A mystical moment is at hand, night sprinkled with the astral dust of the moon and stars. The veil of October behind us, the crisp chill of November tearing the leaves and the last of the summer from the air – there is no pretending that any vestiges of summer might linger.
You can ride high atop your pony I know you won’t fall ‘Cause the whole thing’s phoney. You can fly swinging from your trapeze Scaring all the people But you’ll never scare me
Bella Donna, my soul
The demo of this Stevie Nicks song speaks to me more than the finished version – I like its rawness, the way it speaks directly from one soul to another, searching for a connection, for understanding. It is the search of an artist ~ the search for the purpose of humanity. More often than not, it is the search for love.
No speed limit this is the fast lane It’s just the way that it is here And you say I never thought it could… Come in out of the darkness
Bella Donna my soul
You are in love with And I’m ready to sail It’s just a feeling
And we fight for the northern star
Bella Donna my soul
The moon seems to play hide and seek with a nearby star, ducking behind a cloud, peeking around a tree, though it’s only our fanciful imprint of imagination. The moon and the stars take no real notice of our clouds and trees, nor are they bound behind or before them – it’s all our perspective. We want so badly to have such power, to name and decipher the motives and motions of the moon, to harness its power and energy and magic. In the end, all we can do is watch and hope and dream.
And the lady’s feeling Like the moon that she loved Don’t you know that the stars are A part of us
The parade that my Dad took me to see when I was a little boy was a parade of ducks that made its way around a tiny pond near the place at which we used to have Sunday breakfast. Faded, faint, and vague, the memory of those Sunday mornings is shrouded in the mist of time – and well over forty years have passed since those days – yet remnants of it remain. Whether from my mother’s retelling of how much I loved to see the cleaning supplies in the back kitchen of what used to be the Windsor Restaurant, or my own indelible mental imprint of Dad bringing me to see the ducks, just the two of us – it remains a vital memory.
When I was a young boy My father took me into the city To see a marching band He said, “Son, when you grow up Would you be the savior of the broken The beaten and the damned?” He said, “Will you defeat them? Your demons, and all the non-believers The plans that they have made? Because one day, I’ll leave you a phantom To lead you in the summer To join the black parade”
Watching the ducks waddle from their wooden house to the water, I am entranced by their feathers, especially those on the ducklings, which look so much fluffier and softer. It must have been spring, lending the morning a haze that a summer sun had not quite started to burn away. Such a haze adds to the clouded aspect of the memory, cocooned in the gauze of weather and atmosphere and the love a boy felt for his father. To my side, Dad watched the parade of ducks, as gleefully enrapt as me. Catching the gleeful side of my Dad wasn’t always easy, but it was such a joy to behold that we all chased after it.
Sometimes I get the feelin’ She’s watchin’ over me And other times I feel like I should go And through it all, the rise and fall The bodies in the streets And when you’re gone, we want you all to know
We’ll carry on, we’ll carry on And though you’re dead and gone, believe me Your memory will carry on
We’ll carry on And in my heart, I can’t contain it The anthem won’t explain it
Tracing the line from that little boy to the man that types this today is not easy. It is not even particularly linear – there have been fits and stops and stalls along the way, restarts and rebirths and re-dos that make it impossible to easily track the journey of a life. Death seemed to be the ultimate halt to that journey, or so I used to think, but maybe life isn’t a line as much as it is a circle, or some infinite, undulating curve. My geometry skills were never stellar, especially when the graphing went off the page with an arrow. I needed some control to the chaos, some finite sense of completion, but that’s not how it works.
On my last visit home, those ducks were still there at that little pond. Well, different ducks, but ducks nonetheless, still marching in their little parade. There is even a duck crossing sign near the road that runs dangerously nearby. If I didn’t know better, I might believe that those ducks never left. And in some way, aren’t they still there? If I were to bring my godson Jaxon to see them, his memory of them would be the same one I had, and forty years from now he would look back with the same experience. Maybe the ducks never truly leave. Maybe death doesn’t halt life.
A world that sends you reelin’ From decimated dreams Your misery and hate will kill us all So paint it black and take it back Let’s shout it loud and clear Defiant to the end, we hear the call
To carry on, we’ll carry on And though you’re dead and gone, believe me Your memory will carry on
We’ll carry on And though you’re broken and defeated Your weary widow marches
On and on, we carry through the fears Disappointed faces of your peers Take a look at me, ’cause I could not care at all
Ducks are a far cry from my Dad. They may be imperceptibly reincarnated to the effect that I cannot tell they’re missing, but my Dad has physically departed from this world. The first three months are done, and the holidays are coming up, so this will likely be a tricky time. There are days when the struggle is barely perceptible, mostly because other things take over – the cadence of work, home maintenance, and friend obligations. I try to immerse myself in the daily meditation and exercises in mindfulness, the writing of this blog, the attempt at a new recipe, or the simple sustaining of any meal. The motions of making a cup of tea on a rainy day can, when done carefully and mindfully, be enough to see you through to the next moment.
Then there are days when I feel agitated and annoyed by everything, when the slightest inconvenience or ordeal takes on a magnified feeling of being absolutely unbearable. At those times I feel like one more setback or mishap will have me pick up and leave town without a trace, disappearing with nothing but cash and an untraceable burn phone. My social media accounts would dangle there untended, this blog would be stuck on its last programmed post, and my whole ridiculous online existence would slowly be buried by all the nonsense piling up on the internet. Part of me quite likes that idea of being buried that way by technology, slowly ticking down on some search engine ranking, gradually disappearing until all the links are broken, until the trail has gone completely cold. No one asks ‘whatever happened to…’ when they never knew you in the first place.
Do or die, you’ll never make me, because the world will never take my heart Go and try, you’ll never break me, We want it all, we wanna play this part
I won’t explain or say I’m sorry, I’m unashamed, I’m gonna show my scars Give a cheer for all the broken, Listen here, because it’s who we are
Just a man, I’m not a hero Just a boy, who had to sing this song Just a man, I’m not a hero I don’t care
We’ll carry on, we’ll carry on And though you’re dead and gone, believe me Your memory will carry on
You’ll carry on And though you’re broken and defeated Your weary widow marches…
When the struggle bears down, and the world turns dark and cold – as it’s doing with the onslaught of proper fall – I seek out more than the making of a cup of tea to get me through it – and I cannot say that I’ve been very successful thus far. Some part of me knows that the mere questioning of this – the very acknowledgement of not knowing what to do or where to go or how to make sense of it – is the main key that will unlock wherever I’m supposed to be going. A larger part wants the answers yesterday, and finds frustration so great it brings me to tears. The smallest part, one that I hear in the quietest whispering voice, believes it is enough to simply carry on.
Do or die, you’ll never make me Because the world will never take my heart Go and try, you’ll never break me We want it all, we wanna play this part (we’ll carry on) Do or die, you’ll never make me (we’ll carry on) Because the world will never take my heart (we’ll carry on) Go and try, you’ll never break me (we’ll carry on) We want it all, we wanna play this part (we’ll carry on!)
Entering the fall of one’s life is not something that usually happens without incident or reflection, and finding myself not-so-suddenly at the age of 48, I realize that there are probably more days behind me than are ahead of me. Cresting over this hump of middle age is, somewhat strangely, not something that has caused much consternation or worry. In a number of distinct ways, the overriding feeling is one of gratitude. Honestly, I never thought I’d make it past thirty – there were so many moments fraught with willful self-annihilation, so many times when I gave up on myself, when I actually set out to destroy the young man I couldn’t quite stop myself from becoming.
A song then, on the piano, for the boy I used to be. (All those years of piano lessons, and still I could never play like this.) A song, too, for the man I’ve somehow become, in spite of my weaker efforts, and because of my strongest.
One doesn’t reach a place of gratitude from mindfulness or meditation alone, or from the luck of leading a very charmed and privileged life. One has to suffer a bit, go through a few things, build some character, and maybe approach oblivion couple of times. The debilitating struggle of not feeling like you belong, of not feeling wanted, of not being understood at the most basic level – those things chips away at the innocence and exuberance of childhood. If you’ve only ever felt you were at the margins of life when you were a kid, you never really quite feel like you belong anywhere – at least, you don’t until you can find yourself, and find your own worth. It’s that shaky and unsteady ground that many gay people feel themselves on at one point or another – that moment when coming out might cost you friendship or love or life.
Such a strange thing, that unsteadiness, and the dizzying lack of some feeling of belonging – and then of thinking you don’t belong anywhere unless you’re there at the center of it all, marching in some grand parade, embraced and hoisted on the shoulders not because different, but because you’re just like everyone else. You belong.
Everyone’s eyes are on the spectacle of it – the music and the pomp and the majesty of a march – and we lose ourselves in watching it go by, not looking around to see all the people next to us – eyes only on the chosen few, missing the real connections, the true threads of life running through our journey. I thought I wanted to be in that parade. I thought that would make me belong.
So I made myself into my own parade – a grotesque, ridiculous, carnival of outlandish proportion compared to my trifling lot in life. It was but one of the many demons I conjured in the name of survival. A celebration of me to mask the utter lack of believing I deserved one.
There came a time when all those demons became my friends, when they stopped fighting me and turned their formidable powers against the outer world. Suddenly I could charge ahead with a battalion behind me, a support system the likes of which I never knew or got when I was growing up.
Like all demons, however, they proved problematic, deceptive in their perceived power, and ultimately deserting me when I needed them the most. Empty shells and vaporous ghosts, the scariest forms of imagined life, they were all in my head, all made-up and false crutches to get me through. Sometimes they did, but in the end they couldn’t do what I needed them to do.
In honor of Taylor Swift’s release of ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version), I’m posting my favorite track from the album (‘Blank Space‘ is a very close second, and on days when I’m feeling especially crazy it might be number one). But I digress, and must remind myself that comparison is the thief of joy. ‘Out of the Woods’ has what I consider to be the greatest bridge of any Swift song, which is saying a lot when you consider the likes of ‘Cruel Summer’. Still, I give the edge to ‘Woods’. And there I go comparing again…
Looking at it now It all seems so simple We were lying on your couch I remember
You took a Polaroid of us Then discovered (Then discovered) The rest of the world was black and white But we were in screaming color And I remember thinking…
In celebration of the woods, we are revisiting the forest, where fall comes into its own with the following links.
Remember when we couldn’t take the heat? I walked out, I said “I’m setting you free” But the monsters turned out to be just trees When the sun came up you were looking at me…
Gloria Estefan doesn’t get the credit she deserves for creating a body of music that has pervaded pop culture more than any of us realize over the 80’s and 90’s and early 2000’s. She’s kept creating music in the first two decades of this millennium as well, as fans and appreciators know, while pushing forth on endeavors like a Broadway musical and various philanthropic enterprises. She earns this Dazzler of the Day for doing it all with heart and soul, and staying true to herself and her heritage before such things were fashionable.
{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}
A quintessential fall album, coming out during one of the most indelible falls of my youth, ‘Bedtime Stories‘ was the soundtrack of a pivotal period in my life. This little soft-focus disco ditty was one of the few upbeat moments in a relatively moody atmospheric album, although ‘Don’t Stop’ felt like one of those unremarkable filler tracks designed to puff out a Madonna album so more solid material like ‘Secret‘ or ‘Survival‘ could shine. Hearing it now brings me back to that time period, to that tricky fall when I shared my very first kiss with a man.
Get up on the dance floor, everything is groovin’ Get up on the dance floor, got to see you movin’ Let the music shake you, let the rhythm take you Feel it in your body, sing la dee da dee
While much of that fall involved experiences with other people, the majority of my time was spent alone – walking the streets of Boston, riding the commuter rail between Boston and Brandeis, writing papers and creating projects in my dorm room within Usen Castle. A sense of loneliness pervaded the chilly air, even as I refused to allow myself to feel lonely; the notion of giving in to that, of being lonely, was an abyss that terrified me more than I can or could explain. It scared me to the point that I backed away from it as soon as I felt it drawing near. Like death.
Such darkness came with the descent of fall, with its early evenings and frosty mornings – the shock of it after the ease of summer, the way it took one’s breath away – the advent of autumn was still a surprise at that time in my life. The ‘Bedtime Stories’ album set an evocative tone with lush orchestral tracks like ‘Love Tried to Welcome Me’, ‘Forbidden Love‘ and ‘Take A Bow‘, while the hazy atmosphere of ‘Inside of Me’ and ‘Sanctuary’ spoke to the private cocoon I’d wrapped around myself, isolating my daily existence from classmates and people in general. The contradiction of not wanting to be lonely and not wanting to be around people was apparent – I just didn’t find a way to put it into words. In some ways, I was happier bopping about alone in my room to a song like this and imagining being around friends and lovers than actually putting such imagined scenes into action.
Come on join the party, let the bass line pump you Bring your body over, baby let me bump you I know I can groove you, you know I can move you Feel it in your body, sing la dee da dee
It was a haunted time, one that I’ve already written about so much it feels more like a book I once read than a life I once led. It’s not a time or place I’d like to dwell, and so we return to the modern day, and the present moment, and a song with the sentiment of ‘Don’t Stop’ carries more resonance on this day, as Madonna kicks off her new Celebration World Tour, proving that she is more concerned with walking her walk than talking her talk.
Daily meditation has formed a safe and consistent bastion of stability in my world over this past summer, a time period when I needed it most. In addition to the formal meditation practice, I’ve also been taking things quietly, using what focus I can find to get through the work days, and spending the remaining hours of the afternoons and evenings writing these blog posts, listening to music, and doing some light reading.
This song came over the radio the other day, and I paused in the post I was writing to listen.
Originally I thought that the fall would reinvigorate me, allowing us to move beyond what was a terrible summer, but I haven’t quite felt that. Not yet. It might simply be that I’m not ready, or it may be that this is the slower pace and quieter footfalls of all that is to come. Learning to accept that is part of this fall, and there is already something peaceful and calming about it.
I’m lying on the moon My dear, I’ll be there soon It’s a quiet starry place Time’s we’re swallowed up in space We’re here a million miles away
There’s things I wish I knew There’s no thing I’d keep from you It’s a dark and shiny place But with you my dear, I’m safe And we’re a million miles away
We all see the same moon. Maybe it’s in shadow for some, maybe it’s brighter for others, maybe it’s barely discernible behind clouds, and maybe it’s the only thing to be seen in the sky – but it’s the same moon, the same body in the universe that everyone on earth gets to glimpse in some way. In that respect, the moon has always been a comfort to me, a reminder that we’re not quite alone.
We’re lying on the moon It’s a perfect afternoon Your shadow follows me all day Making sure that I’m okay And we’re a million miles away
Before the official first day of fall way back in the year 1994, I was priming the seasonal pumps with my ‘Darkness’ project, in which I did a rather perfunctory examination of, well, ‘Darkness’ in an effort to strike some fun fear and silly scares in the hearts of my friends. Little did I know that real life would soon prove dark enough, and that all my writings and mix-tapes on such a theme would feel all the more silly afterward.
This song opened up the theme on the ‘Darkness’ mix I made for all of my friends. (Yes, a mix-tape, on a 90-minute cassette from the 80’s.) The grand finale to the month-long mailing extravaganza of my ‘projects’ at the time was usually the tape (which included chilling musical motifs from the likes of ‘The Silence of the Lambs’). This particular package came with a bloody knife wrapped in a bloody wash-cloth, to really get the point across. (The post office used to be a lot less stringent in what you get away with mailing.)
Love – nobody know just how it was born Love – first came to me with the radio on Jumped up in my body with an attitude Kissed me on the mouth and said “Your leader take me to”
‘Twas like thunder all thru the night
And a promise to see jesus in the morning light
Love say “Take my hand, it’ll be alright
C’mon save your soul tonight”
The package, and the entire project itself, brought mixes reactions. One of my friends reported it, while Suzie and the Cornell Crew opened the package, shrugged, washed off the knife and added it to their questionable collection of kitchen utensils. Back then, I considered it a success based on those disparate reactions alone. Clearly, I was still finding my footing as far as creative expression went.
The stories that accompanied the ‘Darkness’ project were designed to disturb and scare, and thankfully I no longer have any of them because I’m sure they read as more ridiculous than terrifying. (The only one I partially recall is a fantasy on torturing my annoying roommate at the time – a broken light bulb was going to be inserted into his, well, you get the idea.) I wanted to illuminate all the ways that Darkness can make us do things we wouldn’t normally do, things of which we would never be proud, things that turn us into lesser-versions of ourselves. I accessed the darker corners of my psyche and let it all play out on the page, taking my friends along for the ride whether they liked it or not.
Love’s kiss was running all thru my veins
The bed started shakin’, I don’t know who to blame
Me or this flower right in front of my eyes
Is this my sweet savior or the devil in disguise
‘Twas like thunder (oh) all thru the night (all through)
Promise to see jesus in the morning light
Love say “Take my hand, it’ll be alright
C’mon save your soul tonight”
It was my attempt to keep myself in their minds while we were miles apart – my biggest fear back then may have been being forgotten. It worked almost too well, and I came up against the prickly lines that vacillated among notoriety, derision, and disgust. Alienating friends was the art form I was unintentionally perfecting, and the solitary stance in which I found myself may have fed into my behavior that fall. Sometimes I think darkness begets darkness, and once you start rolling down that hill it’s very difficult to stop, much less right yourself. The best you can do is slow down a bit, and hope that any impact at the end won’t kill you outright.
Like rain falling on a window pane
Tears came to my eyes when I asked her name
Made me holler when it finally came
Said “Only the children born of me will remain”
‘Twas like thunder all thru the night
And a promise to see Jesus in the morning light (mornin’ light)
Love say “Take my hand, it’ll be alright
C’mon save your soul tonight”
This song by Prince and the New Power Generation, from the brilliant ‘Diamonds and Pearls‘ album (which remains my favorite Prince album, as much as purists may scoff) brings me back to those thunderous days, when fall felt like the most fitting season for the tales of fright I was intentionally crafting and intentionally living. Fall was rife for drama in that way, and I courted it unabashedly, conjuring the tension and emotions required to make an impression and a memory. I would burn everything down before they could forget me.
Now that feels all so silly and futile, and the only ones who remember anything of my ‘Darkness’ project are myself and the small smattering of friends who got that bloody knife in the mail. Oddly, and wonderfully, those are the only ones who still matter.
Thunder…
Like thunder (thunder) all thru the night (thunder yeah) Promise to see Jesus in the morning light (it will be all right) Love say “Take my hand, it’ll be alright (it’s gonna be alright) C’mon save your soul tonight”
Thirty years ago I was experiencing my first semester at Brandeis University. That puts time, and age, in a very stark perspective. (Originally I typed ‘Twenty years ago’ then did the disturbing math and here we are.) A lot was learned that first semester, so much so that I thought I knew it all by the time the holidays rolled around that winter. Looking back, it’s amazing at how much I didn’t know, and how I still somehow had the balls to walk around like I had my shit together. Going back in time, it’s a wonder such hubris and insecurity could so functionally co-exist… and rewinding to the fall of 1993, I’m astonished at what I still feel when I allow myself to return to that time…
He said I must be dreaming But I thought I heard the sound The sound that lovers make As they drop down from the window Quiet as cats, across the courtyard Moving from shadow to shadow Past the guards to the forest So quiet in her still reflection Drawing them down, drawing them down to the lake To the centre of her attention
In that fall semester, I steal away to Boston whenever I have a chance, finding more comfort in the chilly solitude of the city than the student-filled campus. At the Tower Records store that once stood at one end of Newbury Street, and is now occupied by a TJ Maxx, I browse the bins of CDs, because it’s still only the early 90’s, and I’m still only a few steps removed from boyhood. On this particular night, I’m feeling particularly daring, and so I gamble on an unheard purchase – the ‘Laid’ album by James – based on the accolades in the advertising blurbs, as well as the gents on the cover, decked out in dresses and eating bananas. It spoke to me.
The album would become one of the most profound musical connections at one of the more profound formative sections of my life – that tender time of the very last teen years, still a child in some ways, not yet a young adult in others, and nowhere near figuring out where I might belong and who I might be, but absolutely hell-bent on finding out by any means necessary. Music discovered at such crossroads invariably becomes imbued with significance and import, even if it’s only to our own ears.
Steal the moon tonight Before the morning Steal the moon tonight I just love a good mystery And on the West Bank a boat is being pulled Across the sands they move so softly Slip into water Oars dip, don’t break the moon’s reflection And drift like a cloud To the centre Beneath her cool attention
On the recent evening of the Super Blue Moon – the last of its kind for well over a decade or so – this song was revealed to me via the latest album by James. It turns out this was a B-side to the epic ‘Laid’ album – and I can hear in its melody and delivery the same tone and majesty that first drew me into their fan base two decades ago. It seems a fitting song to introduce the fall season of 2023 at ALANILAGAN.com, and it brings me all the way back to 1993; those tender early days at Brandeis are rife for exploration, though I’m not sure I’m up for that kind of triggering right now.
This fall also marks the 25th anniversary of when I got my first office job – at John Hancock – and I recently stumbled upon the blank book I had everyone sign when I left that gig. The revelations there are as hilarious to me as they will likely be mundane to you, but since this is still my blog I may post them anyway. (Don’t let that frighten you off from boredom – some of the things people wrote are enjoyably embarrassing for those who love to see me in such ego-busting peril. You know who you are, and I know who you are.)
What I don’t know is what this season will bring – and after the events of this summer, I really don’t want to think about it. Getting through it, day by day, will be enough for us to manage. Let’s do it together.
Still water Still water Steal the moon tonight Before the morning Steal the moon tonight I want to drown in your moon dream I’ve seen you rising from shore to shore I want to drown in your moon dream I’ve seen you rising Steal the moon tonight Shine Shine Shine
The wind rustles through the weeping willow, and the sound is more redolent of fall than summer or spring. On the bank of a pond, water birds stand sentinel, their shadows only outlined silhouettes. Remnants of a hurricane echoing along the Northeast coast have drifted inland, and the boughs of trees sway and shift in the temperate night wind.
Something spooky is in the air. Is is really there? Or is it just this time of the year, when change is in the atmosphere? Witches might be flying above the cloud-cover, or that might just be the echoes of the hurricane – who can truly tell? And if you believe the former, wouldn’t the effects of the latter simply back it up? One misguided belief leads to another. The truth, in its infuriating way, refuses to be anything but elusive. Why it should be so hard to pin down is one of life’s more unsatisfying mysteries.
When faced with such a mystery, I find it best to set it to music, and this particular selection straddles the strange undulating border between summer and fall, when chilly nights bleed into striking days, and questions survive only in a world of blue.
Watching the swaying of the willow branches, I’m brought back to those mysteries of life. In most instances they can be traced back to mysteries of love – all the stories somehow come back to love. For some us lucky enough to find escape in the stories we read as children, the wind in the willows sounded a portal to a different world. I still believe in such magic, even if the method to attain entrance is markedly different, and more a better of perspective and mindfulness than actual doors or wardrobes or ships of seedpods to other realms. When the vessel is merely a matter of mind over material, it opens up worlds not limited to the imagination. That expands things to an extent that makes many uncomfortable.
The willow tree is no longer just a willow tree.
It’s a big furry monster that will either warm you with a big embracing hug, or devour you with tendrils studded with thorns, pulling you into a mouth that is only darkness and impossible pain.
“The observations and encounters of a solitary, taciturn man are vaguer and at the same times more intense than those of a sociable man; his thoughts are deeper, odder and never without a touch of sadness. Images and perceptions that could be dismissed with a glance, a laugh, an exchange of opinions, occupy him unduly, become more intense in the silence, become significant, become an experience, an adventure, an emotion. Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportionate, the absurd and the forbidden.” ~Thomas Mann, ‘Death in Venice’
This will be a strange, feverish post. I begin it without knowing where it’s going – never a safe beginning, often a riskier middle, and always an ending of doom. So many doomed endings, so many little deaths – all the deaths of a day. This blog post will suffer its own series of deaths – when it is read, when it is unread, when it is forgotten, when it becomes buried beneath other posts, when the antiquated machinations of this WordPress madness cease functioning, when this blog itself goes offline. So many ways it falls apart, deteriorating and diminishing and dissolving, like some unfinished, half-hearted sentence…
The arrival of today’s mail escaped our notice, so I ended up going out to the mailbox after it was dark, listening to the frogs and insects in the very last days of summer sing their slightly sad songs. This day dies to make way for the night, and the night will be gone as well to make room for a new day. Every day a little death indeed.
“Only incorrigible bohemians find it boring or laughable when a man of talent outgrows the libertine chrysalis stage and begins to perceive and express the dignity of the intellect, adopting the courtly ways of a solitude replete with bitter suffering and inner battles though eventually gaining a position of power and honor among men.” ~Thomas Mann, ‘Death in Venice’
Summer’s demise is happening as I write this. It was there in the chill of tonight’s air, and the official switch of seasons will take place on September 23. Another summer will arrive, and it will be the same, as much as it won’t. Its heart and essence will scream ‘summer’ but it will still not be the same, even as it takes the same name, even as it goes through the same motions. Summer is summer is not summer is summer…
I knew this post would collapse into itself, and imperfectly yet impeccably designed it to do so, like those empty buildings so intricately laced with dynamite at all the right locations that upon explosion almost too neatly fall in on themselves. A million little deaths then – of doorways, of windows, of halls, of secrets whispered, of sighs unheard, of winter footprints stained into carpets, of bathroom tiles once peered into while random men found relief at urinals – all the deaths of an average day in an average building.
Then there is space, littered with dust and debris that will be carted away, ground that will be leveled again – space that will form home for something else, something new. Space and time, both extending and continuing, bound to what came before, bound to what will come after, connecting and separating in infuriating, impossible contradiction. An infinite conundrum that something like Buddhism would only dare hint at resolving, and then it would somehow shift the perspective into something that approached mindfulness, contorting basic laws of science and nature into mere perception, and offering little in how to practically navigate actual survival. Obviously I know little to nothing about Buddhism, or mindfulness… and the last four years of meditation might not mean all that much either. More little deaths – of dreams, of understanding, of plans – and more music by Mahler. I won’t drink to that.
Three more days until summer falls…
“It is probably better that the world knows only the result, not the conditions under which it was achieved; because knowledge of the artist’s sources of inspiration might bewilder them, drive them away and in that way nullify the effect of the excellent work.” ~Thomas Mann, ‘Death in Venice’
For those of us around and cognizant at the turn of the millennium, there was only one war that mattered: Backstreet Boys versus ‘NSync. It was a battle for who could claim the supreme boyband title, and these two groups fought it out on the musical and video battleground, volleying for the top spot. At the end of that initial run of pop glory, I think most would agree that ‘NSync had the edge, following the super status of songs and videos like ‘Bye Bye Bye’ and ‘It’s Gonna Be Me’.
The Carpenters don’t have a song sad enough for when the rainy day also happens to be a Monday, and such is the conundrum in which we find ourselves this final week of summer. Is there a more gloomy and dreary scene than a dim, rainy Monday morning? It unfailingly saps a bit of the soul when it happens, yet rather than fight and wail and rail against it, I’m attempting to lean into the gloom and doom, to let the soul feel its sadness and disappointment, to pause and hopefully to heal.
This classic song by the Carpenters is almost too trite to post, but sometimes you don’t need to get too deep to resonate with such rawness. The Carpenters always managed to straddle that line between earnest and cloying – and today I’m erring on the side of earnest.
Talkin’ to myself and feelin’ old Sometimes I’d like to quit Nothin’ ever seems to fit Hangin’ around Nothin’ to do but frown Rainy days and Mondays always get me down…
Funny, but it seems I always wind up here with you Nice to know somebody loves me Funny, but it seems that it’s the only thing to do Run and find the one who loves me (the one who loves me)
Growing up in the 1980’s, this was the sort of pop music inspiration that informed my formative years, so it’s a wonder my taste isn’t even more gratingly awful than it is. This ear worm would take up residence in my head some days, making itself into a mantra that would later haunt my absences. Subconsciously I was preparing a strategy to never be forgotten – this song seemed to indicate that was important.
My hair never went this high, and my clothes never got this extreme, but the 80’s opened the door to my own sense of style and fashion, for better and often worse. Bold colors, abstract designs, excess and over-the-top madness were the first things that my younger self saw on the television and in the magazines. All the girls in my class wore Liz Claiborne perfume, while my Mom had a bottle of Lou Lou that absolutely transfixed me. She rarely, if ever, wore it – someone gave it to her as a gift and it was decidedly too bold to be her style. I adored it. A few years ago I found a bottle of it, and usually break it out once around the holidays at the whatever over-the-top social gathering that happens to occupy the season.
As I listen to this song now, it feels just as bouncy and happy and hopeful as it did back then, and also slightly empty and vapid. The melody is strong, but the lyrics and their cliches of love fall a little flat. Still, maybe that’s what we need again. Cheesy, cliched hope and fun – even if it’s all a bit hollow.
