Category Archives: Music

Salt air, and the rust on your door
I never needed anything more
Whispers of “Are you sure?”
“Never have I ever before”

From Taylor Swift’s masterpiece ‘folklore’, this is ‘august’ – a fitting companion to this trying post from last year around this time. Last August the house was filled with the music from ‘folklore’ – and when ‘evermore’ came out a few months later, it was a year  that was backed by Swift, who usurped the non-stop wall of sound that had previously been occupied by Madonna. She hinted at the musical huntress she was about to become with ‘The Archer’ and I started listening back then. 

The mark of great music for me is whether you can listen to something for a long time, then come back to it and still feel the same emotional thrill while discovering new elements, new sounds, new nuances that escaped you on the first few listens. A good album grows and evolves that way, revealing itself slowly over time, and resonating in differing stages of development. 

But I can see us lost in the memory
August slipped away into a moment in time
‘Cause it was never mine
And I can see us twisted in bedsheets
August sipped away like a bottle of wine
‘Cause you were never mine

For all the awfulness of 2020, the melancholy musical journey that Swift framed and guided us through was an integral part of how I managed to survive and at times thrive when the world around us fell to pieces. She provided a contemplative background for processing the dramatic shift in how we lived our lives, and the ways we were all changing. Change isn’t easy for most people – looking back the entire population experienced the greatest changes most of us had ever experienced as far as socialization and day-to-day life went. 

Your back beneath the sun
Wishin’ I could write my name on it
Will you call when you’re back at school?
I remember thinkin’ I had you

But I can see us lost in the memory
August slipped away into a moment in time
‘Cause it was never mine
And I can see us twisted in bedsheets
August sipped away like a bottle of wine
‘Cause you were never mine

Back when we were still changin’ for the better
Wanting was enough
For me, it was enough
To live for the hope of it all
Cancel plans just in case you’d call
And say, “Meet me behind the mall”
So much for summer love and saying “us”
‘Cause you weren’t mine to lose
You weren’t mine to lose, no

But I can see us lost in the memory
August slipped away into a moment in time
‘Cause it was never mine
And I can see us twisted in bedsheets
August sipped away like a bottle of wine
‘Cause you were never mine
‘Cause you were never mine, never mine

But do you remember?
Remember when I pulled up and said, “Get in the car”
And then canceled my plans just in case you’d call?
Back when I was livin’ for the hope of it all, for the hope of it all
“Meet me behind the mall”

Remember when I pulled up and said, “Get in the car”
And then canceled my plans just in case you’d call?
Back when I was livin’ for the hope of it all

(For the hope of it all)

Sit with me, if you will, in the almost-silence of the moment, a moment about to be broken ever so gently by this Air, given a revision by the Klazz Brothers and Cuba Percussion – a companion piece to go with this song, another song of meditation in a world of murderers and car crashes and chases that end the only way any chase can really end.

Come, join me in the attic loft, where it is peaceful, and perfectly removed from the world below. The light, though only from a small window, and that blocked largely by a rickety air conditioning unit, magnifies itself in the pale white walls and floor, in the cream rug, and the beige chair. It is a place of tranquility, a place to be gentle with oneself, a place in which to listen – to the wind, to the rain, to the air, and to the music.

It is a place of comfort, with its calming palette of monochromatic, non-striking colors – all whites and creams and beiges – and a small collection of fragrances, most fittingly from Jo Malone – the beige version of scent. There is tea for you, too, however you like it. In my cup, it’s a simple, unamended hibiscus and elderberry herbal variety – something that works for mid to late summer, when the nights are getting cooler. Nature waits for no one, pausing for no wish to delay the sunny season.  Still, I am finding peace with that too, in the way it so invariably happens, ticking away with steady advancement.

This Air is like that too, offering a steady and delicately pulsating piano accompaniment to the hands of the clock – the hands of time. Dive into the moment. Pause here. 

When this song first came across the radio waves as part of the sequel to ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ I was roughly the age that my nephew Noah is now. I got to spend some quality time with him when I was staying with my Dad, and it’s fun to see how much – and how little – has changed in the lives of kids now compared to my hey-day in the 80’s. My brother and I tried to explain how far we used to ride our bikes back then – the trips to creeks across town, the roaming bands of boys traversing all of Amsterdam no matter how hot the day. The lives of boys in the summer are filled with more than anyone really realizes. 

No matter how the race is run it always ends the same
Another room without a view awaits downtown
You can shake me for a while
Live it up in style
No matter what you do I’m gonna take you down

While our main concerns seemed to be which route to take to get home quickest when we suddenly noticed the day waning, there were burgeoning worries that befuddled the mind, even in the freedom of summer. Even the sunniest day went to sleep eventually, and summer nights, without the bright blanket of snow to reflect any light, could be especially dark. In one’s youth, that dramatic hint of darkness was more of a thrill than a concern, and more often than not we found ourselves in bed before the real dark of night ever arrived. There’s a brutal lesson in patience to be gleaned from going to bed when the sun is still illuminating the sky. 

Shakedown, Breakdown, Takedown
Everybody wants into the crowded line
Breakdown, Takedown, You’re busted
Let down your guard
Honey, just about the time you’re thinkin’ it’s alright
Breakdown, Takedown, You’re busted

As I watched Noah ride his bike, toss a ball with his Dad, or jump into the pool, I was reminded of the innocence of this moment, how every minute can feel exciting and hopeful, and the next turn to dependency and despair – all over the smallest and insignificant of things – but when you’re a kid everything matters. Everything is important. Maybe that’s the big fallacy of becoming an adult – we suddenly forget about what it was like when every single thing truly mattered. 

We also lose our sense of adventure unless we keep nurturing it. The sort of summer movie escapism that characterized my childhood – even if it was only in my imagination – is rekindled mostly through things like writing this entry or remembering the chases of our youth with emboldened urgency and drama. There was never anyone really chasing us, but we felt the whole world biting at our heels and sped away because of it. 

This is a town where everyone is reachin’ for the top
This is a place where second best will never do
It’s okay to want to shine
But once you step across that line
No matter where you hide I’m comin’ after you

My niece and nephew are right in that moment, when childhood is cresting and young adulthood is right around the corner. More than any other generation perhaps, they are in a race against time – a shakedown of epic proportion that is probably quite unfair to them, but which we – the adults – have set up for them to fail. If they keep to what’s right, if they stay true to what’s good, they may stand a chance. I’m just not sure it will even matter. That’s the cynical adult in me being brutally honest. I’d rather go back to the eleven-year-old I was, dancing and grooving to ‘Shakedown’ and imagining and enacting all sorts of crazy adventures before I had to grow up.

Shakedown, Breakdown, Takedown
Everybody wants into the crowded line
Breakdown, Takedown, You’re busted
Let down your guard
Honey, just about the time you’re thinkin’ it’s alright
Breakdown, Takedown, You’re busted

Like fried clams and grape taffy, the majesty of ‘The Mighty Quinn’ soundtrack was introduced to me by Suzie, who at one point in our lives taught me whatever bit of cool I once had, and the collection of songs from a movie I have yet to see became the soundtrack to our trip to the then-Soviet Union in the summer of 1990, even more than Madonna’s ‘I’m Breathless’. How a Russian adventure came to be backed by reggae was a typical Suzie Ko mash-up of unlikely cultural combinations. Having neglected to bring a Walkman along for the endless hours in flight, I begged and pleaded for Suzie to share her music with me. I didn’t care what it was, I just couldn’t listen to the two mid-westerners between whom I was sandwiched, away from my friends for the longest flight of the trip, for one more minute, and Suzie – gracious and generous and selfless as ever – was good enough to oblige. And so it was that I found myself hurtling sky-high toward a continent I had never visited, listening to Sheryl Lee Ralph revisit Bob Marley’s ‘I’m Hurting Inside’, and my fourteen-year-old self wanted to cry from loneliness while being surrounded by a sea of people on all sides.

When I was just a little child
Happiness was there awhile 
Then from me it slipped away
Happiness come back I say

And if you don’t come
I’m gonna go looking
For happiness

And if you don’t come
I’m gonna go looking
For happiness

What pain could I have possibly felt at the tender age of fourteen, and on a trip around the world with some friends, and Suzie’s own father watching over us? I couldn’t place it, couldn’t define or understand what my burgeoning and tamped-down awakening as a gay kid even meant, or even if it was a possibility, and so it manifested itself in various wicked ways, such as winning everyone over to share their most intimate secrets and stories. When a person simply listens, and prompts the next part of someone else’s story, people feel special and impelled to share more than they would under usual circumstances. And so I became the keeper of secrets – secrets which I would later dole out when it suited me. No one swore me to secrecy so I wasn’t violating anything, and it was easier to deflect by letting everyone else’s story take center stage while mine hadn’t even begun.

I didn’t see any of that then, I just felt trusted and liked enough to be the repository for those sacred tales. I also sensed the power of listening and gaining access to a person’s confidence. Curating and keeping such secrets could, when we were adults and those skills could result in information that might actually be valuable, be incredibly useful. For our teenaged group of friends, it was merely practice.

While knowing everyone’s private thoughts and feelings carried its own particular power, it also came with a certain weight, and the concern of knowing things that others didn’t, and maybe shouldn’t. Rather than make me feel more included, it more often left me feeling alone and oddly isolated. Without sharing secrets of my own, I was the dead-end of what was also, impossibly, a one-way street.

I’ve done you no wrong, I’ve done you no wrong

Reveal yourself to me

I say, I say

I’m hurting inside
I’m hurting inside

What I’ve only just begun to see of that time in my life is that by accepting the confidences of others, and offering none of my own, I couldn’t share any genuine sense of intimacy or even friendship – it all rang hollow, and it left me empty and unfulfilled, and always longing for more. The hole in my heart would never be filled that way, no matter how close I thought I was getting to people, no matter how much they seemed to like me. Hiding my own vulnerability was a protection device, but as would so often be the case it worked against me. I did not see that then, and I didn’t see it for many years afterward.

We’ve been together like school children
But then the hurt, the hurt was in vain
Oh, Lord, I’m your weary child
Oh, happiness come back again

And if you don’t come
I’m gonna go looking
For happiness

And if you don’t come
I’m gonna go looking
For happiness

Keeping secrets became a way of life – not only the secrets of others, but my own – and only when I was alone did I ever really feel safe and comfortable being myself. Decades of that wear away at the soul like almost nothing else does. Even direct pain and loss and heartache were easier to handle somehow. During my first brush with those secrets, part of me understood that loneliness, and a sense of separation and removal from every situation, would inform the person I was becoming. It was creating a chasm between me and everyone else, a divide that would only grow over the ensuing years. My heart sensed that, and it leaned into that exquisite sadness and tantalizing hurt.

I’ve done you no wrong, I’ve done you no wrong

Reveal yourself to me

I say, I say

I’m hurting inside
I’m hurting inside

When I was just a little child
Happiness was there awhile 
Then from me it slipped away
Happiness come back I say…

It was the summer of 1983, and Elton John was back on the charts with ‘I’m Still Standing’. While he was filming the music video in France, I was frolicking on some beach in New England, embracing my super-short-shorts like any burgeoning gay boy – so innocent and naive and silly – and so happily unaware of what the world had in store for me. The wind in my hair, the sun in my eyes, and the sand in-between my toes – it was summer on the beach. I didn’t feel the need to suck in my tummy, and striking a pose was already my natural mode of existence. It was nearly the end of childhood innocence, and I had absolutely no idea what was to come. 

You could never know what it’s like
Your blood like winter freezes just like ice
And there’s a cold lonely light that shines from you
You’ll wind up like the wreck you hide behind that mask you use

And did you think this fool could never win?
Well look at me, I’m coming back again
I got a taste of love in a simple way
And if you need to know while I’m still standing, you just fade away…

Don’t you know I’m still standing better than I ever did
Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid
I’m still standing after all this time
Picking up the pieces of my life without you on my mind

I’m still standing (Yeah, yeah, yeah)
I’m still standing (Yeah, yeah, yeah)

Building sandcastles by the sea, I lost myself in the sparkle of the water and the sun. I paid no mind to the other people on the beach, being entirely occupied with the kingdom before me. A hole in the sand filled with burrowing sand fleas and seaweed was more intriguing than the sterilized chlorine haze of the hotel pool, and the world I conjured for myself was all the more precious for the encroaching waves of the ocean, lapping and biting at my kingdom, ever-threatening to devour and destroy. 

Back then, I could flirt with the idea of dismantling entire worlds, watching the sea dissolve the grandest design, and not be very bothered by it. As the sun began its slow summer descent, and my stomach rumbled, attention moved from the transitory charms of the beach to the possibility of a seafood dinner. The sea always brought out the most voracious appetite – all the running into and out of the water, the swimming against the current and fighting a way back to shore. The waves could knock us down with their exhilarating might, and every time we got up we felt a little stronger. 

Oddly enough, in some ways I think the boy I was then stood a little taller, a little prouder, a little more confident than the man I am today. He was unafflicted by shame, he didn’t have names or hatred thrown at him, he didn’t know what awfulness the world could inflict. Children have that kind of power for such a brief window of time – I wish I’d known that then. Moreover, I wish I’d learned how to hang onto it. 

Some days, when I’m lucky enough to be on the beach, when the sun sparkles a certain way on the sea, and when I’m feeling especially free, I conjure a little bit of that kid. I remember his spirit, his innocence, his power. I remember his invincibility. 

And I mourn the way he left. 

We started summer off early this year with ‘Where the Boys Are’ but on this official first day of the season, here’s another song to greet the sun: the exquisite ‘Sanremo’ by Mika. It’s definitely my song for this summer, even if the Sanremo conjured can only exist in my mind. After not going anywhere for most of 2020 and the first half of 2021, such mindful travels are neither foreign, nor disappointing. Within the imagination is where summer most fully blooms. 

Light brown skin, Lips like Campari

And words like soda, Can I come over?

Just let me in I wanna go where the nights are blinding

The sun keeps shining

If I could I know where I’d be – In a little town in Italy

Close your eyes, come away with me Tomorrow we will be…

What shall this summer bring? It’s already brought a boisterous return of us boys to Boston for this year’s wedding anniversary, a roller-coaster of a BroSox Adventure that started at the Mandarin Oriental and ended at Fenway Park, and next up is a rendezvous with Chris in a few weeks where his cross-country journey lands him back on the East Coast. I have a trip to Connecticut in the works as well, where I get to see Missy and Joe and their fantabulous boys – the wardrobe is already worked out to a tropical cabana theme. (Oddly enough, I had all the necessary accoutrements in the attic.) That leaves us with a couple of weeks to welcome in the summer before JoAnn arrives for a too-long-awaited reunion. 

Sitting by the seaside, drinking up the sunshine

You’re here so why don’t we go dancing in Sanremo?

We can be there in a couple of hours, to the place with the yellow flowers

Somewhere only we know – sunset in Sanremo

After being rocked so traumatically last year, we all seem to be in a collective state of hesitant hope. That’s not a bad space to be during the summer, when things slow down, when we pause and savor. The other day, I went for a swim and had to remind myself to take it all in, to enjoy the present moment, to stop racing ahead in my head. Summer is no time to rush, and sometimes – most times in fact – it’s ok to simply be. 

To feel like this is one in a million

A suspended moment  – can we seal it with a tender kiss?

Out of a movie made by Fellini, Love that you need me

Over there you shine like a star, doesn’t even matter who you are

Hold my hand and we travel far

Close your eyes and we will be…

Maybe that’s one of the lessons we should glean from the recent past. I take it to heart, and take the world around me in tiny steps. A small cut on my leg brings back summer stumbles as a boy. The pesky mosquito bite on my arm itches and tells me I’m alive. Squinting into the sunlight coming from its zenith, I survey the sky. Nearby the little cries of baby cardinals and baby robins sound from the hedge and juniper. You can just see the straining heads and necks reach skyward when a parent approaches with a worm or caterpillar. Life feels fragile in the summer. Indomitable too, somehow. 

Along with its fragility and defiance, summer is time for celebration, whether it’s the simple opening of a daisy or the opulent parade of hydrangeas this year. A rather benign winter has allowed blooms to form and develop on shrubs that haven’t bloomed in literal decades. It’s a happy sight to see, and so lovely I may make motions to provide some winter protection for them in the hopes to preserve this wave of blooms for future years. Lessons in kindness and compassion, even in the plant world, are always welcome. 

Sitting by the seaside, drinking up the sunshine

You’re here so why don’t we go dancing in Sanremo?

We can be there in a couple of hours, to the place with the yellow flowers

Somewhere only we know – sunset in Sanremo

There you can shine like a star

There’s a place for you whoever you are

I know you’re tired of the rain, but tomorrow we’ll be…

Music hits differently in the summer. It hits harder, deeper into the heart and head, and it makes a more potent memory than at any other time of the year. I can’t say why that is, and maybe it’s just me, but summer music memories are some of the most powerful and meaningful. To that end, I’ll be writing a few summer song posts as we slink through the sunny days ahead. 

Sitting by the seaside, drinking up the sunshine

You’re here so why don’t we go dancing in Sanremo?

We can be there in a couple of hours, to the place with the yellow flowers

Somewhere only we know  – sunset in Sanremo …

Summer can be serious, but I’m most enamored of it when it turns cheeky and fun and light and whimsical and flirtatious – teasing and smiling and giggling at its own effervescent charm and silliness. When all else fails, and the world fumbles and toils and troubles, summer comes again – all sunshine and grace and balmy goodness. It’s hard to be sad or serious on a sunny summer day. Beauty has that power, and the sensual pull of the sun reminds us of all the physical pleasures this world still holds for us. A bowl of ripe cherries, sweet and tart on the tongue. A tall glass of cucumber-tinged water waiting on a table and sweating in the shade. A coconut-scented bottle of sunscreen warmed in the sunlight by the pool. A sun shower prickling my skin and tickling the hair on my arms. 

Sitting by the seaside, drinking up the sunshine

You’re here so why don’t we go dancing in Sanremo?

We can be there in a couple of hours to the place with the yellow flowers

Somewhere only we know… sunset in Sanremo.

So let us have this summer, let us celebrate it quietly and defiantly, gently and ferociously, in all the ways summer deserves and demands to be celebrated. It will go quickly, but it will go sweetly, and we will lean into the sweetness, embracing the warmth, the beauty, the joy.

PS – Tomorrow is the second night of summer.