The scene has already been set, and the rainbow of lights on the roller rink is spinning as wildly as the wheels on our skates. Round and round and round we go, where we find love we’ll never know. It’s winter and I’ve not yet happened upon the very first brush with a crush that would drive me crazy. For now, it was enough to swirl around the roller rink
My wings had not yet been broken, crushed or clipped. They were as fine and untouched as a newly-hatched chick, minus the messy wet stuff I suppose. I flew around the roller rink as if gliding on air, propelling myself between and among the couples trying in awkward fashion to hold hands, their flailing arms and legs a sure sign that this was not easy or comfortable for them. I could swerve in and out of the groups, weaving among friends and strangers alike, unbound and unattached and all the more uninhibited for it. There is a certain happy freedom in not being tethered to anyone.
TAKE THESE BROKEN WINGS
AND LEARN TO FLY AGAIN AND LEARN TO LIVE SO FREE
WHEN WE HEAR THE VOICES SINGS
THE BOOK OF LOVE WILL OPEN UP AND LET US IN
TAKE THESE BROKEN WINGS
Before romance even entered my life, I embraced the rebellious freedom of childhood – not in any sort of misbehavior or rule-breaking, but in the way children are naturally inclined to rebel against the strict rigid social structure imposed by adults and the arbitrary madness of trying to contain and control the human heart.
As a child, my favorite dreams were of flying – soaring high over hills and streams, beside the clouds and between the earth and the stars – of effortless and uncontainable joy. The closest I could get to that in the little town of Amsterdam was a roller rink where I could go faster than almost anyone else thanks to a quicksilver attitude and an ability to melt into the background while getting exactly where I needed to go.
BABY I THINK TONIGHT
WE CAN TAKE WHAT WAS WRONG AND MAKE IT RIGHT
BABY IT’S ALL I KNOW, THAT YOU’RE HALF OF THE FLESH
AND BLOOD MAKES ME WHOLE
I NEED YOU SO…
SO TAKE THESE BROKEN WINGS
AND LEARN TO FLY AGAIN AND LEARN TO LIVE SO FREE
WHEN WE HEAR THE VOICES SINGS
THE BOOK OF LOVE WILL OPEN UP AND LET US IN
In many ways, I never gave my wings to anyone to break – I’d destroy them myself, in choices made from ignorance and innocence, in the mistaken name of love, in the moments where the heart overrode the head, and passion took doomed flight without permission. They were my wings to pluck, my flight to take, and when I chose to walk and keep them closed and unseen, they were my burden to bear.
TAKE THESE BROKEN WINGS
YOU’VE GOT TO LEARN TO FLY, LEARN TO LIVE, LOVE SO FREE
And High Rollers – the roller skating rink in Amsterdam, NY, where kids spent most of their weekends in the winter.
It sounds like such a silly thing now, but how all-important and serious it felt back then. To be honest, I don’t recall much of the friends I may or may not have hung out with then. I simply loved the feeling of gliding along while music played and lights flashed. There was a large main rink, like the enormous tank in the middle of the New England Aquarium. We all went around in the same circular motion – not unlike the denizens of that extra-large fish tank. In the corner was a smaller kiddie rink, which had a couple of long benches bordering its sides where less-skilled skaters – and children, of course – could practice with a safety buffer. There was also a dark penalty box in the corner of the large rink, where those who broke the rules (skating the wrong way, aggressively bothering other skaters, and basic misbehavior) would land after one of the workers tapped them out. (It was also a fun and hidden spot for when you needed a break.) I was much too young to know if anything more untoward happened there, but now that I think about it, what else could it be used for?
There were also limbo contests, held periodically on Saturdays, and I was so small and short I could also make it into the final four or five. As contestants dwindled, and the bar got lower and lower, more and more people stepped up to watch the final moments. I hated that. More often than not, I’d lift up at the last moment and intentionally knock the pole down because I couldn’t bear the thought of all those people staring at me and watching. (Looking back, it’s clear that practically my entire life has been one big bout with social anxiety.) It was enough to be in the finals and to know that I probably could have gone lower than that pony-tailed girl who made it look so effortless, and who soaked up the attention of the crowd’s prying eyes better than I would ever be able to do.
Far more enjoyable to me was hearing a good song come on, picking up speed, and feeling the rush of air on my face. I was just starting to hear and learn songs from the radio. Our home didn’t have MTV, or even a VCR (my parents would be the last to succumb to both in the later 80’s – you do the math of the deprived) but we had a radio, and a cassette player, and with those technological advances we could figure out the hit songs of the moment and not look like totally uninformed and shoebox-residing idiots.
One of the bigger songs at the time was ‘Say, Say, Say’ coming at the height of Michael Jackson’s reign. In a joint-effort with Paul McCartney (pop royalty past made present), it was a synthesized and sinewy piece of pop that had a slinky bass line and words that didn’t make much sense to me. I just liked the way it sounded, and the way one could skate along to it in smooth, gliding motions.
I didn’t know many songs – this must have been around 1983 and I was only eight years old – so when a song I knew came on, I made damn sure I was in the rink.
On one Saturday morning, a girl whom everyone said had a crush on me was trying to start a conversation in the snack bar area. I was just taking a break and had no interest in the tater tots or pretzels or whatever else they were doling out, but she cornered me before I could pretend not to see her. She had always been very sweet, and I considered her a friend, so I did my best to keep up the patter of small talk, until I heard a familiar bass. She wanted to stay and talk with me, but Paul and Michael were beckoning me to the skating rink, and I wanted to move with the music. “I love this song!” I exclaimed, interrupting whatever she was saying as the opening beats to ‘Say, Say, Say’ began. It wouldn’t be the last time I passed up a pretty girl for a pop song.
I paused at the entrance to the rink, waiting for a break in the stream of skaters, then made my move, seamlessly entering the clockwise swirl and getting giddily swept up in the motion and the music.
{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.}
Impenetrable fortress of leaves and flowers.
Walls of vines grown rigid and gnarled.
A cloud of bees readying their swords.
Bordered by trees and shrubs, a sun-lit section of secret garden opened up to the boy who didn’t belong there. Like Peter Rabbit, he’d gained his entrance without invitation, stumbling upon it while on a hide-and-seek mission with the neighborhood kids. It was so entrancing, so seductive with its leafy curtains begging further exploration, that he promptly forgot about anyone waiting for him to return. Already the garden cast its dangerous spell, and with the boy securely in its trance closed its gates around him.
A line of marigolds held golden goblets of fire in the air; a rough brush of their foliage and flowers released a less-than-desirable fragrance. (Being pretty and blessed with such fiery shades would have to be enough.) A patch of ferny-leaved cosmos winked and blushed, bobbing their pink faces in the breeze.
A bed of vegetables was neatly tended. Bare teepees of bamboo rods hosted climbing pole beans. Large umbrels of bright green shaded the protuberance of new zucchini fruit, the swollen phallic forms practically throbbing within their ribbed skin. A stand of blood red tomatoes looked a little worse for wear. The mutilated, disemboweled and partly-devoured carcasses of several fruits sat in a sad pile beneath those who had not yet fallen. The boy was not the only marauder who had trespassed here. Such is the inherent problem with excessive prettiness: everyone wants to look. And if you taste good enough on top of that, some will want to eat.
IN MY SECRET GARDEN, I’M LOOKING FOR THE PERFECT FLOWER
WAITING FOR MY FINEST HOUR
IN MY SECRET GARDEN, I STILL BELIEVE AFTER ALL
I STILL BELIEVE AND I FALL
YOU PLANT THE SEED AND I’LL WATCH IT GROW
I WONDER WHEN I’LL START TO SHOW
I WONDER IF I’LL EVER KNOW
WHERE MY PLACE IS
WHERE MY FACE IS
I KNOW IT’S IN HERE SOMEWHERE
I JUST WISH I KNEW THE COLOR OF MY HAIR
I KNOW THE ANSWER’S HIDING SOMEWHERE
IN MY SECRET GARDEN…
A garden where sex and death were as much a part of life as air and water. Sin and salvation intertwined like a pair of vines, and you could not gain a seed without the death of a flower. The act of copulation was at its inception an act of violence: an act of breaking and entering – a holy act of destruction. The garden was cruel in those ways and others. It bestowed beauty and charm while insidiously offering poisoned fruits and thorny barbs. It was the exquisite opening scene of ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ before everything went all bloody and murderous. A garden is not a thing with which to trifle, and a secret garden carries even more defenses.
THERE’S A PETAL THAT ISN’T TORN
A HEART THAT WILL NOT HARDEN
A PLACE THAT I CAN BE BORN, IN MY SECRET GARDEN
A ROSE WITHOUT A THORN, A LOVER WITHOUT SCORN
Psychedelic and trippy, this song closed the gorgeously-prickly ‘Erotica’ album with an artful flourish, and it remains one of Madonna’s most seductive and challenging works. A colorful prism of self-reflection and perpetual seeking, it finds Madonna both reflective and hopeful. The song doesn’t want to end – the piano is tickled incessantly like some giddy post-coital lover and the ‘Erotica’ album doesn’t so much end as fade eternally into a searing, sexy sunset.
We are nearing the final section of songs for the Madonna Timeline (I’d say this is the last quarter, the winter of our several-years-long journey), and while it has by no means been a comprehensive and complete examination of her immense catalog, it hits the majority of efforts from her main albums. I’m glad this song waited until the end to appear, as it is a nifty (not neat, never neat – anybody who says the show is neat has to go) close-out of the ‘Erotica’ period. It was a fertile portion of her infamous career, perhaps her most provocative, and with it came some of her best music. The title track to the album is an ode to a largely-vanished New York sex scene (God how I miss the Gaiety), while singles ‘Deeper and Deeper’, ‘Bad Girl‘, and ‘Rain‘ round out the proceedings with wildly-disparate themes and videos. The deep cuts were just as brilliant, with ‘Words‘ and ‘Thief of Hearts‘ easily vying for single-status. Things got sultry with ‘Fever‘ and ‘Waiting’ and ‘Where Life Begins’, then subdued and somber with ‘Why’s It So Hard’ and ‘In This Life’ before kissing someone cheekily off in ‘Bye Bye Baby’. For the CD (this was back when we still had cassette tapes too, kids) the bonus track ‘Did You Do It?’ was a ridiculous waste of time and space but every album needs a dud; I suppose we should be grateful she made it the bonus track instead of the final song. That final song is here, and it encapsulates the heady time of her life that was ‘Erotica’ and ‘Sex’ and the firestorm of controversy that accompanied both.
IF I WAIT FOR THE RAIN TO KISS ME AND UNDRESS ME
WILL I LOOK LIKE A FOOL, WET AND A MESS?
WILL I STILL BE THIRSTY? WILL I PASS THE TEST?
AND IF I LOOK FOR THE RAINBOW, WILL I SEE IT?
OR WILL IT PASS RIGHT BY?
CAUSE I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE, CAUSE THE BLIND ARE NEVER FREE
EVEN IN MY SECRET GARDEN
THERE’S A CHANCE THAT I COULD HARDEN
THAT’S WHY I’LL KEEP LOOKING FOR…
As for me, ‘Secret Garden’ was the gloriously trippy soundtrack to the rollercoaster of my sex life that was about to begin. Straddling the innocent and the profane, it brought a font of forbidden knowledge, the kind that gushed so guiltily in the garden of Adam and Eve. Tempted by such sweet fruit and called by the beauty dangling in front of me, I happily fell. I didn’t know then how sticky it could be, how wildly the heart could run when led by the cock. The scorn of lovers was not usually a character trait in the others; I would bring it out in them. And they in me. No great rose ever came without a few thorns.
A PETAL THAT ISN’T TORN
A HEART THAT WILL NOT HARDEN
A PLACE THAT I CAN BE BORN, IN MY SECRET GARDEN
A ROSE WITHOUT A THORN, A LOVER WITHOUT SCORN
I STILL BELIEVE, I STILL BELIEVE
CAUSE AFTER ALL IS SAID AND DONE, I’M STILL ALIVE
THE BOOTS HAVE COME AND TRAMPLED ON ME AND I’M STILL ALIVE
CAUSE THE SUN HAS KISSED ME AND CARESSED ME
AND I’M STRONG
AND THERE’S A CHANCE THAT I WILL GROW, THIS I KNOW
SO I’M STILL LOOKING FOR…
The long-ago summer of the boy’s visit to the secret garden passed. It would be one of the last games of hide-and-seek, one of the last times he would look upon a hidden garden and feel magic and delight. He was growing up, and fall was taking him back to the noisy and riotous world of people, to a world less dangerous in some ways and much more wicked in others. In the garden that was just going to sleep, a few lethargic bees buzzed, more out of habit than any pollen-gathering work-ethic. There were still days when the sun warmed the earth and the land gave up the scent of life, even if life meant decay and rot and impending winter slumber. If you looked beneath the oak leaves, you might find a pile of green put forth by a few stalwart fighters, hanging onto their freshness to the very end. They too would be gone soon enough, buried beneath the snow and brutalized by a cold that sunk into and below their roots. The secrets of the garden would not be fully revealed before it went into hiding for the winter.
This popped up on my FaceBook feed the other day – a ray of light in the midst of so much online hate – and I paused to watch the entire thing. Skeptical of such moments, probably because of so much online foolishness, I wasn’t quite sure it was entirely organic. People will do all sorts of things for internet fame, no matter how fleeting or worthless. Yet this seems legit and has yet to be proven an orchestrated event.
It’s a scene from a Paris train station, where two strangers come together for a piano duet that is both raw and magnificently moving. I’m not sure which moved me the most: their almost primal talent, or the way they joined together so easily and comfortably. I’ve read that the original player is Gerard Pla Daró from Spain and the man who joins in is Nassim Zaouche from Algeria. (My favorite part begins at the 4:45 mark, where things begin to coalesce into a much grander thing than the sum of two talented gentlemen, before culminating with a happy finale.)
There is something sublimely poetic about this. Sometimes I forget that there is such goodness in the world, such simple joy in two human beings making something beautiful together. It makes me want to be better. Kinder.
It almost makes me wish I had continued piano lessons. Or just worked harder at them. Either way, this is inspiration and hope and magic, and we need more of it.
“I’m an absolute introvert. I do not like parties larger than eight close friends. I’m quite the loner. What I do publicly is a performance. It’s part of my job, and I’m good at it.” ~ Tom Ford
Last year we began with a bang, and though I usually like to change from one extreme to another, I’m going to go against my boomerang nature and aim for a double bang. Boom-Boom in the zoom-zoom room! Nobody booms bigger than Britney:
The double-sided tension that has run through this blog from its inception almost exactly sixteen years ago has largely been about what to share and what to hide. The public versus the private. How personal does one have to get on a personal blog? How distant and remote can one be before everyone moves on, bored by such practiced removal from anything too real? How much flagrant showing off and stripping down can one perform before the performance becomes the truth? I don’t think we’ve come close to uncovering the answer or reaching a reconciliatory resolution. Questions remain. Mystery begets mystery. The puzzle shifts, changing shape before our very eyes. Time, so celebrated in such a falsely defined structure (how else could humans cope with it?) comes to mind today, when we trick ourselves into thinking things can start all over again, as if the turning of a meaningless calendar page has any real bearing on the dirge of middle age.
In the face of the clock, as its hands wind around interminably, circling in on a stranglehold that never quite finds release or connection, the numbers advance and retreat, stationary but signifying movement. Time ticks and tocks, marking itself in rudimentary glee, its only purpose to make a map and mockery of itself. A new year begins, born like a baby, and already donning a top hat: the utter insanity of how we have erected the world. Dance, baby, just dance!
ALL EYES ON ME IN THE CENTER OF THE RING JUST LIKE A CIRCUS
WHEN I CRACK THAT WHIP EVERYBODY’S GONNA TRIP JUST LIKE A CIRCUS
DON’T STAND THERE WATCHING ME, FOLLOW ME,
SHOW ME WHAT YOU CAN DO
EVERYBODY LET GO WE CAN MAKE A DANCE FLOOR JUST LIKE A CIRCUS.
A step in time, fox trot or gavotte, Jack will be nimble and quick, and what he can do with a candle stick! Dancing through life, spinning through time, mixing metaphors and musical madness, we begin the year with a whirl and twirl. What will come of us in 2019? Just keep on dancing, baby, just keep on dancing…
THERE’S ONLY TWO TYPES OF GUYS OUT THERE,
ONES THAT CAN HANG WITH ME AND ONES THAT ARE SCARED
{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.}
Hola! Ese bato loco!
I’m going bananas,
And I feel like my poor little mind is being devoured by piranhas,
For I’m going bananas.
A story once circulated that en route to one of her Girlie Show gigs around the world, Madonna watched ‘Sunset Boulevard‘ for perhaps the first time. It sounds a little suspect. That this would be her introduction to such a classic film so late in the game feels unlikely. But such is the story, and who knows if it happened. The point is that it may have informed her “crazy” section in that otherwise glorious tour production. There’s a very distinct stretch that begins with ‘I’m Going Bananas’ in which she wears a bandana on her head like a skull-cap and then performs ‘La Isla Bonita‘ and ‘Holiday’ while acting downright maniacal, at times refusing to vacate the stage in an elaborate James Brown routine. It was almost cute, and nice to see her poking fun at herself and her little career slump following ‘Erotica‘ and ‘Sex‘. Of course it was far from the end, but the wink was a reassuring reminder that she hadn’t lost her sense of humor, nor her way.
That’s how I view ‘I’m Going Bananas’. Not really worth psycho-analyzing such a trifle of a Dick Tracy throwaway track. Better to be reminded of some other cuts from that theatrical soundtrack:
There’s bats in my belfry.
Won’t you make sure this straightjacket’s tight,
Otherwise I might get myself free.
Yes, there’s bats in my belfry.
Who knows?
Could be the wine I drink
Or it’s the way I think,
That makes me gonzo.
Oh, Doctor Alonzo says I’m going bananas,
Someone get me a bed in the “Casa de Loco” for all my mananas,
For I’m going bananas.
Yes, I’m going bananas.
Si, I’m going bananas.
Keep looking through the window pane
Just trying to see through the pouring rain
It’s hearing your name, hearing your name
I’ve really never felt quite the same
Since I’ve lost what I had to gain
No one to blame, no one to blame
“You like the classics?” Jamie Fox asks Jada Pinkett Smith as their taxi roams the streets of Los Angeles while the day turns to dusk. In one of the few Tom Cruise movies that I can stomach (the excellent ‘Collateral’) this opening musical scene sets the Zen-like tone of the whole movie, and seems a practically perfect entry for this extra Daylight Savings hour. Settle in, make a cup of coffee or tea and let’s go into Sunday, and this extra hour, in quiet and contemplative fashion. The world can wait a bit…
Seems to me, can’t turn back the hands of time
Oh, it seems to me, can’t turn back the hands of time
It’s strange the way we turn the time into November. Like a manual switch, the day after Halloween is instantly gray, damp and chilly, and the realization that we will never be going back to September is a sad one. We can only move forward, through the oblivion of winter and the rocky road of spring before we get back to some semblance of the state of summer. What a long trip that seems. A song like this helps us take the first steps of the journey.
Keep looking through the window pane
Just trying to see through the pouring rain
It’s hearing your name, hearing your name
I’ve really never felt quite the same
Since I’ve lost what I had to gain
No one to blame, no one to blame
The mellow groove marks time, the melancholy lyrics mark our past, and all of it keeps us company when that’s all we have. Sometimes a song is the best company around. Much less messy when it comes to the peskiness of people. You can start it and stop it and repeat it, or shut it down altogether and nobody’s feelings get hurt. We are not so lucky with people. Or with time. Except on this day. We can turn it back, for one hour, and do it all over again. Make things right. Make things better. Maybe just listen a little closer this time. Appreciate things a bit more. Enjoy it.
It’s only an hour.
Seems to me, can’t turn back the hands of time
Oh, it seems to me, can’t turn back the hands of time
Seems to me, can’t turn back the hands of time
Seems to me, yesterday was left behind…
{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.}
Just take me with all my stupid flaws
Changing me’s like shooting in the dark
Patience please, I’ll never be as perfect as you want me to be-lieve me I want it just as bad
Forgive me, wish I could change the past
Take it ’cause I’ll never be as perfect as you want
I think you’re confusing me with somebody else
I won’t apologize for being myself
Take me with all of my beautiful scars
I love you the way that you are
I come to you with all my flaws
With all my beautiful scars
A bonus track from 2015’s ‘Rebel Heart’ collection, ‘Beautiful Scars’ is standard Madonna fare – an airy disco-lite track that finds our heroine musing on the inner beauty to be found in the face of all our flaws. A nice-enough message with a nice-enough musical track, but I understand why it didn’t make the proper album cut. It percolates like coffee in the morning – nothing exceptional, nothing new, and nothing horribly offensive. Dare I say a little dull? I dare. Give it a listen and see what you think.
I love you the way that you are
With all my beautiful scars
Don’t judge me, just gotta let me be
Accept me, although I’m incomplete
My imperfections make me unique that’s my belief
I think you’re confusing me with somebody else
I won’t apologize for being myself
Take me with all of my beautiful scars
I love you the way that you are
I come to you with all my flaws
With all my beautiful scars
I love you the way that you are
With all my beautiful scars
Never say never
Anything is possible Always been a rebel
Overcoming obstacles
I can’t give you perfect
But I can give you forever.
He flew in from a cloud of smoke atop a grand piano.
An orchestra conducted by Michael Kamen welcomed him as he landed.
And so Aerosmith celebrated the 10th anniversary of MTV way back in the fall of 1991 with their classic ‘Dream On’.
Every time when I look in the mirror
All these lines on my face getting clearer
The past is gone
It went by, like dusk to dawn
Isn’t that the way
Everybody’s got the dues in life to pay
I know nobody knows
Where it comes and where it goes
I know it’s everybody’s sin
You got to lose to know how to win
For her homage to MTV’s anniversary Madonna had contributed a psychotherapy session in black-and-white cinema verite style, French beret, suspenders and the whole smoking vibe. Without any backing music, however, it is this song and not Madonna that recalls the haunting fall of 1991.
Suzie was in Denmark that year, and the upcoming holidays would be the first we did not spend together. It would also be the first without her father helming the festivities. So many reasons for sadness, so many days of darkness. That was November, though, no surprises there. I couldn’t pinpoint whether my depressed countenance was typical seasonal sorrow, or something deeper. It didn’t much matter. Whether it was the moment or something more sustaining, destruction beckoned to my wayward sixteen-year-old self. What sixteen-year-old hasn’t contemplated giving up? When November’s wind and rain crush the summer’s leaves beneath your feet, and you walk alone in the woods eyeing every sunken patch of earth as a possible grave, death strikes you as neither frightening nor unwelcome.
Half my life’s in books’ written pages
Lived and learned from fools and from sages
You know it’s true
All the things come back to you
On certain nights, just to get away, to feel something – anything – be it cold or chill or danger or dark – I would sneak out of the house when everyone was in bed, and I would run – as fast and as hard as I could – running as furiously as my body would allow, pushing and daring it to give up, to take and tear me down, rip up my muscles, ravage my bones, slice through my skin and render my shell from my soul. Most of us want to run into oblivion eventually.
It never worked. My brain gave in before my body did, and I’d return, panting and catching what was left of my breath, as much as I fought for it to leave me. In the driveway, beneath the thorny Hawthorne tree that brought us such happiness in its spring bloom, I paused, kicking off the dried and dead berries from those very blooms, now stuck to the bottom of my shoes. This was life, I thought. It always turned to shit. Nothing beautiful remained. Nothing good would last.
Sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laughter and sing for the tear
Sing with me, just for today
Maybe tomorrow the good Lord’ll take you away…
Back inside, I clicked on the basement lights and put in this MTV tape, mostly to watch Madonna again. No matter what happened, there would always be Madonna. Whether Aerosmith was before or after her, I somehow always managed to see a bit of their ‘Dream On’ performance, and the song became part of my teenage life, as it did to so many others before and since. The classics never die. Steven Tyler had been to hell and back and still managed to scream and screech and work that magic like it never left him. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe you couldn’t kill that artistic glory – not even in death. This song would live on. This music would continue to sound. This moment, shared by the audience and the listeners then and now, will keep going. There was comfort in that. Some small seed of inspiration had been dropped into my sub-conscious. And so I kept going. Not because I didn’t want to die. Not because the world wasn’t cruel and rife with misery. Not because I had any breakthrough realization. No, I kept going because… I didn’t really know what to do. And if you’re not sure about something that big, I find it best to wait and consider. One day. One night. Then another day. Another night. And another. And I made it through.
Dream on, dream on, dream on
Dream until your dreams come true
Dream on, dream on, dream on
Dream until your dreams come true…
And so November’s days ticked away. Thanksgiving came to the Ko home. My brother and I haunted the attic and its secret passages, but it wasn’t the same without Suzie or her Dad. We sat on the stairs remembering things instead of making new memories. I never liked adding sad rooms to my memory castle, but there it is, all these years later. November tends to unlock it. I’ll take a quick look, do a bit of dusting, then carefully lock it up again.
He stood at the edge of the yard, rather a long distance away. Arms crossed in front of him, his eyes squinting into the high sun of noon, he seemed determined. Sometimes, even on sunny summer days, the hardest thing to be is a boy. As the initial minutes of our visit wore on, he got closer to the house, until he was peering in, watching us and waiting for the right moment to enter.
The last time I’d seen Julian he was barely able to walk, much less speak. Now he was a boy, walking and talking and, as he would show us later, mastering the ukulele. His Mom is one of my closest friends, whom I’ve known since I can remember, having met her at Suzie’s birthday parties in the Junes of our childhood. There’s a bond that a childhood friendship carries that is like no other, and in many ways it is as unbreakable as the bonds of family. Sometimes more. As her son Julian walked in and sheepishly said hello, I was flooded with memory, happiness and warmth.
His younger brother Cameron hid behind Mommy for a while, with a shy but irrepressible smile across his face. He would break into giggles periodically and I hoped his happiness would last. I think that should be the goal of all the world: keeping that childhood happiness for as long as possible. The lucky ones among us never lose it. Most of us do at some point, then spend the rest of our lives trying to get it back, with varying degrees of success. Or maybe I’m just conflating happiness with innocence. They are both too often fleeting, as was our visit to Connecticut.
The days were idyllic. It was hot and sunny – perfect for some time in and beside the pool. The house lent itself to easy relaxation, with its large windows and airy layout. Still new enough to be uncluttered, and lived-in enough to be comfortable, it was the perfect backdrop to a reunion with friends we hadn’t seen in far too long. On our way in, a swath of evening primrose lifted their bright canary faces next to the brick walkway. Nearer the front door, a clump of shasta daisies was at the height of its bloom, as if welcoming us with its greatest finery. Behind them, waves of shrubs softened the long lines of the house. Everything whispered ‘home’ and erased the recent bout of traffic we had to endure to get there. More than an oasis, this was a very real realm of respite, and as the door closed behind us, so did the troubles of the world.
We enjoyed our brief time there immensely; it was exactly what Andy and I needed to start the summer off, and I’m hopeful we left a little something behind too (besides the proliferation of feathers that remains the tell-tale sign of a visit). We’d been warned that Julian would ask a million questions, but the inquisitive nature of children was never an annoyance to me. Quite the contrary: seeing that insatiable curiosity, when one question leads to another, as if he already understood that the process of getting to knowledge was its own fulfilling journey, was a balm on my own soul, a reminder of another kid who had nothing but questions and a world unwilling to be bothered.
As for his fabulous younger brother Cameron, there were other happy reminders of my childhood mirrored in him. He liked feathers and sequins and all sorts of fancy items that lend magic to an unadorned summer day. He liked dressing up and expressing himself in costume and theatrics. He was on the verge of being exactly who he was meant to be, and yet also on the verge of drawing back into himself.
No matter what the rest of their lives brought, they had this summer – the first time in their pool, the first time in those pink pumps, and the first time we got to visit them. I know a thing or two about brothers, especially brothers who are dramatically different in so many ways. Brotherly love is almost unbreakable, but it doesn’t happen without tensions and traumas. Still, it’s best to dwell on days like this, when your brother is your best friend.
No one else will go through the exact same things you go through.
No one else in the world will experience the exact same basic upbringing, remember the same house, the same worries, the same resentments, the same triumphs, the same love.
I hope they hold onto that above all else. Not everyone does.
By the time we were reluctantly ready to leave, Julian was willing to sing us a song. It encapsulated our time there, and in many ways our entire summer.
Ahh, the musical montage. That glorious bit of cinematic magic wherein a key song plays over a spattering of key dramatic moments, in which storylines are advanced, tied up, or busted open while a single snippet of music brings it all together. I love a good musical montage. I’ve also found one to see us off into summer break and take us through the rest of the season. It’s an oldie, from a summer long ago, and just in time it will save the day, take us to a castle far away…
It’s the perfect bit of languid music minimalism, ripe for a hot and lazy summer day when it takes every last ounce of effort to simply walk from one room to another. It’s ambivalent too, like summer can be. A certain tension informs these days, when too much sudden heat can clash with cooler realms and summer storms may be born into devilish, destructive offspring. We always pay for such heat.
Last year I took my first break from the blog, not knowing what to expect, feeling a vague fear and trepidation reminiscent of whenever I had had a really good year of school, when part of me didn’t want to break for summer, as crazy and incredulous as that may sound for a kid to think. I always felt older than the others. I always knew that that was the best time of our lives. At least, I forced myself to believe that. It worked well. Not expecting as much from these grown-up years has made them feel like a bonus. And no one wants to peak too soon.
On that last day of school, when even the teachers seemed to let down their guard in giddy relief, I walked a little slower, trying vainly to still the minutes, trying to enjoy them because somehow in the previous year I had forged bonds, made connections and even formed a few friendships that would last my lifetime. It was then, near the end of the year, that I started to feel a little loved. It always came so late, and it always overwhelmed me. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want it to end. Maybe we all wanted to be kids for just a little bit longer.
It only took the brief walk home, however, to turn off school-mode and ease instantly into vacationland. By the time I reached our house, that brief bout of nostalgia passed and only elation and the hope of a full summer ahead was left. I’d throw my pencils up into the sky, scattering them on the roof of our garage where they’d fade and warp in the sun and summer rains. I’d inhale the freshly-cut grass and begin the daily ritual of examining the gardens. Between bike rides and trading baseball cards, I would do my best to indulge in the traditional trappings of a boy in summer, and for the most part I enjoyed the days as they passed. Part of me longed for adventure, for something more exciting like we’d seen in ‘The Goonies‘ or ‘Stand By Me‘, and whenever we’d see a movie and were waiting for our ride, we’d roam the sparkly cement of the Amsterdam Mall parking lot and race into whatever dramatic scenario we’d concocted in our mind. The same spirit would accompany our night-time pool play, where we’d splash in the aqua light like some ‘Poltergeist’ meets ‘Jaws’ monster-mash. They were simple joys, and we never needed anything else. When left to their own devices, children will find a way to entertain themselves. Sometimes I think parents today feel some strange need to provide continual and constant stimulation, entertainment and occupation for their kids – when they really just need to be left alone. But what do I know? Andy and I remain happily unburdened by children. We are lucky that way. Besides, we have more than enough kids in our orbit to fulfill any sense of missing something, and we get to give them back at the end of the day. (Sometimes before the end of the day.)
I’LL KEEP HOLDING ON
I’LL KEEP HOLDING ON
I’LL KEEP HOLDING ON
I’LL KEEP HOLDING ON
As we wind down for summer, I’m reminded of those television shows that went on hiatus until the fall, leaving us with re-runs and non-challenging fare. Sometimes they ended with a bang, and a big dramatic cliffhanger (remember ‘Dallas’ and the whole ‘Who shot J.R.?’ mystery?) Just as often, however, they finished in quieter form, with a more contemplative place-holder. This post is one of the latter and that feels right for this moment in time – both for the blog and the summer. It’s simply too hot to work up a bombastic season finale. Instead, I’m putting ‘Music’ on repeat and holding on.
For now, if you remember last summer, this is not a goodbye. It is a quick little break to allow us both to enjoy the season of the sun without the onus of obligation, a chance to break away from the computer or the phone and take a swim, see a silly movie, or sleep in. It will pass too soon, the days will dwindle, and before we know it the cool night whispers of September will be tickling our ears and begging for the heat to be put to sleep. That heat has only just begun, and we’re at the point where we can embrace it.
In a very quiet room, I try to sit very still. Outside the window, I can see the heat rising off the pavement in those surreal waves that seem to bend the air. Already, the peonies have been overcome by mildew. The lilacs will not be far behind. Others come into their own with such heat – the sweet potato vines have finally started leaping out of their pots. A lion’s paw plant has begun its subtle but steady ascent. The cup plant, provided it gets enough water, stretches its staunch stems skyward. Soon it will bloom in happy daisy-like faces of bright yellow, to be visited by bees and butterflies, and later by the goldfinches. They will scatter its ripe seed on the ground, starting the cycle over again, continuing this beautiful circle of life on its wondrously infinite trajectory.
For most of my childhood summers my brother was my best friend. Away from the daily circumstance of school, and without cel phones or the internet, we lost touch with school friends that we had grown accustomed to seeing daily. Stranded in the same house, raised by the same parents, my brother and I are the only two people in the world who shared almost the exact same upbringing. No one, not even Suzie, has a keener understanding of what it was like to grow up in the Ilagan household, with all its requisite glories and flaws and luxuries and discipline. My brother shared all those things for the first decade and a half of our lives before we went our own ways and forged our own paths.
Back then, it was just him and me, and I didn’t mind in the least.
TONIGHT IT’S VERY CLEAR, AS WE’RE BOTH LYING HERE
THERE’S SO MANY THINGS I WANT TO SAY
I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU, I WOULD NEVER LEAVE YOU ALONE
SOMETIMES I JUST FORGET, SAY THINGS I MIGHT REGRET
IT BREAKS MY HEART TO SEE YOU CRYING
I DON’T WANT TO LOSE YOU, I COULD NEVER MAKE IT ALONE.
We had friends in the neighborhood that we’d play with ~ Michael and Eric and Jennifer ~ but I was more content when it was the two of us, riding our bikes across town to grab baseball cards and candy, or down to the small corner aquarium store to see the fish. There was a huge 100-gallon tank of freshwater fish near the back of the store, filled with colorful decorations and large denizens slowly swimming above its graveled expanse. I remember the owner of the store, Linda, and how we could mark the passing of time in her hair and, later, her pregnancies. She had a short hair phase, then there was a tragic perm moment (from which she never quite recovered) and finally ~ thankfully ~ she started to grow it out. By then we had almost grown up.
I AM A MAN WHO WILL FIGHT FOR YOUR HONOR
I’LL BE THE HERO YOU’RE DREAMING OF
WE’LL LIVE FOREVER, KNOWING TOGETHER
THAT WE DID IT ALL FOR THE GLORY OF LOVE.
This song, an unabashed love song, is a strange one to intertwine among memories of my brother, but its essence could be read on a grander scale than finite romantic love. It was part of ‘The Karate Kid’ ~ a movie that I saw with my brother, and it filled the radio of one of those childhood summers. In the hot and humid nights, back when heat and humidity didn’t bother us (childhood has a way of making us weather-resistant), we’d listen to this on the radio, caring not a whit for Peter Cetera’s cheesy delivery or the banal cliches of knights in shining armor and castles far away. What did we know of romantic love at that point? Nothing, and we didn’t want to know. Sometimes children have all the wisdom.
Instead, we reveled in brotherly love, even if we would never say or acknowledge it. We emboldened one another. It’s often been assumed that my brother was more of a risk-taker than me, that he would make questionable choices and do occasionally-foolish things, acting as daredevil to my more sensible angel. That wasn’t really the case when we were kids. My brother was most often the voice of safety and reason when I wanted to do something really stupid. He was the one concerned about Mom and Dad and what they would do to us if we got caught. I just had the confidence to assume we wouldn’t get caught, and most of the time that carried us through. Like when I stole an expensive (or so I thought at the time) baseball card from one of the local dealers. We were browsing with a friend, and on a dare or desire to impress my brother (I could do crazy-ass daring things too!) I stuffed some rookie card down the front of my shorts into my underwear. I thought I did it furtively, but the owner, a cigar-chomping rotund gentleman with straggly yet curly hair that was running away from the top of his head, must have seen me, and immediately stopped me from leaving the store. Alerted at this point by the accosting, but unaware of what I had done, my brother looked at me and waited. The owner said he saw me stuff a card down my pants. I denied it, and through sheer force of will and defiance, one of the only times in my life when I have been so bold, I stood my ground and dared him: “If it’s in my pants, why don’t you come and get it?” (I didn’t watch all those soap operas for nothing.) He backed away and just yelled at us to get out of his store. We got on our bikes and quickly pedaled away. Amused and a little irate, my brother asked, because he didn’t quite believe me, whether I had taken the card. “Of course not,” I replied. Then I rode ahead of him a little, pulled the card from my underwear, and waved it in the air to show him without saying a word. Older brothers have been doing stupid shit to impress their younger brothers since the world began. Most of the time it doesn’t work.
YOU KEEP ME STANDING TALL, YOU HELP ME THROUGH IT ALL
I’M ALWAYS STRONG WHEN YOU’RE BESIDE ME
I HAVE ALWAYS NEEDED YOU, I COULD NEVER MAKE IT ALONE…
We had our arguments, like all brothers will, and at the end of them we’d separate for a while, cooling off in our respective corners. The world would turn a little dimmer whenever that happened. I remember one time we were building a fort in the forest and we got into a ridiculous fight about how to make it or something, and it ended with us going off to make our own separate forts.
We eyed each other suspiciously, scrambling for materials before the other could get them, racing to see who would finish first and whose would be the better. Neither of us ever won then. We were better as a team, stronger when we were together and on the same side. But sibling rivalry runs deep. We did not see that then. Our forts, and the loneliness that resulted from erecting them on our own, were emblematic of our struggle. We abandoned them. The summer storms ripped their walls of twigs apart. Every time we’d return after a heavy rain, more had washed away. The floor, which we had raked and swept and kept free of debris would be littered with leaves and branches. Deciduous boughs, bent and tied to form a canopy, broke free of their string and returned to their natural form, taking the make-shift ceiling with them. Summer could be as destructive as she was sunny.
I AM A MAN WHO WILL FIGHT FOR YOUR HONOR
I’LL BE THE HERO YOU’RE DREAMING OF
WE’LL LIVE FOREVER, KNOWING TOGETHER
THAT WE DID IT ALL FOR THE GLORY OF LOVE.
For a summer best friend, one could do a lot worse than my brother. He had the qualities I lacked but so often admired. He wore his sensitivity on his sleeve; I kept mine hidden. He was more open and raw about getting hurt, emotionally and physically; I kept my pain quiet and private. He was quick to play and please; I was quick to run and hide. Yet for all our differences, for all our childhood summers, those differences bound us together in ways I still don’t completely understand. We each seemed to supply what the other lacked, whether we realized it or not. But maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe we just wanted a playmate. When the sun was out, and the summer beckoned, the best thing to do was share it with someone.
IT’S LIKE A KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR, FROM A LONG TIME AGO
JUST IN TIME I WILL SAVE THE DAY, TAKE YOU TO MY CASTLE FAR AWAY
And so we carved out our summer adventures. When my brother would journey out on his own or with a neighborhood friend, I’d sometimes stay behind and immediately regret it. At those times I’d stay inside, watching out the window like a dog waiting for its owner to come home, hoping they wouldn’t be gone for too long. Solitude was my resting stance, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be alone all the time, and certainly not on a sunny summer day.
It takes me a long time to feel safe and comfortable enough to make friends, so my brother was often my conduit to social interaction in those days. He was a talisman of sorts whenever I felt anxious about being accepted or part of the group. In that way, he was more like an older brother, and me his younger charge in need of a little help. He was better at talking to people whereas my shyness was crippling. He probably did more to bring me out of my shell than anyone else, and in his company I could feel bold and brash (and apparently bodacious enough to steal a baseball card). Without knowing it, my brother was the protective hero that I would so long for when the world turned its back and closed its doors.
I AM A MAN WHO WILL FIGHT FOR YOUR HONOR
I’LL BE THE HERO YOU’RE DREAMING OF
WE’LL LIVE FOREVER, KNOWING TOGETHER
THAT WE DID IT ALL FOR THE GLORY OF LOVE.
All these years later, summer is still the season that seems to bring us together as brothers again. Christmas does that in quicker and shorter fashion, but summer, for whatever magical reason, finds my brother and I able to see each other more, to visit and hang outside while his kids swim, or have a sleep-over without having to worry about anyone getting up to go to school. We’re able to travel easier and get to see each other more in the summer months.
{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.}
Have you ever swum in the black of a summer night?
I don’t mean in a brightly-lit pool or an ocean under a full moon.
I’m talking pitch black, perhaps in a lake not surrounded by electric-laden homes, when the sky might be dotted with stars but no moon. When you can’t see where the water ends and the sky begins, you can only feel it. I would imagine that it’s as thrilling as it is terrifying, that without being able to tell where water meets shore one would feel maddeningly lost, but at the same time absolutely free. We are so rarely without boundary or vision. I wonder if it echoes back to the darkness of the womb, to the amniotic fluid surrounding us before we learned to breathe air. What a strange state to be in – the very ends and beginnings of our lives.
I RAN FROM MY HOUSE THAT CANNOT CONTAIN ME
FROM THE MAN THAT I CANNOT KEEP
FROM MY MOTHER WHO HAUNTS ME, EVEN THOUGH SHE’S GONE
FROM MY DAUGHTER THAT NEVER SLEEPS…
A minimalist track murmurs a muffled introduction. The music is as close to liquid as music gets. Credit the wizardry of William Orbit and his way around gurgles and bubbles and water-like personification. As the main conjuror of the aural texture of Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’ album, Orbit helmed things like a proper ship captain, navigating the watery environs that informed so many songs on that great work of art. For its final cut, the devastating ‘Mer Girl’ closed proceedings with a dark, poetic, and often tortured treatise on life and death, particularly the early loss of Madonna’s mother.
I RAN FROM THE NOISE AND THE SILENCE
FROM THE TRAFFIC ON THE STREETS
I RAN TO THE TREETOPS, I RAN TO THE SKY
OUT TO THE LAKE, INTO THE RAIN THAT MATTED MY HAIR
AND SOAKED MY SHOES AND SKIN
HID MY TEARS, HID MY FEARS
I RAN TO THE FOREST, I RAN TO THE TREES
I RAN AND I RAN, I WAS LOOKING FOR ME
What swims in that primordial darkness of fluid and life? What particles of matter comprise and collide to give us purpose and meaning? What other beings or entities share that lake of night? What gives rise to connection, to affection, to love? There is beauty in the blackness, in the way it goes on forever and swallows everything up. Immortal being. Endless existence. A point in time on perpetual repeat. The fluid stirs, all warmth and life and lack of light – the time frame expands. Infinity.
I RAN PAST THE CHURCHES AND THE CROOKED OLD MAILBOX
PAST THE APPLE ORCHARDS AND THE LADY THAT NEVER TALKS
UP INTO THE HILLS, I RAN TO THE CEMETERY
AND HELD MY BREATH, AND THOUGHT ABOUT YOUR DEATH
I RAN TO THE LAKE, UP INTO THE HILLS
I RAN AND I RAN, I’M LOOKING THERE STILL
AND I SAW THE CRUMBLING TOMBSTONES
ALL FORGOTTEN NAMES
When describing the summer before her ‘Ray of Light’ album was released, Madonna characterized her state of mind as haunted. The violent deaths of Princess Diana and Gianni Versace had hit close to the rarefied circles of the upper-level celebrity echelon. Madonna had been in the tunnel where a Princess crashed, had walked up the steps now bloodied with a designer’s spilled life. She had known death from the age of five, the age one typically begins to make memories, to know and to be aware. She felt it again and again throughout her life – all those friends that died from AIDS, the ones that had informed the woman she was becoming. She knew its indiscriminate, cruel pull, the way a person was there one day and simply gone the next. It was a terror that destroyed as much as it made her resilient. She defied it in most ways, teased it in others, yet it remained a steadfast dancing partner, as reliable as her own fame, as faithful as her most die-hard fans.
I TASTED THE RAIN, I TASTED MY TEARS
I CURSED THE ANGELS, I TASTED MY FEARS
AND THE GROUND GAVE WAY BENEATH MY FEET
AND THE EARTH TOOK ME IN HER ARMS
LEAVES COVERED MY FACE
ANTS MARCHED ACROSS MY BACK
BLACK SKY OPENED UP, BLINDING ME
Like no other Madonna song before or since, ‘Mer Girl’ is the most introspective and raw she has been, both lyrically and musically. It never quite resolves itself. Death here is not only an end. It’s a stepping-off point. To where, no one can know or say, but when you’re running away from one thing, you’re running toward something else. Whether that’s nothingness or some other state of oblivion may never be known.
I RAN TO THE FOREST, I RAN TO THE TREES
I RAN AND I RAN, I WAS LOOKING FOR ME
I RAN TO THE LAKES AND UP TO THE HILL
I RAN AND I RAN, I’M LOOKING THERE STILL
AND I SMELLED HER BURNING FLESH
HER ROTTING BONES
HER DECAY
I RAN AND I RAN
I’M STILL RUNNING AWAY
The ambient music drains before Madonna finishes her delivery. The last lines are sung unaccompanied and alone. There is vastness and emptiness here. There is a hallway that runs on forever, a sea that never reaches the shore. There is loss unending, sorrow without solace, a ruin that can never be restored. Somewhere there is light – somewhere the sun and the moon and the stars shine and reflect and sparkle, but not here.
This bonus post is to honor the official arrival of the first day of summer tomorrow. Last year summer happened in fits and starts that never quite took off. There were a few days of hot, stifling weather, but they felt too spread out to get into a summer groove, and most weekends as I recall were wash-outs. Andy wasn’t happy with the summer we never had, not only because of the weather but of other sadness and loss, so we’re hoping this summer is better. We always have that hope – the hope for the perfect summer. It’s an idea of summer we doggedly pursue, no matter what the meteorological records indicate, no matter what might step in to ruin the flow.
I usually make a few summer music mixes, old-school style, and try to find songs that evoke the season, not only in mellow mood and sound, but in the time of the year in which they were originally released. Music jogs the memory second only to scent. Last year our summer anthem was an ancient 80’s chestnut: ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ by Crowded House. I’m not even sure that one came out in the summer, but its languid, wistful atmosphere, and the sentiment decrying the passing of a certain time is perfect for the season that never seems to last long enough. It goes deeper than one might assume it would.
THERE IS FREEDOM WITHIN, THERE IS FREEDOM WITHOUT
TRY TO CATCH THE DELUGE IN A PAPER CUP
THERE’S A BATTLE AHEAD, MANY BATTLES ARE LOST
BUT YOU’LL NEVER SEE THE END OF THE ROAD WHILE YOU’RE TRAVELING WITH ME
HEY NOW, HEY NOW, DON’T DREAM IT’S OVER
HEY NOW, HEY NOW, WHEN THE WORLD COMES IN
THEY COME, THEY COME TO BUILD A WALL BETWEEN US
WE KNOW THEY WON’T WIN
Outside on the backyard patio, an old-fashioned boombox plays the CD – a relic from the 90’s with technology from the 80’s – and I pause with wonder at all the summers that have been burned into memory like music burned onto rainbow-deflecting CDs. Sheer panels in pink and green flutter in the breeze, hanging baskets of sweet potato vine are just beginning their descent, and a lounge chair is littered with wayward pillows as I make my way to the pool. Andy has heated it to a lovely temperature, and as high as the sun has risen in the sky, it still dances on the rippling surface of the water.
NOW I’M TOWING MY CAR, THERE’S A HOLE IN THE ROOF
MY POSSESSIONS ARE CAUSING ME SUSPICION BUT THERE’S NO PROOF
IN THE PAPER TODAY TAKES OF WAR AND OF WASTE
BUT YOU TURN TIGHT OVER TO THE TV PAGE
HEY NOW, HEY NOW, DON’T DREAM IT’S OVER
HEY NOW, HEY NOW, WHEN THE WORLD COMES IN
THEY COME, THEY COME TO BUILD A WALL BETWEEN US
WE KNOW THEY WON’T WIN
On the lime green float, I paddle to the side of the pool and dry my hands on a towel, then carefully pick up the book I’m reading. Pushing off with my foot, I float into the middle of the pool, gently bobbing to the hypnotic undulation of the water. It is a heavenly place to be. The song carries out over the yard.
Memories of neighborhood girls sunning themselves on towels, stands of Queen Ann’s lace running along brutally hot pavement, a bike ride down a forest-lined dirt path, hunting crayfish in the cold water of a running stream…
The mesh netting of a swimsuit hung on a rusty iron fence, the first few pole beans hanging among all those pea-like blooms, the sound of a lawn mower roaring in the distance followed by the smell of freshly-cut grass…
Joe’s Pub at The Public, June 9, 2018 – 9:30 PM
The slightly restless sonic soundscape of ‘Ecotopia’ signals that this won’t be the usual night of standards by a typical Broadway chanteuse, but Betty Buckley has always been much more than that. Never content to tread the same old boards, she tries death-defying vocal aerobics and challenging interpretations of songs she loves, story songs in which she believes. If you’re brave enough to come along for the ride, the rewards are rich and ample. She’s also got a backing band that does justice to her wide-ranging selections, as evidenced in that opening piece of evocative, contemplative and deliciously moody music. The only way to find hope is to go through some dark places, and dark places have always inspired some of the best songs.
She kicks things off with the ambivalent ‘Any Major Dude Will Tell You’ in which she struts the stage in her high-heeled black boots and enough swagger to knock out any Scoundrel-in-Chief; clearly, Ms. Buckley came to slay, and we came to swoon. More than just telling a story with music, Buckley absolutely inhabits her songs, evidenced by moments when she was clearly moved – and we are moved in return.She has mastered the art of connecting to an audience on an emotional level and at such times, as in the transcendent and exquisite ‘Chanson’, she manages to turn Joe’s Pub into a church, stilling the bustle and holding the room absolutely rapt at this wonder of an artistic vessel. (A simple ‘Mmm-hmm’ near the beginning of Lisa Loeb’s gorgeous ‘Falling in Love’, a throwaway sigh that might be barely noticeable if sung by anyone else, is given a world of emotion in Buckley’s heartbreaking reading.) Complemented by a band that seems to have an innate understanding of Ms. Buckley’s wide-ranging musical skills and styling, the evening is anchored by the brilliant Christian Jacob, whose intuitive arrangements and piano work prove a marvelous extension of Buckley’s own musical instincts.
The hymn-like ‘Hope’ by Jason Robert Brown is the centerpiece and elegiac heart of the show, an antidote to our ever-dimming world, even as it struggles with its primal ambition: how does one find hope in such a world?
‘I come to sing a song about hope
I’m not inspired much right now
But even so
I came out here to sing a song
So here I go
I guess I think that if I tinker long enough
One might appear
And look it’s here
One verse is done, the work’s begun’
In a year in which so many have been left hopeless, the mere act of trying, of getting up and getting dressed is its own act of rebellion and resistance, its own form of fighting back. When one looks back upon Buckley’s astounding career, and the many curves and unlikely roads it has taken, it is clear she knows of what she sings. When she pauses, and Mr. Jacob’s piano work carries Mr. Brown’s sweet sounds and melancholy lyrics across the night, it is a moment of delicate bittersweet joy. This is the Artist, come to grieve, and come to heal. She didn’t even need to explain; every person in that room understood.
Now more than ever, Buckley’s message that no one is better, or, more importantly, less than anyone else informs her shows in ways that belie the multiple standing ovations she gets throughout the evening. That may be the essence of the ‘Hope album: honoring the experience of everybody. It’s there in the characters she brings to life, and the way her own life experience in turn informs her performance. It is, in essence, the very purpose of art. To resonate. To reveal. To connect.
That kind of connection begins with the close-knit group of musicans she has assembled. They are tightly in tune with her rollicking journey here, and each gets a little spotlight at some point in the evening. The most glorious moments, however, may be when everyone is working together in rockers like ‘Don’t Take Me Alive’, when all cylinders are firing away with locomotive-like might. It as at such times that the driving drums of Dan Rieser, the slinky fluid bass of Tony Marino, and the rapturous rock-star licks of guitarist Oz Noy coalesce with Jacob’s piano genius, finally getting their chance to let go as in the rousing ‘I Feel Lucky’. A difficult but wondrously-executed take on Paul Simon’s ‘Quiet’ demonstrates the trust within this group of musicians, with Buckley’s voice soaring over the meditative lyrics.
A touching memory of Gilda Radner sets up a moving version of ‘Prisoner in Disguise’ and she brings the audience through the heartbreak and loss with a brittle bit of beauty and a delicate balm of soothing vocals. Maybe that’s where we will find the hope that sometimes feels so elusive these days: in the way we share with each other, in the same way Buckley has shared her voice and her talent over the years.
Rather than keep it dangling there, however, she offers a coda of release and relief, and a wink at what happiness might just yet come. ‘Young At Heart’ was the requisite encore, and a neat nod to where she is heading. As she prepares to embark on a much-anticipated U.S. tour of ‘Hello, Dolly!’ Ms. Buckley ends on a positive and nostalgic note, a blissful ending to an evening of musical enchantment.When it dawns on her that she won’t be playing Joe’s Pub for a while, she pauses wistfully in the realization, and some of us felt the slightest twinge of sadness that there won’t be a fall show this year. But sometimes it is best to share such wonderful talent with others, to spread the message of hope that she so expertly managed to capture, if just for a night, with the sheer happy exuberance of doing what she loves and doing it so well. It is only fair for her to take that joy on the road, across a nation that needs it like never before.
Besides, a meadowlark sings best when she is free.
