Category Archives: Music

This isn’t a typical Tuesday morning song. In fact, it’s not quite a morning song at all. Too moody, too unpredictable, too jazz-inflected to do for a mid-week start. Yet here it is, because for many of us today feels like a Monday, and most Mondays I spend in a bit of a daze, recalling the fun that was had over the weekend – and holding out a few more hours of living in the recent past. Let’s ease on into it this time.

Better yet, let’s go back a couple of days, to your Saturday night. A little bending of time before the snow and freezing temps return to New England. Just a few more hours of leisure. A few more moments of luxury. We’re already over Monday anyway. It’s Tuesday, and it’s going to be… grand.

PS - Cécile McLorin Salvant is pretty amazing. This is from her album ‘WomanChild.’

I didn’t know what time it was
Till I met you.
Oh, what a lovely time it was,
How sublime it was too!
I didn’t know what day it was
You hold my hand.
Warm like the month of May it was,
and I’ll say it was grand.
Grand to be alive, to be young,
to be mad, to be yours alone!
Grand to see your face, feel your touch,
hear your voice say I’m yours alone.

It would be one of those pivotal albums that informed everything thereafter. Like Shirley Horn’s ‘Here’s to Life’, Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’, ‘James’ ‘Laid’, REM’s ‘Automatic for the People’, and Marianne Faithfull’s ‘A Secret Life’, the first album I ever heard by Casey Stratton – ‘Standing at the Edge’ – instantly became a collection of songs that spoke to me deeper than any Top Forty pop song ever could. Produced by longtime Madonna cohort Patrick Leonard, ‘Standing at the Edge‘ was that rarest of animals – a cohesive cycle of music that took the listener on an emotional journey with the richest of melodies, and one of the most moving voices I’d ever heard in my long-short life.

I remember listening to the album and marveling at both the sonics and the lyrics, the majestic cascading piano, the moving bits of strings, and at the core that glorious voice – transcendent and vulnerable and powerful all at once. There are certain albums that come into your world when you expect it the least, but need it the most. This was one of those albums for me. They don’t preach, they don’t beg, they don’t wink or dance, but they seep inside your soul, because they share something only you thought you’d experienced. Maybe it was heartache, maybe it was a lost love, maybe it was betrayal, maybe it was pain. Maybe, if you’re lucky, it was happiness.

‘Standing at the Edge’ delivered all of that, and in Stratton’s voice I heard a kinship of spirit that the greatest artists are able to conjure for all of us willing to listen. It was the transformation of feeling into song, of emotion into music. From the most plaintive of coos to the most wailing of laments, his instrument may have carried the weight of the world sometimes, but it always soared.

Suzie introduced me to a great many things. Mary Poppins, grape taffy, fried clams, the soundtrack to ‘The Mighty Quinn’, and a number of movies, including ‘Auntie Mame.’ I was raised on a rather sheltered diet of pop culture, at least until I could find my own way. That meant we didn’t have cable, or a VCR, until the late 80’s, so Suzie was responsible for bringing me up to speed on all the things an adolescent needs to conquer the world, or at least to have a fighting chance. Enter ‘Harold and Maude.’

In our cellar, I dimmed the lights and popped the video into the VCR. It was probably a weekend night – I didn’t go out much until later in high school. The soundtrack by Cat Stevens lulled me into its folk-like trance, and then the story captured my attention, and my heart.

At the start of the movie we see Harold staging numerous suicide scenes in his morbid fascination with death, trying in vain to shock or surprise or simply get a reaction from his disinterested (if passive-aggressively antagonistic) mother. He forms an unlikely friendship with an older – much older – woman, Maude, who shares his joy in attending funerals. I’m not sure what Suzie thought I would relate to or love the most about the movie – Harold’s empty and desperate dramatic theatrics, or Maude’s eccentric joie de vivre. Maybe she just appreciated unlikely friendships and knew I would too.

Back then I related mostly to Harold.

Today, I relate a little better to Maude.

That is, I think, the best trajectory for a proper journey on this earth.

The strange thing was, that even with its focus on death, this movie sings with life. It may have been a risky gift for someone with a suicidal fascination, but in the end it only left me feeling glad to be alive. A little sadder for having gotten to know these characters only to say good-bye when the movie was over, but sadder in the best way – in the way that the heart bleeds so beautifully for however long we are here.

Though his public statements have been questionable in recent years, Morrissey’s voice will always embody the best moments of angst ~ those times when sadness becomes a thing of beauty, when melancholy is a state of glorious madness, one that rivals the most joyful gladness. For most of my adolescence I managed to avoid much of Morrissey’s music, even his work with The Smiths. It wasn’t until his 1994 album ‘Vauxhall and I’ that I fell under his spell – and what a wonderful spell it was.

Somewhere in the winter of 1994 I looked into the dreamy blue eyes of that simple album cover as ‘Now My Heart is Full’ came over the stereo speakers. Familial betrayals, ruined romances, obsessive and unrequited love, self-doubt and crippling insecurity – this was the soundtrack to my stumbling existence. There was such a resigned sense of sorrow in some of his wails, but at the same time an unfailing hope for something better. ‘Hold Onto Your Friends’ was a self-recrimination of sorts, while acknowledging a loyal support system. ‘The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get’ was easily the theme for almost all of my doomed infatuations. My burgeoning gay self read much into ‘Billy Budd,’ and ‘Used To Be A Sweet Boy’ was ambivalently disturbing in owning up to some of the blame for everything I became.

Throughout the album, questions ~ of longing and heartache, want and desire, anger and resolution ~ surface and subside. For a Freshman finishing up his first year at college, it was a defining musical companion. To this day, whenever I hear Morrissey I remember those tender days, when the whole world hinged on a sad song.

If it seems strange that I should post a song by One Direction here, how little you know me. Once upon a time I was a big Boy Band fan – I had a Backstreet Boys calendar before I had an ‘NSync calendar. Old enough to know better, young enough not to care. But none of their songs inspired me like Madonna did. They were fun sing-a-long trifles for car rides or the end of a fling. (‘Bye Bye Bye’.)

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve grown too old to be moved by the magic of a pop song. Would there ever be something that filled me with giddy excitement, pure adrenaline, or the possibility of romance in the thaw of a January night? I don’t know, but it seems to me a song like this is surely forming the backdrop soundtrack for young lovers, for anyone embarking on what is yet to come, and what might one day be. That gives me hope. That makes me want to get in the car and drive with the windows down, seeking the cusp of spring. I hope I never lose that.

As for One Direction, I was never a big fan, but I have to respect anyone who can annoy Taylor Swift like that.

Outside the grand Victorian home of my friend Suzie, perched midway up Locust Avenue in Amsterdam, NY, a snowstorm rages. The roads have become, for the next few hours, impassable. My mother, who dropped me off earlier in the day to play with Suzie, phones and says she can’t come to pick me up for a while. At the top of the winding staircase, I pause and look into the family room, feeling the first tears of fear and abandonment creep out of my eyes. I will them to stop, and Suzie’s Mom puts a comforting arm around me. I can’t be more than five years old, and it is one of the first memories that will stay with me for my entire life.

It’s a memory that melds with other memories of that stately house on Locust, where we spent our Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, where we spent most of Suzie’s younger birthdays, where I played in the garden and shared grape taffy beneath a grape arbor. The sweet spring scents of bearded iris and peonies still bring me back to those days. A love of flowers was nurtured there, my love of gardening too. And my familial friendship with Suzie. She came to mind as I sat watching ‘Saving Mr. Banks’ the other day. I loved the film, mostly because I had such a love of ‘Mary Poppins.’ And fried clams. But I’m getting ahead of myself, and making a shambles of this narrative. Let’s go back again ~ to the first time I saw ‘Mary Poppins,’ and fittingly it was with Suzie.

It can’t have been too long before or after the opening memory. If my parents trusted me with anyone it was their closest friends, Dr. and Mrs. Ko (Suzie’s parents). Since Suzie was born two months before me, we were destined to be friends, though in actuality we were more like brother and older sister. It was one of the first trips I can remember taking without my mother, and it must have been half an hour away in Colonie, because we were going to have lunch first at Friendly’s. As we neared the mall, my fingers resting on the slightly ajar backseat window, enjoying the rushing air, Suzie decided to close the window. I felt the quick pinch but pulled my finger out just in time. (She was always cruel like that:) To this day, I will bring up that incident whenever I feel I may have been too mean about something, and always in jest. It’s a running joke – like red lobsters, hambones, and Japanese lanterns. Inside jokes, all of them.

At Friendly’s, I think I ordered a hot dog – well, I know I ordered a hot dog, because that’s all I would have ordered then. Suzie, though, was more daring, opting for the fried clams. I scoffed, if a five-year-old can scoff (and I probably could), but she insisted I try one. One turned into five, and before I knew it I was hooked. (Clearly it didn’t take much to appeal to my virgin tongue, considering how fried clams at Friendly’s must compare to something like this.) That was the day I learned to love fried clams – another milestone for which I had Suzie to thank.

But the big event was yet to come ~ ‘Mary Poppins’ ~ and once the movie began I forgot all about crushed fingers and fried food, and entered a magical world where escapism and fantasy were the only ways to deal with unconcerned parents, frightening bank executives, and other scary adults.

I returned to that world as I watched ‘Saving Mr. Banks.’ Only now there were other concerns, greater concerns, that couldn’t be solved by a song or a spoonful of sugar or a simple night of safe slumber. ‘Feed the Birds’ took on new nuances, deeper and darker meanings, and it seemed that certain demons unleashed in childhood could not be conquered merely by growing up. The ever-elusive happy ending dangled its kite tail high in the sky, far out of reach, well beyond a little boy’s grasp.

Oddly enough, I realized then that no magical nanny was going to fly in on the East wind, that one day I would need to create my own magic, fill my own carpet bag, and jump into my own chalk-drawn fairy tale. I knew too that sooner or later, like Mary Poppins herself, my time to fly away would always be just around the corner. The wind would eventually change. I would eventually come to be unwanted.

What I didn’t comprehend then was why I would cry over ‘Let’s Go Fly A Kite’. I thought it could only be because Mary Poppins leaves at that point. Now I understand that it’s a little bit more.

“It’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination, we instill hope again and again and again.”