The story of ‘Grey Gardens‘ came to musical life on Broadway a number of years ago, and Andy and I were lucky enough to see the original cast perform their wondrous magic on a frigid January night. Near the end of that show was one of the saddest songs ever written for a musical – ‘Another Winter in a Summer Town’ – and it opines on the misery of living in a resort town on the shore during the winter months. While it’s undeniably a sad scene, there’s a spirit of resilience to it, one that embodies those who survive a winter in a place known mostly for summer.
One little leaf adrift in the breeze Refuses to fall from the sky Blown by the wind It clings to the trees Unwilling to wither and die
I think of that song whenever I see an artifact of summer covered in snow. There’s such a element of sadness and loss to it, and I don’t know why. There is always another summer to come, whether we will be here or not. Time moves regardless of people.
Yesterday’s dreams are faded bouquets (Only a rose) Roses that died on the vine (just a memory divine) Yesterday seems more real than today (of love, when sweet) It’s difficult drawing the line (youth was mine)
The slumber of our backyard seems deceptively calm. Even in the storms and wind and endless nights, it feels quiet and still from behind glass doors. And I can remember – the splashing of pool water, the laughter of kids, the frogs singing in the humid nights – I can remember summer.
My season ended (ended) A long time ago But no one took the party tent down (alone now) The pink paper lanterns still twinkle in place My young Navy hero, his tender embrace That sapphire blue ocean; oh how can I face Another winter in a summer town?
Just when the world looked to be lacking in inspiration and jolting thrills, Lady Gaga releases a banger like ‘Abracadabra’. While I adore most of what she has done over the years, the past few projects have failed to move me much. I can appreciate her acting prowess; at the same time I first fell in love with her through her music, and one never forgets their first love.
‘Abracadabra’ offers the driving melody and beats that characterize the best of her work, while an intricately-choreographed video recalls the glory days of the medium. The costumes, the drama, the dancing, the looks, the hair, the operatic phantom nature of it all… it’s giving everything, and I’m giving myself over to the spell.
Almost exactly twenty years ago this month, I was taking these photos on a Sunday afternoon in winter, when I hoped for empty industrial spaces that evoked the garages of Herb Ritts and a man named Fred holding onto a couple of tires. It was freezing cold, but something impelled me not to waste any more time. I understood on some level that I had to capture the magic of the last few months of my twenties. Even then, I felt the tug of age on a gay man’s body, the way time tears away at the very things that would make it necessary to stay even marginally attractive. The majority of my thoughts were that I didn’t mind aging if I was more or less happy in my life, and if I wasn’t happy in my life, then not aging certainly wouldn’t change that. Bottom line: I was contentedly resigned.
That would ebb and flow differently over the years, and now that the years are piling upon one another faster and faster, thanks to my own perception of time after going over the middle-age hump, I find pockets of space where I look back at the person I used to be.
Now you know you’re a cute little heartbreaker You know you’re a sweet little lovemaker Hey
I wanna take you home I won’t do you no harm, no You’ve gotta be all mine, all mine Oooh, foxy lady
Andy said this is the song that presented itself in his mind when he first saw me walk across a crowded bar floor – ‘Foxy Lady’ by Jimi Hendrix. I wasn’t even aware that he was there or watching, so I could not have been putting on a show for him. It was his first impression, coupled with a mental assessment of ‘Bitchy queen‘. He’s usually spot-on in his initial readings of people. Foxy and bitchy and everything-but-nice ~ and I won’t pretend that wasn’t me way back when.
I see you down on the scene
You make me wanna get up and scream
I’ve made up my mind I’m tired of wasting all my precious time You’ve gotta be all mine, all mine Foxy lady
I’m gonna take you home I won’t do you no harm, no You’ve gotta be all mine, all mine Ooh, foxey lady
Here I come, baby Comin’ to get ya Foxy Lady
Some nights I can still summon that spirit and energy and attitude, some days too, if I work hard enough at it. Mind over body at this point, and the latter is becoming slower and slower to follow. For ‘The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale’ I channeled what it was like to inhabit the body of a man on the verge of thirty – and what once felt impossibly ancient now feels impossibly young. How were we ever so old, and ever so young, all at the same time?
One of the dangers in presenting a project from twenty years ago is the inevitable comparisons that crop up. I must remind myself that, ‘Comparison is the ultimate thief of joy.’ Words worth remembering and honoring. Would you switch your mind and body so as to maximize when they were at their best? I’d rather not risk it – the way we age is designed in the way it’s meant to unfold. Fighting that has its fun, but is always a battle that can only be lost.
Right now, I’m looking back at these photos of me at the age of 29 and I’m mildly amused, lightly impressed, and mostly grateful for having had the youth not everyone is afforded.
A favorite scene from ‘Schitt’s Creek’:
Moira Rose: I am suddenly overwhelmed with regret. It’s a new feeling for me, and I don’t find it at all pleasurable.
Stevie Budd: You regret that embarassing photos of you aren’t online?
Moira Rose: No, I regret that they’re lost. They were the one perfect memorial to who I once was. And I should’ve appreciated those firm round mammae and callipygian ass while I had them.
Stevie Budd: If you’re talking about your body, uh… I think you still look amazing.
Moira Rose: Then allow me to offer you some advice: Take a thousand naked pictures of yourself now. You may currently think, “Oh, I’m too spooky.” Or, “Nobody wants to see these tiny boobies.” But, believe me, one day you will look at those photos with much kinder eyes and say, “Dear God, I was a beautiful thing!”
This post may be the most powerful piece of counter-programming that the Super Bowl has ever seen – and I’ve made more than my fair share of counter-programming posts for Super Bowl Sunday. Here we continue the magnificently opulent opening of The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale which finds a stripped-off and stripped-down before-and-after scene, where ruffled lace bloomers stand-in for more hidden lace and ruffles. The essence of a woman intersperses with the essence of a man – and who can tell which is which? We each play a part, usually several, in any give day. To even attempt to dull the shine and sully the sparkle of another creature because you do not fully understand them… is a certain destroyer of one’s karma. There are places in hell for that kind of behavior, even when you don’t realize you’re doing it. Ignorance is not bliss, nor is it an excuse for hatred.
Glitter and be gay That’s the part I play Here I am in Paris, France Forced to bend my soul
To a sordid role
Victimized by bitter
Bitter circumstance…
Let us not be saddened by worldly wear and cynical tear; let us instead escape on clouds of ruffles and lace, lit by lamps of beaded glass fringe, and hung by ropes of diamonds.
Pearls and ruby rings Ah, how can worldly things Take the place of honor lost? Can they compensate For my fallen state? Purchased as they were at such a, at such an awful cost? Bracelets, lavallieres Can they dry my tears? Can they blind my eyes to shame? Can the brightest brooch Shield me from reproach? Can the purest diamond purify my name?
When questions of a darker time plague the mind, and shadows elongate into the fierce and deadly, the sparkling lot of a jewelry box is sometimes the only thing that will pierce the blackness. We’ll make our own damn stars if the universe refuses to deliver. We’ll don our own starlight – and we’ll stay in the glorious fight.
“During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for. It didn’t look like we were going to win then and we did. It doesn’t feel like we’re going to win now but we could. Keep fighting, keep dancing.” – Dan Savage
Eartha Kitt provides her signature cheeky glamour in this song selection for the next installment of ‘The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale‘. It reminds me of that hilarious time one of my, shall we say ‘critics’, voiced their claim that I married Andy for his sugar daddy status, which Andy actually found more riotously funny than me. All these years of joking about being a ‘Material Girl’ somehow left an impression that I was actually a material girl, but when you know something isn’t true it doesn’t really leave a sting. An amusing anecdote perhaps, never a sting. There are scorpions far more skilled than issuing such amateurish accusations. And so I play it up, giving the people what they want and indulging in the very image with which they find such bothersome fault. Eartha had this playbook down pat.
I’m just an old-fashioned girl with an old-fashioned mind Not sophisticated I’m the plain and simple kind I want an old-fashioned house with an old-fashioned fence And an old-fashioned millionaire
I like the old-fashioned flowers, violets are for me Have them made in diamonds by the man at Tiffany I want an old-fashioned house with an old-fashioned fence And an old-fashioned millionaire.
I like Chopin and Bizet and the songs of yesterday String quartets and Polynesian carols But the music that excels is the sound of oil wells As they slurp, slurp, slurp into the barrels.
My little home will be quaint as an old parasol And instead of carpets I’ll have money wall to wall I want an old-fashioned house with an old-fashioned fence And an old-fashioned millionaire.
My very favorite part of any endeavor: the anticipation.
A quick tuning of the orchestra – arpeggios and scales and troublesome stitches of difficult passages – and then the lights go down.
An-
ti-
ci-
pa-
tion…
A lone figure stands at a podium. The music laid out before them. Everything has already been written. Every piece of the story is already in place. All that is left to do is follow the leader.
The overture begins… and this one has been heralded as the overture to end all overtures.
The comical drama of the flawed ‘Candide’ was more fitting for this opening than I cared to realize at the time, full of folly and beauty and poignancy, all amid a world of wicked waywardness and the worst of humanity. Glimmers of the best surface too, little sparks in the blackest night, and you too may be surprised at the might of one candle’s flickering flame.
A figure shrouded in layers of lilac tulle steps onto a golden chair – a fairy on the precipice of flight or fall…
Forming the Preamble to ‘The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale’, the following playlist was actually burned to CDs and sent out to my friends before that fateful tour even began. Hey, it was 2005 – I’m not even sure we had playlists then. The musical selections for this portion of the Divine Diva project were designed to be quietly enchanting, with an element of whimsy, highlighting the fairytale aspect of what was to come. This is very much moody music, conjured for atmosphere and ambiance, to set a tone of dream-like intrigue and fantasy. It’s also night music, for drifting off to sleep on clouds of sheep and rolling hills of cotton candy. Compile and play accordingly, tomorrow we tour…
Shades of lilac and lavender in a tulle puff of a strapless dress, flitting about like a cloud of fairy dust – not wholly solid, more of a wisp, a whisper, a hint of something purple in the air.
In Tchaikovsky’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ ballet, “the Lilac Fairy is a benevolent fairy who represents wisdom and protection” and ultimately helps Sleeping Beauty find her happy ending. My own fairy’s tale doesn’t come to such joyful fruition, but a story isn’t told from the end to the beginning…
A music box whirls, tinkling bells of metal shards, sharp enough to slit a throat, slowly dying and running itself down. Crystalline winter, wrapping the sly softness and icy deadliness of snow around us, seduces with dangerous charm. We allow ourselves to be swaddled, thinking it is what we want, believing in the lie that it is what we need. We are too often willing accomplices in our own deception, in conspiring with the loveliness of a city covered in snow and ice – a city of quartz, ticking away with the tense, unrepentant measure of a time-bomb. Beauty about to explode.
Charming, someone to fear Handsome, very much here Evil, dancing through fire Whore of Babylon, world famous clear
Something to charm Danger, someone to harm Falling into the mire Climbing, higher and higher
The smoky world-ravaged voice of Marianne Faithfull, something we will never hear live again, gives ragged life to the song at hand. Recently deceased, she lasted longer than she thought she would. We never know how strong we are, or will need to be, until we go through it. And God, what she must have gone through… file it under ‘fun from the past’.
Someone to fear Handsome, very much here Evil, dancing through fire Whore of Babylon, world famous clear
This is the penultimate song of our introductory fairy-tale playlist, setting up the whimsical beginning of the Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale. How fitting to give the almost-last word to Ms. Faithfull, whose voice once gave sustenance to a lost boy. Every fairy tale is lined with darkness and danger, as though designed to prepare a child for the horrors of what will undoubtedly lie ahead.
Ivory tower Longing for something now Waiting, hour after hour Give me some of your power
Every escape can become another prison. Every chance grab at freedom another chance at confinement. Paradoxically, every prison can be conquered by the mind, and perspective is the greatest weapon anyone can ever wield. The power is in our hands.
Citadel, a prison of sorts Only the rich make the laws Using repression and force Whore of Babylon, City of Quartz
Why did this music imprint itself upon my brain at such a young age and why did I carry it with me all these years later? Imagined worlds unfurled before me – allowing for escape, allowing for survival, allowing for finding goodness in a place that wouldn’t always find me good. If I could create goodness, if I could conjure beauty, even if it was make-believe, perhaps it would be enough. Whatever gets you through being a gay kid and surviving somewhat intact.
A waltz. A walk in the forest. A whisper from my future self.
Our precious preamble to escapism continues its whimsical way with this track by Tori Amos, and featuring a gratuitous foot pic inspired by this quirky video. Fetishists have fairy tales too, sometimes more quaint than the rest of us. It has been my experience that those who dare to delve into their more devilish sides come out with stronger morals at end of it. Make of that what you will – there’s a lot of room for interpretation. The same goes for a Tori Amos song, so have at it.
Things you said that day Up on the one-oh-one The girl come undone I tried to downplay it With a bet about us You said that you’d take it As long as I could I could not erase it
And I’m so sad Like a good book I can’t put this day back A sorta fairytale with you A sorta fairytale with you
And I ride alongside you then And I rode alongside you then And I rode along side ’till you lost me there in the open road And I rode along side till the honey spread itself so thin For me to break your bread For me to take your word I had to steal it
When I stuck a letter into our mailbox for the postal worker to pick up on their later round, I had to step gingerly around large patches of rippled ice and snow; by the time I picked up the mail at the end of the day, the ground was clear of all ice and snow, just a muddy and wet space that promised of spring. A day of melting is a sign we are headed in the right direction, even if the temperatures plunge again every night. The overall trajectory is promising. It’s been a while since we’ve had such a feeling.
Let’s have a song to celebrate, part of the extended preamble for our next project posting, something that hints at the whimsy and escapism to come…
I’ll stop the world and melt with you You’ve seen the difference and it’s getting better all the time There’s nothing you and I won’t do I’ll stop the world and melt with you
To catch melting as its happening takes a different kind of magic and acute perception – most often we only notice the before and after – the act itself is always more elusive, shunning to be seen in motion, as if it might diminish the sorcery. It’s seen in the dripping of an icicle, or the sweet, sticky running of an ice cream cone; hardly ever when it comes to the heart or the malleable movements of the mind, and those are the places where melting is most important.
Dream of better lives the kind which never hate (You should see why) Trapped in the state of imaginary grace (You should know better) I made a pilgrimage to save this humans race (You should see why) Never comprehending the race had long gone by
Love and lunacy on full display in the winter sky – this is Venus making motions to kiss the moon on an early February evening. Winter has always held its enchanting delights if you know where and when to look for them. I’m not so well-informed, so this was a happy catch that I didn’t realize I made until after the fact. The Cowboy Junkies wrote a song about this scene for their album ‘Pale Sun, Crescent Moon’.
Reach a hand to the crescent moon Grab hold of the hollow If she sits in the palm of the left That moon will be fuller tomorrow If she sits in the palm of the right That moon is on the wane And the love of the one who shares your bed Will be doing just the same
‘Won’t you come with me’, she said ‘there’s plenty of room in my iron bed You’re looking cold and tired And more than a little human I know I’m not part of the life you had planned But I think once your body feels my hand Your mind will change And your heart will lose its pain’
Lunacy and love, and years past have already swirled beneath our life bridge, long carried away by currents we caused and currents we could not control. Knowing moon, winking Venus, and the power and might of a winter’s night. Whatever bit of warmth that remains from a memory, whatever sees you through the dark, these are little prayers to which we cling.
Do I reach for you When I know you’re on the wane? Do I sense you when I know you’re not around? Do I search for you When I know you can’t be found? Do I dare to speak your name?
Oh crescent moon, how we long for you to cradle us right now, lifting us up from this wretched planet if only for a night of comfort. Humans are reckless and relentless in their torment. What a lovely predicament to be as constant and removed from us as a heavenly body. Do you watch us from your lofty vantage point or are you wisely and sensibly tuned-out to all our awfulness? I wouldn’t blame you for either – I feel torn myself.
Raise your eyes to a moonless sky And try to wish upon a rising star Search all you want for her blessing But you won’t find her sparkling there Now cast your eyes to a part of the sky Where nothing but darkness unfolds And watch as all around you She reveals the brilliance of secrets untold
If I focus, and block out the noise from this crazy world of plane crashes and encroaching fascism, I can escape to the chiffon-shrouded world of Lawrence Welk, flying along on a cloud of accordion comfort, and finding momentary respite in the flight of fantasy…
Sunday night, in the dark of mid-winter, light seemingly still glowing from the snow, though I know that could never be. Moonlight, perhaps, the kind that brings out a certain wildness, that would have us dancing naked beneath its glow if it were just a smidge warmer. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…
Bed, bed I couldn’t go to bed My head’s too light to try to set it down Sleep, sleep I couldn’t sleep tonight Not for all the jewels in the crown I could have danced all night I could have danced all night And still have begged for more I could have spread my wings and done a thousand things I’ve never done before
I’ll never know what made it so exciting Why all at once my heart took flight I only know when he began to dance with me I could have danced, danced, danced all night
It’s after three now Don’t you agree now? She ought to be in bed!
I could have danced all night, I could have danced all night And still have begged for more I could have spread my wings and done a thousand things I’ve never done before
If I’m up beyond three these days, it’s not from the overwrought excitement from a night of dancing – quite the opposite. My nights are more restless than usual, my sleep not unfettered from bother and worry. Middle-age, I suppose, and so far from the carefree slumber of youth. Sunday nights aren’t supposed to feel sadder the older we get, are they?
