At the time of this writing I am felled by a sinus/cold thing that has my head stuffed and throbbing. I’ve had to miss a day of work and the No Kings rally. The world feels separate, removed, muted – more like winter than spring. And I don’t want to rush, but I don’t want to remain…
Dreaming of lilac trees, and the way their gnarled trunks last from year to year and the beauty that only age can create. Their perfume and flowers are the showiest and shortest part of their annual cycle. The most seemingly wonderful things don’t usually last, but when you learn to find beauty in the venerable gnarled trunk as much as the fleeting flower, you can find beauty everywhere and always, in sickness and in health.
Starring in the new revival of ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ on Broadway, Luke Evans leads with his, ahem, prominent package, bulging in a black lace jockstrap costume that is a reminder of all his assets. Let this serve as a basketful of previous Luke Evans posts:
Notoriously difficult to translate to a wearable perfume, the fragrance of a lilac is not one that likes to be captured with ease or success. It is probably best experienced in person, for the fleeting time they are in bloom at the magnificent mid-point of spring. For those who don’t live in a climate suitable for lilacs, or for anyone who wants more of their precious perfume at other times of the year, there is a decent-enough approximation in the ‘French Lilac’ perfume by Pacifica.
Personally, this will only be used in times of extreme desperation – when the lilac harvest isn’t a good one, or when winter weather stalls and spring hesitates to warm up. It will do in a pinch, when one needs a little nudge toward nostalgia.
Rainy mornings with sprays of lilac drooping over the neighbor’s fence…
When The Body Shop announced it was bringing back their ‘Dewberry’ line from the 90’s, my heart took a nostalgic leap as I hurried to the nearby mall to pick up a fragrance that I felt certain would bring back some questionable memories from my youth. As I approached the area where I remembered the store was located, it was nowhere to be found. It’s been a while since I was in a mall, or at least since I was paying attention to the stores rather than just walking through to the movies. Apparently all of The Body Shop stores had closed long ago. Alas, we live in an online world, and within days I had a bottle of ‘Dewberry’ body wash and body butter in my possession, where I kept them for a bit, saving them for one of the early moments of spring.
On a recent evening, when the hope of this new season tickled the senses in a warm night wind, I rubbed the Dewberry between my hands and inhaled the sweet aroma as it surrounded me in the shower. Suddenly, I was transported to the days of ‘Always Be My Baby‘ and ‘Waiting in Vain‘ and ‘Be My Lover‘ and the freaking choo-choo train… the music was cheesy and awful and I still remember every song like it was yesterday…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9McVO9hpUE
Back in the 90’s, I didn’t place much importance on colognes, at least judging from the small arsenal of scents I had at the time – Curve, Cool Water, Eternity, Safari. Of greater relevance was the fragrance of my skin and haircare products – I was keen on specific shampoos and body washes, and one of my favorites was the ‘Dewberry’ line at The Body Shop. (I also loved their tea tree oil products.) ‘Dewberry’ was vibrant, fruity, and sparkling in a way that said spring and summer to me. By the spring of 1996, I was living alone in Boston, and focusing on what made me happy rather than trying to impress anyone else.
Beginning with just a brief bit of paradisiacal birdsong, Melanie Martinez’s fourth album ‘HADES’ jumps right into its gorgeous hell-storm of musical majesty with opening track ‘Garbage’. Plucked strings, gun shots and church bells swirl to usher in this theatrical feat of wonderment – a grandly beautiful entrance for the ‘HADES’ era.
No stranger to dramatic and visually-arresting images, literal and sonic, Martinez paints a conflicting soundscape of America at this most perilous moment as ‘Garbage’ winds its introductory way down a dark and mesmerizing path:
Militant freaks hovering over the sky So you better run for the forest And we’re all under their cold watchful eye So you better hide what you’re growin’ Lookin’ out for yourself won’t get you far Better make peace with your people There can be beauty among trying times We can push through all the evil
A beautiful Jesus-looking figure named Hades is the treacherous temptation on display in ‘Is This A Cult?’ before Martinez lets loose with some of the most deviously diabolical lyrics, backed by equally-demoniacal music:
All of my girls wear whatever they wanna No men allowed ’cause they wanna control us We grow our own food and don’t need no money Everything’s free, and we have our autonomy Is this a cult? Or is it home? We see the future and get what we want We killed the leader, and now we’re on top Is this a cult? Can I come home? We make the rules, and we love on the land We fuck ourselves better than they can.
A dystopian vision is being built – insidiously, viciously, gloriously – and with a certain element of undeniable delicate beauty thanks to Martinez’s voice – ethereal, soothing, tender, and heartbreakingly human, even amid the ruinous machinations at work here. Fairy tales get turned on their fairy heads, the string-tastic one-two-punch bombast of ‘Disney Princess’ and ‘Grudges’ promising a world that wants to defang our prettiest monsters – and the pretty monsters refusing to blunt their incisors.
I just wanna burn bridges and kill bitches And pour their medicine in their mouth and give them a taste
In a musical time where the two-and-a-half minute song is a standard bearer for all that anyone under twenty can digest, ‘HADES’ is a magnificently fully-fleshed out world – the very illustration of album as art form – with songs that take their time to develop, and an overall arc that leaves one gratifyingly gasping for more. By the time the album reaches its apex and midpoint with ‘Avoidant’ and ‘Monolith’, love in its ambivalent and most heartrending ways arrives to temper the tempest at hand, and it’s almost enough to make one believe in an almost-happy ending.
If the fall of our memory comes to be true, then I’ll know I did everything I could do To show you the depth of what love can pursue When you’re out there talking to someone new Think of everything that I have given you Maybe she can get some of that, too, that’s what my love can do
Alas, love would never prove such a savior, not when it could cause such hurt, not when it could inflict such pain – and never in a world where things like ‘Weight Watchers’ and ‘The Plague’ exist. One of Martinez’s greatest strengths is balancing the tension of how to push through and make sense of such a mad world – how to be human when we are hellbent on being superhuman or inherently evil. As disturbing as the imagery and lyrics are in a song like ‘The Plague’, the music carries us along, a cough or two working perfectly in each of the dance breaks. It shifts seamlessly into ‘Batshit Intelligence’ where things get even more dystopian, and the sonic wind is so enthralling you almost don’t mind where we’re headed, or perhaps where we’ve already landed. Around us the discarded inhabitants of the ‘Gutter’ are paraded to jail, or worse, as Martinez begs that we “don’t get immune to this” over a vaguely circus-like musical meandering.
A haunting choir opens ‘The Vatican’, defiantly setting up the last section of ‘Hades’ – and this banger is a majestic fuck-off highlight of religious indictment:
Money power got its chokehold on humanity Nothing gives these motherfuckers quite a boner Like religion, Catholic, Christian, kissing Jesus, licking AR-15s
It’s so homoerotic, the way you pray to men And treat your women like the Leviathan Come out the closet/ Sip my holy water/ Pray to this pussy/ Confess your sins
Oh Melanie, now you are speaking my language and I’m down on my knees and waiting for you to take me there. Weaving in the patriarchal hypocrisy and evils inherent in all the evangelical bullshit, ‘The Vatican’ is this generation’s ‘Like A Prayer‘ taken to an incendiary extreme – precisely what this space in time needs. Finally descending to ‘Hell’s Front Porch’, Martinez gives in to the awfulness around us – because there’s no more denying that we’re fucked and there may not be a way out of it anymore – and the music swells to the point where we’re just “Fuckin’, sweatin’, dancin’ on hell’s front porch, baby…“
‘Chatroom’ may be the most perfect encapsulation of how people connect (or more pointedly don’t quite) in today’s online world, and as grim as some of the observations are and how deeply they pierce the heart, the music retains some small bit of hope among the disappointment and anger at constant work.
When I stare out the window, crying It’s ’cause you’ve made me hate my reflection In another reality, I could’ve loved myself, I could’ve been myself But here I am cramming all of your words deep into my veins till it kills me
Burning boldly right up until the very end, ‘The Last Two People on Earth’ brings us to the final days, and the only thing left to do is carnally express ourselves, blowing up “like a volcano/ Catastrophic orgasm that can wipe out a whole nation.” The one act that is creation and destruction at once – the one act that is love and hate and desire and annihilation – the one act that brings us heaven and hell, fire and ice, rendering words and music into mere echoes: the act of the fuck.
Part of my efforts to be more mindful and present, while returning to more primal roots of writing, has been to write out these blog posts (and project work – shh!) by hand in a lined notebook. I’m already on my fourth or fifth volume of nonsense since last fall. Writing things out by hand was the best learning trick of high school, when I had to remember anything historical or scientific. It serves a different purpose now – it connects me to words more directly, like they are actually a part of me now left on paper for as long as paper will last.
The act of hand-writing forces me to slow down, as it takes longer than typing or dictating. Perhaps more importantly for my situation, where there is no one to edit or rein in the hubris, I find the re-typing of these entries from notebook to blog back-end a helpful opportunity to refine and improve what rough stuff initially pours out onto the page.
Reconnecting to a physical, real world endeavor, and a chance to revive my cursive (a dying art) are small antidotes to the social media disconnection plaguing so many of us. Writing things out at a cafe while sipping herbal tea and munching on a cookie or muffin is another way to connect – whether it’s in small talk with the barista or accepting a compliment on a coat from a fellow customer or overhearing conversation of tables nearby; humanity is all around us, providing little time to be truly alone.
And sometimes there is no lonelier place than a crowded cafe.
Attachment and detachment are life and death these days. Sometimes you have to pretend some things are not happening or you run the risk of sinking so low into the actual reality of the moment that there would be no rising from the muck again. At the same time, how much can we actually detach without losing sight of the real hurt and pain that is necessary to make this life worth living, that illuminates how sweet the happier moments can be?
I’m glued to the thoughts in my mind (mind) They pester like a hawk in the sky I am glued to the love in you (in you) It swallows me whole, you’re hard to let go
That conundrum is at the heart of Melanie Martinez‘s brilliant ‘Glued’, which posits the idea of a love that is kept at a distance, a chemistry that is kept at bay, and the question of whether or not to recklessly give in to it entirely or keep safely away. A heart that is hidden cannot as easily be hurt.
Oh, that’s not what I wanna do (oh, no) Perfectly attached like a noodle in the soup (huh?) You’re good with the X-Y-Z (Y-Z) I’m good with the A-B-C
And D-E-F-G, H-I-J-K, baby We all have our strong suits, built differently Different experience, different needs I know we can’t die at the same time (oh, so sad), but please?
I don’t wanna think about the morbid parts of life no more? I’m tryin’ just to focus on the things that hold me so damn close I’m sticky, sticky, stuck and solidly sealed up to this reality I’m seein’ not what I wish to be achieving, the old idea of me is
Glued up, sometimes it’s too much I’m fucked up and clueless (clueless) I’m stuck in the vortex, stuck in the vortex Glue-less, life would be borin’ Empty but no hurting (hurting) Is it necessary? Detachment is scary
When my petty feet start to sway (sway) You better turn around the other way (walk away) When the doubt starts creepin’ in (oh, no) It’s hard to let go of old instinctual
Patterns that I picked up from my environment since a baby Cut the negative self-talk and cut out my procrastination Being sticky stuck, glue those old habits shut Paste me to a new way of being, somethin’ to breathe new life in me again
There is something scary and brave and soul-rending about giving yourself up so easily and so soon in a relationship. I’ve always done it, and rarely has it worked to my advantage, but I never stopped doing it, because being real is the only thing I want to be. When I met Andy, I even attempted to play by the rules, our first night ending with my laughably-elusive non-promise of, “I’ll probably never see you again but here’s my number” only to discover later that Andy didn’t like games either.
Glued up, sometimes it’s too much I’m fucked up and clueless (clueless) Stuck in the vortex, stuck in the vortex Glue-less, and life would be boring Empty but no hurtin’ (hurtin’, no hurtin’) Is it necessary? Detachment is scary
It’s been a while since I’ve been inspired by a musical artist, but Melanie Martinez has reinvigorated and recharged my inspiration battery. With a gorgeously dramatic visual representation of musical visions, Martinez is as much about evoking an atmosphere and feeling as about writing and singing some stunning music.
Deceptively doll-like, her images drip with exquisite irony, while not detracting from their dark gorgeousness. A tricky balance, that, and Martinez manages it with deft and sure confidence. From the days of ‘Dollhouse’ through this week’s release of her fourth album ‘Hades’ (out Friday), Martinez seems hellbent on staking a substantial career propped up by jaw-dropping visuals and backed by aural audacity – and in honor of this exciting next chapter, she earns her first Dazzler of the Day crowning.
{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.}
The Queen of Pop’s very first official duet was fittingly with a man named Prince. At the time of the ‘Like A Prayer’ album’s release, Prince and Michael Jackson were probably the only two musical icons who could match Madonna’s own pop-culture stardom. Prince was a more avant-garde choice, and in the end more fitting. Michael was fine for arm candy at the Oscars, but for musical legacy and credibility, Prince was far more prolific. His quirky and unmistakable musical style was all over his duet with Madonna, entitled ‘Love Song’ in questionably stultifying fashion. As unimaginative as the title was, the song itself also fell a little short of expectations from two pop superstars arguably at their apex in 1989.
It begins with Madonna speaking coquettishly in French: “Je suis prête? Vous êtes prêt aussi?“
Are you wasting my time? Are you just being kind? Oh no baby My love isn’t blind Are you wasting my time? Are you just being kind? Don’t give me one of your lines
If it sounds slightly disjointed, as if the two aren’t quite connecting, that’s reportedly because they recorded their parts separately, somewhat diminishing the duet aspect of the whole affair, and wasn’t that the whole point? Still, it grows on you if you let it, and Madonna steps up to the Prince-like musical environment, almost making it her own.
Say what you mean, mean what you say Don’t go and throw our love away God strike me down if I did you wrong This is not a love song
Are you just being kind? No Am I losing my mind? Losing your mind Oh no baby… Yeah
Strangely enough, given their pop-culture status at the time, ‘Love Song’ didn’t make much of an impact or impression. That said, it actually fits in the kaleidoscopic/psychedelic 60’s undertone of the tapestry that was the ‘Like A Prayer’ album – Madonna and Prince melding their personae like patchouli and lavender – and it works well as an album-cut.
Are you wasting my time? Wasting my time Are you just being kind? Oh no baby, my love isn’t blind Are you wasting my time? Time, time, time Are you just being kind? Don’t go give me one of your lines
Say what you mean, mean what you say Don’t go and throw our love away God strike me down if I did you wrong This is not a love song
Ooh, are you just being kind? What? Am I losing my mind? Don’t… Wait
There was muted genius here, and a brilliant foreshadowing of a classic line that would come into great prominence many years later:
Time goes by so slow for those who wait And those who run seem to have all the fun But am I wasting my time? She’s so fine Are you just being kind? No
My high school life had settled into a bit of a funk by the time I came to the whole ‘Like A Prayer’ album, and the darkness that was part of that journey was a welcome companion. The push-and-pull ambivalence of this track did nothing to allay my concerns of romance at the time, or the mixed emotions that handsome men elicited in my hidden heart.
Don’t try to tell me what your enemies taught you Show them now how I didn’t do you wrong
This is not a love song
Despite its spring 1989 release, the Like A Prayer’ album was speaking to me most pointedly in the desolate fall of 1991. In the way that music has of meaning and mattering the most during adolescence, ‘Love Song’ was part of my romantic formation, for better or worse. I wasn’t even infatuated with anyone at the moment, but I knew those days would come, and if Madonna and Prince were finding love to be so maddening, I wondered how the rest of us mere mortals would navigate it. I could easily wait to fall in love if that was the case.
Are you wasting my time? Wasting my time Are you just being kind? Oh no baby, my love isn’t blind Are you wasting my time? Time, time, time Are you just being kind? Don’t go give me one of your lines
‘Love Song’ is the final song from ‘Like A Prayer’ to get the Madonna Timeline treatment (you’ll see its missing link here). It’s a reminder that time ticks on, and this timeline is in the winter of its seasonal lifespan. Enjoy each entry as we approach the end – and be reassured that with a new album on the way that end will be extended like only Madonna could.
Nowhere to run, Nowhere to hide That’s how I feel, Don’t fog my mind Mean what you say or baby I am gone This is not a love song
Don’t try to tell me what your enemies taught you I’m gone but I just want you to know That this is not a love song that I want to sing.
A breathtaking gust of fiercely fashionable fabulosity, Robert Hartwell is a force of joy and hope and promise packaged in the prettiest wardrobe you may ever see. With an impressive Broadway background in shows from ‘Memphis’ and ‘Motown’ to ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Hello, Dolly!’, Hartwell has the theatrical experience and rich knowledge to share with others looking to break into musical theater, hence his running of The Broadway Collective. His reality renovation show ‘Breaking New Ground’ revealed a bit of the man behind the myth while pushing the idea that being unabashedly ourselves is always the best form of progress. With a commitment to beauty, joy, and fashion, and a bedrock of family and friends to populate his wonderfully whimsical rooms, Hartwell earns this Dazzler of the Day crowning as if to the manner born.
When people say they’re ‘Single as a Pringle’ that never made much sense to me; I’ve always considered Pringles rather polyamorous – they’re packaged in a freaking human centipede formation for fuck’s sake.
Walking the walk I talked about in this post declaring this the spring of rejoining the real world and taking physically-present part in the action, I made a Sunday stop at the recent holding of A Big Gay Market hey in Troy, NY. The ride over the Hudson River is not as far as it once felt, and as long as you veer clear of rush hours, it’s not usually backed up, especially on the rainy, early afternoon I made the trip to the Mount Ida Preservation Hall.
Once inside, a warm and inviting environment filled with a bustling crowd beaming with happiness at being there greeted me, along with tables of enchanting materials – from cuddly crocheted cuties to scrumptious candles that filled the space with their delicious fragrance. Stickers and artwork were on hand, as were homemade jewelry and knitwear, and all sorts of goodies.
I’m already looking forward to their next event on April 26, 2026 at Washington Park in Albany.
