This is what you’ll get This is what you’ll get This is what you’ll get When you mess with us
Karma police, I’ve given all I can It’s not enough, I’ve given all I can But we’re still on the payroll
Winter recedes from focus – I cannot get my arms around it, can’t get my head around it – winter obscura, sentences collapse, words fragment…
Walls of noise rise, but not here, not in this post. Not when we so need melody… and solace. Ease to the ears, healing for the head – and I wouldn’t dare ask for any help for the heart.
This is what you’ll get This is what you’ll get This is what you’ll get When you mess with us
Winter obscura… like silent snow, secret snow, sickening snow. Snow on the television, snow on the phone, snow on the brain. Snowy blowy bloviating bullshit.
{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.}
Back in 2003, some saw the teaming up of these two pop icons as the passing of the Pop Goddess baton from Madonna to Britney Spears, but I knew only one of them would/could last, and with a new album on the more immediate horizon, that looks to be Madonna. Nothing against Britney, or the music, just a reflection on longevity, and Brit’s got a long way to go before she surpasses Madonna on that front.
Here was their first and thus far only collaboration, the lead single from Britney’s fourth album ‘In the Zone’ – and a strange little blip on Madonna’s musical timeline.
Hey Britney, you say you wanna lose control Come over here I got something to show ya Sexy lady, I’d rather see you bare your soul If you think you’re so hot Better show me what you got
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clwLKJ294u4
Like almost all of Madonna’s collaborations with other superstar artists, this one suffers slightly from overwhelming expectations and an oddly-muted production. For all their effort, and all the hype of being released in the white-hot aftermath of their infamous and incendiary MTV Video Awards performance smooch, it falls just a little flat. While Britney gets top billing, this is just as much a duet as Madonna’s ‘4 Minutes’ splash with Justin Timberlake (which make be her strongest collaboration with another renowned celebrity/singer).
The video keeps them tantalizingly apart until the very end – a lengthy tease that is emblematic of the song as a whole. All tease, little action, and not much lasting resonance. Madonna’s greatest strength will always and forever be as a solo artist.
While Laufey will forever embody that glorious Coquette Summer we celebrated a couple of years ago, she’s been a staple on the cafe playlist where I’ve been spending my afternoons. It’s good winter music as well, and so I seek out a proper seasonal song from her impressive oeuvre.
Madonna’s love affair with Dolce & Gabbana goes back decades, and finds further expression in her lending them a song for their promotional push for ‘The One’ fragrances. It’s her first musical release since 2019’s ‘Madame X’, and acts as an amuse-bouche for her upcoming return to dance-floor form in a long-hinted-at sequel to ‘Confessions On A Dancefloor‘.
A respectable cover of Patty Pravo’s ‘La Bombola’, sung in its original Italian, this Madonna is moody, mature, and understandably a little worn and worse for wear. At moments, it doesn’t even really sound like her, which is a bold move, as she’s not the chirpy girl of ‘Like A Virgin‘ or ‘Material Girl‘ anymore, and this is an accomplished effort. It’s not going to climb the charts, as if that even mattered at this point in her career, and it really speaks more to her commitment to creatively expansive artistry, and a wonderful evocative companion to her perfume ad visuals.
I wish she’d done something like this for her own fragrance releases for ‘Truth or Dare’ and ‘Truth or Dare: Naked’ – both of which are exquisite scents, and worth more than Madonna’s relatively lackluster promotional push at the time. A song by the lady herself would have possibly made these flagons immortal in the style of Elizabeth Taylor rather than a one-two-off adored by a selective niche.
That said, perhaps I should be glad not more have embraced these, as they can still be found if you know where to look. Like the music here, the mood is sensual, spicy, slightly carnal. If anyone knows how to whet the appetite for what is about to come, it’s Madonna. This is a gorgeous start to a year that may find her deservedly back in the pop spotlight.
The vast expanse of emptiness that acts like vacuum and diamond-rendering pressure at once…
A force of force, turned in and on itself…
Pushing from without, pushing from within… and the end result, far from balance, is just more unbearable pressure…
Body and brain, both basically hollow, the way we carve out our live without regard to what we’re tearing out of ourselves in service of what we think we want to add…
How much of ourselves do we throw away like that?
The moment of destruction is finitely beautiful – it almost makes the aftermath worth it. This world favors those who dare to prolong, or even find, such moments.
I dwell in waves of silent despair Reborn in matter and time, a starless universe Onward, into eternity A nocturnal light will set my spirit free…
Blasting eardrum-shattering technical death metal might seem like an antithetical means of clearing the mind and finding peace but I’m in the mood for trying new things, and sometimes an enormous wave of a song, crashing down upon the soul and rushing the mind’s processing of stimuli, is the precise antidote for a proverbial cloudiness in the head.
Is this the reason then that some love death metal? The absolute abandon of the brain while it’s being so beautifully bombarded into oblivion through the sheer pounding of a sonic fit of wrath and rage?
This selection is from the band Obscura, whom I stumbled upon when researching this Winter Obscura theme – and it arrived at moment when I needed to assault my senses with something different, something jarring, something jolting, something more…
A slap out of it, a shock wakening, a reckoning to ravage… a desperate act to feel again, to reset the mind and reboot my entire system when Control-Alt-Delete no longer does anything.
I didn’t want melody, I didn’t want lyrics, I wanted only sounds – tons and tons of deafening sound – pure sonic abuse and attack – aimed directly at my chest – so loudly that I could feel it there, pounding away from the outside while my heart pounded back from within. Sound so striking, sound so strident it feels like skin being ripped off the body. Sound so potent, sound so petulant it spits in your eyes and probes uninvited into every orifice of your body. Sound that turns you inside out.
Is this the sound of Winter Obscura? Too soon to tell… but it’s the sound for today.
Before I realized what form this year’s Holiday Stroll would take, I was haunted by the faceless mannequin displays at Macy’s in Downtown Crossing, Boston – at which point this rendition of a BTS song came over the sound system, and everything fell into place for the duration of the music.
The power of a potent pop song – the sillier the better.
For anyone struggling this Christmas day, or during any point of this purportedly most wonderful time of the year, I offer some solace and empathy and understanding. Know that you are not alone, and there are plenty of us who no longer find the magic of Christmas for whatever reason – and that’s ok.
So take a moment for yourself, clear some space around you, and just let loose to this ridiculous song.
The idea of a solo Holiday Stroll was formulating in my head as I stood in the cold wind outside Fanueil Hall. What, after all, was the point of traditions? Why did it feel important to maintain them? In some way, it was one of the only things of reassurance in a year that found nothing assured or safe. There was comfort in tradition, but maybe coming out of one’s comfort zone was the only way to grow and evolve. I still wasn’t sold on the idea of carrying this one on solely for the sake of tradition; I also wasn’t against ending this still bit of holiday folklore I’d created so many years ago and starting over, or not starting again at all. Some endings should stand on their own. I resumed my solitary walking, nearing a lone bull market stand where sausage sandwiches were being assembled, and the aroma of peppers and onions smoldering beside them made for a deliciously cozy smell at the late lunch hour. Music played from the proprietor’s phone, and though the song that was playing, ‘Fire and Rain’ by James Taylor, had never been a favorite of mine, today I listened, and it spoke in a new way, opening up like classic songs tend to do when you are ready to receive them.
I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend But I always thought that I’d see you again
In that moment, the grayish sky began dropping large but mercifully-spaced-out snowflakes, more pretty than menacing, more beautiful than annoying, at least at this initial stage. Our very first Holiday Stroll happened on a snowy morning of similar loveliness, and suddenly it struck me how close the word ‘loveliness’ is to ‘loneliness’.
My mind travels back to that snowy stroll through the Boston Public Garden with Kira, and as snowflakes instantly melt into tears on my eyelashes, I understand that I carry her with me. More snowflakes fall into my hair – silver piling upon silver, simultaneously stinging and tickling when they reach skin. Hastening my steps, I pass the building I used to work in, and those hilarious days of retail flood forth from the memory bank, along with the years of finding solace in my retail family – Barrie, Suzie, John, Ginette, Spencer, Jose, Ola, Simon, and Kim – all of them come rushing back. At a time when I felt out of place at school, they gave me one of my first glimpses of what it was like to be accepted, and adored, for being nothing but myself. My own family hadn’t always made me feel like that, and to find it with people who started as strangers was somehow more poignant. It brought back the upstate New York retail family – Dawn and Matt and John and Justin – and I realized I carried them with me too. Memories of my John Hancock office job – with JoAnn, Kira, Tamekia, and Bettina – and the whole microfiche community crossed my mind, and my last long-term love in Boston – Paul – and our time together, reminded me that even absent, they were a part of this.
Nearing the front entry of Faneuil Hall, I recalled the side-splittingly funny episode Skip and I shared listening to a man sing a rather catchy song about diarrhea – and all the riotously comical BroSox Adventures rushed into my mind – as did a stormy but sweet night with Sherri and their kids at the Boston condo. I thought then of my current co-workers, and the friend who brought me into my longest office home – Marline – as she and Gretchen had seen ‘Plaza Suite’ in Boston (a show we were scheduled to see just as COVID hit)- and more co-workers past and present who have become friends in their own right – Lorie and Sue and Doris and Betsy – they were all there with me as I climbed the stairs up past City Hall.
Andy reached out a hand from memory then, and the many moments we have shared in Boston – from the day we secured our wedding license at City Hall (strangely moving) to our wedding day at the Public Garden, and all the anniversaries and visits before and since. Every step of every stroll I’ve ever taken or will ever take in Boston comes with an accompanying loved one, often several, and even when I’m alone they are still with me.
Been walking my mind to an easy time My back turned towards the sun Lord knows, when the cold wind blows It’ll turn your head around Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line To talk about things to come Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground
Back on the T, I remember the first time my brother and I rode the green line from Copley to Government Center when Mom thought we were just walking around Copley Place Mall. Our fledgling motions toward independence – it was a thrill as much for its illicit nature as for its empowering glimpse at what it would be like to be on your own in Boston. And then I thought of Mom’s first visits to the city with us in tow – she introduced me to the magic of the city, and its access to all that was beautiful in museums and stores and history – and then I thought of Dad, who literally gave us our home on Braddock Park many years later, and so many years ago. They were with me now too, the way they would always be.
As I rose from the T stop near Copley, the snow was falling more heavily. The afternoon was beginning its turn. Passing the area where I met the first man I kissed, I thought of our brief time together – not the damaging, darker part of it, but that sunny September day when two young men walked along the Charles River together, unsure of anything and everything other than a shared spark of attraction, an empty and beautiful afternoon, and the possibility of a promise of an entire world and lifetime in the air. Walking deeper into the South End, I remembered my friend Alissa’s first apartment, and a photo shoot we did there, and all the ensuing years of friendship that found us reconnecting in Boston at every major interval in our lives. She was with me too, and so was Chris, who introduced her to us just as they started dating. Chris and Suzie and Anu and Kristen and Tommy and Janet – and all the love we shared through these past decades – the holiday children hours, the weddings and births and deaths – I felt them and our shared history there, strolling beside me, linking spiritual arms and charging through life, always together.
I was hurrying a bit now as the sun was coming down, and I thought back to one of my earliest Boston memories of my Uncle Roberto, tying a scarf around his head as we ran back to the condo after watching a James Bond movie on a frigid January night – parts of his original painting job remain – the gold accents and green stripes – and I knew he was with me as well, even though he’s been gone for over twenty years. All of my loved ones – whether near, far, or sadly departed – walked with me as my snowy stroll neared home.
Maybe there is no such thing as a solitary stroll. Maybe all of our ghosts walk with us once we’ve experienced and amassed a certain amount of living. Maybe this wasn’t My Holiday Stroll for the year – maybe this was Our Holiday Stroll.
Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend But I always thought that I’d see you, baby One more time again, now Thought I’d see you one more time again There’s just a few things coming my way this time around, now Thought I’d see you, thought I’d see you, fire and rain, now
Trudging up the final steps and unlocking the door, I stepped into the room and remembered that I was no longer alone. A backpack and sweatshirt were thrown on the couch – my brother and nephew had arrived in town for a concert that night – and they were about to turn the solitary stroll I’d just reconciled in my mind on its head…
While ‘There’s Always Tomorrow‘ plucks at the heartstrings, and ‘The Christmas Waltz‘ sways in sad three-quarter time, it is this song that always melts my heart – strangely, as it’s one of the most uplifting holiday classic songs that’s ever been written. A highlight of the animated ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’ – one of the stalwart chestnuts from my childhood’s television diet – this tells the story of when the Winter Warlock is transformed into a friendly creature through the generosity of Kris Kringle.
One of the best things to come out of the musical version of ‘Mame’ is this happy holiday chestnut which we will use to christen this Christmas season. Its contagious joy and giddiness feels slightly at odds with the current state of the world, but that’s also sort of the point of this song – which begs for a celebration right here and now in the face of all that’s awful.
Haul out the holly Put up the tree before My spirit falls again…
Fill up the stocking I may be rushing things But deck the halls again now
It’s a herald and a cry for joy no matter the time of year, and it’s the sort of desperate plea for some shred of happiness that somehow knows it’s all destined for failure – or at the very least a fall far short of high hopes and dreams. That’s the essence of being human though, isn’t it? The desire and drive to keep trying, to keep wishing, to keep believing – in hope, in love, in Christmas, and in the face of everything and everyone around you pulling the world apart.
For we need a little Christmas Right this very minute Candles in the window Carols at the spinet Yes, we need a little Christmas Right this very minute It hasn’t snowed a single flurry But Santa, dear, we’re in a hurry
We haul out our holly, we hang our brightest lights and fill our empty stockings because we are still human. Flawed, failed, fractured, marred and scarred humans, fumbling for betterment, sometimes for mere survival – and we keep going. We fall and falter, slip and sputter, wail and waiver, finding and taking our joy in tiny fits and spurts, and it must be enough.
Enough to sustain us.
Enough to give purpose to rising in the morning.
Sometimes that’s found in the laugh of a friend.
Sometimes it’s in the patience of a husband.
Sometimes it’s in the melody of a song.
So climb down the chimney Put up the brightest string Of lights I’ve ever seen
Slice up the fruitcake It’s time we hung some tinsel On that evergreen bough
For I’ve grown a little leaner Grown a little colder Grown a little sadder Grown a little older And I need a little angel Sitting on my shoulder Need a little Christmas now
Cold earth sleeps Underneath a flaming northern sky The snowy trees gently weep This dark Christmas time
Now it’s been almost a year since I last saw her, and eight months since she last bothered to text me back. Looking at my long litany of texts since then – some comical, some casual, some desperate, some panicked – I cringe at my pathetic attempts to cling to a friendship that apparently slipped away many months ago.
Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal – no one really returns texts anymore, and to expect them to be timely is even more laughable. Still, it’s no secret that it’s a sore spot for me, and it preys diabolically on my most tender and raw insecurities of not mattering – and admittedly hurts me in a way that explains so very much of my pathology. The entire ghosting thing, and not responding at all, even in the face of pointed pleas to “Just tell me you are alive and not dead or deported by ICE”, strikes at my heart in a manner that has directly fueled the monster I’ve become.
Don’t hide the light that shines in you Let the brightest star of Bethlehem Make your darkness fade away Believe the power of your dreams You’re the Pharos in the night Guiding us, you’ll lead the way
Eventually, I tracked down one of her daughters on social media, who said her mother still had the same number, and I assumed that meant she was alive as well – and that’s all that matters, and all that’s left to say. This sort of thing has never happened to me before – not in a platonic relationship. Romantically, I’ve scared away more than my fair share of possible paramours – and their ghosting of me made more sense. I don’t understand anything about this one, all I feel is hurt, confused, and looking for another failure on my part to make it make sense. The world has thrown enough at me this year to start making me doubt myself.
With Kira gone from my life, that means that one of my favorite holiday traditions – our holiday stroll – has also come to an end. It seems like many of the traditions I once held so close to my heart have fallen by the wayside, and at this point I am trying hard to even be bothered by it, because I really should care. Apathy begets apathy I suppose, and maybe it was time for me to let go of such things. In so many respects I am the only one holding on to traditions – and for what? Maybe there is something to honoring tradition year after year, as a means of grounding our lives at regular intervals in a way that matters to us – and maybe there isn’t. I watch today’s generation flit from year to year, experience to experience, with no ties or significant pulls to anything other than the moment at hand. They don’t hang onto traditions, or friends, the way I did. Maybe that’s the best route to take now. Maybe none of it fucking matters, and that might just make life much easier and less tortured. It will certainly make holiday-planning easier and completely absolve me of any obligation to be there for any of it.
We are not obligated to anything, or anyone, and it may be high time for me to join the masses and let go of tradition for the sake of tradition. Perhaps that goes for friendships too – just because we shared a certain section of life together need not mean we have to share the rest of it, and that doesn’t have to be a bad or sad thing. I’d rather remember the good times Kira and I shared, and not the fact that she ghosted me, as I’m sure she must have her reasons. That’s the sort of peace and happy ending I want and need right now. Being messy – even on an emotional level – is always a choice. And as messy as I’ve been in the past, there’s a point when one must decide to stop the mess, and this is that season for me.
Snowflake falls, warms my heart Memories call me home Silence hauls, fears depart I’ll never be alone.
When last our tribe gathered during the summer days of summer, Anu made us make a plan for a fall visit to her River House in Virginia. That felt far away in every sense, though the best destinations often require a certain amount of work to reach. In the case of Anu’s River House, the work was a nine-hour car drive South with Suzie at the wheel – and the only work I had to do was keep her awake and stocked with sub-par Chex mix and beef jerky (as I was not about to drive an unfamiliar car on the New Jersey turnpike, for everyone’s safety).
We stopped for a lunch of French sandwiches I’d made for the trip (fancy European butter and thinly-sliced cornichons included) at the Connie Chung Rest Stop – because if such a thing as a Connie Chung Rest Stop exists, you fucking stop at it and eat a sandwich. I was not fully aware of Connie’s cultural sway in this country, nor of her place in the New Jersey rest stop landscape, but there she was plastered larger than life in a grand poster right above the rest rooms. Go Connie.
The sandwiches had a tad too much butter on them for my liking, but Suzie gamely had one, and the it was back on the road. The final stretch included that brutal Chesapeake Bay Bridge, wherein one practically kisses the roiling water below and to your side – I remember going over it as a child, and how little my Mom enjoyed it. Anu felt the same, as she indicated in a check-in text as we shared our current location.
By the time we reached the River House, it was deeply dark, but the company was good, the food delicious, and the bed a respite of immediate sleep and rest. A day of travel usually grants instant slumber, and this was happily the case. The river slept along with us, waiting to surprise me with its grandeur the next morning…
A scent, a resin, a sound, a song, an instrument, an abstraction – Mr. Oud takes his name from any number of objects or ideas, shape-shifting like quicksilver and sliding into whatever you want him to be. Without one stage and true identity, he is free to become whatever the moment requires. But let’s not even restrict it that much – he is free. It can end and begin there. That’s why some find him problematic; envy of freedom is the most vicious and powerful form of envy in the world. Most of us are not so free; most of us will never be. And most of us have found Mr. Oud odious at one time or another, loathe though we may be to admit it. The loathsome builds on itself.
A mite of menace, a vivisection of versatility, another zig in a field of zags, resulting in a wondrous whirl of whiplash – Mr. Oud spins dervishly and devilishly, because in chameleonic motion it’s difficult to catch him.
You could never ride such a creature and hope to survive. Let him gallop away.
Yes, you read that correctly, as this is, by careful calculation and analysis, my fourth mid-life crisis since about 2014, but the happy news is that this one is a fun one, taking place mostly in my mind, and marked by giddy hands-in-the-air abandon as if I’m on some perpetual high, perhaps teetering to a psychedelic mania just this side of hallucination – and all without the sting of drink.
Skip introduced me to the following song, which is characterizing this particular moment of time in ways both exuberant and desperate. It spoke more deeply and plaintively to me than I was expecting, perhaps because my most recent mid-life crisis came with the death of my Dad and the aftermath (despite what this post tried to pretend) and that was decidedly less fun. By then, I’d done it twice before, and the first two were pretty damn near disastrous.
Julian, it’s a hungry world They’re gonna eat you alive, son, oh-yeah Oh, Julian, when their fangs sink in I’ll stitch you, but then I gotta throw you back in, oh
According to my therapist, many people, especially men, will go through several mid-life crisis moments – something she wisely neglected to warn me about when I was having my first because I probably wouldn’t have continued on had I known that it was only the beginning. (I also only-half-jokingly tried to tell her that I did not sign on for more than one.) This time around is decidedly less worrisome than the first three, as I’m aware of how to navigate the pull of drama in such a way that I don’t make life-altering/endangering choices. This one also comes just as I’m working on a project that aligns itself perfectly with the theme at hand – and whenever I have a creative outlet in heavy flow it’s like having a multitude of therapy sessions, all of them deeply illuminating and helpful.
You just try and sleep, even though you’re alone You just close your eyes, boy, you dream of home The light is always on, you just keep that in mind When you wake in the morning, you’ll be satisfied
As we are also in the throes of a Mercury-in-retrograde moment that looks to last for most of the month, I’m going to let the universe guide me on whatever merry-or-not-so-merry way it wants to take. A helpful bit of advice I’ve heard of late is to stop trying to force things to go the way you think you want them to go, especially if signs and people and gut-feelings are giving you pause. Give in to the pause, and just fucking pause. If anything is truly meant to be, it will be, and it will unfold as it’s meant to unfold.
‘Cause there is always a wrong to your right And there will always be a war somewhere to fight And God knows I’ve had some rough fuckin’ years Ooh, oh Lord, oh Lord, keep on keeping on
As for navigating this bit of tumult, it comes with the course of a fifty-year-old. I’ve reached the age where more years are behind me than in front of me, so the past will revisit and rear its old head, and it need not be so haunting and bothersome if we simply acknowledge it, and move on with the day. There is no way to go back and change things – life fell as it fell, and if there are still broken bits and pieces of destruction you either pick them up or kick them out of the way. If it doesn’t serve you, let it go.
So hide this song away for a darker day When you’re down on your knees, screaming “Oh, Lord” I am always there, you just keep that in mind When you wake in the morning, you’ll be satisfied
Unless this is the last day of your life (and if it is, what the hell are you wasting it reading my drivel?) another one will follow tomorrow. So pause… wait… hold… breathe. Let the mind go a different direction for a bit then revisit whatever might appear to be ailing you. Don’t immediately act when the dander is up; don’t change your life in the heat of the moment. This is how you get through a mid-life crisis – at least, this is how I’m getting through mine – and it’s my fourth, so I know a little of what I speak – but only a little…
‘Cause there is always a wrong to your right (yeah) And there will always be a war somewhere to fight (ooh) And God knows I’ve had some rough fuckin’ years Ooh, oh Lord, oh Lord, keep on keeping on
Mercury goes into retrograde motion tomorrow for a spell of seemingly backwards bullshit, and in honor of that, a song that stands on its own in the face of the joke of a band that released it. This is ‘Blame It On the Rain’ by Milli Vanilli (and written by the great Diane Warren) – some of us remember when it came out in the fall of 1989 because we were freshmen in high school, but my fifty-year-old ass digresses.
You said you didn’t need her You told her goodbye (goodbye) You sacrificed a good love To satisfy your pride
Now you wished that you should had her (had her) And you feel like such a fool You let her walk away Now it just don’t feel the same
The essence and melodies of the song remain intact after all these years, and the lyrics are more profound than I remember, lost to the Vanilli backlash of the ensuing years. It’s a piece of aural popcorn – a trifling snack that will never fill you up but is worth hearing for the fun factor. Not everything needs to approach high art to be worthy of admiration.
Gotta blame it on something (gotta blame it on something) Gotta blame it on something
Blame it on the rain that was fallin’, fallin’ Blame it on the stars that didn’t shine that night Whatever you do, don’t put the blame on you Blame it on the rain, yeah, yeah You can blame it on the rain
