Sooner or later, although most signs point to sooner, we won’t be able to tell what’s real.
In this instance, we come upon Tom Holland assuming the stance and position for Henry Cavill. A pose of possibility, perhaps. A pose of something more in the minds of the great gutter-dwellers.
Targeted marketing on social media often works quite well on me – all those glamorous duds from Saks and Nordstrom, caftans with sumptuous cuffs of ostrich feathers, sequined jumpsuits, and bejeweled purses in the shapes of swans and stars and shells. They don’t always get it right though, as seen in this ad for a vibrator sold through Anthropologie.
My most recent purchase from Anthropologie was a pair of sheer sequined pants, and perhaps that gave them the wrong idea in this case. As amusing as this is, I’m more in shock that this particular company carries vibrators. I fear the next stage of growing old is being shocked at such a thing, and that is the stage I’m at: shock and awe, only I’m usually on the other side of both.
It’s time to get back in the game, and back to my usual side.
Winter is scheduled to return this week after a bit of an unofficial and greatly-appreciated hiatus – we’ll see how much she decided to dump on us tomorrow. In the meantime, the weekly recap slides us into Monday whether we are ready or not…
The trailer for the movie adaptation of ‘Wicked’ dropped during the first moments of the Super Bowl (this is why we watch, people!) and it is more than I was hoping, and certainly more than I was expecting. Obviously, a trailer does not a movie make, but a trailer has been known to break a few, and this one magnificently shows just enough to set the stage for a year of anticipation until the first installment arrives. Feast your eyes and ears upon it below, and prepare to fly…
“Style is something that you cannot learn. It’s something that has to come from within you and bit by bit be arrived at. And it’s simply there like the color of your eyes.” – Truman Capote
It took some time to arrive, and it shall continue to evolve, but my style has always been a component of who I am. For many years I played it up while simultaneously dismissing it, donning costumes and items of artifice that conveyed a chameleonic shifting of character. It was a form of dress-up that we adopt as children, and which some of us never quite quit. It was as much revelation as it was masquerade.
Were mistakes made? Numerous times. Big, bombastic, egregious mistakes. And when I knew better, I tried to be better. I’ve always been one to appreciate the arc of a learning journey, the ways we improve and what we do after we make our mistakes. Too many people want to focus on the mistakes themselves and the immediate aftermath and repercussions; I prefer to focus on the growth and evolution and eventual revealing of who we truly are that comes about from those mistakes. These days I’m also discovering how to accept and be at peace with the perfection of imperfection. Perhaps I should have written that when I knew better, I tried to do things differently, rather than doing them better. Sometimes we don’t need to improve; sometimes we just need to do things in a different way.
As for what constitutes my style these days, I’m deep into comfort. Sweat pants and loose, oversized long-sleeve t-shirts. It’s winter. It’s a new age in a new world. And I’m cocooning. The unseen transformation is always the most powerful. In other to listen well, one must be completely quiet, and I hear the subtle whispers of inspiration when the wind is low. Acknowledging the past is also a component of good listening; it allows for the advice of the future to be fully heard. In stillness and silence there may be understanding.
One of the greatest thrills of life is discovering a word you never knew, especially when it so aptly describes something that you have always loved. In this case, it’s the word ‘apricity’ – which means the warmth of the sun in winter. Tell me that’s not an exquisite word, with an exquisite meaning. It contains a gorgeous bit of tension in its juxtaposing elements, eliciting a silver thread of hope from the barren doldrums of the slumbering season.
When posed with the question of why I have written posts for this website for over twenty years, my first, and perhaps over-simplified response is that I love to write. Inherent in that is a love for words – how they’re used, how they might be transformed and rearranged into something new and spectacular, how they might be both masks and revelations in the exact same time and place. On some level, writing is the ultimate act of manipulation – using phrases and sentences and structure to convey whatever you want to convey, and in that sense it’s a concrete version of what we do as humans. Mastering manipulation may not sound like a noble quest in being human, and maybe it’s not – that doesn’t make it any less true.
Rather than dive into that icky contemplation on humanity, let’s instead focus on apricity, something auto-correct is repeatedly insisting on switching to ‘apricot’ – a lovely word in its own right, but not the one I want to celebrate today. Apricity – the warmth of the sun in winter – must be a phenomenon that most skiers who have ever gotten sunburn around their ski goggles know and understand quite well. As a well-proven non-skier, my understanding is limited to the instinctual way my head will sometimes turn to face the sun on those colder days. Merrily squinting and smiling into its brightness, I close my eyes and let it fall on my cheeks and forehead, imagining through the icy chill and wind that it’s summer somewhere, knowing that it will come again if we’re all still here in a few months.
Recently I read that the daylight grows longer at its quickest pace during this time of the year. When the workday is done, that’s usually the time and space where I make my meditation. It’s the moment when the sky just starts turning dark, and in the living room the sun determines how the remaining light looks – the sun, the sky, the clouds, the atmosphere – they all conspire to bring about something gray and dull and somber, or something filled with rich hues and deep color.
I don’t usually think of winter in such colorful ways. In my mind, I’ve relegated it to the stuff of dreams, and most of my dreams are in black and white. Yes, my dreams are drained of color – a rather unfair predicament for someone so enamored of bold splashes of fuchsia, gorgeous gushes of chartreuse in early spring, or the fiery red of this candle.
Even on the gray days, the light outside the window will often turn blue when seen in pictures. In person, it’s never quite as striking. Another instance of disappointment, of something that feels unfair, when really it’s just another lesson of winter, another way to shift one’s views. Finding beauty in more subtle nuances is a way to finding happiness, but it takes practice and focus and a willingness to live in the quiet, without the relentless distractions and bells and whistles of cel phones and lap tops and surround sound and screens that get bigger and bigger. I’m running on now like my sentences, running through winter and keeping a steady pace to get through, to keep going.
At the bottom of the hill where my Dad’s ashes are interred, I always stop to get whatever bearings I might locate. It is the pause before the visit. Here is where I will get out of the car and walk to the edge of where the manicured grass meets the barbed wire fence where a more wild and untamed section of land begins. It is a wet space, damp enough year-round for cattails to grow and flourish. On this gray day in early February, I walk through a muddy mess just barely speckled with snow. The ground is uncharacteristically soft, the grass gives way beneath my feet and there are mounds of spongy moss lending a gentleness to my steps. Seeking some sign of my Dad, I wait and listen, then hear the running water.
A little stream, hidden at other times of the year by foliage and brush, gurgles ever so quietly, the running water like a set of barely-audible chimes carried on the wind. A sign of spring. A sign of hope. Water and land – movable and immovable – constant and inconstant. I hadn’t noticed it before. Maybe the water wasn’t running the previous times I’ve been here. Maybe I wasn’t ready to hear it. On this day, I am listening, and the sound of the water is soothing.
It was during this week way back in 1987 that Madonna was reigning on the charts with her #1 hit ‘Open Your Heart’ – one of my all-time favorite songs by her, and one that she recently performed in thrilling fashion on her Celebration Tour. While the Madonna Timeline for ‘Open Your Heart’ has already been written, I am happy to resurrect this extended version of the song in honor of such a recollection of its chart success.
1987 was a banner year for music in my life (even if critics may disagree on its musical merit). Pop songs can infiltrate the mind of a 12-year-old and leave an imprint that may last for decades. The cadence of melody here always brings me back to that winter of 1987 – much else from that winter has been forgotten, the typical loss and degradation from time, and other things occupying the mind. And still, the longing to belong, inherent in this song, the desperate way she begs for another to open their heart, will always resonate with that part of me who never felt like he belonged.
“If you gave me half the chance you’d see my desire burning inside of me, but you choose to look the other way…”
Meanwhile, Madonna’s love for art, and an artist like Tamara de Lempicka, spoke to me on another, more subtle and subliminal level. I had just begun to appreciate her appreciation for certain painters, following her lead less for the specific artists she chose to champion (like Frida Kahlo) and more in her passion and love for the evocation of a scene, of a mood, of a feeling. The greatest works of art elicit an emotion of some sort, ideally many emotions from many different people. The readings and interpretations are as varied as the viewers.
For a 12-year-old in the golden age of MTV, Madonna’s ‘Open Your Heart’ video was a piece of modern-day art – a little story set to music, a mini-movie defined and delineated by costume, dance, movement, and gaze. Madonna’s mastery of the medium made her a star, and an inspiration for many a burgeoning gay man such as myself. She was speaking a language I understood in a way I couldn’t understand the basic communication of other boys my age. They spoke through sports and physical activity, through fights and horse-play and wrestling; I wanted only to whisper, to share a secret, to cast a spell. With wishes, with words, with sheer force of will…
{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.}
Madonna has crafted some amazing summer songs – see ‘True Blue‘ and ‘Express Yourself‘ and ‘Vogue‘ and ‘Ray of Light‘ – and songs hit a sweeter spot when they are released in the summer; the season of the sun burns musical memories into the mind more indelibly than perhaps any other time of the year.
It was a darker summer but we didn’t know that then, and so it was a summer of light, the last if I really think about it. The thing is… summer always comes with dark nights, and darker currents underneath all the sun and fun. This Madonna Timeline, a bonus track from her ‘Madame X’ album, hints at that darker undertone, taking things on a slightly more serious turn, one that would find fruition the next year.
Every night, before I close my eyes I say a little prayer that you’ll have mercy on me Please, dear God, to live inside the divine Not like I want to die Teach me to forgive myself, outlive this hell
Is it really love if it hurts? Is it really pain if it’s inside? On the outside, I’m strong Hold my hand, please sympathize Hard enough trying to forgive Hard enough trying to live Please don’t criticize, yeah Please, please sympathize, yeah
The ‘Madame X’ album was an exercise in moody music, even as it came out just as summer was getting started. The drama of ‘Looking for Mercy’ finds Madonna examining a quest for mercy, a search for sympathy – the usual desire for connection and understanding. It’s not the fluffy stuff of previous summer fare like ‘Love Makes the World Go Round‘ or ‘Where’s the Party?‘ It rings closer in theme and import to ‘Live to Tell‘ – a throwback to summers that wanted to be more carefree than they ever actually were.
Somebody to teach me to love Somebody to help me rise above I need to survive, I’m looking for
Looking for, looking for, looking for mercy Looking for, looking for, looking for mercy I’m looking for, I’m looking for love Looking for, looking for, looking for mercy Looking for, looking for, looking for mercy I’m looking for, I’m looking for mercy
Looking back at that summer of 2019 – the summer before we were plunged unwillingly into a worldwide pandemic – it feels both innocent and somber, as though we knew there was something darker coming, and somehow we had to make the most of it. Summer lends urgency to its days, ever-aware that September would arrive sooner than desired. Did we embrace the days? Did we honor the hours? The memories now are mostly questions, the wisdom of hindsight muted and inscrutable, and the gauzy haze that summer wraps around its days closes in cocoon-like fashion.
Is it really faith if I’m weak? Can you tell the truth when you live lies? I’m just looking for the signs Hold my hand, please sympathize Hard enough trying to forgive Hard enough trying to live Flawed, flawed by design, yeah Please, please sympathize
