Art

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Art, Music, Theater

The Master

January 25, 2022

Wisdom: when words convey a truth that’s irrefutable. The right ones echo, to the point where you realize you’ve memorized it because it’s something you never want to forget. Ever. Stephen Sondheim’s words and music have had that effect on me even before I knew his name. In “Something’s Comin’” from West Side Story, I recognized…

Art, Criticals, Deep Songs, Gay, Literature, Museums/Galleries

Man on Fire

August 18, 2018

I was finishing a late-aborning BA when a professor introduced me to the works of David Wojnarowicz. No doubt she fathomed that he could be a model for the writing I was attempting—autobiography of a frank, sexual nature that also had very much to do with loss and the times in which I came of…

Art, Film, My back pages

Jonathan Demme, Film Director 1944-2017

April 30, 2017

A few hours or so spent in the company of a great film is akin to falling in love. A spell is cast; like a lover, the images on screen evoke a flipbook of feelings. That was what it was like to experience a Jonathan Demme film. I won’t soon forget the unbeatable elation I felt…

Architecture, Art, Film, Museums/Galleries

Haunted Art

September 5, 2016

How apt that the red barn on top of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is called Transitional Object. It’s a term psychologists use to describe that which weans us away from, while providing the comfort of the original—think pacifier, though such objects might also be defined as props used to test reality. Could the same…

Art, Criticals, Museums/Galleries

Heavenly Rests

March 30, 2016

Want to know what it’s like to live inside a dream? The installation art of Do Ho Suh provides a lovely metaphor for the ways we carry our notions of home and hearth, and how a place, or even a country, imprints until it becomes part of us. Suh recreates these totems most strikingly in…

Art, Deep Songs, Essays, Writings

Still, Standing

December 5, 2015

For an art model, time bends, saunters, crawls, or stealthily expands, but it rarely flies. Twenty minutes can feel like infinity if the pose is difficult—and each is difficult in its own way. Tonight is my first full-figure gig, which means I’m struggling to maintain the position of various body parts as my mind manages…

Art, Music

Hang in there, you…

April 2, 2015

Tough times for Folkies Dept: First she fended off Taylor Swift’s attempt to make a movie of her life. Now comes word that Joni Mitchell was hospitalized this week. The prospect of losing the ultimate artist is too dispiriting to contemplate. We love you, Joni–now get up and get back to work.

Architecture, Art, Current Affairs, Museums/Galleries, Music, Theater, Writing

Comes another year

January 21, 2014

There’s a certain slant of light, Winter afternoons— That oppresses, like the heft Of cathedral tunes Emily Dickinson Winter is the cruelest season, though for me it’s not so much about the cold (though we’ve had our chilly moments, this time of year our apartment often feels like summer). What kills me is the darkness. …

Art, Dance, Film, Music, Television

Fool for Fall

October 15, 2013

That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73 Don’t’ be fooled by those guys still wearing flip-flops, or the young (and not so) women who continue to stroll our avenues in their Daisy…

Art, Current Affairs, Gay

National Coming Out Day (Be Yourself)…

October 11, 2013

I could think of no greater tribute than posting some works of Barbara Kruger, many of which read like metaphors for the state of closetness. A toast…to self.