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My back pages – Ennis Smith

My back pages

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Current Affairs, Essays, Gay, My back pages, Race, Writing

tiny love story/New York Times Sunday Oct 22, 2023

October 24, 2023

Featured

Deep Songs, Film, My back pages, New York, Television, Theater

Liaisons with Angela

October 27, 2022

Attend this tale. I regret that I never ran into her at a cocktail party, nor was I privileged to have shared the stage or screen with her. Except for a brief moment, my story is the story of millions. I was an audience member, a fan who was the happy beneficiary of the talent…

Featured

AIDS, Deep Songs, My back pages, New York, Theater

A million years ago

October 16, 2022

On this day a million years ago the two men in this photo packed up their dreams in a UHaul and moved to New York (helped by our lovely, talented classmate Stephen Hope). It was a leap of faith for us Ohio boys to pack up and move to a place where we could live…

Featured

Books, Essays, Music, My back pages, Race

Urban Savant

January 25, 2022

Greg Tate, the prolific critic and culture chronicler, died Tuesday December 7. He happened to be a neighbor of mine. For close to 30 years we lived next door to each other in the Sugar Hill section of New York’s Washington Heights. We shared what neighbors share: a street/mecca where greats like Ellington and Strayhorn,…

Criticals, Dance, Film, Music, My back pages

Crazy Rhythms in a Night of Love

November 29, 2020

Last night I enhaled the glorious mise en scene of Steve McQueen’s Lover’s Rock, one of the five short films that comprise his Small Axe series (Amazon Prime). All that polyester! Sweaty dancers and swigs of beer redolent of high school parties in the basements of classmate’s houses! It’s the power of film, and its…

AIDS, Deep Songs, Gay, History, My back pages

Dread aught

December 1, 2019

A few nights ago at dinner out with new friends, our getting-to-know-each-other small talk circled around to coming out to our families. Our stories all had variants, but one thing seemed universal: how the presence of AIDS smoked the edges of each instance. Mine came at the end of a most challenging year, one spent…

Music, My back pages

Fordham’s Road

October 29, 2017

She’s older now, I thought. The blonde bob, the square jaw with a complexion that’s classic English rose, still radiates but the eyes were wearier: less Lulu, more Julie Christie after a wild night. Seeing her made me wonder if her most recent engagement at Joe’s Pub would be 1) a shoe-string affair (only a…

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…

Music, My back pages, Vespers

Al Jarreau 1940-2017

February 12, 2017

Back when I sang professionally, I could think of no greater compliment than when some trade paper critic or a fan would say, “he reminds me of Al Jarreau.” No worries I’d be puffed up with delusions of greatness. By then I’d been listening to the guy long enough to know I’d never be that…

My back pages, Television, Vespers

Two Marys

February 8, 2017

After the death of Mary Tyler Moore about a week ago, many notables wrote about Ms. Moore’s influence on everything from fashion to career. Most were women who saw her as a role model, a beacon of possibilities in a changing world that now seems so distant we forgot we were once there. She made…