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September 2015

She whispers ferociously in my ear. “It’s a return!” Flinging her sunglasses off her face, her eyes still smolder, her gaze is still entrancing. When I begin to doubt anything, she adjusts her turban and sweeps around the room with majestic flair. Enveloped in leopard print or sparkling in a beaded gown, she mesmerizes with a glamour that cannot be erased with the passing of time. It may fade, but it can never fully disappear. No one who makes such an impression can ever be forgotten.

I DON’T KNOW WHY I’M FRIGHTENED
I KNOW MY WAY AROUND HERE.
THE CARDBOARD TREES, THE PAINTED SEAS, THE SOUND HERE
YES, A WORLD TO REDISCOVER, BUT I’M NOT IN ANY HURRY, AND I NEED A MOMENT 

I’VE SPENT SO MANY MORNINGS JUST TRYING TO RESIST YOU
I’M TREMBLING NOW, YOU CAN’T KNOW HOW I’VE MISSED YOU
MISSED THE FAIRY TALE ADVENTURE IN THIS EVER-SPINNING PLAYGROUND
WE WERE YOUNG TOGETHER…

I DON’T WANT TO BE ALONE, THAT’S ALL IN THE PAST
THIS WORLD’S WAITED LONG ENOUGH, I’VE COME HOME AT LAST!

AND THIS TIME WILL BE BIGGER! 
AND BRIGHTER THAN WE KNEW IT!
SO WATCH ME FLY, WE ALL KNOW I CAN DO IT.
COULD I STOP MY HAND FROM SHAKING?
HAS THERE EVER BEEN A MOMENT WITH SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR? 

For twenty years she has haunted me. For twenty years I have felt her passion and her pain, her heartache and her hopefulness, her determination and her desperation. In many ways, she inspired my very first tour, and this false notion of being a star.

No One Ever Leaves A Star…

In the same manner she believed her fame and notoriety preserved through all those years, I built a legend and a sense of celebrity to everything I did. I wasn’t famous enough to fade. I wasn’t known enough to be forgotten. Yet I carried myself as if I was the Greatest Star of Them All.

Now it’s time to let her go. To let myself go. To break the delusional mirror at last. It’s not a good thing to be stuck in the gauzy, glamorous solitude of a mansion on Sunset Boulevard, no matter how pretty or decadent the trappings may appear. It’s not a happy place to be. It’s not a safe place to be, and at this stage in my life there is a lot to be said for safety, and warmth, and comfort.

Yet a part of me will always belong to Norma, and a little bit of Ms. Desmond will always reside in my heart.

The whispered conversations in overcrowded hallways
So much to say not just today but always…
We’ll have early morning madness
We’ll have magic in the making
Yes, everything’s as if we never said goodbye
Yes, everything’s as if we never said goodbye…
We taught the world new ways to dream!

THE DELUSIONAL GRANDEUR TOUR: LAST STAND OF A ROCK STAR

Before she slashes her wrists open, before she withers beyond the point of salvation, there is a moment when Norma Desmond has the hope that everything will, finally and at long last, work out. That she will get the guy, and that the guy will love her in return. It’s a sad and deluded take on what is happening – the belief of a person too desperate to face the truth of the situation. Yet there is something noble and honest and raw about her happiness. It’s the stuff of childhood, the stuff of innocence. The sort of earnest belief that a lifetime of delusions will foster and encourage, but it carries with it a purity and grace that far less jaded individuals too often fail to exhibit, or even know.

In the name of that innocence, she dances a dance few of us have the guts to execute.

It is a dance of unabashed happiness, a dance of dreams.

Yet at the end, it is only a dance to the death of remaining hope.

RING OUT THE OLD, RING IN THE NEW, A MIDNIGHT WISH TO SHARE WITH YOU

YOUR LIPS ARE WARM, MY HEAD IS LIGHT, WERE WE ALIVE BEFORE TONIGHT?

I DON’T NEED A CROWDED BALLROOM, EVERYTHING I WANT IS HERE

IF YOU’RE WITH ME NEXT YEAR WILL BE THE PERFECT YEAR.

He tries to tell her, he tries to ease the news, but it’s easier not to, easier to leave before landing the final blow. As misguided and mistaken as she is, Norma is never dishonest. Her want is raw and open, her desire is stated, and boldly at that. She puts it out there, and leaves her heart vulnerable for the taking.

He does not take it. He tramples on it. Lightly at first, but it is unmistakable, and a declination, no matter how kind, stings however it is delivered. When you love someone and are told that you are not loved in return, there’s a sort of pain that’s different than dealing with anything else. It isn’t blameless, like death, and it isn’t random, like an accident. It’s a deliberate verdict on what you mean, or don’t mean, to another person. It is a dismissal.

ANOTHER CHANCE, ANOTHER START

SO MANY DREAMS TO TEASE THE HEART

WE DON’T NEED A CROWDED BALLROOM

EVERYTHYING WE WANT IS HERE

AND FACE TO FACE WE WILL EMBRACE THE PERFECT YEAR.

She wants so much to be wanted.

She wishes so badly to be loved.

She asks for so little… and so much. She asks for everything.

She gives her heart to this final dance, not knowing it will be their last. That’s just how she lives. A dance isn’t worth dancing if you’re not going to take the chance. She goes hard that way, burning brightly and at all expenses. The magnificent white-hot brilliance of pouring the whole of your being into the existence of another.

“What you’re trying to say is that you don’t want me to love you. Say it. Say it!”

She is dangerous.

She is devastated.

Above all else, she is delusional.

It carries her through to the very end.

It was the only way she could survive.

THE DELUSIONAL GRANDEUR TOUR: LAST STAND OF A ROCK STAR

A woman sits in a dark room, shrouded in a cloud of tuberose perfume and topped with a turban befitting royalty. Even in the dim light, she wears sunglasses – perhaps to add an air of glamour, perhaps to hide tearful eyes, perhaps to shield her from the prying gaze of others. Whittling the months and years and decades into splinters of time and decaying dreams, she went from having the world at her feet to being forgotten and isolated. What terrors lurked in her great, dim mansion? What nightmares tormented her sleep? Is it better to have never known such happiness and adoration at all, than to know it and lose it and spend a lifetime trying to win it back? It must have been a brittle existence, a fragile and lonely one ever on the verge of breaking apart, shattering into a thousand jagged shards.

WITH ONE LOOK I CAN BREAK YOUR HEART
WITH ONE LOOK I PLAY EVERY PART
I CAN MAKE YOUR SAD HEART SING
WITH ONE LOOK YOU’LL KNOW ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW 

WITH ONE SMILE I’M THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
OR THE LOVE THAT YOU’VE HUNGERED FOR 
WHE I SPEAK IT’S WITH MY SOUL
I CAN PLAY ANY ROLE. 

This is Norma Desmond. On this day she waits, for what she does not yet know. Joe Gillis is about to pull his car into her driveway and hide it away in her garage. For now, though, in this early morning of a sunny day which once again won’t allow any sunlight into her grand home, she sits quietly nurturing the heart that survived the only way it knew how. A belief in the grand illusions of her faded fame. A hope planted on the fantasy of her implacable glamour. A delusion that saw her through decades of a lonely existence. The things we believe in order to go on living… and the things we refuse to believe.

NO WORDS CAN TELL THE STORIES MY EYES TELL
WATCH ME WHEN I FROWN, YOU CAN’T WRITE THAT DOWN
YOU KNOW I’M RIGHT, IT’S THERE IN BLACK AND WHITE
WHEN I LOOK YOUR WAY, YOU’LL HEART WHAT I SAY. 

She is a sad creature, but she doesn’t see that, not in the way that most people might see it. She’s not sad in a pitiable way, in the way that makes one feel sorry for her – she’s internally sad that she can no longer thrill like she used to thrill, that she can’t make her art the way she once did, that there is no longer a place for her in a changing world that left her old-fashioned craft behind. She’s also sad because she’s had her heart broken. No doubt she’s broken a few hearts in the process too, and sometimes that’s worse. Sometimes that takes a deeper toll, a toll whose devastation only becomes clear long after the fact, in the ruined years that follow. It’s a toll that doesn’t ever seem to find comeuppance, a hurt and ache that finds no resolution or relief. A guilt that bears down on everything that comes after it.

WITH ONE LOOK THEY’LL FORGIVE THE PAST
THEY’LL REJOICE I’VE RETURNED AT LAST
TO MY PEOPLE IN THE DARK, STILL OUT THERE IN THE DARK… 

Yet she is not broken. She has not yet cracked. There is the distinct possibility that a return is possible. Not a comeback. Don’t ever call it a comeback. She hates that word. But a return, yes. A return to form, a return to glory. A return to being loved. Why should she be so punished for wanting that again?

WITH ONE LOOK I’LL IGNITE A BLAZE 
I’LL RETURN TO MY GLORY DAYS 
THEY’LL SAY, “NORMA’S BACK AT LAST!”

Somewhere downstairs, off the terrazzo where rumor has it Rudy Valentino once tangoed, her butler shuffles about. A car rolls into the driveway, and she peers out the slats of a window shutter. A man walks toward the door, out of the sunlight, into the shadows of the house on Sunset.

Norma Desmond rises. He is not who she thinks he is, but he may be altogether better.

And there’s that hope again, that innocent belief in herself, and the possibilities of the world, even when it’s done nothing but dash her against its cold rocks. She emerges from her boudoir, regal bearing intact, ready to demand the love of the world, or the love of a man, or simply the chance to do it all again.

THIS TIME I’M STAYING, I’M STAYING FOR GOOD

I’LL BE BACK WHERE I WAS BORN TO BE

WITH ONE LOOK I’LL BE ME! 

THE DELUSIONAL GRANDEUR TOUR: LAST STAND OF A ROCK STAR

It is not enough to be adored.

How sad to finally say it, how sad to give up that ghost.

It’s easier to believe in something, no matter how far-fetched, no matter how ridiculous, than to face an empty truth. Some of us, like Joe Gillis, believe right up to the very end. The bullets tearing through his back must have come as quite the surprise. The first one doesn’t even stop him, so intent is he on walking out the door, away from the dream, into the future.

Most of us just stumble along, happily or sadly as circumstances allow, without the drive to move toward or away from something. I’ve always admired those who make the effort to do more, not only to steer the way, but to actively rev the engine. It’s a lazy thing to simply react to the world. To take a first step into something, no matter how unknown, is an act of courage.

To take the last step requires something more.

Resignation.

Reconciliation.

Redemption.

When at last we grip our bloodied chests, when our final breath floats to the surface and disappears, we find relief at the end of a journey.

The splash, and then the slow gentle sinking

Of a dream

Of a wish

Of a beginning.

The Delusional Grandeur Tour: Last Stand Of A Rock Star

It begins with a man floating face-down in a pool. Not just any pool, the pool belonging to Norma Desmond. The man has been shot, Ms. Desmond has gone delusional, and at this 40-year-old crux of my life, I feel sympathy and empathy for both. The dreamer destroyed by a world that passed him by; the dreamer destroyed by a world that passed her by. Both treated roughly, and both deserving it a little, because we all fall victim to our successes as much as to our failures. The sun sets equally on everyone. It cannot be stopped.

Audiences don’t know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along.
~ Joe Gillis

My fascination and love of ‘Sunset Boulevard’ runs deeply. It runs darkly too. Ms. Desmond did, after all, slash her wrists in an act of desperation, hopelessness, manipulation and love. It was an act of defiance too, and, in a sad way, of nobility. She was a survivor, but not a successful one, and merely surviving is not the stuff of grandeur. We want to pretend it is, and we bestow honors on the Miss Daisy’s of the world to make it be true, but comebacks are never as glorious as that first initial high. It’s the nature of the beast.

You don’t yell at a sleepwalker – he may fall and break his neck. That’s it: she was still sleepwalking along the giddy heights of a lost career.
~ Joe Gillis

Joe Gillis and Norma Desmond are brittle and bitter, not wholly likeable, and selfish enough to want and want and want, but they were made that way, and why should anyone be blamed for being a product of their surroundings, of a world that so easily discards those who dare to dream and want? It’s a harsh view of our nature, a cold and contemptuous take on greed and fame and love, and there is little redemption to be found in the way either of them end up.

There’s nothing tragic about being 50, not unless you try to be 25.
~ Joe Gillis

Because ‘Sunset Boulevard’ played such an inspirational role in my very first tour, it’s only fitting that it rears its gorgeous and grotesque head again for my final tour. Here, an homage to the demise of Joe Gillis. There is peace in still water. Darkness too.