Tay Tay unexpectedly saved this past summer with the best album of the year, until this past week, when she released ‘evermore’ which is actually even better than ‘folklore’ – and this puts her into the vaunted position as closest successor to the throne currently still, albeit barely, occupied by Madonna. Taylor Swift has earned her place in the pop culture pantheon, weathering time and controversy with an ever-evolving musical talent. And it’s pretty cool to be this inspired at my ripe old age, so I’ll take this album to bed with me and process the lyrical merit, because there is quite a bit that resonates with me. For now, let’s focus on the past week before we have that musical breakdown…
The holidays linger like bad perfume You can run, but only so far I escaped it too, remember how you watched me leave But if it’s okay with you, it’s okay with me
Before knowing exactly how much more often I’d be traveling home these past few weeks, I’d scheduled some fortuitous Fridays off from work, as much to make use of accumulated vacation time (unused from these previous months of non-travel) as for holiday errands and deliveries. This past Friday was one such day of minor running about, as I made my way to Amsterdam to drop off some food for my parents. The timing worked out beautifully, as the new Taylor Swift album had been released the midnight prior, and there’s nothing better than listening to good music while driving on a sunny day. This particular album was perfect for a drive on the verge of winter.
Dropping off some adobo and banana bread I’d made that morning, I stayed a safe distance from Mom and Dad in the garage as we talked of family and friends, of the sun that was still shining in December, of the changed holiday plans for this strange year and season. Yet it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t sorrowful – it was actually nice. The idea of a pared-down and simple Christmas hewed closer to home, held closer to our Christmases as children. Maybe that’s part of the lesson the universe wants us to learn right now. When the pupil is ready, the teacher always appears.
Who’ll write books about me, if I ever make it and wonder about the only soul Who can tell which smiles I’m faking’and the heart I know I’m breakin’ is my own To leave the warmest bed I’ve ever known
There have been a lot of people who have tried to supplant Madonna in my heart. A couple of them were quickly and easily dismissed ~ Britney and Christina, for example. A couple were definite contenders ~ Beyonce and Lady Gaga ~ still both possible contenders given their talent and shape-shifting durability. Now, Taylor Swift is making her move with the surprise release of a second album in a single year. It’s a bold endeavor of genius and brilliance, backed up by a collection of songcraft that is just as strong and compelling as its precursor. (Madonna should take a lesson and put down the Instagram and tattoo excursions for a bit.)
Swift’s second surprise drop, the companion/continuation of ‘folklore’ titled ‘evermore’ carries on where ‘folklore’ ended, apparently a little too soon. This is its winter sister, and she may be slightly better than the original. If I had one tiny little criticism of ‘folklore’ it was that its atmosphere felt too winter-like for such a summery release and themes; ‘evermore’ confirms this opinion, for me (others may feel quite differently) and with that it succeeds on absolutely every level, with its seasonal references to November and December, decking the halls, and titles like ’tis the damn season’.
There is holiday sparkle in a song titled ‘champagne problems’ but the underlying story is a deeper and more complex one that makes these latest albums such powerful vehicles for a mature and artistically-challenging evolution. The music behind it remains the driving force of Swift’s magic, and she has once again conjured a cohesive sonic adventure, a journey of emotional fables and modern-day folklore such as in the opening ‘willow’, continuing stories with fictional (or not?) figures like ‘dorothea’ and ‘marjorie’; those story songs paint vivid portraits, while leaving enough room for varied interpretation, which is the trick to lasting art.
Swift delves into a wiser and more blunt examination of love and romance and relationships ~ more ambivalent, more unsettling, as evidenced by the heartbreaking ‘tolerate it’ or the devastating ‘happiness’ ~ both of which posit questions of how much we are willing to take, how much we might deserve, and how undeserving we might also be. The best stories ~ the ones that reflect our own ~ are not always easily reconciled with happy endings or definitive destruction. Our hearts spill messier than that, they want things that aren’t always noble, they grasp for things that might not make sense… yet they beat on, wanting what they want, destroying when they get hurt, crying out to be understood even when they know none of it makes sense.
Swift has made another prescient album, revealing our hearts at a time when an apocalyptic year comes to its welcome close, when winter is at our doorstep and darker days haunt future corridors. These are songs to see us through such desolation, a gauzy musical mood in which the heart nestles, comforted and acknowledged, even as its restlessness and longing goes unresolved. May such music see us through to the spring.
My disappointment for missing the Holiday Stroll is actually a welcome surprise – I honestly thought I had given up completely on feeling a normal emotion like disappointment again after numbing myself to such calamities after almost a year of let-downs. Maybe that’s the glimmer of hope in an unlikely disguise, so I’ll take it.
Sadly, that means I will miss out on seeing Kira for the remainder of the year – I haven’t seen her since January or February – a sorrowful aspect of this COVID crisis, and we will have to make do with a linky look back at previous Holiday Strolls, much in the way we recalled Broadway traditions with Mom and Red Sox Adventures with Skip.
As far as annual events go, the Holiday Stroll is one of the longer-running ones – and as best as I can trace, it started in 2011, right after Kira and I were reunited from a decade of being apart. But I won’t bore you with what has already been written on the subject. Here, then, is the list of links to bring you to some previous Holiday Strolls:
When all else fails, and the holiday mayhem and chaos have gotten you down, the only thing to do is dance. That hasn’t happened yet this year, and I don’t anticipate it happening, for many different reasons. I’ve already finished all my gift shopping a couple of weeks ago, and there are no longer any parties or gatherings that require free time.
And so the holidays feel lighter and more free this year, as well as a little more sparse. It allows us to engage in the true meaning of the season, whittling away at the crowds and noise and all the things that bothered the otherwise-relatively reasonable Grinch. It feels like the universe is still trying to tell us to slow down, to inhabit and embrace the quiet, and a number of us aren’t listening. I can’t worry about that – it’s a pointless and endless rabbit’s hole.
Instead, I’m leaning into my meditations. Embracing the simplicity of a single bouquet of pine greens. Welcoming a pre-winter snowfall. And doing a little Peanuts dance whenever that piano breakdown comes on.
“What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future.” ~ Agnes M. Pahro
On its surface, the main image of this year’s holiday card is a rather plain, if slightly strange, pose featuring my family. It’s also not my typical garb (I’m more Reebok than Adidas any day.) Taken with its inspiration photo, however, it gains a greater resonance, and recreating an old family photo is always a fun affair.
My Mom had sent me the original photo a few months ago, and I cracked up for days when I saw the histrionic pose I had apparently been perfecting even as a child. Ladies with an attitude, indeed. I vaguely recall this vacation – a southern trek that found us in Florida – and I remember giving this fierceness in all the photos from that trip. (You should have seen the dramatics in which I engaged at Epcot Center. There was a particularly fanciful photo taken on a fountain somewhere around Norway if I recall correctly.)
Striking a pose since 1975 hasn’t always been easy, and yet somehow I’m still managing to pull it off, thanks largely to the two people behind me here. Literally and figuratively. I realize and appreciate their support more and more the older we get. And so, in this year perhaps more than any other, with all that has happened to us as a family and as a world, this image is the one that means the most to me. I share it with you and your family, and wish you the very best for the holiday season, and for the new year.
Tomorrow my annual Holiday Card gets posted here, so it seems a fitting moment for a couple of links that will show off a number of previous efforts. While I’ve been doing holiday cards since 1995 (don’t do the math), I’ve only been posting them online since 2004. Besides, much of what happened before 2004 is best left unexcavated.
As for what’s in store for this year’s effort, I’ve done my best to go against the awful grain that is 2020 and present something rather sweet and hopefully slightly comical too. There’s enough heaviness in the world right now. Come back in a few hours for this year’s totally-safe-for-work extravaganza…
“Money’s scarce Times are hard Here’s your fucking Xmas card.” ~ Phyllis Diller
There were several holiday appetizer staples that were on hand whenever we had holiday get-togethers at my childhood home. Most were recipes my Mom had found either in a magazine of the time or passed around among friends. These were simply called ‘Crab Appetizers’ and for years their make-up was a thing of magic and mystery. I loved everything except the weird crunchy nut thing on top (later explained to me as a water chestnut) so I’d always end up taking that garnish off and pushing it to the side of the plate. The rest went down splendidly – a creamy mixture of crab and cheese and flavor, all atop a base of fluffy, flaky dough.
When I got old enough to delve deeper into the recipe, the mysteries were revealed as a typical mash-up of 70’s ingredients that somehow hold up to this modern-day mess in which we find ourselves. To that end, I made my first attempt at these in years the other day, and they came out decently enough. While this recipe calls for mayonnaise, I halved the mayo and amended it with some softened cream cheese. I feel better when putting a new twist on these ancient classics, as if that makes them more palatable for a modern-day eating audience. As if there is an audience. Oh well, here’s the original recipe of Crab Appetizers. It’s all in a name.
Crab Appetizers
1 7 1/2 oz. can crab meat, flaked and drained
1 tbsp. sliced green onion
4 oz. Swiss cheese, shredded
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 pkg. flaky-style refrigerated rolls (I use Pillsbury Grands)
1 5 oz. can sliced water chestnuts, drained
Combine crab meat, green onion, Swiss cheese, mayonnaise and lemon juice. Mix well. This can be done ahead and refrigerated.
Split rolls into 3 separate layers. Place on baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Spoon crab meat mixture on each roll. Top with a water chestnut. Bake at 400 degrees for 10-12 min.
Since Thanksgiving (and perhaps slightly prior) I’ve been on a bit of a sugar tear, devouring cookies and ice cream and sweet treats as if there was a sugar shortage (and given that it’s still 2020, there may just be). That didn’t bode well for my figure, but I’m indulging and enjoying these last few weeks of a year that had otherwise been horrid. I’ll get back on the fitness wagon come January, which is a drag, but a good way to pass the first couple of winter months. That’s all a bit ahead. Right now, my belly is full with a gigantic chocolate chip cookie that just came out of the oven.
With all the sugar flowing through my system, I’ve been a bit more hyper than usual, and that has, in turn, made my daily meditations slightly askew. Clocking in at 27 minutes, there’s a decent stretch of time in which the mind can travel unless kept in strict check – something that’s more difficult to do when riding the sugar crest. I’ve noticed my thoughts wandering more, and being in the midst of the holiday season doesn’t help. To combat that, I will sometimes combine my meditation with a nightly shower, and somehow by the end of both I will hopefully have found some sort of calm, and a more peaceful and less frenzied frame of mind.
The kind of mindfulness needed to combat the holiday mayhem is not the easy and casual sort so quickly referenced in passing new-age fancy and quasi-spiritual quests. This is a mindfulness that takes effort, and in that exertion is the method of cleansing the mind that works if you truly engage and focus. Such mindfulness is not a passive thing, especially at this time of the year.
In the words of Britney Spears, “Work it out, work it out, work it out, work it out…”
Keeping things as pared down as possible, the only outside decorating we will be doing for the holidays is the display of lights on this Japanese umbrella pine. It may also be the last year I’m able to reach the top of it to decorate properly, at least without a ladder. I like how that will change and switch up our decorating plans. After this year, a change will be welcome. And for now, this is perfectly lovely – simple yet striking enough to make an impact in our little front yard. A reminder that Christmas need not be extravagant or excessive.
This plaid holiday jacket from Zara was not the easiest piece of clothing to acquire, and I owe it all to Suzie. The Boston location did not have my size, but it was absolutely perfect for a holiday party that year, so I called all over and the closest store that had one in a 40S was one in Manhattan. To give you an idea of how old this jacket is, Suzie was still living in New York at the time, and had not yet given birth to her first-born child Oona, so this was prior to 2006. Good friend that she is, Suzie managed to find it in Manhattan, then get it home that Thanksgiving, and I had just enough time to add the beaded adornments you see on the shoulders. (I was inspired by one of Barbra Streisand’s gowns in ‘Funny Girl’ at the time.)
From that moment on, I’ve worn it at least once every holiday season, not only because of the effort it took to get the damn thing, but also because I still absolutely adore it. Plaid is a timeless holiday pattern, and I’m embracing it even more as I get older.
This year, I put it on for a video conference with our office staff in which we were doing a group shot for some holiday show later on. Of course that demanded some tinsel and sparkle for the background, which should see me through all my video calls until 2021, and perhaps beyond since it’s so fun. The world needs some fun right now, and God knows I do too. So I got dolled up, plopped myself in front of the golden fringe, switched on an O-ring light, and took a few selfies to commemorate the moment. I even had pants on, though you can’t see them. It was a brief and nostalgic moment of feeling like my old self again, even if everything else had changed, even if we would never be our old selves again.
Recently launching his podcast ‘What’s Your Medium’, Gunnar Deatherage takes his passions as a modern-day Renaissance man and turns his seductive voice of velvet into a soothing moment of sharing. A favorite on ‘Project Runway’ and ‘Project Runway Allstars’, Deatherage won me over a long time ago with his penchant for all things colorfully fabulous, and the way he injects wit and humor, along with knowing pop culture nods into much of his work.
His talent has translated into interior and set design, which he’s putting to good use in Los Angeles, but it’s his TikTok page that is garnering frenzied acclaim of late, so much so that he’s tapped into the world of podcasts to bring his dreamy dulcet tones into an aural exploration of artistic media and inspiration. The care and detailed expression he puts into all of his artistic endeavors are what sets him apart (see the way he carefully presses seams to make them neat and beautiful) and what inspires me most about his work. It’s a majestic melding of hard work and talented artistry. Executing a vision is not always an easy task, and the challenge of any artist is how to translate what they have in their head into a way that reads on the page, in a dress, through the angles and opulence of a room. Deatherage not only manages that, but does so in a way that simultaneously challenges what we think is possible.
He’s often straddled the prescribed line between male and female, masculine and feminine, and his greatest works not only blur that line, but create another plane entirely for something altogether removed and exalted beyond those ancient terms. In shattering such limited terms, Deatherage crafts a new world that has more than enough room for new visions. For all of us who have ever felt uncomfortable in the clothes generally assigned to our perceived gender, who wanted something more than what society has formally decreed, we have artists and visionaries like Deatherage to help us find our wings – to unfurl their feathers and take magnificent flight.
This little silver tinsel tree manages to be both retro and modern in a wonderful amalgamation of old and new – though being on display in the cellar is a decidedly new twist for holiday decor here in the house. It’s a bright spot in a season largely devoid of them. On with the weekly recap…
The Salvation Army bell ringer had been ringing their bell outside of Price Chopper for several weeks, something that’s somehow more annoying when you do a little research and read about their shady anti-LGBTQ history. They’ve made attempts at fixing this, but the sour taste still lingers. That’s their business, so I always just walk by without saying a thing.
On this day, after picking up the groceries, I was checking out and the cashier asked if I wanted to round up my total and give to the Salvation Army.
“No thanks, not with their anti-gay history,” I said in as friendly a tone as I could muster. Looking slightly surprised, they continued ringing me out.
Then it was my turn to be surprised, as the cashier asked, “You’re not going to commit a hate crime like kicking over one of their buckets or something, are you?”
Mustering every ounce of self-control, I replied, “Umm, no. Also that’s not a hate crime.”
Cashier: “Just warning you that we have this all month so I may be asking you to donate again.”
Me: “Then I’ll repeat what I said as well.”
Just another interesting day at the local Price Chopper.
Having largely written off this holiday season (to try to do anything in 2020 is pure madness) I find myself in the happy predicament of finding any little brush with joy a bonus. Such was not the case with this try at a holiday mocktail. I’m still overestimating what my memory holds, so I thought I could casually put together something akin to this drink, but I failed to consult that post or the recipe itself, and so ended up with a bland and yet-still-nasty concoction that neglected the use of blood oranges, and substituted the seltzer with a fruit soda that was not quite right, making it both too tart and somehow finishing with an element of sickly sweetness.
The lesson being that this is not the time nor year to mess around with classics, no matter what sort of semi-successful motions I might have made with the jello salad. For every innocuous switch, there is a change that alters and ruins whatever magical alchemy exists in a balanced group of ingredients. Stray but a little…
For this pretty mocktail, the old ‘look-but-please-don’t-drink-me’ adage holds true. Typical of 2020, when so little substance hides behind such monumental piles of shit. That’s ok. Maybe we have learned a few things, gotten better at life by looking a little deeper at ourselves, our flaws and faults, our blindness to our biases, our genuine efforts at being better people. A closer examination of things is often uncomfortable, but always leads to improvement, or at least awareness. That’s the beginning. And so I continue the holiday season by raising this mess of a mocktail and asking you to toast to the start and continuation of something wonderful. Something better.
