THESE ARE THE DAYS.
THESE ARE DAYS YOU’LL REMEMBER.
NEVER BEFORE AND NEVER SINCE, I PROMISE, WILL THE WHOLE WORLD BE WARM AS THIS.
AND AS YOU FEEL IT, YOU’LL KNOW IT’S TRUE THAT YOU ARE BLESSED AND LUCKY.
IT’S TRUE THAT YOU ARE TOUCHED BY SOMETHING THAT WILL GROW AND BLOOM IN YOU.
It isn’t often that I find myself looking back over the years that came before, at least not in the extensive archives of photo albums that I’ve amassed in the last two decades. (Remember, I’ve been doing this long before digital photography was even a thing.) Every once in a while, however, usually when I’m cleaning (as was the case here) I pause to thumb through an old and yellowed album, and I remember…
The photos here are from 1995, and the start of my very first ‘tour’ ‘Chameleon in Motion: The Friendship Tour’ – back when it was a more innocent time, and the world a more innocent place. At least, it feels that way now. Maybe we were just better at hiding how awful humanity was. Maybe we simply didn’t want to see. Instead, we had fun and silliness and the general tastelessness of our college years.
Luckily for me, I had a few mother figures who watched over me when my real Mom was not around, and who kept me more or less in line (or at least gave me a fighting chance).
There were other mother figures around, not pictured here, but I saw them again peering out from the sticky old pages of the album – Funzie and Janice were there, both gone now – and my heart ached at how time had plucked them from our world. Grandmothers were captured here too – Suzie’s and my own – and I paused as this song from the 10,000 Maniacs played in my head.
THESE ARE DAYS YOU’LL REMEMBER.
WHEN MAY IS RUSHING OVER YOU WITH DESIRE TO BE PART OF THE MIRACLES YOU SEE IN
EVERY HOUR.
YOU’LL KNOW IT’S TRUE THAT YOU ARE BLESSED AND LUCKY.
IT’S TRUE THAT YOU ARE TOUCHED BY SOMETHING THAT WILL GROW AND BLOOM IN YOU.
There’s no need to dissect the fashion going on here. All I can say is that it was the height of the 90’s. CK One was everywhere (except on my bathroom shelf) and I was probably high on all its unisex pervasiveness. I took my sartorial cues from the International Male catalog, for worse and worser. It was all about the Gothic drama, the velvet vests, the satin pants – and if I could incorporate sequins or feathers into it so much the better.
That outfit with the red pants, silk boxers and sequin top is the infamous one that got me mistaken for a clown by some child in Ponderosa. There are a lot of things wrong with that sentence, and Ponderosa is one of the lesser ones. Let’s shift the focus to that other youthful guy – my pal Chris. You may not recognize him with all that unruly stuff on his head, or the bear in his hand. I can only be blamed for the latter (and I know he misses the former).
Up next is a special photo of my Mom in front of the Minskoff Theatre marquee, where we saw the original Broadway production of ‘Sunset Boulevard’ near the end of Glenn Close’s first run. That was one of our first Broadway theater weekends, and still one of my favorites. (And we’ll end this first nostalgic post with a look to the future, as I’m currently plotting out this year’s Broadway adventure…)
THESE ARE DAYS.
THESE ARE THE DAYS YOU MIGHT FILL WITH LAUGHTER UNTIL YOU BREAK.
THESE DAYS YOU MIGHT FEEL A SHAFT OF LIGHT MAKE ITS WAY ACROSS YOUR FACE.
AND WHEN YOU DO YOU’LL KNOW HOW IT WAS MEANT TO BE.
SEE THE SIGNS AND KNOW THEIR MEANING.
IT’S TRUE, YOU’LL KNOW HOW IT WAS MEANT TO BE.
HEAR THE SIGNS AND KNOW THEY’RE SPEAKING TO YOU, TO YOU.
