My mother introduced us to the Carpenters, or maybe it was just her easy-listening radio station that did it. Whatever the case, the melodies of that musical group informed the early years of my musical education, and ever since I’ve been a sucker for a hook and melody delivered in earnest, dramatic fashion.
Leave it to Madonna to remind me of this song during a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the filming of ‘Evita’. She and some of the other actors were sitting around between takes and singing a few songs by the Carpenters. This was one of them, and whenever I hear it I’m instantly brought back to that winter of ‘Evita’ and all its now-acknowledged loneliness.
Loneliness is such a sad affair And I can hardly wait to be with you again What to say, to make you come again? (Ooh, baby) Come back to me again (Ooh, baby) And play your sad guitar
Once upon a long time ago, there was a boy who played his guitar for me ~ a nameless boy, on a drunken night, before I found true love. After a brief tussle in his flannel-sheeted bed, I laid there as he found his guitar in the darkened room and sat down on the edge of the mattress, strumming snippets of a few folk songs. I knew instantly we would never be together – his naked act was so raw and vulnerable even I would not approach damaging him in the way I had damaged others, and would damage more.
It wasn’t as selfless as it may seem – at the moment I understood I was saving myself as much pain as I was saving him. Still, I lingered when I should have been somewhere, anywhere else, and let him play his music for me. Barely illuminated by the gray light coming from a dirty window, he was mostly a silhouette, a tender shadow only given away through the movements of his arm and the strumming of the strings. He sang along a bit too – the voice of a young man when we were both still in the early stage of youth when we could be careless of heart and head and still maybe make it out unscathed. Maybe.
I dressed quickly when he paused in his songs. He tugged at my shirt a bit as I hastily worked to button it, and I left it mostly undone in my rush to get out of there. He never saw my eyes well up from the beauty of his act.
One of life’s greatest mysteries is the single shoe left in the middle of a street. For all my questionable nights of tipsy shenanigans, I’ve never once lost a shoe. Yet a single shoe or sock or sipper is often seen on the sidewalk or street after any given weekend. How that ends up happening has always puzzled me – and the mind concocts all kinds of possible scenarios, because it has to be something more interesting than a person tripping and tossing off a shoe then not having the frame of mind to retrieve it. I’d like to think there was something more dramatic – an abduction or a fight or a modern-day Cinderella story.
There is a ghostly element to it, especially in the rain and the light of day, and a certain sorrow to the scene. It feels like something is missing – a notion of loss that is evoked when we are so accustomed to seeing shoes in pairs. Out on its own, a lone shoe looks lonely.
Recently featured as a Dazzler of the Day here, Dominic Albano launches his first foray into underwear this week, drawing on years of modeling and fashion experience. His self-monikered line features the sort of sexy designs he’s so proficient at showing off for other designers, and it’s always a treat when the designer can say they have walked a mile in the clothing they are selling.
Albano is coming off a scintillating retro-styled piece for the online version of Playgirl Magazine, and a retro-feel informs the promotional images for his current underwear campaign. The lighting and feel are moody, evoking and playing up the sultry gaze that Albano has come to embody in much of his modeling work. It’s the perfect sales pitch for underwear, which is largely about selling sex, but should also come with comfort and function. Both seem to play a part in the new line, which keeps the flashy and colorful excess of many other underwear offerings to a minimum, relying on basic neutrals and classic cuts.
Centering it all is Albano’s focused determination on building a brand and his familiarity with the product. There is a carefulness and deliberate cultivation of his image, but also a courage in doing things entirely his own way. Check out the new line of underwear at his website here.
When Tom Ford released the scandalously-monikered ‘Lost Cherry’ it was somewhat of a let-down. Like ”Fucking Fabulous’ before it, the name was more exciting than the fragrance, and while I love and enjoy ‘Fucking Fabulous’, it doesn’t walk into a room and announce its presence with fanfare and electricity. It seduces in a quieter manner. ‘Lost Cherry’ simply lost me, with a rather cloying sugary element that might appeal more to the youth of today than the old curmudgeons like myself who want more oomph than sweetness.
So it was with a dose of skepticism intermingled with hope that I heard about two new cherry frags from the Tom Ford Private Blend collection – ‘Cherry Smoke’ and ‘Electric Cherry’ – whether they will be flankers or stand-upright on their own remains to be seen. Of the two, ‘Cherry Smoke’ sounds the most promising, and I could totally get on board if they’re going for a darker cherry vibe. That said, my nose tends to favor the fruity, as evidenced by the ‘New York Oud’ by Bond No. 9 which entranced me despite my reticence to sweet and fruit-like scents (nothing really Oud about it) so perhaps ‘Electric Cherry’ will be the one that brings me into Ford’s cherry-popping glory.
A piece of music has the power to paint its own pictures, just as much as a book or a play or a fable. Sometimes it can create more than a painting or a sculpture; those are set and stationary, whereas music is more malleable in its images. Such is the case with this magnificent work by Kayhan Kalhor – ‘Blue As The Turquoise Night of Neyshabur’ – here performed by Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble. The stories that may be spun from hearing it run through the mind along myriad paths, each one slightly different, taking new turns and twists depending on the listener. It begins in a calm if slightly mysterious and tense tone, before gradually unfurling into a rollicking adventure.
Maybe it’s a love story, with all the tumult and passion of a first kiss. Maybe it’s a realization – a mystery slowly solved over the course of its fifteen minutes. Maybe it’s a journey, a trip we have taken to a new place, a new city, a new country. Maybe it’s a party, from the anticipatory preparation through the tense starting minutes to the bombastic climax when all the guests have assembled and the state of happy camaraderie crests in loud laughter and the majesty of merriment.
Listening to this on a dark January night when all that lay ahead were more dark January nights, I felt the gentle and insistent tug of art and beauty, the tantalizing wisp of imagination and inspiration, the call of some distant muse or siren. It was a tempting invitation to travel from the comforts of a conversation couch to any number of far-off lands and worlds. Why limit our experiences to what we can physically achieve when the body is so bound by time and place?
And so I listen to this piece of music, not looking up its genesis or background, not wanting to be influenced or nudged into something for the first few times I experience it. I want it to make its own way, choose its own adventure, conjure its own castles of creation. Make its own memory from a pile of mental rubble. My wrists ache, my knees are sore, my eyes are failing by the minute – the body begins the downward slope. The brain, such as it ever was, remains mostly intact – and the imagination, my one shining strength in a world of largely unimaginative comrades, is still sharply honed. It’s kept me going for all these 47 years, and it pushes me forward on this turquoise night, when I hear music that makes me feel like I can fly…
They were skeptical at first, the way they are with every new thing their Uncle Al has ever shown them, but after a dozen years of having their skepticism turn to delight, they were up to trying it. For this dinner on New Year’s day, after feasting at the family’s early lunch, we assembled a hodge-podge of random items after making a hasty trip to Price Chopper to procure whatever additional ideas they each had. Noah chose fruit and Emi chose Cheese – a Vermont Sharp Cheddar.
I told them to try it with a slice of apple. They looked at me as if I was kidding, or trying to get them to do something they wouldn’t like, even though I always end up giving them the best of what I’ve enjoyed thus far. And so they sampled a slice of cheese and apple and marveled at the wonder of them together. The way their eyes lit up, the surprise and delight they genuinely felt as the textures and tastes combined – this was the thrill of raising kids, and I rarely got to see such moments.
This summer, I will introduce them to melon and prosciutto.
The first guests of a New Year set the tone for the months to come. Well, not really, actually not at all, but our attic was graced by my niece and nephew on the first night of the year, so it sounds good. They are growing much taller and much too quickly – soon they will tower over us, though no shift in authority will take place. On this night, I promised them a dinner of appetizers, so we made a quick market run, then returned to set up lumpia, cocktail wieners, clementines, Vermonth cheddar cheese, Honeycrisp apples, various crackers and chips, a Rice Krispies treat, a pomegranate, pears, pineapple, Fresca, and a bag of five shrimp. It was, as Emi declared, the most random collection of food that they’d ever had for dinner. Welcome back to Uncle Al and Uncle Andy’s kitchen!
After ‘dinner’ we worked on some playlists for a possible trip to Boston (to make up for this one that the twins had to miss). Noah came up with the funkified portion of the list, while Emi suggested some Tay Tay Etcetera. We went to the basement to watch a movie and paint our nails, and then it was bedtime. After tucking them in, I read a few poems from Rumi, popped Bab’s Christmas Casserole in the oven, then hunkered down myself. All in all, it was a lovely start to the year.
There is no better way to greet the iffy dawn of a new year than drinking from some bloody fountain of youth. In this case, the freshness of a Virgin Mary marked the first few moments of 2023, as I accessorized with enough garnishes to make this a light breakfast unto itself.
The Bloody Mary is one of the best cocktails to translate into a mocktail. Typically the vodka disappears into the tomato juice and horseradish, so you don’t miss much in the way of flavor. This one was amended with some fresh lemon juice, a few drops of hot sauce, a smidge of cocktail sauce (which may be redundant), some freshly ground pepper, and the garnishes seen here – celery, cilantro, olives, and a shrimp.
Those Bloody Mary bars you sometimes see are aspirational with the amount of additions now on offer. (I’ve seen lobster tails, lobster claws, bacon, oysters, peppers of all kinds, asparagus, okra, gherkins, and just about every pickled item imaginable.)
For this version, I kept things relatively simple, if a little tall. At the turn of an old year into a new one, you need a bit of loftiness.
The Lenten Rose is usually either the latest or earliest bloomer in the garden – and sometimes it is both. The last few times I’ve been in Boston, they have been holding onto their blooms, even during the wintry conditions that recent snowstorms have brought. I distinctly remember seeing their nodding heads on a dark night in an Uber ride with Andy. They were ghostly then, and oddly reassuring in their seasonal defiance.
During our recent gathering with the kids, I found this stand of them on Braddock Park, blooming away as if it were spring again. Such resilience is admirable, especially when so much of winter is yet to come.
Our own Lenten rose has never done an end-of-the-season show. Our winters are much too harsh, often much too early, for the plant to be tricked into such a quirk. They will slumber under the last of the snow melts away in March or April, then gently rise, somewhat torn and tattered until I clean them up and make some judicious pruning decisions. They are the first sign that spring is returning, and so seeing them at any time of the year reminds me of hope.
Only two days into the New Year and we are already looking back at shit. This is what happens when holidays fall on Sunday – it fucks everything up. Blame it on Mercury in retrograde – as I’m blaming everything for the next few weeks. God help us. On with the recap of all the year’s recaps…
Dawn enters in gray garb, less of an entrance and more of a shifting of the light.
Another calendar year begins, the way humans mark their time.
It starts, like every year has, in stillness and silence. Forget the crazed stroke of midnight – my clock for the New Year begins at the first light of this morning. That is when the world is quiet. Contemplative. The way anything of true import should start. The way a calm year should start. We have had our fill of all that is tumultuous.
Looking outside, I see the tall bare stalks of the cup plant, next to the sturdy bands that remain of the fountain grass. When the sunlight is able to break through in the early afternoon, both are lit like flames against the sky and the dull landscape. In the morning, when there is no snow or wind, they stand still and silent, largely gray and unobtrusive despite their stature and prominence of place. Genuine presence requires no fanfare or pronouncement.
And so it is that we begin this year at ALANILAGAN.com – the 20thyear of this website’s existence, so prepare for some double-decade anniversary celebrations. For now, let us begin in relative quiet. There will be other years for boffo New Year’s Day blog posts, such as this one set around ‘Circus’ by Britney Spears or this one featuring ‘The Greatest Show’. Even when I don’t try to go big and brash, a follow-up post often sneaks in the bombast. For this year, I’m back to a silent beginning – shades of gray and somber tones in look, feel, and sound.
In the reflections of trees in water, a change in perspective signals something deeper, a new way of looking at things, a different take on navigating life. So much has changed over the past few years, and so many of us are still reeling from the trauma of what have collectively been through. A worldwide pandemic hasn’t happened like this in a century – to think we are over it, mentally or emotionally or even realistically, is foolishness. We are all living in the trauma of it.
Continuing the saga that was 2022, here is the wrap-up to the Year in Review. The second half picks up where we left off, right in the glory of mid-summer and all the fun-in-the-sun moments that make the season so wonderful. Summer lingered into September, and then the inevitable low slide into fall, and the very start of winter. Another calendar year has come and gone…
December 2022: I which our calendar year comes to a close, with all the holiday drama and holiday mayhem you’ve come to expect at the most wonderful time of the year.
How shall you remember 2022? I’m not sure what constitutes a memory worth making, and maybe that’s why I don’t have many that come to mind. Still, there were notable moments, and there was some fun, and we made it through largely intact. There is something to be said for that. And now, let’s go back, let’s go back, let’s go way on way back when…
The sky clock ticked to an early descent of darkness. Late December worked like that. In the air hung the threat of snow and burial – a promise of peace and disappearance.
The first burn of love gets a bad rap. Like the first anything, it’s not always as bad as we make it out to be. At least, that’s what I told myself. If it was a lie, it was a lie of protection, of self-preservation. It was a lie to save a life. The burns that came after were more intense, more cutting, more dangerous. Far from making me stronger, that first burn merely revealed what the pain was like; subsequent injuries would not be lessened by any sort of numbing effect – they would mount and multiply and murder more than once. “That which does not kill you doesn’t necessarily make you stronger – it just nearly kills you,” or something like that. And in our weakened state, when the heart wants what it wants, we do foolish things. If we happen to be the object of desire, we often act just as foolishly – sometimes more-so, true power being afforded so rarely in life. And being so admired places one squarely in a position of power, whether admitted, acknowledged, or ignored. True power stems largely from love. But we’re not supposed to say such things. That would eliminate the sentiment of it. That would extract the magic. That would mean we’re all mostly hollow.
LOVE IS A BURNING THING
AND IT MAKES A FIERY RING
BOUND BY WILD DESIRE
I FELL INTO A RING OF FIRE
Victims of love get more play than victors. Their story… ok, our story, is usually more exciting – and certainly more interesting unless you’re one of the parties involved. When I think back to some of my earlier adventures in romance, particularly the unrequited kind (and of those there were many) my mind recoils in a mixture of horror, hilarity, and hubris. How one young man could be so hysterically stupid and at the same time so full of himself still boggles my mind – and somehow I knew exactly what I was doing, even as I knew I shouldn’t be doing it. Self-awareness doesn’t necessarily equate to self-understanding. Only in the understanding of motive and impetus does one find healing and the ability to truly let go and move on. I could not know that then, and so I burned…
I FELL INTO A BURNING RING OF FIRE
I WENT DOWN, DOWN, DOWN
AND THE FLAMES WENT HIGHER
AND IT BURNS, BURNS, BURNS
THE RING OF FIRE… THE RING OF FIRE
Burning demands more of a soundtrack than the typical crackling of a quaint fireplace. A true burn must roar, consuming all the oxygen in its path. It should be the sound of suffocation. Utter annihilation. Or in the case of this song, whereby the burn is mostly silent, the sound of something evil.
The music here begins in slow, deliberately diabolical fashion. Sinister elegance. Innocent love song taken to a level of denigration and denial. Aural defiance. From the wreckage comes the wrecker ~ wreaker of havoc and destroyer of innocence ~ and when survival becomes the offense, the surest way of saving the heart is to go on the attack. Reverse the hunt.
It’s music that begins insidiously – start it again and listen to the beginning. It doesn’t bash you over the head, it doesn’t instantly demand submission. I’ve tried that, and very rarely did it work; when it did, it never ensnared anyone worth ensnaring. No, this version of the song starts off slowly. It is an entrance of dramatic import – the kind of entrance that someone earns from a life of loving the hard way. It is the entrance of a poet and an arsonist ~ the entrance of someone who’s learned how to burn.
THE TASTE OF LOVE IS SWEET
WHEN HEARTS LIKE OURS MEET
I FELL FOR YOU LIKE A CHILD
OH, BUT THE FIRE WENT WILD
When I was a kid, I was fascinated by fire. I’d play with matches and magnifying glasses, burning spent pine needles and following their hisses and little explosions. Some say it’s an early sign of serial killers or psychotics. I’d watch the trails of smoke left by discarded cigarettes in the ashtray at the entrance to OTB, when Dad would bring my brother and me there when Mom was at night school. Entranced by the way the smoke curled and dissipated, we’d go home reeking of it on our clothes and hair.
Candles held an allure that was as frightening as it was beautiful – and I still remember the shiver of dread I felt when the electricity was out one night, and we were sitting in the family room in candlelight. My brother shifted the table so that one of the candles started to fall off. Not knowing a thing about fire, I jumped up and grabbed it, certain that had it hit the carpet the whole house would have gone up in a split second, devouring all of us before we could even attempt to flee. Such was my misunderstanding of how fire worked.
A similar misunderstanding occurred when I fell in love the first few times. I always thought it was going to be forever, and I always thought it was going to be easy and perfect. If it involved bending or changing or compromise of any kind, it wasn’t to be. I ended a couple of romances that way. More often than not, however, others ended them for me. And a few times, others wouldn’t even let the spark start a fire.
Blue fire runs across the ice before burrowing into its hole. An echo of the sky, which had long ago turned dark, its blue light bends and twists as if in peril or pain (and one usually leads to the other). Tricky things – fire and ice – each burning in its own way, each dangerous, each a warning unto itself. They invite you to get as close as possible, sometimes demanding it for your own survival, and then they threaten you with eradication.
On a cold morning at the end of December, I’m siding with the fire, and so I play this classic song by Johnny Cash. At first listen, some songs seem deceptively silly. Their instrumentation and production may feel dated, their delivery out of sync with the time. But the soul of a song – its spirit – won’t be lessened or diminished by the confines of its era. A song will live on as long as it means something to someone. This song suddenly meant something as I looked back on the many roads I took in search of love.
I FELL INTO A BURNING RING OF FIRE
I WENT DOWN, DOWN, DOWN
AND THE FLAMES WENT HIGHER
AND IT BURNS, BURNS, BURNS
THE RING OF FIRE… THE RING OF FIRE
Burning the place down was the theme for this fall on the website, and it’s going to smolder for a bit to bring us into the New Year. A pervading sense of nostalgia informed the last few months, and re-examining the many mistakes I made brought me back to the very first man who ever kissed me. In some ways that was a kiss of death. Certainly it was a kiss of pain – literally and figuratively. It burned like sandpaper against my young face, tracing its sting along my chest, and traveling downward to the burn I bucked against with all might and desire. A flaming September left fall in cinders.
Memories of lovers or would-be-lovers of the past mingled with newly-informed introspection and retrospection. While I don’t usually like to look back, it has afforded a certain wisdom over the past year or so – and I’m better able to see the longer arc of evolution that makes up one’s life. In the ensuing years after that first kiss, I would start my own fires, carrying a smoldering collection of embers to fling into the faces of would-be-suitors, not bothered by the blowback of deadly sparks that worked to blind and bind me.
My favorite pop star once asked, “Where do we go from here?” in a song fool-heartedly named ‘You Must Love Me’, lamenting that, “This isn’t where we intended to be.” Guessing the future, for all my planning and organization, has never been my thing, and I’ve always abhorred questions that demand some sort of knowledge of what may come, as if any of us could ever predict that, as if any of us could have a clue. We can hazard our own thoughts and cry our own tears, but no one really knows. “If you want to know how to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.”
I FELL INTO A BURNING RING OF FIRE
I WENT DOWN, DOWN, DOWN
AND THE FLAMES WENT HIGHER
AND IT BURNS, BURNS, BURNS
THE RING OF FIRE… THE RING OF FIRE
And love… exciting and new… come aboard… we’re expecting you…
Yes love…
Love has always proven the downfall and the rehabilitation. It is that ring of fire that burns brightly around us, blinding and thrilling and obscuring and revealing, until we can’t help but be transformed – for the better, for the worse, but always for something, never without consequence, never without reason. Bringing us high, high, higher and swinging us back down – the most obscene and insane amusement park ride one can imagine – spinning and whirling and rushing in gloriously-debilitating fashion. The heart races and the head tries to catch up. A parade of my beloved ones marches through my past, silent and accused, sheepishly pretending not to notice, or maybe not pretending at all. Perhaps such pretense was the only way they knew of letting someone down gently. Perhaps they truly are phantoms – ghost figures hollow of anything other than the patchwork of life I’ve given them in my head – floating in mostly empty fashion, made up of fragments and wishes and insubstantial wisps of what never even existed. We populate our pasts both with what we remember and what we make up.
