“It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

The next morning dawns beautifully in Boston. Alan has decreed that an early bowl of phở will be the perfect way to begin our shopping excursion, even as he frets over the fact that it’s not quite cold enough to get the full warming effect of the Vietnamese soup. A few minutes after our appointed meeting time, Alan arrives at the designated restaurant, a corner landmark in the heart of Boston’s Chinatown. A rust-colored top coat is flung over his chair as he sits; a sculptural scarf of felt flowers encircles the coat’s collar and spills to the floor. Practiced nonchalance would be how he would describe the entrance; to the rest of us it looks like careless confidence. A floral shirt runs over the top of his pants, untucked and uncharacteristically lending an unkept aspect to his countenance. In Boston, on a shopping spree, he is dressed to work: digging out bargains, flitting from store to store, and hurrying along to beat the coming crush of college kids who are sleeping in on the weekend. This is his happy place; this is his native soil. “I grew up in the retail world,” he chuckles. “Made me who I am today!” It’s impossible to take it too seriously.

Against some odds and bets, he’s a chipper morning person. One might assume he’s a creature of the evening, but these days he likes to be in bed by 11. “I’m too old for late nights,” he sighs at one point. On this morning, despite the lines around his eyes, he is bright and engaging. “I just love the phở!” is one of several exhortations he makes during the course of ordering the meal. Reports of moodiness seem, once again, to be quite missing the mark, and though he maintains he prefers solitude to shopping with a buddy, I am one of the trusted few he’ll deign to bring along, provided I “tow the line.” We both laugh a little at that.

As much as his appearance and guises have changed over the past couple of decades (yes, it’s been that long), it feels like the young man I met long ago is still intact and that life, in spite of the typical bumps and bruises it doles out, has allowed him to remain the person he’s always been. Not that there hasn’t been growth, particularly when it comes to his creative expressions.

Returning to the notion I was just realizing from the afternoon before, it struck me that Alan is once again in a different place from where he was the last time we met. That was when he was about to embark upon ‘The Delusional Grandeur Tour’ way back in 2015 – his self-proclaimed final tour (the seventh of such endeavors) and he was finally realizing that the manifestation of his creative artistic output need not influence his own emotional and mental well-being. For quite a while, I think we all worried it might, so strikingly autobiographical were his projects, so vainly self-centered and self-serving some of them seemed. Yet by the time ‘The Delusional Grandeur’ spectacle rolled around, it seemed as if he had made the leap from living his artistic output to managing it from a place of control and safety. It was a deliberate and hard-fought battle to reach such a space, and though there was the occasional veneer of calculation and manipulation to it, the execution and artistic intent was of such purity that the power of the piece bled through. Arriving at that point, however, may have scared him on some level. In previous modes he would put out a new project about once a year; this time he’s waited for about three trips around the sun before releasing something new.

Not that he’s been idle during that time. If you think about it, producing an average of 1000 words a day for his website was the rough equivalent of creating one previous project per month. His output was more substantial than ever, but the official ‘project’ – that all-encompassing behemoth of artistic creation – kept getting pushed off in service of his blog and website, as well as the more pressing concerns of a marriage and a job and maintaining a home and yard. Andy’s health had taken a downward turn, and while Alan was notorious for clamming up for fear of inviting the universe to wreak more havoc, he took a more active role in helping out and being a better husband. For someone who’s led a very charmed existence on many levels, this intrusion of real life into the fantasy of how he was portrayed was a drastic change, but he stepped up to the tasks at hand. I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that he could do it; it was just a matter of whether anyone had the trust or know-how to let him prove it.

That most recent project, ‘The Delusional Grandeur Tour’ had been drawn out over two years. With “tour dates” being scattered fewer and farther between, and Alan finding himself at home more than away for the weekend, the tour book itself was posted in regular installments on ALANILAGAN.com, signaling a transition to online output, a major shift that will finally find full fruition when the new project premieres online in November, with in-person viewings of the photo book to follow. More telling is the fact that the online version contains about 100 more photographs than the physical book; proof that future projects may find themselves more web-oriented. That means more content, less interaction, and greater reach.

“In a way, my website has come full circle,” he explains as he rips up a bouquet of Thai basil and squirts some sriracha sauce into his bowl of steaming pho. “In the very beginning, the website was only going to be a repository for my work, an online representation for anyone who wanted to see the real thing. I would use it as a back-up for the physical copies of my projects, or a sort of virtual store-front for the kind of writing I did. Since then, it’s evolved into a blog, and a diary, and a place where new projects are born. Now, the physical book, which I just had printed for the new project, is sort of the repository and representation of a larger project that can be viewed in its entirety online. In that respect, things have flipped.”

That new project, entitled provocatively and mysteriously ‘PVRTD’ (yes, it’s short for ‘Perverted’) is taking up most of his promotional time. As he was coming to terms of being home more, and the end of his “touring” days, he was also feeling the familiar nudge of creative restlessness. By the winter of 2018, he’d formulated the general idea for ‘PVRTD’, and it would be as provocative as anything he had ever done.

{To Be Continued… See also Part 1}

“Self-exploration is very painful, but unless you do that, you will never know who you are and who you want to be.” – Iris Apfel

The best way to get to know who you truly are is to take a step back and remove yourself from your own situation. This is not an easy thing to do. Most people are too afraid or uneasy to ever make motions in such a direction. We get to be very comfortable with ourselves, and removing us from our own experience is daunting at best, debilitating at worst. Yet I’ve found that distancing yourself from your own life from time to time can be a very valuable lesson. It allows you to see yourself from a more objective and analytical perspective, something that creates the space for honest assessment and personal growth. Whenever I find myself in moments of doubt and uncertainty, or when I feel a little lost or unsure of where I’m headed, I’ll pause for an interview, as much for the adoring fans that inhabit my mind as for the mind itself. At such times it is best to slip safely into the third person; it’s easier to face the harsher truths about yourself that way.

Thus was I summoned to Alan Ilagan’s Boston brownstone, where he waited for my arrival on the front stairs on a fine September afternoon. Turning onto Braddock Park at one of the quainter bends on the Southwest Corridor Park, I spy him instantly. He is looking toward the fountain in the middle of the street, leaning in to listen to its soothing trickle of water. He will tell me later that he sleeps on the couch on such nights, just so he can be nearer to the window to hear the fall of the water. But I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s just my tendency to do so.

He nods at me from above, like the old friend I am. Today’s stance is one of silent benevolence, slightly royal in comportment but not overtly haughty. It’s the bearing of one who knows his worth, yet is not quite comfortable with others knowing it. A rather unbearable bearing when you think about it, and the puzzle that he often poses finds no further pieces falling into place. We shuffle them about some more…

He is waiting for friends, hence the extravagant get-up. Flowing pants in saturated tones of purple and maroon are festooned with elegant filigrees of gold. A lacy shirt accented by swirling whorls of lime-green sequins sparkles in the dappled sunlight of the afternoon. Around his neck hangs a tassel made up of fuchsia velvet balls, golden beads and sparkling crystals. His feet are encased in slippers of silken preciousness, with heels of green velvet and magenta flowers of the sheerest fabric. It sounds a bit of a mess but, as is often the infuriating case, he makes it work.

“Let’s go up for a cocktail,” he announces before I have a chance to consider sitting beside him.

We ascend the stairs to the second floor together. There is a deep reservoir of history here for him, yet none of it holds him down or makes things stuffy. If anything, there’s a certain freedom with such a bastion of the past to ground him so securely. That said, his heart is still slightly elsewhere, and that’s the way it’s always been. On this particular day, I sense it’s mostly with his husband, Andy.

“He will not be joining us this time,” Alan declares in a wistful tone, before giving a cursory summation of a recent blood clot and the ensuing travel ban that have stranded Andy in upstate New York, and in the many years that read into the growing lines of his face, I sense the concern and worry that he usually masks so well. This is a different Alan than the one I thought I knew. Every time I visit, it seems, he’s a little different. Often it goes with whatever project or theme that suits him for the moment. Many of us have seen him through various guises over the years, but this is one of the longer stretches we’ve been apart. Coming back will require some trust, some ice-breaking in the form of actual ice-breaking, as in the cocktail shaker he holds for one of the first Negronis of the fall season. Expertly shaving off a piece of orange peel, he pours a pair in spite of my weak protestations. “I’ll finish it if you really don’t want one,” he offers disdainfully. There’s something to be said for the comfort to be cruel. It’s a badge of honor for anyone who truly knows him, and in two decades of friendship I’m surprised by how few get this.

Sitting at the front window, the beauty and quiet of the moment strikes us both. As sunlight pours in through the bedroom – all bright white with accents of spring green (“That bedding is now out of season,” he admonishes, more an indictment of himself than me, who had absolutely nothing to do with the state of Alan’s bedding) – the afternoon slowly ripens into evening. Shirley Horn sings plaintively in the background (“the quintessential voice of fall”) and Alan hustles me through this initial interview as he has friends arriving for dinner. While keen to talk about the new project for this first reconvening of third person narrative in several years, it is enough to simply mark the beginning. The rest will come. We agree to meet the next day for a shopping session; he finds no therapy more potent than retail, and so I depart, leaving him to his impending guests.

{To Be Continued…}

The big promotional interview (and photo shoot) for my ‘PVRTD’ project will be posted starting later today, but here are a few sneak peeks from that pre-project promo effort, and a very disconcerting quote that reminds us of how humanity once failed us. It’s also a chilling warning at how distant or close we might be to a similar situation today. The cautionary signs are here. It begins in small ways, little increments of deteriorating freedoms, a chip here and there that we all let slide. ‘PVRTD’ is a reminder and a warning, a comment on the past and a concern for the future. It’s my own take on the current state of the world.

“One is tempted to say that the twentieth century has mistreated minorities in a more brutal fashion than many preceding periods. And it is precisely technological progress that has made possible ever more refined techniques of brutalization, torture, and obliteration.

Thus the fate of the gays under the Third Reich may serve as a touchstone for all those victims swept away by the hurricane of hatred. To this day, the extent and impact of this catastrophe has not been fully understood… In many ways, the specters of the Third Reich still haunt us – not because a few elderly Nazis may be hiding in South America and not because groups of younger neo-Nazis demand attention with recycled swastika ideologies and emblems. The specters begin to come to life whenever fanatical fundamentalists of any sect – religious or secular – take over a nation and call for a holy war against its most vulnerable and vilified minorities.” ~ Richard Plant, “The Pink Triangle”

Do not be fooled by the photos leading into this project. They represent a decadent world already gone by, a realm of fantasy and play where escapism is the only way to survival. There are hints of foreboding treachery to come, but we will ignore that for as long as we can. Ignorance. Apathy. A blind eye. This is how some of us cope. This is how some of us endure. Slippery as quicksilver, evolving at lightning speed, and transforming at the drop of a hat to secure our safety with disguise or pretend or make-believe. Sometimes the only freedom to be found is inside your mind. If you’re lucky to be so vacant, so unfeeling, so unattached…

Vapid beauty.

Empty elegance.

Hollow hearts.

~ P V R T D ~

…The New Project…

—November 2018—

///ALANILAGAN.com\\\

{The Projects Page}

( P E R V E R T E D )

[Follow Alan on Twitter & Instagram @alanilagan.]

Have we perverted society, or has society perverted us?

If you glanced at yesterday’s newspaper headlines without seeing the date, you’d be forgiven thinking we were back in the 1940’s. White supremacists are rallying, neo-Nazis are banding together, and we are witnessing the emergence and rise of a fascism that wants only to foster hate and division. What a stark difference this day is from one of those that existed in ‘The Delusional Grandeur‘ stretch of 2015, the last time Alan Ilagan released a project, and how much the world has changed in three short years…

The very act of loving can be a revolutionary act. It is a revolt against all that is ugly and base and mean in this world, an argument against all that is hateful and wrong. It strikes back at the heart of apathy, taking deadly aim at the notion of not caring. It engages and demands a response, far more than a hateful attack or wanton dismissal. Yet love is outwardly lacking in ‘PVRTD’, the new photographic project by Alan Ilagan; the images are diabolically lonesome, many are simply empty, static as death, and eerily silent. A mouth taped shut. Eyes taped closed. Hands taped still. Page after page of black and white contemplation. A series of an eye-patched general madly roaming a run-down factory. A gas mask in a duet with a Chinese hopping ghost. The haunting image of Ilagan having his head shaved by a menacing, faceless figure.

‘PVRTD’ brings him into hazardous new territory and is already being heralded as beautifully disturbing. The themes and images he touches on – the Holocaust, white supremacy, the Ku Klux Klan – are cultural totems, each rife with layers of historical hurt. Playing around with such images can be a hazardous business, and many artists have been burned by getting too close without understanding or realizing the deep-seeded connotations and offense that might result.

Yet now more than ever such a reminder may be needed. It’s dangerous folly to think that something similar won’t happen again – gay men and women are being killed around the world, even more transgender people are attacked and murdered – and the suicide rates for both groups are exponentially higher than heterosexuals. What if the real perversion is not of nature or of being different, but a man-made symptom? What if the most perverted thing is the hatred that separates one person from another?

‘PVRTD’ offers no such up-front explanation to its mysterious images, and even less of a defense for the more controversial photographs. Anyone who is brave enough to face the past, and more importantly anyone who is brave enough to own up to the present, knows what is being conveyed. It is a test of our own moral turpitude as to what we are going to do about it. ‘PVRTD’ posits, provokes, and projects – staking its claim in the pantheon of art as social revolution.

{‘PVRTD’ will be released online at ALANILAGAN.com in November 2018.}

Call me Mr. M or call me Skippy Day, because this Halloween I went to work as my boss’s husband, Skip Montross. You know and love him, and today I was him. From the worn baseball cap to the distressed jeans and beaded man-bracelet, I embraced all the little details that go into making one Skip M. It coincided with the Boston Red Sox parade, so it was a win-win wardrobe situation. It also brings to mind all of our Boston adventures, so here’s a linky look back:

— BroSox Adventure 2014: No posts or links exist documenting this first foray into the #BroSoxAdventure, and it’s probably for the best. 

— BroSox Adventure 2015: Part One, Part Two and Part Three. (Thus far, this was the only time we had a police encounter on any of our excursions, and it happened in Loudonville so it doesn’t really count.)

— BroSox Adventure 2016: Part One and Part Two – in which our hero installs an air conditioning unit while Alan looks on while sipping a gin and tonic, and no one wants to dance with somebody. 

— BroSox Adventure 2017: Part One and Part Two – The year I spit beer onto the human beings in front of us at the Red Sox game. I’m still ashamed. And The Karate Kid. 

— BroSox Adventure 2018: The Only Part – because I took the summer off from blogging and we went later this year than usual. It was still awesome. Skip planked, even if he didn’t mean to. 

Soon all our pumpkins will be as lost as the ones seen here. Personally, I’m not sorry. For most of October we’ve had our fall and it’s been a relatively fine one. After today, the eye wanders to the start of the holiday season, extended and early as so much of our world seems to be these days. 

The arrival of Halloween is viewed with mixed feelings in our house. Andy and I will arrive home after a work day and there’s usually already a group of kids waiting eagerly to demand candy before we can even pull into the garage. I despise the eager as much as I despise the tardy. This season my Halloween costume is Hateful Creature. I’ll be wearing it all year. 

A few people have asked what I do at my job.

This clip pretty much sums it up. Just call me Juno, your happy Human Resources case worker. 

And here’s me at a typical meeting. 

“Will you get out of here?! Men’s room, are ya kidding?!?”

There were three of them and one of me. The day was pouring rain – you remember the recent Saturday when the Nor’easter was hitting – and I figured if I was going to make the Price Chopper run I’d at least have a Starbucks coffee out of it. There I sat, next to a table of two older men chatting over their newspapers. Typical upstate New York politics – they liked Trump’s policies and that’s what they were voting for, who needs another lefty! Their hatred of Cuomo. Their disdain for Delgado, and how they weren’t worried about Faso. How they felt New york City should be separated from the state because they could never beat them based on numbers.

I focused on my coffee and didn’t turn around. A third gentleman sat down across from them, enjoying their talk. One was complaining about a recent treaty that Trump was pulling out of.

“They should do away with treaties,” said the guy who was doing most of the talking, not bothering to say which ones.

Then they started talking about the wall, and how it needs to be built. “There are drones that could see for miles and know when people are coming from the other side.” Some bit about a flame-thrower I couldn’t quite make out. (Yes, a flame-thrower.) And then this: “They should build it out of a slippery material, and then have a ditch of oil, maybe two feet deep, so when they get across the ditch they will be covered in oil and be too slippery to climb the wall.”

Yes, I busted out laughing. But they didn’t notice. They were too busy solving the world’s problems safely from their vantage point in upstate New York.