Category Archives: Music

No matter how strong

I’m gonna take you down

With one little stone

I’m gonna break you down

And see what you’re worth

What you’re really worth to me

There was a musical accompaniment to go along with the ‘shades of gray’ project from 2004 – and as we re-explore that written work, I offer the following playlist as recommended listening for when you go through these vignettes. It’s largely contemplative instrumentals, but there are some traditional pop songs as well. The latter selections are lyrical wonders, echoing the spare power of carefully-chosen words. All serve to evoke an air of 

Dinner at eight was okay

Before the toast full of gleams

It was great until those old magazines

Got us started up again

Actually it was probably me again

Why is it so that I’ve always been the one who must go

That I’ve always been the one told to flee

When it fact you were the one long ago

Actually in the drifting white snow

You left me 

A centerpiece would have to be ‘Dinner at Eight’ by Rufus Wainwright, which features an exquisite piano treatise on love, family, and the eventual need to find acceptance and move on; as evidenced by the lyrics running throughout this post, it’s as poignant and powerful as it is sorrowful and resigned – a gorgeous mess of emotion set to glorious song. The following songs follow suit – give them a listen as you revisit this project from two long decades ago…

‘The Goldberg Variations’ – Glenn Gould

‘Any Other Name’ – Thomas Newman

‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ – Annie Lennox

‘The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1: Prelude No. 1 in C Major – Glenn Gould

‘For Reasons Unexplained’ – Casey Stratton

‘9 Little Preludes: No. 3 in D Minor’ – Glenn Gould

‘Precious Things’ – Tori Amos

‘Alone in Kyoto’ – Air

‘Loneliness’ – Annie Lennox

‘Gymnopédie No.1’ – Erik Satie 

‘Dinner at Eight’ – Rufus Wainwright

‘Clair de Lune’ – Johann Debussy

‘Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73’- Ludwig Beethoven

We’re a little over halfway through presenting ‘shades of gray’ already, so there is some more to come, and just around the Thanksgiving holiday – the way that life’s little fuck-overs often come at the worst possible time. We don’t choose these things – they choose us, or something like that. I’m out of banal platitudes and all the rest of it. 

So put up your fists and I’ll put up mine

No running away from the scene of the crime

God’s chosen a place

Somewhere near the end of the world

Somewhere near the end of our lives

~SHADES OF GRAY~

Midway Through Life

Gray Ghost 1

A Bagel in Boston

At the Mall

Gray Ghost 2

Squirrelly

Brother 1

Andy’s Mom

Gray Ghost 3

Change

Idle

Brother 2

Mental Replies

Brother 3

The Man in Your Office

Gray Ghost 4

Uncle Roberto 1

Fairy Nursery Tale Rhyme

Dee and the Geese

Uncle Roberto 2

When the Roses Bloom…

I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser
Midnights become my afternoons
When my depression works the graveyard shift
All of the people I’ve ghosted stand there in the room…

My 8th grade class at Wilbur H. Lynch Middle School in Amsterdam, New York had the usual cast of teenage characters – football players, cheerleaders, band members, slack-offs, fuck-ups, nerds, jocks, beauty queens, drama kids – the typical coterie of children masquerading as adults, just beginning to find our way and carve out identities of who we might be. Despite our varied interests and the panoply of society under one roof, we lacked one essential ingredient: a villain. Because of that, and despite the usual drama of teenage angst and budding hormonal avalanches, school was a rather dull and boring affair.

It was up to the one person with the flair for the dramatic and diabolical to set things into some semblance of half-interesting motion – and I was the only one wiling to do it. Did I sacrifice a certain mainstream popularity to do it? Perhaps. Did I throw away my chance at being voted Best Dressed Man when high school rolled around and those designations were really just votes on who was well-liked? Probably. Did I sink my teeth into the role with the relish and zeal of someone desperate for something – anything – to shake up the dull hallways of that school and wreak havoc with friendship circles? Better than anyone else. 

I should not be left to my own devices
They come with prices and vices
I end up in crisis (tale as old as time)
I wake up screaming from dreaming
One day I’ll watch as you’re leaving
‘Cause you got tired of my scheming
(For the last time)

It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me
At tea time, everybody agrees
I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror
It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero

Looking back, it was all so much silliness, but at the time how malevolent it seemed – and how terribly was it taken. I watched the maneuverings of the girls in my class, how they wrote notes to one another, passing them back and forth when the teacher’s back was turned. I saw their friendship circles and noticed the whispers they would adopt in favor of some and against certain others. I was a master at appearing uninterested and uninvolved, while all the time not one single side-eye or shifty gaze escaped my notice. I was also adept at sneaking these notes out of their bags when they weren’t looking, and reading what they wrote about everyone else. 

It was a glimpse into a secret world I would later access through more benign means – at that time it was a brutal violation of their privacy, but what cares a villain for such codes of honor and simple human decency? Nothing would jolt our narrative or change the dull doldrums of Amsterdam unless I did it. And so I hatched my simple plan, stealing the notes of my classmates and putting them into the hands of the very people they were maligning. Words never meant for certain people were deposited by me as the secret villain – and I left a trail of hurt feelings, betrayal, and distrust in my undetected wake. Supposed friends turned against supposed friends, wondering at first how things came to unintended light, struggling to repair wounds, holding on to not being hated. In the justifications that I conjured as I gave myself over to such darkness, I reasoned that they had a right to know what others were saying, that truth and transparency were better than polite deceit and tolerance. In reality, I think I just wanted to fuck things up. Out of boredom, out of wanting to be part of something, out of sheer mean delight. 

Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby
And I’m a monster on the hill
Too big to hang out, slowly lurching toward your favorite city
Pierced through the heart, but never killed

Eventually I revealed myself as the perpetrator – and then the real fun began. When I managed to procure an especially juicy note, I held it over the writer as a form of power and persuasion. My reputation was earned and burned and sealed in stone right then and there – and though there would be redemptive movements and saving graces, I’d take that villainous persona with me wherever I went – even when I tried to kill it. Like most villains, my path would always and only end with my own internal consumption. 

Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism
Like some kind of congressman? (Tale as old as time)
I wake up screaming from dreaming
One day I’ll watch as you’re leaving
And life will lose all its meaning
(For the last time)

It’s been a long time since I felt that way, however, and the image of a villain has remained latent and silent all these years. Only when faced with certain pain and childish acting-out have I thought about revisiting such merry mayhem. Villainy has its benefits, foremost among them a freedom that comes only when you’ve given up all the fucks and are ready to let the world find out. Am I reveling in such an idea? Absolutely. It’s time I once again had some of the fun that everyone else has been having. Will I get called out on it? Unlike the others, of course I will. That’s the way it goes (see previous reference to having no more fucks to give). There will come a time when all grievances come to light, and while I won’t dare to judge anyone for it, the truth has always spoken louder than anything I could ever shout. When put down in words, the most atrocious acts are suddenly contained, and often that mere capturing of them somehow lessens their atrociousness. Or so the justification for villainy goes… 

It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me (I’m the problem, it’s me)
At tea time, everybody agrees
I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror
It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero

Music on the wind, swooping in, nestled among fantastical feathers. Color seen through the darkness, impossibly bright, and glowing brighter as the breeze nudges us toward midnight. The veil grows thinner, and this is when it’s easiest to fly between worlds. Sometimes we want so badly to escape this one. Fly, my pretties, fly…

Know, know too well
Know the chill
Know she breaks
My Siren
No teenage flesh
Know that she’ll
Know she breaks
My Siren

It was winter in Boston. Late 1990’s. Snow was there, and snow was melting. There was water in the air, ice on the wind, and witches seem to like when the weather gets hazy that way. Water as smoke, water as fog, water in the winter thaw. On the molecular level, water moves mountains, cracking stone and splitting rocks. It sparkles and stuns, like a gown you will only wear once. 

I moved through that winter, I moved through that snow. 

I moved through that spring, I moved through that grass.

I moved through that summer, I moved through those moons. 

There were witches to guide me, witches to right me, witches to pick me up when I fell or simply gave out. 

They rode on the night, gliding through folds of blackness, showing me the way through the stars. 

Now I know that you know I
Never was one for a prissy girl
Coquette, call in for an ambulance
Reach high, doesn’t mean she’s holy
Just means she’s got a cellular handy
Almost brave, almost pregnant
Almost, ya know, in love

Then I arrived at fall. 

Fall with her fiery splendor, fall with her flaming finale, fall before she shed herself into winter. 

Fall with her welcoming arms, open like a freshly-dug grave site, earth so deep it’s still wet – like where we all began…

Fall brought me here, through all the years – the moons and suns and days and nights – brought me to where I would finally take flight. Spurred on by the Siren, imaginary exoskeleton fluttering and protruding from my back, lifting and placing me on the wind, I learned to fly when they first let me fall. 

Some call her sister of the moon
Some say, illusions are her game
They like to wrap her in velvet
Does anyone, ooh, know her name?

A holding place for magic, then.

A sacred circle of sorts.

Some say ‘witch‘ like it’s a bad thing, the same way they say ‘bitch’, and the same way they mean it. Casting a spell of words is a dangerous ritual, and how quickly we throw them out. Ropes of words, magical lassoes – as if anything could truly force a person to tell the truth. Where does such a magic land exist? 

Maybe in my own backyard…

Rings of fire once populated these flaming autumn days; rings of cock twirled and spun their circles of burn too. Lace of florals, fabrics of sheer, and the power of pretty – it all seems so flimsy, so easily torn. Satin sheets of leopard seemed very romantic as a wise woman wondered what happened when we weren’t in bed. That same sense of female empowerment comes across in the bop and beat of this Chappell Roan song, and female empowerment is about the only hope that seems to exist in these dark days.

You know what they say:
Never waste a Friday night on a first date
But there I was, in my heels with my hair straight
And so I take him to this bar – this man wouldn’t dance
He didn’t ask a single question
And he was wearing these fugly jeans
It doesn’t matter though
He doesn’t have what it takes to be with a girl like me

Some songs remind you of what you needed to be all those years ago, and if you stomp through today with a little extra casual cruelty, the piercing punctures of stilettos piercing hearts that didn’t quite deserve it, more power to you. A riveting thread runs from Madonna through Lady Gaga all the way to this pulsating pussy-power anthem – and self-empowerment lifts everyone, regardless of gender labels and limitations.

Years ago, long before Andy, and somewhere after yet another failed romance, some hyper mega bummer boy, I remember walking through Copley Square on a windy, sunny, and somehow still-cutting day, blaring the bridge of Madonna’s ‘Express Yourself’ and pounding the pavement with purposeful strides, “And when you’re gone he might regret it, think about the love he once had…” My heart was as hurt as it was hellbent on hurting whomever was next. 

I’m not proud of all the collateral damage that I left in my wake, and all the pain that begot more pain. All I cared about was that my coat billowed beautifully behind me, that I could walk fabulously forward without looking back, and that I would do the dancing and the trouncing and the pummeling on hearts that inadvertently crossed my dangerous and ridiculously dramatic path. 

Get up off your feet, get up on that bar
Walk that walk from Tokyo to New York
With everything you feel and everything you are
Walk that walk, flash the camera
Flash the camera, flash the camera, you’re a star!

Perhaps this false confidence was a major misstep, and I’m not averse to acknowledging the many flaws in the way I executed portions of the past. Perhaps my strut was a mask; perhaps it was the key element to my survival. Perhaps it was the only thing that kept me in existence. Whatever the case, it got me through – or maybe I got through in spite of it all. I still revere the power of a pop song, and the song of a siren who is thoroughly sick of the fucked-up patriarchy that has informed centuries of who we are. 

A super graphic ultra modern
Ooh you got me la-la-la-ing
Hyper-sexy top to bottom girl like me.

Stevie Nicks is about to provide the bulk of the soundtrack for our October listening list (coming up shortly, since we just released the Fade-to-Black Fall Playlist). I hear her siren’s call, drawn to the sweet music, and the spicy scent of pine warmed by the afternoon sun in our little side-yard, and I try to join in the dance. It’s there in the wind. It’s there in a falling leaf. It’s there in the soft and sticky brush of pine needles.

I’m tired
I’m thirsty
I’m wild-eyed
In my misery

Timeless in your finery
It’s a high price
For your luxury

In times of doubt and uncertainty, I find it best to reconnect with nature. Sitting in the soft blanket comprised of leaves and moss, the earth embraces all of us if we let it. There is healing in that embrace, and in the music of a woman who has seen more than most of us. She knows our secrets. She knows a way out. She knows. 

Sorcerer
Who is the master
A man and woman on a star stream
In the middle of a snow dream
Sorcerer
Show me the high life
Come over
Let me put you on ice

The wisdom unseen by men, the wisdom gleaned by women, and the wisdom discerned by those somewhere in between or beyond such limited labels is the wisdom of the ages. It changes with the passing of time, something we as humans don’t always want to admit or acknowledge, because that might require a change in our own beliefs. We don’t usually like to change our beliefs – it’s messy and makes us uneasy – but if you learn how to do that, you learn a bit of magic that will unlock hidden doors for as long as you keep your mind open. It’s the kind of magic that lights the darkest black ink nights…

All around black ink darkness
And who found lady from the mountains
All around black ink darkness
And who found lady from the mountains
Lady from the mountains

Lately I’ve felt the downward pull of time and age – two of many things over which a person has little to no control. Time and age – the sorcerer and the sorceress that lord their ways over us all. 

Whispers on the fall wind.

Slivers of hints written in the veins of leaves. 

No way to make it all make sense. 

Barely a wisp of a song, hardly a melody. 

Pricks in the silence.

Ripples on the water. 

The witch’s cry is silent.

Our fall playlist is finally being posted here – a little late perhaps, but I hope you find it worth the wait. It begins with songs that inspired the ‘Fade-to-Black’ theme, segues into a rollicking femininomenon section with a couple of disco moments, and brings us all back to black in the end. Click and listen, preferably in the order in which they appear. (Apologies, I’m an anal-retentive Virgo after all.)

Paint It Black – Westworld version

Desperation – Steppenwolf

For What It’s Worth – Stevie Nicks

Paint It Black – Rolling Stones

Edge of Seventeen – Stevie Nicks

You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) – Sandra Bernhard

At Midnight – T Connection 

Gimme Gimme Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) – Abba

Hung Up – Madonna

Femininomenon – Chappell Roan

I Can Do It With A Broken Heart – Taylor Swift

Brave New Girl – Britney Spears

Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl – Chappell Roan

Chemical Sunset – Orville Peck 

Back to Black – Oscar and the Wolf

Your Heart is as Black as Night – Melody Gardot

Demons in My Sleep – Peaky Blinders

Bacchanal from ‘Samson and Delilah’ -Camille Saint-Saëns

When It Rains It Pours – Twiddle

Welcome to the Black Parade – My Chemical Romance

Paint It Black – Cello version

One of my favorite pieces of music is the Bacchanal from the opera ‘Samson and Delilah’. I’m not sure why it became a favorite, because it brings back bad memories of all the stress and worry and competitive ickiness of my time in the Empire State Youth Orchestra. That it contains one of the more celebrated oboe solos is one reason for how stressful those passages once felt, and I remember the first time we read through it – I think I had the solo and totally massacred it. 

The orchestra raced ahead before I even knew where we were in the score, and I was left behind, eventually taking the second seat after tryouts. In truth, I probably had no business even being in the actual Empire State Youth Orchestra – and as much as I learned there, as much as the experience hardened and honed me, I wonder if it was worth the social anxiety and stress at that time in my life. It still haunts me, and I question whether that was the best thing to do to myself as a kid (not that I was given a choice in those early days) – and did it really prove the tipping point at getting me into all of the colleges to which I applied? I doubt I’ll ever know – and there’s no point in dwelling here. Instead, let’s revel in the music at hand, and allow it to fuel this fall’s reckoning… 

If you stick it out and wait until about the 7:00 mark, you’ll hear when things really begin to soar – and it is here where I take all the trauma of the past and turn it into something else – anger, rage, triumph, revenge – and a power I’m still discovering buried within. Spreading the wings of a silky caftan, with a rope of pearls to harness the universe’s available energy, it feels like a moment ripe for flight.

The music is a seduction and a celebration in one, entrancing with its sensuous oboe solo, and then setting the scene for the destruction of a temple. Sexual symbolism and blatant hedonism brilliantly collide in a meeting of the minds and bodies of opposing forces. Prepare the way for aural ecstasy and orgasmic, orgiastic might. 

Who knew that opera could be so gorgeously filthy? It’s a perfect treat for the fall season. 

Ever since Dad died, this song has taken on a deeper meaning – and it was pretty deep before then, so this one goes far down. For our fade-to-black fall, it gets resurrected and brought back with even greater resonance. Life does that – it sharpens some things, dulls others, and reconfigures the world in a way that makes you realize it was all perception and perspective – and hopefully in that realization there comes a certain peace. 

When I was a young boy
My father took me into the city
To see a marching band
He said, “Son, when you grow up
Would you be the savior of the broken
The beaten and the damned?”
He said, “Will you defeat them?
Your demons, and all the non-believers
The plans that they have made?”
“Because one day, I’ll leave you a phantom
To lead you in the summer
To join the black parade”

A world that sends you reelin’
From decimated dreams
Your misery and hate will kill us all
So paint it black and take it back
Let’s shout it loud and clear
Defiant to the end, we hear the call

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve felt old. Not physically, just in my head. I had no patience for childish nonsense, and all the silly things the other kids were doing. I felt weary, like I’d done it all before, and I was already tired. I felt jaded, not better than anyone – never better than anyone – just like there was nothing new under the sun. I felt entirely too serious for my own good, and my earnestness was never taken at face value, jumbling things up in my head even more. I felt stressed and worried – about everything. And what should have been one of the only truly carefree times in a person’s life was never meant to be, at least for me. 

Do or die, you’ll never make me
Because the world will never take my heart
Go and try, you’ll never break me
We want it all, we wanna play this part

I won’t explain or say I’m sorry
I’m unashamed, I’m gonna show my scars
Give a cheer for all the broken
Listen here, because it’s who we are

Just a man, I’m not a hero
Just a boy, who had to sing this song
Just a man, I’m not a hero
I don’t care

We’ll carry on, we’ll carry on
And though you’re dead and gone, believe me
Your memory will carry on

One of my favorite moments of last week was driving home from a family dinner with Andy, and having this song come on the radio. I’m not going to pretend I was ever a huge fan of the Carpenters, but I had a few favorites, and they definitely knew their way around a melody, and a harmony for that matter, so let’s indulge in a bit of optimism. Andy reminded me of that during this darkening fall, so I turned the music up and let it play.

Such a feelin’s comin’ over me
There is wonder in most every thing I see
Not a cloud in the sky, got the sun in my eyes
And I won’t be surprised if it’s a dream

Our self-seeded patch of cleome continues to blooms its head off – a happy reminder of our banner coquette summer. Even in a spell of rain, there is beauty here – some might say the rain only enhances the prettiness. 

Everything I want the world to be
Is now comin’ true especially for me
And the reason is clear, it’s because you are here
You’re the nearest thing to heaven that I’ve seen

For a Monday afternoon post, a bit of optimism makes all the difference. Go ahead, sing along.

I’m on the top of the world lookin’ down on creation
And the only explanation I can find
Is the love that I’ve found, ever since you’ve been around
Your love’s put me at the top of the world

While I’m finalizing a Fade-to-Black Fall Playlist, here’s a sneak preview of one of the songs – fitting in tone, lyrics, and atmosphere. Moody as fuck, ambivalent, decadent and more than a little sinister, it slinks along for a very late Friday soundtrack. 

I wore all black today – it’s the uniform of this fall season. It also marks a shift from my typical garb of crazy colors and wild combinations; it also fits the mood at hand, which is black as the night. 

Still, I see the stars.

Before a late meditation, I stepped outside and looked up at the dark sky. An airplane blinked and slowly crossed in a gentle arc, then the stars began to appear as my eyes adjusted. They are always there – sometimes it just takes a bit of effort and patience to see them.