The charming photo featured here is a glimpse of Troy, NY on a recent Saturday night on which we got to see the magnificent Rufus Wainwright perform at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. Clearly, the entire evening was an exercise in enchantment, and while this song has nothing to do with Mr. Wainwright, it felt like a fitting soundtrack to a fall night.
Lord knows I love a nocturne. May this one lull you to sweet sleep.
Actor, singer and writer Sam Perwin is one of those triple-plus-threats who somehow manage to insinuate themselves into any role, then drag the audience around in mesmerized amazement. A graduate of Harvard (in Literature no less), Perwin also studied voice at Manhattan School of Music. Currently slaying as John Wilkes Booth in the Playhouse Stage Co. production of Stephen Sondheim‘s ‘Assassins’ at the Cohoes Music Hall, he earns his first Dazzler of the Day crowning for all of the above. Check out his charming website here for further evidence of his brilliance.
A somewhat purgatorial moment – this mid-week, mid-month, mid-fall day – and all the worst that is Wednesday still lays ahead. Or is it lies? My English major fails me yet again. I’m never quite as good as everyone thinks, and still quite better at the same time. Such a conundrum calls for a simple song that poses similar sentiments, with a somewhat sad piano melody. Wonderful Wednesday music…
Fall hangs heavily in the air on these foggy mornings. It takes a little longer to get out of bed, and this is only the beginning. Wait until January. Wait until February. Wait until that thirtieth snowstorm of March. We haven’t even approached winter, and the weight of its enormity feels overwhelming. At such times I return to my daily meditation, and remind myself of the focus on the moment at hand. One minute is easy enough to get through, and minutes becomes hours become days become months and so on. The blessed and cursed cadence of time.
Time, spilling out, spilling forward like gourds from a fall basket, is our greatest sorcerer. It bends and twists itself into grotesque forms, usually in whatever frightens us or wears us down the most. I don’t know how best to master or tame it. Instead, I do my best to take it a little bit at a time, trusting that being mindful is always the right choice, no matter how difficult it might be. Breathing through those tough times, one breath in and one breath out, and then again, and again. And then a minute has gone by, and if you can get through one, you can get through two. By three or four you forget what you’re doing and why, and perhaps a crisis is averted. Simply by breathing.
A good-enough lesson for a Wednesday morning.
Torn between the lingering effects of a very relaxing vacation and the jumpstart of a new week in which I’m already behind on office work, this Tuesday is an exercise in recuperation on a number of levels, and I’m already feeling as tattered as the flowers and leaves shown here. (Even on the Monday night on which I am writing this, I feel the return to stress and wear; how quickly our vacation mode evaporates the moment we are back in the routine.)
And so I will aim to be a little gentle with myself today, and with those around me. It’s not in our nature to be on a perpetual vacation – and deep down I know a perpetual vacation would lose its glamorous appeal the moment it became perpetual. Only a fool would wish for such monotony and throw away the very thing that makes vacation such a wonderful state of being. I embrace the days off, and feel a slight, underlying sensation of gratitude for the days on. The challenge – one which I’ve always been up for – is to make these days on as enjoyable and entertaining as possible. Another weekend away will be here before we can update the automated out-of-office response.
Hometown heroes are not as common as we’d like to believe, but Amsterdam, New York, in addition to being the hometown of yours truly, is also the hometown to television producer extraordinaire Woody Woodbeck, who recently celebrated producing his 10th Bravo series, which is way more than needed to merit this Dazzler of the Day crowning. I’ve known Woody since his days on Fly 92 (our local radio station) and watched him fly through the years with happy pride. To see someone who started off in the Home of the Rams go forth and take the world by storm was a marvelous, and rare, event. The second season of his ‘What’s up Woody?” podcast is coming out soon, which feels like a full-circle moment for those of us who listened to him all those years ago on the radio.
Our weekly recap usually happen on Mondays, but since that was a vacation day for most people, we are behind, hence this recap a day late and so many dollars short. The previous week was all about ‘FireWater’ – the 2009 project that was shelved way back then but finally saw the light of day in a litany of posts that occupied things here while I was vacationing in Maine with Andy. It forms the bulk of posts this week, and was more than enough to keep the fires burning while we were gone.
The elusive ‘Amber Absolute’ by Tom Ford sizzles for the season.
The long-list project is resurrected.
The preamble to FireWater, because forewarned is fair-warned.
Dazzlers of the Day included Lauren Ford, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dr. Joseph Abramo.
Finally, here is ‘FireWater’ in all its burning glory:
Scene 1: Bourbon Street, New Orleans
Scene 2: College Ave., Ithaca, NY
Scene 3: Union Square, San Francisco, CA
Scene 4: Sunday mornings, Boston & Provincetown
Scene 5: Braddock Park, Boston, MA
Scene 6: Times Square, New York
Scene 7: Tapas & Tinis, Ogunquit, ME
Scene 8: Hollywood Brown Derby, Albany, NY
Scene 9: Holiday Cocktail Hour, Albany, NY
Scene 10: My Brother’s First House, Amsterdam, NY
Scene 11: A friend’s home, Stormville, NY
Post Script: the ashes of FireWater.
Mastermind and executor behind Lords of Sound and Lesser Things, Joseph Abramo is once again crowned Dazzler of the Day, thanks in no small part to the tantalizing hints of the genius to come this Friday, October 14. That’s the date of ‘Samsara’ – a musical multi-media phantasmagoria (see the trailer below) that Abramo is performing at J. Louis von der Mehden Recital Hall at the University of Connecticut starting at 8 PM. This event will also be live-streamed at https://www.kaltura.com/index.php/ext… and https://www.twitch.tv/los_alt.
As Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut, Abramo has been published in countless texts, all of them well above and beyond my brain level, but I’ve been lucky enough to connect with him on a more basic plane, that of a friend who can appreciate the various calls of an artist. On my last few trips to visit his wife Melissa and their two amazing kids, I’ve been able to get a glimpse of the mad musical genius that comprises Abramo’s artistic world, and it’s always exhilarating. Witness the two excerpts below.
What he has in store for the recital this Friday is anyone’s guess, but it looks to be his usual groundbreaking stuff – an amalgamation of music and images where gorgeous melodies reckon with modern-day technology, and the push and pull of darkness seeks out redemption or damnation, and the only way out is to go through each pulsating beat, letting it reverberate through the body and mind. Watching Abramo at work is like seeing a wizard at the height of his powers – it’s raw, wild, occasionally unnerving, and absolutely mesmerizing of sight and sound. Check out his recital this Friday if you get a chance.
Too many drinkers have ended their stories in a blaze of shame and destruction. They burned brightly and feverishly and insatiably, only to burn out too quickly, too irrevocably. They provided the perfect finale, with the locked finality that left no room for another act, or even one last goodbye. Their fires raged until the very end, taking up all the air in the room and suffocating those who dared to remain loving them.
It’s such a difficult thing to love someone so seemingly hell-bent on destruction. I’ve often said that we can’t choose who we love – it’s our original failing as human beings – we are powerless in the throes of love. Even when we know better – and we all know better – we are abysmally weak when it comes to our hearts. I knew that then, and I knew my heart needed something to see it through the thousands of breaks it would have over the course of a year, a month, a day. How many pricks and cuts and fissures can we withstand before we all simply break?
Elaine Stritch once described needing a drink before she went on stage because it was too hard to go out there alone. “It’s scary up here,” she said. “You know, so… you’re scared, you drink, you’re not scared… I never put a foot on the stage without a drink. Or any place else come to think about it… Up here, two drinks. One before the curtain, another at intermission, a little back up and that was it. Well, three maybe. If I had the eleven o’clock number. I wanted a friend out here with me…”
I often felt that way about the world.
It’s too hard to go out there alone.
I wanted a friend out here…
My ‘FireWater’ project was a love-letter to drinking, and in that love-letter was the poison seed of a goodbye ten years in the making. Written in 2009, it hinted at what I feared might happen, what I dreaded might happen, and what I most wanted to happen. I planted the darkness, let it take root, and when it grew and bore all its rotten fruit, I cut it down and burned it to the ground.
In 2019, I stopped drinking. A decade after ‘FireWater’ was written. A decade not quite lost to the fire, and not quite spared from it either. Alcohol was my savior and destroyer. It gave me a false confidence that saw me through some of the darkest days – there is no denying it helped me when nothing else would. The cost, though, was dangerously high. If I could afford it, it’s just because I got lucky. Catching myself just in time, or maybe just realizing I didn’t need to be caught if I could stand on my own, I was able to stop drinking and not look back or miss it. There is immense gratitude in that – I’ve seen firsthand how difficult and sometimes impossible that is for others.
While I can make no predictions about never or forever (as doing so seems to be a curse and challenge) I do know that I don’t really think about or miss drinking. I’ve found other exquisite enjoyments, and don’t want to add a depressant that messes with my brain anymore. The thrill was gone, and I was glad to see it go.
During the ensuing years, it has felt felt like a fog and haze were slowly and steadily lifting. It didn’t happen overnight, but the very act of slowing things down became an exercise in mindfulness that I so badly needed. My ‘FireWater’ days had reached their end, and I was fortunate not to have burned out. Too many of us end up extinguishing our lives before we learn to live without the fire.
Scene 1: Bourbon Street, New Orleans
Scene 2: College Ave., Ithaca, NY
Scene 3: Union Square, San Francisco, CA
Scene 4: Sunday mornings, Boston & Provincetown
Scene 5: Braddock Park, Boston, MA
Scene 6: Times Square, New York
Scene 7: Tapas & Tinis, Ogunquit, ME
Scene 8: Hollywood Brown Derby, Albany, NY
Scene 9: Holiday Cocktail Hour, Albany, NY
Scene 10: My Brother’s First House, Amsterdam, NY
Scene 11: A friend’s home, Stormville, NY
“Being a freelance explorer of spiritual dangers, the Artist gains a certain license to behave differently from other people; matching the singularity of his vocation, he may be decked out with a suitably eccentric lifestyle, or he may not. His job is inventing trophies of his experiences – objects and gestures that fascinate and enthrall, not merely (as prescribed by older notions of the Artist) edify or entertain. His principal means of fascinating is to advance one step further in the dialectic of outrage. He seeks to make his work repulsive, obscure, inaccessible; in short, to give what is, or seems to be, not wanted. But however fierce may be the outrages the Artist perpetrates upon his audience, his credentials and spiritual authority depend depend on the audience’s sense (whether something known or inferred) of the outrages he commits upon himself.” ~ Susan Sontag
It’s been my one constant companion for over a decade. Friends and lovers and family have come and gone, but alcohol has always endured – a comfort, an unbreakable contract, a covenant with a reliable savior.
It’s been with me for the most important events of my life – weddings of friends, graduation parties, birthdays, holidays, reunions, vacations, even funerals. One of my favorite family memories is of standing in the garage on the evening before a relative’s funeral, knocking back beers with my Uncle and talking with the men of the Ilagan family. It was the only way we could relate to each other sometimes.
It’s been the bearer and witness to some of my most heinous acts, my most embarrassing and deplorable behavior, and my cruelest blows – always without judgment, always without condemnation – forgiving me when forgiveness was the very last thing I deserved.
It is with me now, in the back of my mind, waiting to be released, to wash away the pain and sorrow, to end the doubt and worry, to drown the fiery demons of my heart – and it will not let me go.
The bottle of crystal clear Ketel One sits chilled in the freezer, along with a single martini glass. At last I am alone, arriving before my friends return, ending where it began – in solitude. That’s the thing about drinking: it begins and ends alone, and the whole point of it – to get closer, to connect, to feel at ease among others – is ultimately rendered fruitless and barren.
I am visiting Missy and Joe, who will be back in a few hours. The house is quiet. After writing a few letters, I amble up to the kitchen and pour the vodka into its glass. No vermouth today. No olives. Only clear, transparent alcohol – in appearance like water, even as it goes down like fire. It’s a delicately wicked sting, taking me away from my tears, my failings, and my friends.
The next morning, in the bleak early light of day, I awake alone. A glass of water rests on the table before me and I hurriedly gulp it down in the hopes of easing the hangover and reviving my worn organs. In the kitchen, two unopened cartons of Chinese food sit on an empty plate. Had I been awake it would have been what I shared with my friends. Instead, I remember nothing, and repeat most of the exact conversation that we had during my black-out.
Repeating myself, repeating myself – losing brain molecules one by one, and these seem to be the ones that matter, the ones that once set me apart from everyone else, and in some insane effort to fit in I may have finally succeeded.
The same stories, the same lines, and I remember none of it. In the shameful silence of the morning-after ~ for what is there to say? ~ and the scary thought that no one knows what this is like – this secret, clandestine love affair with liquor ~ my own private addiction, at last admitted to myself – and what do you do with that acknowledgment? I don’t want to stop – I want to be able to do it forever – for the rest of my life.
For now, though, the thought of vodka – of any liquor – sickens me like it always does after an evening of excess. But I will return to it, faithfully and true, over and over again, because it has proven faithful and true to me. It has been the only one.
{‘FireWater’ is a project from 2009 that has gone unposted until now.}
[See also Scene 1: Bourbon Street, New Orleans
Scene 2: College Ave, Ithaca, NY
Scene 3: Union Square, San Francisco
Scene 4: Boston & Provincetown
Scene 5: Braddock Park, Boston, MA
Scene 6: Times Square, New York
Scene 7: Tapas & Tinis, Ogunquit, Maine
Scene 8: Hollywood Brown Derby, Albany, NY
A traditional, comfort drink – the Highball. Whiskey and ginger ale. It’s a lovely shade of amber, filled with fizz and clinking ice cubes, as it rests on the windowsill in the filtered winter sun. On this Christmas afternoon, I sit in my brother and sister-in-law’s home, where we’ll be having the holiday dinner in a few hours. Until then, there’s the highball. Family continues to arrive, the kids and dogs roam the floor, and a fire crackles in the fireplace, spewing wood smoke back into the room. A cozy scene with a cozy drink – all warmth and bonhomie and holiday spirit and in the midst of it all my senseless brain indicating loneliness and melancholy and a disconnect from everything that’s going on around me.
Surrounded by the people who love me the most, the people who love me unconditionally because we are family, I still feel like my one true companion is nestled in my hand, giving strength when called upon, and numbness when necessary. Soon, the golden liquid courses through my veins, traveling along the bloodstream, and warming me from the inside out. Cocooned and bound within myself by ropes of liquid fire.
{‘FireWater’ is a project from 2009 that has gone unposted until now.}
[See also Scene 1: Bourbon Street, New Orleans
Scene 2: College Ave, Ithaca, NY
Scene 3: Union Square, San Francisco
Scene 4: Boston & Provincetown
Scene 5: Braddock Park, Boston, MA
Scene 6: Times Square, New York
Scene 7: Tapas & Tinis, Ogunquit, Maine
The Vodka Gimlet is a pretty, light green thing for the holiday season. Alone again at one of my favorite haunts. Christmas music plays – the songs always so sad for some reason. Contemplative and filled with longing – for what? For faith, for Christ, for human failings. A lost childhood, a lost lover, a lost way.
The bartender sets up, rubbing a lime around the rim of a chilled martini glass. He shakes the drink in the silver mixer – fresh lime juice and Ketel One – chilling it into its own winter wonderland – mottled citrus green perfection, dappled with slivers of ice. It is a glorious entity, the cocktail – and to the regal horn revelry of ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ I raise my glass, saluting the season and the reason. The heart – warm and incomprehendingly satiated at last – sends up a murmur of thanks and joy as the trumpets peel. Let us adore him indeed.
{‘FireWater’ is a project from 2009 that has gone unposted until now.}
[See also Scene 1: Bourbon Street, New Orleans
Scene 2: College Ave, Ithaca, NY
Scene 3: Union Square, San Francisco
Scene 4: Boston & Provincetown
Scene 5: Braddock Park, Boston, MA
Scene 6: Times Square, New York
Silhouettes of faux banana trees line the walls, and shadows of banana leaves are painted near the ceiling. Outside, the winter winds rush wildly down Clinton Street, but here, in the Goddamn shade of a fucking fake banana tree, all is golden, warm, and glowing. A black and white movie plays on a flat-screen television behind me, something with Anthony Perkins in a bathrobe – but decidedly not ‘Psycho’.
Faint echoes of old Hollywood – divine decadence and delicious depravity – of glamour gone ridiculously wrong and twice-removed in this snowy upstate New York winter locale – and through it all the cockles of my heart remain warmed by the drink in my hand.
Older men greet each other with hearty handshakes and garrulous guffaws. This is how men of a certain age operate, and it’s charming to witness even as it’s going out of fashion. The days of the liquid lunch deal and, perhaps, of honor and a binding handshake, are quickly dissipating. I mourn that loss, as much as I mourn their inflexibility and their fading power.
The holidays are coming, and with them the requisite batch of parties and social events. It is enough to make me order another, and so I fortify myself against the onslaught.
{‘FireWater’ is a project from 2009 that has gone unposted until now.}
[See also Scene 1: Bourbon Street, New Orleans
Scene 2: College Ave, Ithaca, NY
Scene 3: Union Square, San Francisco
Scene 4: Boston & Provincetown
Scene 5: Braddock Park, Boston, MA
A fall surprise. In Ogunquit, Maine, at the new Tapas & Tinis, I sidle up to the bar, alone in the small room, and after a brief wait I am presented with a long list of faux-tinis. Summer has already passed, but the sun is shining and the air is warm – the idea of a cucumber martini, as suggested by the bartender, seems refreshing and perfect for a crisp fall day.
Everyone who’s anyone knows that a traditional martini is made with gin, so a “Gintini” already has a strike of redundancy against it. Wretched mangling of the moniker aside, the Hendrick’s Cucumber Gintini is an unexpectedly superb treat. Floating cucumber slices add to its fresh appeal, their large blank eyes staring up at the drinker, open-wide and beckoning with their innocent scent. They leave a lingering fragrance, notes dancing across the surface, an effect that intensifies as the drink wears on – a pleasant sensation really, and an elegant way to ease into the gin.
{‘FireWater’ is a project from 2009 that has gone unposted until now.}
[See also Scene 1: Bourbon Street, New Orleans
Scene 2: College Ave, Ithaca, NY
Scene 3: Union Square, San Francisco
Scene 4: Boston & Provincetown
Ensconced twenty floors above 42nd Street, with the sun bouncing off the buildings on a late afternoon in fall, I am waiting for Suzie to arrive. At the hotel bar – is there anything grander than a hotel bar? – a tourist with an Irish accent orders a vodka with a Guiness chaser. I think of how easy it is to talk to strangers when you’ve had a drink. It’s the universal ice-breaker. The gentleman slides into a chair in the lounge and begins his descent. He thumbs through his American money before downing the vodka. I ponder the drink menu.
An article in the ‘New York Times’ recently heralded the Negroni as a quintessential Fall drink. It’s on the menu, so I order one now. Rich with the redness of Campari and jazzed up with an orange peel, it goes down quickly – the rush of fall gliding along my throat like so many autumnal-hued leaves in scarlet, persimmon, and amber.
One of the best things about having a drink while waiting for friends is that I don’t care whether or not they’re late. This bodes well for all involved parties.
{‘FireWater’ is a project from 2009 that has gone unposted until now.}
[See also Scene 1: Bourbon Street, New Orleans
Scene 2: College Ave, Ithaca, NY
Scene 3: Union Square, San Francisco
