Saturated with summer, the world at last feels ripe. So rarely do we realize it when it happens; so often it is revealed in hindsight. I’m trying to live more in the moment, to put down the phone and the laptop, to open a book, to jump in the pool, to examine the garden a few times during the day. See how the light shifts and changes, see how the leaves and flowers respond. Let’s take an equal examination of the week that came before…
No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone. ~ Oscar Wilde
My last project was released with all the bombast and racy photo shoots that my first project in four years earned, and ‘PVRTD’ deserved such a build-up and promotional platform. Postcards and press releases and all sorts of fantastical stuff were sent out, a long and regular posting scheduled of online promotional stunts, and a super-saturation of all my social media outlets served to drive a self-proclaimed (and mostly solely self-realized) publicity frenzy for what was largely one of the most controversial, and angry, projects I’ve ever made. And when I open that book and go through the photographs, I most humbly say that it delivered. ‘PVRTD’ was not a happy or fun journey, but there was beauty there – dim, subtle, heart-wrenching beauty, almost lost in the gray shadow-world that I did my best to conjure. By the end of it, though, my darkness fetish had been satiated, and I wanted something that went the complete opposite for a next project.
Hence my new one. Out next weekend if you want to stop by and see it for yourself. I’ll try to get it up online shortly thereafter, but along with the absence of pomp and grandiosity, there’s also an absence of impetus. I’ll do it when I feel like doing it, and in the summer that may take longer than usual.
The good news is that the select few people who have seen it have declared it their favorite among all my projects, and that’s sweet to hear. Rather than toot my own horn, I’ll let this one slip quietly into the sunny days. Come back here periodically to see if it has made its appearance. She’s a shy little thing, but she’s oh-so-pretty… you’ll find her like a piece of painted water…
While any smart person would hesitate to proclaim one particular summer their all-time favorite, the summer of 1990 stands out as a definite contender in my life. (2000 and 2010 do as well, for different reasons.) Way back in 1990, I was all of fourteen going on fifteen, but I can still remember more of that summer than I can of anything that happened yesterday.
It began with a first date with a guy, when all I could do was ‘Hold On’ because I didn’t even know what was happening. It continued with the striking of a pose: ‘Vogue.’ It got everyone a little Breathless, because ‘It Must Have Been Love’ before I even knew what love was. Does anyone really know what love is? It saw my friends and I making a trip to the then-Soviet Union ~ around the world and as far away from home as we could possibly be, so we made our own home and somehow I knew that I would be all right. A guy named Rat helped a little too.
It was a summer of wishful thinking and someone would be crowned a king…
I DON’T NEED TO FALL AT YOUR FEET
JUST CAUSE YOU CUT ME TO THE BONE
AND I WON’T MISS THE WAY THAT YOU KISS ME
WE WERE NEVER CARVED IN STONE
IF I DON’T LISTEN TO THE TALK OF THE TOWN
THEN MAYBE I CAN FOOL MYSELF
I’LL GET OVER YOU I KNOW I WILL
I’LL PRETEND MY SHIP’S NOT SINKING
AND I’LL TELL MYSELF I’M OVER YOU
CAUSE I’M THE KING OF WISHFUL THINKING
I AM THE KING OF WISHFUL THINKING.
I needed someone under me before I could get over them. Yet I was not quite ready to embark or even hope for a romantic quest. When I thought about girls, I wanted to be their friend more than anything else, to be part of their whispered secrets, to exchange silly notes, to be a member of their cloistered spheres and realms of influence. I wanted to BE with them, not to be WITH them. And at such a young age (because once upon a time fourteen was a very young age) I had no interest in anything else.
To make up for that, or to impel something ~ anything ~ into happening (such were my soap-operatic leanings) I wished to access the push and pull of this Go West pop song. I wanted the heartache because that would mean I’d had a love to lose. I wanted the break-up pangs of sadness because it would mean I would have had the happiness of romance. I wanted the blues because something in my soul accessed sadness easier than happiness. It might have been fucked up, but I’ve never claimed not to be fucked up.
I REFUSE TO GIVE IN TO MY BLUES
THAT’S HOW IT’S GONNA BE
AND I DENY THE TEARS IN MY EYES
CAUSE I DON’T WANT TO LET YOU SEE
THAT YOU HAVE MADE A HOLE IN MY HEART
AND NOW I’VE GOT TO FOOL MYSELF
I’LL GET OVER YOU I KNOW I WILL
I’LL PRETEND MY SHIP’S NOT SINKING
AND I’LL TELL MYSELF I’M OVER YOU
CAUSE I’M THE KING OF WISHFUL THINKING
I AM THE KING OF WISHFUL THINKING.
Despite the warning of so many fairy tales, I wasn’t careful with what I wished for. Happily, I didn’t know that then, and I would welcome any bit of emotional flotsam that floated my way, eager for a feeling, for an emotion, for a reckoning… Summer did that to a person.
The level of customer service is invertly proportional to the quality of coffee at both Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts, and I’m starting to accept the lackluster coffee of the latter to avoid the shoddy service of the former.
When you get caught between the moon and New York City, I’m not exactly sure where you’d be. Far preferable would be to get caught between Tom Holland and Jake Gyllenhaal, who make bromantic chemistry in the latest Spiderman movie. Mr. Gyllenhaal has been here numerous times before. See the following:
Whenever I’m feeling a little lonely, I just slip into my junkiest pair of gym shorts and some ratty t-shirt, fuck up my hair before forgetting to hide it with a baseball cap, and put on a pair of faded flip-flops – then head to the nearest grocery store. There, I will invariably and without fail run into numerous coworkers, acquaintances, family, friends, enemies, nightmares, and anyone who has been anyone in my life: a veritable who’s-who cornucopia of a cluster-fuck with me at the center of it all, dressed in sartorial-reputation-tattering rags.
Works like a charm every time.
Now, when I want to lay low, I just get all dolled-up and put on high hopes of having everyone see me and I will be completely left alone. That’s when it falls to strangers to stroke the ego and fan the flames of self-idol-dom.
This is the way of the universe, and the universe is nothing if not infuriatingly clever.
I say that in a tone tinged with fatigue and admiration.
It’s always been the easiest social media outlet for me to use, at least on an emotional level. In a practical sense too I suppose, though some might say it’s much simpler to post a few words on FaceBook or Twitter than to take a photo worth sharing. I’m somewhere between the camps, in an overpriced hotel with a balcony because I do not do camping. But back to Instagram before I digress completely into Troop Beverly Hills wanna-be territory.
It’s a platform for pictures and hashtags, and they don’t even allow you to put a website link on each post which makes for a cleaner experience. (They don’t seem to mind the ads though.) Anyway, I go back and forth between putting effort into my Instagram account and not doing anything for a day or two, and my feed swings wildly among various states of nudity, pornographic plant pics, culinary glory holes, and gratuitous cocktail money shots.
My followers pick up whenever things get racy and shirtless, then decline when I post family-friendly shit, but the latter is so much more interesting and fun for me, so I’m left wondering: is the point of Instagram to gain notice and glory, to stay in touch with friends and online acquaintances, or just to have a good time? Or maybe it’s just a time-filler for those who can’t stand to sit alone at a cafe and simply look around and engage with a real environment. I’m still figuring that out.
The cardinal rule for social media that has allowed me to be rather successful in certain manners of measurement has always been not to take any of it too seriously, while honoring my own voice and image and doing my best to convey authenticity. It’s too taxing to fake it, but too silly to take it too gravely. I find a lighter touch works best, which is what I’m trying to work out for Instagram. If you like what you see here (I’m partial to strong color and vivid shades) check out my Instagram handle (alanilagan) and hold on tight.
I earned my crotchety old man badge this July 4th, when at 12:30 AM I was still awake in bed because some neighborhood idiots were setting off fireworks. Not the quiet smoke bomb kind or sparklers, but the real rocket deal that shoot way up in the sky and explode with thunderous booming and banging. The local dogs were going wild, so between the barking and the explosions, I didn’t have a restful night.
I still don’t know how/if that kind of explosive is legal. I also don’t think they’re supposed to be setting them off after 10 PM. I do know that I am officially a grumpy old man, but the truth is I was a grumpy old man at age 11, so now I’m just super good at it. Give me my badge and stop talking.
It was only with the slightest bit of trepidation that I ordered second row tickets for Faye Dunaway’s performance as Katherine Hepburn in ‘Tea At Five’ currently playing in Boston. It’s not like she’s going to break the fourth wall, make it to the second row and choke me out or beat with a wire hanger, right?
RIGHT??
Or is that too much to hope for? As a fan of Ms. Dunaway’s stage and screen work – I saw her a number of years ago as Maria Callas in ‘Master Class’ – and any graduate of Gay 101 has seen and memorized most of ‘Mommie Dearest‘ – I’m looking forward to her take on Katherine Hepburn. When one icon portrays another icon, it’s always worth a look. The mirrors and reflections involved, and the multi-level density and complexity of such a theatrical feat have proven rich and fertile grounds for wonderful things in the past (see all the times Helen Mirren portrayed a queen).
There are plans for this show to hit Broadway in the next few months, so something special certainly seems to be in the offing. We shall see what we shall see… I had high hopes for last summer’s ‘Moulin Rouge‘ preview in Boston, and that was one big hot spectacular mess. Here’s hoping Ms. Dunaway’s star vehicle doesn’t fly off the rails or the handle. Well, maybe a little off the handle. If you can’t be slightly shook by Faye Dunaway as Katherine Hepburn, you’re not really alive.
