Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

It’s finally happened – I’ve turned into an almost-old man. (By the way, the original title of this blog post was ‘ He’s Got Legs and He Knows How to Use Them’ – still torn about whether I made the right decision…)

The realization of old-manhood came as I was halfway down our driveway to pick up a package that had been delivered to our mailbox. I got the message late at night and slept on it, and upon remembering it first thing in the morning, I just threw on an overcoat over my long-sleeved t-shirt and underwear, then stepped into a pair of ancient, battered slip-on sandals that Andy and I have been sharing for years, and made my way out into the cold, sunny day. As I reached the end of the driveway, I looked down at myself and saw what any of the neighbors might be seeing – a middle-aged guy with crazy hair and glasses, bare legs and sandals, with an overcoat hopefully buttoned in the right holes whose occupant was too scared to fully check. (Some things are better left unknown.) When I got back inside (and the short walk back into the house was much quicker than the walk out as my brain woke fully) I realized that I actually didn’t care. Moreover, I wanted to capture the reality of it, so I took a few pics with my phone to commemorate the early-morning occasion. 

It is a most unflattering photo you will see below, but not inaccurate, and if we’re going to be real here – my main endeavor whenever possible – we are going to be super-real. That means owning and acknowledging and accepting all 48-and-a-half years I’ve lived on this earth. It means being ok with being perfectly (and often wildly) imperfect. It means being messy and crazed and unkempt, and embracing all of it at every moment. 

That makes for a sillier, and happier, life.

It also makes me feel less alone, because you are all just as fucked-up in the morning, and I don’t see any of your asses out posing for pictures. Good day.

When you haven’t been to Raindancer with your bestie in a couple of decades, you have to order a Colossal Flowering Onion. So it was that Suzie and I found ourselves on the receiving end of what is indeed a Colossal Flowering Onion, in all its fried glory and horseradish sauce splendor (and no, we did not completely finish it). We were in town for the Still Remains show, and decided to do a catch-up dinner at one of Amsterdam’s stalwart haunts. 

When I arrived (we were traveling separately) I sat in the parking lot for a minute and watched as an older couple got out of their car. The woman hurried ahead, while the man, in white hair, walked around to the passenger side to examine something before catching up with her. It was such a commonplace scene, and not at all noteworthy, except it reminded me of my parents, and all the dinners we had there over the years. Such simple scenes would not happen now that Dad was gone, and I took it in again. There was a pang of sadness, the insidious sliver of loss, but it was ok. I pulled my coat around me and rushed out into the winter’s brutal cold.

At our table, I noticed the salt and pepper shakers, thinking of how well they went together, and how strange it would be for them to be apart. But Suzie kept the talk buoyant, and I never let on what was in my mind. Not that she would have minded or that I intentionally wanted to keep it secret (clearly, as I’ve poured it all out here) – I just stuck to other people’s drama, and we ended up having a fine dinner before the show. 

A little fried food goes a long way toward comforting new wounds, as does an old friend. 

We have reached the final week of the final full month of winter, and while arch may come in like a lion (and often leave like one too) the very first wisps of spring are carried on the wind, and a little feeling of hope is in the air again. With that happy thought, on with the weekly blog recap…

It began on unsteady legs and uncertain terms.

What February 21st has looked like for the past ten years.

Circus Maximus.

Like a vagabond.

Apple Pay is as easy as I used to be.

See Tom Holland topping Shawn Mendes.

Time was…

That microwave chocolate cake in a mug.

A return to Cape Cod realigned the chakras or whatever else needed alignment.

It offered a glimpse of a swan, and a stunning sunset, as only the Cape can.

Suzie and I made a surprise appearance at my brother’s band’s show this weekend for his birthday eve – see this little write-up on Still Remains here. 

Dazzlers of the Day included David Archuleta, Pamela Anderson and my very own brother.

A gift from my friend and the universe, a Cape Cod sunset is one of life’s most spectacular treasures. Just as my phone chimed to signal the close of my meditation, JoAnn burst through the door and ordered me into the car to catch the sunset. Unsure of its appearance after the snow squall, she saw it happening on her way back, and we quickly drove down to the shore to catch it dipping into the water. 

The sky was incendiary – more glorious than any photo could ever capture, more magnificent and moving, and it took the breath away just as much as the chill in the air. Such beauty was worth a little time in the cold, and we stood there, over twenty-five years since we first met in Boston when we were young. With this single sunset, I felt the happy and heavy weight of those decades. 

I understood why JoAnn would often stop here for the sunset. There was a splendor to the sky that whispered of the divine, and somehow brought us closer to a sort of spirituality that transcended all religion and wonder. It was mystical and majestic – it was its own act of faith, as much of a covenant as a rainbow. 

You don’t always realize how starved the soul can be until it can be fed by such beauty. Calmly, we surveyed the magnificence in ways we could never fathom twenty-plus years ago, appreciating and acknowledging the gratitude of simply existing amid such glory. 

A dinner with several dear friends awaited us at JoAnn’s cozy abode, and our quick little chapter on this return to Cape Cod comes to a quietly contented close. 

Sensing that I needed a dose of the Cape’s rightfully-renowned natural majesty, JoAnn drove me out to the water. Years ago our friend Lee had sent us out to walk a pair of dogs she was watching, and we took them to the stretch of beach we drove past now. Lee has been gone for almost ten years – another loss, another bit of emptiness never to be filled – but as we drove by and the afternoon light hinted at spring, it felt more like acceptance than torment. We reminisced a bit about that day with the dogs, and somehow Lee was back with us, laughing and smiling and as amused as we were touched. Our loved ones do live on, even as our winter storms rage. 

The sky changed swiftly then, as though reminding us of it transient nature. You can count on friends; you cannot count on the sky or the weather. A wall of dark gray approached from a distance. We made a stop by the water and got out of the car to take it all in before the weather shifted further.

A lone swan swam in the water, its feathers echoing the white clumps of snow still unmelted. JoAnn eyed it warily, warning me that the swans here weren’t of the friendly sort. A temperamental swan prone to acting out, I thought – a creature after my own heart. Beauty and danger. 

We stood there for a while, as the swan circled its patch of water. Before it could reach us, we were back in the car and driving directly beneath the wall of gray that had now become a ceiling, and a quick little snow squall. This is the Cape, again, in another of its facets. Beautiful and ferocious. 

We made it through the squall, which was soon over, and the sun was back in the sun for my afternoon meditation. JoAnn had an errand to run, and one more gift to bestow before dinner with a few surprise friends. I settled in to the deep breathing, and the sun conspired to grant us grace…

The last time I was in Cape Cod it was beneath the cover of darkness and sadness and loss. JoAnn had just lost her mother, and though I was in no shape to be there, I had to make the trip for her, just to give her a hug at the wake. There’s nothing to be said at such moments, but it means something to be there when you can. At that time – the cruel November of 2019 – my social anxiety was saddling me with panic attacks, and being around people was becoming more and more difficult, but Kira offered to accompany me and we made the trip to see our friend as she bid goodbye to her Mom. 

Shortly thereafter, COVID hit, and we were bound to our homes without travel for a couple of years, during which time JoAnn was able to make a couple of trips up to Albany, and we would occasionally rendezvous in Boston, as we did this past holiday season, but I couldn’t carve out a Cape Cod return until last weekend. It was, as always, worth the wait, and more than worth the drive. 

Out of all of our friends, I would have bet that JoAnn and I would have been the last ones anyone thought would stop drinking and partying – yet all these years later that’s precisely what has happened, and we are both happier and better for it. Life has knocked us about and taken some of those we love, and maybe that’s made it easier to take better care of ourselves. I don’t know, we’re still finding our way – and it’s easier to do that work together. 

The world has changed dramatically since 2019, but the beauty and balm that Cape Cod has always been for me remains the same. It’s a feeling that enriches and sustains the soul, a brush with the sublime that leaves me better than I was before, if only for a moment. Those moments reside happily in memory, accessible on the coldest winter nights, ready to warm with their magic and love. 

That JoAnn should bring me back to such beauty is a fitting testament to our enduring friendship. Her home has truly become her own, with a renovated kitchen and bathroom that are simply exquisite – the ideal embodiment of her taste and style, and a welcoming interior countenance to match her personality. (I’ve already reserved the bathroom backdrop for a photo shoot in service of a new project – but I really just want to dive into a long bath there.)

On this Saturday, I arrived to the new-to-me renovations, and we quickly settled in for an intense session of catch-up before heading out to see some of the afternoon light before it went away for the day…

The passing of time is rarely felt as it happens. Our senses are far too unrefined to feel the shift of seconds, even as we hear them ticking away. Time is too moody in the way it shifts – ebbing and flowing in waves slowly drawn out or quickly smashed. It’s also dependent upon mood and perspective – and just one of those variables differs from person to person, and hour to hour. 

We gauge time largely through hindsight, when we look back at photos from the past. We don’t see it pass day by day in the mirror every morning – we see it only when we look back farther than a day. Time terrorizes in such insidious ways, ever the great equalizer. 

It feels like we only just started winter, as if that December date was right behind us, when really we have less than a month left to the season of slumber. Realizing that, I had a bit of a panic. As anxious as I am for winter to pass and spring to arrive, I wondered if I truly appreciated these slower days. I wanted them to mean something more. I wanted there to be more healing. More peace. And I don’t know if that’s happened. Maybe the not knowing is the real answer. Maybe time is the only answer. I still don’t know. I still doubt. I try to be ok with the doubt. 

Did I lean into the stark days of winter? Will there be something more trying to this season, I wonder. A brush with despondency once felt like the only way to move forward. My mind now feels scattered. Sitting down in the living room, I attempt to literally ground myself, sinking into the floor and allowing gravity to pull every part of me flat against the ground. This is where I find myself often these days: on the floor, grounded in the only way I can muster when the mind takes flight.

You can’t fall down when you’ve already been laid flat. 

The realization of mortality then shakes and shifts the ground beneath me, and nothing is revealed as stable in the end. That’s when I learn there are many ways to be grounded, one of which is to remain in the motion, undulating with the wish and whim of the world, floating like a single pink petal from a cherry blossom, so sure of its life, finite and small.

The circus has come to the town of my mind, as whispers of a new project grow louder and more insistent. It appears that this website has thus far survived the updates of the host company, so I am scrambling for something to post since I was banking on a few days of down time. Alas, no rest for the wicked. 

These pink-themed top-hat-topped ringmaster pics are from the promo blitz for last year’s 20th anniversary of ALANILAGAN.com. As I gear up for a possible new project, look for more re-treads and outtakes from previous efforts. It’s been a while since I was in creative gear, and over the last few years I’ve learned not to try to do everything I used to do. That means focusing less on substantial content here while I move into making something new. My content and output on this blog is such that one week of posts here once amounted to an entire project in and of itself. That means the volume is equal to 52 projects a year. Something has to give if I’m going to produce a new one, and so the schedule will be lighter. It’s all good. And I want to take this year a little bit easier anyway. 

So peruse the past posts when things get barren here, particularly the past that once felt so much like a circus. There’s still some crazy in this old horse.