I was about to go all devastated about the news that the Spice Girls were mounting a tour without Posh, but then I realized that Victoria Beckham has much better people, I mean things, to do.
PS – Find more of Mr. Beckham in his underwear and other gratuitous glamour here.
“We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.†– Andre Berthiaume
We make our way along Boston Common and then the Public Garden, where Ilagan was married in 2010. He ushers us along one edge, as is his usual wont when passing by, pointing out where they stood during the ceremony. It’s a comfort to pass through, even as evening has arrived, and the leaves have started falling in earnest. He recalls their wedding lunch at the Four Seasons across the street. Even at a distance, Andy is never that far away. In the same way that he informs much of Alan’s blog (as do many of us friends and family if I may be so bold to say), he is present even in absentia.
The scent of early fall is in the air, and walking beside him and thinking of this online cast of misfits and familiar characters makes me feel slightly less alone in the world, even as it grows ever colder and dimmer. The hour, already christened the saddest of the day, adds to the melancholy dampness that suddenly stands between us and the long walk back to the condo. Alan senses something too, and just as we exit the Garden he suggests one more stop for tea at the Taj.
A sumptuous couch is open in one corner and he quickly makes it his own, dropping his shopping bags and relaxing onto its arm like he owned it. He requests a list of teas from the slightly snooty server, dismissing my annoyance at the attitude of said server, and settles on a peppermint herbal selection. “No caffeine for me, ever,†he pronounces. “I need to sleep tonight.†Here, in another place where people make their temporary homes away from home, I wonder at his propensity for hanging out in hotels. It’s been a habit of his from the time I’ve known him, and all these years later he still thrills at the notion of transitory strangers. He doesn’t want to examine the notion much. “Maybe I just like other people to make the bed?†he ponders before swerving us back to his new project. If I wanted to get deeper, peppermint tea was not the way. Yet he is passionate about the new work, and as he delves into it he gets as animated as when talking of friends.
“The whole idea of certain people being perverted has always been fascinating to me,†he says. “Is it society that that has perverted us or is it we who have perverted society? Is a gay person more perverted than a leader who believes certain minorities are less than human? Why is it more perverted for me to love my husband than for a stranger to hate us because we’re gay? That notion of where true perversion lies formed the impetus for this project.†He is off on a trip now, galloping quickly as his words tumble out between sips of tea.
“I also found myself returning to the artistic aspect of photography and using the camera as a means of communicating an idea or a thought. Just images and whatever narrative the viewer brings into it. I wanted the photographs to indicate something missing. Empty space. I wanted to capture that feeling of emptiness, but also something haunting. Faded spirits. Foreboding. Ominous. Dread. A haunted aspect as if something or someone was missing. Photos that beg the questions: what happened here? Did someone disappear? What is missing? Is someone waiting? I wanted there to be tension and a taut sense of mystery. A sense of doom.â€
There is a palatable tension to much of the project. Photos that initially read as mundane – an empty doorway, a deserted run-down factory, a dirty patch of snow – gradually turn into something more upon closer and longer examination. The cover is a ghostly vision of Alan, jarringly out of focus and barely recognizable as human, which looks like he could be dancing or being hung. That about sums up the different and disparate levels of meaning and image that run through the work. It is surprisingly complex, and eons beyond anything he’s done before.
He is somewhat critical of past projects, saying, “Most of my photos have been very posed and choreographed and set up just so. Very staged, very still, and there’s not a lot of movement in it. I wanted to do something different and new to convey movement and restlessness. So much of my previous work is stationary. Dramatic, yes, and over the top with costumes and stuff, but not in movement or action. Everything is perfectly posed, backgrounds meticulously created, framed and designed. It is deliberately formal. This project is raw, casual, entirely of-the-moment. It is urgent and transient, indicative of change and transformation. It also goes against so much of what I see today – on Instagram for example.â€
Alan has a growing Instagram following, in addition to his formidable FaceBook presence (when he’s not being banned), a sizable Twitter account (verified, no less) and even an oft-neglected YouTube Channel (“Do subscribe!” he begs). Unlike some people, however, particularly those with much larger followings, he uses most of his social media outlets as light entertainment. Granted, his Twitter account veers hard into political retweets, and he is often calling out the current President for stupidity, cruelty, and simple nonsense, but for the most part Ilagan uses his social media accounts to drive traffic to his blog. “The rest is just fluff, honestly. People take those things way too seriously. For a long time I did too, but as much as I make use of them, they actually have little impact on real life.â€
He will expound upon the virtual online world that is being created, and he owns up to being a part of it, but is hyper-wary of it. “I’m the first to post about a new coat or pair of shoes I got, or a trip to see a Broadway show, and cumulatively the world gets a very skewed notion of how I live my life. I don’t document getting up at 5:30 every morning to get to work, or sitting at my office desk, or getting home and typing a week of blog posts into my laptop. Yet those are what constitute the bulk of my daily life. On Instagram though? I’m a fucking star who lives a glamorous life where the only thing I need to do all month is try out the latest Tom Ford Private Blend.â€
If ‘PVRTD’ is a social commentary on today’s political world, it is also as much a statement on Ilagan’s own artistic evolution, and how his creative work fits into the current pop culture environment. The advent of social media has resulted in a platform for everyone to act like a star, and all the filters and apps and fancy digital tricks have given even the dullest person an opportunity to shine. That comes with benefits and drawbacks. The playing field may feel more even, but it’s also more vast, and in such a climate where the masses can theoretically put forth their own content in the same exact way that Kim Kardashian or the President does, something has to set people apart from one another. As Alan and I sit near each other, engaging in a conversation, following the threads of where thoughts and listening lead us, I’m struck by how suddenly old-fashioned such a scene has become. In this ancient hotel of this most ancient city, we are relating as humans have related since we first learned to communicate. No one under the age of 30 would dare be caught idly sipping tea and simply talking without a cel phone within safe reach. It all feels slightly sad, and I wonder if that makes me old.
Alan mentions going into “old curmudgeon mode†and indulges in a bit of lamenting to go along with my train of thought. As much as the landscape of ‘PVRTD’ is a new challenge for him, the process of its creation marks a return to where he actually began.
“Today everything is in sharp focus, brilliant color, and has this impossible-to-ignore sheen,†he explains. “With our filters and photoshop we can make perfect images, even from rather rough raw material. I didn’t want to do that for this project. I’ve never been a big photoshop fan. If you can’t take a decent photo without excessive filters and effects, then you need to work on that first. I wanted these shots to be unfiltered and unfettered by those bounds of perfection. I wanted it to be a throwback to film, when a hand or arm or foot was inadvertently part of the finished product, when you caught what you could catch in the blink of an eye, and didn’t take a series of bursts from which you could get the best shot. I wanted the immediacy of that, yet also the time-freezing and time-catching that was a hallmark of film.†To that effect, ‘PVRTD’ is strikingly effective, and plants Ilagan squarely in the realm before the arrival of digital cameras.
“It feels like moments and photos are more fluid today. There are so many ways of capturing pictures, it’s no longer so strict and unforgiving. When you used film, you had the 24 or 36 prints that were available on a roll, and that was it. You had to reload, do it all over again, and send it away to get processed if you didn’t develop them yourself. You didn’t see how things were progressing, whether you needed more or less light, until days or weeks later. Most of the time you worked with what you got, even if it was less than perfect, and tried to make it better the next time.
Conversely, today’s technology allows for instant correction – not only in the editing process but in the act of taking the photos themselves. You can see what it will look like instantly on the screen and readjust instantly. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted it to be like one roll of film, where you had to use what you got. It gave the thing a feeling of daring, of risk, of possible failure. But it gives an absolute rendering of a moment that is less staged and artificial. What happened was what got captured. There were no repeats, no retakes, no additional opportunities to make things better or prettier.â€
If it sounds like he may be pining for a by-gone era, don’t be fooled: his website exists precisely because of the advance of the internet. It’s not lost upon him, yet his Thoreau-like aversion to too much technology has kept him mostly on the creative side of things (even if he can tell you what “HTML†code stands for). As we finish our tea, I look around the beautiful room, at the Public Garden across the street, and I yearn for a little bit of the past. A little bit of our youth. A little bit of what the world was once like. At the end of this day, it feels like it’s all gone.
We part in the lobby of the Taj, near the bottom of a circular staircase and beside a banquette of seasonal flowers. Alan always walks through this space just to see the floral arrangements; he still recalls the bountiful bouquets of peonies and cherry blossoms that marked his wedding stay all those many years ago. It is a fitting end to our Boston interviews. He will go back to the condo and sleep on the couch, listening to the sounds of the Braddock Park fountain before it is drained and put to bed for the winter. We’ll rendezvous at his home in upstate New York in a few days for one last interview session. He sweeps through the revolving door and disappears into the night.
The magic and mystery of Daylight Savings. What did you do with your one extra hour? I’m spending mine going over this recap for you. Everything that got posted in the last week, all in one convenient post for your reading pleasure, or otherwise. Shall we begin, Mr. Hart?
The week was mostly about promoting my new PVRTD project (and all the ass shots that have nothing to do with the project itself but are fun because it annoys everyone and their mothers). The Press Release is here (ass shot included). The promotional interview (with all the requisite tooshie pics) begins here.
Tomorrow we vote. Here’s what we are up against.
I model my office behavior on Juno.
… solved by the perfect costume for this point in my life.
November dreaming goes deep.
Beautiful Scars by Madonna: the rare non-noteworthy Madonna Timeline entry.
The perverse thrills of a onesie made out of netting. (Ass shot warning!)
The perfect song for the extra hour.
The second part of the PVRTD Promo interview is posted here. (Where you can debate what constitutes ass-coverage when netting is involved.)
Follow the threads back to the beginning.
Shawn Mendes showers in his trunks (but a shirtless Shawn Mendes is better than no Shawn Mendes at all).
The third part of the PVRTD Promo interview gets rather ghostly, but I’ve not given up the butt-shots just yet.
Hunks of the Day included Vanilla Ice, Ronnie Woo, Diego Arnary, Sidharth Malhotra, Brian Sims and Joshua Morrow.
“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.†– F. Scott Fitzgerald
The day has turned cloudy and cool. Alan thrills at the shift in the atmosphere. “Finally, fall in proper form!†he proclaims to no one in particular. In the shadows of the downtown buildings, the day feels even darker. Fall indeed has descended and as much as he professes to be excited about it, a furrowed brow indicates the first tinge of worry. Shopping bags in hand, he directs us up an old cobblestone street into the lobby of the Parker House Hotel, bringing us back a full century. In the hush of the dark entrance, we pass couches and chairs where people are propped looking down at their laptops or cel phones. Even in his most outrageous outfit, Alan might go unnoticed in this modern scene. No one looks up as we glide by, even with the occasionally inappropriate outburst. (“That luggage is ghastly! Isn’t that luggage ghastly??â€) He knows a cozy nook upstairs where we can have oysters and early afternoon cocktails, looking over the bustling street below and secreted safely away from the suddenly-wicked wind.
We choose a window seat, and the glass is from an era of imperfection and wavy variation, lending a surreal distortion to the people walking outside. Our server takes the order – a dozen oysters and a pair of dry martinis, one with olives and mine with a twist – and then we are left alone. If it were not for the television almost-discreetly placed in the corner, I’d swear we had gone back several decades. Alan is game for timelessness, leaning back into his chair and surveying the room.
“This is the first place my friend Kira tried oysters, and she’s loved them ever since,†he says, recounting former antics with his long-time friend. Whenever he talks of friends, his eyes are a bit more animated, and a rare glimpse of affection emerges from a typically-stoic stance. Kira has become a mainstay on his trips to Boston, one of the regular characters who populates his blog. That little village of friends and family is known to those of us who regularly follow along on his website. “God love you,†he intones in a quieter voice, “But no one close to me reads my blog with any regularity.†There is more to be said about that, but he’s not quite ready, or willing. It’s easier to talk about his artistic output, the separate entity that originates from within and takes on its own life once it’s been birthed. Distance and time, time and distance – he can address anything with enough of them. And so he begins telling of the origins of ‘PVRTD’.
The idea was seeded at the Art Institute of Chicago in the spring of 2017. He hadn’t been in the city since 2000, and as he left it in the rear-view mirror of the rental truck that he and Suzie were driving away from his busted-up relationship, the salty film over his eyes blurred it all in a haze of heartache and pain. Almost two decades later, he found himself back at the lakefront, on a sunny but windy day, entering the museum by himself. Two immense lions guarded the edifice, and he remembered a holiday shopping article he had written for the Windy City Times in which he visited the museum gift shop and was given a foam pen topped with a colorful abstract lion. At the time, conflicted by his break-up and the nagging sense that he didn’t belong in that city, he’d wanted to roar like those lions, out of devastation and sadness. All these years later he felt a kind of fondness for returning to the place where he had to grow up, but such warmth was marred by those bittersweet memories.
“I was visiting Chicago and surprised by how moved I was looking back at everything that had happened so long ago. I went to the Art Institute and there was an exhibition called ‘Provoke’ culled from the Japanese photo magazine of the 1960’s (‘Provoke: Provocative Materials for Thought’), which featured black and white photography of the protests of the period, of the artists, of the human life that was going on. It spoke to me on many planes, and it reminded me of the purity of photography, something I’d sort of neglected or marred with the ease of iPhones and Elphs. I was inspired to focus on the photograph, and less on the gimmick or presentation. I was moved by how raw much of that work was, how there were fingers blocking some of the photos, the smudge of movement, the unfocused brutality of it all. And that style was what I wanted to attempt. Coupled with the state of the country, and the frightening situation of having such a dangerously inept and volatile leader, it made for fertile creative ground.â€
By the winter of 2018, he had an idea of what he wanted to present, he had only to execute it. Test shoots were held at his brother’s new house in Amsterdam, NY, while the overall trajectory of the work began to flesh itself out. Themes of winter, outcasts, and the darkest points in our collective history echoed similar events playing out in the current news cycle. Recalling such tragic and dark points in the past – from the Ku Klux Klan to the mass-extinction of Jews during World War 2 – bled into our modern-day world, and he saw similarities that were as eerie as they were alarming. He wanted to make statements on that without hitting the viewers over the head with any overt message.
“Guilty,†is his verdict on getting the point of past projects across. “I have always worried that people wouldn’t get whatever message or statement I was making, and some of my work got a little… clunky because of it.†For ‘PVRTD’, there is no table of contents to guide the viewer through the pages, no foreword or preface to give an indication of what is about to be seen. Alan kept the whole project under the strictest secrecy, only revealing a few key images when others were employed to help with the photography and he himself slid in front of the camera (which he did far less for this endeavor than most others).
It wasn’t always easy to get people to help – his brother voiced concern over stepping onto abandoned property, while others weren’t comfortable being involved when select portions of the subject matter was described (“I purposely left out the whole trajectory and intent because I didn’t want to reveal that, but in hindsight it might have helped people understand things betterâ€), but throughout the winter and spring of 2018, he worked diligently at getting the bulk of principal photography finished. When he took a summer break from his blog, he also set ‘PVRTD’ down for a couple of months.
When he returned to it at the end of summer, the world was in an even more chaotic place. The final set piece shot for the project was its most incendiary (quite literally, as it involved fire and burning certain objects). As he watched the country return to a 1950’s nightmare of racial unrest, sexist inequality, and blatant bigotry, he brought to life disturbing images of white supremacy, reminders of how awful our country had been, not so long ago. (As of this writing, only a select few have seen the finished product in its entirety, and no one wants to be the first to go on record as to its merit.)
Part of him wants to get deeper into the creative process of how ‘PVRTD’ came into existence, but the hour has turned tricky. “The saddest part of the day,†is how he describes our current predicament. Our oysters finished and our martinis sweating onto the table, it’s almost time to go. He doesn’t want to speak further on the topic at hand. I excuse myself for a quick trip to the bathroom. After giving direction to the stairs that lead up to the next level, Alan gives a quiet warning that it’s haunted. He settles back in his chair and folds his arms across his chest after the decidedly unsettling comment, and I back away.
Looking it up later, I find that the Parker House is indeed rumored to be haunted, and on the third floor, deserted and empty, there is a discernible feeling of being watched, a creepiness amid the pretty surroundings. The sense of someone lurking around each corner is palpable, and I know not whether it’s simply the suggestion of a haunting or an actual ghost. Neither is very reassuring, I must admit.
Darkness comes, sooner than expected, sooner than I realized. I rush down the stairs and find him ready to go.
“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.â€
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 fallâ€) 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 Triangleâ€
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\\\
[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.â€
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.
There’s a whole lot of Eve going on right now, and Bette Davis is likely throwing a tantrum in her grave as only she can. All fire and brimstone and things that go bump in the night… I have nothing more to add. Let’s look back at the week that came before.
Breathing new life into peppers.
It was a Monster Ball.
Dipping candles in the fall.
A shirtless Ben Cohen returns to the calendar game.
Shirtless Sunday fun-day stuff.
Hunks of the Day include Matty Lee, Mark Ballas, Rory McIlroy, Randy Rainbow, Titanius Maximus, Matt Dallas and Daniel Newman (again).
“Homosexual practices were actually very widespread in the camps. The prisoners, however, ostracized only those whom the SS marked with the pink triangle. The fate of the homosexuals in the concentration camps can only be described as ghastly… Theirs was an insoluble predicament and virtually all of them perished.†~ Eugen Kogon
Shadows in shadows,
turned the blackest night
next to sunlight on snow…
Ominous darkness, foreboding
and criminal.
Stains of history,
implacable
stubborn
doomed.
Stains in shadow,
stains in complicity,
stains in conspiracy…
Shadow takes us all,
suffocating
smothering…
Choking on
smoke rising
from the bodies,
Breathing in
your charred brothers and mothers and daughters and sisters and uncles and grandfathers and sons
our charred brothers and mothers and daughters and sisters and uncles and grandfathers and sons
burnt hair
flesh
bone
floating into the sky
onto the snow
mud or blood or ash, who can tell…
?
PVRTD
The New Project
November 2018
www.ALANILAGAN.com
We are on the verge of the month that my new project ‘PVRTD’ gets released. It’s all happening online, right here on The Projects page, which ushers in a new era of how these things may be done from this point forward. It also marks a departure from most of what I’ve done thus far in both style and substance. Here are a few peeks at the change in tone, and a look at what goes into the creation of something new.
Much of the promotional stuff has been typical strip-tease mining, and while that’s fun for some of you, it doesn’t encompass what the bulk of ‘PVRTD’ is about – and that’s been quite intentional. Before every big fall there is a rise to the giddy heights of decadence and freedom. Here, the very first peek at what happens afterward… and some behind-the-scenes shots of how we made it all happen.
For this work, I got my friends and family to help out. It’s such a dark project that I wanted the warmth and light of those people who mean the most to me to seep in somehow. On this particular weekend in Boston, Kira aided me in the photographic duties, and we traversed Chinatown seeking out the appropriate settings and scenes.
It was a dreary and damp night, but she made it fun and bearable, and we ended it with a bowl of soup. Sharing such a meal at the sleepy tail-end of a cold evening out is one of my favorite things to do. A necessary one too. The subject matter, while it had not yet been fleshed out fully, would be weighty, and knowing this imbued our work with a seriousness that most of my projects often lack, particularly in the creation portion. (You should have seen the hysterics involved in shooting some of my holiday cards. The darker those were, the funnier it was to make them.) For this project, there wasn’t as much laughter.
The fatigue from a night of shooting shows through here, and I love that. My guard is down when I’m with Kira. I can ease into a subway manspread (it was practically empty!) and let the outside wind fuck up my hair and it’s all ok. We got some good shots and in my mind I was already figuring out what part they would play in the new project.
We walked from the subway to the condo, the night promising the end of winter but neither of us quite believing it.
I think I’m at my most alive when I’m in the act of creating.
PVRTD
November 2018
The Projects Page
www.ALANILAGAN.com
