Bonus Round Portland Performance Now Online.

Steve Schalchlin from Chris Guillebeau on Vimeo.

I am grateful to Chris Guillebeau for inviting me to the World Domination Summit 2013. You'll hear several references to other speakers in my talk. All of their talks are also online and I absolutely ENCOURAGE you to click around and listen to them.

The Album He Would Have Made #IfHeHadn'tDied.

I keep hearing that in my head every day. The Album he would have made if he hadn't died.

It's only an accident that I'm making an album. What I'm presenting is a collection of songs that I like singing at this moment in my life. Plus a few I hadn't done in a long time. For instance, I was kind of shocked to find out there was no recording of me singing Somebody's Friend. 

How I've sung it has evolved much over the years.

When I wrote it originally, with the "radio" audience in mind, we made a big demo that we thought would sound good with a reggae beat. I still love that recording. Ginger Freers nailed that vocal. But that didn't work for the show. It had to be more angry and raw than that. 

I could hear what I wanted in my head, but I couldn't reproduce it until I realized I was hearing a guitar lick. David Robyn helped me with that. 

Since I don't play guitar, what I ended up with was my piano imitation of a guitar lick, which has its own weird sort of authenticity. I have a special relationship with Somebody's Friend, the promise of false cures.

As I was riding the bus the other day, after having had a discussion about "rise from the grave" life experiences, I kept hearing the title phrase in my head: The album he would have made if he hadn't died.

I can't say that this is that album. I don't want to try to live up to that kind of pressure. The pieces I've been composing are more concert/choral/orchestral type. They need a lot more formality. My Mass, for instance, will be performed in the Spring. And I'd definitely want that to be a part of my musical legacy.

But that would make a great title for something. Or even a meme. 

#IfHeHadn'tDied

However, going up to someone on the street and asking. "Hello, what would you have done if you hadn't died?" sounds more like a slasher pic. Ah, ye cynical world.

Just How Old Am I?

From a recent article by David France ("How To Survive A Plague"):

A study presented at a conference in February in Montreal showed that otherwise healthy people on HIV medications at about 56 years of age had immune systems comparable to HIV-negative subjects whose median age is 88. Perhaps as a result, many diseases that typically attack the very old are striking younger HIV-positive people disproportionately, like diseases of the liver, kidney, heart, and veins. One study found that 55-year-olds who are HIV-positive have all the telltale signs of late-life frailty—muscle loss, fatigue, and rheumatologic disorders.

I can relate to that. I'm a cranky old man before my time!

And studies show patients with minor deficits have trouble remembering to take their medications, which can lead to more serious problems like drug resistance and even early death. “We’re not talking about people who look like advanced Alzheimer’s disease,” he says. “But nevertheless they can have an effect on everyday functioning, which can be serious.” Plus, as Dr. Simpson puts it, “it’s scary as hell.” That describes a former Balanchine dancer named Kenn who, though battling HIV for 25 years, had been able to remake his career several times over until recently, when he lost his ability to process information reliably. “You realize you can’t read and you used to read,” he tells me. “That’s the hardest part, when you cognitively know you’re losing yourself.”

It's why I devote my life to music. As I said before, when I'm not doing my music, I can feel my body weaken. I also have been keeping my mind active through memorization. I tell you, my Richard II is like nobody else's.

It might seem churlish to complain about the consequences of aging with HIV, when, for the first six years of the plague, there were no anti-HIV drugs at all. Life expectancy after a first doctor’s visit back then was eighteen months.

When the HIV meds started working, we went from Holocaust levels of dead people to suddenly nobody dying. Dr. Ellie Goldstein, my first doc out in L.A. said, at the time, it was like seeing a dying garden suddenly rebloom.

You saw skulls become flesh. It happened with me.

So, yeah. I'm grateful for the fact that I'm alive. I'm grateful to still have a functioning mind. But that's why I can't let up. I can't slow down. If I slow down, like the bus in "Speed," it all blows up. And now, with this new information, I don't know if it will be death or dementia. I'm in the headlights. But aren't we all? Isn't that life itself, anyway?

I turn 60 this year. So, it's SteveFest 60 in the City and around the world. I'm declaring it now. Get me while I'm still here! Want to perform New World Waking? It's yours. Want your choir to test out my Mass? Just ask. I'm giving it all away. Let's celebrate life together. 

At A Hospice.

A Worldwide Choir?

He heard the music in his head and then conducted it in silence on video. Hundreds of singers all over the world sang to his conducting, also on video, and he put them together into a virtual choir.

I want to steal this idea. I love it so much. As the music began playing, and the different faces of the singers began to flash, each in their own little window, I actually got a little teary-eyed. The first video tells how he did it. The second video is the song itself.





h/t: Nevski

Thor to the Rescue.

Stephen Wallem singing "Rescue."

They call him Thor on the Showtime series, Nurse Jackie. He’s a nurse, and is one of Jim’s and my favorite characters on the show.

His real name is Stephen Wallem and our mutual friend, Ralph Lampkin, introduced us via email last year, because Stephen was moving from Chicago to New York, saying that he’s a really good singer.

Not having heard him, and since we were also making the move to New York, I didn’t get to chance to really hear him until a month or so ago, when he and Nurse Jackie star, Edie Falco, did a cabaret act -- called something like, “The Other Steve And Edie” -- at the Laurie Beechman Theater, near our apartment. (They were fabulous together, and he’s a seriously talented singer and comedian, and writer).

So, last week, I saw his name on a poster for a benefit concert for a rescue shelter program. Called Broadway Goes To The Dogs, I decided to send him the music for “Rescue,” blithely telling him that he should learn it and sing for this concert, which was only a few days away.

I got a note back immediately. “YES!”

I didn’t get to see the concert, but I did get a note saying that it went really well, and that a DVD is being edited. I cannot wait to hear it. But, how lovely that he would so immediately respond.

Gypsy of the Year

Today, sitting with Jake at the Gypsy of the Year competition, Judith Light stepped forward to ask for a moment of silence in remembrance of people who died. She was there at the first one and she said people who weren't alive during that time will never know the kind of extreme loss of that year, when people were dying by the hundreds and thousands.

Having gone through a lot of memorial services, including my own, I tend to be pretty hard to move to tears.

But, without warning, my eyes started just gushing tears. Jake patted me on the shoulder, but I didn't react to him. I wasn't even sure what I was feeling, except loss.

Loss of entire generation of gay men. The ones -- as Fran Liebowitz puts it in the hysterical HBO movie, Public Speaking -- who were the most likely to get laid. That's a punchline, of course, but the underlying truth, she says, is that the smartest, most talented and beautiful died. We're left with third and fourth level talent. Not just the artists, she says, but the audience.

The audience died. The smart, informed audience. As effectively as if they'd been cut down in a war. I would have been one of those victims, too, if my name hadn't been picked in the Crixivan lottery.

I just cried at the enormity of it. The crying turned into weeping and then, when I started gasping, I just took control of it and put it back under control, wiping away rivers of tears.

Honestly? It felt good. I just wasn't expecting it.

I also got an email:

Thank you for your gift of music with MY THANKGIVING PRAYER.  Three congregations that used to be on three adjoining corners in Davenport, Iowa continue meet together annually to celebrate an Interfaith Thanksgiving service:  Temple Emmanuel, the Unitarian Church and Edwards Congregational UCC.  This was our 67^th year of worship and fellowship together.  Each year a speaker is chosen representing a community of need in our Quad Cities.  This year we heard about homelessness and gathered funds for the new youth shelter in Illinois, across the Mississippi River. 

Hosted by the Unitarians, we had a combined choir of male and female voices in November, doing our beset to make the PRAYER sound beautiful…and people were moved by your music which the Unitarian choir director chose.  Thank you for making this music available for our use.  Many have been blessed by your creativity.  May the blessings return now to you.

 Advent Peace to you.

Rev. Jean Norton
Minister of Music
Edwards United Church of Christ
3420 Jersey Ridge Road
Davenport, IA 52807

I wrote her back and asked if anyone recorded it. I also invite readers to see if anything shows up on YouTube.

And Iowa. Hm. Maybe I should run for president. As a third and fourth level guy, I'm at least as qualified as that woman with the reality show.

A Tearful Visit to Columbus.

"Don't run."

That's what Dr. Anthony told me just as I was leaving his office. So, on Sunday morning, at 4:50am, as I ran to the Newark/Manhattan bus, departing Port Authority at 5am, my back heel hit the carry-on bag, rolling behind me, and I hurtled through the air, hitting the ground hard, my left arm finally hanging useless at my side. 

I determined it wasn't broken, but it hurt like hell. I almost decided to not go. But I couldn't miss this.

Though I wasn't getting paid, people were depending on me, having raised the money to pay for the plane ticket. So, I forged ahead, got to the station just in time, and took off for Columbus to play two concerts for the health care workers at a hospice, and then, later at a hospital.

Getting from Newark was another adventure. Just as we got on the plane, it has a "mechanical," and I had to stand in line, change carriers, go to a different terminal and go through security again. The first time was difficult and painful enough, as I was unable to use my left arm to buckle my belt, lift my carrying case or tie my shoes without screaming.

I went to the other terminal, got the new ticket on a different carrier, stood in line, and was told that the plane would be leaving from the first terminal I had just come from.

Sighing, I went back to the first terminal, went through security, found a pharmacy, got a sling and some motrin, waited two hours and got on the plane.By now, I'm hurting so badly, all I can think is, "How will I ever play the piano?"

When I landed in Columbus, Brian, Sarah's adorable bear husband, picked me up. The kids, who I hadn't yet met, were in the back seat. 

Sarah introduces me at Kobacher House hospice.

I met Sarah -- she was single at the time -- almost from the first day I set up this diary in 1996. In fact, as she introduced me the next morning, at the hospice, before my "show," she reminded me that this Bonus Round site was actually the very first web site she ever logged into, having just gotten her first computer.  

She explained, "At the time, I was working with dialysis patients, and I felt Steve's entries were inspirational. So, I would print them out and read them during the treatments. Then, one day I asked him to come sing for us, and he said yes. This was 10 years ago."

I looked at the 30 or 40 hospice workers sitting in front of me. People who spend their lives tending to the dying. And not just the dying, but the dying and their families. 

Some families, so racked with pain, they can't even speak to each other. Some families, prepared and peaceful. These people work through all that, trying to make sure the patient is comfortable and at peace, while helping the family make "decisions" they usually don't want to make.

Each nurse, aid, doctor and lab tech is a part of this journey, and it takes a huge toll on them. 

And that's why I was there. I went through it all as a patient. My mother was a Registered nurse. My father was a minister. I watched how they ministered to people in pain. I knew the emotional toll it could take on them, long after they left the "office."

Imagine, reader, having a job where every single person you treat dies.

How fast can you fall in love with another human being? And how far to do you allow yourself to care, knowing that person is not going to last very long? Or is constant pain? 

And, speaking of emotional toll, all of us were drenched in tears. At one point, one of the nurses, noticing my kleenex, pilling up on the piano, brought up a trash can. I said "We're gonna need a bigger boat."

These people have created a support system for just the workers. I was so proud to be a part of this program. As a patient, I thanked them for their work, I told them I understood that this kind of work is a calling, and not just a job. 

I didn't think about my arm during the two hour concert. I don't remember feeling pain, but I think it's because my mind was elsewhere. I knew I couldn't play strongly or as percussively as I enjoy. 

Brian made me breakfast, earlier, dressed in a chef's hat.

After the show, Sarah took me back to her house, where I slept all afternoon with Uno, the one-eyed dog. He laid down next to me in the bed and didn't move a muscle until he heard the door open downstairs, when Sarah came home to fetch me for the evening gig.

The venue, at the neighboring Riverside Hospital, was much bigger. And I had a magnificent Yamaha piano. Also, my arm wasn't hurting quite as badly and I was able to play with a big more aggression. It was very exciting.

I didn't cry this time, having gotten it all out in the earlier show. My voice was strong, and I told stories and sang for two hours. We also engaged in a dialogue, as we shared stories and I answered questions.

By the end of the night, after getting about a thousand hugs, we went home, and I miss them, already. I also miss Sarah and Brian and the kids. Talk about falling in love.

Uncle Steve with his two new favorite human beings on earth.

Sadly, though, I came home to an empty apartment. Jim is in Florida doing Zero Hour for the next 10 days at the Maltz Jupiter Theater. (Lucky them!) But, there's lots of things for me to do, including working on a brand new production of New World Waking in Miami by the Gay Men's Chorus down there. But I'll save that for another blog entry.

Ayatollah Fears Musical Insurgency!

I'm trying to imagine a country without music, but destroying music and art is exactly what the despots, who disguise themselves as "religious leaders," do. From the Wall Street Journal, Terry Teachout reports:

According to the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's maximum politico- spiritual leader, the promoting and teaching of music—not just Western music, but any kind whatsoever—is "not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic." 

 The Journal's Eric Felten suggested the other day that such attitudes are at bottom political. Music, Mr. Felten writes, "somehow manages to make despots nervous." Why? Because "it affects people profoundly and can't be controlled," which would explain why authoritarians of all stripes look upon it as trouble incarnate.

TROUBLE! Right here in River City!! And here you thought my idea of a "musical insurgency" was just a clever marketing ploy? Do you think we should start body scans when people get on a plane, looking for hidden harmonicas? Will a person whistling while walking down the street get arrested?

He "suggests" that Iranian youth should instead "spend their valuable time in learning science and essential and useful skills and fill their time with sport and healthy recreations instead of music." Those Iranians who prefer to do as they please run the risk of getting themselves stoned, by which I don't mean high.

Apparently, this religious leader never read the studies showing how music helps the brain develop so that it can more effectively learn "science and essential and useful skills." And I'm guessing there won't be any marching bands at halftime at soccer tournaments.

If it seems to you that you've heard that song before, you're right. The Taliban of Afghanistan long ago acquired the nasty habit of blowing up music stores, and they also believe in the word of the Prophet Muhammad, who said that "on the Day of Resurrection, Allah will pour molten lead into the ears of whoever sits listening to a songstress." An equally tough antimusic line is now being taken by the Islamist militia that runs much of Somalia.

 Time to find a new god to worship. Christians love music and would never do such a thing, would they?

Most of the early Protestant reformers, including John Calvin and Martin Luther, opposed the use of musical instruments in worship, and Puritans have always set strict limits on what kinds of music were permissible. Many an English church organ was put to the torch in the 17th century, and to this day there are numerous sects that refuse to allow instrumental music in their services.

Oops. Burn those church organs! The Ayatollah, oops, I mean, the preacher don't like no music playing. But, why?

Flash forward to 1698 and you'll find in Jeremy Collier's "A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English State" a pair of sentences that would sound no less at home in the mouth of a Taliban cleric: "Music is almost as dangerous as gunpowder; and it may be requires looking after no less than the press, or the mint."

Music scary!

In the song "Holy Dirt," I make the point that you can judge a religion by two rules. One, "what does it make you do." Two, "What does it make you do to others."

When your religion tells you that music is bad, and when your religion blows up music stores and burns musical instruments, you're in the wrong religion. Time to get out, no matter what your "prophet" or "minister" or "holy book" says, said or didn't say.

The saddest thing is that an entire generation of kids will grow up without music. Now, that's how you destroy the spirit of a culture.

Lazarus come out.

Seeing Carol Channing.

Carol Channing is so consistently herself -- dizzy, hilarious, talented, relentless -- and, yesterday, at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble, host Richard Skipper basically just let her go, which was great, because being in her presence is really enough.

Her husband, Harry Kuligian, a man who was her childhood sweetheart -- and with whom she got back together only a few years ago -- is a perfect match for her. When she would do one of her frequent meandering down rabbit trails, he was there with a ready punchline to pull her back. And she would break out into this huge guffaw.

She was there to promote her new Gospel CD. Yes, Gospel CD. (Mom, I got one for you).

Oh, why not. Ethel did a disco album. Channing can do Gospel.

But she wasn't there merely to sell product. She and Harry, who was a bandleader back in the day, are both passionate about the tragedy of how arts programs are being excised from school curriculum. And they were blunt: To take the arts out of the schools is to destroy our civilization.

And it's that simple.

It's been proven, over and over, that when a student has music or art as part of his curriculum, it creates pathways of understanding for science and math and the other hardcore subjects.

It's not enough, in this life, to merely eat, sleep and work. Our souls and our lives and our minds are enriched by art, music, plays, movies, games. These things make the rest of life possible.

You have too look at these two lovebirds. He's 90. She's 89. Their love for music and art, and for each other, is palpable. And you can tell that one would not be possible without the other.

And though I don't love the TV, GLEE -- a little too wacked out for my taste -- I do love the premise, kids singing in high school. Today, in the NY Times, is an article about college students banding together in schools mainly concerned with other kind of academics and creating glee clubs for themselves. And bravo to all of them. The school systems might be failing our kids, but there's always hope when the kids themselves decide that the arts mean something.

Music is Healing. Music is Sanity.

These TED talks are amazing, but this one got me because it uses all the same terms I've been using in describing how music is more than notes on a page. It's measurably therapeutic.

Musical Healing, Ctd.: Singing Rewires Damaged Brains.

This is from an article in the BBC News.

Singing 'rewires' damaged brain

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News, San Diego

Singing words made it easier for stroke patients to communicate

Teaching stroke patients to sing "rewires" their brains, helping them recover their speech, say scientists.

By singing, patients use a different area of the brain from the area involved in speech.

If a person's "speech centre" is damaged by a stroke, they can learn to use their "singing centre" instead.

Researchers presented these findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego.

Hey, Mel Tillis, a most famous stutterer, was a terrific singer.

So, how do you do it?

During the therapy sessions, patients are taught to put their words to simple melodies.

Professor Schlaug said that after a single session, a stroke patients who was are not able to form any intelligible words learned to say the phrase "I am thirsty" by combining each syllable with the note of a melody.

The patients are also encouraged to tap out each syllable with their hands. Professor Schlaug said that this seemed to act as an "internal pace-maker" which made the therapy even more effective.

"Music might be an alternative medium to engage parts of the brain that are otherwise not engaged," he said.

Read more.

But it's that last part that intrigues me.

Music opens up areas of the brain that are not otherwise engaged. That's why we need more music in the world. Because I think there are a lot of disengaged brains out there, myself included.