I have now spent this entire week, trapped on the couch, keeping my arm in ice. I didn't know until two days ago, though, that the problem was in my shoulder, not my wrist (because the pain seemed to be more focused on the lower arm and wrist area -- I thought the shoulder pain was coming from "favoring" my arm.
I'm still in pain, so I can't do much, include type, but I thought I'd just put down a few thoughts.
I probably shouldn't have gone to Columbus and done those two shows, but at the time, after I fell, mere steps away from my front door on a Sunday morning at 5am, all I could think of was, "I gotta get to the plane!" What can I say? I'm dense.
Anyway, since I couldn't use my right hand much -- still can't -- it has given me a chance to slow down and just think, even as I have all the media I can eat.
I saw on the news the other night a story about making some kids spend a week, or something, away from all electronic devices -- and judging how "addicted" to the net they are.
It all sounds so fantastically sci fi to my ears. And yet, how quickly I take for granted things that, a generation ago, weren't even thought up yet.
But how ironic it is that the more we think up in The Cloud, the more unreal "reality" starts to seem. The two "wars" they keep telling us "we're" fighting rage on like an intermittent mini-series on USA Network. Our lives are so divorced from that reality, we don't even want to look at it.
(And, now, the Wikileaks Papers, which the major news organizations have been hoarding, so that they can analyze it before the government spin doctors go to work? have come out. Al Jazeera broke it 30 minutes too soon.)
Friends of mine on the Christian Right have been insisting, to me, that we are in a war with Islam itself, and that lefties are all in denial about it. Radical Islamists and radical Jews agree with them. It's nice to know they all agree about something other than gay people are going to hell. But, I kid my Abrahamic faith brothers and sisters!*
There was this song by the Monkees, long ago. Peter Tork sang it. The King of Zor / Called for a war.
I have several friends in the armed services who tell me they almost wince when someone says "thank you for your service" but ignore how this country treats its veterans, and how the wars are treated as this remote thing "the government" is doing. As interesting as watching someone else play a video game. Thus, without substance.
It's why I added the song called "He's Coming Back" to New World Waking with a shared lyric credit with my friend, Avril, who volunteers at Kulak's Woodshed. She sent her son back to Iraq and I wrote the song surreptitiously over the weekend, by writing down what she said as she told the story at a Wednesday song writing workshop.
That's the vocal arrangement I was working on all week.
This is the video where I first performed the song for Avril, that following Monday.
It makes me even more committed to New World Waking, The Last Session and The Big Voice. All three pieces, written from the heart with no original purpose other than to tell a story and to entertain, foster an environment of dialogue and communication.
Just last week, I heard from a theater in Canada that wants to use The Big Voice as their way of engaging with the conservative people in their area.
That's how all wars end. With a negotiation around a table. And that's how I'll end this rambling post. With a trip to get another ice pack out of the freezer.
The good news is that I don't have a fracture. However, I do have a separated shoulder. Not Dislocated. I also traumatized muscles in my elbow and wrist, but there's no break.
So, the prescription is that I need to keep it as immobilized as possible, and it will heal after few weeks.
I was going to attend the Afterglow tonight at the University Glee Club, just to see what Dec. 2 is all about, but I'm still in a lot of pain. I can't use my left arm. But I have food for a few meals more, friends volunteering to help me, and my usual stubborn refusal to stay down.
And Jim gets home on Sunday. (Horray!)
He's been having a blast down in Florida. I'm so glad for him. Zero Hour is really starting to become more and more well known in theater circles. Already he has had several theaters contact him for inclusion the post- New York international tour. It's all very exciting.
New York Ethical Culture Society Building
West 64th & Central Park West, 4th floor
I've been asked to sing an "Afterglow" for the University Glee Club of New York City, and I couldn't feel more honored and scared. It's one thing to sing for "civilians." It's quite another to sing for people who really know music. It's a free event for the public, also. So, anyone who would like to attend, get there at 8:45pm.
I know 9pm is a late start for a show, but I promise I won't be doing a 2-hour presentation. I believe Afterglow lasts only about 45 minutes.
I know I'm going to sing "Gabi's Song" and "William's Song" (unless I invite a special guest soloist to do so -- hmmmm) because of all the gay bullying/suicide stuff in the news.
For me, these are my entries in the "It gets better" meme that's been going around, where older gay people tell younger gay people that, no matter how horrible things can get, it does get better if you endure.
Saw doc. Possible wrist fracture. Not serious, but painful.
X-rays.
I'm staying still. Ice packs. Hot packs.
Right-handed typing.
Many friends said they'd help.
Am finishing up two arrangements for Miami. Adam West Hemming came over to give me an opinion. He arranges and sings for the Marquee Five, a terrific vocal group here in the City. Adam never withholds his opinion, and he makes me laugh.
We both sing in Mark Janas' Christchurch choir in Brooklyn every Sunday morning, making some ridiculously good music, I might add.
I saw John Fischer, too, who helped me change a Finale file. I've gotten so used to Sibelius, I needed some coaching.
Jim and I are video chatting. He is raving about the crew and staff at the Maltz Jupiter.
This is one of the most moving videos testimonials I've ever seen. Watch it all the way through as he begins revealing things he's kept hidden his entire life.
Jim opened "Zero Hour" down at the Maltz Jupiter Theater last night and posted these fabulous new photos. This is my favorite. It looks like a movie still. We have been approached by people who think Zero Hour would make a good movie.
"In the show, thanks in part to a crafty makeup job,
Brochu bears an uncanny resemblance to the burly, larger-than-life Mostel. " Hap Erstein.
He wears, for the record, almost no make-up. He uses a pencil and draws "Hirschfeld lines" on his eyebrows after plastering his hair down to look like a combover. I wonder how many make-up artists have used Al Hirschfeld's caricatures as a basis for celebrity make-up? At MGM, I'm told the iconic actresses would come to a photo shoot with zero make-up, and that artists add that later, to the photograph.
Zero Mostel (Jim Brochu) being grilled in front of the House committee. "All of Zero’s testimony in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee is online, a lot of his letters between himself and ( his wife ) Kate, so many articles, interviews...” from PB ArtsPaper.
Jim did a great job of condensing the testimony. It's funny and scary all at the same time, as you realize how easy it is to go from having an opinion, to being blacklisted and an object of suspicion and fear. Zero admits he was a Marxist, but it was because he felt, during the 30s, as did many, that only the commies were opposing the Nazis. Right or wrong, it's what he believed, and he also liked how Franklin Roosevelt kept everyone working when no one could get a job.
"The government gave me paint, and a brush."
People like Mostel were being accused of being foreign agents with an intent to overthrow the government through the use of violence. Absurd. And they were forced to betray their friends who might also have those same political beliefs, or never work again.
Zero took it even more personally. "Commie equaled liberal, and liberal equaled Jew."
His best friend Philip Loeb committed suicide after he was blacklisted.
He would also butter his arm in a public restaurant and ask for more butter, according to Piper Laurie, who also knew him in those days. He was absurd, loud and unpredictable.
I thought about Zero and how wonderful he'd be in this play that just opened on Broadway, a birthday gift from Charlotte Rae, "La Bete," where a very serious playwright character is confronted by an inebriated, besotted-with-himself fool of a playwright. (Mark Rylance in the performance of a lifetime, with David Hyde Pierce, bravely finding a thousands ways to show withering contempt, and who we met afterwards -- nicest person on the planet).
Charlotte Rae visiting David Hyde Pierce backstage after "La Bete."
I was so excited, I forgot to ask for one with myself.
I also reminded David that each time we've gotten major awards in Los Angeles, it's he who ends up either announcing it or giving it to us. (We don't really know each other.)
But the discussion of what's "art" and what's just commercial crap has been going on since the dawn of time. Jim and I, of course, embrace both in TLS, TBV and Zero Hour. We like plays that mean something and that might have an idea or an opinion or a point of view hovering in the background, but we also love a good belly laugh and a little baggy pants.
Oh, and we're not afraid of drawing out a tear or two, either.
Speaking of which, we now have a new production of The Last Session scheduled for the Fall in Norwich, Connecticut, and The Big Voice, maybe even with Jim and myself, is coming to a small theater in Canada next summer, if we can coordinate schedules. And New World Waking is coming to Miami.
I'm more or less staying home, keeping ice on my shoulder. (Frozen Chinese vegetables are almost as good as frozen peas, btw.)
I met Piper at the Paley Center for Media to celebrate the ongoing restoration of the General Electric Theater, a classy TV show from the 50s which featured great scripts and great actors doing an original drama every week. Hosted by Ronald Reagan, it gave him the national exposure, combined with his visits to GE factories, that, according to the panelists, was the start of his political career, as he honed his speeches before the workers..
Cliff Robertson greets Piper Laurie in the green room.
I can't say that I was prepared for so much Reagan worship. He was not my favorite president.
Posing for the photogs.
Cliff Robertson, Piper Laurie, William L. Bird, Curator, Division of Political History, Smithsonian Institution,
Edwin Meese, Reagan's Chief of Staff and Attorney General,
Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE.
But, the clips from the GE Theater were spectacular. I particularly loved Zsa Zsa Gabor dressed in jewels, as an actress who refuses to dress down for a maid's role.
Reporter Andrea Mitchell, former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, Ed Meese.
This photo of Piper comes from the episode she was in, where she played a child bride of a mountain man.
Piper Laurie, 17, on GE Theater.
Brian Williams was witty and asked good questions.
The entire panel, with NBC news anchor Brian Williams.
Jeffrey Immelt, of course, is Brian's boss. GE owns NBC/Universal.
William L. Bird, Jeffrey Immelt and Brian Williams.
Piper Laurie, Cliff Robertson, Ed Meese, William L. Bird.
Piper Laurie, Cliff Robertson, Ed Meese.
Piper Laurie, Cliff Robertson.
Cliff told us in the green room that when he and Piper appeared together in a TV production of The Days of Wine and Roses, he was expecting her to be what the studio had promoted her to be, a bimbo. "But it turned out she is a great actress and she totally blew me off the screen."
Piper Laurie, Cliff Robertson.
Peggy Noonan, Piper Laurie.
So, it was an informative night. The film canisters from the show were thought lost until someone found them in an attic or something. Now, they're being slowly brought back to life, thank goodness.
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.
After Grisetti finished “The Joker” to tumultuous applause, Jim Brochu (Sir) came on to deliver his next line. But Brochu realized that the audience was in no mood to stop applauding, and far be it from him to prematurely take away even a second of it. He waited patiently, looking off into the wings, still in character, acting as if Sir were searching for something he’d misplaced. I love generous actors!
Brochu was equally marvelous, not going over-the-top, which is so easy to do with Sir. He trusted his material, and I trust that everyone enjoyed him as much as I. And, my, for a staged reading, did Brochu know every word of his songs! I surmised that he, like I, listened to the cast album incessantly when it came out in 1965. I asked him about it at the closing night party. “Yes,” he said, “but the reason I really remember it is because during the run I sold orange juice at the back of the Shubert.” Nice to have you out front, Jim.
Why, it's just a hat and cane show, isn't it? The kind that is usually built on corny jokes and silly routines? Isn't rock supposed to be more honest than Vaudeville?
The front of house is very old fashioned.
The colored lights are a great touch.
Thrilling, exhilarating, scary, uncomfortable, innovative, with not a wasted moment on stage, Scottsboro Boys is the kind of incisive and uncomfortable storytelling that leaves all the "entertainments" that have been passing for musicals behind in the dust.
This is how you tell a story.
Toward the end, there's a costume change that I read as a big F-U to the society that pretends to care about justice, but who is really just wanting another diversion until the next one comes along.
Kander and Ebb have never shied away from exposing hypocrisy and shame in our culture, and they don't shy away here.
The Lyceum is one of the oldest theaters on Broadway.
Built in 1903.
Classic style posters.
Jim Brochu ("Zero Hour," "Roar of the Greasepaint")
You also won't see better performances, nor hear better singing. What a cast!! It's hard to know who to single out, because each performer has his moment to shine -- and just the SOUND of those voices when they harmonize sent shivers all up and down my spine, especially in songs like "Commencing in Chattanooga" where the simple pile of chairs has now been assembled into a train. The joy in their voices as these nine men, who had never met before, were feeling free, and on the road to a better life.
(They were wrongly accused of gang rape by two white women, who didn't want to go to jail for freeloading the train ride.)
Particularly bone-chilling is a hymn to Alabama, sung in the jail cell, that lays waste to every plantation song ever written. You really don't know whether to applaud or not, and that's not because of any fault of the staging. But, the whole story is just so tragic. And yet, here we laughing at it!
Two trial scenes bristle with sharp-edged sarcasm and anger. All of it in ragtime!
This is not a happy minstrel show. This is bone-rattling, nerve-twisting reality that smiles at you while twisting the knife in your gut. And they manage to do it over and over again, all through the piece, until you're left shattered.
Every song has a steely surprise and every scene subverts its show biz trappings. A hat and cane show, dancing and singing with leather electric chair hoods over their heads. It's the kind of thing you imagine Sondheim doing in that you get no quarter (though, of course, Kander and Ebb have been doing this almost from the beginning.) No chance to just be entertained.
Neither does it merely skewer the easy target country rednecks who ruined these "boys" -- one was 12 -- lives, but also a liberal establishment where the fight for justice for them was little more than the fashionable and tabloid thing to do, forgotten as easily as last year's runway offerings in Paris.
I'm going to be thinking about this show for a very long time. It seems to be about the Scottsboro Boys. But, really, it's about us and what we are, and, maybe what we always have been.
The question is whether we have the courage to look into that musical mirror.
Jim Brochu (Sir) & Josh Grisetti (Cocky) laugh between poses after the
York Theatre's "Musical In Mufti" performance of
"Roar of the Greasepaint, Smell of the Crowd."
"It's a relationship show," said Sacha Newley, son of Anthony Newley and Joan Collins. It was also his first time to even see his father's show, "The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd."
And it is. And as you can tell from the photograph, Jim Brochu and Josh Grisetti love each other -- and it shows.
Jim Brochu & Sacha Newley, son of Anthony Newley and Joan Collins.
It was his first time to see "Greasepaint."
Which is why everyone who saw this show, over the weekend, loved the experience, whether they liked "the show itself" or not. I say that because the show has a famously "difficult" book.
At the audience talkback after the afternoon performance of "Roar of the Greasepaint," I asked Marcia Milgrom Dodge, the director, the question, "Why does Cocky come back for Sir at the end, when Sir has done such horrible things to him?"
"Greasepaint" director Marcia Milgrom Dodge
with Jim Brochu, Sacha Newley & Josh Grisetti.
Jim had said, earlier, to me, "In the play, I make him starve, I rape the girl he falls in love with and I accuse him of murder. What's to come back for? More abuse?"
"I'm going to answer the Jewish way and ask you what you thought," she responded, laughing, to the audience.
Wrapped up on the politics of the piece, I gave some intellectual theory about how the oppressors in society need their oppressees, and that oppressees need their oppressors, maybe out of some sick co-dependency or something.
"The obvious answer," I stated rather declaratively, "is that none of it is real. It's two hobos acting out a surrealist play to show the inequities in society. There was never any chicken for Sir to withhold and the "rape" was about as real as a Snidely Whiplash train gag. Sir is not really Sir. He's a hobo pretending to be Sir. These are two friends who need each other because, alone, they can't put on a show."
A musical "Waiting For Godot" is how some people describe "Roar of the Greasepaint." (And, in fact, it belongs, scholars tell me, to the Absurdist Movement in American theater).
The next night, I was sitting near Sacha, at a benefit for the Dana & Christopher Reeve Foundation, where Jim and Josh performed "Where Would You Be" (from "Greasepaint"). Here it is, taped by someone from the audience:
I asked Sacha if the show, written in 1965, was the first, or one of the first, examples of the melding of theater with confessional singer/songwriter. After all, the book seems almost like a revue. Each song is sung whole with little interruption, usually as a solo, and the dialogue seems to string them together, rather than integrate them into action.
Outside, the pop world was quickly changing. Broadway shows no longer fed the Top 10. Instead, the charts were dominated by the British Invasion, the personal songwriter, which was the antithesis (supposedly) of the old Tin Pan Alley songwriter, whose main motivation for writing a song, as Sammy Cahn once put it, comes from "the phone call."
("What comes first? The music or the lyrics?" He was asked once. "The phone call." He answered.
SIDEBAR: Back a couple of weeks ago, when they were renaming the Philip Loeb Room at Actors Equity, I found a bookcase with some bound volumes of the Actors Equity newsletter. Inside, in an issue from, like, 1923 or something, there was an notice about how ASCAP was formally protesting the use of the vulgar term "Tin Pan Alley" to describe their very professional work and environs. Now, of course, the term is deified.)
Sacha looked intrigued. "My father had a horrible childhood of desperate poverty. When he wrote, he wrote from his personal experience. That's really him inside those songs."
My friend, singer/songwriter Robert Leh, sent me this link -- a very rare performance -- to Newley singing "Who Can I Turn To?". This was taped during the run of "Greasepaint" so he's in full costume -- and probably we're seeing how he performed it on stage.
Notice, despite the theatrical trappings, how the song seems to come from such incredible depths of feeling. His entire life seems to inform every note and every word, even as his exposed hands, looking as big as his head, reach, clutch, and embrace in moves that are pure Vaudeville. Watch him thrust his hand into the air (to God, who has abandoned him?). It's bone-chillingly theatrical, and yet completely honest.
Maybe "Greasepaint" is even more than that. Not just a melding, in and of itself. But perhaps it's also a metaphor for the relationship, itself, of theatre and modern singer/songwriter pop music, which prides itself on being more "real" than "Broadway." Please. You can't get more real than Anthony Newley. Rock and roll (and hip hop) needs Vaudeville just as much as it needs the gritty streets from which it comes.
At the talkback, a woman remarked that Josh Grisetti sounded very much like Anthony Newley when he sang, and wondered if he had done an intentional imitation, or studied his performances to learn how. (He didn't and hadn't.)
Director Marcia Milgrom Dodge looked startled because it had occurred to anyone on the production team that Josh was "imitating" Newley.
"It's just the cockney accent," she responded. (Josh is on vocal rest and didn't participate in the discussion.).
Later, I was having a conversation with Quentin Earl Darrington, who, in the show, sings one song, the (now) jazz standard, "Feeling Good." "I didn't know the song. I got it on Monday and just started listening to everything. From Nina Simone to Michael Buble, and kept thinking, 'I don't know what they're singing about.' I mean it's a beautiful song, but I wasn't even sure they knew what they were singing about. I couldn't feel anything...
"...until I heard Anthony Newley sing it. And it all fell into place. I just got it."
I got a chill and was reminded of our "Salute to the American Songwriter" concerts at NAS, that the writer, no matter how flawed a voice he or she might have, brings something to a song that, perhaps, no one else can, though I'm not suggesting great singers cannot interpret and make songs their very own.
But, check this link. It goes to several versions of "Who Can I Turn To?" Tony Bennett. Vicki Carr. Two of the greatest singers in the world. But, do either of their performances even remotely approach what Anthony Newley does in that hobo costume and pin spotlight?
On the other hand -- and I have to say it -- Josh Grisetti got there. He really did. I had rivers of tears streaming down my cheeks when, at the end of the play, he comes back for Sir and sings "Sweet Beginnings."
Grisetti, gazing up into the now-helpless and lonely eyes of Sir, as portrayed by Jim Brochu, raised the hair on the back of my head, and took what looked like sentimental straw, on paper, and spun it into meaningful, emotionally profound gold.
Lots of talk on the theater discussion boards have harshly criticized the book of "Roar of the Greasepaint," saying that they ought to just jettison the books of both this and his earlier his, "Stop the World, I Want To Get Off" (also an experimental, essentially plotless) show, creating a "Stop the Greasepaint" revue. Maybe someone, somewhere, has already done it.
But, I have to tell you. I saw two performances. The first one last Friday night. The last one on Sunday night.
If you had asked me, on Saturday, what I thought of the show, I'd have agreed with the above. Book, dumb! Book, silly! Book, awful! Songs, fantastic! Songs, mesmerizing!
And, yet, today, I'm sitting here wanting to see the whole thing again, from the obviously placed songs that seem suspiciously tenuous in their relation to the plot, to every groan inducing joke.( "I got an eyeful. An eyeful towering above me.")
Jim Brochu & Sacha Newley at the York Theatre's Musicals in Mufti production of
"Roar of the Greasepaint."
Marcia Milgrom Dodge, Jim Brochu, Sacha Newley, Josh Grisetti, TCM host Robert Osborne.
How sad and desperate our lives would be if were to "stop the greasepaint" and rid ourselves of the stories and the theatricality and puts it all into perspective, making us laugh and cry.
It's the relationship that makes "Greasepaint" work. It's "relationship" that makes the world work, especially when it comes with a hat and cane.
---
We would never have had this experience without Jim Morgan and the York Theatre's "Musicals in Mufti" series. I am providing a link to their website. If you are a reader and you are in a position to make donations to worthy causes, send them a couple of bucks to support this series and tell them I sent you.
And if you're a "prosperity minister," you marry a woman, have kids, talk your congregation into giving you tons of cash for mansions, private jets and stretch limos so that you can, eventually, seduce all the boys in your congregation, by lavishing them with gifts, the promise of riches and have sex with them.
I am starting to hear it on Twitter now. Ah, how terrible homosexuals are! Look at what they do to us!
No. The Ted Haggards and Eddie Longs are not representative of the gay community, dear Christians. They're on your side of the culture war. They want nothing to do with us. And neither do the leaders of Exodus and all the rest.
We tried. I spent years trying, and I actually forged some healthy and surprising friendships.
But this mess. This stuff. It ain't coming from the gays.
Bishop Eddie Long embodies the result of historical anti-gay/ex-gay religious doctrine and belief. You thought only Catholic priests had this problem?
Here's another result of it.* This past month:
Asher Brown (age 13) (Texas - Shot himself at home)
Seth Walsh (age 13) (California - Hanged himself in his backyard)
Justin Aaberg (age 15) (Minnesota -Hanged himself in his room)
Billy Lucas (age 15) (Indiana - Hanged himself in family's barn)
Tyler Clementi (age 18) (New Jersey - Jumps off George Washington Bridge)
Raymond Chase (age 19) (Rhode Island - Hanged himself in his dormitory)
It's not just about Bishop Eddie Long. It's about an invisible undercurrent of fear and paranoia that vibrates and pounds in the hearts of every single gay kid, every moment of the day, a panic that each eventually has to address.
But, I could have been that person. I was on that track. I was in those pulpits, singing the Gospel, preaching the Word. I almost married a girl -- my best friend, really, who I dated in college.
But I knew it was wrong. I didn't know about an Eddie Long or a Ted Haggard, back then, but I was a Baptist. And I was to become a singing preacher with a wife and kids. Praise the Lord!
Back then, I wasn't living two lives. It wasn't an option. 1971. East Texas. The woods, the church, the pianos, Marvel comics, Credence, Beatles, Neil Young, my Bible, asthma, quartets, college choir.
I don't think I had even heard of homosexuals except through Rolling Stone magazine. And in the sermons of hellfire and brimstone traveling evangelists, exactly the kinds of events my college choir, and then later Jesus band, would sing for.
I would sweat and burn, sitting in the pew hearing how homosexuals would burn in the lake of fiery sulfur. All that dialogue in The Last Session is the real stuff.
The Ex-Gay literature says they only want to "help" people with "unwanted same sex attraction." But that's not their practice. Instead, they spend time and money fighting again legislation, using their titles and status to gain entry to the halls of power in DC. They do not dialogue with us.
So, when a Bishop Eddie Long comes along, they don't see themselves.
I "surrendered to the ministry" not once, but twice! I preached my first sermon at the age of 12! But then, I think I decided, in my teens, that I was "really saved," so I got saved again and re-surrendered to the ministry.
But what else did I know? "Baptist" meant "Christian," and if you weren't a Baptist, you weren't Christian. In fact, we were the ONLY CHRISTIANS ON EARTH, except for a few Southern Baptists who managed to not be "liberal." But, Catholics? Lost.
And now I'm singing for an Episcopal Church, speaking of lost!
And, this next Sunday, as I sit in the little alcove to the side of the people, at the piano, -- one day before my 57th birthday -- I will think back to my days when I had a choice. My choice took me out of the church. I'll be thinking of the Steve That Would Have Been.
The trouble is, that Steve never existed.
And had I chosen the Ex-Gay path, I might have been a Bishop Eddie Long.
But I think it's more probable that I would have been Tyler Clementi, jumping off a bridge.
But it does get better. It really does.
*A candlelight vigil will be held this Sunday, October 3rd at 9 p.m. in Washington Square Park in Manhattan to commemorate the loss of these lives. More information about the vigil and the victims we lost can be found here.
Jim and I are featured in a new book just reviewed in Men's Wear Daily. The authors, Charlie and Linda Bloom, spoke with us back when we were performing "The Big Voice: God or Merman?" in San Francisco.
"A gay couple confronting Steve Schalchlin’s AIDS find themselves going broke as Jim Brochu takes off work to care for Steve full-time. “We celebrated what we believed would be our last vacation, our last Christmas, and our last birthdays together. For about a year, I was so weak I couldn’t even sit up.” Medication rescues Steve just in time, and today their relationship is stronger than ever."
What is SHE talking about? We can't STAND each other! Hmm. Is there a Lifetime Movie there? I think so!
What can we learn from these couples? As the authors lay out in their introduction, we see throughout the book that—among other keys to their successful relationships–they: have a high level of mutual respect and trust for their partners; have a nonhierarchical relationship; tend not to hold grudges; address unfinished business expeditiously rather than putting things on the back burner; tend to avoid cycles of blame, express affection, appreciation, and need for each other frequently; are honest with themselves and their partner; and engage in frequent acts of service to each other. “The way to avoid divorce,” Hal and Sidra Stone wisely counsel, “is to have a no-fault marriage.”
I suppose all those things are true, but the real secret to a good marriage is that I let him think that he always gets everything his way. Oh, and coffee in the morning. I make sure he has his coffee.
Last night, on Project Runway, Mondo Guerra, a talented little Urkle of a guy "came out" as HIV positive, and rightfully won the night with this amazing print which he created using plus signs. HIV positive. Funny that his name means "world war."
Here's the official show pic, complete with sponsor.
What made the teary-eyed moment, at the judging, especially powerful was that he hadn't told his family yet about his HIV. It's a secret he's held onto for 10 years.
He used art to say, "This is who I am!" And you could see the weight lifted off his shoulders as the full realization dawned that he's not just told his family, but the world.
I cannot even imagine the amount of stress this has inflicted upon this poor guy's health system. The closet, as we used to say at Bridges Across, the "failed" cross divide dialogue project, is evil.
But stress on a person who's HIV positive is very bad.
My new doctor, Dr. Anthony, said that AIDS causes the body to be in a low grade inflammation all the time. In fact, I'm on a new health regimen. Been into it for about a month because my blood sugars are too high again, my cholesterol and triglycerides are out of control again, and the stress of moving. A new city. A new life.
He said, casually, "That's why HIV positive people look 10 years older than they really are."
I laughed out loud. Doctors just tell it like it is, don't they? I love it.
I turn 57 this next week. Do I look 67?
Meh. Who cares.
But, I need to get my tests results back in the normal range or I'll be in trouble.
He said, "You're pretty much maxed out on medications. What are you eating?"
"Well," I told him, proudly, "Ever since we got to New York, I've been all pasta and pizza. But I've changed. I'm now eating a huge bowl of greens, broccoli, spinach, etc. and only a little of anything else on the side. My body's pretty good at responding to good things."
"Good."
"And I've started doing push-ups between writing sessions, all day long, like I'm in training."
