Halloween CaBOOret!

So, I sang at AAT's Gender Bender CaBOOret Friday night.  Dressed up as Audrey Hepburn and sang my own little version of Judy Garland's "The Man That Got Away" with the incomparable Maddie Tarbox at the piano.

Super fun!

With Shlebby

The Man Who Turned Out Gay

The night is bitter
And he's aglow in glitter
He's on the dance floor
Leaving you to sit and drink more
And all because he's the man who turned out gay

You'd like to feel his kiss
But he's loosened up his wrists
Those dreams you've dreamed have all gone astray

The man who stunned you
Has come out and undone you
Your great beginning
Won't ever see an inning
Don't know what happened
It's all a crazy game

It's only friends from here
But you get to shop with your queer
And never your wardrobe will be the same

You ask yourself why
You never saw the signs of "Gay Guy"
He worships Calvin Klein and Lady Gaga

You see him grinding
And now you're realizing
You won't romance him
Just find a way to get past him
Keep on drinking this goddamned Diet Coke

'Cuz ever since this world began
There's nothing sadder than
The Mormon girl praying for the man who turned out gay

The man who turned out gay

Have You Got the Curves?

Dear French Art Song,


Your feminine wiles and supple curves attract my most "sensitive" sensibilities.  Had you been a greater force in my life four years ago, I would have perhaps found in you a type of complicated answer to a lifelong prayer.  Today, you simply reaffirm that my highly cultivated sense of aesthetics is part of a fabulously snarky, happily limp-wristed birthright.  I suppose thanks are in order.

A Pianist in Awe

Rachmaninov: Prelude in D Flat Major, Op. 32, No. 13

Rachmaninov: Etude-Tableau in C Minor, Op. 33, No. 3

Beethoven: Sonata in A Flat Major, Op. 110, Mvt. I

Bach: Prelude and Fugue in B Major, BWV 868

ephemeron

you enter a small, locked room. there are no windows and

the air lacks imagination.  you place scores--bach, beethoven, rachmaninov--

on the music stand and sit carefully upon the black leather bench 

(an artist's bench).

                      artist:  seek their inspirations--bach, beethoven, rachmaninov--

in this uninspiring room.  your work is placing your fingers upon the keys

day after day after day:

excite the current

wash and wring the unimaginative air within the whorl of your ear

(frustrate your already frustated mind, gauging weight and pacing lines),

work for weeks to sift through the alluvium of sound

and pan for sparkling, golden tones.

in the end, present the glorious work, but realize this:

only the clearest-eared will hear and shrewdly explain while the hungry rest

make you a god-for-five-minutes and clamor maddeningly to bask and congratulate.  

bear the moment while you can and then return to a small, locked, windowless room.  your

work is placing your fingers upon the keys day after day after day.

it will be cold there, too separate from whatever sun warms the world outside

that heavy, lonely door.

Love Who You Love

A gorgeous song from "A Man of No Importance" by Lynn Ahrens and Steven Flaherty.