brooding ’bout stuff
What follows is my reflection on David Byrne and Mala Gaonkar’s Theater of the Mind, which I saw six months ago, and while it moved me, I haven’t until now taken the time.
Continue reading “Byrne Bomb: Theater of the Mind”
Three poems and two songs…
Continue reading “Lessons and Carols”
Not long ago I was asked to vet a request for use of photos that appeared in my writings at The Tangent Group. The reprint request was from Robert C. Steele for his book Banned from California. Curious about the book, I did a halfhearted web search and didn’t find it. Days later my friend Jerry Gerash told me he was sending me a book about Jim Foshee. “You know who he was, don’t you?” he asked. “Of course,” I said. I know who Jim Fouratt is. Continue reading “Dreaming California: The Life of Jim Foshee”
Before Christmas I checked out a book from my little public library branch: Naomi Wolf’s Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love. I had a lot of other things to read and left it for last, not knowing what it contained, vaguely recognizing the author’s name. Turning to it, I recognized Wolf’s photo. If nothing else, readers might remember her defense of Julian Assange when he was accused of sex crimes in Sweden. I thought the book would be a history of censorship, but it’s more comprehensive. By introducing and then returning often to her cast of characters, Wolf creates an intimate narrative against the mise en scène of her historical sweep and sociopolitical stance. Continue reading “Symonds, Whitman, Rossetti and Rake”
Yes, this involves Leopold and Loeb and their victim Bobby Franks…
Killing time a week ago in the expansive area devoted to new releases at the central branch of the Denver Public Library, a title beckoned: Nina Barrett’s The Leopold and Loeb Files: An Intimate Look at One of the Most Infamous Crimes, issued last summer.1 If overly familiar with The Crime of the Century—title of Hal Higdon’s 1975 book2—one might ask, Why another rehash? Continue reading “A Perfect Crime?”
A review of the book by Martin Aston.
With this new volume, Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache: How Music Came Out, Aston fills a much needed lapse in LGBT+ pop history. Unlike books such as Zoot Suits and Second-Hand Dresses (1988) edited by Angela McRobbie and John Gill’s Queer Noises (1995), the former which deals with the subject tangentially and the latter which deals with it personally and sporadically, Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache (taking its name from a late ’60s Northern soul hit) moves decade by decade through the 20th century (a bit before, and after), just as the music itself comes into play.