Alternatetakes2

~ arts journal~ Lewis J Whittington

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Daily Archives: August 10, 2009

Lives of the composers

10 Monday Aug 2009

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Back from that jaunt around town on my brakeless bike and inner city blues was replaced by Rossini in my mind’s ear as vaulted away from the park.  Now back considering Anne Migrette’s discussion via Think Denk whether Charles Ives was a homophobe or a victim of prejudices of his time.  Migrette takes it a step further looking for gay markers in Ives’ music.  Interesting exercise. 

The out composers I’ve been lucky enough to talk to have reinterated, sometimes emphatically, that there is no such thing as ‘gay music.’  Principle among these is Ned Rorem, who admitted that he regretted being included on a recording ‘Gay American Composers’ just for that reason.   Timeless music is, after all, bigger than sexuality even though it may have everything to do with who you are sleeping with. 

Anyway, even though there is a collective gay mantra about there not being anything as ‘gay music’ in classical realms, can anyone conceive that ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies’ could have been written by anyone else but Tchaikovsky?  Or as I’m listening now to ‘Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis’ Henry the Eighth’s court composer and I’m wondering where classical music would be without gay aesthetics, consciously recorded or not.

potm by Jan Carroll

10 Monday Aug 2009

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‘fleur de fungus’

fleur_de_fungus

Gone fishin’

10 Monday Aug 2009

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Impossible to face Monday grammar and 105 heat index. It rained all around Philly last night, setting up a bubble of a steam bath within the city limits.   The storms must be performing just outside the city limits, all sound and fury signifying nothing here.  Was hoping they would rip through and lance the heat, but barely a spit take all night. 

I’ve been out already for an emergency trip to the bank and to partially blind myself with the sun.  Inspired by the runners and cyclists undetered by the heat. The motorists are already cursing, slavishly whipping around Rittenhouse Sq. destroying any momentary inner city bucolic peace.  Maybe already thinking that they are sitting in traffic combat at 5:25 tonight.  They can’t go fishin’ and really can you blame them for wanting to run me down as I wing past them that is stuck in broiling traffic. No brakes! no brakes! please.

All poems by Lewis Whittington unless otherwise noted

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