Now I know what it feels like to win something that has meaning for me. Thanks to the folks at the Lambda Literary Awards, I am the recipient of a beautiful crystal tablet inscribed with my name and the title of my most recent book: LAKE ON THE MOUNTAIN. It's meaningful to me for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the award is juried by my peers, people who know what it takes to labour over words in an attempt to create something meaningful and beautiful, inspiring and wise. When I got home, I put it on my mantlepiece to remind me why so many of us continue to write even when the rewards and the acknowledgements are few and far between. That's why I'm so grateful for this particular award.
The ceremony, held in New York on June 3, was an uplifting celebration of talent and labour, as well as a testament to the perseverance of the LGBT community itself. We need no reminder that this community has had more than its fair share of fights to exist and prosper. I'm grateful to have been so honoured and hope I can continue to do what I love while contributing to the community in return.
THAT FEELS GOOD!
CUBA: HOW REAL IS THE THAW?
Ever wonder what it's like to be gay in other countries? It's not always so easy, as I discovered during several recent trips to Cuba. In North America and Europe, we take a lot for granted that other LGBT folk can only dream about. Here's my first-hand report from the streets of Havana, as published in the Xtra!: http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/Finding_gay_Havana-13525.aspx
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, A LEGEND...
A very fab! night at the McCallum Theater in Palm Desert, where I was the guest of producer and celebrity photographer Michael Childers for his One Night Only. In the audience (front row, if you please) sat Broadway legend Carol Channing in trademark gold lame and probably a few diamonds. (I don't mean rhinestones...) Also attending was Mrs. Barbara Sinatra. Now an annual fund-raising event, Childers' show features some of the best Broadway and film talent, showcasing music from various chapters of his life as the longtime partner of director John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy.) Everything from Bob Dylan through Evita to Mozart. Highlights? Yup, plenty of them. Too many to choose, in fact. (Though I have to say, Kaye Ballard still sounds amazing at 87. Not kidding! It must be the desert air.) More, please.
"ELECTRODOMESTICOS" AT THE STARVING ARTIST STUDIO GALLERY
Time warps can be fun, especially when they take you back to your formative years. It's also interesting to see those times recreated by a younger generation. Who would have thought that attending an indie gallery opening in Puerto Vallarta in March 2013 would find me contemplating the ghosts of 1978 as rendered by six visual artists, some of whom were not even born then? But there they were, lingering on the walls and in the corners of the Starving Artist Studio Gallery. This was not just a slavish recreation of an ethos, however, but an unofficial reinvention of a controversial period in art, one that's not easily refined, like putting boulders in a blender and expecting them to come out smooth and polished. Yet here was Keith Haring revisited, with traces of Jean-Michel Basquiat and David Wojnarowicz reflected back in thoughtful, intriguing ways, photographic images that Cindy Sherman or Robert Mapplethorpe might have contemplated in the aftermath of punk's corrosive vision. Here, too, was Pop art without all the irony, and layered over with a queer twist. Even the casual, seemingly artless approach to appending work to the gallery walls (here sometimes painted directly on the walls in DayGlo colours or projected onto a loosely blowing screen) speak of punk and Pop's disdain for things too refined or carefully considered. Not quite as transgressive as the originals, still it's a brave choice amid all the decorative elements Vallarta churns out endlessly. If you missed it back then, here's your chance to see it now.
The Starving Artist Studio Gallery, Aldama #209, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
LAMMIES, THE ACROBAT AND MARY WALSH GOES BOMBALISTIC
Wow, it was quite a day. First off came news of my Lambda Award nomination for Lake On The Mountain. (Yay, thanks!) Ceremonies in New York in June. Then I met up with poet/novelist Jim Nason at a fun and funky west end bar, No One Writes To The Colonel, for the launch of The Acrobat, an online zine from the hard-working folks at Tightrope Books, promising fabulous visual, aural and written art, and put together with a lot of love and enthusiasm. As if that weren't enough, writer Keith Garebian and I took in Mary Walsh's bombalistic Dancing With Rage at the Panasonic. All Canadian, All The Time, this is comedy at its best, as Mary tromps through her favourite characters and gives Canadian politics its comeuppance. ("I don't like political jokes anymore," Marg Delahunty laments. "I've seen too many of them elected.") Marg's search for the love child she gave up decades ago takes her to Ottawa, where she faces her fears that it might just turn out to be that "crypto-nazi" Stephen Harper. I'm with Marg when she laments that things get soft in middle age. Marg is referring to her body; I'm referring to my cultural heroes. I doubt Mary Walsh will ever get soft. As we say in the Maritimes, "She got some mout' on her, that girl!"
A LITTLE BENT
Seems to be my week for being coaxed out of the house to see things I might otherwise not experience. First up, with writer Farzana Doctor, I attended artist and agitator Gita Hashemi's fine piece of political dialogue at the A Space Gallery, Time Lapsed, about the British-US derailing of Middle Eastern democracy when the legally-elected Iranian leader Mossedeq was ousted in what was to become the blueprint for American political interventions that continues to this day. Then, no less trenchant, last night I went with friend David Tronetti to the Hart House production of Martin Sherman's epoch-making play, Bent, to see our friend Edward Karek as a very unpleasant Nazi. Edward, we hereby crown you The Queen of Nasty.
TIME LAPSED -- A SPACE GALLERY
