Y'all, 1992-2002.

I finally started digitizing and putting the old Y'all video on youtube. I would imagine most of the people who read my blog are also facebook friends so they already know this, but just in case, here's the "playlist" with all the Y'all stuff I've posted so far:



Oh, the memories. More to come...

If This Was The Onion, It Would Be Funny.

An article in Scientific American (which I found through Andrew Sullivan's blog) describes a recent study of how the brain is affected by thoughts of "love" as opposed to thoughts of "sex":
Participants in the first study first imagined one of three situations: a long walk with their beloved one (the love condition), casual sex with a person to whom they were attracted but not in love with (the sex condition), or a nice walk on their own (the control condition). Participants then attempted to solve three creative insight problems and four problems that assess analytic thinking, which were logic problems from the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) (e.g., if A <> B then ?) As predicted, participants in the love condition solved more creativity problems and less analytic problems than those in the control condition. Participants in the sex condition, on the other hand, solved less creativity problems and more analytic problems compared to participants in the control condition.
The most glaring problem here is the unexamined assumption that "love" and "sex" are discrete phenomena. What? Another obvious problem is that people lie about their feelings regarding love and sex all the time, even to themselves. Probably especially to themselves. These people ask someone to imagine "a long walk with their beloved" or "casual sex with a person to whom they were attracted but not in love with" and then expect me to believe they have any idea what that person is imagining, let alone that they've induced some measurable state? It's amazing to me that educated people present this hooey with a straight face.

I call bullshit.

Leonard Cohen.

Since I seem not to have much of inspiration to write today, I'll share some Leonard Cohen with you. I can't think of another artist I revere like Leonard Cohen.



A friend posted an old video on facebook today of Cohen and Judy Collins singing "Suzanne," which, until everybody went batshit over "Hallelujah" a few years ago, was probably his most famous song.

One of my favorites is "Chelsea Hotel #2," which Cohen says he wrote about Janis Joplin. The Chelsea is still open, and my friends M and B stayed there when they went to New York for the opening of my show a few weeks ago. My friend P is staying there in a few weeks. Rooms are a little cheaper than average for New York. The Chelsea Hotel's bohemian heyday is decades in the past, but it must hold onto a bit of its color. M said there was a stinky cat litter box in the hallway next to her door.



The Warhol shenanigans are interesting to me, but my real attachment to the Chelsea comes from An American Family, the PBS documentary series from the early seventies. Lance Loud's sojourn at the Chelsea was the first bit of gay culture I was exposed to even though I didn't know that's what it was at the time. I'm sure that glimpse of New York art sex freakiness planted the seed of my desire to move to New York as soon as I could.

Blech.

It's a gloomy gloomy rainy day and I have a cold. The last few years I've been getting these frustrating colds that start with about 3 days of a sore throat and, just when the sore throat is waning and I think I'm over whatever it is I have, I wake up the next day with a full on congested running nose head cold. Since it's happened several times now, I should see it coming and not get so bummed out. So much for my short-term memory.

Being a little sick shouldn't matter much since I have nothing much going on right now. It's only important in the scheme of things because I've been seeing someone. Well, if two dates qualifies as "seeing someone." It has been over a span of time, so it feels more substantial. He travels a lot with his job, I've been going back and forth to New York, several weeks passed between our first and second date which was last weekend. Then I got sick. I thought I may have even gotten the cold from him, or he from me, because we both felt under the weather on Monday, but he didn't get any worse and got better soon.

We have a date tomorrow, which I will probably cancel because I feel like crap. He's leaving again Tuesday for a week, and then I'm leaving the following week for New York again.

This is probably the most boring blog post int he history of the world, but I'm determined to keep blogging daily for a while to get back in the habit.

Privacy.

I've had a hard time sitting down to blog lately. Lots of reasons -- many of them to do with laziness and disorganization because of a transitional phase in my life and career -- but also a lot of the stuff that's occupying my thoughts lately is not stuff I can share. For instance, my collaborators and I on Lizzie Borden have been negotiating a legal agreement to lay out things like billing and percentages of royalties. It's a very interesting conversation, complex, bringing up all kinds of issues related to career, ego, art, business ethics, and friendship. Subjects I love to pontificate on. But the conversation is private. I wouldn't share it -- at least not until I'm very old and writing my memoirs.

And I've been dating. Lots of anecdotes about men and sex, food, nightlife. This is the stuff I'm dying to write about. But it's personal. Private. I don't feel right sharing intimate stories that involve other people.

And why is that? Why is sex private? I guess I'm jaded, but when you've traveled for so long in a milieu where people have sex in bars, in clubs, in parks, in the woods, in public restrooms, alleys, and parking lots between cars, it's hard to regard sex as something that is or should be private. Why private? I can't come up with any reason that I myself might avoid having sex in public other than shame or embarrassment, and that doesn't seem like a very good reason. If I'm in a situation where I don't feel in danger of shame or embarrassment, I'm all for it.

I can buy that some sex is or should be private. Maybe sex is like conversation, sometimes it works better if it's tete-a-tete, and sometimes it's nice to let the whole room in on it.

An article I read last year about bonobos' sex lives had a huge impact on my thinking about sex. Basically bonobos are constantly having sexual contact of various types and degrees, homo- and heterosexual, all day long for myriad reasons: to smooth over or prevent conflicts, in exchange for food or other favors, to express affection, for fun, to make baby bonobos, or because they're drunk and horny and some guy just told them they looked hot ... oh wait, sorry, that was me.

So why do humans create this arbitrary thing we call "having sex" and insist that it's super-serious and has to be kept sacred and private, rather than just let sexual contact be one of many ways we might naturally interact with each other.

Of course, now the whole notion of privacy is sort of antiquated. We think we have privacy, but we don't. Somebody's always got an iPhone and he's taking pictures to put on facebook. I find it exhilarating when my secrets are revealed. Shame is heavy.

Am I missing something? Is there some real reason for us to hold our sex lives so close?

My Epigottis Is Unreliable.

The two deaths I have, for some reason, fantasized about are one, getting hit by a car, and two, choking. Since I got hit by a car this summer and survived, I'm wondering if that means I'm going to die of choking.

My epiglottis is unreliable. I come close to choking fairly often, once or twice a week. Just now, I took a swig of beer and my epiglottis totally didn't even try to prevent it from going down the wrong tube. My conscious brain stepped in in the nick of time and took matters into its own hands.

The Partridge Family.

The Partridge Family is the first pop culture I remember being my own and not my parents'. It cracks me up to remember how I was so titillated by the commercials for the Partridge Family show, before I had even seen the show, how I thought it was some strange new slightly dangerous thing. Pretty much all we listened to at home before my brother and I started buying records in the early 70s was Beethoven, Johnny Cash, the Mills Brothers, and Errol Garner.

Of course, when I was 10 I had no idea how totally surreal the show was. I just loved the songs. I still do. When I was starting to write songs and playing in bands in New York in the 80s, I always wanted to sound like the Partridge Family. I especially love the background harmonies.

Life in a Box.

The hard disc in my computer died a few weeks ago, so I had it replaced. I didn't lose any data, but I may as well have because the only way it could be recovered was without the file structure and file names, meaning that what I have now is a folder called Data Recovery with subfolders called Doc Files, JPGs, etc., each of which contain thousands of numbered files. All my stuff is there, but it's nearly impossible to find anything in a reasonable amount of time. Not such a big deal in the long run -- most of it was archival, not stuff I need to access regularly, and a lot of it I have on DVDs somewhere in boxes around here.

I did lose the "disc image" that allowed me to burn DVD copies of my film, Life in a Box, so J borrowed a copy on DVD from a friend, and I spent today making another disc image on my computer. Then I made a new DVD, and I had to check it to make sure it copied okay, which means that I had to watch the film carefully this afternoon. I've seen it many many times and still enjoy watching it -- except for the argument scene that comes right in the middle, which is excruciating.

Humility aside, I'm still kind of amazed that we couldn't get a distribution deal for the film. I think it's entertaining, funny, complex and affecting, and has a wide appeal. It occurred to me watching it this time after not seeing it for a while that it's no wonder I've been at a bit of a loss how to follow it, what to do next. Not just because the film seems in a way so perfectly realized, but also because it tells a story of a career which seems so perfectly realized, so contained and finished.

In fact, I think it's such fine work that if I never did anything else as an artist, I would be content that I had fulfilled my potential as an artist. That's what I think about the work. But as an artist I still have that same impulse to create, that same need I always had. So somehow I have to find out what to use it for. I thought for a long time that it would only be natural to make more films, to use what I learned, go from there, but I have floundered trying to make that happen. It's such a complicated medium, requiring time and people and resources that I still haven't figured out how to bring together again for a new project. Life in a Box fell together in a way, mainly because we had a producer spending the money to make it happen, to allow me to work with great people and take the time necessary to learn the skills and do the work.

When I was editing and finishing the film, and when we were traveling around to various festivals and getting such great responses from audiences, I thought the way it would happen is that the film would get on TV and in theaters which would generate interest in my work which would grease the wheels for me in putting together my next film. I really expected things to grow organically from there. Ironic that the big message of the film is that nothing turns out like you expect. I wonder if that's a lesson anybody really learns for long.

Good News! Another Reason to Cut Up Your Baby's Penis!

Is it just me, or do Americans seem obsessed with finding reasons for circumcising babies? I guess it's easier to find ways to prevent HIV infection among babies than among 18-25 year olds where infection rates are still increasing. The CDC is trying to decide whether to promote the mutilation of infants in order to -- maybe slightly, but they're not really sure -- decrease their chances of contracting an infection many years in the future. But
[Dr. Peter Kilmarx, chief of epidemiology for the division of HIV/AIDS prevention the C.D.C.] and other experts acknowledged that although the clinical trials of circumcision in Africa had dramatic results, the effects of circumcision in the United States were likely to be more muted because the disease is less prevalent here, because it spreads through different routes and because the health systems are so disparate as to be incomparable.
Did they consider the fact that when these babies reach the age of sexual maturity, they might be able to, and might want to, make up their own minds whether or not to cut off the ends of their penises?

Janis Ian.

In high school I had the album Between the Lines. I don't think I knew much about the record or Janis Ian before I chose it as one of the pile of free records you used to get for joining the Columbia record club in the 70s. I pretty much wore it out. It's such a cliche now that it makes me smile a little queasily, but I really would listen to At Seventeen and cry and think, "that's me, that's my life." Way before I knew I was homosexual. (This is also around the time of the beginning of my Judy Garland obsession.)

In our first year performing together in New York, Y'all played in the gay pride day rally in Union Square. We played 3 or 4 songs in front of thousands of people -- it was a huge thrill, one of the highlights of our career. Janis Ian was the headliner of that show. We met her backstage, and she said something funny about J's dress, I can't remember what it was now. I remember being thrilled and honored to be there performing on the same stage with her.



When J and I lived in Nashville in the late 90s, Janis lived there with her partner and had a thriving career as a country songwriter (belying Nashville's hyper-conservative image). They lived in an old house with some kind of neon sign, like a vintage beer sign or something, in the window. I'm pretty sure she still lives and works there.

The clip I think is from the Smothers Brothers show.

Inglourious Basterds.

I read the New York Times review of Inglourious Basterds yesterday. I don't read reviews of movies I'm planning to see, so I was safe with this one. I guess you'd call it a pan. My housemates saw it last night and loved it. They're Tarantino fans, and they compared it favorably with Pulp Fiction. I didn't have any desire to see it before and less so now since I don't like Pulp Fiction. The first time I saw Pulp Fiction, I thought it was fascinating, but I couldn't put my finger on what was interesting about it. The second time I saw it, I realized there was nothing really there. One thing Tarantino is great at is creating an illusion of substance. I guess it's all that talking.

I watched Kill Bill too. I didn't want to dismiss Tarantino too quickly; so many people seem to think he's a great artist. Kill Bill didn't even grab me the first time. It was just boring.

Here's what Conor Clarke (at The Daily Dish) said about Inglorious Basterds:
There is much debate about what genre Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds deserves. Is it comedy? Philosophy? Revenge fantasy? Silly exploitation? David Denby, for instance, takes the position that it's "lodged in an uneasy nowheresville" between these things. I'd take the position that it's too easy to over-intellectualize a Tarantino film, which is probably just an empty (but extremely well crafted) vessel studded with encyclopedic and occasionally annoying references to films the director likes. Good luck speculating about Tarantino's intentions. But I can report that the audience with which I saw it last night treated it as comedy, which is probably the right mindset with which to enter the theater, at least if you want to have an enjoyable experience.
I just don't trust him. I don't think he has anything to say, and if you're going to make a movie about Nazis, I think you should have something to say.