|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
May 14, 2009Certain men fascinate me–always have, always will–BECAUSE THEY’RE IMPOSSIBLEto figure out, and you wouldn’t want to. A conflict within a contradiction wrapped in a conundrum. A puzzle within a problem wrapped in a paradox. There is always more to wonder and speculate about. I keep returning for new clues, and encounter more mystery. They’re all dead, so they can be studied in their entirety, as men and as legends. The first whose spell I fell under was my lifetime love, Jack Kerouac, so attractive, yet to become so repulsive, who appeals to my temptation to mother suffering souls. So obviously influenced by his writing and his wandering ways, I feel more kinship with this long-gone icon than most people I know. Then I discovered Yukio Mishima, totally out of my ken, a writer, revolutionary, mystic modern samurai, endlessly intriguing and beguiling, of a world so different from mine that he might have been a mythological god. The other is Glenn Gould, “my” Bach pianist, who died at the height of his powers, of a stroke, at age 50. This guy was a natural, born to excel. So odd in his habits and behavior, so outrageously good at what he did, he was an upstart standout from the start. Jack Kerouac, Yukio Mishima, Glenn Gould, and now comes… ADAM LAMBERTHuh? An American Idol finalist among three 20th century titans? This Lambert guy’s got so much going on he has taken on an alien quality to me. Who and what is this fabulous exotic bird of paradise? Similar to how I regarded Michael Jackson, circa “Bad” era—I don’t care what he is, he is one freakin’ exploding supernova superstar! Dazzled by his star power, I can’t take my eyes off the dude. Adam is by turns soulful, sensual, sexual, tender, brazen, outrageous, over-the top, down-to-earth, a chameleon, yet always himself. Whatever a song needs him to be, he is that thing, without losing his core self. He’s a straight shooter, but emotionally deep as the Mariana Trench. Every one of his videos, from the exquisite “Mad World” to the bizarre “Ring of Fire,” comes from his heart. I simply enjoy watching someone do what he was born to do, and having the world-wide venue in which to do it. He moves and performs with complete confidence, yet no bravado. He’s not showing off what he does, he just does it. No look at me, world, but you can’t help but look at him. “I know who I am,” the AI website quotes him as saying, and he has the enviable quality of being comfortable, at age 27, in his skin. OK, sue me, I’m star struck. THE MAGIC BULLET, REDUX,in my column, “Kicked It,” was not a paid advertisement. Nor was it a public service announcement. It was just an announcement, a piece of information, that a food supplement, Resveratrol, did something for me I have never been able to do for myself: clear the cobwebs out of my brain. I know I sounded like a commercial, but my shrink had never heard of Resveratrol and perhaps someone out there who could also find it to be balm in Gilead, hasn’t either. I’m talking one person, one suffering soul, to another. I WRITE FOR THAT ONE READERwho “gets” me, who needs to hear what I have to say, who considers me one of her best friends, though we have never met and never will meet, because she will never contact me, but nevertheless considers me a favorite companion because I “get” her. That reader is sitting in the Chair of the Unknown Reader. It could be a stuffed armchair with a tassel-trimmed lampshade, casting a mellow glow. It could be hard wooden BART bench at 16th and Mission, the reader monopolizing it by laying back and holding his paperback up to blot out the sun. It could be a porch glider, the beach, the library, your bed. The Chair of the Unknown Reader is anywhere anyone nods in recognition at something you have written. Maybe you illuminated a human characteristic, or stated an emotional truth, or put something in a way this person could never have done, but that resonates. I write first for myself, and, secondarily, for the Unknown Reader. You can’t be trying to please certain readers, or all readers. I ran into my neighbor from my former flat, and he told me he’d always meant to ask me out to dinner, but that I “always seemed to be somewhere else.” Wow, did he have my number! My attempts to live in the Now always thwarted by distractions of what I’m not getting done and beating myself up about it, I am now training myself to see something that needs to be done and to do it, right then and there. But if I don’t, so what? The pressure’s off. The pressure’s off! The persistent, insufferable pressure on my brain to accomplish everything at once right away, is gone. No one was ever my taskmaster but myself. And I have laid down my whip. I’d like to hand that whip over to Adam Lambert. And he may do with it as he pleases, I don’t need it anymore.
The author finds you fascinating, but please, hon, put the sword away. ------------------------------------------------------------ Take it easy
Be your own American Idol copyright Alexandra Jones 2009 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
