|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
July 14, 2009It’s reality that will bring you joyis the most important thingANYONE HAS EVER SAID TO ME,I have mentioned before, uttered by a shrink behind a desk, leaning back with his fingers laced behind his neck and elbows akimbo. You can’t live in la-la land forever. NOT LONG AGOI saw the SF Opera’s magnificent, soulful production of Tosca, one of my favorite operas (and Harvey Milk’s—as the film “Milk” has it, the banners for Tosca on the War Memorial Opera House across from City Hall are the last thing he ever saw). Tosca and Cavaradossi! How could a love so right go so wrong? As the lights were going down for the Third Act, a woman behind me said, “OK, here we go, Round Three—and this one goes to Scorpio.” (She meant Scarpia, the villain.) THE PROGRAM NOTESrelate that after seeing Sarah Bernhardt in the original Victorien Sardou play La Tosca, Peter Louys wrote, “Sarah is grace, youth, divinity! I am beside myself! My God, what a woman!… when shall I see you again, my Sarah? I weep, I tremble, I grow mad! Sarah, I love you!” USUALLY AT SOME POINTon my birthday I wonder if this is the year I’ll meet Mr. Wright (my code name for Mr. Right), but this year, May 3rd, it didn’t even enter my head to think about men. Just didn’t give a damn. Nevertheless, less than two weeks later, May 14th, American Idol finalist Adam Lambert made his way into my column “Certain Men Fascinate Me,“ as one of these inscrutable sorts you can’t and don’t want to figure out. By May 20th, I was taping my eyelids open so as not to miss a second of Adam’s final shows. And it’s true that, yes, by the AI Finale, we were all weeping, trembling, growing mad with love for Adam Lambert. We were beside ourselves! My God, what a man! When shall we see you again, our Adam? We love you! A scant four days later, I was a basket case and went off the deep end with a bottle of red wine and a laptop. A month later, through controlled exposure to Adam, my fever was down to 98.8, until the cover of Rolling Stone hit, shortly before I was to experience him live three times in succession. ADAM HAD TEMPTED MEaway from my regular life of tapping on a keyboard and brought me some dash and dazzle, some sex and sizzle, and best of all, it was a sneak attack I didn’t see coming. I was just living my life, and this guy comes along, gets his hooks into me, and won’t let go. Someone commented, “I didn’t know it was possible for someone to be so hot.” It had been a while since I’d seen anyone in that light. At the same time, he evoked a motherly desire to shield him from harm in the cold cruel world. Somewhere someone commented the RS cover made her want to “ravish and protect” him at the same time. He does give off an aura of needing protection, but he doesn’t need us to provide it. Leila’s the best mom he could have. Hopefully he’s making the right business connections that will protect him too. IN MY CASE,basket or otherwise, Adam speaks to my already passionate nature. My regard for him is not that different from my feeling for the arts, specifically classical music, but I am so seldom inspired to this degree by a visceral response to a person it truly took me by surprise. Usually it’s thinkers who get me fired up—Bucky Fuller, Norman McLaren, the Eames’s, Howard Zinn, Wendell Berry, great authors, artists, and filmmakers, etc., who make me strive to bring out the best in myself. Adam reminded me how exciting and delightful a passionate artistic life can be, especially when, like he, you can use your body and voice and heart to embody that passion. In my sedentary occupation of writing, I envy him that. BUT IT’S MORE THAN THAT.I think this Cougar mania he inspired hearkens to a deep-seated, perhaps unstated, desire in women of a certain age, best expressed by an emotionally distraught friend in a hotel room in Rio de Janeiro: “I just want to be young and pretty again!” Adam, at 27 and the beginning of big things for him, reminds us what it was like to be passionate, energetic, hopeful, ambitious—young, and hot. It’s wonderfully bittersweet to have that brought out in ourselves again, to be reminded that we can still feel and act on those things at any age. Those of us who have watched our bodies steadily turn into someone we no longer recognize as ourselves, may feel rejuvenated and ready for adventure. And I certainly hope a lot of boyfriends and husbands have benefitted from the awakening. BUT THERE’S YET SOMETHING ELSE.Adam appeals to the “hole” and that’s not how I mean it! The hole in people’s beings (not bodies) that needs filling. The well of loneliness, as Radclyffe Hall put it. The feeling that something’s missing—the feeling of fulfillment, or of being loved and accepted and desired. A deep, dark well that echoes frustration and despair, but, mostly, emptiness. Maybe it was full at one time, but all that’s left is the stagnant water at the bottom. For those of us for whom reality does not bring joy, for whatever reason, he brought us something to feel bubbly with excitement about. He’s the modern-day Conrad Birdie (of Bye Bye Birdie) fame—he even resembles him (the actor Jesse Pearson). Remember the Mayor’s wife collapsing and exposing her bloomers? As I wrote in “What is Wrong With Me?“
Just as I was quoting that I got an email from reader Connie, who took it yet one step further:
THE MAGIC IS ALWAYS INSIDE YOU,but sometimes needs to be drawn out by a powerful magnet like Adam. To lose the crush—the withdrawal of the projection—is something, for me, which had to occur, because I need to move on with my own creative process instead of being obsessed with someone else’s. I just took inventory of my ITunes playlists to date. I have watched Adam’s AI videos altogether 1,416 times, and listened to songs alone 1,418 times, for a total of 2,834 instances of Adam. I’m averaging the shorter videos and the longer songs into 3 minutes of play time each. That comes to 8,502 minutes (141 hours) = 6 full days of Adam, not including You Tube videos and other web content. That’s why I subconsciously “invented a scenario” at the Portland show in which I could detach myself from him rather than grow ever more involved. No, Adam Lambert was not cocky and full of himself. Don’t think he’s capable of it. It’s the song, “Whole Lotta Love,” and the performance of it that were cocky—and in the AI video of “Whole Lotta Love,” he was cocky too, as well he should be. It’s all about cock. Why did it turn me on, on TV and off, on-stage? Because I needed it to. That’s why I enjoyed the Oakland performance so very much; I was free to respond to whatever was in front of me without losing myself in head trips. I’d had a lingering concern that something in my columns might have offended him; I even sent him a note offering an apology (”if one is needed”) and that was something I wanted to resolve for myself, but it became irrelevant after I divorced the guy. He has so much to deal with he no doubt wouldn’t remember it anyway. “I HAD A SIMILAR EXPERIENCE,”said reader Connie, “when I saw Seal in concert (in a much more intimate venue at the 9:30 Club in WDC). I had projected so much stuff on to the person I thought I knew from his songs that I was taken aback by what felt like his lack of connection to the audience. I was disappointed that he was not more ‘authentic’ in the way that I envisioned he would be. Hey, they’re just people, right? Performers giving a performance.” And reader Kathy also wrote: “I have watched the videos of the tour in each city from the beginning in Portland. On the first night…there was no fire. All I saw was nerves. He did not relate to the audience or to Allison in the duet. It looked like his fire went out. The charisma was gone. That sparkle when he sang with KISS and Queen was gone. Each night he would perform again Adam would come back to that guy with the magic we loved. During the beginning tour dates, all I thought of was Adam telling an interviewer, ‘it’s all smoke and mirrors.’ ‘I am not that guy.’ I know now what he was trying to tell us and the interviewer. The man on stage is an actor.” SEEING ADAM LIVEmade blatant that you will never encounter these on-stage personae of his off the stage, and the real life person behind them cannot have a personal relationship with all his fans—so neither of them will ever give you what you want, face it, the intimacy of whatever sort you crave. To me that means eliminate the craving with some kind of wake-up call. Not that everyone needs that detachment. There are plenty of fans with happy lives, alone and/or with stable, loving relationships and perhaps children, that they wouldn’t trade for anything, who are still under Adam’s spell and take great pleasure in it. THE CRUX OF THE MATTERfor me is that I want reality in my life, a flesh-and-blood man in my arms to bring me joy. As I quoted Shia LeBeouf about fame, no matter how “intoxicating and exciting” Adamania was, it wasn’t real. I don’t want my primary emotional investment to be a wet dream over a gay rock star half my age. And it’s funny, because when I’m not involved with anyone, I like having a crush, or someone intriguing to think about; it gives my emotionality something to occupy itself with. But someone called Adamania an “affliction,” i.e., “something that causes pain or suffering.” And to encourage an impossible situation, is not something I can allow myself to indulge in. I NEEDED MY BUBBLE BURSTI have no interest in being one of millions of women who would like to throw her vagina at Adam (as his brother Neil put it). Now that I’ve managed to distance myself from him, he is not a source of frustration and longing but pure delight. I feel completely free to love Adam without making it about my need or desire for his love. I’ve kept track of Adam’s career by making him a Yahoo “Keyword.” Every time AL appears in the news, Yahoo sends me an alert with links. It’s fun to follow his tweets and picture him somewhere in real time, but now it’s just friendly interest, rather than trying to glean every piece of information that would reveal just a little bit more of him. There’s just too much to know. That’s why he continues to fascinate me, even at 98.6 degrees.
The author wishes Adam joy in life, in work, in love. Everybody deserves that. Photo by Adrianne Martin ------------------------------------------------------------ If I had two pairs of arms
Birds flying high, you know how I feel copyright Alexandra Jones 2009 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
