Happy New Year, dear reader!
CAMP: "A cornucopia of frivolity, incongruity, theatricality, and humour." "A deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love." "The lie that tells the truth." "Ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate or homosexual; pertaining to or characteristic of homosexuals."
Sunday, 31 December 2023
Everything's set out for the Dolores Delargo Towers New Year's Eve party...
...just waiting for our guests to arrive!
Saturday, 30 December 2023
Could I wave the years away? With a quick goodbye?
Very sad news, just as 2023 draws inevitably to its close - one of the greatest of all interpreters of Stephen Sondheim's songs Mr David Kernan has departed for the glittering halls of Fabulon.
Originally an actor (he indeed appeared in Zulu, as well as some tackier stuff later on like Carry On Abroad), Mr Kernan's fame was sealed when he became a fixture on the cult 60s satirical programme That Was the Week That Was.
However, that show's producer and impresario Ned Sherrin had other plans for his talents when TW3 was over, and so it was that he became best-known for his singing, not least in the world premiere of the Sondheim revue Side By Side By Sondheim.
By way of a tribute, from that show, these...
[You'll need to adjust the volume on this first clip; it's very old...]
And my favourite [no video, more's the pity]:
Leave you? Leave you?
How could I leave you? How could I go it alone?
Could I wave the years away? With a quick goodbye?
How do you wipe tears away when your eyes are dry?
Sweetheart, lover, could I recover?
Give up the joys I have known?
Not to fetch your pills again every day at five
Not to give those dinners for ten elderly men from the UN
How could I survive? Could I leave you
And your shelves of the world's best books
And the evenings of martyred looks, cryptic sighs
Sullen glares from those injured eyes?
Leave the quips with a sting, jokes with a sneer
Passionless lovemaking once a year?
Leave the lies ill-concealed and the wounds never healed
And the game's not worth winning and wait, I'm just beginning
What, leave you, leave you? How could I leave you?
What would I do on my own? Putting thoughts of you aside
In the south of France, would I think of suicide?
Darling, shall we dance? Could I live through the pain
On a terrace in Spain? Would it pass? It would pass
Could I bury my rage with a boy half your age
In the grass? Bet your ass!
But I've done that already or didn't you know, love?
Tell me, how could I leave when I left long ago, love?
Could I leave you? No, the point is, could you leave me?
Well, I guess you could leave me the house, leave me the flat
Leave me the Braques and Chagalls and all that
You could leave me the stocks for sentiment's sake
And ninety percent of the money you make
And the rugs and the cooks, darling, you keep the drugs
Angel, you keep the books, honey, I'll take the grand
Sugar you keep the spinet and all of our friends and
Just wait a goddamn minute!
Oh, leave you? Leave you? How could I leave you?
Sweetheart, I have to confess, could I leave you?Yes
Will I leave you? Will I leave you?
Guess!
Sheer perfection. We'll miss him.
RIP, David Stanley Kernan (23rd June 1938 – 26th December 2023)
Sunday, 24 December 2023
Friday, 22 December 2023
The weakening eye of day
I leant upon a coppice gate,
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land’s sharp features seemed to me
The Century’s corpse outleant,
Its crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind its death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead,
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited.
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
With blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew,
And I was unaware.
- Thomas Hardy
Midwinter, the Shortest Day, the Longest Night, Dongzhi, Makara Sankranti, Yaldā, Yule - it's the Winter Solstice! Look on the bright side - it's all uphill from now on, and Spring will be here before we know it...
Sunday, 17 December 2023
Olly Dolly
Congratulations!
Gay icon and all-round sweetie Olly Alexander has been selected to represent the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest next year...
Saturday, 2 December 2023
There is only one way, one voice. Yours.
"An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I've left the opera house." "Art is domination. It's making people think that for that precise moment in time there is only one way, one voice. Yours."
"I don't know what happens to me on stage. Something else seems to take over."
"I don't need the money, dear. I work for art."
"I am not an angel and do not pretend to be. That is not one of my roles. But I am not the devil either. I am a woman and a serious artist, and I would like so to be judged." "You are born an artist or you are not. And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks. The artist is always there."
"When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I'm slipping."
One hundred years ago, the Diva to beat all Divas was born.
All hail!
Maria Callas (2nd December 1923 – 16th September 1977)
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