Alzheimers update: deep brain stimulation

This is exceptional news. Doctors in England have found that deep brain stimulation via electrodes has a definite effect in reversing symptoms of Alzheimers. In what is, in laymen's terms, a "pacemaker of the brain", some sort of contraption would massage or stimulate the areas of the brain that regulate memory. This could be the miracle!

The pertinent article:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-discover-way-to-reverse-loss-of-memory-775586.html

How weird...

In one of my AlertsMail accounts, I was made aware of the fact that a song lyric I posted earlier in the month, "Waterloo", has been incorporated into a site devoted to the battle of Waterloo in art! Weird!!!

For my birthday I am having...

Scottish Shortbread

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9”x9” pan (or line with Silpat).

Cream 3/4 cup unsalted butter and 1/4 granulated sugar until light and fluffy.
Beat in 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (never use that hideous artificially flavored stuff).

Add 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour and 1/8 teaspoon salt. Don’t overbeat – just see that they’re decently incorporated. Press onto the bottom of your greased pan and bake for about 20 minutes, or until pale golden in color. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool while you make the filling.

Pour one 14 ounce can of sweetened condensed milk into a heatproof bowl and place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Cover and cook, over low heat, stirring occasionally, for 45 to 60 minutes or until the milk has thickened and has turned a light caramel color. This is a tricky stage. Remove from heat and beat until smooth. Pour the caramel over the baked shortbread and let set.

Melt 6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate with 1/2 teaspoon unsalted butter. Pour the melted chocolate evenly over the caramel and leave to set. Cut the shortbread into pieces using a sharp knife.

I decorate with either a sprinkling of multi-colored dragees (added while chocolate is warm) or a light dusting of gold powder (after chocolate sets) from New York Cake and Bake Supply, 56 West 22nd Street.

Yield: 16 2” pieces.

I love this painting...

A friend just sent me a birthday card with this painting on it --- I think my adoration is well known. it is:

"The Storm", 1880 by Pierre-Auguste Cot (French, 1837–1883). Oil on canvas. Commission of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe. Bequest to Metropolitan Museum of Art by Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, 1887.

It's home is the Met, though it has traveled the country in the last year as part of a "romantic paintings of the 19th century" exhibition. I missed it!

I just love these kids (though they need to learn how to dress for inclement weather).

It's my BIRTHDAY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, today is the day. I've managed to convince Lisa, my boss, to wander by occasionally to say "Ah, Tim... what a rare and intoxicating beauty..." and several folks have brought me chocolate. There was a lovely party Friday night, this weekend is filled with revelry and celebrations of moi, Lori's boyfriend is making me dinner Saturday night, I'm seeing SITPw/Geo... what's not to love?

What do I want for the year ahead? A production of Sylvia So Far. I've been waiting for a variety of things, but I can't any longer. SO... 2008 is Sylvia's year! Yeah!!!!!!!!!!

The last of the 2007 films...

Last night I saw No Country For Old Men, the last of the critically adored, majorly nominated movies of last year left on my must-do list. It's been years since Oscar time came and I had seen virtually everything. I think couples just see fewer movies, stay in more, blah blah blah. Single folk --- particularly single men --- see everything.

Okay --- so I haven't seen Ratatouille (which I am told I would love).

But NC4OM? Creepy, frightening, beautifully put together... and ultimately just not my kind of film. But I admire it enormously. Javier Bardem is as good as they say.

I just don't relate to Westerns (too much dust) or pugilistic films (I loathe seeing people hit each other).

So, of the five films nominated for the Oscar for best film, which would I pick?

Hands down --- Juno.

Hope for Alzheimers

In what could be a miracle-sized breakthrough, researchers are finding that a drug prescribed regularly for treatment of arthritis may also have life-altering benefits for Alzheimers patients.

Enbrel, when injected directly into the spine, can reverse dementia symptoms in a matter of minutes. While results are said to not make the sufferer “normal” (whatever that word means), it renders them able to drive a car.

That’s pretty high-functioning, as far as I’m concerned!

I watched my grandfather slip away horribly and angrily. His father had done the same, though with more joviality. Now my mother is ill. Any one of my siblings or cousins could be next, as could I.

Enbrel is not yet approved in any country for the treatment of Alzheimers or other dementias. Tests, studies, cross-examinations will have to happen.

But I have hope. I’ll keep you posted.

Blue Coyote Theatre Group's "Happy Endings"

The folks at Blue Coyote Theatre Group are up to their old antics.

This is the theatre company that has made a name for themselves mostly through fine productions of plays by indie favorites David Johnston and Matthew Freeman. This time last year they had a breakout production with David's Oresteia, simultaneously winning ecstatic and scalding reviews (you can't beg that kind of press). But they've been producing David for years, having mounted then remounted Busted Jesus Comix (Mike Diana actually attended one of the performances of the revival!) as well as Phone Call from Washington State Late at Night, Saturday with Martin, Leaving Tangier and Funeral Home in Brooklyn. I also remember, with terrific respect, a gorgeous evening of one of Matthew's works called The Americans. In it, a poem is created that is so beautiful that, upon completion, the building that houses it (and indeed, the entire neighborhood) explodes, hurtling at least one innocent bystander into a sublime heaven. Now, that's my kinda play!

Late in 2006 they did the Standards of Decency Project. Intended, I think, to challenge the sensibilities of the audience, it was actually a pretty tame collection of small, occasionally naked, commissioned playlets, much more silly and adorable than button-pushing. It sounds like they've embraced that mantle of entertainment in the upcoming Happy Endings, incorporating most of the same playwrights they used in the Decency project for an evening about sex workers. I expect James Joycean spewing go-go boys.

It opens February 12 and runs for three weeks through March 1. For tickets go to http://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?showCode=BLU9

(Photos: top, Happy Endings, 2008; right, Vince Gatton in The Americans, 2004; bottom, Bob Buckwalter and Tracey Gilbert in A Funeral Home in Brooklyn, 2006)

Guess what I'm seeing Saturday?!?!?!?!?

My all time favorite...

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is a show I adore. Saw it four times on Broadway (twice with the Mandy/Bernadette pairing, then once Bernie/Robert Westenberg and once Mandy/Maryanne Plunkett, who was very good).

I am counting the days!

And speaking of...

I just saw this photo of Faith Prince as Aggie (Matt Cavanaugh and Leslie Kritzer, background) in the Old Globe pre-Broadway tryout late last year of A Catered Affair. Overnight it has become the show I most anticipate in the coming season!!!

"The Catered Affair"

My friend Jimmy introduced me last night to a very special movie I had not only never seen but never even heard of. The Catered Affair. I'm still recovering.


The tilted, cock-eyed title credits indicate a funny romp through loving family misunderstandings. Wow, are they misleading! I found The Catered Affair one of the most brutally honest and distressing films about smothered dreams and barely buried resentments ever made. Based on a Paddy Chayefsky teleplay, Gore Vidal comes up with a script about the tangled webs of feeling brought to the surface by a daughter's announcement that she and her longtime boyfriend will be married in a small immediate family ceremony five days hence.

What follows is a heartbreaking chain reaction of smithereened feelings, tiny betrayals, huge resentments, bitter recriminations, gut-wrenching humiliations. Powerful stuff.

Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine pair as the long married parents, whose initial reaction to their daughter's pragmatism is typically blue collar: "She's got a good head on her shoulders". But Davis, fueled by her deeply held fury about her own wedding, shifts into full mother-of-the-bride gear, precipitating showdowns with Borgnine that can only result with the slinging of barbs that can never be unsaid.


Davis is variable in the role. In the early scenes she is wonderful, explaining the ins and outs of marriage to her daughter. But, wedged chronologically about halfway between All About Eve and Baby Jane (1956), she occasionally takes on the oddly consonated rhythms that drag queens would emulate for years forward. All the same, she is heartbreaking. The scene wherein she explains the circumstances of her own wedding to her daughter in a bridal shop dressing room is simple, shocking, horrible. Her daughter, appalled and trying to hide it, says, "Ma, I never heard that story". Davis looks away, purses her lips, and simply relpies "No? I thought'cha had". It's like being kicked in the stomach.

The real shock, in movie terms, though, is the restrained, beautifully muted performance by Debbie Reynolds as the daughter. Cavorting only a year later as the over-the-top, hillbilly hooligan Tammy, I had no idea Reynolds could act. Hoof, sure. But act? Wow!


A musical version of the film - an idea I wish I had had first - opens this Spring at the Walter Kerr. It stars Faith Prince in the Davis role and Tom Wopat in Borgnine's. The "bachelor" uncle played by Barry Fitzgerald in the film is undertaken by bookwriter Harvey Firestien on stage, so I expect a more explicitly gay take. The role that is such a revelation in Reynolds is played in the musical by Leslie Kritzer, so funny in Betsy Kelso's Trailer Park.

The score is by John Bucchino, whose "Grateful" is a cabaret standard. Can't wait!

"Twenty In My Pocket"

I had a lyric request. From Sylvia So Far, this is "Twenty In My Pocket". And, for those of you who'd like to actually hear it, I have an MP3 I can e-mail you!!!

"Twenty In My Pocket"

Sylvia So Far

Timothy Mathis

I GOT A
TWENTY IN MY POCKET
AND, GOD, IT’S STRANGE.
MY POCKET’S USED TO EMPTY,
BUT IT LIKES THE CHANGE.
I GUESS I LOOK LIKE BROKE,
BUT I’M DAMNED IF I
DON’T GOT A
TWENTY IN MY POCKET
AND I’M THINKING WHAT I MIGHT BUY.

SO, TWENTY DOLLARS DON’T BUY ME
MUCH CHAMPAGNE,
BUT IT SURE COULD SPELL SOME TACOS OR A
PORK CHOW MEIN.
MAYBE TWENTY DON’T GET ME HOOT KWEEZINE,
BUT ALL THE

SAME, I CAN’T REMEMBER IF I
EVER FELT QUITE THIS FINE.

SYLVIA, SO FAR

REALITY BLOWS.
NOTHING TO SHOW FOR MY PART.
BUT GREEN LIGHTS ARE SIGNALLING,
“EVERYONE ONES.”
AND I’M KNOWIN’ WHAT THEY MEAN,
AND I THINK I NEVER SAW MYSELF A
NICER SHADE OF GREEN.

AND BABE, A

TWENTY IN MY POCKET IS
SWEET BECAUSE
A TWENTY BUYS AN AWFUL LOTTA
HAAGEN DAZS.
THINKIN’ THINGS ARE READY TO ‘BOUT EXPLODE.
I GOT A

TWENTY IN MY POCKET AND THERE’S

PLENTY MORE DOWN THE ROAD.

SYLVIA, SO FAR
MY LIFE’S PRETTY THIN.
ONLY A FACE AND PHYSIQUE.
NOTHING TO SHOW WHERE I AM OR I BEEN,
AND THE VIEW WAS KINDA BLEAK.
BUT TODAY I GOT A TWENTY…
JUST IMAGINE IN A WEEK!

I GOT A
TWENTY IN MY POCKET
AND, DAMMIT, SYL,
ORDER WHAT YOU WANNA, CAUSE I
GOT THE BILL.
YESTERDAY THE OUTLOOK WAS NAVY BLUE,
BUT WITH A
WITH A TWENTY IN MY POCKET THERE AIN’T
NOTHING THAT I CAN’T DO.
OH, I GOT A

TWENTY IN MY POCKET
AND I’M BLOWING IT ALL ON

YOU!

Copyright 2006.

The reading and beyond...

What a week since I blogged you last! Rehearsals. Readings. Birthday doings (yeah, my birthday is next week).

Bottom line, after a weekend of really exciting rehearsals, the reading of Sylvia So Far was a wonderful success.

The cast, led by the fantastically gifted and sensitive Caesar Samayoa, told the story - a true one, you know - with such humor and beauty. About half way throught the second act I had to remind myself that Caesar is an actor and not my loved, lost friend. His rendition of "Long Time Coming" is a great thing.

Marie Gouba can do it all --- be delightfully trashy one moment, tawdry the next, touching the one following that. I loved working with her and know I will again. Lori Lane Jefferson? The woman is a genius. Her ability to paint a complete character (she plays something like nine different people in the show) in just a few lines is astonishing. I am particularly fond of Mother Hester, the blowsy old three-pack-a-day alchie who runs a nightclub. Mother has four lines which Lori parlays into something of a major supporting role.

To a person, everyone at the reading said to me "Where did you find the guy playing Brian? He's great." That would be Josh Franklin of Grease. What a dollbaby. He is simply one of the most talented folks I have ever worked with and one of the most delightful. Josh is one big, beautiful bundle of guy and I hope he becomes a star (and he could).

PP?? Peter Proctor Peter Proctor Peter Proctor??? The concensus last year after the La Mama production was that he was walking away with the show. I loved watching him ease his way back into Marsha - the whimpers and pouts and growls. Peter's Marsha is something of a cross between Mahalia Jackson and Eartha Kitt with a little Latifah for flavuh. It just proved that Peter's performance only needed Peter and last year's enormous, gold organza dress was just the icing on the... um... cake.

There is something special I feel for Gavin Esham. Maybe it's the character. Maybe it's him. Maybe it's just that he reminds me sooooo much of me when I was acting. There were a few moments as he told his story that I looked away. After all, I had a piano to play.

The response has been terrific. The pros who were there have offered terrific - and often conflicting - advice.

So now...

REWRITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As Miss Sylvia Rivera... CAESAR SAMAYOA

Wow. I've only been working with Caesar Samayoa for two days...

and I am sold.

This guy is the real deal and he is, most importantly to me, doing my Sylvia proud. She'd have adored him (after some inapproriate touching).

Caesar has done Broadway. Off-Broadway. La Jolla Playhouse. Cirque de friggin' Soleil!!!!!!!!

And just wait till you heart him sing "Long Time Coming". I mean, I wrote it and I cried.

And in the role of Moi... GAVIN ESHAM

Oh, Gavin, Gavin, Gavin.

I did not always love Gavin Esham. In fact, cast in 2004 as the frightened, lonely soul at the center of Wallflowers, Gavin and I loathed each other upon sight. Gavin’s love life had soured and he hated the show, hated the role and hated me. I returned the sentiment with equal aplomb and called him a bitter, over-the-hill go-go boy.

Gavin and I squared off and glowered at each other for two weeks. Then something happened. I was asked to attend a run-through. The piano started, Gavin Esham looked up from a chair stage center and launched into the opening number. Ten minutes later (yes, this thing I am obsessive about is all of ten minutes long), as Gavin and Jennifer Waldman played out the piece’s last moment, I had tears streaming down my face.

I had come to a horrible realization: no one plays me better than Gavin Esham.

And that is exactly what he does in Sylvia So Far. He is recreating his performance from last year’s La Mama production and he plays Teddy, the character based on me.

I do love Gavin. He is a gorgeously gifted singer and actor. Much more importantly, he is a wonderful guy. We’ve sort of, well, been through it a couple of times and we are still friends.
He is simply a dear, good man. And, to my knowledge, was never actually a go-go boy.

With special guest... JOSHUA FRANKLIN

So, the Sylvia So Far reading looms before me at six days away.

In a bit of blatant type-casting, the role called "All the Handsome Men" will be filled by the strapping, gorgeous and endlessly sweet Joshua Franklin.

Several years ago Josh was the first person ever to sing "The Man Reading Kafka on the Train". That number from SSF is, for reasons I have not yet identified, my biggest hit. It's a song about a romantic pick-up that goes south on a northbound subway. Maybe it's just so typical of the New York experience, but it's my most requested number in performance (yes, Peter Proctor, even more than your rendition of "My First Mistake"). Anyway... shortly after it was written I premiered it at a cocktail party thrown to promote my writing and I asked this young singer dude I had met to give it a go. He was fantastic.

And he is fantastic --- so fantastic that he works all the time and we've never had the chance to do anything again. So, his appearance in SSF is a real pleasure for me. If you want to catch him singing, go to his MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/joshfranklinmusic. If you want to see him live, he's the understudy for Danny Zuko (remember Max Crumm?) in the current Broadway revival of Grease.

My Gals...

Thought you might like to see a pic of the real girls. That's Marsha P. Johnson (the P stood for "pay it no mind") on the left and Sylvia ("hell hath no fury like a drag queen scorned") Rivera above. Sylvia is wearing a button bearing Marsha's picture. She always wore it and swore never to take it off until the city opened an investigation into Marsha's murder. That death still stands in the NYC books as a suicide.

Featuring... LORI LANE JEFFERSON

My beloved friend Lori returns to the cast of Sylvia So Far as the heavies. Actually, the role is called "All the Tough Broads". It ain't a stretch. Lori has gracefully survived one hell of a year, proving she is one of the toughest people I know. She's also a fantastic, take-no-prisoners actress and I adore working with her. Okay, okay. I just adore Lori.

Lori Lane Jefferson (All the Tough Broads) Thrilled to be working again with the talented Mr. Mathis & this great cast. Previously with Timothy Mathis: Sylvia So Far (world premiere, LaMama); Miracle Time (guest performer, Don’t Tell Mama). Off-Broadway: Caryl Churchill’s Iraq.doc (world premiere, Synapse) ; Regional: Proof, Comedy of Errors, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Rocky Horror Show, Confederacy of Dunces and Bright Room Called Day. Off-Off-Broadway: The Eumenides, This Is A Play (Bridge), Raised in Captivity and 24-Hour Plays (Shotgun Productions). Graduate: Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. http://www.lorilanejefferson.com/.

Introducing... MARIE GOUBA

One of the delights of writing is getting to work with new, exciting, talented people. In Sylvia So Far, one of the characters is called "All The Street Trash". The lovely and decided non-trashy Marie Gouba will be filling the role. This is our first project together, but I already know Marie sings like a dream!

Marie received a Bachelors degree in Vocal Music Education, Vocal Music Performance and Theatre Performance from Olivet College in 2006. Her college and regional theatre credits include, (The Witch) "Into the Woods", (Lucy Brown) "The Threepenny Opera", (Antigone) "Antigone" and (Ariel) "The Tempest" (a role always longed to play when I was acting). She is currently applying for Graduate School at New York University's Steinhardt School in Musical Theatre Performance. Marie is passionate towards educating young children about music and theatre and recently established a private vocal studio for middle school and high school students.

In SSF Marie sings "Lullaby", a song of which I am particularly proud.

Also Starring... PETER PROCTOR

It's just eight days until my first big deal of 2008: a small, invitational reading of the newest version of Sylvia So Far. On the panic scale, I am registering around a seven today. I'm still not happy with the script, two of the numbers are redundant, the scale is still tipped too far in the direction of the supporting characters... so what's new.

But, I thought I'd weigh in with something or other every day about the show. I intend to introduce the cast (there are six of them) bit by bit. So, the first bit:

Peter Proctor (above) as Marsha P. Johnson.

Peter is one of the original cast members from last years developmental production at La Mama returning for this reading and thank god! Marsha was, like Sylvia, a legend of the Village. Larger than life. Over the top. Painfully human. Peter nailed it all. One critic said Peter reimagiend Marsha as "an elegant goddess of the streets" in "a star-making turn".

An Ohio native, Peter has appeared as Che in Evita, both C.C. and Curtis and Dreamgirls, Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors and Lun Tha in The King and I. He also holds the distinction of having recorded demos of more of my songs than any other singer. His rendition of "My First Mistake" is requested more frequently by folks than any other of my recordings.

Peter is also tall, black, extremely good-looking, and has something like zero percent body fat. His abs have abs. He is married to the equally lovely and strikingly accomplished Shari Proctor.

Bit of Tim trivia: "When You Loved Me", the power ballad from Sylvia So Far, was added to the La Mama production in the 11th hour. It was written specifically for Peter. And he is territorial around it.

The nature and nurture of morality...

Yesterday’s NY Times (which costs an appalling $4, a figure that just galls me) has a great cover article in the mag section. Check out “The Moral Instinct” by Steven Pinker. Scientists and philosophers cross territories here in fascinating ways. I’m still mulling a few of the moral conundrums posited. Of the five general areas of moral assignment, my allegiance with justice/fairness (okay, righteous indignation) is right up there with the cool kids. On the other hand, I am much more ambivalent when it comes to issues under the banner of purity. Hmmmmmm…

Nothing can compare...

I saw, I bought, I wept…

Our favorite movies change through the years. When I was a child I always said it was Bambi. Lovely as that film truly is, I am struck now that, at the ripe old age of eight, I would passionately identify with a male protagonist with feminine qualities so pronounced that many people remember the character as a girl.

At eighteen I would have picked To Kill A Mockingbird, a film about a young person reckoning with the fact that the world is far less innocent than she.

At twenty-eight, I’d have said my favorite was Meet Me in St. Louis. My Poppa had died the year before and my nostalgia for “happy family/difficult father/all will be well” movies was in full swing.

I am forty-eight. In very little time I shall be fifty. My favorite movie was re-released this week on DVD in a glorious new digital transfer.

An Affair To Remember.

It has it all. Shipboard romance. Delightful repartee. The unexpected poignant moment (“We’ve already missed the Spring”). Unforeseen tragedy. Supreme sacrifice. And then there’s that last scene. Total ambiguity and total promise. “It was the closest thing to Heaven… you were there.”

An Affair to Remember is an embarrassment of riches: the studio system in top form, an amazingly smart script, glorious locations, and Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr (!!!) giving the performances of their careers. As love stories go, Titanic and Shakespeare In Love and The Way We Were (all movies that make me swoon) bow down to it.

In 2006, my lover of several years, playwright David Johnston, and I split. It wasn’t my choice. It was certainly an affair to remember. Does the film, with its message that lost love may find its way again, move me more now that it might have otherwise?

Oh god. I don’t know. Probably. Who cares? It’s a lovely, sophisticated, adult romance and I adore it.

In a sideline, the title number, sung over the credits in the film, is exquisite. I crave a good lyric:

“Our love affair
is a wondrous thing
that we’ll rejoice
in remembering.

Our love was born
of our first embrace,
and a page was torn
out of time and space.

Our love affair,
may it always be
a flame to burn
through eternity.
So take my hand
with a fervent prayer
that we may live
and we may share
a love affair
to remember.”

"Waterloo"

This song, printed by request, was written for the New York Artist's Collective's production of Iowa 08, presented last summer at The Vineyard Theatre. It was premiered by a great singing actress, Jessica Carter.



(Lights up. WAITRESS in mid-order:)


"Toast with your eggs missus?

White, rye or wheat.

No, fresh outta raisin,

but we got jam for sweet.

Wheat then.

Just be a minute or so, so

back in a flash.

Can I top off your Joe?


(Lights dim, isolating WAITRESS. SHE is in her head.)


Morning shift out on US 63.

Shabby, but hell,

got nowhere else to be.

'tatoes or hash with that?

Bacon or steak?

Not many choices a girl can make

in Waterloo.


Evening shift,

regulars makin' demands.

Married men gettin' too

smart with the hands.

Someday, I swear, I will

pack up the car,

toss out the map and drive

someplace that's far

from Waterloo.


Midnight shift's bad,

way too much space to think.

A trucker or two and a

pan in the sink.

Girl has time to dream where she might go.

Indianapolis.

Far east as Buffalo.

I could break out,

give some new place a try.

Jesus, you put me here,

Jesus knows why,

but sweet Jesus promise you

won't let me die

in Waterloo.

Let me fly

from Waterloo.

Say goodbye to ---


(Lights back up. A voice has snapped her back into reality.)


Say again?

God ma'am, I'm sorry,

you said?

Right! I just went somewhere

else in my head.

Sure ma'am, your order.

Hey - this one's on me.

Back in a flash.

I got places

to be."

"Elephants" and Grover

In the first four pages there is prostitution, the hint of betrayal, a yak stampede (followed by chimpanzees, a polar bear, a zebra, a lion, a panther), and a murder.

Last night I began “Water For Elephants”, a 2006 novel by Sara Gruen. If the photo accompanying her bio can be trusted, she is very pretty. But what a story she is telling. Set in a depression era traveling circus, this promises to be one dusty, tawdry, twisted ride. I love it!

My great Uncle Grover, a one time tailor for the Army stationed in Alaska during WWI, spent many years in the middle of his life traveling with a small chips circus. He was a show clown, posing before and after the main event for photos with the locals (it’s Grover, full show drag, in the photo above). Grover, who had a penchant for crochet and a nice evening cross-dressing with friends, was very old by the time I knew him. But I adored him. He had seen Mary Martin in South Pacific. Fanny Brice in Grab Bag. Charlotte Greenwood (his favorite) in virtually everything. The death of vaudeville was deeply and bitterly mourned well into the nineteen-seventies. The “bare butts” he encountered when Eleanor Parker brought Applause to Indianapolis were a travesty, Gypsy Rose Lee’s cavorting a thing of beauty. Grover never missed me in a show and never wavered in his prediction of my impending stardom.

But never, no matter how I begged at 8, flattered at 13, or kidded at 18, would he talk about his days with the circus. On that, Grover was mum.

My brother Michael, who remembers Grover as vividly and, I think, as fondly as I, chose the book for me. Maybe he thinks that in “Water For Elephants” I might learn a little something about what Grover remained oh so silent.

I hope I do.

Gay Sex: When did the rules change?

I reread a piece by Sarah Kershaw from last Wednesdsay's Times about the rise in HIV cases (and full-blown AIDS) in young gay men in the city. I'd kept it to read again and study because of the tidal shift I have perceived in the way gay men - and not just the 22 year olds - are dealing in a new century with the nightmare scourge of the last one.

I first became aware of "gay cancer" in the summer of 1982 and by 1984 we were all pretty much practicing safe sex all the time - no exceptions. I met my lover in 2002 and stayed in that monogomous relationship until Spring of 2006. Somewhere in those four years, a change occurred. Maybe it was the natural reaction to the success of antivirals and protease inhibitors. HIV was manageable. AIDS wasn't a death sentence.

By the summer of 2006 I had jumped into the dating pool with righteous enthusiam and there I remain. Safe sex, before 2002, was non-negotiable. Never in those almost twenty years had any date ever broached the subject of making love without a condom. Hell, I can remember a couple of sweaty nights when neither my date nor I had thought ahead and that simply meant going to bed horny. No glove, no love, we would say.

Now, virtually every sexual encounter includes the discussion as to whether unprotected sex is negotiable. A couple of times it was a deal-breaker, since my date only does it "raw" and I refuse that. I went out last summer with a much younger guy (25: age inappropriate but sweet, funny and such a looker). He is bright, sophisticated, talented. And he has NEVER had sex with a condom. He called it the "kink" of the AIDS generation. He also feels HIV infection is inevitable and treatable. And, I think he is far more typical of his generation than anomaly.

So, what happened? Did we lose the battle so many of us waged so fiercely? All of these young guys contracting HIV now, will their infections be treatable against a virus with an astounding track record for learning how to defy medication? Will we face, twenty or ten or fewer years from now, a new wave of despair and loss and death like in the eighties and early nineties?

And how can I tell a vibrant, hormone-infused young buck that he doesn't get to have sex the way we did in the olden days? It all breaks my heart.

Book trouble...

AAARRGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have spent the weekend trying yet again to make Sylvia So Far work.

That’s the musical that I’ve based on the life of one of my best friends and favorite people, Sylvia Rivera. Syl was the transgender gal who, long before that verbiage existed, threw the shoe at the Stonewall Bar that began the riot on June 29, 1969 and launched a revolution. Or that’s the legend.

Last year we did a developmental production of SSF at La Mama. First of all, it was a nightmare of an experience. But, that aside, the show was mess. One of my dearest friends said, “Tim, you have written a fantastic score and married it to the worst book in musical theatre history".

I wrote the book.

Or I tried. I want to be faithful to Syl’s life but find a workable dramatic structure as well. And I couldn’t write a single funny line for Sylvia, who was simply one of the funniest people I ever knew. One of the critics suggested I was possibly more interested in canonizing Sylvia than writing a musical.

David Johnston, the wildly popular downtown idie playwright (and my ex-luvuh) suggested, when my musical The Conjuring hit stall, that I tackle the Sylvia story. She had died six weeks before David and I met and he had always regretted that. David is one of those people who is effortlessly funny --- very much so in life, more so on the page. He would know what to do. But I’m stuck with a mess of a show and a reading I two weeks.

Did I say AAARRGH?

But the songs are great. Ah well…

Anyone know a good book doctor?

Laurette Taylor

If you could, wouldn’t you travel back about 60 years and catch Laurette Taylor doing Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie? I watched that documentary on Broadway’s golden age again last night. I had caught it at the Angelika when it came out. To a person, every one of the luminaries interviewed picked Taylor as the greatest actress they had ever seen. Even the notoriously hard-to –please Uta Hagen praises her (actually, Hagen dissects a Taylor moment from Outward Bound at some length in her book “Respect For Acting”). She must have been the ticket.

There is a brief screen test done in 1939 by the Selzick company in which Taylor, older than I’d have thought, plays a simple scene in a Pittypatish get up. She is, truth be told, so real and so honest. It’s a tiny nothing of a scene --- and she is dazzling.

"Sylvia So Far" on MySpace...

Hey, to read up on my musical Sylvia So Far (and hear three tracks from the score) go to:

http://www.myspace.com/sylviasofar

For all of you "When You Loved Me" junkies, have a listen whenever you like!

Jerry Herman’s due…

Last night I had the chance to see a PBS documentary about the career of Broadway tunesman Jerry Herman. Little heard from in recent years, Herman was the composer and lyricist who triumphed twice in the sixties (Hello, Dolly! and Mame), got shuffled aside in the Sondheim seventies and reemerged for a while, just before the agony of AIDS, to reclaim his popular stature with La Cage Aux Folles.

It’s fashionable in theatre song circles to pooh-pooh Herman as nostalgic, superficial, naïve. Even I, Barnaby to many a Dolly in my acting days, have long dismissed him as second-drawer. I remember my righteous indignation when his La Cage trumped Sunday in the Park with George for most of the theatre awards of 1985 (thank God for the Pulitzer).

But watching last night, hearing songs I haven’t thought of in years, my admiration shot through the ceiling and, God forbid, inspired me to finish one or two things I’ve started. Amazing songs. “If He Walked Into My Life”. “I Don’t Want To Know”. “Ribbons Down My Back”. The perfect “Time Heals Everything”.

To master-lyricist Sondheim’s opposite, much has been made of Herman’s gift with a melody. But it is in his words that I find something inspiring and special. Consider the way he uses ideas and senses in this bit from The Grand Tour:

“Don’t speak or garnets
or pearls from Manila,
forget them as fast as you can.
Don’t talk of ginger,
or lime or vanilla,
Until you have met Marianne.”

That’s lovely stuff. And tucked away in a tiny reprise in Mack and Mabel (my favorite Herman score) is a lyric so right and so lovely it makes me shiver every time I hear it:

“…and if he calls me,
and it’s collect,
Sir Walter Raleigh
I don’t expect.
And though I know I may be left
out on a limb…
so who needs roses
that didn’t
come
from
him?”

"A Room with a View"

A friend asked for the lyric to the title number of my new show, A Room with a View. Here 'tis:

"If it's damask that you wish,
in blue love,
damask is the very thing
I'll do love.
Me, I won't ask much:
now and then a touch,
and I need a room with a view.

If you say the parlor's damp
and chill love,
I shall rise to tend the fire
and grille love.
Let me do my best,
with a small request:
promise me a room with a view.

So much goes on dear,
to think and to feel,
that walls only mean to conceal.

Sometimes I sit very still
and lonely,
planning things that I would do,
if only...
Silly it may seem.
Cecil, let me dream.
Let me have a room with a view.

A room with a
window where lovers go ambling by,
framed by the sun and the sky.
They don't need a view.
I do.
Cecil, I do.

I won't ask a kiss.
Only promise this:
Lucy and her groom,
silent as a tomb,
living out ---
I mean loving out their lives
in a room with a view."

"Wallflowers" redux

Okay, I wrote it in 2002, it's all of ten minutes long, and I am still tinkering with Wallflowers.

For the uninitiated, Wallflowers is a tiny musical for which I provided the story and the lyrics. Inspired by Chagall's painting, "The Birth", composer Michael Moricz provided a ravishing score on which I pinned a tale of an emotionally unstable man picking between the bliss of fantasy and the gruesome challenges of reality. I've written so many things since then, but Wallflowers has a hold on me like none of my other writings. Trying to make it user-friendly for audiences is a cottage industry for me.

Wallflowers was commissioned during the heyday of Raw Impressions Music Theatre, a noble experiment in collaboration that lasted a few years and burned itself out. Raw Impressions pitted a composer with a lyricist, cast, director and concept, sent them off into the wild on a Friday night to return Sunday afternoon with a ten minute musical ready to go into rehearsal. The original cast, directed by Mark Schneider, included Matthew Trombetta, Emily Rabon Hall and Jamie Mathews. Raw Impressions restaged it in 2004 as part of Dreams This Way: The Best of Raw Impressions with a new director (Daniella Topol) and completely new cast (pictured above: Gavin Esham, Jennifer Waldman and Lucy Sorenson). That production played The Kirk Theatre later that year as part of the inaugural New York Musical Theatre Festival.

For reasons unknown, a huge revival of interest in Wallflowers has blown into town. I've had four requests for productions in the past few months and an NYU film student wants to produce it incorporating some lovely animation elements. We'll see.

So, of course, I am tinkering.

Weighing in on film season...

With everybody and their fichus issuing a list of 2007’s best film accomplishments, I’ve been pondering what of last year’s slate of movies affected me the most. What I’ve realized is that “Bests” and “Favorites” are by no means like defined. Respecting a film is hardly the same as adoring it. And individual susceptibilities reveal themselves shamelessly for me this year.

I’m a songwriter, and movies about songwriters and songs made a deep impression on me. Nothing blew me away like Todd Haymes I’m Not There (his Douglas Sirk homage of a few years ago, Far From Heaven, affected me similarly). Employing six actors as various incarnations of Bob Dylan, I’m Not There succeeds brilliantly in exploring the conflict between public perception and private identity. Who is realer? Richard Gere’s desperado or Heath Ledger’s hotshot superstar or Cate Blanchett’s media-fried junkie? Blanchett, for the record, is amazing, turning what could have been nothing more than a gender gimmick into a moving, truly scary portrait. Her Dylan is simultaneously hyper-articulate and nonsensical, like a creature popped by from some particularly acid Lewis Carroll trip.

Songwriting is also at the heart of Once, a romance (my favorite genre) set in contemporary Dublin. It’s the only movie of the year I saw twice. If you haven’t seen it, rent it. The developing love between an aspiring pop writer and his muse is intoxicating in the “it should only happen to me” manner.

Marion Cottilard’s Edith Piaf, for whom songs were food and air and life itself, blew me away in La Vie en Rose. The dizzy delights of Hairspray’s singing ensemble made me very happy and Johnny Depp’s reimagined Sweeney Todd ended the year with a welcome jolt. And for me, a lover of New York City, fairy tales and musicals, what could be better than a misplaced princess inspiring a ridiculous and delicious production number in Central Park? I wanted to love Enchanted more, but for a few splendid minutes in the middle it was all I could dream.

Of course, there were other films and performances having nothing to do with songs and writers that I loved. Atonement. Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood (though his enormous-for-film performance could easily be considered operatic). Ellen Page’s Juno.

But the performance that haunts me most this year? As I said, our opinions all are colored by our particular susceptibilities. Julie Christie’s turn as a woman disappearing before her beloved’s eyes in Away From Her has kept me awake too many nights. It’s a performance that is beautiful, horrible and much too close to home.

Everybody's doin' it, doin' it, doin' it...

Ah, to blog or not to blog. Whether 'tis nobler to shut up...

Ah well. I guess I have a lot to say, it's a new year, and even my ex is blogging these days. I'm going to give it a try. It might be fun! At any rate, there is a lot slated for 2008 that is exciting.

So, here goes...

Oh --- I'm Tim.