Thoughts

Youth of America

We’re the youth of America, bound by the weight of our leaders' choices and actions. What adds to the weight of our responsibility is the crushing force of today’s leaders trying to destroy our identities and existence. In a surge of ignorance and hate Texas, Florida, and other states have, or like our own Pennsylvania, are trying to pass  laws such as the, “Don’t Say Gay Bill” or others that prohibit or try to hide us from total inclusion.. 

We persist under the threat of violence, ridicule, and loss of medical care just because of who we are, who we were born to be. Meanwhile, legislators preaching that they are protecting the lives of children by, passing these bills ignore the staggering amount of LGBTQ+ youth that commit suicide each year because their own families and local communities won’t accept them as they are. Many of our politicians turn a  blind eye so they don’t have to deal with voices of change. We are those voices!

Out in the streets we cry for our leaders to listen. In the local courts we fight for justice. Yet when we voice our concerns we are called militant…, when we ask for understanding we are called snowflakes…, and when we want our identities acknowledged and our rights secured we’re called attention seekers and greedy. Our cries are not just to the town, county, or state. It is a plea to the country to stop this attack on our community and to ensure that this generation of children will not be lost just because of ignorance.

Even now as we speak time is running out! It’s running out on the kids who need gender affirming healthcare, it is running out on the youth who see no other way to be accepted than at their own death, and it is running out to make the change that will help those who come after us. Let’s pave the road not only for ourselves but for the people who come after us so they can run to a brighter future, a future where we can be accepted at home and in society, a world where it’s not taboo to speak of gender diversity, and a world where the can walk in the sun and among our peers proud of who we are.

We shall march and protest until our voices are heard, we will demand change until our voices go hoarse, and we will pave the way for all the LGBTQ+ people that will come after us. We need the government to change, we need diversity to be accepted, and we need to repeat our message until the world can see that we deserve the basic human dignity to be heard and to be respected as members of our communities! Thank you.

In the Movement of a Brush 

Even before I knew I wanted to be a writer, I felt the constant urge to create. When I visited museums, whether in the American Museum of Natural History where each dinosaur called for a name, the Museum of the American Revolution where the weight of each flag’s importance wavered heavily over my mind, or the Smithsonian Museum of Aviation where I could feel the gusts of wind breezing by me while looking at each suspended plane. 

I would feel my heart race to their callings, and my search would begin to look for something to write or sketch on. I felt more and more compelled to create in their presence. Each object, each subject, carried a history that was hidden in my eyes, and the joy I felt in discovering its being rivaled even the most grandiose aspects of life. After our family trips to those places, I would head back into the car to head back to my home far from the gazing marble statues, I’d find myself still longing to make something from those emotions I felt. To create as was created was something I wanted to do. It was a passion that couldn’t be quenched by distance.

I love paintings. They carry emotions in their brushstrokes, and stories in their frames. They’re simple objects that are complex in their nature, and I can’t help but fall in love with them. It doesn’t matter which time period they’re from: Impressionist, Post-modern, Romantic, or the Renaissance; they all hold this energy. Some are intent on being static, in that they are successful and they remain timeless and unmoving. But for many, I find this wild creativity, and in there I find stories.

One artist I admired far before I created a play about him was Vincent Van Gogh. There is nothing inherently grandiose about a shoe, sunflower, or chair, but through his brush strokes he made them move and thrive in their frames. The objects themselves became something more than what they were created as. Each and every color melted into the other, delving into the frame as if he were chiseling into marble. It felt like a magic eye poster where if I squinted hard enough, I could swear that something else was there, that life was in it, that movement and light were harnessed in his brush. 

So I began to create. With pen and ink I found that I could write stories from these frames and picture them onstage as if they were in front of me inviting me to a debut performance. I would take a seat on the couch with art students, dreamers, and people looking for meaning in the works to find the best seat in the house. Each portrait took a backstage place to prepare for the show. Suddenly, I felt entranced in the scene… suddenly each brushstroke fueled my impulse to create.

Cue loudspeaker announcer in the booth as they reach for the microphone to address the audience of one…

“Welcome ladies and gentlemen- wait, it’s just one person for the time being? Okay… welcome madam to the opening night, the debut, for Fields of Flowers. It stars Vincent Van Gogh, the artist who suffered and died for his art and-”

Cut.

I wanted to make a story of the artist that wasn’t tragedy porn for his situation. He was more than his death and his cut ear. I wanted to tell the lush nature of his art and his love for life. Rewrite and revise that.

“... It stars Vincent Van Gogh, the artist who lived for his art and his life, Paul Gauguin. It has the supporting roles-”

The pillars-

“Of the story. Madame Ginoux who wants to create but feels like a mantel-piece in the eyes of different men, and Theo Van Gogh, Vincent’s supportive brother who sees in him what nobody else can, a spark of potential and creativity. An infinite light that cannot remain static. That moves his brush to create the flow of paint, that reflect him in the process-”

That’s it! Right there. Hold the scene. His art reflects him. It reflects what he sees in the world around him. Despite his limited energy and time on earth, he wanted to capture the movement around him. I create to capture the changing world around me, and even if my ink is scratched off by grains of time, that picture of time is what I’m striving to create. 

The mundane can be extraordinary through the brush and through writing. Who wore that shoe on the floor? Maybe they left it behind because they had somewhere better to go. It is untied since the owner was on the go. What story was steeped in that leather? If the person left with just one shoe then surely they had to leave it for a reason. It is there but it has something else, it’s still but it is moving within the frame.

Next scene, we see the writer walk through fields of sunflowers swirling around them like a rushing stream. They become not only entranced by it, but consumed by it, enveloped by it. Their portrait and wandering eyes seem like they’ve been captured by the painter, looking in awe at the scenes around them. She rushes through the smoke and past the patrons of Madame Ginoux’s cafe, a Zouave looking puzzled by their rush. 

She enters the curtains of an apartment, where Theo Van Gogh is looking into the distance, wondering if his efforts for his brother will ever amount to anything. She has but a moment to soak it in before being in the marble hallways of an asylum, where the smell of oil paints and charcoal scratching permeates from an isolated room down the hallway. She begins to chase it. Wanting to see the world in the bubble of that space. She gets closer, and closer before… she begins to see a face. A man in a blue, absinthe stained cardigan, smiling fondly. He fades out of her reach leaving a long wood object by his side. She snaps back to reality, and the object is still there.

Protected by glass in front of me is another exhibit, a cane. It’s carved with images of a woman, with a coil going down its handle. It’s beautiful. Simple, but beautiful. I lean in to see what is written on the description, and from it I find that its owner was Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh’s friend, and in the scene I saw, his lover. Its handle has an empty cavity, where Gauguin would keep letters. Letters of sensitive sentiments, ideas, and secrets that only he wanted to know. I go quickly to the couch, and I begin to paint the story to life with my pen as if it were my canvas, and the scenes were in the movement of a brush.

Maybe This Time...

Cabaret Reflection

Erotic, harrowing, joyful, and most of all- stone cold and afraid.

Cabaret is to be taken, at least for me, in small, limited, amounts. Cabaret is an experience, a rollercoaster you go on again and again because... maybe this time it will be better. You strap in your seatbelt, put on your rose colored glasses, knock on wood, praise God, and dive headfirst into 1930s Berlin and the end of the world.

Of course, it wasn't really the end of the world. Skratch that, it was the end of the world, but just not the end of the world for the rest of us. 

For the Sally Bowles of the world it is just the nightshift. They put on their uniform, they go to mic check, and with a little help from booze they forget who they are performing to. So it wasn't the end of the world for Sally Bowles, it was just the end of the world for the Jewish people, the Romani, the LGBT people, and the opponents of Facism. It is a pill that can be taken only in small doses, for at least yours truly.

That is in no way to say I don't like it, quite the opposite, I love it. But, it brings out memories. When I was younger, while in elementary school, I was the subject of Antisemitism. It is in no way a victimhood mentality I carry from that time, once again, quite the opposite, it toughened my skin. Even so, there are just moments where art slightly brings that back. This musical is among those.

My family and I first saw it on Broadway under the title, "Cabaret: The Kit Kat Klub". Later on I saw it at Bard College with it being a project headed by Norrie Canniff. It was there I was hit the hardest with it.

When watching it with a friend, Sophie, we came to the scene in it where a character, Ernst, reveals that he is a member of the Nazi party by revealing his swastika armband. At that moment the theatre went silent. I went silent. There were other friends, aquaintances, and some people I had briefly met. But in that moment, I felt alone. There was a feeling a drowning in an ocean of feeling. It was in the moment my heart sank and I went cold and numb. 

If it wasn't apparent, I wasn't born in the 1940s. I wasn't born in the time of the musical, nor did I experience the horrors of the Third Reich or the war. But in that moment, it was real. Everything was real. I could hear the chants praising Hitler, I could see the goosesteps toward the podium, I could see... I could see my family. My family, well half, lived in Poland. That half were killed. I could see them, standing there, waiting for someone to yell, to scream, to fight... but there was just silence.

That is what a good musical does. 

WHERE THE BIOPIC SUCCEEDS

Film is inherently a passionate medium. It is meant to make us feel and to drive us to conclusions and themes that regular life doesn’t challenge us to do as to a clear point. That is what makes the biopic. The bland, boring, biopic. Sometimes it's shaken up with movies like, “Walk the Line” “Rocketman” and, unfortunately, “Elvis”. These films, varying in their respective qualities, do what other biopics are afraid to do, which is to justify themselves. Rocketman is a riveting jukebox musical that genuinely feels like it's allowed to question its author. No, it's encouraged to do so. Elton John is portrayed as an arrogant childlike performer who in any other film feels like the audience would drop kick him after the showing of it. But its the filming and the acting that bring the story to life. It allows the audience to be immersed and invested into the idea that “Reggie” Dwight is still somewhere in the performer, and feels like we have an active payoff. Elvis, god forgive me for saying this, gets one huge thing right about its entire runtime. It shows why the artist struggled. For something like Bohemian Rhapsody nobody wants to see anyone who questions, criticizes, or doesn’t fully jive with Queen, because it's Queen! It feels like the film producers for projects like that look to the audience with an active middle finger saying, “You tell us why they matter, lazy pigs…” That wouldn’t be acceptable for any other film. But rants aside from that, Elvis is shown to be caught in a social whirlwind, being the target of conservatives, the police, while not being able to say what he wants to say on movements that matter to him. Granted, the movie itself is a headache. But rarely have I seen a biopic that has actively shown, “This is why you should care about this guy and this is how he relates to our today” more thoroughly. Then there’s the jewel, “Walk the Line”. It’s not groundbreaking like the other two or really much on its own, but in the biopic collective it shines because it is gritty. It shows Johnny Cash going through substance abuse, alcohol abuse, and shows his redemption. Each of the films outlined show that the people we are seeing (with the exception of the Elvis movie) are problematic people who make character arcs. That is what film does that no other medium can do, capture gritty truth and human growth. 

WHERE THE BIOPIC FAILS

Let’s compare that to “Bohemian Rhapsody” and sadly for me, “Harriet” Since I already did a small bit about the former movie I will go back to it, but