Rufus is love....
Nov. 7th, 2005 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felis_ultharusThe Rufus Wainwright Concert
So where do I begin?
It was incredible on many levels.
Musically, it was wonderful. He's one of these singers people either love or hate. I love his music. His lyrics, especially. He's such an original lyricist, even when he tackles a clichéd subject like love. His style is uncategorizable -- a little bit of all the slower musical genres mixed together, bits of pop and rock and classical, opera and showtunes, drifting through like bits of memory.
His voice, like his music generally, is something a person loves or hates. It's a unique sound. My roommate can't stand how his consonants disappear, fading into a fluidity of mostly-vowels. But I think it's part of its charm.
His stage presence is wonderful, and not just because of his physical beauty. There was nothing slick about the concert at all. On the contrary, it had the feel of something a friend organized in their garage. His mother and aunt were the opening act -- a pair of wonderful aging hippies playing folk tunes (Rufus said, "That's the second time my mother opened for me -- that was a joke").
The only part that was really choreographed was the "Gay Messiah", which he sang in an electric blue toga with gold arm- and legbands and a crown of thorns, while tied up to a crucifix and flanked by Roman soldiers. Then he came back and played four encores after his standing ovations -- he'd already changed into a grey flannel housecoat and tube socks and not much else, and did the encores just like that.
He covered Leonard Cohen, and old Irish air (accompanied by his mother on the piano), and did his French showtune from Moulin Rouge. Both he and his mother did songs in French, which impressed me. French-Canadian musicians often make the effort to sing in English, but it almost never happens the other way around, which is sad :(
But most of what he sang was his own. And he told us the stories behind each song, and how he'd flunked out of McGill music school, and little things like that.
Things struck me besides the music, though. I think one of the things I like about him -- and it's almost politically incorrect to admit it -- is how unapologetically gay he is. He is almost the only queer mainstream singer I know who doesn't take refuge in the second-person pronoun, "universalizing" all his songs by addressing them to "you." Straight singers will have songs to "you", but also to "he" or to "she" -- whichever sex is opposite, but I've never heard a queer singer use any pronoun which (what with the heavy commercialization of the the industry) could "limit their appeal."
Rufus has songs with titles like "One Man Guy," songs about men he's been in love with. It never seems to cross his mind that his audience won't like him for it -- or more likely, he just doesn't care.
And just as importantly, he was unapologetically flaming. None of this, deep-voiced, stiff-wristed, "We're just like everybody else" stuff. And that's rare. We live in the age of the new closet, a Will & Grace world prepared to tentatively love us, so long as we're all lawyers in suits who never date or get laid.
Rufus showed up on stage at first in a disco-era leisure suit, did his "Gay Messiah" piece taking cues from drag shows, and ended up doing showtunes in a housecoat. Along with everything else it was, it was the celebration of a culture that's being rapidly swept under a rug as part of a PR exercise, by the very people who a generation ago would have hid their sexuality from the world while the queens fought for every inch of freedom.
I love him for his music, and for the sense of beauty that runs all through his music. But part of me loved him for another reason-- that sixteen-year-old self inside of me that once spent a whole night in a bathroom with a knife to my wrist, wondering if I should or shouldn't, because I knew I was gay and in those days I knew no one, absolutely no one else who was gay. Because I had to look long and hard to find mirrors for my self that weren't distorted, mirrors I needed to see who I was.
And seeing a gay man -- one who never hid it, one who never tried to conform -- turning what was beautiful in our culture into a beautiful and fun performance, and looking around at the mostly straight crowd that was shouting their adulation at him -- looking at all that, I think that sixteen-year-old-self put down his knife. Maybe for the first time.
Maybe that's too personal a detail to put in a journal entry. But now that I've written it, I can't bring myself to delete it.
I do know I was fighting back tears last night.
The Montreal Election
I was one of the one-third of the city that voted last night.
I knew my party of choice wasn't going to win, and actually I'm surprised at how well they did. Richard Bergeron of Projet Montral walked away with 8% of the vote -- which sounds like nothing, but considering he's an unknown heading an unknown party that couldn't afford to put up a single sign and which wasn't given any serious press time, 8% is about 8 percentage-points higher than I was expecting.
I chalk up that number both to the internet, to PM's good ideas, and to many people being fed up with Tremblay (who won by a landslide) and Bourque.
So where do I begin?
It was incredible on many levels.
Musically, it was wonderful. He's one of these singers people either love or hate. I love his music. His lyrics, especially. He's such an original lyricist, even when he tackles a clichéd subject like love. His style is uncategorizable -- a little bit of all the slower musical genres mixed together, bits of pop and rock and classical, opera and showtunes, drifting through like bits of memory.
His voice, like his music generally, is something a person loves or hates. It's a unique sound. My roommate can't stand how his consonants disappear, fading into a fluidity of mostly-vowels. But I think it's part of its charm.
His stage presence is wonderful, and not just because of his physical beauty. There was nothing slick about the concert at all. On the contrary, it had the feel of something a friend organized in their garage. His mother and aunt were the opening act -- a pair of wonderful aging hippies playing folk tunes (Rufus said, "That's the second time my mother opened for me -- that was a joke").
The only part that was really choreographed was the "Gay Messiah", which he sang in an electric blue toga with gold arm- and legbands and a crown of thorns, while tied up to a crucifix and flanked by Roman soldiers. Then he came back and played four encores after his standing ovations -- he'd already changed into a grey flannel housecoat and tube socks and not much else, and did the encores just like that.
He covered Leonard Cohen, and old Irish air (accompanied by his mother on the piano), and did his French showtune from Moulin Rouge. Both he and his mother did songs in French, which impressed me. French-Canadian musicians often make the effort to sing in English, but it almost never happens the other way around, which is sad :(
But most of what he sang was his own. And he told us the stories behind each song, and how he'd flunked out of McGill music school, and little things like that.
Things struck me besides the music, though. I think one of the things I like about him -- and it's almost politically incorrect to admit it -- is how unapologetically gay he is. He is almost the only queer mainstream singer I know who doesn't take refuge in the second-person pronoun, "universalizing" all his songs by addressing them to "you." Straight singers will have songs to "you", but also to "he" or to "she" -- whichever sex is opposite, but I've never heard a queer singer use any pronoun which (what with the heavy commercialization of the the industry) could "limit their appeal."
Rufus has songs with titles like "One Man Guy," songs about men he's been in love with. It never seems to cross his mind that his audience won't like him for it -- or more likely, he just doesn't care.
And just as importantly, he was unapologetically flaming. None of this, deep-voiced, stiff-wristed, "We're just like everybody else" stuff. And that's rare. We live in the age of the new closet, a Will & Grace world prepared to tentatively love us, so long as we're all lawyers in suits who never date or get laid.
Rufus showed up on stage at first in a disco-era leisure suit, did his "Gay Messiah" piece taking cues from drag shows, and ended up doing showtunes in a housecoat. Along with everything else it was, it was the celebration of a culture that's being rapidly swept under a rug as part of a PR exercise, by the very people who a generation ago would have hid their sexuality from the world while the queens fought for every inch of freedom.
I love him for his music, and for the sense of beauty that runs all through his music. But part of me loved him for another reason-- that sixteen-year-old self inside of me that once spent a whole night in a bathroom with a knife to my wrist, wondering if I should or shouldn't, because I knew I was gay and in those days I knew no one, absolutely no one else who was gay. Because I had to look long and hard to find mirrors for my self that weren't distorted, mirrors I needed to see who I was.
And seeing a gay man -- one who never hid it, one who never tried to conform -- turning what was beautiful in our culture into a beautiful and fun performance, and looking around at the mostly straight crowd that was shouting their adulation at him -- looking at all that, I think that sixteen-year-old-self put down his knife. Maybe for the first time.
Maybe that's too personal a detail to put in a journal entry. But now that I've written it, I can't bring myself to delete it.
I do know I was fighting back tears last night.
The Montreal Election
I was one of the one-third of the city that voted last night.
I knew my party of choice wasn't going to win, and actually I'm surprised at how well they did. Richard Bergeron of Projet Montral walked away with 8% of the vote -- which sounds like nothing, but considering he's an unknown heading an unknown party that couldn't afford to put up a single sign and which wasn't given any serious press time, 8% is about 8 percentage-points higher than I was expecting.
I chalk up that number both to the internet, to PM's good ideas, and to many people being fed up with Tremblay (who won by a landslide) and Bourque.
