Skylight Musings

I'd been hosting events at Skylight for over TEN years now. I'd had some great times there. Indeed, a big part of my writing community is because of that bookstore. The picture above is of me and a fellow skylight staffer Kevin. See other pictures here.

What's great about Skylight is that there is a great bunch of weirdos who work there. They even started a Skylight band! The band is called Staff Juice.

I was cleaning up after a book event when I saw some of the guys fiddling with some recording equipment. They wanted to know if I'd like to sing.

"Sing what?" I asked.

"Anything."

"Anything?"

Well, I sat down, put the mic to my mouth and recorded this song. I totally made it up on the spot! It's coarse and funny. My voice is wacked, but, hey, it was a blast. You can also hear our store cat "meow," along with other staff folks chiming in. Hear us screech here.

To hear other Staff Juice songs, click here.

Literary Chorus

Evelyn Marquez, a new friend, invited me to see the Gay Mens Chorus of Los Angeles. Believe it or not, I'd never seen them before. I don't know why. Lord knows I'd been to every other gay event in town. (Hell, I've even produced some of them!). I guess I just didn't think it would be my cup of tea. I want something subversive, something more edgy.

Well, I was blown away my the Chorus, laughing and singing along. They'd been around for 30 years. Wasn't the act of getting a bunch of out gay men singing a subversive act back in the day? Anyone who has seen a musical can argue that gay men singing en masse is common--but they weren't necessarily OUT!

Read this from their website:

In 1978, as cars burned in the plaza outside San Francisco’s City Hall in protest at the sentencing of Harvey Milk’s killer, a small group of men joined the demonstrations—and began to sing. That’s how the modern gay choral movement was born.

There was a moment in the show when the chorus sang Unforgetable. A screen came down and it listed all of the men who'd passed away. And there were a lot! It wasn't said, but one couldn't help but wonder how many deaths were AIDS releated.

I'd written about AIDS before, but I can't imagine what it was like to have been a member of the chorus when AIDS was at its height.

A Member of the Chorus...hmmmm. Sounds like a book title, doesn't it?