Archive for the ‘Memory’ Category
On Miranda
In which The Gay Recluse appreciates Miranda. Many years ago we had a friend named Miranda. She was the coolest! She wore the smallest backpack ever! It was gold and she used it to carry her cigarettes in it and nothing else, and even that was a tight fit. She was a photographer and a […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Memory, Nostalgia, Photography, Science, Search, The Gay Recluse, The Spring Garden | Leave a Comment
Tags: BackPack, Cigarettes, Climbing Hydrangea 'Miranda', East Village, Enemies, Fame, Friends
In which The Gay Recluse works in the garden. Time of Photographs: April 20, 2008, afternoon (ish) Today, a first in the garden! We heard an opera singer. She was doing scales in a nearby apartment. Her window was definitely open. She was loud! And she was struggling to hit her high notes. (She was […]
Filed under: Architecture, Memory, Opera, Resignation, Ruins, The Gay Recluse, The Spring Garden, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Frank Lloyd Wright, Garden Statues, Hinoki Cypress, Mezzo, Opera, Scottish Broom, Singing
In which The Gay Recluse again laments the suffocation of the gay voice in American literature. If you’re like us, when you scanned through the list of books included in New York Magazine‘s recent “New York City Canon 1968-2008,” you had one reaction: wtf! where are the gays? In every other format, gays are represented […]
Filed under: Bad Rock, Conspiracy, History, Infrastructure, Literature, Memory, New York City, Ruins, Search, Sickness, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, Writers-American | 4 Comments
Tags: 9/11, AIDS, Andrew Hollaran, Closet Cases, Dancer from the Dance, Edmund White, Gay Books, Gay Literature, Gay Voice, HIV, New York Magazine, Rick Whitaker, Sam Anderson, Susan Sontag
On Deirdre’s Terrain: Cube Party
In which The Gay Recluse imagines a life more exciting than his own. Our newest correspondent — Deirdre’s Terrain — sends in pix of her desk at work, which she labeled only half-ironically as “CUBE Party!” along with the following report: Look @ my cube This is the view from where Deirdre sits. (Note the […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Communism, Conspiracy, Deirdre's Terrain, Dream, Memory, New York City, Technology, Television | Leave a Comment
Tags: Deirdre's Terrain, Manhattan, Office Cube, Office Design, Permalance, Television
On Notes from a True Gay Recluse
In which The Gay Recluse corresponds with Harry, an 80-year-old autistic gay man. Herewith, for those who asked (and for those who did not): March 24: It is none my business to know, but! My curiosity is tweaked. Who are you? Have you posted something somewhere to give a more detailed bio? or do I […]
Filed under: Gay, Letters, Memory, Pessimism, Philosophers, Resignation, Ruins, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Asperger Syndrome, Autism, Birthdays, Cherry Grove, Fort Lauderdale, Gay, Gay Seniors, George Washington Bridge, Little Red Lighthouse, Riverside Drive, Saab
In which The Gay Recluse celebrates Easter. It was not until eleventh grade — in Mrs. S____’s English class — that we began to appreciate the obsessive and illogical side of literature, which of course is to say we were reading Wuthering Heights. Do you remember Mrs. S____? How thin and small and severe she […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Dream, Landscape, Language, Literature, Memory, Obsession, The Gay Recluse, The Spring Garden, Washington Heights, Weather, Writers-British | 1 Comment
Tags: Catherine, Easter, Emily Bronte, Fort Tryon Park, Heathcliff, Heather, Sylvia Plath, The Moors, Wuthering Heights
In which The Gay Recluse provides a gay alternative to this week’s Modern Love offering in The Times. Mom, It’s Me, Your Gay Son, Finally By PETE MacDONALD and THE GAY RECLUSE Published: March 22, 2008 A YEAR after my partner Alan left me, and on the day before my estranged mother would have turned […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Landscape, Language, Longing, Memory, Search, Sickness, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, The Times | 4 Comments
Tags: Anger, Daniel Jones, Drama Queens, Fashion & Style, Forgiveness, Gay Modern Love, Pete MacDonald, Psychology, Redemption, Stereotypes, The New York Times
In which The Gay Recluse promotes remembrance of things past. Today we received this letter from reader Steve in Manhattan: I, too am obsessed with the George Washington Bridge, and have been ever since as stoned youths me and my friends cavorted in the park on the New Jersey side that is directly below the […]
Filed under: Architecture, GWB Project, Infrastructure, Letters, Memory, Photography, Pleasure, The Gay Recluse | 3 Comments
Tags: Drugs, New Jersey, Parks, Paths, Picnics, Readers, Stoners, The Gay Recluse, The George Washington Bridge, Walks, Youth
In which The Gay Recluse retreats to our garden in Washington Heights. As it has done for thousands of years — and not just in our garden — the hellebore has sent forth the most beautiful, delicate blossoms at this improbable juncture, as if to taunt winter into sending one last storm. (Let’s hope nobody […]
Filed under: History, Landscape, Memory, The Spring Garden, The Winter Garden, Washington Heights | 4 Comments
Tags: Alexander the Great, Black Flower, gardening, Hellebore, Hellebores, Mythology, Pink, Spring, White, Winter
In which The Gay Recluse photographs birds. Mary-Kate and Ashley? Elliot and Silda? Tristan and Isolde? You decide. (Our Jonathan Livingston Seagull moment for the day.)
Filed under: Animals, Dream, GWB Project, Longing, Memory, Photography, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Ashley Olsen, Birds, Elliot Spitzer, Isolde, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Mary-Kate Olsen, Seagulls, Silda Spitzer, Tristan
On One New Alternative for LOL
In which The Gay Recluse shares a fresh expression used by an older relative new to the internet. “I’m dead! That’s funny!”
Filed under: Landscape, Memory, Technology, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Baby Boomers, Generation Gap, Language, Relatives
In which The Gay Recluse compares the Richard Wagner opera Tristan and Isolde (first performed in Munich in 1865; financed by King Ludwig II of Bavaria and now running at The Metropolitan Opera) with Loveless, the final record by My Bloody Valentine (Creation, 1991). While the music is dissonant, it’s never abrasive; it’s just another […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Good Rock, Longing, Memory, Opera, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Bavaria, Creation Records, Gesasmtkunstwerk, King Ludwig II, Loveless, Munich, My Bloody Valenting, Richard Wagner, Tristan and Isolde
On the Extinction of Golf
In which The Gay Recluse ponders the dinosaurs. In today’s New York Times, in a shocking piece that has vaulted all the way to number one on the “Most Popular” chart, we learn that golf is on the way out; declining in a popularity, with too many courses built in the 90s, it’s no longer […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Memory, Resignation, The London Eye, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Asshole Republicans, Extinction, Fifty Dollars, Forest, Golf, Golf Balls, Sledding, Tiger Woods, Woods
In which The Gay Recluse is inspired by a classic. Of all the French photographers who documented Paris at the turn of the last century (and we don’t mean 8 years ago), we are most obsessed with Eugene Atget. Who can resist his urban streetscapes, his ghostly renderings of the city of light? And his […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Memory, Nostalgia, Pessimism, Photography, Pleasure, The Winter Garden, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Eugene Atget, Litter, Paris, Roots, Trees
In which The Gay Recluse enjoys a game of “Would You Rather,” the elementary school game in which you must choose one of two offered alternatives and explain why. The Set-up: You are at the gym over lunch, about to get on to the treadmill for fifteen minutes when you realize — fucking-shit! — that […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Government, Memory, Pessimism, Politicians, Television, Would You Rather | Leave a Comment
Tags: 38-Special, Bethel Park, Bruce Springsteen, Charlie Rose, Condileeza Rice, Dead Battery, iPod, John McCain, Pittsburgh, Republicans, The Allman Brothers, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, WDVE
On the Rainbow Room
In which The Gay Recluse writes metaphorically about life. Let’s say you were invited to a cocktail reception in the Rainbow Room, hosted by ____ and featuring a talk by _____, a political hero of yours who now works at a prestigious law firm. And even though it was a corporate event, which is never […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Government, Longing, Memory, Politicians, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Crab Cakes, Law Firms, Midtown Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, Suits, The Rainbow Room, Ties, Wine
On Maiden Voyage
It was difficult to read Maiden Voyage, the 1943 novel by Denton Welch, although not in any of the usual ways. For starters, the prose is relatively simple, marked by compact sentences — very much in keeping with the voice of a sixteen-year-old — but deceptively elegant; sincere and direct without ever being vulgar or […]
Filed under: Literature, Memory, The Gay Recluse, Writers-British | Leave a Comment
Tags: Catcher in the Rye, Denton Welch, Holden Caulfield, Maiden Voyage
There is something oddly unsatisfying about The Master, Colm Toibin’s 2004 treatment of the life of Henry James. Odd because we almost always love Toibin’s prose, which is elegant but unpretentious, and — unlike so much contemporary fiction — never shifts tenses or otherwise calls attention to itself in a distracting or superfluous manner. Occasionally […]
Filed under: Gay, History, Literature, Longing, Memory, Resignation, The Gay Recluse, Writers-American, Writers-Irish | 1 Comment
Tags: Bear, Colm Toibin, Daddy Bear, Gay Bear, Hendrik Anderson, Henry James, Homophobia, Hot Bears, The Master, William James
Perhaps you saw the news story making the rounds today about the science of “gaydar”? Apparently a couple of geniuses affiliated with Tufts University came up with an “experiment” in which they showed participants “90 faces belonging to homosexual men and heterosexual men for intervals ranging from 33 milliseconds to 10 seconds.” When the participants […]
Filed under: Athletes, Drag Queens, Drivel, Gay, Memory, Science, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Andrew Sullivan, Chris Crocker, Gay Stereotypes, Gaydar, Homosexual Stereotypes, Ivory Tower, Lady Bunny, Matt Kaplan, Nalini Ambady, Nicholas Rule, Rock Hudson, Safety School, ScienceNow, Three Quarks Daily, Tom Cruise, Tufts University
The Gay Recluse 