Cantara’s (Social) Notebook

An old friend from San Francisco, the tough-guy actor and outspoken gay activist J.E. Freeman, just sent this poem to me and asked if I could repost it for National Coming Out Day , which I am very glad to do, as the suicides of those young  people are also weighing heavily on my mind: Unfortunately to be free requires sometimes that one fight back The most expensive quality in life is freedom. Freedom is never free. Never without cost. The price is not caring what the price is The price is to dare to be unafraid. Or if afraid to stand any way in fear and to take what comes. For what else makes courage? How else are heroes made? It is by facing that which we fear and surviving. It lies in requiring in demnding the haters to stand exposed in the light of their hatred which is only their own fear lashing out. To kill one's self is to become one's own executioner. It is to buy into the verdict of the hater. If one must die for one's freedom make the h...

I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, ...

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles, Miles and miles On the solitary pastures where our sheep Half-asleep Tinkle homeward thro’ the twilight, stray or stop As they crop— Was the site once of a city great and gay, (So they say) Of our country’s very capital, its prince Ages since Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far Peace or war. Now the country does not even boast a tree, As you see, To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills From the hills Intersect and give a name to, (else they run Into one) Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires Up like fires O’er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall Bounding all Made of marble, men might march on nor be prest Twelve abreast. And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass Never was! Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o’er-spreads And embeds Every vestige of the city, guessed alone, Stock or stone— Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe Long ago; Lust of glory pricked t...

I can’t believe it—the idiot actually did something right. For one of those tedious videos he’s been embedding in his blog he shaved, showered, put on a clean shirt, kept his introduction to a coherent minimum, and simply recited from Claptrap . The one he chose, “The Enron in My Face”, is short and snappy and shows you—do you hear this, you scumbags at Gawker?—that he is a pretty damn good poet. (Only, Steve, you didn’t write it a year and half ago. You wrote it four years ago. The Enron scandal was over eight years ago.) And you know what? One of his blog followers actually went online and bought a copy of Claptrap . So there you have it. Effective video marketing works. SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE. _____

Need more cheering up. And what could be better than a great loud Yes I will yes? I. Cord of Life (Anderson/Bruford/Howe/Squire) A man conceived a moment’s answers to the dream, Staying the flowers daily, sensing all the themes. As a foundation left to create the spiral aim, A movement regained and regarded both the same, All complete in the sight of seeds of life with you. Changed only for a sight of sound, the space agreed. Between the picture of time behind the face of need, Coming quickly to terms of all expression laid, Emotion revealed as the ocean maid, All complete in the sight of seeds of life with you. Oh turn round tailor, coins and Assaulting all the mornings of the crosses Interest shown, never know Presenting one another to the cord, their fruitless worth; All left dying, rediscovered cords are broken, Of the door that turned round, locked inside To close the cover, the mother earth. All the interest shown, they won’t To turn one another, to the ...

Must wash off the stickiness of another Stephen Gyllenhaal blog posting with a moment with A Real Artist—in this case, the transcendent Dylan Thomas: In My Craft or Sullen Art [Dylan Thomas by Alfred Janes] In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms, I labour by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages But for the common wages Of their most secret heart. Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art. SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE. _____

Or: Stephen, can you hear me through those headphones? You don’t see this done this well too often, but at a blog called The Original Spy a couple of regular bloggers from the late lamented recap site, The Recapist, are attempting a sort of directed stream-of-consciousness team blogging—the direction being their immediate reactions to episodes of their favorite TV shows as they watch them . One of their favorite programs is Torchwood , another one is Numb3rs . (For a show I’m not particularly fond of, I do end up posting more than once about Numb3rs , don’t I? Not to mention I mentioned it in my interview with Dave Herrle. Three guesses why.) Confession. I broke my vow to never watch the show again after the “Oriental” episode—even for Stephen ’s sake—but TOS’s post on the fifth season’s penultimate episode intrigued me enough to catch it On Demand. Also, May is sweeps month, which hinted at more provocative (if not better) scripts. Now I understand their cryptic phrases,...

This was the poem heard on the TV in “Maidenform”, last night's episode of Mad Men . The author of this sonnet—most known to television audiences of a certain age as part of the air sign-off—was John Gillespie Magee Jr (1922-1941), an Anglo-American aviator and son of missionaries, was killed in flight while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force, which he joined before the United States officially entered the war. “High Flight” was sent to on the back of a letter to his father, then a church rector in Washington DC, and became popularized through the efforts of poet Archibald MacLeish. It now serves as the RCAF and the Royal Air Force's official poem; it also is required to be recited by memory by first year cadets at the United States Air Force Academy. Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things You have not dreame...

Excerpt Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious as if I were French? Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth. Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change? I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love. Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don't I? I’m just like a pile of leaves. However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless i know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; t...