As I’ve mentioned, the Gay Gotham Chorus, with which I sing, has a big concert this Saturday night at 8:00 pm on the Upper West Side. I’d love it if you’d come. Just keep in mind that my family will be there. My parents, my aunt, my brother, his girlfriend.
I don’t think my Jewish parents ever imagined the day would come when they’d watch me sing Christmas carols with a bunch of gay men.
(FYI, less than half the music is Christmas music, if you happen to be against that sort of thing.)
We had our penultimate rehearsal last night. For the first time, we sang all the music on our program. And you know what? I never realized how many double entendres our music has.
“You must sit down, said Love, and taste my meat.”
“Step we gaily, off we go.”
“Plenty herring, plenty meal, plenty peat to fill her creel.”
“Shiny tops to play with.” (From a dreidel song.)
“By sighs and tears more hot than are thy shafts.”
Et cetera.
The first time we ever sang most of these lines, many of us laughed our heads off. Myself included, of course.
The thing is, I sang with a primarily straight men’s chorus for five years, and that group’s reaction would have been exactly the same. Well, OK, the straights wouldn’t have caught “shiny tops to play with,” but other than that, it would have been the same.
This shows that men really are all alike. Gay, straight, or in between, no matter how old you are, it doesn’t matter; on the inside, we’re all just a bunch of dirty-minded adolescents.
So, um, come see my concert!
Heh. Sounds like a blast. Have a great concert!
What’s your favorite song you will be singing?
Heh. Can’t imagine which straight men’s chorus you’d be referring to. Yeah, until I scrolled to your next paragraph, I was thinking, “Good joke, but Chris Corr beat you to the line about ‘how hot than are thy shafts’ by about ten years.” Of course, you forgot to mention that the song is called, “Come again, sweet love.”
And actually, Tim, that’s not the only familiar song we’re doing… there’s also “Drunken Sailor” (which I never actually got to sing with Club) and a couple of other things. But “Come Again, Sweet Love” has always been one of my favorites… and always makes me think of the Lawn Concerts.
Not that the rest of my readers know what I’m talking about. :)
“You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat” is (I assume) a version of George Herbert’s “Love (III)” set to music?
Part of the pleasure of Herbert lies in the way he weds metaphysical concerns to fleshy (and often carnal) metaphors. The entire poem is deeply sensual, even seductive. Ironically, the lyrics to “Love Tried to Welcome Me” on Madonna’s “Bedtime Stories” is also taken from this same Herbert poem.
I’m not very religious, but I find myself moved by his poetry. You should check out some of his other stuff, in particular “The Collar,” “Artillery,” and “Easter Wings.” (“For, if I imp my wing on thine,/ Affliction shall advance the flight in me.” For some reason this line catches in my throat when I read it aloud…something about the idea of having such faith and devotion that you would graft part of another onto yourself.) Contemporary poets like Mark Doty seem to pick up and amplify these traces in their own work.
Enough esoterica. Good luck at the concert this weekend!
Ha ha ha. Straight male chorus. You kidder, you.