Its Not Raining Men

Remember that song from the Weather Girls in the 1980's, the one that Ginger Spice butchered in Bridget Jone's Diary? Well its raining here (again) in New York and there are no men to be seen. Or cats and dogs for that matter. Do you know that I went to buy an umbrella last week in this fancy store and they had brollies for $200? I'm sorry but for $200 that umbrella better make like Mary Poppins and carry me over the rooftops.

See the hottie to the left? That's my new Object of Lust. His name is Nathan Gunn and he's an opera singer. Yes, I said an opera singer, which is funny because I think that most operas sound like cats yowling. But he was so hot as Lancelot in Camelot for Live from Lincoln Center that I would willingly go to the Metropolitan Opera House to hear him sing. And he's wearing leather pants!

Unfortunately (like Clive) he's married and has 5 kids. He also lives in the middle of nowhere Illinois when he's not off making womens knees weak like mine. And he has an amazingly glorious baritone voice. Sigh!

What else did I do this merry May weekend? Well, I braved the monsoon on Friday to go to the MET museum to see the Superhero costume exhibit which was lamer than lame. The exhibition was supposed to be how superheroes have inspired fashion. Guess what? Not so much. I did see an absolutely lovely Dante Gabriel Rossetti of Lilith which I fell in love with. I'm a sucker for the pre-Raphaelites.

Saturday, I went to see a documentary on Philip Glass at The Philoctetes Center because I'm all about the culture. I admit that I'm not a huge fan of his music, its a little too atonal for me for the most part, but I enjoyed the documentary and I came away with a new appreciation for at least his newer music. Nothing could make me go see Einstein on the Beach, his opera however.

What really got to me was the aspects of his personal life that we got to see. Glass has been married four times, and his current wife, Holly had had enough of his constant work schedule. For all intents and purposes, she was a single mother raising two kids, while he flitted hither, thither, and yon with his music.

There were lots of scenes of him at his place in Nova Scotia and in New York but what struck me was how often they weren't alone as a family. Even their vacations were about his work. We also got to see a little bit of his spiritual quest, which involves Tao, Buddhism, Shamanism, etc. I found that interesting because again it seemed to be at a remove from personal relationsips.

It brought home the point that there has to be some kind of balance between creativity and ones personal life. One can't be at the expense of the other. Perhaps women are better than this than men, since we are pretty much born multi-tasking. I can remember going from a dance recital to a girl scout jamboree to traveling to our house upstate all in one day. I was the master of changing clothes in 60 seconds. All the female writers that I know, particularly those who have children, have set times for writing, and then its family time. It may mean they produce fewer books a year (although in Wendy Corsi Staub's case, it hasn't harmed her output) or they have the ability to write fast. I also have other friends who have chosen not to have kids because they don't feel they have the time or attention to give to them.

Both films that I've seen recently about male artists, Robert Wilson and Philip Glass, there seems to be no balance really, its all about the work. Robert Wilson didn't seem to have any real personal relationships or we didn't seem them in the film. It made me very sad to see the breakdown of Glass's' marriage in the film. Unfortunately we only got to see his wife's reaction to it and not his which I felt was a weakness in the film.

The rest of my weekend was spent doing research and watching old movies on TCM.