A Loving Man
A new release for the COMMISSION project.
I met artist/educator Robert Rindler when I played bass and drums for Michael Holt at a concert at the Wellfleet Library, in December 2019.
He and his husband, James, were seated to my side, essentially behind me, and I apologized for giving them my back for the whole show, and he said something nice about my butt, and a friendship was born.
Bob posts Facebook pictures from his extraordinary home collection of intensely colorful sculptures, assemblages, paintings, reliefs, and discarded student drawings. He tends to use CAPITAL LETTERS!, which is apt, given the degree of his enthusiasm for beauty (c.f. my butt).
When I was gathering requests for COMMISSION, he asked for
GAY MALE LOVE CELEBRATED!
which was a challenge, not because of GAY, but because of LOVE. It turns out to be difficult to write anything real about love, and to do so without succumbing to cliché. Still, I couldn’t avoid expressing these feelings in the form that seemed most apt, viz., James Taylor/Carly Simon/Carole King songs.
My friend of 35 years, Dan Mackenzie, who hosts a podcast that supports and explores evolving notions of maleness, joins me in this duet. You’ll hear his voice first.