A Top Ten Memoir: 2011 - "Focus on your ability..."

2011 was a year of some big events.  Frank’s niece Heidi got married in San Diego that January and we had a great time being with his side of the family for a change. They are all such positive, loving people and I felt that more than ever. I also fell in love with the Mission Bay area which would become a go to location for vacations in the years to come.

Heidi and Taylor

Me, Frank, sister-in-law Pat, their son Marc, and Frank’s brother Warren

We were back in California two months later with our friends Marco and Elise for what would be the first of many trips to Palm Springs.

Elise, Me, and Marco

Teaching was still grounding my life solidly. I continued my film reviews on WDCB radio and moved further into the world of film festivals than ever before.  I attended the big festivals in Chicago and Toronto and I was also given a press pass for the Waterfront Film Festival in Saugatuck, Michigan.  We had been visiting the artsy/gay friendly town for over twenty years at this point, so this was pretty special.

This was also the year that Illinois passed Civil Unions for same-sex couples.  Frank and I had been together for over two decades but it made sense legally to get it on paper.  On June 10^th, the date we always celebrated as our anniversary, we had a small ceremony in our yard with our friend Colleen, a Chicago judge, officiating.  My mom and several of our closest friends including Marco, Elise, their sons, Pat, Bernie, Mary Carol, Ingrid, and our gay neighbor Frank all attended early on a Friday afternoon.  We then had to kick everybody out and head to Saugatuck for the film festival.  It was a very happy and thrilling weekend. The following video is a bit long but it will give you a sense of what our Civil Union Ceremony played out.

My Top Ten of 2011:

 1.  Don’t Stop (Color on The Walls) – Foster the People

 2.  Houdini – Foster the People

 3.  Annabel Lee – Stevie Nicks

 4.  Roller Coaster - Datarock

 5.  Call It What You Want – Foster the People

 6.  Moneygrabber – Fitz & The Tantrums

 7.  Blue Cassette – Friendly Fires

 8.  City Boy – AM & Shawn Lee

 9.  Please Take - Wire

 10. Waiting for Kirsten – Jens Lekman

Foster the People released its first album that year, Torches.  So many of the songs reflected the emotions I felt.  Houdini very exuberantly stressed the importance of keeping it real:

“Focus on your ability, Focus on your ability, Gain again what they want to steal, Gain again what they want to steal.”

Forget about what I yet wasn’t: a full-time faculty member at Moraine or DePaul, a perfectly in shape regular gym goer, or an Oscar-winner like Mauro.  Projecting myself onto others and giving them the power to affect my psychological well-being wasn’t useful.  I could, however, focus on what I could do.  Even Wire’s song Please Take offered a perspective to let all that go:

“Fuck off out of my face
You take up too much space
Move! You're blocking my view
I've seen far too much of you
Please take your knife
Out of my back!”

Don’t Stop (Color on the Walls) reflected an appreciation for all the good I did have in my life.  Very simply to the universe:

“I said don't stop, don't stop, don't stop
Talking to me
Stop don't stop don't stop
Giving me things”

Call it What You Want embraced difference and uniqueness, something that always felt especially important to me.  Here I was: a gay, long-haired, atheist, adjunct professor, living in the suburbs. Call me what you want!

Foster the People would become one of the defining acts of the 2010s for me.  Ultimately, while some of the lyrics often can feel like simple clever hooks, there is an energy to so much of their music that regardless of its great humanistic outlook never ceases to get me moving with a lot of positive energy.

Frank and I continued our many travels in 2011.  The highlight being a cruise to the Baltic and Scandinavia.  This two-week adventure with Pied Piper proved to be one of the most satisfying and eye-opening experiences we’d had yet.  The trip took us to Belgium, Germany, Russia, Estonia, Sweden, and Denmark.  If that wasn’t special enough, we also got to meet and become great friends with two couples from the Philly/New Jersey area:  Conrad and Chuck, and Rich and Dave.  They were wonderful traveling companions, so down to earth and easy to get along with.  We bonded almost instantly.  I loved being around them.  I remember on one of our days at sea working out in the ship’s gym, watching the waves, and listening to Friendly Fires’ song, Blue Cassette.  While the lyrics suggest finding an old cassette tape with familiar voices from the past, something I could fully understand from all of the tapes I still had from my childhood recordings, the line that got me every time was:

“As I hear your voice
It sets my heart on fire
That with all the noise
It sets my heart on fire”

Being with these guys set my heart on fire.  They were lovely, warm people.  Frank and I enjoyed being them so much that by the end of the year we had taken another trip with Conrad and Chuck to Ft. Lauderdale.

I felt a lot of appreciation for the life Frank and I had.  While at times, it felt like an emotional rollercoaster, perhaps due to my own angst, I felt that with trips like these and others to San Diego and Palm Springs we had something few people had.  Datarock’s Roller Coaster hit that emotional chord for me:

“We’re on a wild roller coaster, we’re on a merry-go-round….

We’re set in motion, we’re on a highway in the speed of light

Wherever we go, they’ll be love and devotion”

We weren’t the Moneygrabbers Fitz and the Tantrums sang about in their retro sounding but highly infectious song, rather we were embracing all that life had to offer us. 

It was one of the last big Broadway trips we’d take for a while. Mom came again. She and I took a ride in Manhattan that was a truly memorable experience.

We also celebrated mom’s 80^th birthday that year with a party featuring many people from her past at her favorite restaurant.  As usual, mom enjoyed her time immensely.  She always loved getting people together and this was a great chance to do it.

I’ll end this section by mentioning two more songs that made my list that year.  Both of which were also played at the respective concerts I attended featuring those acts.  Annabel Lee was one of the songs on Stevie Nicks’ album In Your Dreams.  It was another song that I played so prominently on our cruise.  The lyrics, based on a poem, were mysterious and contemplative, perfect for such a journey. A month or so later we got to hear Nicks perform the song live when she came through Chicago for a concert.

AM was already becoming a major staple in my life and Top Ten.  In 2011 he teamed up with Shawn Lee for the album Celestial Electric.  The album was more electronic and funkier than anything I’d heard AM do.   The song City Boy also reflected another appreciation for my life and adventures:

“Sit in back rows with nothing to say

Born into headphones running away

You needed someone to turn you around

You couldn’t make it alone

Come get what you wanted

There’s nothing denied

You’re at the center of everyone’s eye

Places we’re going you wouldn’t believe

You are my ultimate prize”

Now it was legal and official, Frank and I were a “union” and our lives together were reflecting that bond through our great friendships and experiences.  What more could we want?!

Well, we didn’t meet Kirsten Dunst – and neither did Jens Lekman in his quirky song Waiting for Kirsten. However, we did meet Charo…

and Cloris Leachman…

Links to my Top Ten of 2011:

Apple Music

Spotify

Other favorites from 2011:

Lights - Ellie Goulding, Helena Beat - Foster the People, Annie You Save Me - Graffiti 6, He Gets Me High - Dum Dum Girls, Junk of the Heart (Happy) - The Kooks, Streetlights - White Lies, I Follow Rivers - Lykke Li, California - Datarock, Bright Lights Bigger City - Cee-Lo Green, At Least I Have You - Mates of State

What are some of your favorites from 2011?

National Association of Memoir Writers