A Song For This Time Of The Year

With 18 days to the Solstice, it is cold, clear & crisp in Portland Oregon, & I feel strangely drawn to a 45 year old song that I was crazy about in my youth.

Lush Life

I was just moments away from posting on Billy Strayhorn's birthday, when I was visited by the  nasty computer virus. Strayhorn is a major figure to me & the writer of one of my most admired songs. I have chosen a Linda Ronstadt version, which is included in one of her incomparable Nelson Riddle albums from the 1980s. Here is a live version with a lovely intro from Joe Williams:



Songwriting genius Billy Strayhorn lived, unnecessarily, in the shadow of bandleader Duke Ellington. He was openly gay in an era when it was nearly impossible to be out of the closet & he moved in the homophobic jazz circle of Harlem. He was able to live & write songs because of the protection of the famous band leader. Ellington took credit for Strayhorn’s compositions & he worked without a contract. Ellington’s signature song-Take the A Train, was, unknown to everyone at the time, written by Strayhorn, who never received any royalties. Strayhorn worked without recognition or reward. He is responsible for some of the greatest songs of all time: Lush Life, Day Dream, Clementine, Johnny Come Lately, Maybe, A Love Like This Can’t Last & the ironic Something To Live For. Many of his creations were recorded by his close friend Lean Horne. In 1940, shortly after arriving in New York, Strayhorn & his boyfriend Aaron Bridgers lived openly as a couple in Harlem, when he was just 24 years old. He lived a life of heavy drinking & smoking, & he died of cancer of the esophagus at 51, in the arms of his partner Bill Grove. Strayhorn worked in the early gay rights (years before Stonewall) & civil rights movements. He wrote lyrics & music to what I think is one of the most perfect gay laments ever composed:


I used to visit all the very gay places
Those come what may places
Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life
To get the feel of life...
From jazz & cocktails.

The girls I knew had sad & sullen gray faces
With distant gay traces
That used to be there you could see where they'd been washed away
By too many through the day...
Twelve o'clock tales.


Then you came along with your siren of song
To tempt me to madness!
I thought for a while that your poignant smile was tinged with the sadness
Of a great love for me.
Ah yes! I was wrong...
Again,
I was wrong.


Life is lonely again,
& only last year everything seemed so sure.
Now life is awful again,
A troughful of hearts could only be a bore.
A week in Paris will ease the bite of it,
All I care is to smile in spite of it.


I'll forget you, I will
While yet you are still burning inside my brain.
Romance is mush,
Stifling those who strive.
I'll live a lush life in some small dive...
& there I'll be, while I rot
with the rest of those whose lives are lonely, too…

It has been a rough couple of days in blogtown. Last week, my poor little laptop was so badly infected with a nasty virus that I had to call the Geek Squad to make a home call & clean up the mess. They charged a pretty penny, but they sent an adorkable real geek to do the job & I was thoroughly entertained by Brandon, who arrived in full geek mode including chunky black glasses & pocket protector. On his advice, I paid for & downloaded new protection- Webroot, & Brandon spent 3 hours on the clean up, but not without incidents. He somehow deleted Adobe Photoshop & I lost about 100 pictures. I was so glad to have my little computer back. During the period of the virus infection, I was still able to do blog posts & email, but all applications would come up very slowly & I was plagued with multiple pop-up windows. When my geek was finished working & I had sent him on his way with a check, & I had a real sense of relief with a new security system & a cleaned up computer… but the real trouble was yet to visit. Shortly after doing a very small post in honor of Winston Churchill’s birthday, the laptop was visited by an insidious “rouge spywear” virus. This thing manifested itself as a security shield that you had to purchase. It took control of my computer & would not allow me to get on the internet or open Outlook. This nasty intruder wouldn’t even let me into my control panel to get to Add/ Delete Programs! The new virus would load the laptop with dialogue boxes demanding the purchase of the security product & if you left the computer running it would start layering on windows of straight porn. My computer was a pussy parade! Thankfully the Geek Squad guarantees their work, but I couldn’t get another geek until yesterday evening. I missed several days of posts & I felt like I was going a little nutty without Post Apocalyptic Bohemian to express myself. Did you miss me? I missed you.