Category Archives: gblt interest

Marc Almond: Non-Stop Erotic Divo

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Marc Almond is one of those singers that I’m amazed that I didn’t get into his work earlier, but upon reflecting, I probably did at the perfect time in my life to. Probably best-known this side of the Atlantic for his work with Soft Cell, which is best known this side of the Atlantic for their cover version of Motown artist (and common-law wife of Marc Bolan) Gloria Jones’ song “Tainted Love”, Marc Almond has a career spanning nearly thirty-five years —and I’ve been told that I kinda sing like him, since my balls dropped (meaning yes, this is probably not the most-representative example of my modal singing voice —assuming, of course, my friends are telling the truth, and honestly, most of my friends who’ve heard me sing on a good day have no reason to lie to me).

Marc Almond has been openly gay for most of his career, but dislikes being labelled a “gay artist”, as he feels that opens the door for pigeon-holing and creating the false impression that his work is somehow only important and relevant to the gay community, which it is not, though some of his songs and music videos do engage a clear homo-eroticism, while others simply portray a blatant eroticism. Marc Almond has also been “out” about being a member of the Church of Satan, founded by Anton LaVey; in the last ten years, I’ve occasionally heard that he’s since quietly distanced himself from that organisation, and I’ve yet no confirmation from the Webmistress of his official site (the most relevant contact e-mail I found on his site). While this may just be fan speculation since his accident in 2004 (much like the persistent yet completely falsified story of Charles Darwin’s “deathbed conversion”), I also wouldn’t be at all surprised if it were true: For every one of the “Ooh, I’m spooky! Hail thyself!” songs of Almond’s, there are at least two or three that display a clear, often urban-based spirituality; while this is technically not completely contrary to the writings of Anton LaVey, the Church of Satan understands the spiritual world to be a manifestation of the human experience, something that only exists within human reality —that is not reality as I understand it, but if that’s what works for another, then more power to them, and all the better if they can understand that this is one of those aspects of reality where understanding and acceptance is any one interpretation of it or another is subject to human experience. I cannot make an Atheist understand and accept reality as I know it any more than he can make me understand and accept theirs as a reality that is not only compatible with my experience but also one that empowers myself.

….but enough about that.

Marc Almond is one of those musicians who wears his influences on his sleeve and manages to do so without being a complete rip-off of those artists. If I had a nickel for every Goth band that or Mod Revival outfit that clearly couldn’t make something that sounded like anything but “Christian Death, only not” or “The Jam, only not” or “Bauhaus, only not” or “The Pretty Things, only not”, I could deposit those nickels into a Cayman Islands account and live comfortably, though not lavishly, off the interest. Marc Almond doesn’t do that, and he’s kind of a Dieselpunk dream singer. His personal style, as shown in his solo career, is clearly in a New Wave / Synthpop idiom, but heavily steeped in a love of Edith Píaf, Jacqués Brel, early Amerikan Jazz and Blues, British music hall, French cabaret, and with the introspective qualities of Rozz Williams and Gitane DeMone with the bite of Siouxsie Sioux and Andi Sexgang. His first solo recrd, Vermin In Ermine practically invented the “dark cabaret” sub-genre about three or four years before Rozz Williams’ Ashes line-up of Christian Death turned up the darkness and threw in a heaping helping of Dada. Yet he’s more than that, he’s one of England’s national treasures.

There’s also a highly Eroic quality to Marc Almond’s life’s work. By “big-E-Erotic”, I don’t necessarily just mean “sexy” (which, of course, it is, but that’s going to be a given —I mean, just look at him), but also hope to imply connotations of that which conveys qualities of Eros and His various epithets: Kallistos, Anikatos, Skhetlios, Eleutherios, Abros, and more. He’s one of the few true music artists, and one of the few who consistently displays a passionate joie de vivre et joi de vie. I can’t help but see, hear, taste Eros when Marc Almond’s music comes on; every single word reveals the folly of Democritus (“Medicine heals diseases of the body, wisdom frees the soul from passions,”).

Of course, to be fair, Marc Almond is of a similar school of songwriting as Prince, where any song that comes into his head is clearly good enough to record, even if this means recording the occasional song that just can’t hold a candle to the rest, suggesting perhaps there is a great folly to following one’s passions, but I know better, for I know that there is greatness even in what at first seems the most trite —from Vermin In Ermine‘s “Ugly Head” to “Money” from the Soft Cell demos, he manages to give light to certain truths, often of a personal yet shared nature, saying things that many have felt and wanted to articulate as something worth saying.

If I were casting an opera based on Hellenic mythology, hands down, no questions asked, my first and only choice for Eros would be Marc Almond; I don’t care that he’s fifty, that sort of thing just would not otherwise work — anyway, he looks very good for his age, and most opera are not cast with singers appropriate to the age of the role, if only cos there’s the art of theatrical make-up to take care of that. His voice doesn’t have the range that Apollon would need, and his emotive qualities as a singer are just “disconnected” enough that the passion for this art shows through, but just emotive enough that one simply cannot help but relate. The Moisai would have to be superb yet subtle emotive singers, as would Apollon, Dionysos would have to master dramatic emotions, as would Hermes and Aphrodite, but despite Eros’ purveyance over emotions, or perhaps because of it, to portray the God even in the throes of emotion, there needs to be a clear and dramatic knowledge and understanding of emotion, but a subtler feeling of it, and as a singer, Almond does that. Eros takes this knowledge and understanding and translates it into passion, which can neither be learnt nor understood, but like anything else one can feel, others can recognise when sensed, and what others want to know and understand when it can manifest as a thing of beauty. Marc Almond is nothing if not a passionate singer, and that is nothing if not a gift of Eros.

We are gathered here today to celebrate Derek Jarman

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It’s the anniversary of the birth of Derek Jarman, possibly my favourite director. If he were still alive today, he’d be 70, and he’d be fabulous.

My first exposure to Jarman’s work was possibly his most accessible film, Jubilee, filmed during two weeks using a script that changed regularly as filming progressed, influenced by the strengths and weaknesses of its cast, during the year of the Queen’s Jubilee, 1977, and released the following year. Working titles of the film included the subtitles of “An Anarchic Comedy of Sex and Violence” and “A Time Less Golden”. The overall tone and aesthetic of the film is heavily influenced by the newsworthy punk scene of the day, but met criticisms from the self-appointed faces of that scene, including designer Vivienne Westwood, who shortly after released a t-shirt “An Open Letter to Derek Jarman”, with the front and back design being a barely coherent and incredibly homophobic rant that, as best as anybody with decent reading comprehension could tell, spends around two-hundred words to say nothing more than “I hated your film, and you’re a fag.”

My opinion differs from Ms Westwood’s (who has never apologised for her apparent homophobia in the letter, leading one to assume that not only does her opinion of the film still stand, but so does her apparent opinion of “fags”). From the very first time I saw Jubilee, I saw something about myself; this was a film about oppression, a film about the Crown, a film about history, a Queer fable and parody of morality tales, a film about England, and most importantly, it was a film about what made Derek Jarman, well, Derek Jarman.

This is the way it was and is, but not the way it was told. —Derek Jarman

All of his films are like that, or so I would come to learn. He doesn’t re-write history, he doesn’t re-interpret the facts, he simply makes history relevant to his life, and his life was that of a middle class youth who rejected that life for his own, the life of a Queer Englishman who grew to reject the hushed dual life of a lavender marriage for one of the relative freedom that the world of art and theatre could offer, a defender of male femininity even when he appeared only slightly effete on most given days, a radical traditionalist with emphasis on the radical.

I am certain that the world I lived in is preferable to the one my parents lived in. —Derek Jarman

There’s something about Jubilee that says everything I ever wanted to about my British identity indoctrinated into me by my grandparents. There’s something hard to articulate about it, and must be experienced to understand. Something that only people who understand it innately will ever understand, even if those who do not can still enjoy it, still see the inherent value in it.

Jubilee, though, is not his first film, nor is it his most notorious.

Looking at historical figures and wondering: were they gay? They may have had the same sexual preferences but ‘gay’ is a late twentieth century concept. I always felt uncomfortable with it; it always seemed to me to exude a false optimism. —Derek Jarman


Sebastiane is Derek Jarman’s first feature, though technically it’s credited as a co-write and co-directorship. It’s not my second exposure to Jarman, that position is held by his biopic of Caravaggio, but it was my next after, and after Jubilee, became my most-sought.

Sebastiane is an infamous film and one I have previously written about. Two things that really stand out about this one in British cinema: It is the only film by an English director to have a dialogue written completely in a foreign language, and also that nearly the entire thing is shot with the cast in little more than loincloths, and often not even that —only the opening scene is any real exception. Also of note, it is the only film I know of written entirely in reconstructed Latin vulgaris, the common Latin of the Roman peasants rather than the “classical” dialect of the upper classes. Jarman was also very consistent in his claim that the primary reason for the film’s rampant nudity was that they’d run out of budget for costuming, and in context, it made some sense.

An orgasm joins you to the past. Its timelessness becomes the brotherhood; the bretheren are lovers; they extend the ‘family’. I share that sexuality. It was then, is now and will be in the future. —Derek Jarman

The films of Derek Jarman, as his life progressed, became increasingly more personal. This is evidenced even before he received his diagnosis of being HIV-positive in December of 1986. 1980′s The Tempest takes the classic Shakespearean play and subtly morphs it into a homoerotic fable that, if Jarman’s diaries and published prose are to be believed, had been something of a personal interpretation of the story since his adolescence. 1985′s The Angelic Conversation, another tribute to Shakespeare, is composed of a series of silent film clips laid over atmospheric music and recitations of Shakespeare’s sonnets, hand-picked by Jarman for apparent homoerotic qualities, and read by Judy Dench. The end product is something as autobiographical as only an art film can be.

Yes, all men are homosexual, some turn straight. It must be very odd to be a straight man because your sexuality is hopelessly defensive. It’s like the idea of racial purity. —Derek Jarman

Even at his most serious, there’s a clear and distinct humour permeating his films. His last film, made while blind from AIDS-related illness, is Blue; the entire film’s visuals is nothing more than a blue screen, while bignettes of monologues are read and atmospheric music plays. There’s something very tongue-in-cheek about that, a man who always made films about life and history and identity as he saw it in a poetic sense, is making a film that will give the audience a very literal interpretation of the world as he now sees it.

Until I’d enjoyed being fucked I had not reached balanced manhood. When you overcome your fear you understand that gender has its own prison. When I meet heterosexual men I know that they have experienced only half of love.

Because as an unreconstructed man you had to be in control. It is about control. If you aren’t the dominmant partner in the sex act then you are emasculated, you are unsexed. It took a long time for me to realise the falsity of that. ‘He’s uptight, tight arsed’: you’ve got all of these colloquial expressions about anal sex. It’s different to overcome that conditioning. —Derek Jarman

Possibly the primary feat that mainstream Amerika will regard Jarman for as as the director who “discovered” actress Tilda Swinton, or the man to whom Swinton was “his Muse”. Even Swinton rejects these notions, stating that, if any-one was Jarman’s Muse, it would be himself. Furthermore, it was not Jarman who “discovered” Swinton, if anything, it was her own talents, including Edinborough theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and a television mini-series based on the work of Percy Bysshe Shelley that brought her to Jarman’s attention. What kept their working relationship to progress as long as it had, though, was a friendship and fondness of working together.

His background, though, was as a painter and in theatre design. He only started working in the medium of film when a friend gave him a Super-8 home movie camera in the early 1970s as a gift. This is apparent in just about every one of his films, as the visuals are deeply important to the meaning. His biopic of Caravaggio is given mid-Twentieth anachronisms in much the same way the painter himself painted Biblical and Greco-Roman figures in attire and with props contemporary to the 16th Century. The visuals in Sebastiane often come across as a Neo-Classical painting from the Renaissance. And every little cut-away clip during a lengthy soliloquy in The Tempest is just as important as the words.

THIS is How You Name a Sexual Aid Company After an Ancient Goddess

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Hathor Aphrodisia premium lubricants

image posted because I LOVE the design work on this logo

No, really, Athena doesn’t care about your sex life.

While I’m at it, The “Eroscillator” brand sure is expensive —I find this appropriate, especially considering all the graphics illustrating the superior design, and not to mention the goldtone of everything (and not to mention an actual gold-plated Eroscillator), I just can’t afford any of it.

And I gotta give props to Pjur brand’s Eros line of lubes; the Power Cream is honestly the best thing I’ve ever used.

Fund-raising goal met!

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Wow.

So, who would have thought that a couple sentences at the bottom of a net.friend’s blog post could save my day? And in less than thirty-six hours, if timestamps are to be believed. Thank you so much for this. There’s no greater feeling than being comfortable in one’s own skin, and I’m so grateful that there are people in this community who realise this sort of prosthetic for trans men is no more a toy than glasses are for those with poor vision.

Again, I extend a sincere and hearty THANK YOU to those who donated. I’m brainstorming on how best to use the difference —I’m hoping to at least get a fire pit this year, so I’ll probably set it aside toward that.

As always, my Etsy buttons are up, and I’m willing to arrange a tea or coffee reading via Skype, and I’ll probably make another donations call for Kardia tou Thespiai when it gets closer to planting season.