In summer’s flurry of joyful singing, record-breaking heat, Covid resurgence, political revelations, and Olympics coverage, June is gone. July is close behind.
Until now, my Covid recovery, birthday revelry, and travels to and from Minneapolis for the 2024 GALA Festival prevented me from posting highlights from Encore, our Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus concert in late June.
Suffice it to say Encore was a musical review of favorite chorus moments and tunes (A Million Dreams, Some Nights, What Was I Made For?, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Proud, I’m Still Standing, For Me and ten more.)
Beyond that, it was also a reflective celebration of Marc Gaston’s twenty-two years as our artistic director–laced with storytelling vignettes (I wrote), LGBTQ anthems, and dazzling dance routines.
As a singer and one of several storytellers, I couldn’t be prouder of the program we created and performed for three exuberant audiences at Tempe Center for the Arts.
I will leave you with a snippet of dialogue … along with four images from the concert … that represents the joy, energy, rainbow colors, and love, which reverberated in the room away from the summer heat.
“When I sing with this chorus–these amazing people–and I absorb all the music and camaraderie, it feels like the sky is the limit. It feels like I could rule the world.” Mark Johnson, Storyteller #1, in Encore.
I’m back home. Inside the furnace, better known as the Valley of the Sun.
I have begun to reemerge from an affirming, magical, inspiring five days of LGBTQ bonding and music with my chosen family at the 2024 GALA Festival in Minneapolis.
From July 10-14, 7,000 singers (representing nearly 300 choruses and presenters from around the world) inhabited the Twin Cities.
We owned the stages. Occupied the hotels. Flooded the restaurants, bars, shops and streets with gaiety and glee.
But it was more than the magnitude of this quadrennial event that has left an indelible imprint on my creativity and identity. It was the sense of joy, kindness, support, and human possibilities that dazzled me most.
At a time in this country and our world where so much hatred abounds, I was reminded that when love is present–when people truly come together to care for one another and cheer each other on–we can be that Bridge Over Troubled Water (one of the songs my Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus mates and I performed) of hope for one another.
This was my third GALA. I shared all of them with my husband Tom: 2012 and 2016 in Denver; 2024 in Minneapolis. Each one has nurtured me, deepened my sense of artistry and compassion, and reinforced the importance of rekindling/kindling old and new relationships.
In this 2024 installment, over a five-day period I was able to reconnect and celebrate with friends from Chicago (who perform with the Windy City Gay Chorus and the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus), Washington, Seattle, and–of course–Phoenix.
A friend and ex-colleague (from my past consulting career) who lives in the Minneapolis area, also surprised and delighted me by attending our performance on July 12. It was a treat seeing her again.
If you follow my blog, you know I have written five books. One is a book of poetry; the other four are memoirs or creative nonfiction. I’ve also written lyrics and librettos for the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus.
Already, I have begun to scribble ideas in a spiral notebook that were sparked by my latest GALA experience. Who knows? This may lead me to a stream of poems or lyrics I have yet to compose.
For now, I will leave you with an idea and image that captured my attention on Saturday as Tom and I watched a series of choruses perform inside the auditorium of the Minneapolis Convention Center.
A few rows in front of us, a couple neither of us knows relaxed and leaned in. Away from the heat and fire in the world, they rested their heads against one another. They held each other. They listened to beautiful music in a safe space.
Many of us in the LGBTQ community have spent large portions of our lives searching for answers, longing for love and understanding.
The beauty of the GALA Festival is that–through the power of music, relationships, and community–we can move from longing to belonging.
Moving beyond this amazing and affirming five days in the upper Midwest, we will continue to raise our voices inside our choruses and be our authentic selves outside in the everyday world.
Truly, we are much more than a large collection of singers. Together, we represent a movement of kind, talented, and diverse humans with the power to change hearts, minds, and attitudes.
It may or may not surprise you to learn that I’m sipping hot herbal tea–lemon and ginger–as I write this.
Ordinarily, that would feel counterintuitive to surviving the summer desert heat. (We are expecting 115-degree temperatures in the Phoenix area again today.)
But I am determined to eradicate the nagging remnants of Covid congestion. Plenty of rest, fluids, hot tea, Sudafed, and throat lozenges are helping me slay this beast. (I am no longer Covid positive or contagious.)
I want to be clear-headed for my sixty-seventh birthday on July 6th. (Actually, it’s OUR sixty-seventh birthday. In a gift from the cosmos, Tom and I are exactly the same age. I’m no mathematician, but what are the odds of that?!)
We will celebrate by seeing a production of Fiddler on the Roof at the Phoenix Theater–it’s getting rave reviews–followed by dinner at a Phoenix restaurant.
Then, early next week, Tom and I will travel to Minneapolis for the quadrennial GALA choral festival. 7,000 LGBTQ singers (representing hundreds of choruses from the US and around the world) will be participating in this massive community choral event.
It will be more than five days of non-stop music, singing, listening, cheering, and applauding. It will be a giant uplifting and affirming dose of camaraderie, which all of us in the LGBTQ community–the entire world really–need right now.
If you aren’t familiar with GALA, it’s a phenomenal program–gay music camp, of sorts–which happens only once every four years. Of course, the 2020 program was Covid-cancelled.
Therefore, GALA 2016 in Denver was the most recent festival. I still have fond memories of standing on stage with my mates from the Windy City Gay Chorus.
We were asked to perform the song I Love You More from Tyler’s Suite at the closing ceremonies in front of 3,000 people. It is a positive moment seared in my memory … and it happened on my 59th birthday.
Evidently, the GALA 2024 organizers were able to repurpose countless stacks of 2020 lanyards, which someone must have purchased four years ago. Look closely, and you’ll understand what I mean.
Anyway, on Friday, July 12th, at 12:30 p.m. (Central Time) I will perform with my Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus mates on the Minneapolis Convention Center auditorium stage.
We will sing six songs: Bridge Over Troubled Water, You Are Enough, Proud, For Me, I’m Still Standing, and Sing to the World Our Light.
For more information, go to http://www.galachoruses.org. If you love choral music, you can purchase a live stream pass for $35 and see any/all of the chorus performances you like.
Trust me. No matter where you live, the quality, scope, magnitude, magic, and healing power of the music at this exhibition will dazzle you.
In the 1960s–when the San Francisco Giants appeared at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis to play the Cardinals–the bleachers were a heavenly place for Dad and me to be.
Because, on many hot summer days and nights, in addition to watching our beloved Cardinals’ legends perform on the field (especially Bob Gibson and Lou Brock), we saw Willie Mays patrol centerfield.
Simply put, there was no one better–before or since–at chasing down line drives and long fly balls. Securing the ball in his mitt with his patented basket catch. Smiling at fans who gravitated to his magnetic personality.
Willie was the face of major league baseball in those days. His affable presence and disarming charm seemed to neutralize the racial prejudice that haunted many other black athletes when they traveled from town to town.
We ALL observed Willie’s greatness and humanity with awe and pride. He was a hero to black and white fans alike.
I won’t recite all of Willie’s remarkable batting statistics and records. I’ll leave that to the experts. Suffice it to say, his lifetime batting average of .301, 660 home runs, 3,293 hits, 1,909 runs batted in, and 339 stolen bases made his election to the Hall of Fame in 1979 a no-brainer.
Willie brought exuberance, fun, and a boatload of hitting and fielding talent to every game he played over more than two decades.
He was a legend off the field, too. For instance, he spent many hours playing stick ball with kids on the streets of New York before the Giants moved their franchise to San Francisco in the late 1950s.
I cried when I learned of Willie’s death on Tuesday at age 93.
Truly, there will never be another Willie Mays.
***
Beyond past ballfields (and my continued propensity to root for the St. Louis Cardinals as I approach my 67th birthday in the scorching summer heat of Arizona), my personal sense of awe and pride lives and breathes in a far different venue: on stage with the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus.
This weekend we will be performing our Encore show at the Tempe Center of the Arts. I’m proud of the libretto I’ve written for the show.
Five storytellers–I’m one of them–will connect the music with tales of reflection concerning who and what our chorus is. More than that, what it means to us in 2024.
For the audience and us performers, it will be a high-energy, emotional rollercoaster of favorite musical and choral moments, punctuated with dazzling choreography.
For added emphasis, this will be the final performance for our artistic director, Marc. He will pass the conducting baton to our new director, Antonio, who will usher in a new era of awe and pride for the Phoenix-area LGBTQ community and all our avid supporters and music lovers.
My friend Randy–baritone section leader for the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus–surprised me at rehearsal on Tuesday night. He handed me this descriptive name plate, which–four years ago in the depths of Covid–felt unlikely and unreachable.
As background, this unforeseen opportunity in my writing journey emerged in 2022, when I wrote lyrics for a few original songs for the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus (PHXGMC).
Shortly after, PHXGMC’s artistic director Marc asked if I would have an interest in crafting a libretto for Born to Be Brave, the June 2023 performance.
Quickly, that led to libretto #2–Thanks for the Memories: A Gay Christmas Carol–performed in December 2023. Remarkably, what began as a novelty developed into a creative trend.
Over the past few months, I’ve been “noodling” and “angsting” over libretto #3. Marc, Scott (our choreographer) and I met a few times this winter to select the music and brainstorm creative approaches for Encore, our June 22-23 concert at Tempe Center for the Arts.
Randy knows I’ve been working on this behind the scenes. But what he doesn’t know (until he reads this) is I finished drafting libretto #3 on the same day he smiled and handed me his gift.
A beautiful arrangement of A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman will open the show. That’s ironic, because–in my wildest dreams–I never imagined seeing the word “librettist” attached to my identity.
I think this is one of life’s lessons. That the person you ultimately become at 65 or beyond may not reveal itself at 20, 30, 40 or 50.
But if you hang around long enough, and allow yourself to explore outside your comfort zone, you might discover you are capable of creating something meaningful you never dreamed of.
From time to time, it’s important to take stock of where we’ve been and how we’ve grown. In that spirit, as December’s light wanes, I look back over the fence at 2023.
Here are ten important things–in no particular order–I’ve learned (or been reminded of) this year. Each is connected to one or more blog posts I wrote in the past twelve months.
***
#1: Creative opportunities are rare butterflies; grabthem when they appear.
#2: Music transforms the human heart with joy and hope.
#3: Cats are resourceful, cuddly, and conniving characters.
#5: Trees keep us rooted to the places we love most.
#6: Good poetry simply IS; no explanations are required.
#7: My husband is a sweet guy, who really knows his movies.
#8: Carol Burnett is a national treasure and a kind human being.
#9: You can’t replace your mother or father, but you can remember them fondly.
#10: We all need a sense of community to connect and nourish our souls.
***
Join me on my blogging adventure in 2024. Just fill out the information on my Contact Me page. I will be sure to add your email address to my subscriber list.
My friend Adele Singer captured this glorious musical moment during the second act of Thanks for the Memories: A Gay Christmas Carol, on Saturday afternoon, December 16, 2023.
Today I find myself straddling two worlds: the joy of what was (three fabulous, sold-out holiday concerts last weekend with the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus) and the reality of what is (a post-concert malaise and head cold).
Minus the minor illness, this is a feeling I’ve become accustomed to as a writer and performer. You work tirelessly to tell your story, edit it, publish it, and wave goodbye as it bobs on the waves of readership.
Or, in the case of a stage performance, there are the weekly (and then daily) rehearsals that crescendo on opening night–and all the behind-the-scenes machinations of memorizing notes, lyrics, and choralography at home in your robe or underwear.
Then, standing on stage with your chorus mates. All of you wearing black accented with a sparkly, sequined, rainbow-colored vest–mine was blue–waiting with anticipation for the curtain to rise before the opening number–That Christmas Morning Feelin’–and the applause of a full house that followed.
Then, ninety-minutes later, realizing the show is over. Making your way to the lobby to hug and thank loyal friends and family who attended and (based on their enthusiastic response) were most-definitely entertained.
Even listening–as a total stranger who smiles through her tears–grabs you, looks directly into your eyes, and tells you how moved she was by the music and the transformative holiday tale.
She told me it was something she and her partner desperately needed to experience–see, hear, and feel–away from this frightening world.
For me, there is also the added component of savoring my libretto. Remembering when it was a kernel of an idea. Developing characters (three flamboyant-and-visionary Celestials who would visit one lost-and-misguided protagonist).
Then, writing lines of humorous and topical dialogue–that cascade like a string of colorful Christmas lights connecting the branches of each song–in July and August when it was 115 degrees outside in the Phoenix area.
These are the memories I savor on a post-concert Wednesday, five days before Christmas.
***
It rained in Scottsdale early this morning. Heavily. That’s a novelty in the Valley of the Sun, but we’ll take the moisture whenever it comes. More is expected Friday.
As Tom and I sipped our coffee in our den, I read an article Making Space, written by poet and author Christopher Soto, in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers.
In it, he artfully acknowledges the act of fully embracing the process of letting go, once your creative work has landed. In his case, he traveled to Joshua Tree and the desert of Southern California for a farewell ritual for his debut book of poems, Diaries of a Terrorist.
After considering the success of his book, he pulled out his journal and began to write something new.
I haven’t read his book. Maybe I will in 2024. However, his story certainly resonated with me–now that this latest libretto/performance–and my five books that preceded it–has sailed away.
The best thing all of us writers can do as 2024 approaches is to set our sights on writing another story, essay, poem, or libretto.
After all, the world–especially now–needs its artists to step forward and paint a picture of what the world is and what we hope it will become.
***
P.S. I’ll be taking a break until early January. To join me on my blogging adventure in 2024, send a message via my Contact Me page and I will add your email address to my subscriber list. Happy Holidays!!
Tom snapped this photo of me outside the Herberger Theater in Phoenix after our final performance of Thanks for the Memories: A Gay Christmas Carol on Sunday, December 17, 2023.
When the gift is musical theater–when the right notes, lyrics, blend, dialogue, choreography, and staging surround and transport the spirits of the audience and performers in a positive, fun, and meaningful way–its dimensions, ripple effects, and entertainment value can’t be measured or quantified.
That’s the transformative mission of the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus this weekend at the Herberger Theatre. We will perform our holiday show–Thanks for the Memories:A Gay Christmas Carol–twice Saturday, December 16, and once Sunday, December 17.
What’s my involvement in the concert? I’ll be singing second tenor alongside about eighty of my mates. I also wore a second hat in preparation for the shows. I wrote the libretto for the program and am proud to report that all three performances are sold out.
To say that I am fully vested in the outcome of this program–and brimming with excitement–is an understatement.
My journalistic impulses prompt me to preview the show for you, since few of you reading this will be in the room. Here’s the scoop.
Our concert will be a parody of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with an array of significant topical and cultural differences.
As the curtain opens, the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus is busy in their holiday workshop. Their mission is to select, influence, and transform one person–Lance, a fictional, homophobic sports figure and Scrooge-like character–into “one less hateful human.”
In the first number, That Christmas Morning Feeling, the audience meets a trio of divine spirits called Celestials: Starina (with their magic wand); Dione (with their rainbow fan); and Stella (with their shiny tiara).
Over the course of the next ninety-minutes, these wacky, playful and somewhat visionary Celestials and the spirit of Dirk (Lance’s Marley-like, ex-publicist colleague) visit Lance.
They lead him on a part-serious-part-campy personal journey of discovery through his past, present, and future holidays.
By sharing scenes of his life, told through music and images, they shine a light on the mistakes he’s made and encourage him to take a more productive path.
Ultimately, they help Lance realize the positive “ripple” effect he can have on the world by opening his heart and mind, correcting the error of his ways, loving himself and his gay identity, and embracing the cultural diversity of his community.
In the process, he repairs an important lost relationship, and even ends up committing to “doing a little good” in the world.
That’s a lot to accomplish in less than two hours, but I believe those in attendance will be moved, inspired, and maybe even dazzled this weekend.
Now, in order for that to happen, I need to get some rest. So, it’s time to take a power nap to recharge my battery between last night’s four-hour rehearsal and tonight’s reprise.
You won’t be surprised to learn that my energy-recouping strategy includes naps Thursday and Friday before our technical and dress rehearsals. Then, I will break a leg (or two) this weekend.
Look for a recap story next week–long after I recover from whatever happens on stage and Sunday night’s cast party.
Since 1981–the beginning of the epidemic–about 40.4 million people have died of HIV/AIDS, according to the World Health Organization. Another 39 million were living with HIV at the end of 2022.
These are staggering numbers, especially when you consider the emotional and economic ripple effect across all the families and loved ones of the victims, who have suffered along the way.
Tonight–on World AIDS Day–I will join other members of the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus at the Parsons Center in Phoenix. We will sing as part of a vigil that will remember those lost … and provide encouragement for those who live with HIV every day.
We will be surrounded by the quilts you see here–just a sampling of those created in the 1980s and 1990s–which pay tribute to victims of this horrible disease.
Ironically, this is also the space where we rehearse every Tuesday night, as we continue to prepare for our holiday concert, December 16 and 17 at the Herberger Theater, and a weekend of holiday musical fun and inspiration.
Still today, the quilts prompt a sense of sadness and reverence for lives snuffed out. For people we will never know and never meet. For people we loved and lost. For the beauty they brought and the art they never created.
From my spot on the back row of the tenor two section, I captured fellow members of the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus–surrounded by AIDS quilts–rehearsing on November 28, 2023.
Thirty Thanksgivings have come and gone. You wouldn’t recognize the world now. It’s not the one you left on November 26, 1993–much less the country you helped defend during World War II.
Despite some steps forward, life in 2023 is far more complicated, contentious, and fragile for most people.
Nonetheless, I count myself as one of the lucky ones. Thankful to be alive. Thankful for the love of family and friends. Thankful to remember you.
I met Tom about three years after you died. In my thirties, I didn’t imagine this sense of companionship and contentment in my later years … able to marry another man with a similar worldview and creative disposition.
Nor did I imagine living and writing in the warmth of the Sonoran Desert. Creating a life far outside the bounds of the Midwest existence I called home for nearly sixty years.
Over the past three decades, I’ve often reflected on your life, your troubles, your good intentions.
Whenever Tom and I watch the film, I Never Sang for My Father, I am reminded of the deep and treacherous waters fathers and sons navigate together.
We had our share of those moments, but I don’t see a huge resemblance between our relationship and the conflicts facing the two lead characters–frail father (Melvyn Douglas) and his writer son (Gene Hackman)–who never find common ground or the language to make their relationship whole.
There is a profound line in the movie that resonates and always leaves me in tears.
“Death ends a life. But it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor’s mind toward some resolution, which it may never find.”
Thirty years later, I feel at peace as I recall our relationship in some unnamed, spiritual way. I feel it on certain occasions with my sons. Or when Tom and I commiserate over our personal losses.
Or as I consider my book of poems, which I published earlier this year. Or when I sing on stage with the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus and sense a ripple of emotion charging through my heart and lungs.
I can imagine how proud you would be to see how far I’ve come. You were always the first one to stand and applaud when I sang in high school and college. Thank you for that.
I never told you that I understood your struggle to be heard, even when your depression caused me pain. I observed both your successes and failures–your hopeful exuberance, love of family, health challenges, and bouts of unhappiness.
They have shaped my odyssey as a writer and given me greater compassion and empathy for the plight of the disenfranchised.
In 2023, I live about fifteen hundred miles west of St. Louis, far away from your grave at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery. So, I won’t be able to visit your marble slab today, but this letter is better.
Rest assured–long after your final breath the day after that big meal with your sisters on Thanksgiving 1993–our sometimes-messy-sometimes-sweet bond still exists.
We will be father and son forever. That will always matter to me. Because I still remember.
Love, Mark
My father’s final resting place at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery south of St. Louis.
Mark Johnson Stories 