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.
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#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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Nature’s mid-century palms rose early without caffeine’s jolt. The quartet whisked breakfast into curls of golden cotton candy best consumed in a wondrous hush.
Perched on sprinkled pavement and slanted roofs, a mix of mourning doves, misplaced pigeons, and I marveled at December’s delight beyond distant flurries.
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.
Today in the United States we celebrate Thanksgiving. It is easy to become consumed by the preparations for this holiday. To focus on the feast we will consume, while many in the world aren’t as fortunate.
But there is greater meaning–in our bodies, hearts, and minds–when we pause and recount what makes life satisfying beyond the things that adorn our days.
I am thankful every day for the love of family past and present, friends and neighbors near and far, good health and the ability to write and sing, gorgeous trees and furry critters that grace our lives, and most definitely the world Tom and I have discovered and created together inside and outside our Arizona home.
Wherever you live, thank you for joining me on this journey. I am thankful for the ability to connect with you–for this opportunity to share my voice through words, images, ideas and memories–every day.
With Thanksgiving 2013 approaching, Tom and I knew we needed to change things up after my mother’s slow-and-painful exit the previous January. We decided to escape our suburban Chicago home.
In the wake of our significant loss, we wanted to create a new tradition and plan a week-long Thanksgiving holiday in the desert (in our cozy Scottsdale condo) with my twenty-something sons Kirk and Nick, and Nick’s girlfriend Stephanie.
Early November came. Each of us cleared our schedules. About ten days before our flight from Chicago to Phoenix, Tom developed pneumonia. He was hospitalized for a few days, but insisted he would be well enough to make the trip.
Remarkably, Tom recovered enough for his doctor to clear us for take-off. When we landed at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix just west of the Papago buttes, I felt relief.
Over the next few days, Tom’s health continued to improve. We even climbed a portion of “A” Mountain in Tempe near the ASU (Arizona State University) campus.
On Thanksgiving Day 2013, Tom, Nick, Stephanie, Kirk and I dined outside under an orange tree on the patio of Mission Palms hotel, also in Tempe.
In those cool-but-sun-soaked moments–still a year before Tom and I would marry and four before we would move to Arizona permanently–I realized that the space created by my mother’s passing would mean more than a horizon shrouded in tears.
It would mean new possibilities … new chapters … for all of us.
The longer, hotter summer of 2023 in the Valley of the Sun claimed countless trees and plants–not to mention hundreds of human lives.
Now that November has settled in, we are reminded that cooler mornings and evenings–with warm, sunny afternoons sandwiched in between–actually exist in central Arizona from October through May. This is why we live here.
Unlike most of the United States, fall is a time of renewal in the Sonoran Desert. It is more like spring with an autumnal twist–minus the crunch of rotting leaves underfoot.
We desert rats can now focus on revitalizing our gardens and spirits. Perhaps a Barbara Karst or Torch Glow bougainvillea here–or a crested cactus there–to dress up the back patio in time for Thanksgiving.
Whatever your potting preference, it is growing season despite the advancing darkness. While old plants and trees lick their wounds, new ones pose with the promise of buds to endure winter–a foreign concept for most of the Northern Hemisphere reconciled to the shiver of ice and cold.
Trees connect us to the earth and sky. They adorn our natural spaces with character, continuity, and shade. Though they never speak, trees–if we listen–whisper wisdom in the wind.
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Tom and I have missed the presence of a tree in front of our Scottsdale home for nearly six months.
In May, carpenter bees sawed our fifty-year-old fig tree, selected and planted by Tom’s grandfather in the early 1970s.
Sadly, it split in two and tumbled down in the darkness. Only a stump remained for nearly six months.
During the long, hot summer of 2023, I missed the solitude and protection of a tree outside our north-facing window.
Each time I walked past our fig tree’s stump, it reminded me of other recent losses: our friend Dave last December; Frances (my mother’s sister) in July; then another friend Chad … suddenly in September.
Strange as it sounds, the space where our fig tree once stood felt like an open wound or incomplete canvas. But that changed in September when Tom and I shopped for a new tree.
I felt the exuberance of nature’s possibilities as we walked through Moon Valley Nursery in Phoenix–sizing up the options: Hong Kong Orchid (flowers in the spring); Chinese Elm (strong shade tree); Ficus (evergreen and can be trimmed to stay small); and Red Push Pistache (drought-resilient with a pop of color in the late fall).
Jonnie was our escort and sales rep. She helped us compare and contrast the leading candidates. By the end of September, the choice was clear for Tom and me.
We picked the new tree of our dreams, a hearty Red Push Pistache. It is best known for the vivid red color it produces in late November.
In that sense, it will remind us of the Burning Bush we planted in the front yard of our home in Mount Prospect, Illinois in the summer of 2013.
It turned blood red every October (and still provides a splash of color though we left in 2017), after the Blue Spruce that preceded it died in the spring of 2013 … a few months after my mother left this earth.
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On November 1, a crew from Moon Valley Nursery arrived to remove our fig tree stump. As they dug up the remaining gnarly and decaying roots and hollowed out the hole, Tom and I could feel relief pour in.
The following afternoon, our new, mature, Red Push Pistache tree arrived on the back of a long, flatbed truck. A team of five men from Moon Valley maneuvered it through the gate and down the sidewalk. Moments later, the crew enlarged the hole to accommodate our new tree’s three-foot ball of roots.
By five o’clock they had anchored our durable-and-drought-resistant shade tree in the ground in front of our condo. Soon after, they left to deposit another tree for another customer.
I imagine, in a few weeks–as Tom and I prepare to sit down at our kitchen table and give thanks on a Thursday–our new tree will lavish us with a blaze of red leaves.
But even before the redness appears, it feels as though some semblance of balance, normality, and renewal has returned to reveal our new view in south Scottsdale outside our north-facing window.
Mark Johnson Stories 