some friends from last night that came to hear me sing

note to friends

A note to my friends. The words "thank you" are terribly small and ineffective when it comes to telling you how moved I was that you came out to support me at the Opry in Gladewater. The loveliest fact about it was you were all part of the reason I was healed enough to do it one more time. The last time I had sang in a show was at that Opry. I melted down in rehearsals, had a big panic attack and left before I was finished and never returned again or even apologized for not showing up. I never in a million years felt that I would do that again. Bit by bit you have either brought out in me or handed me elements of my spirit that had been lost along my way. You saw me alive last night and I wouldn't be there without what you have given to me. How you brought a dead man back to life and got him to sing on stage is a modern day miracle. I can't thank you all enough but I promise you this, I will pay it forward from now on and do for someone else what you have done for me. Last night coincided with the exact date that I was institutionalized the last time and it was 2 years to the hour.  I do not claim the 14th as my clean date because I didn't decide to join NA until 4 days after but, it was when the fog was beginning to life. To get from institutionalize to performing clean and sober at an Opry being fully present and right-minded is the stuff our books are filled with. You have all made me feel special, very special and my hope is to do the same for you some day soon. Auditions are Saturdays at 4:00.

I found this review of a play I did in Dallas when I was an actor/singer in the early 90's

Jermome Weeks the entertainment reviewer was really a dick head to a lot of productions in Dallas but he didn't really go after us with a hatchet and he more than liked my voice. It was the first time I was paid to act and sing in a live theatrical show. I think half the people involved in the show are dead now but it seems just like yesterday we were rehearsing in a hotel ballroom space where the director Jack Pressley was in management at. Worst toupee on the planet but he was sincerely driven when it came to live theatre and plays/musicals that affirmed the plight of the gay man in the 90's.

New Search     Return to results      Printer Friendly About your archives purchase:Your purchase of articles expires on . You have viewed articles and have articles remaining. The Dallas Morning News Moonstruck's `Lovers' is too positive  Jerome Weeks Theater Critic of The Dallas Morning News   Published: September 24, 1993 We've had A . . . My Name is Alice, the wildly popular but only mildly feminist music revue. And we've had Ball Games, the men's-movement revue inspired by Alice. Theatre Three, which debuted the lackluster Ball Games last month, originally referred to it as B . . . My Name is Bob. And now we have Lovers, which could be called G . . . My Name is Gavin and I'm Gay. Actually, the show, which the Moonstruck Theatre opened Sunday, was written in 1974, long before Alice. As one of the first gay pride plays, Lovers appeared off-Broadway and made the rounds of U.S. theaters several years ago. For this production, Moonstruck has updated Steven Sterner's songs and Peter del Valle's book and lyrics with local references and two new numbers. The show's early birth date helps explain its earnestly gee-whiz spirit. Yes, among its three young gay couples, the brief cabaret revue must confront a premature death. And it does struggle with the stresses and strains of relationships, trying to find some accommodation between the demands of fidelity and the fun of the bar scene. But overall, Lovers has the sunny, get-with-the-program naivete of a war-bond rally put on by enthusiastic college kids who are into leather. Directed by Jack Presley, Lovers is nothing if not affirmative. No doubt the gay community, like other minority communities, needs some amount of affirmation. But you have to wonder what affirmation must mean if it demands all of these bright smiles, winsome singing and inane lyrics. They're bad enough in straight musical comedy, where they can frequently be undermined as camp. But in a gay revue, what you get is a kind of cutesy, clean-cut camp - even in the S&M number. Actually, Lovers wouldn't be too bad if it were done much more crisply and confidently, in a space that doesn't swallow voices, with musical instruments that do not manage to sound both tinny and too loud. In any musical effort, there are often moments that don't redeem much but do highlight a talent or two. At one point, Richard Frederick is amusing as a small, stiff, incongruous cowboy. In the cabaret number Hanging Out with the Boys, Jeff Scott gets to show he's probably the most proficient member of the cast when it comes to movement. And in Somebody Hold Me, Clinton Gandy displays an appealingly sleepy, bluesy voice, a talent that exists beyond questions of affirmation. With some training and practice, it could amount to something. Something more than Lovers, certainly. PERFORMANCE INFORMATION Lovers, presented by Moonstruck Theatre Company at the Hickory Street Annex Theatre, 501 Second Ave., through Oct. 9. Tuesday-Wednesday and Sunday 8:15 p.m. Performance reviewed was opening night Sunday. Additional performances Sept. 26 at 3 p.m., Oct. 8 and 9 at 11:30 p.m. Tickets $12. Call 526-2700. PHOTO(S): Richard Rollin (left) and Richard Frederick are one of the three couples in Moonstruck's Lovers.; PHOTO LOCATION: NR. Copyright 1993 The Dallas Morning News Company

everything doesn't have to be given a fucking meaning more than whatever the thing is

It's heresy for me to say this to some people, but I just don't buy into the idea that everything happens for a reason. I think you can make the best of anything , but to deny the universe contains nothing of a random nature is a repellent idea to me. Maybe "nothing happens in God's world by mistake" doesn't necessarily mean everything has an exact purpose. I love a good fluke and dig me some happenstances. I think the whole concept of "randomness" is kind of exciting and I like that not everything has to have some deep meaning. Sometimes, shit just happens and it means absolutely NOTHING when it does other than I have to work my program to deal with whatever "it" is.

Spring Cleaning

I decided that I wasn't proving how big and spiritual I was by keeping people on my Facebook account that frankly are never going to get out of their tiny god box mold. If I hear how jesus fixed my car, fixed my marriage or got me the job of my dreams I think perhaps I may explode. For years I have been practicing tolerance toward a handful of folks and I realized this morning it would be easier to omit them in my recover than to overlook their religious hysteria. My friend tried to make a point when I told him about me cutting 20 people off my Facebook page which is just sort of symbolic for my life. He said that people accept me being gay as just a part of me and I then fired back, I don't incessantly talk about dirty hairy man humping and just expect you to be ok with that. lol  It is not ok for me to feel like it is my duty to hang around everyone at the meeting hall. I don't want to deny them the right to be there, but I just don't feel like they even make an effort at adjusting their religious jibber jabber down to low speed, I'm not going to just sit quietly by any more. In fact, I am just going to leave the conversation. I get that if they didn't have the unicornia and magic apples to hold on to they might have nothing to give them form. I've just lost the will to smile and pretend I don't hear it.

I dig that.

Seasons pass and then they are gone, leaving forever a memory and a stain

I was standing in the bathroom , peeing and I looked over out the spaces in between the mini blinds. I could see my neighbors back yard. In the 16 years I have lived here I have seen the old couple spend nearly every daylight hour in there yard. She has prized Iris' and he had a carpet of green. The season of daffodils have come and gone and this year neither of them were here to witness it. In one swoop, their kids came and put her in a home for those with Alzheimer's and the husband is in another part of the state. They will never plant another garden , Wanda will never see another iris bloom in her yard. All the hours they spent in that yard, in their home , in their church, in there community and BLIP. They are gone for good. We all will be gone . The way we fret over the details and odds-n-ends of life are comical.  We are just specs and our our time matters only to those who love us who will be gone. Why is it so hard to use our time , our valuable finite time thoughtfully. In a flash this is all going to be over, and someone in my neighborhood will look at my house and think, he won't be coming back. Or in my case, "He will never get around to cleaning that mess of a yard up". lol  The things I do today, the things I say today, the love I give today is important, because I'm trading a limited number of heartbeats for them. I like knowing that this house will stand to have another family in it, I like knowing that I take nothing with me except the love I created. I will look over the fence and I will appreciate Wanda's yard and her Iris's that will bloom next month. Beauty Lingers Longer and it's the final thing to go before the seasons of life transition.

tea people

An elderly man handed me a card outside the post office today and he beseecher me to go to the web site listed on it and read. There was  a visible smell of fear to his urging. Easily he was at least 78 and when he stuck his head inside my car window i was shaken for a moment how much he looked like my gray haired father. I of course did not go to the web site. I find if you don't look directly at an anus, you are less likely to spot shit. I am so tired, and frankly wary of folks who are so convinced they are right that they will go to the death for the "rightness". Hilter was certain he was right about the master race, Bush thought he was "right" about the war in the Gulf. Through out history, anytime some was hell bent on spreading their "rightness", thousands suffer. I'm coming to grips with "religion in America" issues, but it wasn't that long ago on the calender and the Christian church history they would slit the throats of those who refused to convert, even though those people already had a way of connecting themselves with a power bigger themselves. BEWARE of ANYONE WHO CLAIMS TO SPEAK THE TRUTH OF GOD! Keep god and government separate.  My understanding of the Tea Party is that originally it was only about the U.S. finances and it was perverted by hate groups looking to spread "rightness of character and moral". They end up just adding to the confused nation, on paper they sound good but i think others are using it as a "Trojan horse" . Regardless, I don't live in actual fear of anyone today. My life and how I interact and maneuver through other's lives takes most of my time up. I'm just looking for my own way to connect with the higher spiritual power that put everything in place and I am not compelled to grab strangers and WITNESS to the lost.

sunday night reflection.

It's one of those times when all is right with my spirit and my emotions and I am just filled with the overwhelming warmth. There was a lot of  instances earlier when I was cranky surrounding by a little chaos and I didn't attach to it. I moved through it and on with my life without setting roots down in the unpleasantness of strong willed people trying to have a meeting and none of us were any more right than the other. I got a call from a dear friend in the middle of it having a very very bad day. The fact that someone on or near the end of there rope and would reach out to me to feel better is overwhelming. Not that I could fix anything for them but I listened and tried to reorient my friend from the lies that fear was telling to the fact that he was in fact not cut of from spirit. Good stuff for me to remember, that just because the sky is dark, doesn't mean the sun isn't the sun isn't shining and when you can't FEEL you connection to spirit doesn't mean it isn't there. If you have a breath in your body you are connected. There is no possible disconnect unless you leave your body then you just rejoin spirit. We just have to keep making decisions based on love and fight hard not to let fear get a foothold and completely derail  us.  I'm so grateful for all the chances I squandered in getting here, everyone of them told me how "IT DOESN"T WORK",.

I booked myself into a show on April 14th. It will be the first time I have sun with a band on a stage in gosh, nearly 11 years. Not that I was ever a big deal as a singer but I did it for 15 years and was really really good for a while. I was just crippled with mental illness, non-existent self esteem and I was trying so hard to be what I thought everyone wanted me to be that the act of performance wasn't fun anymore.

When I take the stage on April 14th, it will be two years exactly, nearly to the hour that I took a ride to Lousisanna in a taxi cab to the mental hospital.  In less than two years I have really began putting a nice life together for myself. I want to sing because I have some unfinished business. I am singing a song that I learned over 20 years ago but never sang it. I have many friends from recovery who been so constantly supportive about me growing as a spirit in human form that I can't wait to show them a little of what one part of my life, or one of my man LIVES was like. They have pulled the creativity back out in me. I'll post a video of the show here when I get one.

I would have never guessed I would have this much life going on and this much spirit spilling out.

A very quick rundown of some of the psych meds I have tried and failed to locate one that fixed everything that needs fixing. Sadly there are more I simply don't recall the name to. It wasn't until my Pdoc looked at me after years and years of working with him and told me "Clinton , there isn't a pill on the planet that is going to do for you what you want one to do. The best I can help you with is getting to to a stable place where you are on even footing. After that if you want to get better it's up to you to do the hard work. It's completely up to you." It was the last medication I change I had in four years or more. Most days I am doing the hard work, but the message I picked up that I believe with everything fiber I can believe anything is , that there isn't a pill with the power on the planet to fix it.
(Xanax)
(Klonopin,
(Valium)
(Ativan)
(Serax)
(Celexa, C
(Lexapro,
(Prozac,
(Luvox)
(Paxil,
(Zoloft)
(Clozaril) -
(Zyprexa) -
(Risperdal)
(Seroquel) -
(Geodon) -

Abilify
senequan
remeron
thorzine
lithium
depakote
tegretal

All of which were taken in multiple combinations and alone. One I left the East Texas Behavioral Clinic on 6 at once. I couldn't even stand upright for long stretches without just falling over in slow motion like a giant red oak. lol