It was pretty difficult to top my birthday weekend last year. It was more of a night-to-morning type of thing. Cascada was in town for a concert that ran until 2 am, and the MBTA had recently cut back on "the Late Night T" service. I thought that for such a special weekend, I could take the night off at a hotel in Boston's Theater District. I got Friday off, made reservations for this swanky hotel that's part of Marriott's "Moxy" line, sang a tribute to Disney's "Hercules" at Queeraoke to celebrate the movie's 37th anniversary, and then pregamed for the Cascada show with a gourmet steak & cheese sandwich and a chill writing session. Cascada' show was great. I felt like a rock star walking half a block up to my hotel, and eating a Whole Foods breakfast in the rooftop lounge. In spring 2025, I'm wondering how could this June's birthday getaway could compare.
I spread out Boston's events calendars before me, and let my intuition draw a timeline. There wasn't a a concert on my birthday that particularly appealed to me, but Paul Simon was playing a few shows at the Wang Theater. I almost planned for Simon's Friday night show with a Friday stay at Moxy, but checking into a hotel on Friday the 13th raises some red flags in terms of superstitions. By spreading my birthday celebrations out more, I secured a better seat for Paul's Thursday night show.I then lined up the Roxy stay for Saturday night, and the Van Gogh exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts could sweeten the deal. The downside of a Thursday night concert is that it takes me away from Queeraoke. The past year of performing at the weekly LGBTQ+ music program has both connected me with a community of friends and it's re-ignited a love for performing on stage. Taking to Thursday nights off, I felt like a grounded pilot when I heard other singers performing.
My seat for the Paul Simon concert reflected the balance between a great view and cost practicality with a center spot in the balcony. I'm aware that the Wilbur and Wang theaters prohibit photography and video for people without press credentials, so I was hoping that I could draw the performance as a digital note on my phone. In the age of smart phones, drawing withy fingertip on an app in Samsung's basic functions, this is dort of my comparison to bygone wartime artists drawing and painting editorial illustrations live from from the battlefield. It's a practice that's worked well for me at these venues in the past and has earned some from both visual artists and the musicians that I'm drawing. Unfortunately, drawing the performance wasn't going to work out as planned. I was toning my figurative canvas when this draconian usher (let's call him "Gilbert") stopped by the end of my row and said "Put your phone away". Swooping down the balcony stairs in his Patagonia vest and skinny jeans, Gilbert was having a time for himself confronting at least a dozen people the second they tried focusing a smart phone lens. Seeing some others texting, and one person video recording "the Boxer", I'm wondering why my drawing was an itch that the ever-vigilant usher was eager to scratch. I had too much composure to argue my case then and there. After studying little nuances of how Paul Simon played, I was half afraid that Gilbert would get me kicked out of the theater for taking out a pen and paper for a quick sketch during the intermission (at a time when most people were checking their social media apps).
The first segment of Simon's concert was a live presentation of his 2023 album "Seven Psalms". Such an opportunity is used to integrate recent works into a setlist, and the world renowned singer-songwriter openly explained that it was a time to share the "new" stuff. In the scope of Simon's 65 year career, it's valid to still call a 2023 release "new". I actually recognized one of Simon's "Psalms" from Pandora. It's this song called "The Lord" which explores in each verse different Judeo-Christian facets of the divine. Whether it's the benevolent God of forgiveness, mercy, and love, or the God who would mysteriously act through cataliclysmic floods and plagues. That middle part depicting a harsher side of God makes a contemporary reference to the COVID-19 epidemic. I'm not sure what his personal experience with "the pandemic" was, but Paul's comparing it to biblical cataclysms reminded me of some fundamentalists I had seen welcome the virus as if it was God's will against certain cultures and those who could afford expensive cruises. It was like those who have (especially in the 80's) saw the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a divine action against the gay community. The shortsighted view of COVID-19 changed as "super-spreader" events started taking place stateside. But their pious Hosanas and hymns over growing death tolls showed me a disappointing element of these individuals' code of ethics. In the case of Simon, the second part came across as the songwriter's moment of asking how a God so good could also cause such devastation.
"Greatest hits and deep cuts" were the focal point for the core of the set. Memories flooded back as I saw the musician perform iconic gems live in the here and now. I thought of my first time watching Simon sing as a cameo in Sesame Street's "Put Down the Duckie". Coming off the "Graceland" album, Paul Simon and his accompanists Ladysmith Black Mambazo got cameos alongside Madeline Kahn, Itzhak Perlman, and two of the '86 Mets. Another Paul Simon touchstone in my millennial listening experience is when he recorded "Father & Daughter" for "the Wild Thornberrys" movie. With Tim Curry, Lacey Chabert, Flea, and Danielle Harris reprising their roles from the TV series, Klasky-Csupo added more icons to the production. Less than ten years later, Amber performed "Bridge Over Troubled Water" on "Glee". Yes, I'm a millennial. While listening to songs like "Kodachrome" and "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes", it's through the magic of the same Pandora algorithm that includes Wilson Picket, King Harvest, Brian Wilson, and "Seven Psalms". After the show, I started drawing Paul Simon from memory as I rode the Orange Line back home.
That Saturday was the next part of my birthday celebration. The day had a rocky start, and technically it happened on Friday the 13th. I started having doorknob issues. Returning to the theme of flexibility, I turned this hardware misfortune into a learning opportunity. I still have my college screwdriver with interchangeable heads, and some DIY how-to videos on YouTube taught this trans girl how to figuratively fish! That's a pretty significant win. I packed up my overnight bag, and took the T into the theater district to check in. My hotel room was on the 6th floor and my view peered up Tremont Street onto the Boston Common. I went to the Common for the last hour of the Pride Parade festivities, but had to grab a quick dinner at the Whole Foods Ink Block if I wanted to have a good amount of time at the Museum of Fine Arts that night. A turkey and cranberry sandwich with pasta salad and I was on my way. I took the Orange Line to Ruggles Station, and was at the museum by 8. You can imagine my sigh when I learned that the Museum was closed that night to a private event. Time for flexibility in my plans.
There was no midnight concert at the Royale piquing my interest that night. Both the Bruins and the Celtics has already been eliminated from their respective playoffs. I picked up some aloe juice and half a quart of mixed berries. I went back to my hotel room, and had a peaceful night writing. Weird as it sounds, there's something meditative about sitting down to a keyboard (even if it's on a smartphone) and writing while in a hotel room or on an Amtrak trip. You can just focus in on the moment and getting your thoughts articulated in a written composition. It was that following morning when I got to indulge in the hotel restaurant's gastropub style menu. Compared to the tacos, tots, and burgers from the night before, these menu items had relatively low prices. I had until checkout to use my $30 meal voucher so I paired carrot cake inspired waffles with a smoked bacon hash. I didn't notice any walnuts or raisins in the carrot cake (the batter could have used some raisins), but the waffle was awesome nonetheless. The specially mixed butter drew inspiration from the cream cheese icing traditionally a part of carrot cake recipes. The hash had bacon without it seeming to be the focal point. As a former Whole Foods employee, what stood out to me was the biodiversity in the vegetables. Golden potatoes, blue potatoes, sweet potatoes, white onions, and red oinions. Altogether in one hash. Yes, carrot cake waffles and smoked bacon hash is an indulgent breakfast, but it was a special breakfast. And a delightful one. I still had time to check out the view from the rooftop lounge (where one can see south across Boston Harbor and north across the Charles River and Cambridge. I took a nice long shower. Staying at the Roxy last year is what turned me on to Muk haircare products, and the hotel remains contracted with the brand. After checking out, I revisited the Ink Block Whole Foods. There was something that particularly drew my attention the night before. This amazing paleo centric deal involving giant filets of salmon, green beans, and sweet potato spears. It means buying prepped foods by the catering tray, but I can enjoy the routine. Thank you to my former employer for the inadvertent birthday gift of this deal. I need to stand out on the subway with those cuts of grilled salmon and seasoned lime sweet potatoes, but Each time I come back for more I've gotten more used to this relative spectacle.
I did eventually see the Van Gogh exhibit. The next Saturday. I stayed true to my goal, and made an afternoon trip to the MFA my "Birthday Part 3". I had seen some Van Gogh paintings when I was in college. One of my painting classes went on a trip to Manhattan to see a 2005 Van Gogh exhibit. That trip also included seeing Christo & Jeanne-Claude's "Gates" installation in Central Park. One last moment in art history was the Total Request Live show drawing a crowd outside the MTV studio in Times Square. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grant were promoting the release of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". Seriously, this was my first time in Manhattan, I had no idea what the TRL crowds looked like from street level.
As an art historian and an impressionist painter, I was needing out at the MFA's Van Gogh exhibit. It focused on a point where an older (and relatively established) Vincent travelled to southern France. In the city of Arles, he befriended a postal worker and his family. "Portrait of Postman Joseph Roulin" was the centerpiece (so to speak) and part of the museum's permanent collection. Vincent started drawing and painting Joseph while Roulin's wife was away with her family, giving birth to the youngest child. 12 paintings from the Roulin family series were collected in addition to works the painter was inspired by and paintings by Paul Gauguin of the same subjects that Vincent painted. The two artists had lived together in a little building called "the Yellow House". An interior view of Vincent's bedroom in Arles is one of his most famous paintings. For the first time, I not only saw "The Bedroom", but I got to see a painting of the exterior. Looking at a shut pair of green shutters standing out in the facade of the Yellow House, you realize that those are the same shutters, same window, and same wall, but viewed from the other side. The museum had collected some letters that Joseph had written to Vincent's brother in Paris while Van Gogh was in throes of health problems, demonstrating the how close the Roulin family had become in their friendship with Vincent. Keeping with the postal theme, the MFA hosted a place where visitors could color postcards of the famous postman. People of all ages were indulging in the colored pencils. One woman asked if it was okay that she made Roulin's jacket green. Cheerily encouraging, I told her that the exhibit's about impressionism, and asked what her impression was of the color of the jacket. Carefully working in shades of this color and that, honored the unforgiving nature of how any mark on the paper would remain. That said, I approached the postcard like I do with watercolors. Shadings (instead of washes) overlap as the picture developed, with the black pencil providing shadow, contrast, and some heavier lines. It was reminding me of how The Adventures of Tintin were created with watercolors and distinct linework. Another professional artist came by, saying that her visit to the museum was meant as an escape from personally creating art. I welcomed her to see this as an opportunity to collaborate with a master. It could be seen as combination of improvisational jazz musicians jamming, and an art game called "Exquisite Corpse" (a game usuallymorbid only in name where different artists take turns contributing to one creation).
I have a few more museum trips planned for the summer. I have a Van Gogh calendar and the pencilled postcard as souvenirs of this exhibit. On my way out, I stopped my the museum's primary gift shop, and picked up a lithograph of yet another post carf. This one is called "To Tomita Beach" from 1936 by an unknown Japanese painter. Coincidentally, I saw that this was from Leonard A. Lauder's collection. Leonard's name didn't just stand out because of the cosmetics company started by his mother, but also that the philanthropist and art collector had passed way the previous weekend. Over the years I'm building a collection of my own featuring souvenirs from my adventures. Many of which will look great in frames beside "To Tomita Beach".
On that note, I've got to get to work on my next article. See you next time!
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