Los Angeles

Dream Your Dreams!

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1476352_10153534656775128_2017242665_nI just returned from a night out in West Hollywood.  I met up with one of the kids who was in my youth group back when I was a youth minister in Missouri.  He is a gymnastics coach and teacher in San Diego.  I haven’t seen him for a few years, the last time was 2009, but I feel that we have a connection that will always endure.

He posted a picture of us to Facebook with the caption “with my high school youth minister turned West Hollywood gay comedian. I’m being serious.” Several people clicked like and a few commented that you can’t make things like that up. I’ve certainly written about my years as a youth minister before, specifically here. There is a regret that I sometimes feel that I let these kids down by going to New York and leaving the ministry. Some of those kids are still very conservative Christians and others have gone in other directions. Regardless of the path their lives have taken, I love them all and I treasure the time I got to spend with them. I hope I helped them love God and their families and their friends and their selves a little more.

I love so much about Facebook. While scrolling through the messages that Olin and I had sent to each other in the last few years, I came across a picture he’d sent me of an old Christmas card I gave him in 1991. image_1356835853716789
“I know that you will go far in life. Dream your dreams!” And in the 22 years since that Christmas, he has gone far in life and I’d say that he has dreamed his dreams. I’m very proud of Olin and the man he has grown into.

A few years ago, he told me that one of the reasons he became a coach was because of me and the influence I had on him when I was his youth minister. I don’t tell you this to brag, in fact, I’m telling you this to confess just how much his words meant to me when he told me. Maybe I’ve made a few mistakes in my life, but maybe I’ve done a few things right, too.

So, tonight we drank Hefeweizen (him) and Maker’s Mark (me) and talked about California life and El Dorado Springs and parents and men and dreams. I’m not that 23 year old from the Christmas card anymore, but my wishes will always be the same. To Olin, and the rest of you from Park Street: I hope 2014 is a super year for you. I know you will continue to go far in life and always, dream your dreams!

Guest Blogger, Michael Patrick Gaffney: My Funny Cater Waiter

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catering nightmareIt seems like just yesterday, Michael Patrick Gaffney and I were standing on the corner of Castro and Market in short shorts and tank tops hollering, “Coupons for Party!  Who wants a coupon for Party?!?”  In truth, that was 17 years ago, when we were at the beginning of our enduring friendship.  We’ve acted together and we’ve catered together and I must say, in both situations, it’s a pleasure to be by his side.  I asked him to guest blog and he graciously accepted.  While not everyone has catered or waitered or cater waitered for a living, I think his story is universal.  Who among us is living a life that turned out exactly the way they thought it would?  Recently, a blogger friend of mine wrote, “What will survive us is Love.”  I completely agree and I must say, I know few people that are as loving or as loved as my friend Michael Patrick Gaffney.

 

My Funny Cater Waiter

I was sitting in my therapist’s office on Tuesday…It’s worth noting that this is the therapist I have been trying to break up with for a few months now because he cried during my session TWICE!  And he stood me up once and is quite aware of my abandonment issues.  I have been dealing with an anxiety disorder for awhile now and he finally asked me, “What are you most afraid of?”  I sat there for a moment and thought for awhile and finally I said, “I’m afraid I will become the oldest living cater waiter.

I am a professional stage actor but if I am to be brutally honest I have been making most of my living as a cater waiter for the past 17 years.  

I started off in L.A. trying to make it as a film actor and worked as a waiter in restaurants until the infamous potato skin incident of 1989, which abruptly ended my career.  When I moved up to San Francisco in 1996 a friend suggested I try catering work between theatre jobs.  I signed up with a very high end company and began my new career as a cater waiter.  I enjoy it for the most part and have been a part of some incredible events over the years. I have waited on countless celebrities and politicians including; Nancy Pelosi, Sean Penn, Christy Turlington, Hillary Clinton and Tabatha, from Bravo’s Shear Genius.  And although I didn’t serve him dinner, at one fundraiser I met and shook the hand of President Barack Obama.  

But as the years have gone on, I have found myself wearing a uniform more than a costume and my body has begun to tell the wear and tear of the often physical work and long hours.  I find myself worrying about my future and how I will support myself.  Will I become the oldest living cater waiter?  Sometimes I think about how many weddings, fundraisers and bar mitzvahs I have done over the years.  Some of them easy, most of them not so easy, and some of them down right grueling.  I remember one particular wedding several years back.  We were loaded onto a shuttle at 6am and driven down to Montecito to a 48 million dollar estate for a wedding that was rumored to have cost 5 million dollars.  We worked for hours setting up the dining room and by the time the guests arrived I was exhausted and didn’t know how I would make it through the entrée course.  I was assigned to the head table and had several celebrities to serve, including an unnamed romance novelist who chain smoked throughout the meal.  By the time we dropped the entrée I was physically, mentally and spiritually spent. I was very close to tears and my white gloves were filthy with cigarette ash from replacing the ashtray for unnamed romance novelist.  Suddenly I heard the voice of an angel singing my favorite song of all time, “My Funny Valentine”.  I turned around and just a few feet from me was Etta James on stage.  I just stood there smiling with the biggest lump in my throat and gave her a little wave with my filthy white glove and she looked at me and smiled.  Time stood still and for a moment it was just Etta and me and Rogers and Hart.   It is moments like these that make my career as the oldest living cater waiter all worth while. 

Thank you, Etta…and bite me, unnamed romance novelist.

Love Is All Around

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sc00361b62In the autumn, sometimes I like to put a little cinnamon in my coffee when I’m brewing it.  That always makes me think of Larry Baker who was the stage manager of a play I was in several years ago, David Dillon’s Party. Volumes could be written about my Party days, I did the play in three different cities, over the course of a year and a half, and it brought many talented, funny, dramatic people into my life, many of whom I’m still in touch with.  Anyway, about the coffee: before every show, Larry would make a pot of coffee and sprinkle cinnamon on the grounds before he brewed it.  It made the coffee taste delicious and made the dressing room area smell cozy and warm.

The play was kind of a big deal, we were on the cover of magazines, we were on a billboard, we each had our own dressing room.  It was an Equity show in a large theatre and it was the most money I’d ever made as an actor.  My parents decided to come to LA for Christmas and they planned on coming to see the show.  Oh, and before I get much further, let me tell you, Party was a play about a group of gay men who get together for a party, play a truth or dare type game and ultimately, every one gets naked.  In fact, my character’s big (pardon the pun) moment comes when he appears naked from the kitchen, bag of M&M’s in one hand, can of whipped cream in the other, and orders one of the other guys to take off his shirt so he can lick the whipped cream and M&M’s off his chest.  (Did I mention it was the ’90s?)  A friend from Bible college had seen the play and told my parents about it, so they had a little idea of what to expect.  I told them they didn’t have to go, but they said they wanted to.

The day that they came to the play, they came early to see my dressing room and meet the cast members.   My parents were impressed with the elegant stage and my Mom took a picture of my starred name on my dressing room. But they were nervous.  My friend Vince offered my parents a cup of coffee and while my Dad politely declined, my Mom said, “Yes, thank you, I’d like a cup.”  And I’ll never forget the image of my shy Mom from Kansas sitting in the lobby area of our dressing rooms, sipping her coffee out of a cup and saucer, Vince in the background playing the gracious host, his own southern roots shining through.  “This coffee is very good,” my Mother said.  And Vince told her about how Larry put cinnamon in it.  “Oh, I wondered if that might be what I noticed.” Fellow cast members came in and out of the lobby, introducing themselves, asking my parents how they liked LA so far. My Dad good-naturedly complained about how hard it was to find a Dr. Pepper out here.

I was touched by all that was happening in front of me.  My fellow cast members all knew my story, that I’d gone to Bible college in hopes of not being gay, that I’d been a youth minister, that I’d only come out to my parents in the last two years and that the news had been very difficult for them.  And that at every step of the way, as heartbreaking as my news was to them, they’d always, only showered me with their love.  And I think that sitting in that room, it was the first time my Mother realized that my gay friends were a form of family to me as well.

The song used it the curtain call every night was the Joan Jett cover of The Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song, “Love is All Around.”  From the very first time I heard it, as we were taking our bows during the first tech dress rehearsal, it summed up what doing the show was for me.  Here was this song from my youth, and Joan Jett had turned it into a rock anthem.  I felt that I was all grown up at 26, starting a new exciting life and that love was all around, no need to waste it. I could have a town, why don’t I take it? My life was at once, everything I’d hoped and yet, nothing I could have predicted when I was a 6 year old watching the Mary Tyler Moore show on a Saturday night with my parents, but I was gonna make it after all.

Neewollah

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189143_106824046067080_2529733_nA few years ago, San Francisco’s historic movie palace, the Castro Theatre, ran the film Picnic.  I was lucky enough to be in town when it was playing and I went to see it with my friends, Michael and Kim.  The Castro is a gorgeous old theatre on Castro street, smack dab in the middle of the Castro, San Francisco’s gayest neighborhood.  I’d obviously seen the movie a few times before, but I’d never watched it with two hundred gay men and their straight girlfriends and I listened to it for the first time through the filter of my people.  I’ll never forget the shrieks of laughter that occurred when Rosalind Russell came to the window, her face covered in cold cream, and pondered, “Anyone mind if an old maid school teacher joins their company?”  But the thing that touched me the most was the pride I felt when Kim Novak sailed down the river, the newly crowned Queen Neelah, and the townsfolk called out to her, “Nee-woll-ah, Nee-woll-ah.”  And while the Neewollahs of my own youth did not include the queen riding down the Verdigris River on a candlelit float (that’s not safe!), it did remind me of the many, many Neewollahs that I’ve enjoyed since I was knee high to a grasshopper.  

It doesn’t matter, where I am: when this week, Neewollah week, rolls around, I keep an ongoing timeline of what is happening back home.  Last night as I was driving home, I wondered who the new Queen Neelah was going to be, even though I’m sure I did not even know any of the candidates.  This morning I thought about how today is probably the first day of the rides at the carnival.  Also, it used to be that today was the first day of the food vendors.  I can taste the jaffles and apple fritters even still.  Friday afternoon, I’ll be thinking about the Kiddie parade, where one year I went as an astronaut (Dr. Ryan Stone?) and the next year, I wore a frog mask and the same astronaut costume and went as the Martian who killed said astronaut and stole his ensemble.  On Saturday, when I am at work, believe me, I will wish that I am at the aptly named, Grand Parade, running into old friends and feasting on barbecue and cinnamon rolls, and sneaking in another jaffle.

I haven’t been to Neewollah for about 15 years now.  That seems unbelievable, but it’s true.  The last time I went, my Dad had just recovered from his first bout with cancer and I remember it felt like we had something to celebrate when we went to the Parade.  We did. The Grand Parade is for many of us who grew up in Independence, a holiday like Christmas and New Years that marks the passage of time.  

I’ve travelled a certain amount and I’ve lived in a few large cities.  I used to live in New York and I never went to the Macy’s Parade.  I live miles away from where the Rose Parade takes place every year and I’ve never gone to that either.  I guess you could say that Neewollah spoiled me on parades, when you’ve grown up with the best, you have no interest in lesser versions.

I’m 45 now, at an age where I’m realizing that few things I experience will resonate in the way the memories of my youth do.  The scariest Magic Mountain roller coaster will never compare to the Tilt-a-Whirl, Yo-Yo Ma will always be second fiddle to Jana Jae. No brush with celebrity compares to the time HBO came to film a concert with Roy Clark, Ronnie Milsap and Merle Haggard and we all thought it was going to make us famous. The prettiest beauty queens will always be Gail Moore and Jeannine Bailey and Missy Housel and Shelly Nelson and Kara Woods. And of course, the most exquisite, sophisticated, delicious, exotic food will always be the jaffle.

By the Time I Get to Phoenix

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spritle_chim-chim_trunk2On Sunday night, I went to a Cabaret open mike. I love a piano bar. That’s been documented before. At one point a duo sang a very bluesy cover of Glen Campbell’s By the Time I Get to Phoenix. I enjoyed it, but to me, it did not compare to his version, which is a song I remember listening to from the back seat of my parents’ car when we’d go on road trips. I have a soft spot for old Glen Campbell or Ray Price or Merle Haggard songs. When I hear one, I’m five or six and it’s late at night and we’re driving from Independence to Colorado and I’m half awake, but listening to my parents’ adult conversation in the front seat and I feel really safe and cozy. And I probably have about 3 or 4 stuffed animals huddled close, mostly definitely my #1 stuffed animal, Chim-Chim whose wardrobe was sewn or knitted by my mother and grandmother.

So, that is one of the things that I thought about when these two were singing By the Time I Get to Phoenix on Sunday night. And when I listened to the words of the song this time, it broke my heart a little because it’s a real tearjerker. Maybe it was the first time I really heard it.

And then an elderly bespectacled gentleman got up to sing a song about hoping to find love. (I wish I could remember what song it was.) He was probably in his 70s and quite spry for his age, and the way he plaintively toyed with the hem of his shirt, there was something very youthful about him. I got the feeling he probably looks in the mirror and thinks, my goodness, just yesterday, I was 18. I’m 45 and I do that, and I’m realizing I’ll probably always do that. Time flies.

And then on my way home, I listened to the Glen Campbell original (I know, it isn’t THE original) and I thought about love, my own loves, my heartbreaks. How it’s sometimes tricky to navigate relationships. And yet, there’s a line in the song where Glen says that he’s tried to break up with his girl “so many times before” and I’m left with a little hope for them that maybe he’ll turn the car around and head back to LA. (He is driving from LA, right?) There’s always hope.

I don’t know very much about my old friend on stage singing wistfully about finding love. Obviously, I hope that he has a lifelong partner that he goes home to and they watch Gloria Swanson movies and drink Manhattans and talk about their trips through Europe together. Maybe he has that, I hope he does.

And as I write this, I think about how I want to tie every thing up in a neat bow. Maybe Glen should keep driving, maybe his true love is in Oklahoma and they haven’t even met yet. And maybe my friend is single and likes being single. And maybe the truth is messier, sadder than that. I don’t know.

These are the days that I want to be six again, whispering secrets to Chim-Chim, my Dad expertly commanding our ’73 Buick as it sails across the plains of Kansas, Glen Campbell in the background, singing about a road trip of his own.

What the World Needs Now

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photo-32So, I’ll be honest, when I finally got to Wilshire Boulevard Temple tonight for their Sanctuary Rededication and community concert, I wasn’t feeling the love for anything.  It’s been a hectic, arduous, often annoying 48 hours.  I got 5 hours of sleep last night.  I didn’t get out of work until 4:00 and the service was supposed to start at 5:00.  I told Eric to go on ahead and I’d meet him there.  Our friends Barbara and Jack were meeting us there as well.  Of course, parking was a nightmare.  I was grumpy when I found my group in the balcony of the newly restored temple.  I started kvetching (I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist) about having to park half a mile away.  And then I stopped and looked around the sanctuary and I was kind of speechless: it was stunning.  I took a few pictures which I posted to Instagram (feel free to follow me at raybarnhart68), but I really wish you could have been there to see it.  A few minutes after my arrival, the two-hour service started.  Different guests and members of the congregation talked about the temple, the previous rabbis, interfaith relations, Los Angeles.  There were prayers.  There was music from six different choirs including the Wilshire Boulevard Temple Choir, the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, the Sacred Praise Chorale of Faithful Bible Church.  

And then the service closed with Burt Bacharach and all of the choirs singing What the World Needs Now.  I also posted a snippet of that to Instagram.  After the weekend I had, there was a part of me that dreaded sitting in a pew for a religious service, and yet, I left invigorated.  I shed a tear when Rabbi Steven Leder became a little emotional as he introduced his mother.  What a big day this was for him, this respected religious leader and yet, at heart, like the rest of us, he’s a child who just wants to make his parents proud.  

It was an evening filled with blessings for people of all faiths and among those blessings was being able to sing along with Burt Bacharach to one of his most iconic, beloved songs.  Btw, he’s 85 and spryer than me, not that that’s saying too much.  His life has certainly had its joys and sadnesses and I couldn’t tell you how much his faith has played a role in his life, but it was a gift for him to share his time and talent with us, with me and Eric and Barbara and Jack, tonight.  And certainly, the song couldn’t ring truer, love is exactly what the world needs, now and always.

http://youtu.be/jh9PMULbuFI

Valley Girl

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vgs1I watched the film Valley Girl today. It’s the first time I’ve watched it in its entirety in probably 25 years. It’s not a perfect movie, but I still love Elizabeth Daily as love starved Loryn and Colleen Camp and Frederic Forrest as Julie’s parents and my favorite, Joanne Baron as the teacher who gives perhaps the best monologue in film history as she presents West Valley’s Prom King and Queen. “I remember my prom. I wanted to be queen. I wasn’t.”

I can’t hear the music from Valley Girl without thinking about my own high school years, when the thought of shopping at Sherman Oaks Galleria or eating French fries at Dupar’s or cruising down Hollywood Boulevard in a convertible was a pipe dream. Do I live here because of this movie? If only I’d watched Footloose a few more times, I’d have never left home.

In high school, I had a friend who brought the California to Independence. I’ll call her Cindy. She’d attended part of grade school in Independence, but spent several years in San Diego. She moved back to Independence in the beginning of our sophomore year. She had short dark brown hair, but had a little rat tail that she braided. (It looked cooler than it sounds.) If I recall, as the year wore on the braid grew longer and at some point she dyed it maroon. We formed a friendship over our mutual love of “New Wave” music and she introduced me to her favorites like Depeche Mode, OMD, Bow Wow Wow and Yaz (she LOVED Yaz!). I had a tendency to quiz her about all things California. For the life of me, I couldn’t get it through my head that San Diego was over 2 hours from Hollywood. Do you know Molly Ringwald? Have you ever been to a Facts of Life taping?

Sometime in the winter of that year, February perhaps, Cindy told me in the hall that she was moving back to San Diego. I was heartbroken, and more than anything, I wanted to flee Independence and move to Hollywood with her (I REALLY didn’t get the geographical difference). She told me that someone was throwing her a going away party and then invited me. One important detail which makes me sound totally arrested development-y to even point out: Cindy was popular, I was not. Cindy went to fun parties every weekend, Kansas versions of the ones in Valley Girl. I stayed home and watched Dallas and Falcon Crest or Love Boat and Fantasy Island, depending on the night. I was a little apprehensive about going and I should have been. It was a wild party, several people were drinking (alcohol!) and it made me very nervous. Also, almost no one talked to me. Cindy talked to me a little as did a few others, but mostly I sat in a corner wondering why I came in the first place. I didn’t belong. Late in the evening, there was a commotion. A few guys started shoving each other. They were both drunk and unfortunately, they were also near me. One of the guys, if I remembered his name, I’d tell you, looked at me, and thinking I was someone else, punched me in the eye. When I came to, there were a handful of people around asking if I was okay. The rest of the evening was a blur, I think someone might have driven me home. I don’t remember if it was that night or the morning after when my parents found out about the attack. I wouldn’t have been able to not tell them because I ended up with a black eye that lasted for 2 or 3 weeks. Ah, high school. I actually never saw Cindy again. We wrote occasionally and she once sent me a rad mix tape.

And now here I sit on my Los Angeles couch in my Los Angeles apartment with my Los Angeles life. And when I watch the movies of my youth that called to me like a beacon, “What’s your dream? Everybody comes to Hollywood with a dream,” I think about the 15-year-old boy who dreamed of a life beyond the intersection of Penn and Main. And I’m glad I didn’t feel like I belonged at that party, because if I had, maybe I never would have left. Fer sure.

Dream Come True

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agrant-thumb-500x375-64086Last night, I went to see Amy Grant at the Grammy Museum here in Los Angeles.  About a month ago, a friend told me about these events that the Grammy Museum hosts where different musicians do a Q & A and then a short music set in a small theatre (200 seats) at the museum downtown.  If you live near LA, I would recommend getting on their mailing or email list because if you want to see your favorite artist, there is no venue more intimate.  

Last night, my friend Richard and I went to “A Conversation with Amy Grant,” a dream come true.  We were on the 7th row, but there are no bad seats at the Clive Davis Theatre.  It started with a guy asking her questions about her career, her songwriting process, her influences, her old music, her new music.  They opened it up briefly for questions from the audience and then she sang about 8 songs, including Jesus Loves Me, My Father’s Eyes, Love of Another Kind, Our Time is Now, and Better than a Hallelujah.

I had planned to ask a question, I was going to stand and say, “I have a comment and a question.  First of all, I would like to say that as a gay man who has spent the last 30 years listening to your music, I want to thank you that your message has always been about God’s love and God’s grace.  That being said, if you were a Golden Girl, who would you be?”  I’d tried it out on my friend Richard and he approved it.  Before the show, we met for drinks and food and rehearsed our questions to Amy, each of us taking turns responding as Amy. (“Oh, thank you, Richard, I would love for you to be the set decorator for my next Christmas special.” and “Ray, I’d be honored to do a guest blog for Easily Crestfallen, do I have to talk about William Inge, though?”)  Alas, the rehearsal was the performance because we didn’t get to ask our questions.  It was touching to hear the handful of people who stood with questions that were really just testimonials masquerading as questions.  We knew it before we got there, but Richard and I were not the only people in the room whose lives were deeply affected and enriched by Amy Grant’s music.

After the event was over, my little brain apparently did not get enough Amy Grant because she was in my dream last night.  It’s kind of embarrassing to talk about dreams with celebrities, but hey, if one can’t embarrass one’s self on his own blog, what other platform does one have?  It seems as though, I had been assigned the task of taking care of Amy after the show, although in my dream, it was now the afternoon.  We were walking around the area near La Brea Tar Pits, E! Network and no surprise, Marie Callender’s.  I asked her what she wanted to do and she told me she wanted to see a playground, so we set out to find a playground.  As we walked and talked, our conversation was intimate and personal.  At one point, I tried to get her to assess the skill level of a young woman she’d invited on stage to share a duet a la Kristin Chenoweth at the Hollywood Bowl.  Amy wouldn’t say anything bad, but she did give me a look to say, don’t go there.  In our travels, we wandered over to Park La Brea.  Somehow the topic of life dreams came up and she asked me, “Ray, if you could do anything, what would it be?”  Instantly, an answer came to mind and my face lit up.  “What is it, she asked?” “I can’t tell you,” I said.”  “You want to have a child, don’t you.” I laughed because having a child was definitely not what popped into my mind.  “No, I don’t want to have kids.” And then I quietly wondered, does Amy Grant know me better than I know myself? Not long after that, we were headed back to wherever Amy’s next destination was.  As we crossed the cross walk on 6th and Curson, she set down on the street a pair of sunglasses she’d found while we were walking around. I thought to myself that probably wasn’t the best place to leave them, but I didn’t say anything. As we were saying our goodbyes, I realized we had not found a playground. Amy said, “That’s okay.” We hugged and then the next thing I knew, I woke up in my bed. For a while, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I lay there wondering, what does it all mean?  What does any of it mean?  It’s just a dream and like most dreams, it might take a little time to be understood.

Dear Daisy

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4453551996_b1d8ffa745_oIt’s rare for me to spend more than a few hours on a blog post, but I have been working on and off on this one since Thursday.  Up until, just now, I didn’t feel that I was saying what I wanted to say, in the way I wanted to say it.

On Thursday, by chance, I saw that one of the kids that had been in my youth group when I was a youth minister many years ago had unfriended me on Facebook.  She popped into my head and I thought, hmmm, I wonder what Daisy is up to? When I got to her FB page, I saw the little +1 Add Friend rectangle on her profile.  I was a little shocked.  Not surprisingly, it is not my first FB unfriending, but it’s the one that stung the most.

Thursday, not long after discovering the information, I started working on a blog, also entitled, Dear Daisy.  That blog was an actual letter to her which sortof snarkily started off, “I guess you will probably never read this because most people who find my blog, find it through Facebook and ever since you unfriended me, I don’t now how you would even know to look for it.”  Like I said, I’ve revisited that original blog every day, tweaking it, but ultimately, it never felt right enough to publish.

I will tell you a little about Daisy.  She is a singer.  I remember not long after I was hired to be the youth minister at her church, one of the elderly ladies was telling me bits of information about all of the congregation’s young people.  I remember Velda Blagg saying, “And Daisy!  Daisy has the voice of an angel.”  And she did.  When Daisy sang a special in church, usually an Amy Grant song, it was something the entire congregation looked forward to hearing.  Most who have heard her sing would say that she has a God-given gift.

Another thing about Daisy that I think about fairly often is when her mother died suddenly while I was her youth minister.  Her mother was a force: magnetic, beautiful, sharp-witted, opinionated.  Also, she was a teacher.  Her death was one of the first lessons in how fragile life is and how everything can change permanently in an instant.  I marvelled at the poise with which Daisy handled her loss.  She was just weeks from going away to her freshman year of college, yet the Daisy I remember continued to lend support to her father and three younger brothers.  In college, she studied music, because she wanted to glorify God with her music.

We have not had a lot of contact since the time that I was her youth minister.  Even before FB entered all of our lives, she did know that I was gay.  I know that she is still very religious, but I’ve never known her to post anything anti-gay on FB.  Our FB messages were usually about light things, like dreaming of meeting up in New York to go see Broadway musicals together.

At one point in the last few days, I thought I knew why she unfriended me.  Since I’ve started this blog, I talk about a lot of different things. Granted, every word I write, it’s with the cognizance that my mother will probably read it, but I would give my blog a PG-13 rating.  And I talk a lot, A LOT, about being gay.  I wonder if it might be painful for Daisy to see how different I am from the man who was her minister, her pastor, at a very formative time in her life.  If I was a man who once made her love Jesus more, what am I now?

I thought about Daisy and the rest of the youth group quite a bit all weekend.  Something about the action, unlocked some memories that I hadn’t thought about in 20 years, sweet memories.   Yesterday, I posted a blog about a young voice teacher, roughly Daisy’s age, who got to sing on stage with Kristin Chenoweth at the Hollywood Bowl this weekend.  I included a link to her account on BroadwayWorld.com where at the end, she talked about walking to her car after the concert with her dad and him reminding her that he prayed 11 years ago that she would be able to sing with Kristin Chenoweth.  That touching moment made me think of the beaming pride that Daisy’s dad always had for her.  He was a stoic guy, but whenever Daisy sang, whether it be at church or concerts or pageants, he always shed more than a few tears.  He was and is the kind of guy who would pray for his daughter to sing with Kristin Chenoweth, or maybe Amy Grant.

Anyway, I am not angry that Daisy unfriended me.  I do hope that if she did not hear about Sarah Horn from me, that she heard about Sarah Horn from someone.  Those magical musical moments that I talked about yesterday, are something Daisy’s knows a lot about.  So, Daisy, if you ever read this, and I hope that someday you will, know that, Facebook friend or not, I will always love you.  

For Good

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300x300xkc.jpg.pagespeed.ic.KMhWl8swMzThere is a video going viral today of a voice teacher named Sarah Horn who was plucked from the audience of the Hollywood Bowl last night to sing a song from Wicked with Kristin Chenoweth.  The video is electric and I’ve included the link to her account of the experience on BroadwayWorld.com right here.  

In the interview, she talks about how she could feel the entire audience rooting for her, that she was doing what they all dreamed of doing, singing on stage with Kristin Chenoweth.  I don’t think Sarah Horn’s life will ever be the same again.  It’s been changed, for good. (Get it?)

There are moments that happen at live shows, whether it be plays or concerts or even comedy shows, where the moment is so magical, everyone who bears witness to it, whether on stage, or in the audience, they feel like they’ve been active in a rare, indelible experience.  As far as I know, the person who posted the YouTube video did not even know Sarah Horn and you can hear her gasps, her excitement, her thrill.

Even me, sitting at my computer, a little hungover, a little depressed about my job, fretting about that audition last week that I thought for sure I’d get a callback for, I did not know what I was in for when I clicked on the link to the video that my friend Michael posted to Facebook this morning.  I felt like I was in on the magic, too, like I was Sarah Horn on that stage singing in perfect harmony with Kristi Dawn from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.  And it reminded me that this world is full of magic, we just don’t always know when or where we’re going to find it.