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Loud and Loved

       It’s Pride Month here in the states and it’s “Pride Week” here in Columbus.  That means that this weekend we’ll have two different festivals, two parades, two performances by the Columbus Gay Men’s Chorus, and a whole lot of joy over the fact that we LGBTTQQIAAP folks are not only afforded the right to be visible in our community - but also that we have had the the ability to celebrate our Pride for 38 years here in our city.  It feels amazing to live in a time where being LGBT has become less stigmatized and more normalized in our culture - something I couldn’t have imagined while growing up as a little closeted gay boy in southern West Virginia.  Yet we are still struggling with acceptance, with constant attacks on the rights of transgendered individuals from our presidential administration and the “Religious Freedom” bills being introduced in states where conservative politicians have a strong hold.  It’s because of this opposition to who we are that I feel the concept of Pri
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Duality: Who We Think We Are and Who Other People Think We Are

A few weeks ago, I got to experience something that always manages to shake my confidence in myself.  You see, the chorus I sing in always throws a cast party to celebrate the show and to give us a chance to watch a video of the performance.  Watching the performance is one of my favorite parts of the cast party because when you’re a part of a show it can be very difficult to appreciate the whole.  You can’t see yourself, you can’t see how all the pieces fit together, and you can’t appreciate the finished product in the same way that the audience can.  So it is great to see it all together and to get an idea of what it was like for the live audience.  However, I spend a lot of the viewing watching myself and how I move.  Confession time: I really hate watching myself.  I do not enjoy seeing moves that I thought were very precise and focused turn into vague and sluggish hand gestures on the video.  I don’t love watching my face and being surprised when an expression I thought was movin
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Identity and the Power of the Past

        I had an interesting and rare experience last weekend.  I saw two films that were dramatically different from each other and yet shared a common thread that also fell in line with some of my own recent thoughts.  The two films were Captain Marvel and Us.  Now, if you’ve seen either film, or even the ads for either film, you can clearly see how different they are.  One is a classic superhero origin story and the other is a horror and suspense thriller.  Yet, they both have a central idea at their core that they share.  In both films, there is a female protagonist struggling with fragmented images from her own past and if she can put the pieces together, she might just be able to solve the central problem of the story and figure out who she really is.  It was astonishing to me that I would randomly choose such different films and that both of them would tread such similar ground.  I enjoyed the juxtaposition and the exposure to similar themes in each film got me thinking about my
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Belonging

This recently I had an amazing experience as one of 70 plus members of the Columbus Gay Men’s Chorus.  We performed our show, Live Loud Live Proud, and shared with our audience what it means to us to be LGBTQ in 2019.  It was emotional and revealing experience for all of us, and one I was personally proud to have.  I was part of a group with similar interests and singing about topics and feelings that we can all relate to on some level.  It was glorious and it got me thinking about the importance of being a part of a group with similar interests.  Why do many people feel better when we are a part of a group?  Why is there strength in numbers?  Why do many people even feel the need to be a part of a group? For me, I think the main reason I enjoy being a part of a group is the connections that are formed between the members.  In the chorus, we were all brought together over our love of music and, specifically, singing.  However, we also share the uniting factor of being a part of or su
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What Do You Do When You Feel Sad?

I enjoy re-watching favorite TV shows I happen to own on DVD from time to time - and before you scoff, plenty of people own a season or two of something on disc still, streaming services haven’t yet gifted us with unlimited choices on what to watch - and as I was watching an early episode of The Simpsons this month, something about it struck a chord with me.  In the little remembered season one episode called “Moaning Lisa”, Lisa finds herself dealing with an unclassifiable sadness. The episode spends a great deal of time focusing on Marge and Homer both trying to cure her of her sadness, Marge specifically. Marge remembers her own experience as a child being told by her mother that she should be happy for the benefit of the people around her and passes on that advice to Lisa and thinks the problem is solved until she sees what the repression of that sadness does to her daughter.  Lisa immediately attracts two male classmates who proceed to try to take advantage
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New Year, Same You

So it’s 2019 and it’s time for everyone to make some New Year’s Resolutions.  That usually means making promises to ourselves that we don’t intend to keep and falling back into old habits fairly quickly.   “Oh, how original,” you must be saying, “Another opinion piece on how New Year’s Resolutions are bullshit.” Actually, despite my opening, I truly enjoy our tradition of making resolutions toward self improvement.  New Year’s Resolutions give us a rare opportunity to actively about the things we like about ourselves that we would like to enhance and to change those things about ourselves that we don’t particularly enjoy. Sadly, I feel like we get too bogged down in the physical resolutions (i.e. lose weight) and we don’t examine ourselves further than that.  Honestly, and I speak completely for myself, if I really liked myself and who I am all of the time, I probably wouldn’t focus so much on how much I weigh as though it were the number of my total self-worth to others.
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The Importance of “Family” at Christmas

It’s Christmas Eve, I’m surrounded by family that loves and supports my husband and me...and yet I find myself feeling melancholy despite all the reasons to feel happy.  Don’t get me wrong, being with people I haven’t seen in several months is uplifting and knowing that I’ve been missed warms my heart - but ever since I became an adult, I’ve always felt that something was missing during the actual Christmas holidays. It shouldn’t be surprising that I feel this way, given that Andy and I rarely get to spend Thanksgiving or Christmas in the comfort of our own home.  We are childless and so there is an expectation that we will visit our families rather than stay home because travel is much easier for us.  Neither of us is ever upset by this; it’s just what we do.  But it isn’t home that I miss (though having my two cats with me right now would be a comfort), as I felt this same sense of melancholy even when we spent Christmas at home in 2016. So what was missing then?  Family obv
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