DON QUIXOTE

Recently, I saw the movie LATTER DAYS. It is the story of the intersecting of lives of a gay L.A. partyboy and a Utah Mormon missionary on his two-year mission.
Though not 100% perfect, it is a beautiful movie, (and makes me wish that Jaqueline Bisset was my friend)...I feel that gay films are finally becoming contenders in the cinama mainstream (not discounting the earlier HEAD ON and THE SUM OF US to name a few...), and addressing the life of homos in a more balanced light...and can be seen as films and not just GAY films....though of course this is coming from a liberal city-dweller homo....

There is a song strung through the film by the band TOAD THE WET SPROCKET that has completely overtaken me...and I have already listened to it at least 30-40 times....In the mid eighties, as an awkward, shy, dorky, closeted teenager, I was really into the absurdity of Monty Python, and this is perhaps why later, in the early ninties, when I became aware of TOAD that I discounted them (the band's name comes from a Monty Python skit...), assuming it was goofy and dorky, like the kid I wanted so desparately not to be any more....

It has some great lines: "I spend too much time seeking shelter", and "take the darkest hour, break it open...water to repair, what we have broken..". I get the chills just listening to it, and it makes me feel so vulnerable and exposed...naked....to think about things that I have been trying to ignore.. It's a pretty powerful song that can do that...And reminds that the most productive times are when you are forced/force yourself to go places outside your comfort sphere... I can already tell this will be one of those songs 20 years hence that will still be able to root me to the spot when I hear it...

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