Tu Me Manques plus Short Takes on some suggestions for TCM cable offerings and other cinematic topics

Only the Lonely

Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke

I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) when they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.

                             Tu Me Manques (Rodrigo Bellott)

                                         rated 18+   111 min.

Opening Chatter (no spoilers): I’m still confining myself to streaming options (because there's nothing playing just in theaters intriguing me enough to put up with either sitting there for 2 hours with a mask on or nibbling at a giant bag of popcorn the whole time), but there really wasn’t a lot via the Internet that caught my eye until I stumbled onto this Bolivian winner, the country’s entry in the Oscar race for Best International Film (didn’t make the 5 final nominees, although I hope it was a strong contender as it’s hard to imagine all of the others were so much better) about a father grieving over his gay son Gabriel’s suicide (no spoiler; we learn the young man’s fate immediately), travels to NYC to confront the son’s ex-lover, looking desperately for answers about this tragedy.  Despite the dialogue being in Spanish and English (subtitles only about half the time), the title’s in French literally translating to “I miss you” but implying “I miss you in me” as a deeper sense of hurtful-loss, the missing person seeming to be an organic part of the one(s) left behind.  It’s a bit hard to follow at times due to a structure actively intercutting among 4 relatively-closely-related-time periods with no transitional devices (fadeouts, dissolves), few time markers to verify where we are at any given point of the story so you have to pay close attention, maybe even watch it twice to confirm what you may have missed (rents for a standard period of a couple of days but cheap anyway—$4.99—on various platforms [I used Amazon Prime], so even a second payment’s not too bad).  Essentially it explores the undeserved shame so many gay men encounter from their families, friends, society at large just for their inherent-sexual-orientation although the ex-lover here, Sebastian, tries to reclaim Gabriel’s singular-life's-worth with a powerful play about the man, incorporating elements of Bellott’s actual (controversial-yet-successful) play in Bolivia that lead to this cinematic adaptation (the play itself was inspired by true events, but I’m not sure what they are; our first screen image is scene directions as from a play’s script).  Also, in the Short Takes section I’ll offer suggestions for some choices on the Turner Classic Movies channel (but too much extra text for line-justified-layout like you see here [Related Links stuff at each posting’s end is similarly-ragged], at least to be done by this burned-out-BlogSpot-drone—oh, ye tedious software!) along with my standard dose of industry-related-trivia.

Here’s the trailer for Tu Me Manques:

                   (Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate 

                   that same button or use the “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)

If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $.  To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid those important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters like this: 

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

What Happens: Given how this film uses flashback structure (or flashforward, depending on when the previous scene took place) it would be maddening for both me and you to recount every shift in temporal placement so for this summary I’ll just note what happens in chronological order, all of it technically a flashback from the brief events of depicted timeframe #4.  Definitely, it’s a lot more interesting to see the actual film in its fragmented (but ultimately integrated) mode, so I encourage you to do just that, with my notes as a guide either before or after your own screening if that helps.  Timeframe #1: In 2014 Bolivian young adult Gabriel (played throughout by 3 interchangeable actors [sometimes in different shots within the same scene]—Jose Duran, Quim del Rio, Benjamin Lukovski [in the photo just above with him wearing glasses]) comes to NYC looking for a new life in North America, goes into a store to buy some clothes for a job interview, meets salesclerk Sebastian (Fernando Barbosa)—also, by chance, from Bolivia—who invites him to a party which Gabriel agrees to attend despite protests he’s not gay.  After some humorous encounters with Sebastian’s friends, though, Gabriel shows no hesitancy in kissing Sebastian; soon they’ve moved in together, have a happy life that’s constantly amorous (one steamy sex scene goes as close as you can get to explicit without crossing over into porno).  Trouble arises, though, when Sebastian posts photos on Instagram that essentially outs Gabriel to his family back home where his parents are God-fearing-Catholics well aware of their church’s teachings about the “sin” of homosexuality (recently confirmed by Vatican pronouncements even as some radical German clergy defy these orders*); upset by his lover’s insistence Gabriel become more public in his sexuality than he’s ready to do yet, he leaves, goes to Miami where he has a breakdown, almost-admission (never says he’s gay, just not hetero) to supportive older sister, Andrea (Ana Asensio), after which he commits suicide, jumping off a balcony.

 Timeframe #2 (where the film actually starts): Gabriel’s body, backpack, and other belongings are sent home to Santa Cruz, Bolivia; as his successful-businessman-father, Jorge (Oscar Martínez), opens the laptop he stumbles onto a connection with Sebastian who didn’t know about the suicide, they have harsh words (each blames the other for Gabriel's death), yet Jorge goes unannounced to NYC looking for any insight about what happened to his son.  Despite initial resistance, Sebastian tries to help Jorge understand Gabriel’s gay life by introducing him to their friends, taking him to clubs and parties, etc., which may help Dad a little but he’s still upset over the situation, even after encouragement from Padre Jaime (Modesto Lacen)—questioning whether St. Paul had gay urgings given his condemnation of such, his general concerns about the difficulty of staving off sexual desires—along with the need of forgiving from the friends’ “den mother,” Rosaura (Rossy de Palma).

*Here are a couple of articles exploring this intra-denomination-conflict (second one's a bit caustic).

 Timeframe #3: Sebastian returns to Bolivia in 2015 where he wants to stage a play he’s written about Gabriel and Jorge, but a local producer’s quite hesitant given the clear homophobic attitudes of the community; Sebastian counters by saying he’ll find 30 gay men (some still in the closet), all to play Gabriel on stage at once.  In the rehearsal process we get powerful individual shots of some of them talking to the camera about their own experiences (mostly negative, very sad).  Eventually the play opens, is accepted with thunderous applause, with marvelously-heartbreaking-scenes of the 30 Gabriels and a powerful final soliloquy from the actor playing Jorge.  ⇒Which brings me to a major confusion (others are recounted in this review’s next section)—because the stage Jorge is also Martínez, this actor praised after the show by Sebastian as someone he’s long admired, dreamed of working with; further, in the final timeframe Sebastian says he never met Gabriel’s actual father so what were all those scenes in NYC with the 2 of them?  Imagined speculation giving the working-playwright inspiration about how he’d portray the character onstage?  I’ve encountered nothing that addresses this, so any interpretations anyone would like to share about this would be most welcome.⇐  Timeframe #4: Sebastian, back in NYC in 2016 (bringing his successful play in Bolivia to Broadway? I’m not sure), is interviewed briefly about his thoughts on all that we’ve seen before.  Graphics prior to the film’s final credits tell us the actual play (premiered 2015) this is adapted from was well-received in Bolivia, encouraged many gay men to come out, talk publically about their ostracization from family/society, lament the suicides of troubled men they had known.  I’ll leave it to your discretion after seeing Tu Me Manques (which I hope you do: easy to find, cheap to rent, see last review section for details) as to whether this swirled timeline is distracting or enhancing (with maybe some useful insights for you beyond what I found in a lengthy [1:11:47] interview with Bellott, Duran, Lukovski, del Rio—one important takeaway for me is Bellott [starting at about 16:30] talking about how the backstories of his Gabriels in the play were all true as revealed by the actors in rehearsal for this film but mostly shuffled around so generally one actor is presenting the statement of another, as each man doesn’t have to be publicly connected to the specific testimony he's giving).

So What? I’ll start this section by admitting—as with the dual (?) Jorges noted above—I’m not sure about certain things I saw in this film but am trying as best I can to stay true to my intentions of watching anything I review just once on streaming, as I would in a theater (using Internet sources to help out while writing the review in both cases), rather than going back to see it again to help clear up confusions (although I do have the advantage in streaming to pause when breaks are desired as well as using subtitles—even when the dialogue’s in English—to aid my aging ears, neither of which I can do in a theater), so I’ve proceeded as best I can in this case but am open to corrections/ clarifications if anyone wants to reply in the Comments box very far below or contact me directly at kenburke409@gmail.com.  I’ve not the only one who’s a bit confused, though, as the title of this film is clearly in French (as said by Rosaura to Jorge), as noted above, yet I’ve seen some sites that assume it’s Spanish just because this is a Bolivian film with much of the dialogue in Spanish (yes, when characters aren’t speaking English you do have to read subtitles, but I hope this possibly-minor-inconvenience won’t put you off from seeing a marvelous, heartfelt film based on some aspects—not sure what exactly—of Bellott’s life which inspired his successful play in his home country which he then adapted into this cinematic version which apparently extends the play’s narrative considerably in then giving us more backstory on Gabriel, Sebastian, and Jorge especially).

 As for the on-screen-aspects that confused me some, I wasn’t always clear on which timeframe a few of the events were occurring in, but—even more embarrassing (although my wife, Nina, had the same experience, which makes me feel a little less senile)—is until I read some reviews hoping to clarify what I’d seen* I didn’t realize Gabriel in the many flashbacks is played by 3 different actors, often within each scene (Lukovski's noted in the IMDb cast list as “Gabriel 3” while Duran’s “Gabriel 1,” del Rio’s “Gabriel 2” [all the others from the play are listed as well as “Gabriel 4” through “… 30,” but with some further confusion for me in that Luis Gamarra is listed as “Real Gabriel” just as Carlos Valverde is “Real Father of Gabriel,” but if I ever saw these  different (?) characters they completely eluded me as I don’t recall yet-another-Gabriel while Martínez is the only father I comprehended whether as the man in interactions with Sebastian or as the compelling actor in Sebastian’s play]).  Apparently Bellott wanted to illustrate how complex we all are, not confined to a single appearance.

*The most informative to me is by Liam Lacey at Original CIN (I'm raised Catholic, love that name).

 So, maybe it’s because these primary Gabriel actors look that much alike to my naïve eyes (not so much in the interview video I note at the end of the What Happens section above but definitely as shown in the film where they all wear glasses, dress alike); maybe it’s because I lose enough of what’s on-screen for anything I review as some of my time’s consumed looking at my notepad as I scribble down memory hints (I certainly couldn’t rely on just what would come to mind after the screening or these reviews would be all be about 2 paragraphs long [hold your applause, please!]), exacerbated in situations such as these where even hearing the dialogue as I take my notes is no help given my monolinguality, limiting most of what I understand by hearing words in Spanish to be only Mexican restaurant menu items; maybe I’m getting too old for my attention span to follow a filmic structure as complex as this one as it skips among its 4 time periods; or maybe the damn thing’s somewhat difficult to grasp for just about any viewer.  All I can say about the challenging aspects of how Bellott fragmented both his chronological-timeline and the thespian-identity of a major character is that I had less trouble almost-fully-following what was going on in the challenging-classic-cinematic-narrative-conundrum-film, Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961 [I regularly showed this one in my film history classes; one student said it caused her to have a religious experience: “I prayed for it to be over!”]) than I did with Tu Me Manques, which doesn’t mean I reject the quality of this intriguing addition to the great catalogue of Latin American films, it just means you’d better be prepared to concentrate while watching it if you truly want to comprehend how it’s revealing itself to you, although the emotional impact of loss—both from Jorge’s and Sebastian’s perspectives—will still come through (along with the bitter sense of unearned-shame in Gabriel’s life), will be clear no matter how confusing transitions from one scene to another might come across.

 A final note is this film was released in Bolivia in 2019 but was accepted as that country’s entry for Oscar's 2020 race for Best International Film, not available in the U.S. for streaming until recently so for all practical purposes I regard it as a 2021 release like some others I’ve reviewed in past weeks made in 2020 but seen only by festival audiences or as critics' screeners until becoming available for streaming during spring of this year; that may not be the most official way of designating a release date, but until we get back to post-pandemic-procedures that’s the way I’m approaching this situation (the folks at Metacritic agree, also calling this a 2021 film; IMDb says 2019, tied to Bolivia's opening).

Bottom Line Final Comments: As with anything on streaming—this one gives you several choices for $4.99-$5.99 rental (see this site for options)—I have no financial returns to report, although supposedly it’s also in “select theaters” but they must be very select (or else there’s been little response) because Tu Me Manques doesn’t show up on last weekend’s Box Office Mojo report; nevertheless, there’s support (of limited-fashion) within the CCAL as the Rotten Tomatoes critics have given it a rare perfect result of 100% positive reviews (based on only 14, though, so you might want to check the site at some later date in my Related Links section farther below to see if anything’s changed in terms of number of reviews or percentage of acceptance just as later you might find anything further from Metacritic where there’s only 2 reviews so far [you can easily access them with links within their site] so no average score’s been calculated yet [at least those 2 reviews are positive, with assigned scores—I still don’t know how they come up with these specific numbers which are not in the actual reviews—of 83 and 70 so I’m more in league with the higher one]).  While I do admit I had some trouble at times knowing exactly where the story was resting in its temporal flow of the moment (yes, I did follow Last Year at Marienbad a bit better in this respect, but, truly, that was mostly in the process of showing it several dozen times over the years in my classes along with not having the added burden of trying to take notes after the first time or two so, honestly, I can’t remember how baffled I was after my initial exposure to that film, ultimately largely negating any concerns with quality I might have considered about Tu Me Manques), the Bolivian film industry didn’t have any qualms about submitting it for the Oscars even though it didn’t become a Best International Film finalist (the only other nominee I saw in that category was Another Round [Thomas Vinterberg; review in our April 22, 2021 posting], so I can’t say whether this one should have been a final competitor, but it certainly seems to have the needed qualifications for receiving such an honor).

 No matter how you might possibly get lost in following the rearranged plot line, though, there’s no doubt about the emotional power of how much Gabriel suffered in knowing his parents’ disapproval of his gender identity, with them choosing their fear of God based on the teachings of their church (Catholic in this specific instance but widespread across many Christian denominations) about the Lord’s condemnation of homosexuality (based on just one little phrase in the Old Testament—damn!) over acceptance of their own son, a traumatic schism leading to Gabriel’s decision to commit suicide, a horrible reality for so many homosexual/transgender individuals whose rejections/harassments so often leave them with no further will to live as explored so powerfully in this film.  Tu Me Manques is a heartbreaking experience to watch but it's also redemptive in the connection playwright Sebastian makes with the actor portraying Gabriel’s father (implying a reconciliation between him and actual Dad) and in the real-world-acclaim for Bellott’s original play in Bolivia giving a sense of dignity and acceptance to its actors and so many members of its audiences.  Time to wrap up my ramble with my usual tactic of a Musical Metaphor, this time being Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely (Know the Way I Feel)” (from his 1961 Lonely and Blue album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_wqAT6MCNU (a 1961 live performance) which gets right to the point of feelings Gabriel, Sebastian, and Jorge felt about themselves in regard to their relationships with the others at various times in this melancholy story (“Only the lonely Know the heartaches I’ve been through Only the lonely Know I cry and cry for you”).  Sebastian and many of his friends were comfortable, even some as flamboyant, in their “outness” but for Gabriel it was largely a private experience always stalked by rejection; for those of us who’ve never had to deal with such—at least because of who we are even if what we’ve done may have caused some problems—this film is a tender-but-building-in-intensity-exploration that hopefully can open up some minds and hearts, maybe bring a bit of healing for a few—or more—of those who’ve endured Gabriel’s misery or the emptiness felt by Sebastian and Jorge.

             

SHORT TAKES

                   

Suggestions for TCM cablecasts

               

At least until the pandemic subsides Two Guys also want to encourage you to consider movies you might be interested in that don’t require subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime, similar Internet platforms (we may well be stuck inside for longer than those 30-day-free-initial-offers), or premium-tier-cable-TV-fees.  While there are a good number of video networks offering movies of various sorts (mostly broken up by commercials), one dependable source of fine cinematic programming is Turner Classic Movies (available in lots of basic-cable-packages) so I’ll be offering suggestions of possible choices for you running from Thursday afternoon of the current week (I usually get this blog posted by early Thursday mornings) on through Thursday morning of the following week.  All times are for U.S. Pacific zone so if you see something of interest please verify actual show time in your area for the day listed.  These recommendations are my particular favorites (no matter when they’re on, although some of those early-day-ones might need to be recorded, watched later), but there’s considerably more to pick from you might like even better; feel free to explore their entire schedule here. You can also click the down arrow at the right of each listing for additional, useful info.

I’ll bet if you checked that entire schedule link just above you’d find other options of interest, but these are the only ones grabbing my attention at present.  Please dig in further for other possibilities.

Saturday May 15, 2021 (an amazing day and there are other options I didn’t even note)

10:30 AM East of Eden (Elia Kazan, 1955) James Dean’s screen debut as Cal Trask, a WW I-era young man living near Monterey, CA trying to win the love of his stern father, Adam (Raymond Massey), who gives more support to other son Aron (Richard Davalos), adapted from the stunning John Steinbeck novel (with its intended Biblical overtones). Even when Cal makes a fortune for 

Dad he’s rejected so he shames Aron by revealing Mom (Jo Van Fleet) isn’t dead after all but lives nearby, running a brothel.  Won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (Van Fleet); Dean (already dead by the time of the awards) was nominated for Best Actor (as he was for his last, Giant [1956]).

12:45 PM Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) Do you really need my description to know what this one’s about? If so, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre are “looking at you, kid,” to watch it!  (A movie truly defining what I consider to be a 5 stars-“classic,” celebrated for decades as a story of hope, patriotism, and making the right decision when romance conflicts with greater needs in the early years of WW II.)

2:45 PM The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962) During the Korean War a U.S. Army platoon is captured by Soviet and Chinese forces, taken for a dose of brainwashing, then released with Sgt. Shaw (Laurence Harvey) lauded as a war hero, manipulated by his mother (Angela Lansbury) to assassinate a Presidential candidate so her husband can take the nomination, but Major Marco (Frank Sinatra) is determined to stop it. A disturbing legacy because it was released about a year before JFK murder. Oscar noms for Best Supporting Actress (Lansbury), Film Editing.

 

9:00 PM Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958) After Citizen Kane (1941), I consider this Welles’ best work; he plays a corrupt U.S. sheriff on the porous USA/Mexico border, making trouble for a Mexican detective (Charlton Heston!) and his new bride (Janet Leigh) as Heston’s determined to hold Hank Quinlan responsible for his crimes, ultimately with the aid of a long-time associate (Joseph Calleia). Marlene Dietrich has a small role but delivers a zinger final line.  It seems TCM has the 1998 re-edit (111 min.) based on Welles’ notes, not the atrocious studio cut (95 min.) with credits mucking up a magnificent 3-min. opening traveling shot; the re-edited version is what I'd rate as a 5 stars-film. 

If you miss it on Saturday night it plays again quickly on TCM, Sunday May 16, 2021, at 7:00 AM.

Monday May 17, 2021

2:30 PM Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966) Adapted from Edward Albee’s controversial play (1962), keeps story and most of the (profane) dialogue intact as a professor (Richard Burton) and his wife (Elizabeth Taylor), daughter of this small college’s president, verbally battle in front of house guests (George Segal, Sandy Dennis) as dysfunctionality reigns. Multiple-Oscar-winner: Best Actress (Taylor), Supporting Actress (Dennis), Art Direction, Costume Design, Cinematography (all 3 for B&W films), plus another 8 nominations; bitter to watch, grim masterpiece.

9:00 PM Hollywood Shuffle (Robert Townsend, 1987) A biting satire of how Black actors have been/still are stereotyped in Hollywood movies that balances hilarious jabs at the kinds of roles an aspiring actor, Bobby Taylor (Townsend), is expected to play with the serious reality of what’s being critiqued here (although there were complaints even at the time of release that this script [Townsend, Keenan Ivory Wayans] is still derogatory in its depiction of women and gays, so problems persist).

Wednesday May 19, 2021 

5:00 PM Judgment at Nuremberg (Stanley Kramer, 1961) Adapted from TV’s Playhouse 90, one of the grim post-WW II trials of Germans, here focused on 4 judges and prosecutors who supported the Nazi cause with rulings against those they knew to be innocent, yet the defense cites atrocities by others in the war, including the U.S. Fabulous cast includes Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell, Marlene Dietrich, Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland, and (a pre-Star Trek) William Shatner. Won Oscars for Best Actor (Schell), Adapted Screenplay plus Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to Kramer, nominated for 9 others including Best Picture, Director, an Actor nod 

for Tracy plus Supporting Actress (Garland), Supporting Actor (Clift). Lots of moral soul-searching.

If you’d like your own PDF of the rating/summary of this week's review, suggestions for TCM cablecasts, links to Two Guys info click this link to access then save, print, or whatever you need.

Other Cinema-Related Stuff: Here's this week’s All-Golden Globes-All-The-Time-news: (1) Hollywood Foreign Press Association approves extensive overhaul; (2) Hollywood publicity firms not convinced about the extent of the HFPA reforms: (3) NBC won't broadcast Golden Globes in 2022; (4) HFPA in crisis over NBC decision, concerned about future of the organization.  As usual for now I’ll close out this section with Joni Mitchell’s "Big Yellow Taxi" (from her 1970 Ladies of the Canyon album)—because “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone”—and my reminder you can always search for streaming/rental/purchase movie options at JustWatch.

                   

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:

                  

We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts.*  Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage.  If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!

*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problems’ been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.

AND … at least until the Oscars for 2020’s releases have been awarded on Sunday, April 25, 2021 we’re also going to include reminders in each posting of very informative links where you can get updated tallies of which films have been nominated for and/or received various awards and which ones made various individual critic’s Top 10 lists.  You may find the diversity among the various awards competitions and the various critics hard to reconcile at times—not to mention the often-significant-gap between critics’ choices and competitive-award-winners (which pales when they’re compared to the even-more-noticeable-gap between specific award winners and big box-office-grosses you might want to monitor here as well as here due to many 2020 releases being tracked on the 2021 list, although the income situation for 2020’s skewed due to so many award-contenders getting limited or no theatrical releases)—but as that less-than-enthusiastic-patron-of-the-arts, Plato, noted in The Symposium (385-380 BC)—roughly translated, depending on how accurate you wish the actual quote to be—“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” so your choices for success are as valid as any of these others, especially if you offer some rationale for your decisions (unlike many of the awards voters who simply fill out ballots, sometimes—damn it!—for films they’ve never seen).

To save you a little time scrolling through the “various awards” list above, here are the 

Oscar nominees and winners for 2020-early 2021 films.  (No more links to Golden Globes.)

Here’s more information about Tu Me Manques:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7144186/reference (best I could do for an official site)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHN3pI3O20 (11:30 interview with actors Jose Duran, Fernando Barbosa, Benjamin Lukovski, Quim del Rio and producer Rodrigo A. Orozco)

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/tu_me_manques

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/tu-me-manques (no score yet but a few useful

references and review links are available at this site)

Please note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post.  You can also leave comments at our Facebook page, although you may have to somehow connect 

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If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work.  (But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews-academic-articles about various cinematic topics at my website, https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)

If we did talk, though, you’d easily see how my early-70s-age informs my references, Musical Metaphors, etc. in these reviews because I’m clearly a guy of the later 20^th century, not so much the contemporary world.  I’ve come to accept my ongoing situation, though, realizing we all (if fate allows) keep getting older, we just have to embrace it, as Joni Mitchell did so well in "The Circle Game," offering sage advice even when she was quite young herself.

By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check-out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile (quite an eternal while, in fact).  Ken

P.S.  Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker.  But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion, lover, and wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"

—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the stadium) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest, 

a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes and wanes over the months/years to come. But, just as we can get raunchy at times (in private, of course), Neil and his backing band, Promise of the Real, on that same night also did a lengthy, fantastic version of "Cowgirl in the Sand" (19:06) which I'd also like to commit to this blog's always-ending-tunes; I never tire of listening to it, then and now (one of my idle dreams is to play guitar even half this good).

             

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