• 15 September 2020
  • Gourmet, Down South
  • The Author
  • Walking
  • What Endures. What Passes.

Dispatches From Dystopia

~ "What man by worrying can add one cubit to his span of years?"

Dispatches From Dystopia

Category Archives: Taste

Matters Of Taste

23 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by David in Popular Song, Taste

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

#Rodgers & Hart

I’m sitting here listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing Rodgers and Hart ballads. Last night I binge-listened to interpretations of Noël Coward’s If Love Were All. Various artists from Rufus Wainwright to Barbara Cook have taken their turn at this hauntingly beautiful song. My favorite version? Judy Garland.

It used to be that for an American male to have a fondness for the American popular song would raise doubts about that man’s sexual orientation. Nowadays, who listens to Rodgers and Hart, Noël Coward (OK he’s English), Cole Porter? If you know who Billy Strayhorn was you’re an oddity. If you know that he was gay, you’re doubly peculiar.

The stereotype of so-called gay tastes goes beyond music, to interior design, architecture, cooking, fashion. My friend John A is writing a book about Fred Astaire’s early years in Manhattan. He’s writing a book about a male dancer. John is heterosexual, but then so was Astaire.

I’m going out on a limb and suggest that gays are today as devoid of good taste as the average het guy. If gay males stereotypically follow fashion trends and GQ Magazine is any sort of reflection of gay tastes, they have no taste as of 2017. GQ. has really crappy-looking clothes displayed in bad editorial photography. No great significance to this shift is implied nor should any be inferred. It’s really about the general decline of good taste in this country.

There is just so much good stuff that is largely ignored. It’s the secular version of the trend toward bad liturgical music in current Episcopal/Anglican and Roman Catholic Worship. Sadly we now settle for, if not aspire to the banal, not the exceptional or the sublime.

How did we get here? Can we go back?

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • November 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • March 2014

Categories

  • #cricket
    • Cricket
  • #Grief
  • Addiction
  • Adult Children
  • Aesthetics
  • Age Play
  • alcoholism
  • American History
    • Politics
  • Amtrak
  • Animal Baby Cuteness
  • Anti-Marxist Activity
  • Art
  • Autism Spectrum Disorders
  • Automobiles,
  • Baby Names
  • Baltimore
  • Big Business
  • Birthday
  • Bloggers
  • British Empire
  • Capitalism
  • Cartoons
  • Catholic Life
  • Cats
  • Civilization
  • Class
  • Classical Music
  • cooking
  • Cricket
  • Cuba
  • Cycling
  • Delta Blues
  • Depression
  • Dogs
  • Erotic Writing
  • Exercise/ Fitness
  • Existential Despair
  • Fame
  • Family
  • Fantasy
  • Fashion & Grooming
  • Florida
  • Flowers
  • food
  • Foreign Films
  • Fruit
  • Futurism
  • Gay/Straight Dichotomy
  • Gender Identity
  • Gender Roles
  • Gentrification
  • Going Dark.
  • grafitti
  • Gratitude
  • Health Issues
  • Hedonism
  • Hidtory
  • History
  • Housework
  • kitsch
  • Literature
  • loneliness
  • Love and stuff
  • memoir
  • Mid Century Modern
  • Modernism
  • New York
  • Old Cameras
  • Otakon 2016
  • personal grooming
  • Pie Crust
  • Politics
  • Popular Song
  • Post Office
  • Railroads
  • recovery
  • Refugees
  • Relationships
  • Russian Orthodoxy
  • Sacrifice
  • sadomasochism
  • seduction
  • self-indulgence
  • Sexual Identity
  • Sexuality
  • sleep
  • Smartphones
  • Sobriety
  • Soup
  • Soviet History
  • Spirituality
  • Sport
  • Suburbia
  • Summer
  • Taste
  • Tasteless Gifts
  • Tattoo
  • Tea
  • The Villages
  • Tolerance
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Urban Brutalism
  • Vietnam
  • Wildlife
  • World War II
  • YMCA
  • YouTube-Videos

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.