Sex,Drugs and Rock'n'Roll
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Seeing Through : A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera
Sex, Drugs, and Opera - Book - by Ricky Ian Gordon
(2024)
At eight years old, Ricky Ian Gordon pulled The Victor Book of Opera off
his piano teacher’s bookshelf, and his world shifted on its axis.
Though scandal, sadness, and confusion would shake that world over the
next few decades, its polestar remained constant. Music has been the
guiding force of Gordon’s life; through it, he has been able not only to
survive great sorrow but also to capture the depths of his emotion in
song.
It is this strength, this technical and visceral genius,
that has made him one of our generation’s greatest composers. In
Seeing Through, Gordon writes with humour, insight, and incredible
candour about his life and work: a tumultuous youth on Long Island, his
artistic collaborations and obsessions, the creation of his compositions
(including The Grapes of Wrath, 27, Orpheus and Euridice, Intimate
Apparel, Ellen West, and more), his addictions and the abuses he
endured, and the loss of his partner to AIDS and the devastation of the
HIV/AIDS epidemic. As Gordon writes of that period: “We were, thousands
of us, Lazarus.
We had to rise from the ashes. We didn’t have to
rebuild our lives, we had to build new ones.”Gordon has succeeded in
building a remarkable life, as well as a body of work that bears witness
to all he survived in the process - one that will endure as a pivotal
chapter in America's songbook.