Gershwin: by George, by Bling!

By George, by jing, by God-almighty, I found these Blingees in a George Gershwin file and decided they were too hokily cute not to post. 

I went through a Gershwin phase two or three years ago, and I can't  say it's over, since it changed me. In most of them, you see The Great Man, the Gershwin who struck a pose, whether he was (supposedly) at the piano or (supposedly) talking to his girl friend. And even: See George. See George at the beach. These are ALL posed, the products of publicity, and the early ones bespeak an androgyny that I never knew existed.

Some say Gershwin was gay, others don't care (me!), others see his flexibility in who he wanted to spend time with. Kay Swift, a brilliant composer on her own, was one of his longest and closest relationships, and he dedicated the musical Oh, Kay! to her. In fact, I've always seen that title not as whimsy but as a cry from the heart. 

Gershwin eventually ended up sad and frustrated by the public's unwillingness to embrace his full genius (the lamentably misunderstood Porgy and Bess). They seemed to want to push him back to Tin Pan Alley. They were simply more comfortable with the old George. He served their needs, while his true genius seethed inside him. 

Meantime, a horrendous, horrible thing was slowly growing in his head: a monstrous tumour which eventually claimed him, while his doctors insisted his escalating agony and shocking disability was "psychological". So psychological that when he was in the bathroom, he fell down dead, or so close to it that helping him was impossible. I see him leaving his body, hovering around the ceiling somewhere, looking down while the impotent, idiot doctors cracked his skull open like a walnut, finding a grapefruit-sized tumour that had probably been growing there for years. A sad end for a man still in his 30s, the Mozart of his time. We still have the music, but as prodigious as his output was, it was only a tiny fragment of what he kept in his idea file, his treasure box. A box that, tragically, would not be opened until it was too late.