BijouBlog

Well, Season's Greetings to one and all! This will be my first sequel blog. Back in November, I wrote about my love and fascination with the "musical" organ as well as the biologically attached one that got me into Bijou in the first place! Lol.

Because music has been such a large part of my life, whether it be DJing, selling Hi-Fi or playing and selling organs and pianos, my first blog on the organ left a lot out of a rather large story.

I remember leaving off the first blog at my arrival in Santa Fe. Until the purchase of the Lowery spinet, I had been without an organ for 5+ years... which seemed like a lifetime! I wound up purchasing a couple more organs in Santa Fe, which got me back to another Conn 651! It was not in the best of shape, electronically speaking. It seemed like my organ tech was always coming over to jump start this one.

With all of the abovementioned technical issues, I started pondering another brand... Allen. It was a wise move - musically and technically. My first was an ADC-3600, a beautiful two manual theater model. That didn't last long. Once you have had three manuals, two is a little limiting! That led to the ADC-3600's big brother, the ADC-4600 - the three manual and very well equipped version for its time.

 

It was at this time that I started to take organ lessons again. This was at the suggestion of my Allen technician. Little did I know that the man he was referring was a legend in the theater organ world who lived right here in my home town. I have decided as a courtesy to keep the anonymity of my teacher and tech. My "lessons" were really coaching sessions as my "coach" thought pretty highly of my playing and overall knowledge. I let him know that I was gay right from the start. He "let the cat out of the bag" during our first lesson, as well. He was my senior by 20 years. Besides the wonderful music, we had hilarious times with him recalling his various gay escapades during the '50s and '60s. Belly-laughing was always part of our curriculum!

Through him, I was introduced to his house-mate and his partner and we became a very large family that got together on all of the major holidays. All of this was wonderful except that in only a year and a half of knowing my teacher, his health failed and he passed in 2012. I was not only saddened but lost. I thought I had finally gotten a musical liaison back in my life! Oh well. I am quite thankful for that period of time that I had with him and the rekindling of musical energy that he gave me.

A year and a half later my step-father passed. He left me a nice sum that I used to get the organ that I own today... an Allen MDS TH 17. I still have to pinch myself when I look at it! It is massive and gorgeous! Oh, how I could have used my teacher to learn all of this organ's features. Playing music and playing an organ like this are two different things. Learning to maneuver through a song and change registrations with the thumb pistons and toe pistons was something that I was never taught. And, now in my 70s, it is something that I am determined to learn on my own.

All of these instruments have one thing in common - they have brought great pleasure. From the very first time I heard a theater organ as a child, I knew I wanted to play one. I have been moved to tears on many occasions. It has proven to be the gateway to my soul.

Bio of Will Seagers:

Will Seagers (also credited as Matt Harper), within his multifaceted career and participation in numerous gay communities across the country in the '70s and '80s and beyond, worked as a print model and film performer. He made iconic appearances in releases from Falcon, Hand in Hand, Joe Gage, Target (Bullet), J. Brian, Steve Scott, and more, including in lead roles in major classics like Gage's L.A. Tool & Die (1979) and Scott's Wanted (1980). He brought strong screen presence and exceptional acting to his roles and was scene partners with many fellow legends of classic porn.

 

The Christmas tree, O Christmas tree is a relatively recent addition to the Christmas aka Holiday aka Saturnalia festivities in America. Prince Albert the Good brought it over from Germany during his time as the husband of the great Victoria, and pretty soon the tree decorated with candles and then electric lights has become a staple of what has now become America’s end-of-the-year orgy of consumption.

Such trees, real or artificial, have become status symbols, and they even reflect changing tastes. I head somewhere that the retro Atomic Age white and pink trees (to us in our pseudo-organic age, so unnatural) are returning to popularity. In fact, smaller ceramic Christmas trees with bulbous light and garish ornaments painted on from this period are suddenly the rage on Ebay. Camp and retro and kitsch reign, and o so gay!
 

The proximity of the minor Jewish festival of Hanukkah to the season has created a cousin of the Christmas tree, the Hanukkah bush. Yes, bush. And not the burning one which was not consumed, which would be more appropriate to Passover. It seems that some more secular Jews tried some cross-holiday pollination here, even celebrating Chrismukkah (gifts and trees and menorahs, let’s do it all), much to the consternation of many more orthodox rabbis.

Now the more sensible Reform and Conservative rabbis have claimed that the holiday is mostly secular, so why not put up a tree or a bush if doing so is void of religious significance (its heathen roots in the worship of Odin in the primeval German forests notwithstanding). One woman recently tied in her bush specifically to Hanukkah, decorating with menorahs and little figures of the Maccabees, an interesting solution, but perhaps not one that will gain a foothold in popular culture.
 

Now what’s really fascinating about all this tree and bush worship is the obvious sexual connotations. A tree is phallic, obviously (though as Freud says, a cigar can just be a cigar, and likewise the same could apply to a tree), and in Norse mythology, the great tree Yggdrasil held up the physical world. Its destruction meant its end.

J.R.R. Tolkien transformed this mythology into his own in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. The survival of the world and the fertility of a line of tall kings are dependent on first two trees, one silver and one gold, and after their destruction, then a white tree descended from their seed.
 

And the rabbis and the priests and the ministers of course have interpreted and reinterpreted those mysterious trees in the Garden of Eden, in many cases connecting them with sexual awakening and a fall from innocence into experience.

Thus, rockin’ around that Christmas tree could really in many cases mean sex, and not just the sex that makes babies. The prolific gay porn director, Robert Prion, seems to enjoy setting sexual escapades around and under Christmas trees. Of course these trees aren’t even really growing, because they are either artificial or real ones cut down, so one wonders if somehow the whole life/fertility mythological connection gets lost here. Whatever the case, it certainly adds a somewhat campy/kitschy o so gay aura to the scenes that feature them in our recent release Teasin' 'n' Pleasin' and our upcoming release Access All Areas.
 

A week ago I bought an used tabletop artificial blue tree with a stand covered in glitter that I was told, by the place that sold it to me, once served as a Hanukkah bush. I put some white lights on it, and It really glitters and sparkles. I just might keep it up through February or even March, despite that being a social faux-pas. I mean, who says that lights and sparkles and sex are only a holiday affair?