Elliot Rubin
(continued from pg. 9)
Chris: How do you feel about being a gay
composer?
Elliot: I have written pieces — it just so hap
pens there are none on this program that
deal directly with the issue of my being gay.
And I certainly intend to in the future. In fact
on my Junior Recital I used a poem I found in
Christopher Street that I thought was a very
good poem. It’s a hard situation because I
feel like being open about it in this society is
making a political statement which is good.
B u t I’m also an artist and I also have to
always ask myself, "Is what I’m doing good
art?” So, I always have to balance my political
feelings with my artistic sense.
For example, a piece I had hoped to have
done for this recital is dealing with pederasty.
Well, it’s really about a relationship with
someone thirteen to seventeen. That is,
someone not an adult but not a child. I’m
thinking not only of a sexual relationship, but
a much larger relationship, like teacher to a
student (like the Greek attitude), role model.
Chris: How are you going to handle it?
Elliot: Well, it interests me because it’s con
troversial. I feel this is an important issue in
the gay community, because it’s similar to
the discussions about transvestism or trans
sexualism. They’re subjects that on the one
hand do involve gays to some degree, if for
no other reasn than that they are always as
sociated with gays in the minds of the public.
And, if we deal with them, that means we have
to think about them and we have to draw our
own opinions about them.
Chris: Well, I haven’t formed an opinion
about pederasty — I haven’t even thought
about it much. It’s a pertinent question.
Elliot: We still seem to want to keep people as
children as long as possible, and not accept
that many people mature faster. In many re
spects, they are mature beings at fourteen or
fifteen years of age. Then, some people never
mature, no matter how old they are, and yet
are given adult responsibilities. Also, and this
is something some people refuse to accept
very often these young people are the ones
who initiate the relationship, whether it is sex
ual or emotional. They are the ones who start
it and they know what they want I’m not
talking about exploitive or abusive relation
ships — that’s a totally different category.
Look at how many women are abused by
husbands no matter what age they are. That’s
exploitation — abuse at the hands of some
body else who takes power over another per
son. Would anybody say that therefore there
should be no heterosexual relation
ships?
Chris: Difficult question.
Elliot: It is. Clnfortunatley, it’s made more dif
ficult by social attitudes. There are a lot of
people who claim to be liberal, who deep
down feel that being gay is not quite as good
as being straight— and a way to compensate
for that is by overdoing something else that’s
respectable, whether it’s voting Republican,
or being very patriotic, or trying to look
straight It’s all compensation, and I think
that’s very much the issue here when we talk
about a relationship with a younger person.
It’s not accepted as legitimate in this society.
I’ve talked to a number of gay men who ex
pressed their disgust at the idea of a relation
ship with a much younger man, and when
you delve into their reasons behind that it
very often came out as a way of reacting
against what had already been a struggle to
win acceptance and respectability.
Chris: How are you going to get this across in
your music.
Elliot: The idea I have for this piece is to have
just one or two performers, maybe just a solo
instrument and the concentration would be
on the text — the dramatic activity o f the one
person with maybe the musical accompani
ment of the other person, so that the attention
really can focus on the actor.
Chris: Are you looking for an existing text, or
will you write your own?
Elliot: Right now I’m thinking of using several
different texts covering man-boy relationships
in different periods of time and different soci
eties. I’ve already done some research on
this, and found some really marvelous exam
ples — one from ancient China — a set of
very nice love poems from the medieval Arab
culture — and, of course, there are so many
examples from Greek mythology and culture
— I could do a hundred pieces with that
alone! I want to show that it wasn’t just in
Greece — that it’s a universal phenomenon.
Then, to bring in the Western society and
make it more contemporary, I’m using
Batman and Robin, and concentrating on
more literary or mythology — it doesn’t mat
ter whether it’s myth or history so much really
— it’s to make a point
Chris: So, you’re not going to present diffe
rent pros and cons about pederasty.
Elliot: Right Mostly, I’ll use the relationships
themselves as examples of dialogues be
tween the lovers for the most part All of them
will be different relationships. One of them
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may be more sexual than another one — one
may be more romantic or emotional than
another one. Each of them is very unique in
its own way.
Chris: It seems that the musicians — like
actors — will now need to examine their own
feelings and project some feelings visually
into the performance, as well as maybe being
expected to deliver lines.
Elliot: Yes. I read something that was dealing
with that issue of personalities coming out in
someone’s music. And, of course, that’s al
ways been a big question. Very often, critics
say, “well, if you can see that this person’s dark
side came out in the music and blah blah
blah . . . " But then, can you really detect in
Ravel’s music w here it reveals that he was
gay? Or Saint Saens’? Or Tchaikovsky’s?
That’s absurd? And yet in a sense it may not
be so strange, because in subtle ways your
life experiences influence your music, and in
turn, you influence everything else. Anyway,
that argument just doesn’t hold water. That’s
why I say that a good artist is primarily an
artist — and then other things.____________
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