Guilty Pleasures and Confessions

Notes on the Program

by Steven Blier

Perhaps it was inevitable when the Sexual Revolution smacked up against the Information Age, when offhand remarks and private tête-a-têtes could be surreptitiously recorded and replayed for all the world to hear. We are living through an age of rooting out secrets. In the post-Watergate era, politicians have been accused of plagiarism, pot-smoking, and sexual harassment, while the bewildered public tries to assign blame for Irangate, the S&L fiasco, and Senate overdrafts. Those of us who grew up in the fifties thought that life would be like “The Patty Duke Show”; instead, it’s more like “Candid Camera.” And it’s as if the need to hear confessions has turned us into a nation of confessors. There is, for example, a 900 number where for about $1.59 a minute, one can be party to the secrets of anonymous strangers - a strange variation on the old-fashioned Catholic confessionals. On talk shows, ordinary Joes and Janes become temporary celebrities by airing their dirty laundry for national television. The Religious Right has exploited guilt to raise large sums of money, while two of its leading televangelists have made the most florid confessions of sin in a field crowded by Big Gestures. Meanwhile, John Bradshaw has brought shame out of the closet in workshops and media events. It’s no wonder that Saturday Night Live’s Satan-obsessed Church Lady took hold of the national imagination.

Today’s concert is a tribute to this age of Confession. Composers and poets have always written songs to unburden the soul and share sybaritic pleasures; in this spirit we offer a program of secrets, admonitions, parables, guilt, and delights from several cultures and centuries.

For the complete text of these program notes, please e-mail us at:  info@nyfos.org.