“Let this promise in me start
Like an anthem in my heart…“

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There are but a few songs that can bring tears to this Dom’s eyes at nearly every listen. From Now On is one of those tunes. I remember seeing The Greatest Showman in the winter of 2017 with friends and feeling a measure of hope. At the time, we were closing in on the end of the first year of the first iteration of what will now be Season Two of a bumbling, do-nothing administration. I think by then we’d seen what a mal a la bouche we’d been dealt as a nation. I don’t remember much about the year, only feeling a sense of distaste for where we’d found ourselves. Turning to art, The Greatest Showman was a welcome reprieve from the shit show; I needed something to handle the hurt this heart was feeling.

One can delve into the problematic papering over of the life of P.T. Barnum that The Greatest Showman pulled off in favor of a musical showcase of beautiful people singing and dancing. I won’t be doing that here. One can easily find those truths on the interwebs with a few keystrokes. Instead, indulge with me a momentary delve into hopeful musicality.

I read somewhere that Hugh Jackman was advised against singing From Now On at a reading after undergoing surgery for skin cancer. He defied doctors’ orders and gave a remarkable performance that, I feel, translates well into the recording. Jackman’s voice in this song does it for me on many levels and when the ensemble joins in halfway through the song, I get chills.

I find myself misting up by the song’s end when the chorus fades and the beats end leaving two voices in a soulful, brief duet.

The Greatest Showman was a welcome respite from the reality of 2017, it was feel-good, pleasurably ersatz (to the high-minded musical appreciationists), and infused with a glitzy optimism. Formulaic? Perhaps. Overly generalized? Yeah, sure, but I don’t go to the theater to see a big budget version of life outside the multiplex. I go to the movies to see aliens, cheer on zombies, and watch Hugh Jackman. I mean, come on, when he breaks out of his Wolverine suit in the last act of Deadpool & Wolverine…I felt that all the way down to my wishbone. In Showman, Jackman cuts a toothsome figure in top hat and tails; sometimes that’s all I need to see. In late 2017, that was almost enough. Almost.

Growing up on rural reservation ground, I developed an appreciation for songwriters and would devour lyrics printed on the covers of cassettes and CDs. From Madonna to Tori Amos to Siouxsie Sioux and on and on, I developed a literacy informed by love and loss, dreams and horrors, and everything in between. I analyzed analogy, comprehended hyperbolics, and moved along with rhythms, dancing and reveling in a near-constant chamber of voices, notes, and lyrics vivisecting the Human Condition. All this contained within the confines of my boyhood room, my earphones plugged into my older brother’s “borrowed” Walkman, me lying on my bed staring at the bright, blue New Mexican sky California dreamin’.

Personally, the kicker for me regarding From Now On are the lyrics and the way that Jackman delivers them. It begins low and somber (“I saw the sun begin to dim and felt the winter wind blow cold/A man knows who is there for him when the glitter fades and the walls won’t hold“) to building resolve (“From now on, these eyes will not be blinded by the lights/From now on, what’s waited til tomorrow starts tonight/Tonight“) to perhaps one of my favourite lyrics of all time (“Let this promise in me start like an anthem in my heart“). When I first heard that line, I teared up and write it down in my mind’s ever-growing notepad.

Following the pandemic, I was hesitant to step back onto the path of Dominance. We’d all been through the wringer, sickness and loss, hoping against hope for a vaccine not only against a virus but against the ineffectual, inept “leadership” overlooking the nation. It was during this time that I was reforming, reengaging mechanisms forced to suspend, reviving parts of me that were clawing to come out.

When I started my Leather Journey over 16 years ago, I came into it alone, lost. As my gear collection and experience grew and I began the path of Dominance, I formed a goal to somehow give back to the Leather Community, a Community that had helped me cultivate the will to want to live again and the audacity to embrace desire, both sensual and mundane. (Check out the Leather & Serenity series.) Today, I’ve come to understand and acknowledge that I’m now the Leatherman I needed when I started my Journey. Along the way, I made a promise to myself and to my mentor (Gunny) that I would strive to be there for my Communities (Veterans, LGBTQ+, Indigenous, Leatherfolx, Kinksters) in whatever way I could.

This promise has since evolved into an anthem, an anthem that I think will be more vital in the years to come. To that, I’d like to implore that you to find your own promises of goodwill, grace, and grit and create your own anthems. We’re going to need each other, folx, more than ever.

“‘Cause from then, rubble
What remains
Can only be what is true
If all was lost
There’s more I gained
‘Cause it led me back
To you…“