Before Hitler came along, homosexuals and other nonconformists had long been drawn to Berlin's artistic milieu, exotic night life and relaxed social mores, especially after the first world war.
However, I was so busy anchoring myself in this left feminist milieu – long nights at the kitchen table, drinking red wine and smoking roll-ups, planning our next campaign – trying to feel secure in my somewhat fraught and never completely stable household, that the comings and goings of lovers merged into the domestic and political routines.
He returned to the milieu of that lost and much-missed Manchester in Kalooki Nights, this time using a darker palette.
"Merrily," set in the show-biz world of opening nights and hit songs, turned a disenchanted gaze on the creators' own milieu; Sondheim has said that an Act II number, "Opening Doors," is the only autobiographical song he has ever written.
But those delusions would not have stood out in that particular milieu, certainly not to the young man who answered the altar call that night as a choir concluded singing "Just as I Am".
Edward Hopper's evocative "Night Shadows" sums up the sense of isolation tinged with menace that is unique to the urban milieu after dark.
These world-weary sybarites, operating within the split-personality milieu of prerevolutionary France, fill their days with salacious gossip and malicious scheming, their nights with boudoir imbroglios.
But last week, just to see if he still had an eye for the good stuff, he accepted this reporter's invitation to revisit his old milieu, or at least the Manhattan version: lunch at Le Cirque, followed by a gala the next night at the Plaza for the opening of the Martha Graham Dance Company's 2004 New York season.
Second rule: know your milieu.
Friedrich towered in his milieu.
