Show Tunes! 4 the Apocalypse!

If the world is ending. I’m gonna take some time to really give into my reckless love of show tunes. I was planning to spend my twilight years like some musical theater vampire, sucking the souls out of young broadway TWUNKS as I watched them strive for High C’s from the bleachers. But in case we have been robbed of the future, I’ll just start talking about my love of show tunes today.

My love, Marin Mazzie

I’m biking to the city so that I can take a meeting with my theater company and I am late. Like 20 minutes late and I’ve just reached the Williamsburg bridge approach and even though I am running so late, I decide to get off my bike for a moment so I can put on “Loosing my Mind” by Sondheim from ‘Follies’ as sung by Marin Mazzie at the Sondheim’s 80th Birthday party, and really feel my oats. The last few days I have been living my life for this song. I just sing it on repeat and imagine every word is delivered out to Hillary Clinton and her improbably liberal agenda. It makes me feel so good to sing this song. I sound terrible doing it, my voice struggles to find the notes, and even that is part of the joy, it’s this wrecked and tortured attempt to sound like this sensational woman. 

THIS VERSION IS LIFE: 

I have this reoccurring fantasy that I am singing it in my bedroom as Julianne Moore in a Todd Haynes Film. Expertly lit with 60’s period costumes on as I bemoan the state of the world. It’s an indulgent fantasy but I can not help imagining the real tears that will pour from my eyes as the camera makes a slow pan into my living room while I stand there, still, the world warping around me and sing about my inability to move left or right. It feels so apt for this election. Thoughts of the future Fascist America root me to the floor. It interrupts my morning coffee, my conversations with friends, my thoughts on my ass. And that’s okay. We should have the normal interrupted constantly by the terror of the present so that we can learn and yearn and strive towards something more beautiful. 

I love her in Safe.

So I get off my bike, so I can belt while I ride, which is one of my favorite things to do, hit play and throw my phone in my pocket. I get like 22 seconds into the track before it begins to skip wildly, everything goes at hyper speed and suddenly I am well into a fast forwarded version of Madonna’s ‘Deeper and Deeper’ that sounds like a terrible club track I am sure I have hard before while vomiting on the floor of some trashy gay bar in the backstreets of London. 

so I get off my bike and reset my song.

and it skips again.

and I get off my bike.

and then it just stops.

and I get off my bike and restart it.

and then it begins playing Katy Perry.

By now I am not singing about Loosing my Mind, it is firmly lost. I howl like I just lost my first born and grab my earphone in my hands. These innocuous ear phones which are in no way part of the problem that I am having, and tense my arms so that I can rip them into shreds where I stand, some where high above Brooklynt, looking at Manhattan jutting up between the grills of the bridge fencing.

And right before my earphones snap, I do. I let go, I step outside myself, see myself and am appalled. I’m having a tantrum, just the way a child would. I’m going to break something that has no real relationship to my problems because all I want to do destroy everything in front of me. I want to become something like a villain and go on a rampage

So I snap. I Howl, I cry and I look at myself. Nothing has even happened and already I have broken myself. If this is how quickly I buckle under pressure then I am terrified about what the world has to have in store for us all. I am broken by a skipping song on my smart phone, while I bike to my art meeting from my home in liberal Brooklyn.

Get

Some

Perspective

Gurl.

It’s not going to be okay. But really have we not know that all along. We have. Inside ourselves we knew. It’s not been okay ever. A Hillary presidency was not suddenly going to make it better.

Perspective.

Let us shepherd in what comes next from a place of community and friendship. I will not give up loving you. and fighting with you. and when I lose it, which I am sure I will, often, I will return to this song, and sing it, and remind myself that standing still some times, and screaming your heart out, and not moving at all, is some times the right medicine, when it reminds you to just stop, and breath.

Unless of course its the middle of the Williamsburg bridge midday and there is a throng of angry Bicyclists around you. But on this day they just looked at me and said. It’s okay. 

 

Good Old Kaine

Tim Kaine sent this weird fucking email and he asked me, ‘I hope I made you proud, Shelton’ I mean, it was a form email because I get all these silly presidential E-mails, but its brevity, and use of my name, made me for a moment think he sent it to me, and so I actually began considering, did he make me ‘proud’?

 I felt really awkward getting it, like I’m Tim Kaine’s dad and he wanted to make sure I thought he  was doing great out their on the T-Ball pitch.

Part of me is irritated that he did not lay into Pence about his LGBT track record, but I’m going to table that irritation because focusing on it is not useful to me at the moment. Additionally an hour and a half is a remarkably small running time and not ever issue can be addressed. While its omission is glaring, I think it was probably accidental getting how he attacked Pence about abortion. To me Kaine was on a mission to defeat Trump and Pence was the proxy. That strategy while interesting was not as valuable as landing attacks against Pence, as it allowed him to appear virtuous when he is in fact also oppressive.  These were both oversights on Kaine’s part.

But anyway… to answer his question, sure. I’m proud of Tim Kaine. I think he FUCKING won that debate like a pit bull running intellectual circles around Mike Pence.  sure Kaine also failed in that he was underprepared for the media attention aspect of the ‘performance’. Pence copied trump in making obscene gestures and allowing those to speak as his embodied rebukes rather than directly answering a question. He appeared even to have  better makeup and hair dye, as well as remember to look into the camera which was distractingly placed to far off their eyeline.  He certainly aced his pacing as well allowing his slow wording to appear as composure rather than a lack of knowing how to answer the questions. I was utterly impressed by his debate performance but not from a place of respect but of fear as to how deftly he appears to wield media. The right amount of showing that he felt attacked also helped soften him. And he’s a bigoted man who tries to deny people access to basic rights so you know, seeing him play the poor human card was insulting. 

Pence was not actually a better debater he was more nuanced in a televised performance. Exhibiting the same skill Trump has only delivered with a more rational and seemingly aware demeanor. But back to Kaine, sure he was overly prepared but I loved his raw display of knowledge and his bullet pointing. I LOVE BULLET POINTING. Don’t get me wrong, I love mind map, but a goverment that runs on bullet points seems a bit boring, much like what I want my goverment to be. much like i wish global politics were, boring because we’re all busy getting along and respecting each other through beneficial practices designed to promote global stability and management of resources.  

 And the interruptions yasssss Kaine. That’s exactly what I have wanted to do to Trump for a season call him out repeatedly and watch if he squirmed. You had a look of hunger in your eyes Tim Kaine and I loved it almost as much as I love those photos of you as a missionary. I felt Kaine was expressing a bit of my social rage at having to endure Trumps bigoted statements media broadcast after broadcasts. His repeated calling out of Pence to defend Trump and Pences inability to do so should have cost him the night.

Then their were the reads. Like ‘5th grade civics class’ which he could seemingly not bite back.  I Loved that moment. sure, their are issues and policy questions. But Kaine. I liked your style.

read salons piece and check out hils new ad.

http://www.salon.com/2016/10/05/watch-new-clinton-ad-demolishes-every-mike-pence-lie-from-vp-debate/

Pickle day: The Interview

“Where is your Pickle baby? Are you a pregnant pickle? It that your pickle baby over here?” said the 5 year old girl pointing at a space between a dumpster and a chain fence that separated this tiny children’s park from the hustle and bustle of the Lower East Side. She looked so normal, standing there in her pink cotton gown, but I could not help myself from thinking. ‘What sort of life has this kid already led that she’s asking me if I’ve placed my baby behind a dumpster?’

‘No I don’t think that’s my Pickle Baby over there, I don’t actually have a Pickle Baby.’ I said.

‘Well you should have a baby.’ Which is exactly the same thing my mother said last time we were chatting about my future over a drink. “I think your baby’s over there, I think you should go get it.”

“Uhhh… I’m actually at working right now, so I can’t go hunting for my baby.”

“At work, What are you doing. You’re not at work, you’re a pickle.” She had a point. I was in fact dressed as a pickle. Personally I like to think of myself as a new dill pickle but I’m not totally sure that I need to go into the specifics of my pickle character at this time with this parentless kid. As I looked around for some sort of adult that she may belong to the guy interviewing me caught my eye.

“Does this happen a lot?” he asked.

“Yeah, Kids are really forward, especially it seems when your dressed as food they wanna interact with you in these bizarre ways.”

“Has any one asked if you were pregnant before?”

“Nope. That’s a first.”

“Okay so moving on, what’s your favorite part of being a pickle…” This was the start of my first and perhaps only interview with ZAGAT. You know ZAGAT like the food blog/magazine. I’m used to reading about beautiful and fancy restaurants in there pages, or finding out about the trials and tribulations of some word famous chef on their blog, so it was with a certain sense of confused satisfaction that I got dressed this Sunday morning to be interviewed by them. Why they wanted to interview me however, I had not the foggiest idea, until we were well into the interview process and I realized that the entire reason I was talking to them was that they were doing a special segment on pickles and they wanted to interview as many prominent members of the NYC pickle scene as possible. Which included by their count, Brooklyn Brine, The LES Pickle Guys and me, A 6 foot 1, aspiring writer/performer, currently dressed as a pickle mascot.

My entrance into the world of elite pickle performer is relatively new. Just in the last year, but it has been a wild and unexpected journey. It all started when my friend Cara aka Fantasy Grandma got me a job dancing as a Pickle at a dog costume competition judging party on the Lower East Side. Which was exactly as adorable as it sounds. Words can not really contain how easy a day of work can be when you show up at a pickle festival, only to get dress as a pickle and occasionally hold an adorable dog who is also dressed as a Pickle.

That day, was a blur of photos and adorable moments and puppies and as it faded into the fog of memory I thought, Gosh, that was a weird way to make 150 dollars, but oh boy was it worth it. Cut to almost 6 months later and I’m sitting in City Hall Park with a friend when I get a call.

“Hello. Shelton… This is Natalie, Natalie from the Lower East Side development office, I don’t know if you remember me, but you were a pickle for us last year, and well, we were looking at the footage of you from Pickle Day, and you hand dancing was so great, we just loved it, would you be interested in being a Pickle mascot for us again this fall?” These are the sort of works calls I dream about taking.

“Hold on Katya, I’ve got to take this call.” I said as I walked to that adorable fountain and began traipsing my way around it.  “What is it you need from a Pickle?”

“Well.” Said Natalie, “We would like to make some pickle day promo videos with you. What do you think?”

“Can I write a song about pickles for you?”

“Totally.”

“Can I make an absurd pickle costume to go with it?

“As long as you wear giant mascot hands, we’re game.”

“Great I’m in.” And just like that I became a professional pickle again.

I don’t think I even made it back to Katya before the first few lines of the song blossomed in my head. Set to a rough interpretation of  ‘Short’nin Bread’ aka “Rhubarb Pie’ that my dear friend Ashley had been singing in a show for weeks, it goes:

everybody's talking bout
talkin bout pickiling
come on down to Pickle day

lots of things to learn about 
mostly bout picklin
that’s okay it’s pickle day
tasty things for you to eat. 
some are spicy and others sweet
Made in brine, vinegar too
everything’s pickled just for you. 

everybody's DREAMIN bout
DREAMIN bout pickiling
come on down to Pickle day

lots of things to learn about 
mostly bout picklin
that’s okay it’s pickle day

Pickle day comes once a year
when the leaves on the trees do disappear 
so mark your calendars get ready to eat 
and mosey on over to orchard street. 
everybody's talking bout
talkin bout pickiling
come on down to Pickle day

lots of things to learn about 
mostly bout picklin
that’s okay it’s pickle day

Call em gerkins, kosher, polish or dill
Bread and butter or kim-chi come eat your fill 
It’s a New York tradition, we want to share with you. 
It’s Pickle Day, I hope to see you there tooo. 

everybody's pickling
pickling something
come on down to pickle day

lots of things to learn about 
mostly bout picklin
that’s okay it’s pickle day…

The song ended up being one of the best things I feel that I have ever written. It is to use a phrase that I have borrowed from my friend EM, ‘DUMB AS HELL’ but in a way that just absolutely makes my heart sing. It also is the summation of everything I know about pickles, because in some odd sort of turn of fate I have in fact never really eaten a pickle before. When I got the job it felt sort of inspired, here the Lower East Side business development team had unknowingly hired a man to be a Pickle, who has never eaten a pickle. Most of my knowledge of what a pickle taste like comes from the stains of flavor they leave on the insides of burger buns when the chef slides them in amongst the lettuce and onion before serving it to you. A sort of sickening flavor of salt and preservatives. A taste I associate with both ketchup and mayo, and also don’t eat for exactly the same reasons.

Being a non-pickle eater meant that as a pickle I would not run the risk of being a pickle cannibal. Which was to me at least a central part of my internal branding. I tried to be one with the pickle, I meditated extensively on what the pickling process means in relationship to humans transcending temporality, I became obsessed with the multi-national heritage of the pickle for no singular culture lays claims to, that exists in different permutations everywhere. From Kim-chi to the Gerkin, the world is filled with a thousand varieties of the pickle and I actually love that about them. I love that food can break through barriers of cultural difference because we are all connected through the way that we experience reality, particularly around food I think. I mean sure there are a thousand cultural variations on the pickle, but at its core, the concepts knows no state lines or cultural codes, it’s much more universal.

The one thing I did not do in any of my pickle research was try to eat any pickles. Which standing their as the Zagat interviewer asked my opinion about what makes a perfect pickle, seemed like oversight. I mean sure the night before in a fit of confusion I had gone out to dinner with friends and ordered an entire side of different pickled options, from small baby cucumbers that were no bigger then my finger to onions and carrots, in a desperate last ditch attempt to understand the appeal. But one day is not enough time to develop a sophisticated pallet. Yet even that night the taste however left me feeling slightly noxious. It’s the high vinegar content that really does me in. I feel like I’m eating cleaning solvents. I’m getting into it, but the transition is slow.

So as I stood their, being interviewed about pickles, I kept finding myself giving these awkward answers that just flummoxed around thoughts regarding pickles as cultural ambassadors and agents of time travel, rambling off about my love of pickles, while not actually speaking much about their taste, I think the interviewer may have decided that the little girl, who wanted to know where my baby was, was probably asking questions I was better equipped to answer.

But an interview is an interview and in the end I think we stumbled our way through the process with a certain amount of finesse. Towards the end we went to meet the Pickle Guys at their store. Which is this wonderful sort of sunken treasure of a shop filled with big old barrels of Pickles and a totally thick smell of brine that is both slightly off putting and seductive. I ended up getting to talk to the older man who ran this shop, one of those straight up NYC characters of a man, who seemed like he had lived in the store his whole life, the sort of guy who probably greets every morning with a smile. His love of the food was infectious, much like the smell, and I found myself falling in love for the first time with the thought of their taste. It was this desire that drove me to ask him to feed me a pickle. See I could not feed myself as the awkward mascot gloves encase in the bottoms of lady tights makes it really hand to have any dexterous motion. Seeing my plight he took one in his wizened hands and began slowly feeding it to me, slowly.

Is Zagat not like one of those companies that makes real journalism, are they not like the pinnacle of food? I mean maybe their is a better, more elite guide on the planet, but Zagat is pretty reputable is it not? Why am I basically slobbering all over this pickle, trying desperately to get it into my mouth, with out using my hands, for an interview? Is this my career path in life, because it is I’m game. I love this. Also how is this man so calm as he gently brings the pickle to my lips to let me eat, while he talked unbroken about the different aging times to sourness levels of each pickle. I think you can only do something like that if you’re a real New Yorker. This is the city where everyone has seen everything, this is the city where bombs are discovered before they go off because people try to steal the bags they are in. It’s New York Fucking city. People here can do anything. Unsurprisingly the pickle was sort of delicious, though it tasted nothing like I expected it to.

I’m finding it hard to put into words, the flavors and tastes when this drag queen that I love walks past. We have probably met 6 times in the last 12 months, which is, I’ll admit not that many times, and part of me begins to yell their name, even though its mid interview and my mouth is filled with a food, but the words casually get caught in my throat as I watch them see me, clock me, in NO WAY recognize me, and then flip their hair to keep walking. I mean I guess it’s not THAT surprising that they did not recognize me while dressed as giant culinary fruit, it’s just I really wanted them too. I wanted them to be impressed by my dedication to silly costumes. When we met I was the Whomping Willow from Harry Potter, and then the next time I saw them I was a christmas tree ornament, so I was enjoying keeping up the non-human drag nature of most of our meetings, even if they never remembered them. Which I realized this experience was as well, another time we had crossed paths and I failed to be memorable. Perhaps some people are not meant to be your friends. Or so went my thoughts as they walked on past.

“Pickle???”

“What..”

“What does it taste like.”

“Ohhhhh.” I had totally spaced out. This perhaps being not just because of the drag queen walking past but also thanks to the fact that I had worked the night before as a raver chic for a Latin/Tribal party at the House of Yes and had stayed out far to late when I ran into this adorable boy I had met earlier in the week when I had been a Sexually Liberated recently divorced for the 3^rd time Gym Coach at Bushwhick HIGH for the House Of Yes’s ‘Back to School Party.’ When we met I was speaking in this deep gruff voice and had this  WHISTLE OF POWER around my neck, which was a normal whistle only I was drunk off the power of having one. It was such a delight to  blow into it vigorously and demand attention. I see how actually coaches and referees get power crazed by them. I got perhaps too into the character and found myself feeling totally liberated and sexual and being aggressively flirty with the patrons. That night when I was done working I had tried to find him one more to say hello and perhaps invite him home, but tragically I could not.

So two days later when we saw each other once more at the House Of Yes and he kept calling me ‘Coach’ it melted my fucking heart. It’s such a turn on to be an authority figure, but mostly I wanted to pick him up and fuck him against the wall. Sadly I felt I was ‘working’ and that having sex with a patron may be bad form, though everyone else seems to do it. Even though I really wanted to do.

In retrospect the reason that I did not do it, was mostly because I felt embarrassed displaying my desire for him, because I had been recovering from a knee surgery for the past 6 weeks and I felt fat… That was the reality of it, I felt overweight, and thus I did not desire myself and I could not understand how some one else would. I probably should not have been in booty shorts and the tightest sweatshirt I could find. It was doing nothing for my self confidence. It was like dancing around in sausage casing, and sure everyone spanked my ass and told me I looked like a I had a great big booty, but then that just made me fear it was because my ass muscle had turned to fat. Which is what it was. All of this of course was made more bizarre by the drunk guy at 4 am who had yelled at me. “Hey You, Mr. Thin Thighs, Yeah I’m talking to you. Go Home.” As I stood taking a smoke break from work, making me remember once again, that most body issues are in your own mind. I should have found that strength on the dance floor to invite him home, but instead we danced together, and next to one other and had all of these pregnant moments of connection before I self consciously would run away. Which I did right up to closing time.

Thankful I was at least not feeling self conscious dressed as a Pickle because the outfit covered my entire BODY and I did not have to be worried about my stomach. But at this point I was trying hard to think of how to describe what the Pickle tasted like as thoughts of Drag Queens and cute boys kept clouding my mind. As did ‘The Taste’. What the fuck does a pickle taste like. It’s like the ocean, but a vegetable, mixed in with this after taste of garlic that comes on like a sloppy kiss and this other flavor which has to be dill, by process of elimination but really could be anything, because who really eats that much dill anyway, like what is dill… is it an herb… or a weed… Dillweed. It sounds like some low use magical item you might get 99 of in Final Fantasy. Anyway I said none of this.

“It’s um delicious.” I said something equally uninspired after that. And before I knew it the interview with Zagat was over. So that was what it was about I thought as I walked away, still not terribly sure what we had talked about in the first place, I mean it was about pickles…

And I was just some guy in a pickle.

And that’s all they really needed from me.

And I think I did that.

And I hope I get to do something like this again.

Aliens, Oceans and Depression

I’m gonna be honest with you, if aliens exist I am exceptionally mad at them. I mean I guess it’s important to be specific. The aliens I am talking about here are not the weird flesh eating stomach ripping creature of gore, nor are they creatures of the fungal family which periodically some delightful hippy likes to tell me are sentient consciousness brought to earth to teach us by the divine. (Personally I’m really into that idea, and I love the idea that mushrooms are really bizarre mind-altering creatures we can be in dialogue with.)

I’m mad at those aliens that people periodically say came to the Earth some time in the past and did things like help us build the pyramids before fucking off somewhere into the stars again, to, I guess, build more geometric shapes in deserts, simply because they can. I’m mad at them because as far as I can tell, we need a massive Deus Ex Machina moment if we are to salvage human existence on this planet and if they have come and helped us out once before, you think they could come back and help us again.

We need aliens with weird alien tech that can do things like purify the air, and cleans the waters of the ocean, that can replace our poor inefficient oil based tech with some form of brilliant solar paneled mech that can charge off a single afternoon spent basking in the sun.

We need it, because as far as I can tell, with out it we are doomed. People are very bad at being people, and our collective failure as people is quickly writing the death of, if not our species, at least most of our way of life. Its amazing how quickly knowledge can be erased, how quickly learning can be lost. trust me, Humans may be around for hundreds of years more, but will their humanity look anything like ours?

I really hope not.

Perhaps I have become obsessed with this question as of late, but if I have been, it is because I am depressed and I am not sure how to reason my way out of it. In fact this action here is an attempt to release myself of my own depression by giving name and logical form to my anguish. Not with the intention that some how my depression will disappear, but with the hope that in naming it, it will become more quantifiable, more known and thus I can better relate to it.

anyway, back to the discussion about the END OF DAYS!

You know, THE DOOM TIME. I mean sure this has been a popular topic for most of human existence, the impending apocalypse. But their seems to be a tangible difference between the old religious apocalypse where Jesus comes back and battles Satan for the souls of the dammed, and the Apocalypse which looks like five pacific islands sliding into the sea. Five this week, a few the week after, 93% of the Great Barrier Reef bleached. Oil spills all over the place.

It’s realities like this that make me confused as I look at the development infrastructure of the FIDI and laugh with nihilistic delight as I realize their preventative measure for global warming is a wall to keep the sea out.

A wall.

To stop the sea.

From ruining their luxury property development.

It’s not going to be the water levels that cause the biggest problems. It will be the numerous global refugees that the world will largely chose to ignore, (because we already do) forced into unsanitary living conditions as tent cities spring up to try and compensate from the numerous displaced people.

But these under nourished and probably under hydrated, (for let us be clear a lack of food and water resources will be a large issue for these displaced people.) people will become the true tide of destruction, for we will probably try to ignore them for as long as we can globally, until inevitable close quarters, lack of medical attention and basic standard of living and access to food and water, breed the true killers of humanity, super diseases resistant to contemporary medicines.

and thats when all the wealthy people behind their water walls in the FIDI should begin to become nervous. For diseases don’t care who you are, and while money certainly can help you stay alive, will they cure the disease fast enough to save you.

Probably not.

Wait wait… Let’s lighten the mood for a moment.

I forgot a joke I just heard. Want to hear it… It’s also about real estate. Of course you do… Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

A handful of buildings in New York have installed radiant heat in the Sidewalks outside of their buildings so that the snow melts in the winter! This way the snow falls from the sky, hits the nicely warmed concrete and presto it melts away. Amazing! what a joy! no more shoveling. But the problem is HOMELESS PEOPLE are apparently trying to sleep on the heated concrete during those cold winter nights.

And the problem is, when you pay millions of dollars to live in an apartment building with heated sidewalks you do it for the view, you do it for the bragging rights, you do it so you can wear stilettos in the dead of winter. You don’t do it to look at homeless people. Their are other bits of sidewalk which are not your sidewalk, and people can sleep their.

Poor people without homes trying to sleep on your patch of CONCRETE. HOW HILARIOUS. Poor people trying to have less than their basic needs met. People thinking they deserve to be treated like people. JOKES!!!!

Wake the fuck up.

How is it possible that the people who live in buildings that have enough excess capital, (not to mention disregard for environmental sustainability,) are not horrified by their own lack of humanity? How is it that we have found ourselves in a position globally where some people pay to have their sidewalks warmed so they don’t have to shovel them, while others are kicked off sleeping on that very sidewalk? BECAUSE THIS WARM SIDEWALK IS NOT FOR THEM, AND THEY RUIN THE VISUAL AESTHETIC WITH THEIR POORNESS.

Honestly how do these people sleep inside these buildings. Are they not disgusted with themselves?

Sorry… I think I said this was a joke, but really the joke here is more about how fabulously out of touch with societal needs the wealthy are. (well all of us really) 

Perhaps if alongside side their warm sidewalks they build some more walls to keep the tides of the globally oppressed at bay they would be a little bit safer.

Or maybe we all need to get louder. Or maybe we need to riot. I think we need to riot.

I’d rather like to riot. But rather then choose a singular cause to riot about, I just want to riot the whole system down.

Because honestly what are we excelling at as a global unit. (And DUH, strides have been made in many of these fields which have made the world a more pleasant place then lets say anything between 1200-1800 AD, but better than it was for some, and still shitty for most is not acceptable.)

education………………..……………… no

environmental protection……………… no

race………………………………….…… no

gender……………………………….…… not really

resource management…………………. HA

I mean netflix has really been slaying it with some exceptional programming the last few years. and I have to say I am pretty thrilled with some of the strains of pot I have recently smoked, It’s not all TERRIBLE, but to pretend it is anything short of globally catastrophic is just lying.

Please stop lying.

Because your lies are just killing us faster.

What is the point of human existence?

Theoretically, and as far as I can conceptualize it, it should be to leave the world a better place for those who come after us. To work towards creating and developing systems that can hold those who come after us and empower them to think better thoughts than we ever could. to achieve things we can hardly imagine, to build worlds that defy our thoughts of what is probable.

and maybe hug a bunch of people along the way.

Perhaps create some art

Share some stories.

Sleep under the stars and love the heavens.

And it seems that for a long time, far to few of us have been doing that.

But I know we’re not all deeply out of touch. We humans are creatures of the earth all the same and the poison and pain that ruins in her veins runs in ours as well.

That creeping depression that i’m watching slide up the spines and behind the eyes of my lovers and friends is the undeniable honesty of a system long teetering on the brink of devastation beginning to slip slide away into the inevitable realm of perpetual chaos. You can feel it all as much as I can. I know you do. We have been taught to not trust our gut and our instincts by the very system that enslaves us, for being critically aware is to step out of the system and recognize it as utterly catastrophic.

Hold your children tight now because they probably don’t have that cute of a future to grow into.

And I’m sorry about that. I really am. But it’s not my fault. and it’s not yours. and honestly its not even the fault of our ancestors.

Humans are relatively speaking not particularly brilliant when it comes to thinking in terms of temporality beyond their immediate future. (Myself included) we make stupid choices for today with out really interrogating the reality of tomorrow. and it’s landed us in this odd position where the tomorrows of tomorrow are becoming progressively darker and its becoming progressively harder to maintain a positive attitude.

Unless of course these aliens come and save us.

Right?

Because at this point I think without their help we have utterly fucked our selves.

Right?

Yeah… I think thats probably right… With out the intervention of a god like action, be it religious, extra-terrestrial or born from spark of human ingenuity we are fucked..

some large scale system change.

Right….

who knows, maybe we can all wake up on the right side of the bed tomorrow…..

Or maybe we can all just wake up and be authentically depressed. and look in the mirror and say “this world is fucked and dying and still I’m gonna try to save it. To bring a few more laughs into it. or maybe just some love.”

I don’t know… I just don’t know. But some aliens coming and saving us would be pretty cool. So for know, I’m gonna pray for that.

Back To Basics

A week ago I gutturally admitted to myself, that I don’t know myself. I have been in a hazy floaty state of indirection, sort of awaiting a catalyst to root me back in the earth. I have begun interrogating experiences in a new way, seeking some form of honesty in articulation.

I love the hue of old blue prints.

The Question: When given a second opportunity to erect the architecture of the self, what methodology do you begin with?

I have chosen for the moment.

Investigation.

Yesterday afternoon a 5 year old boy got in an accident on the street and had to be rushed off by an ambulance.  Watching him be carried into the ambulance I heard this truth scream itself from my heart. ‘I never want to see a kid hurt.’

As I cried, I stood in the street, directing traffic around the accident. My arms got tired very quickly and upon reflection I’ll admit I was over gesticulating. Their is a certain sort of power in directing cars that I’ve never really experienced till that moment. It felt like voguing. The pleasure also derived from being able to be useful in a situation where I was entirely useless.

‘I never want to see a kid hurt.’ that’s true… I don’t… upon reflection I was also not entirely useless, I was just not integral to helping the kid. anyone could have directed traffic. but in not walking off I got to sit in that emotion, that place, and let the experience unfold around me, as a semi-detached observer.

It feels odd to have found something in the trauma of this kid and his family. (When he left it appeared he would be okay, might I add) I don’t want to admit that the reality of it shocked me awake, because that seems both a mixture of cliche and narcissistic. It also did not make me realize in a yoga inspired hallmark card, to remember to count my blessings. It was just a weighty embodied reality that last for a duration of time. 

I never want to see a kid get hurt.

(POLITICAL SIDE NOTE

That kid should be taken care of because he’s a kid. his family does not need medical bills, or insurance claims, they just need to help their kid recover. Much like no one should be debt ridden by an accident or illness. Vote for Bernie Sanders and let’s continue moving towards a more socialist system.

POLITICAL SIDE NOTE OVER)

I never want to see a kid get hurt, is a sentence, what was the thought behind it….

FEELING: My body felt like a shell, my bones and many inner organs turned to air, while my skin had the texture of thin diamonds. My mind let itself empty through my ears and on the wind, while my tears decided to run as if to acknowledge the trauma by proxy without having to be directly involved in it. My heart, which was the only organ I could sense, was a mixture of honey and stasis, as if ready to beat for some one else. the world collapsed in complexity. It was an easy calm in part because the father and the medic moved with such clarity it was infectious. the weight of their intense focus seemed to still the movements of everyone on the street. Time was certainly slower, but if it was bending, it was not adrenaline on my part, but the sure force of those men, pulling every second from the air in the interest of helping the kid/patient.

As I mentioned before. my arm grew tired. their were no bones, no muscles really animating it, it was mostly mental. a compulsive desire making me windmill my arms. I don’t feel as if i was not in my body, i just don’t feel as if I was particularly in control of it.

LINGUISTIC The expression ‘I never want to a see a kid get hurt’, is, i’ll admit, a poorly articulated feeling. My initial thought was not, I don’t want kids to get hurt ever. It was that I never want to SEE it. Catching the internal phrasing seems important. I never want to SEE a kid get hurt…

Which does not mean I want kids to get hurt as long as I don’t see it, obviously. It’s just interesting that it acknowledges the injustices of this world which is that kids are constantly being hurt. 

I: It underscores a pretty human reality of out of sight out of mind. I, the I at the beginning of that thought. I don’t want to see. I, primacy, me. Rooting everything in the self. Not within a collective. 

NEVER: The never. Admitting that I would like to remain ignorant about the pain of children. I mean to be a better person I probably need to understand the desires and needs of ‘kids’ in the abstract. But for now I can also under the never as a word that erupts to protect the fragile I.

WANT: The want is all desire. its basic, its directional. its pointed at the never. it’s a want for a lack of understanding, an intentional, void of understanding erected to protect the I, from the reality of pain.

SEE: “Old English seon “to see, look, behold; observe, perceive, understand; experience, visit, inspect” Used in Middle English to mean “behold in the imagination or in a dream” (c. 1200), “to recognize the force of (a demonstration),” also c. 1200. Sense of “escort” (as in to see (someone) home) first recorded 1607 in Shakespeare. Meaning “to receive as a visitor” is attested from c. 1500.”

to live in the eyes, to evacuate the body, to connect eyes to mind, to un-filter the process and be connected with the object in order to hold it internally and inspect it.

KID: gender neutral term for youth.

HURT: pain…..

Anyway. Happy Easter. I’m gonna go make a mirror and stare at myself in it. and then reflect more on this and perhaps write more. 

Through The Eyes of a Performer

Really all reviews are exceptionally subjective, but given that I am in this piece that I am reviewing here I have to say that this is perhaps the least objective review I have ever written in my entire life.

 

Lewks on the Dance Floor 

So here is the next installment in my mission to write like a thousand entries about what it was like to dance in Ballet (New York)  with Jerome Bel.

Check out my latest review here on Eyes Towards The Dove. 

 

Or if that does not work here is the Link again. http://eyes-towards-the-dove.com/2015/12/jer%C8%8Fme-bel-performa-15-through-the-eyes-of-a-performer/

Dancing in Ballet (New York)

 

 

Sometimes you get to be a Mother Fucking Ballet dance because you live in New York, and dreams have a way of comming true here. Dancing in Jerome Bel’s ballet was probably the closest I will come to living the real life Chaning Tatum Step Up 1 role. You know. Just a street dancer who makes it as a big time Ballerina. Or in my case, just your average faggot who likes clubbing who made it as a ballet dancer in a singular piece that was slated by the times.

BUT whatever. It’s all about perspective.

And my perspective was that this experience was sensational. Read about it here on Perfoma.

Lewks on the Dance Floor

Thank you Charles, Marc, Shelia, Julia, Performa, the dancers, any one I am forgetting and of course Jerome Bel.

http://performa-arts.org/magazine/entry/a-review-of-jerome-bels-ballet-new-york-from-the-inside

Medonsa and artistic difference

Medonsa and artistic difference. (Medonsa story 2) 

“Do you mind If I take your photo. Just like this. Before I stone you? I want to hang the picture of you next to the stone version in the gallery. Your freckles are just so beautiful. They light up your face like this cosmic display and I’m worried that when I turn you to stone your just going to end up marbled in that sort of way that the imperfections in your skin will be erased. It’s always tricky trying to turn people into the right sort of stone that speaks to their pose and their character. Mother is really good at it. Her recent work in Obsidian has been incredible. I mean don’t tell her that, but after all of her endless sort of phoned in statues that she has been working on for what feels like AGESSSS, I think that her work in Obsidian is actually like a rebirth of her own artistic career…

Oh really…

A few of them were featured in Vogue last month. Just online, but you know they are talking of doing a real shoot with her in the coming months. Capturing her at work and the likes. An exposes on how she makes her art. She’s normally so private about it. But you know if you’re not going to recreate yourself every once in a while then your just going to fade into obscurity…

Can you tilt your head back slightly…. Thanks… wow… this picture is really good if I do say so myself. I wish my stone work felt as alive as my photography. Maybe its in the way I let you gaze upon my snakes. Maybe I’m doing it wrong…

Yeah well its not like I can ask really. the process is so quick, a few seconds really. It’s like once you have seen them BAM your stone and I mean though I really would like feedback from my models, your dead so it’s not like I can ask…

Oh… I’ve never thought of that…

Yeah I mean I guess I could call me friend Cassy, she’s pretty good at seances…

You would do that… really?… come back and speak to me about what the experience was like being stoned. I mean I CANT even begin to tell you how awesome that would be for me. I feel like it would really give me opportunity to grow as an artist you know. I don’t want to be stuck making terrible works for my whole life, but authentic feedback is so challenging…

WAIIIITTTTTT you went to HillKraft Arts Camp as well!

No. I Never went but the first boy I had a real crush on, Jacob, Jacob Decotas, went there….

Not sure I can remember the year… It would have been when we were about 14, so… yeah… just over ten years ago I guess…. Where does the time go….

Same time as you!? Thats crazy… did you know him?.. Well it was a long time ago…

Anyway you were saying before we got side tracked…

That is an interesting way to appreciate ones art sure, But saying “All artistic failures are the artist striving to accomplish that which has not been accomplished,” sounds a bit like a failed artist trying to validate their poorly received work, or the fact that they are incapable of completing tasks. being lazy you know….

No i’m not trying to be difficult its just that art is art and its not so mysterious. I mean a statue is a statue, its just that some are better then others for what ever reason….

no that does not prove your point…

No i think that….

LISTEN If you don’t quite down I’m….

Well yes, if you don’t shut the fuck up I’ll just turn you to stone now…

Because I can…

No I don’t think that means I’m running from my problems….

No…

UGHHHH… HA… HA…. lets see you speak now. Shhhhhh Oh his name was Jacob Sauster, not Decotas… ohhh I wonder if knew Jacob Sauster…. I wonder where Jacob is… I’m talking to myself again… I wonder…”

Medonsa continued to sit on the stool and stared off at the walls of her studio space. they were perplexingly bare. Perhaps it is the Mise-en-Scene, that is wrong here. She thought, as she twirled a snake into a tight kink and then let it unfurl around her finger. The statue of the young man she had picked up at the Dio’s cafe was disappointingly mundane. Even in her rage, in his rage even, the statue felt remarkably lifeless, cool. His arms were all wrong as well. hunched up around him, they destroyed any sense of elegance and left the whole piece feeling unbalanced. She considered breaking them off. Perhaps she should do just a series of arms. She looked around the studio and her eyes alighted on a half finished joint from the day before sitting in-between an ash tray and a book she was not reading but left out casually so that she seemed well intentioned. She lit it, inhaled and stared at the stone body of the young man. Yes. Perhaps I will do a series just of disembodied arms. She inhaled, reached over, and wrapped her hands around his biceps. the stone was still warm to the touch. She gritted her teeth, het body flared green for a moment with exertion and she ripped his arm from his body.

Medonsa: Entry 1

I’m trying to get better at this writing every day thing. But today words have not been flowing in any way that’s useful. It has just been hours of staring at screens and doing work and waiting for something that has the vague feeling of inspiration to do something like strike me. Instead what I have done is write the same few sentences over and over again as I try to figure out what it is that I am actually trying to articulate. I can sense the form of my thoughts, but their translation to words is fooling me today.

Given that I have decided to give myself a pallet cleanser of a day and explore a fiction story instead of working to continue to articulate my thoughts regarding space. I have recently been fascinated with the Idea of Medonsa, Medusa’s youngest daughter, a sort of awkward recluse of an individual who is struggling to create her own identity for herself in relation to her mothers success and acclaim as a famous classical character, turned Kim Kardashian style reality celebrity. I’ve been trying to get a sense of what her voice may be and to that end have been writing Medonsa’s diary, and exploring her voice through one sided conversations with the people that she stones. Here is one that I recently wrote and reworked today. 

I’d love to see Medusa on Dancing with the Stars.

“I don’t even really know why i’m telling you all of this… Mother always tells me if I am going to grow up to be a really scary gorgon and make the family proud that I have to stop talking to my victims. She tells me I bore people to death, and then when I turn them to stone they look like thats how they died, and no one wants to furnish their gardens with real-life stone statues of people slumped over in the agony of being talked to death, but I’m lonely, and mother is not here right now, so you know, I’m just going to do what I want.

Plus jumping out and scaring people in mazes was moms thing. That’s how she got her start. I can’t do that too. It would be like nepotism or something. I have to figure out a way to do it myself, you know, find my own voice. I think it may be in knowing my victims, or you know models, whatever. Like having a relationship with them. My dream is too like fill a gallery with lots of you and be able to talk about who you were and what you liked. you know personalize it…

You know. do you ever, I mean did you ever just do what you wanted? You look like the type who did. I mean you don’t look like a hero. You’re not covered in muscles, and your sort of not that tan, but you have like a trendy haircut and some cute shorts, I bet you were like one of those hipster people, who biked everywhere carrying your electric guitar on your back and wearing plaid…maybe thats what i’ll have you put on before I stone you. Mothers always saying I need to be more inventive with the outfits I make for my victim as well, she keeps telling me, “Medonsa the devil is in the details.” but i’m just not that good at making outfits anyway. I keep wanting to make ones that are all fabric and flowing and catch the wind, but they just keep ending up rather clunky and then they break when I try to move em. Maybe something simple would be more elegant in stone.

Mother keeps telling me that their is no more market for statues with broken arms in this day and age, but I think its kind of retro so I am hoping it comes back in fashion. I did an entire series last year, of people I met and then stoned while out for walks in Prospect Park, and I broke the first woman legs off by mistake, carrying her home, so i did that for the whole series, trying to give it cohesion. It was my first ‘series’ but mom says you can’t make a series out of repeat mistakes, so she had me sell the bodies to the gravel company to chop up for paving stones. She said she would rather walk on the vestiges of my failures than have to see them in the garden. Mother is always making me chop up and destroy my work rather than keep it about the house. In a way I think that makes me more evil than she is, though she refuses to see it that way. Everyone sort of wants to be turned to stone by Medusa, you know. She’s been working this job for multiple ages, and barely has taken time off, she’s killed so many would be heros and demigods that I’ve lost track. But the great chroniclers have not, she’s always popping up in heroic tales, and stories, and frightening kids into bed at night. you know her work is pretty famous now, in museums and in the gardens of the elite. I mean once she started doing custom stoning for rich families, turning their love ones into statues on their death bed is when i think she sort of stopped being a villain and became a sort of b-list celebrity. Don’t tell her I told you that. OKAY! she’d be really angry if she knew I thought she had become sort of basic, you know. I mean i’m totally going to kill you before that happens anyway.

I just want to be recognized as an artist too, but I think I’m maybe just too like avant guard or unexpected for most people. or something… like maybe I should cut off your arm so you’re bleeding out when I stone you. could be pretty cool right, Like agony and stuff.

SORRY, please don’t cry. It’s ok. You’re just going to die, but I PROMISE to try and make you worthy of mothers rock garden. I MEAN you could live on forever in my art, and you would look just like you do now, you won’t ever age, or get old, or have your body fall apart around you. PLEASEEE stop crying, tears look so shitty when they turn to stone, and mother says hero’s never cry. you want to be a hero right. Please Please Please stop crying. Look how about this, if you stop crying I’ll let you pose yourself before I stone you. how about that? would you like to choose the pose your going to hold for eternity. It could be fun. you know. Like a game?”

Scruff Your Way to Queer Space with your iPhone Athame.

My Dick Pic Familiar and Me

Part 2: SPACE

Last time we ‘talked’ I began speaking about my relationship to my dick pic, re-articulating it as my witches familiar in the first step towards reclaiming my relationship to my sexualized sense of self and my body. Today I’d like to continue that conversation specifically looking at the production of queer space.

This is not what I look like on the subway or (IRL). But um yeah go at it bois.

I’m sitting on the M train still, it’s delayed in that no-man’s land between stations and Lion27 and I are still chatting. He really is rather cute, and he’s made several jokes that actually have got me semi-hard. You know that awkward ‘I feel like I’m 13 and just got a semi-boner on the bus’ sort of feeling, where you look around and wonder if everyone knows. No one knew. But I could feel myself blush, my face flushed, the fabric of my jeans tightening in the crotch.

I love these moment when I am semi-publicly digitally cruising. (or just cruising in general) It’s the rush. How the sexual seems to come cascading in and around you from the ether till it saturates everything. My sense always feel heightened, I begin to actually pay attention to the smells around me. I find myself correcting my posture, cracking my neck, tightening my stomach. Plus he’s doing that cute sub-bottom boi thing that makes me want to simultaneously devour his soul through his ass and cuddle him. Needless to say I have decided, once this train starts moving to go over.

While we were chatting he sent me a screen shot of a map with his house pinned… clever boi, he’s done this before, I don’t even need to type his address into my google. And as I looked at the map, my mind continued to wander, to think about maps in general… space in general… specifically my position in space.

I began to imagine a little red line of lust, floating through the ether, from my phone to his, weaving us together. As we chatted other messages came in. Other men, in other places, some as far as the San Fran to Perth, also messaging me. Sending me anything from photos of their cocks to the casual SUP. Their I was on an M train at 3 am, but it was beginning to take on the character of a good cruisy gay bar. Alone, headphones on, unplugged from the reality of my present physical vicinity, I was finding myself flitting through a series of conversations with a bundle of intriguing men. In turn I too sent photos of my familiar, until my imagination spun it into a dense web of digital connectivity, red desire lines pulsing through the city, its queer veins.

Mostly I feel like this in Gay Bars. I’m rather bad at flirting, I get very confused and I end up saying exceptionally awkward things. I’m learning to deal with it.

Our phones ability to change our experience of space, specifically our sexual experience of space, fascinates me. See if my dick pic is my familiar, then perhaps my iPhone is better understood as an Athame. Today I’d like to specifically talk about how gay sex apps on my iphone/athame enable me to re-write and recode space. In a quite literally way these apps enable me to cut space-time and produces moments of intimate connection with people variously distant from me. YASSS modern Witchcraft.

Traditional tools are meant to be upgraded.

See for me, sexting, specifically through location-based apps, is an intriguing way to challenge and reform space. Why? Because in the abstract, sex apps allow us to make any space, ‘gay erotic space’. In bathroom stalls, or office halls, or other traditionally coded hetero-normative spaces, I can use an app to broadcast my location and thus, make visible to those who are capable of seeing my spell, (a 6 pixel image of my face) networks of queer/gay desire. No longer do I need to go to specific physical locations, like gay bars in order to ‘broadcast’ my sexuality. I can do so from my phone. While sitting in a traditionally coded straight Starbucks in Midtown for instance I can also be involved in dialogues with horny men, exchanging images and promises of future pleasure.

I no longer walk in a world that is ‘straight’ till I escape into the welcome arms of a gay bar, or bathhouse, everywhere is becoming gay. Tinged with the potential of digital cruising.

Furthermore entire screens of men, shift from strangers, to ‘regulars’ over time. These are the men I live near, who I work near, who I see daily when I open one of these apps. They are becoming and have become part of my expanded queer friendship circle. Yes there is an awkward moment when a conversation slides from the digital to the physical unexpectedly. Such as when I run into the guy whom I just texted a photo of my ass to in the cereal aisle of Mr. Kiwi’s. But there is a simple magic to it that I revel in, it helps us as queer people see ourselves everywhere. We are everywhere. We come in every shape and size and form, and digital apps help us to become visible to one another. We Are Not Alone! I also like that I can meet men, virtual strangers, and have already shared with them images of my naked body. I feel as if we have a special sort of connection, a knowing of each other that is deeper then just a casual glance. I like this.

Particularly I revel in how all space, has become spaces where I as a gay man can ‘encounter’ queer forms of digital desire. I would argue that unexpectedly digital technologies and apps such as Gridr, while inevitably hurting the creation of ‘physical’ queer and gay culture in many ways, has offered a massive proliferation of desires. Traditionally, gay bars and cruising zones were ‘gay spaces’ as they stood outside of heteronormative frameworks, had their own networks of communication, their own rituals, rites, and forms of cultural exchange. I love these rites and rituals and bemoan their loss, but rather then cry over the decay of past structures I am seeking here to find joy or inspiration in new modalities of communication. (we can also totally cry later and figure out how to reclaim/produce radical queer space.)

One of My favorite gay bars in London recently closed. It was a sad day for all.

Now thanks to Gridr and Scruff I can make every space gay and cruise within it. That’s some 21st century magic for a collective of people who have been oppressed for generations. We are queering the world. Everywhere I go through the spell of an app and a dick of a familiar, I can transport myself into a magical gay world, filled with desire and longing. Scruff or Grindr to a Faggot Witch Faerie such as myself, is a locator spell, helping me seek out like-minded individuals for entertaining experiences. I use it when I travel to make friends, find bars, discover which club I should be going to. It has numerous applications beyond just the basic finding a willing sex partner. Thats part of its magic to me, it creates complex networks of connectivity.

To me the nearest gay is never more then a login away +/- 78 feet. It’s amazing how not lonely that makes me feel. When I was young, growing up in rural New York, the gay world felt so intangibly far away. Not only was I socially awkward, overweight, and not particularly attractive, which rendered me all but invisible to the few kids my age I suspected may be gay, but beyond them there just did not even seem to be anyone near me that fell into the category of gay. There were no guys on the streets in my town, there were no bars, there were no cruising zones, it was a desert of homosexuality.

I would later learn I was wrong about all of this, and that I in fact grew up in an town overflowing with Faggots, but the thing is I had no way of seeing them. They were hidden to me. I lacked the awareness to pick up on their social queues, to read their bodies and stances for the traces of their queer identity. What these dating/sex apps do is reveal the queer/gay that is present in those unexpected places. (Thank you Scruff for that unexpected rest-stop diner, or airport bathroom moment.)

I remind myself of this when ever I am in rural America. Most often what happens when I am in rural country towns is that younger men (18-22) contact me wanting to know what life is like in the city. What being gay is like in the big city. It is moments like this were Scruff and Grindr become magical tools for changing peoples perspective. So often these young men remind me of the person I was when I lived in the country side. Their feelings of desolation and being cut off from a community are tangible. Yet we have the opportunity to talk with these people about life inside gay/queer communities. How I would have relished this advice, even coming from a stranger when I was 18.

I often talk with these ‘kids’ about the hardships of city living sure, but I also let them know that they really are spaces and places that exist within the physical realm where people are not hounded and insulted for their desire. I think about this often when I go home to visit my folks and am contacting by a bevy of disembodied torsos, asking me if I wanna meet and if I can be discrete. I’ve never really understood this. No I’m not particularly discrete. But then again I’m not going to go around town pasting up screen grabs of your profile on telephone poles. I see no shame in my desire, and rarely if ever meet these men, for honestly I feel that our sex would be inflected by the cold edge of desperation, of self hate, and perhaps pity, and those are not the emotions I want to embody during the sex act. But what I do instead is try and talk to them about why they feel they need to be discrete. Most people have a reason, my job, my family, my friends, and while I hear that, I like to try and encourage these people to perhaps consider life outside of the closet. To talk with them about my journey, to discuss support structures they might want to find, ect… Here is where I find Scruff and Gridr to have a secondary form of quasi-magical connection. We can use these technologies for their non-intended purposes to not just connect and fuck strangers, but to create queer communities.   

—

Yet what most people say when I speak to them about these apps is how bad it makes them feel. How disappointed in themselves. That they message people, or send people ‘woofs’ and never receive a response. To them this moment where they are brushed off or ignored by some one they desire actively hurts them. I see this in part because the people who are not responding believe that they occupy a more desirable social/physical position and don’t need to respond to someone that they think is ‘beneath’ them. It has to do with the ‘space’ they believe they occupy in the social hierarchy.

—

We must start by seeing each other as fellow peoples/faeries/unicorns/witches and greeting one another with respect. We can do this in part, I think, by intentionally using apps like gridr and scruff to foster gay/queer community that includes and moves beyond the sex act. I mean sure we should also continue to have amazing and liberated sex thanks to sex apps. But we need to learn to share our bodies, our stories our skills with one another in dialogues of exchange and gifting rather then commodification. How do we meet each other as people rather than as object we desire and covet.

It begins I think by having a conversation on the etiquette of using one of these apps. If you are going to spend your time on it, watching messages fly into your mail box, and deleting all the ones that come to you from men whom you don’t physically desire, you are part of the problem. Sure the sheer volume of messages can get overwhelming, but at the end of everyone of those sup, hellos, hiyahs, is an actual person.

I wonder what the world would look like if we used location based gay sex apps to also foster and create community. What if we invited each other over to dinner when we have cooked to much, or skill shared, or ask each other for help when we need it. What if we used these tools of connectivity to actually connect.

We could create networks, and neighborhoods of queer community. I’d like to say I do this. I don’t. Not as much as I should anyway. I think I’m writing about it in part because I want to inspire myself to do it. I want to name my intention to begin actively using scruff as a way to foster queer/gay space. I want to invite over all the men who show up on my ‘Nearby’ list to come over and have cups of tea with me this winter. I want to throw mixers. Sure I hope I fuck or am fucked by many of those guys, but ultimately my desire is to strengthen queer community so that I feel even more supported, more seen and more visible. I guess I will report back at some point as to how this is working. But we have the tools to connect ourselves, we already are weaving ourselves together through lines and networks of desire, and I do imagine that much greatness could come from our connecting with one another in a physical space. 

Anyway, the above is not a fully fleshed out or entirely formed idea, I’m presenting it here as I want to start a conversation and I’m not sure exactly where it is going. But I think a first step is in exploring our relationship to our phone and seeing its potential for magick. Seeing how it can disrupt expected social conventions. I really planned to talk almost exclusively about capitalism this morning, but I got distracted, I guess I’ll write about that tomorrow.

Thanks for reading. Now go Queer some space.