Gay Fiction

I've always been reticent when it comes to LGB fiction, as if there's something about it that drives me away. I've read my fair share and almost always come away from it with a question: Where are the voices that speak for me?



If you look at most pop-fiction for gay male youth, it's either the tortured angst of coming out or some slightly less tortured, teen romance. Looking at a lot of the literature for the older set, we come across pages written by the justifiably angry gays who spent the 70s and 80s fighting for visibility and the right to march in something as outrageous as a Pride Parade, now a little bit older, a little bit settled in.



A long standing in joke amongst my friends says I never came out as gay so much as I came out as Danny. That kind of intense romance was okay when my body was swimming in enough of its hormones that I even had crushes on a few girls. Having grown up in a culture where Pride Parades have reached enough mainstream appeal that they can be sponsored by Budweiser, I think I'm what's called the epitome of Millenial apathy, at least when it comes to a homogenized subculture that while I respect it's history, is the stuff of history books (or as is more likely the case, Wikipedia searches).



I'm among the first in a generation of fairies standing on the shoulders of giants, bears, self-styled trannies and assorted other woodland creatures to see at least hints of equality in America. Yes, the racial, class and gender divides meanwhile are even farther from equality, but from certain perspectives we're closer than we've ever been.



We're here, we're queer and we're not something you've seen before. We're the generation saturated in postmodernism from birth onward. I was part of a panel discussion my junior year of college on what it means to be queer in community and one of the panelists could barely answer our questions because of the contextual differences created by the age gap. The very fact that we could ask about a “queer community” at all was astounding.



It's not apathy that we face; it's a paradigm shift. There is an intimate connection between generation theory, activism and sexuality that I don't think current discourse has completely taken into account yet.



So again I ask, where are the voices that speak for me and those like me?



They don't exist. Or rather, they're out on the streets protesting the color/gender/class-blind ideology and practices of reactionary mainstream movements. They're in classrooms laughing at all the silly little boys and girls who still have this image of feminism as bra-burning and man-bashing, writing papers and quoting names like Judith Butler and Michel Foucault. They're homeless on the streets. They're on social networking sites like tumblr, aggregating information and resources and the occasional funny image so that others can stumble upon their tumblogs and make better sense of the world.



And really, when it comes down to it, do I want any other voices other than my own representing me? No, but I would like just once to find a story about a queer that I can relate to without being sickened by the cliches and stereotypes and heteronormative tropes and the bad writing. It's a wonder people even know what queer is since the literature is hidden away in academia rather than mingling with the masses and making itself known.

Song and Silence

Sometimes when I dance, the world goes silent. All that exists is my body and the movement. There are no words, no thoughts, it's a trance-like state and I find that I'm at peace. I'm experiencing the moment not as me, not as a thinking being, but as a nothing. I'm invisible to myself and to the world.

And then I pause and everything comes crashing back. I'm filled with sound, with thought. My reprieve from the world is intruded upon and interrupted.

People spend hours at a time meditating to experience that relief, seeking that cessation of noise, immunity from the infection that Burroughs called Word. In those quiet moments, the inner monologue is absent.

It's rare and takes practice, and for this to occur naturally often requires some kind of interruption upon the interruption, an overriding noise to replace that which has become the background of our existence.

I'm reminded of this because of my experience at HigFOM (the Higginson Festival of Music) this weekend.



What happens when music overpowers lyrics, when what we hear no longer has Word operating within it? Is there still meaning and by that I mean the kind of subjective meaning we use to describe the thoughts and emotions and words used in our day to day existence?

For example, one of the bands at HigFOM, Mission Orange, introduced one of their songs as being about "hiking on Mount Baker" or something to that effect, but when they started playing, the drums and guitar and feedback completely covered up and drowned out any vocals that would have conveyed that message.

You couldn't hear what he was singing at all and it seemed ironic to preface the song with a description. If I'd come across this on the radio, I don't think I would have been able to discern anything relating to being on a mountain.



In other words, the intent is there, but the meaning is lost amongst the sound accompanying it. It interrupts the transmission of the message. And this interruption provides us with silence of the mind.

And I got lost in the song, pulled in and whirled around by a maelstrom of sound. Soon I found that if I let this continue, it tore away at my mind. There was only the music.

Here then is an example of music as a release, as an agent of the momentary nirvana that teases us with a glimpse of bliss, for music in this capacity gives us silence.

But there is also danger in this. As much as it can be a tool for empowerment and enlightenment, the way we envision a monk or other Eastern practitioner reducing thought and expanding mind, applied differently, this ability of music becomes a tool in the power of economy of the mind.

In emptying the mind, it is made vulnerable. Is not the blank sheet easiest to fill?

Energy

When the words call to me, I write. I type. My fingers fly, nimble nails and tendons dancing across the this touch screen madness that is the word we call virus. I play keyboard like a musician at his keyboard, eyes closed, touching the sounds, the sights, the vision I seek to create. click clack Type. A. Type B. Type O-positive. Where do I fit. Question mark correction.

And I avert. My eyes, to talk to this person sitting next to me, this indentation on the seat cushion. Play with my hair again and I will melt. Replace that, find me an answer on your quiz. I'm surrounded on the literal of the metaphors. Screen names I see, faces reflected reflecting para-personalities.

downward dog amazing but excrutiating

And I hear voices. They're speaking to me. They're talking talking words in, around, through and on. Music, sound, interruption. I feel the energy. Feel it like the swirling colors of this screen tickling my retinas. And I want to move, to dance, to groove the night away. I don't need no alcohol, just give me a beat. thump thump thump. You are colors to me, ruthless eddies of emotion buffeting me, slapping me hard in the face. A punch to the solar plexus, send me wind-milling backwards, upwards, twirl twirl twirl as I spin on the ball of my foot.

Type type type. This is my piano/keyboard cat love ailurophile definition of a new word. Sunset horizons are the beginning of the night. Make it long and hard on the recovery. Strong on the drive.

And I'm losing it, this stream of consciousness. I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't. Want to. I want. Let me climb up on the banks and dry off.

Moments and sounds

Have you ever had moments of your life defined by certain songs? You can't hear that song without thinking about that point in your life or think of that moment without hearing that song in your head. Regardless of whether or not you heard the song at that time either.

When I read the book, Ender's Game, I inevitably think of the song White Flag. Of all the books I've read, this is one of the first ones where I really felt like I could connect with the character beyond the book. It's also one of the few where I've been able to read it more than once. Anyways, there's been a parallel in my mind between the protagonist Ender's life and the kind of never give up attitude Dido sings about in White Flag.

The song My World is forever linked in my mind to an incident that occurred my junior year of high school. As a member of what was essentially the Diversity Club at my school, together with a member of the GSA, I attended the 21st Annual RAP conference. I don't rightly remember what RAP stood for, but I'd hazard a guess at something along the lines of Reducing Adolescent Prejudice (Hey, I was right). Since there were only two of us attending, we bus-pooled with one of the other local high schools. Hand-picked by the vice principal, we were joined by I think it was 8 more students. I don't remember all but one's name. The only one I remember was this sophomore named Damien.

Anyways, we got to the conference at UW, and I remember that my school, because of our late registration and small size, didn't have our own folder. This has no bearing on the story at all, but it's one of those random bits of the experience that I remember, like in a dream, so I feel obligated to tell it. Like a game. So once we'd all settled down and gone to some of the seminars and workshops, we gathered for the keynote speaker.

My friend from the GSA, Kate and I sat together with the Puyallup HS students. And at one point Damien stood and walked down the row of seats. To get out into the aisle, he had to squeeze in front of Kate and I, so while he was squeezing, he stopped and shook his booty in front of Kate's face. Right at eye level. She was mortified. So, I *cough cough* took "matters" into my own hands so to speak.

Short version of this: I went to an anti-prejudice conference with some high schoolers and ended up groping one of them when he was shaking it in front of my friend. The funny thing is he didn't know it was me doing the groping.

Soon after this, I was listening to the radio when the MSI song came on. I think the association mostly began because of the lyric: "Everybody wants a piece of my ass." That and this song absolutely oozes a certain kind of cockiness. The exact kind of cockiness that would prompt someone to wave their ass in a girl's face. They're linked in my mind.

The point I think I'm trying to make with this post is to wonder, where does this link, this association come from?

In both cases I've described here, the song and event were not simultaneous, and yet in my mind they are inseparable. In general, I'm a more lyrically minded person, so I have to think that the words within the songs are what triggered these connections. Which brings me back to The Ticket That Exploded and Burroughs.

Words brought this to me. Words hold me here. But what of beyond that? A picture is worth a thousand words, so if I'm using the correct exchange rate, a picture is worth about 4 songs, give or take a chorus or two. What songs am I getting out of my life now?

The Filth strikes me as being grungy, with heavy, dark, metal sounds, but inspired with genius lyrics that will be constantly misinterpreted and ignored. The filth in me. In you. In us.

They're a macro/micro garbage squad "We're Garbagemen, Ned. We stop the world's back yard from stinking. How hard is that to understand?" It's more than that though. They are the agents of morality, policing the realms of decency, which in effect makes the Hand grim angels of a much darker god.

Day 33: On Words

If you repeat a word again and again, it loses it's meaning.
heartbreak. heartbreak? is that spelled right? Heartbreak. AUGH.
A Softer World

I stumbled upon this webcomic while on plurk just now. Someone posted a link to a different posting by this website, and I happened to peruse through the archives until I came across this particular gem.

It reminds me of something we used to do in my journalism class in high school. Those of us who designed pages and covered the whole layout aspect of publishing the school paper often found ourselves searching for an appropriate font to help tell the story. This wasn't always the case, because we were taught well that too many novelty fonts are a bad thing.

Personally I still cringe when I see more than three fonts on a flyer or poster without a very good visual context to put them in. But anyways, when we did do this, we would highlight the text, and then click in Adobe InDesign's font bar and scroll through all the fonts one at a time, only pausing long enough to see if it matched the story we were trying to tell.

After about the twentieth font, the word or name (names were especially bad) we were looking at would start to blur together. And even those of us who'd been designing for years would start to question and second guess. That word can't be spelled right. It looks wrong. AAAgggghhhh!

And then there would be heads pounding against walls as the rest of us rushed in to save the poor designer from the offending word and to have them check it online and in their notes.

Okay, so I hyperbolized that last detail, but you get my point, something about seeing the same word over and over in so many ways without changing anything more than how it looked made it start to look wrong. The word began to lose meaning, and with that, all semblance of being a real word.

So I ask, what makes a word? What gives it meaning and provides the thought behind it? When it comes down to it, print is just smudges of ink on paper (or in the case of this blog post, pixels on the screen). There must be some social aspect that binds the idea to the word. Otherwise when we see a word over and over, or say it over and over like in the webcomic I started with, it wouldn't lose it's meaning.

I'm hoping to start a dialogue with this, so please feel free to comment. I'd prefer if you did so at my blog, and not on Facebook, but I welcome whatever feedback I can get.