Fancy Coleslaw and Heart Attack Man

Today was the last day full day our class had together in London. We all spent the morning doing different things, from going to museums and shops, to just relaxing and reading, and as far as I can tell, we all had a great time. We all went to dinner together at a French restaurant, were served some very fancy coleslaw, and discussed how excited we were for the talk we were going to later by Jeanette Winterson. We all thought it would be really fun, and were looking forward to asking her some questions.

We listened to her lecture, and it was pretty good. I didn’t know much about her at all before the talk, so I found it very interesting, and I couldn’t wait for when she would answer questions. I couldn’t have been more disappointed. She hardly answered any of the questions, even the easy ones, even though she said that we could ask her anything. After a couple stupid easy questions (If you were stranded on a desert island, what three books would you bring? Her answer was the Bible, Shakespeare, and a list of about four others.), Michael asked a question that actually had some thought behind it. Not only did she not answer the question, but made it seem as though the question was completely idiotic. People asked a few more silly questions (Do you love your mom? Her answer was: “she’s dead.”), Will tried to ask a question. He got about three words out, when she interrupted him, and said that she didn’t like those words. When Will tried to finish his question anyway, she said that the two of them couldn’t talk. Then Heart Attack Man (the smelly guy sitting next to Will) started cursing at Michael. I’m not sure what his problem was, but he needed to calm down.

So the talk had potential, but turned into a major flop. Fortunately, we had a great time afterwards, and made the most of our last night together. We had fun with the street performers on the way back to the flat, and talked and danced late into the night. And even though our time together in London has come to an end, I’m sure we will have amazing reunions once we get back.

They Forced Me to Look at Modern Art THEN Write Poetry on It.

A Response to the Painting February 1954 by Roger Hilton

In her red dress she dances

Her feet up in the air

Her head thrown back

No need for music

She’s dancing

I’m her audience

My eyes clap for her

And then I walk away

But she’s still dancing

With much convincing from Michael and Suzaana, I wrote this poem in our impromptu poetry workshop in response to this painting which we viewed Monday at the Tate Britain. Writing this poem was a huge stretch for me. Quite different from those two, I have not picked up a pen to write anything creative (unless you count this blog and witty Facebook statuses) in years. However with encouragement from my always supportive trip mates- and I must acknowledge a teeny tiny bit of alcohol- I scribbled this blurb.

Admittedly, it was only with persuasion that I even viewed the painting described, a simple composition of only the colors black and red splashed, apparently with meaning, upon a white canvas. Like creative writing, modern art is not something I usually enjoy. Often I do not find the works aesthetically pleasing, and rather than inspire me, modern art instills in me envy. I stand before the canvas and think, “I can ‘ingeniously’ produce a work in the fashion of a kindergarten art project all the same, why am I not getting paid millions of dollars for this?” I found these sentiments to quickly arise as I stared at this painting, but through our discussion learned to suspend these judgments. As Michael, Suzaana, and Will looked upon the painting, they saw much more than the seemingly only big blotch of misshapen rectangular red paint with four smaller misshapen black rectangles extending from it and a dash of more black paint to its left. They noticed that the colors possibly make up numerous things, a piano for instance, or a lady doing a handstand. Then, unlocking my closed mind, I finally saw a lady dancing. The big splash of red became her sensuous dress, the four extending splotches of black transformed into her moving arms and legs up in the air, a lacking fifth piece of black her head thrown back in exuberance. I realized that this work was, not amateur, but astonishingly provocative in its simplicity, an inspiring masterpiece that required skill to create.

Through just these casual discussions of modern art and a slightly tipsy poetry workshop, Monday forced me to extract deeper meaning from what I would normally disregard and then create a new discourse to describe it. Moments such as these have made up this Queer London course. Over the past three weeks I have learned to, in the words of Michael, “put pressure on” what I would normally ignore and to analyze and describe it in a new enlightened manner. Thank you tremendously to this course- composed of Gaga dancing, strip tease encompassing glam poetry slam, a confessing dancewhore, laugh-til-we cry Greyhound bus stories (love you Suzaana!), free time Disney movies, and many, many things more- for that.

Wrath of Judith, a Burch/Tarantino collaboration

I just got back from a wonderful late afternoon spent at the Tate Modern, where I spent the majority of my time in the “Poetry and Dream” exhibit (Do exhibit titles go in quotes or are they underlined? Perhaps one of the numerous English professors who read this can help me out). This exhibit, which was largely a surrealist exhibition, was absolutely fascinating in the way it discussed the connection between writing and the physical body, something I am particularly interested in. In this way, the exhibit might have been better termed “Discourse and Materiality” (a la Judith Butler).

Painting, in particular, is an interesting arena in which to engage this discussion because of the medium’s ability to capture (or possibly imagine) the process of bodily materialization; in the real world, we are only able to get at this discussion by way of either fully materialized human bodies (resting at the “matter” end of the spectrum) or via writing (which falls firmly at the “discourse” end of the debate). Dorthea Tanning’s A mi-voix, pictured here,is quite wonderful in the way it captures partially formed human bodies, frozen part-way through the process of materialization. The wonderful thing about this painting (as Michael pointed out of the Francis Bacon paintings) is that, because the bodies are frozen, the viewer cannot tell whether they are being constructed or deconstructed. In this way, painting might be seen to capture the inscription of a body without evaluating it.

These partially formed bodies raise a number of questions: If discourse informs materialization, what sort of discourse might result in partially formed bodies? Conversely, what sort of language or discourse might cause a body to unravel? In contemplation of Jeanette Winterson’s use of the body in Written on the Body, how can physical embodiment be a point of communication that is independent of language, when language is inscribed on the body? I can imagine an exchange between Jeanette Winterson and Judith Buther: “There is a ‘language written on the body,’” Judith might exclaim while beating Jeanette in the head with her copy of Bodies that Matter. “Language is the language written on the body!” she would yell with each blow. The scene might end with Butler standing over Winterson’s unconscious body, head cocked to the side. She would then wipe her brow and whisper “It’s discourse, dummy...” Fade to black.

This Winterson/Butler smack-down aside (guest directed by Quentin Tarantino, of course), the Tate exhibit was particularly fascinating in the way it traced the process of materialization. The penultimate room, the last room that contained paintings, was one dedicated to a sect of twentieth century realists (where the rest of the rooms were abstract in some capacity). Meredith Frampton’s Portrait of a Young Woman, when placed in conversation with the rest of the exhibit, seems to articulate the exhibition’s conclusion in the way it projects the plainest, most uptight-looking white woman into what has (until this point) been quite a queer space. The gallery seems to highlight the idea that bodies are themselves policed and ultimately normalized institutions; by the time bodies are fully materialized, the chaff has already been picked from the wheat, as it were, which is especially problematic because the process/moment of materialization seems largely inaccessible. In Butler’s words, this moment becomes “retroactively installed at a prelinguistic site to which there is no direct access,” and, as a result, pointing to a moment of materialization outside the theoretical seems impossible (Just as a heads up, this Butler quote is taken quuuiiiite out of context. I feel the need to apologize out of fear of Tarantino-esque retribution from Butler. I might become the inadvertent star of Wrath of Judith II: No Exit, which I read somewhere they’ve started production on). Where, then, is there room for a queer body? What about a disabled body, a body which was normative but has been broken? This exhibit might suggest that because bodies are normalized structures, there isn’t any room for a queer body, which seems sort of troubling.

Also, I’ve read that Judith Butler does all her own stunts.

Queering "Queer"

“Camp is a weapon, a means, an attack on the norm,” asserted the triumphant drag queen (or should I say ‘quean’?) with a stamp of her platform-clad foot, a defiant flash of her three-inch-long, glittering lashes. And then the “Confessions of a Dance Whore” star stripped herself slowly of her costume, grating away layers of camp - her weapon, as though scraping iron from iron with a peeler. Even as I write this description, I find myself stumbling over pronouns, for moments later, he stood in front of us in a school-boy uniform, pondering, and asking us to ponder, "Is there an essential me under all these me's or are we always performing?"

I am down to my last blog entry in London, and I find myself distilling the entire course down to that exact question. After all, where does an identity end and a being begin? We have spent the past two weeks traipsing about a city that has no idea whether it wants to be ancient or modern, Greek-classicist or Orientalist, monarchy or democracy, and so-on and so-forth, etcetera, etcetera … until London has finally run out of conflicting dichotomies from which to suspend our question marks. We have spent the past two weeks deconstructing discourse while creating a discourse of our own – one that exists in the loops and holes of a spiral bound notebook, that is – in the margins outside the margins. We have learned to “queer” (that scrumptious adjective/noun-turned-verb) just about everything – queering architecture, queering time, queering literary aesthetics, queering legal systems, queering responses to modern art; but what happens when we turn the verb “queer” on itself? Have we wielded the word “queer” as a weapon for attack on the norm, much like Will’s favorite dance whore wields camp? And in doing so have we created an anti-norm that exists for its own sake, thereby becoming a norm unto itself? I realize I am speaking in abstracts; allow me to “queer” my abstractions with anecdotes …

Earlier this evening, dropping by our fully-applianced apartments to collect his laundry, our professor Jason couldn’t resist a chat with his delightful, A+ students; and being the brilliant interlocutors that we are, the conversation slowly drifted to the cliché binary between academia and activism, and naturally, to the LGBT community’s grand assimilation project: same-sex marriage. And while I have NEVER wanted to get married, and while I would personally like to pull the marble columns out from under the friezes of this aging temple of an institution, I find myself committed to defending the rights of those who seek its security to be free to do so. And if you want to know why, let Jason tell you his story of adoption legalities. Let my roommate Carrie, whose partner was killed, tell you her story of funeral arrangements that excluded her entirely, deference given to “family” who refused to acknowledge that their only daughter was gay, even in death. And what about the average Tom and Dick, or Sally and Sue who genuinely want the rings, the cake, the “till death do us part” shebang?

Yes, I am all about questioning the norm. It is what I want to spend my life doing, and that is why I must question the norm of “queer”? How can we critique binaries that suspend genders and sexualities across taut lines, if we are not willing to recognize the normative/anti-normative binary that we are creating ourselves? Is queerness a kind of camp, a performance of its own? A wig to don and doff when we are on or off a stage? Is queerness about an attack, a weapon we use to destroy? Or is it about an embrace, a tool we use to create? Is queerness about always making a statement or always asking a question - a kind of ever percolating ellipses that forever trails off the end of the page?

To reconcile these binaries of queerness, I would like to take both ends, loop them around till they meet in the center of a skater’s figure 8, then fold the 8 in half to create a queer sort-of imbricated, diamond-drop circle with plenty of nooks and grooves for norms and anti-norms and everything in between. I am interested in existing in the gaps between deconstructed brick walls, where discourse can lose its power structures and become two people talking to each other about how they feel. I want it to be okay for someone who wants patches of norm to stitch those patches into their own quilted queerness. Can’t we exist in the interstices between the iron rails without actually hopping on the train? Can this poly-lesbian, femme-top, academic-activist-artist person find a space in the gaps between her various anti-norms, lay down her weapon, and just be?

Yes, I will admit: if I had to choose (and thanks to Foucault, I don’t), I would privilege a world of beings over identities. Because beings are the essential me under the me’s. Because beings happen in the intersections where identities X away from each other. Because any real queer knows each one of those identities is constructed in the first place. (And after “Love the Sinner,” we all know a bad performance when we see one.)

Hampstead

Some photos for your viewing pleasure, sans insightful commentary. Roxie, this terrier is for you (seen romping about Hampstead Heath).


In the backyard of the Sigmund Freud house.


And finally, a video -- somewhat abbreviated -- from London Pride!

ARTIST.LIVED HERE. (For Mark Gertler)

The Hampstead Plaque Fund
and the local real estate company
have conspired together, wagered
big money to keep you here –
here in this discarded
cigarette butt of a corner,
scuff-marked and ashen with burnt-out light.

They have inscribed your name
in bold white block letters on a mounted black
oval. They have stuffed your years between
unseen parentheses like stage directions.
(Enter stage left 1891) -
(Exit stage right 1939).
Your life little more than the hyphenated
suspension between birth and death.

You are fixed in this space
for good now, whether you like it
or not – a stuffed bird,
dead and caught forever in flight,
invisible cord hung high behind glass
in an old, brick museum.

If I were you, I would
stumble out of the grave screaming,
dirt-mangled grass in my hair,
“I did more than ‘LIVE HERE’ once.
I shat here, and spat tobacco,
and downed shots of whiskey. I pissed here
and painted in bright, contrasting colors.

I piled the horrors of war onto a merry-go-round
and spun them about until their screams
were suspended in orangeblue. I threw
bricks at museum windows and demanded
they let me in. And now you
have all but forgotten

me. My paintings archived
in dusty manila envelopes you call
the Internet, and one or two hanging
naked in the Tate. While you
have turned me into this plaque,
these rusting brown bricks,
a window boarded up
with yesterday's newspapers.”

Pride, Opera, and Disney

We took this photo at the London pride parade. The flag on the left with the pointy tip almost poked my eye out on several occasions. The flags are pretty, with their bright colors and the way they are waving in the wind, but you might notice that there’s nobody marching in the parade. This happened a lot, and to be honest, I was a bit disappointed by the parade. There were some fancy drag queens, a few buses, a couple leather bears, and a lot of gaps between them. Sometimes the gaps between the groups were so big that I thought the parade was over. There was also a distinct lack of nudity. Really, you know a pride parade is a bit pathetic when the opera has more nudity in it.

The opera had to be my favorite part of today (although, watching Mulan later was a close second). We saw Salome, and it was wonderful. Our seats were house right at the very top and, while not ideal, gave us a very interesting view. One advantage was that we could actually see into the cistern where Jokanaan was. Of course, we also had to put up with the bad parts of sitting in seats that cost only 5 pounds. This mostly consisted of the jerk in front of me who started texting twice during the show. But not even the rude cell phone man could do too much damage to the production. One thing in particular that I really liked about this production was that instead of having the dance of seven veils simply be a dance, they turned it into a creepy almost rape, which added a lot to how messed up Salome is at the end, which is saying something since she is really messed up. Another thing was that the severed head looked deliciously real, and even had blood dripping from it from the moment it was brought on stage (by the naked executioner) until the very end of the play. It was also wonderfully disturbing when Salome, completely covered in blood, finally kissed it.

We finished the night by getting some Burger King and watching Mulan. It was the perfect way to end the day.

Jiltfest 2K10: The Day After

In the spirit of voyeurism, I’ve spent the last twenty minutes or so lurking about the park, photographing strangers in an attempt to emulate this afternoon’s exhibit in the Tate Modern. Though the picture I’ve decided to engage is one I took yesterday in the London countryside, I’ve included a few of this evening’s photographs to share my creepings and lurkings with our QueerLondon fan base. I should preface this post by admitting that I am not sure I have quite the eye for detail which is required of a photographer, but that I plan to smokescreen my audience into forgetting this by way of my blog post.

Compositionally, I like the texture of the water; the squiggly lines of the ripples seem to contrast nicely to the very straight ones of the fishing pole. I also like that the viewer is given minimal information about the main character. Man? Woman? Sleeping? Enjoying a lazy day by the pond? Alone? Frustrated? It turns out that this man was snoozing gently, pond-side, quite alone. Something about the way the green of the grass spikes into the water interests me as well, though I’m hard pressed to specify.

I’ve selected this particular photo (which I took prior to our trek to the Tate Modern) because I find something about the voyeurism involved in catching this Londoner at his sleepiest intrigues me. What does the fact that this man is unaware that he is being watched (and captured) mean for the photo? Though we can imagine that the sleepy man is no different for having been captured in such a way (that is, until the Queer London blog gets optioned for a film), this photo, along with the exhibit, seems to raise questions of artistic morality. Why is voyeurism constructed as undesirable in our culture if, practically speaking, it is nearly entirely harmless? What am I, the photographer, doing to this bystander without his consent? One such effect seems to be in the way this medium mythologizes its subjects. It seems as though this voyeuristic photography does a disservice to its subjects by manner of the way in which the photographer strips the subject of his “real” story and impresses his own narrative on the subject. What the man in this picture is actually doing ceases to matter; I have captured him on film and as a result, he will assume whatever story I attach to him.

In the spirit of our discussions of Carol Ann Duffy’s “Stuffed” and Wolfgang Tillman’s photography, I cannot help but think of Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, which seems to parallel Duffy’s poem in its examination of the artistic impulse. We are asked, if only momentarily, to believe that the subjects of a painting are, in fact, real people that have simply been shaped to the artist’s will and frozen in time, condemned to hang on a wall forever. Sondheim and Duffy both seem to explore the selfishness involved in the creation of art thought the way both artists (taxidermist and painter) ignore their subjects actual function/need and instead shape them to whatever is most aesthetically pleasing. Following this line of thought, I wonder what happens if we think about the subject of this photograph as alive. I seem to have turned this Londoner into a 21^st century mariner-sleeping beauty and perhaps, in compressing him to a digital image, robbed him of personhood in the name of art. All in a day’s work, I suppose.

(I was tempted to write about this tender moment I seem to have captured between man and squirrel, but I think the picture tells quite a richer story by itself than I could manage. Love comes in all sizes, dear readers. I just worry that the logistics of moving in together might be tricky; that man looks ill equipped for tree climbing.)

An Image within an Image

Normally I never upload pictures of my travels while I’m away. I prefer to wait until I return home to view the images and reminiscence of the good times recently had because, as Michael said it best, “a photograph extends emotion across time.” The photographs allow me to continue the vacation for just a day or two longer. However, in the spirit of the Wolfgang Tillmans exhibit at the Serpentine Gallery and the Urban Spectatorship reading by Judith Walkowitz, our professors have put us up to the task of commenting on a photograph that we have taken thus far. So here it goes.

I took the photograph seen here on the top of a double-decker bus crossing the Thames, and to me it encompasses the literal meaning of urban spectatorship. It is urban in its composition, the scenic London nightlife composed of Big Ben and the river and its vantage point, a double-decker bus. It is spectatorship in that the photograph, due to the bright lighting and glass windowpanes of the bus, includes the reflection of me observing my surroundings and snapping the picture. The image I attempt to capture and I become intertwined in the most accidental but beautiful way. This unintentional superimposition of me the spectator and my London surroundings defines urban spectatorship.