Author: Taylor

Once upon a petition

Taylor 1 Comment
Thanks to GMHC for this picture.
(GMHC)

With Blood Battle just around the corner–the blood drive competition between the University of Michigan and the ohio state university which measures who raises the most donations–it’s important to remember that not all people are allowed to donate blood. I’m a man who has sex with men. Thus, I cannot donate.

But I don’t care. I have no ethical imperative to gush blood on those that need it.

While some feel discriminated against, which makes sense because it does ban a specific portion of the population (men who have sex with men–MSM) because of a particular “sexually deviant behavior” often equated with “homosexuality,” I don’t have any personal problem with this. There is nothing in the world that makes me feel morally responsible for people who need blood (#IntroToPhilosophy). There are non-sexually deviant hetero folks and people who don’t get tattoos nor travel who can donate blood, so, in general, its covered. (I know the blood pool is low, but people can still get some pretty good height on the diving board of.)

I’d rather focus my time away from liberal-reformist-assimilationist goals of ending blood discrimination and marriage discrimination in favor of liberation, or just not being killed. Also, most of these reforms continue the stigma of “risky sexual behavior” and the stigma around folks living with HIV/AIDS.

However, for the time, I think it’s important to mediate on people who have an extreme amount of empathy with folks in need. While I don’t particularly have an interest in all of humanity, some do and I respect that. I may be a bitter, postmodern, queer revolutionary, who hates everyone. Full stop.

819 signatures to change the policy banning MSM from donating blood. 99,191 signatures left until the White House will view the document and take the petition seriously. 100,000 signatures needed in total.

Behind every number is a person who supports this cause who lets a little information about themselves out into the public sphere and waits until 99,999 people come to the same consensus. There is so much hope with signing a petition, especially when its electronic.

Looking at the list of signatories reminds me of trying to crack a secret code: “Signature #738, November 06, 2013, Lake in the Hills, IL., C.M.” I wonder what was going through “C.M.’s” head on November 06 at x o’clock. They didn’t decide on the 7th or 8th of November and so they locked themselves in to be number 738. Perhaps they were swimming in the lake in the hills lake in the hills on the 6th. I wonder who they are. What is their story? Why are they an ally? How are they an ally?

In each signature lies an actual person (maybe) and that is terrifyingly beautiful. People with their own lives, stories, histories, futures, all of which, for one moment, stopped to sign a petition that could potentially help save lives.

Stopping to stare at the amount of people who have signed this document is like reading the unreadable. K.B. J.L. E.B. D.L. are just a combination of letters that points to 4 people in the world. Each unique person reduced down to 4, sometimes 3, facts all encompassed by a grey speech bubble. Missing voices, missing bodies, intentions present. The symmetrical nature of these intentions all pointing to one goal.

There is beauty in simplicity.

10 Reasons why Fitzgerald (not the president) Knows

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So I read “The Great Gatsby” in 10th grade. I was 15, living in suburbia and confused about the major topics in the novel–racism and eugenics, gangster/mob culture, and perceiving reality (alcohol).
I loved it then. And I love it now. Rereading the book for my Visual Cultures of the Modern Novel class has been such a treat. I now get things that are going on in the novel that weren’t talked about in my high school class (everything is homoerotic). And I feel that Fitzgerald, in describing the 20’s, describes college and he KNOWS my interactions with the world.
1. Friday, Friday, Gotta Get Down on Friday:

Daisy: “I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it” (16). Friday should be the longest day of the week–a day I don’t have class, a day where I wake up and cope from watching Scandal with a workout, a day where I don’t leave my apartment until 9pm. But all of a sudden I wake up in a haze with the sun attacking my eyes and it’s Saturday. Boo hiss. Friday over.
2. Everyone’s stupid and everything hurts:

Tom: “He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive” (30). Tom gets few things besides racism, classism, sexism, ableism, and ageism. But the other thing he knows is that most people I interact with don’t know that they’re alive. “Woah, I’m white–what does that mean? I have privilege?” My response: “oh, another one of you non-alive folks.” Or those people who ask me if I’m dressed up in costume on Halloween (today!) and I’m in regular clothes (peacock earrings, harem pants, tie-dye shirt, neon coat, stilettos).  These non-alive people are worse than zombies and at least Tom (and I) call them out.
3. We’re all gonna die:

Myrtle:  “You can’t live forever, you can’t live forever” (40). She gets this whole mortal thing (and this being-unto-death thing). As the first(?) character to die, she gets the #yolo life. While I will hopefully live more than once, more than 5 is a bit much–Myrtle understands. I refuse to JUST #yolo, but I’m ok with dying after one too many.
4 . To be a freshman is to thirsty:

Nick: “I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited” (45). Everyone at Gatsby’s party just shows up. WHAT. Its like all those nasty freshman that appear out of nowhere, all wearing AP Government shirts or their greek life paraphernalia, that drink the whole keg and then flirt with literally everyone. It’s the best when you’re at a small house party and the freshman flock to show up, finding 15 people discussing cultural appropriation and some good speakers. Come at me, freshman!
5. I’m going to leave this gem hear:

Owl Eyes:  “I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library” (50).
6. And this:

“‘Anyhow he gives large parties,’ said Jordan, changing the subject with an urban distaste for the concrete. ‘And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy’” (54).
7. OH, AND THIS:

Young Lady: “‘[R]each me a rose, honey, and pour me a last drop into that there crystal glass’” (65).
8. Everyone is reckless:

Gatsby: “‘I tried very hard to die but I seemed to bear an enchanted life’” (70). Sometimes you are out until 5am, sometimes you are awake in the library until 5am with marker smudges all over your face, sometimes you drink 2 pots of coffee a day, sometimes you sleep 12 hours to cope, sometimes you eat only hummus, sometimes you j-walk like life isn’t real and its raining and you jump into a bush to avoid a car (unlike Myrtle). Everyone is so intense but if the world likes us, we live to see tomorrow.
9. People troll and derail pretty much everything.

Narrator: “The automatic quality of Gatsby’s answer set us all back at least another minute” (92).
10. Aesthetics are real. Everything is Campy.

Daisy: “‘They’re such beautiful shirts,’ she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. ‘It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such–such beautiful shirts before” (98).
The Great Gatsby might infuriate you. It might inspire you. It might make you nostalgic or make you happy that this century is not a teenager. But, either way, it gets some things. Gets them well.

A letter with no audience

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I remember walking up to your house from our van (you lived too far away to walk, but close enough to get inside the car and immediately exit) and staring in your windows hoping that you were there. You always took your time, deliberate in your movement because you deserved it, you earned your mobility and earned our wait, so we listened with bated breath to hear you move about your house and approach us.
Your space was many layers deep. Living room connected by dining room connected by kitchen (where I would ask to wash your dishes–something I’ve always enjoyed) connected to door connected to stairs connected to foyer/solarium/entry connected to storm door connected to dead-bolted door (windows?).  The location of your bedroom perplexed me and although I never had a reason to see it, I always wondered where you slept. There are spaces in your house (did you have a basement?) that I never knew. Your full reality escapes me.
Every time you welcomed me into your arms, your home, and your life I felt safe and loved. This was so important to me as my extended family lived on the other side of the country, and only in your arms did I really feel that family could be created. Family is something you chose, you cultivate, and you grow–and it is through my family’s relationship with you that I learned this and continue to practice this.
I never remember a time when you weren’t 70 years older than me, and from when I was a baby, toddler, adolescent, and now, a young adult, there was always a world separating us from each other. A fact only bridged from what was a regular occurrence to now, or what still was, a rare treat, a rare embrace.
My nuclear family would sit around you in your La-Z-boy chair, which advanced technologically with each visit–from rocking to tilting to, ha, projecting you into motion and across the room. I would sit on the floor and look into the blocked patterns of the carpet, the way the plush would sit, fold, mold to my body and look in the natural light and by lamp. I sat accompanied by American Indian figurines and these clusters grew and grew with time. Although problematically collecting these peoples in your living room, I romanticized my memory of you with your ties to age, history, and the past. Your connection to families–your biological one and your created family, your community–always seemed apparent.
I remember a well. I remember chimes. I remember your grandfather clock that kept the tempo to our talk, I was usually silent, and that lured my father to sleep in the chair diagonal from you. I remember names of your bloodline–always slightly confused because my memory forgot them. I remember the choo-choo trains constructed with candy–Rolo’s stick out to me–and every time you would give my sisters and I a treat, sometimes a Tootsie pop.
One day, growing up, I was dropped off at your house. Our first outing alone. We went to Big Boy, confused as grandmother and grandson–I had hot chocolate, maybe chocolate milk?–while my mom and sisters (and dad?) went to the movies (I still haven’t seen Titanic, and I probably never will). I remember times and events but few details. The details are in the space, my voice is left silent and mysterious.
I was at work when my parents went to visit you for what would be the last time. While I was participating in a dialogue, my parents took a picture that would capture one of your last moments and it will be a picture I cherish. Your frail but very much alive frame.
My memories are notorious for fading. I’m infamously known within my friend groups and ex-lovers as someone who needs reminding. This letter will remind me of you. Wacousta will remind me of you. The way in which I create my family and choose my family will remind me of you. The love I feel will remind me of you.

“Becoming-Art”

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Don’t get me wrong: I love art. But I don’t want to seek out art somedays. Currently it’s rainy and drab and nasty outside.
So.
I prefer to become art.
Now this isn’t some pseudo (or real) hipster montage of postmodern thought about how all of us are performing our identities and subjectivity at all times, even though we are (ba-zing!), but rather “becoming-art” is a lifestyle choice that I’m very conscious about. I’m very aware about how my body can be positioned as, wear, or become art itself.
For example, at no time do I walk around without performing. I am either:
1) Singing/”Rapping”/Humming/Whistling to music. Which isn’t, hopefully, me as a white man taking up more space than I need to, but me as a bored white queer man who is sick of listening to the buzz and hum of cars and cookie cutter robot-peers. I’d rather be listening to Azealia Banks. Music and sound and noise is beautiful and, especially, when I’m mid-travel I need a little extra inspiration to get where I’m heading (and to forget about the looming drones).
2) Wearing ridiculous clothing. I am a huge fan of monochromatic aesthetics and gray as a way of being; however, there comes a point when the seasons shift, or die, and the sun seems to fade away into a palate of only white/gray/black. THIS MAKES ME SAD. So I cope by wearing neon prints with other stripes with other fabrics with leather with hats and scarves and giant earrings, and rainbow umbrellas. Becoming the overwhelming stimulus I try to avoid or cling to is comforting. When I know that it is myself that is obnoxious–I can handle that. The trees no longer lay claim to being that beautiful shade of emerald, the sky can’t brag that its really that sky-blue, fire can’t embody all that is red, but I can: all in one outfit.
3) Reciting quotes from my favorite books. At no point are there not lines from books circulating in the vast cavernous hole that is my mind. Because I read for the majority of the time that I’m awake, I find it nice to recite lines and share literature with the world! From Toni Morrison to Jesus to James Joyce to bell hooks to Vladimir Nabokov to you name it (or rather I’m a snob so I’ll stick to the people that I know). People always get confused when I tell them that I study English and Philosophy, so it’s nice when I can actually share how cool these areas are. How beautiful they are. How “AHHHHH” they are.
Now I’m not trying to say that everyone needs to be art all the time but I find it’s the way I cope best with being in Ann Arbor. It gets boring looking at the same white, hetero, temporarily able-bodied men in their polos, boat shoes, and pastel shorts–so I say, “liven it up!”

While it can be overwhelming being the art for the designated spaces I’m in, it is more comfortable to seek solace in groups.
Have nail painting parties–there is nothing more I enjoy than having sparkly middle fingers.

Have team shopping events or days where you swap clothing with your friends.

Have days where you and others can annoyingly match in terrifying ways.
Although I’m a broken record and constantly talking about how I’m art itself (. . .) I find it important to reemphasize that I’m glaringly semi-offensive to everyone’s eyes. The sensory overload that is myself is so important to who I am these days. I actively want to be a bit too much because being just enough is so banal.
As I come into senior year I realize more and more about how much I don’t care about most things in my day to day life. I care when and where and how I need and want to care. But other than that . . . I’m a canvas full of life ready to explode.


Jouissanceful Goose Bumps

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There are many things I love about growing a beard / facial hair.
1) It looks damn good;
2) I look even older (sophisticated and sexy) than I already do and am mistaken for a grad student (since they’re all sophisticated and sexy #lol), even in my own classes (awkward);
3) My face has a built-in blanket for the cold, terrible winter months; and,
4) Face goosebumps are the best goosebumps.
However, these face goosebumps (not facial goosebumps because that sounds too weird) only happen in rare, beautiful occasions. “Rare” in that I don’t get myself to concerts that often and even then, only classical music gives me full body goosebumps where I feel like I have stopped living and am inhabiting transcendence itself. Aka that means nothing but I feel everything.
Last night I was able to attend the UM Symphony Band’s first seasonal concert at the majestic Hill Auditorium. Every time I step into Hill I forget that I pass it daily as I sprint, late, to class; I forget how I hate how big society is (although I do love cities . . .); I forget that I live 3 minutes down the road and that I can touch most ceilings with my hand if not head. Going to this venue is going-out in its finest sense–I dress up, cleanse my mind, and the seat I choose becomes my reason for living for 2-4 hours. I don’t have to worry about my thesis, I don’t have to think about my paper due tomorrow (now today), I don’t have to cope with dramatic boys, I don’t have to do a lot of things. The only thing I have and want to do is to sit and listen, absorb and reflect, and be in a state of becoming-child (#Deleuze).
Hill Auditorium is itself distracting when inside it. It’s so big. Every time I choose my seat I stare all around myself and I think that I need to update my glasses prescription. I think about how the space that I can’t discern is going to be filled with music and its mind-blowing. It’s overwhelming. It makes me . . . get goosebumps on my face. (First case, amazing buildings and space.)
Then I remember that this concert is free. (Second case, I love free things–face goosebumps follow realization.)
AND THEN I REMEMBER THEY ARE ABOUT TO PLAY MY FAVORITE PIECE, movement two from Bernstein’s Jeremiah Symphony, “Profanation.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGVRaUj-YLk) GOOSEBUMPS GOOSEBUMPS GOOSEBUMPS.
Every (other) song the band performs is great. It’s rare that I listen to new (classical-ish) music and fall in love. There was so much love, however. And then, of course, they decide to play the Bernstein post-intermission and I feel as if I will simultaneously pee myself, vomit, and pass out all until the beginning notes of this masterpiece are played. Since I’ve heard this piece before live (and have studied the score . . .) I know which parts are difficult and every time the trumpets don’t frack a note my heart starts to soar higher. Every time everyone is syncopated at the same time I feel myself letting out an “AHHHHHH” and I fall deeper into my seat as if the earth is opening up just to save me from this moment of pure joy.
I never want it to end and for me it never will. This concert is everything I wanted. It acts as an escape from some parts of life and lets me relax and involve myself in music. Being in music is all I really ever want. And on these select nights, my dreams do come true.
[To think that my face goosebumps could be also called face goosepimples. I cannot.]

“Icona’s Ball”: insight or violence?

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I know Icona Pop through frat party spectacle’s, angsty/mainstream dance parties, clubbing, working out–basically every occasion of my life can be narrated by, “I DON’T CARE, I LOVE IT.” Or really just “I don’t care . . . .”
Due to the nature of this song, I didn’t expect much from Icona Pop’s newest song/video combo, “All Night.” I was looking for another outlet for my “poor” angsty privileged self where I can thrive in my suburban ennui, hiding in my one bedroom apartment inside of my full-size bed. But I was pleasantly surprised and intrigued, and full of feelings. I love song-screaming and I love new anthems but there were just so many damn feelings, so little time. I’ve watched the video over and over and I can’t tell how exactly I feel.
On one hand, the lyrics make my heart beat faster and I feel that it magically matches the video. Now while the “official video edit” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FWRT9C9XMQ) is  palatable for the average YouTube viewer estranged from queerness in general (coming in around 3 minutes), the better “official extended video” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNuNJLlq8eQ) is what really packs the punch–around 5 minutes of personal narratives, the names of the participants (NAMES! SUBJECTS! HUMANS!), and glimpses of people in and outside of the Ball. Lived experience oozes through the pop anthem’s video and it’s as if you’re being sprayed with a bottle of champagne. It’s pretty magical.
But is Icona Pop really paying tribute? And even if they intend to, are they really respecting and not exploiting the Ball scene, queer people, people of color, queer people of color, etc.? Is this trying to reach an audience (obviously) just to raise more profit and have more sales? DOES EVERYTHING STILL SUCK?
I support the Ball scene getting publicity if it’s what it wants. I support all of them having their shining moment for not only the people in the room but the 270,000+ people that have not and will probably never go to a Ball. I support Ball Culture.
But on the other hand, I feel guilting going into the space as a viewer without any real interaction with the humans whose lives depend on the Ball for happiness, community, and solidarity. My gaze is different from the average viewer because I’m queer but my other salient, privileged identities still hold when viewing it. Part way through I feel like I’m watching this beautifully orchestrated video that Capitalism has created: something that seems inclusive of Ball Culture in all of its queerness and diversity but something that is still a bit terrifying. I feel like this video is equating my life with those of the participants and say that I, too, can have this shining day. While this isn’t a bad message I feel like a message of equality is not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for a respectful celebration of difference where I get to celebrate people. That often does not include me, and that’s ok.
The extended cut makes the video purely magical. Although it is no “Paris is Burning” nor is it intending to be, the video portrays the hope and joy found within Balls and I think Icona Pop really show that through their intense, repetitive lyrics and rhythms that there is no room for any option besides a constructed paradise, a better life.