Tim Miller Preaches To The Choir.

cross-posted at The Gay Place, Austin Chronicle's LGBT blog.

I went to see Tim Miller's show The Lay of the Land at the Vortex Theater here in Austin last Sunday night. I left the theater feeling disappointed, angry, a little disgusted even. On and off all day Monday and Tuesday, I tried to come up with something to write about the show, but couldn't figure out a way to approach my critique without sounding whiny and negative and making it all about me and my utopian dreams dying.

I have to start by saying that part of the difficulty of knowing how to write about Tim's show is that it's sort of a rule with me to be careful about slagging another artist. It's a hard life, and I feel like we should support each other. But part of supporting each other is being willing to call each other on our bullshit, right?

So I mulled over my thoughts all day yesterday, and I'm still not sure if I have something to say that really holds together, but I'm gonna share some thoughts.

It is not accidental that I see the thread of this show reaching back to Tim's work in the late 80s. He makes frequent reference to his status as one of the NEA 4. He mentioned that his first Austin appearance was at the Vortex Theater, some 25 years ago. And he has been wearing essentially the same costume the whole time (tank top, shorts, black Doc Martens, i.e., ACT UP drag, 1988). I suspect he does it deliberately in order to suggest some continuity in his work and in its relationship to the gay rights movement, to suggest that our struggle follows a continuous thread; but maybe that's just what he's comfortable wearing on stage. What it does for me, and maybe for anyone who's been here for the long haul, is to emphasize what has changed, what has aged: Tim's hair has gone gray, he's grown thick around the middle, his skin has lost elasticity. I've experienced all those changes in my body too, which I think is why I had such a personal, emotional response to the show. Since I felt such solidarity with Tim and the activism his work was a part of 20 years ago, my response to the show on Sunday made me question what my politics meant back then and what they mean now. Tim's politics have grown soft along with his muscle tone, and that feels like a betrayal.

Maybe I'm projecting something onto Tim's work that was never there. It's been a long time, I should go back and read the earlier stuff. My memory tells me he was, we were, calling for something more radical than what Tim is asking for now: that is, so-called marriage equality, in other words, asking to be let in the gate. I thought we were demanding that the wall be broken down, that possibilities be expanded. I know that's what I was fighting for. But maybe Tim was always just begging for his entitlement and it just seemed more radical back then. Was the whole gay rights movement only about demanding what we felt entitled to? That's what sickens me.

For work that purports to be about politics, Tim's political commentary is not at all sharp; it is even incoherent at times. He makes offhand reference to the immorality of Bush's war in Iraq, but a few minutes later he complains that American soldiers, whom he paints in heroic terms, are kicked out of the military because they are homosexual. No indication at all of any contradiction or irony in the juxtaposition of these facts.

I think the most off-putting aspect of the show is the same thing that I find off-putting about most LGBT activism of the last few years, and about liberal politics in general lately, the assumption that "of course we all agree. Of course we all believe that gay marriage is a civil right and that it should be the main focus of our movement." It's a smug sort of California arrogance, an expectation of consensus, an attitude among privileged people who somehow can't imagine that many people's lives are not exactly like theirs. The message of The Lay of the Land is so mainstream, so conservative, so normative, it might as well be a commercial for the Human Rights Campaign.

He begins the show by reminding us that on election day in 2008, a majority of Californians voted "to take away our civil rights." It ends with a sort of paean to American democracy and a plea that the U.S. government grant Tim and his husband full citizenship. He frets that he might have to move to Australia because the U.S. won't let his immigrant husband stay here because they're not really married. Poor thing.

Is this what the anger and creativity of my generation is reduced to? Are we really that tired and slack that all we want is to file joint tax returns and be left alone with our American dream, just like the straight people? If this is where my generation has ended up, with this hobbled, compromised vision of what our lives can be, I reject it.


Tommy Glass.

How strange to know that J.D. Salinger is dead now. I guess everyone is gonna say it this week, but me too. Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey changed my life. Not so much because I recognized myself in them but because they blew wide open my notion of what art could be. I had never imagined that art could be so sad and puzzling. I loved the Glass family because they were so fucked up.

For a few weeks or months around 1990, I dated a guy whose name was Tommy Glass. I never knew much about him, never met his friends or family, and I imagined that he was one of Salinger's Glasses, maybe a child of one of the Glass siblings.

I met Tommy in the Ramble in Central Park. He was movie star handsome, tall and dark-haired with a bitter sense of humor. We didn't have sex in the park but passed each other as we were both leaving and he flashed me a smile. He invited me home. He lived in his grandmother's apartment on the Upper West Side. I'm not sure where the grandmother was, but the apartment was still filled with her things, dark antique furniture and damask curtains, doilies.

We never went out anywhere when we got together. I met him at his apartment, we had sex, and then we ate ice cream in bed. Edie's, back when it was a local brand. He was aggressive in bed, talked about opera a lot, didn't have a job as far as I could tell.

He didn't call for a few weeks once, and then he did, and he told me that he had joined SCA (Sexual Compulsives Anonymous). His sponsor told him that because he had met me in a public cruising spot, he should stop seeing me. But he said we could get together again if we met somewhere besides his apartment, like say a restaurant, so that our meeting was not just for sex. We could then go to his apartment and make out, but we had to stop short of actual sex. It was sort of a reenactment of the beginning of our relationship, this time more chaste.

So we met at the coffee shop on his corner, had a quick coffee or bowl of soup or something, then went up to his apartment. The only rule (according to him) was that we couldn't take off our underwear. Which really just made it hotter. Seriously, try it some time. And then ice cream.

Every time I left his apartment, he would walk me downstairs. (He had impeccable manners.) But if I started to step out on to the stoop, he would pull me back into the vestibule to kiss me goodbye. I didn't for a long time understand why he was doing this, but then I realized that he was afraid for us to be seen kissing. I found it irritating. I was very Queer Nation back then. I started to take longer and longer to return his calls, and eventually he stopped calling.

Months later, one morning when I was running to the corner for cigarettes and milk, stinky and bleary-eyed, I ran smack into him on the sidewalk. His black hair was combed straight back, his teeth were bright white, his blue eyes sparkled, he was every bit as sexy as ever. He was with a friend, they'd come downtown for brunch. He was exuberant, thrilled to see me, and told me that he had just been accepted to Tulane law school and was moving to New Orleans in a few weeks.

I wished him good luck. He grabbed me and kissed me long and hard on the mouth, right there on First Avenue on a Saturday morning, and then he walked away with his friend and I stood there with my pint of milk and pack of Marlboro Lights.

I google Tommy Glass every once in a while, but as you can imagine it's a pretty common name.

Supreme Court Freak Out.

People are freaking out about the Supreme Court decision. Rightly, I think. I was trying to make the case last night during a dinner-table conversation that the decision may in some way be a positive thing, because it throws the issue in front of our faces, makes us all think hard about whether or not we have the political system we want.

Granted it's a nightmare to contemplate the real-world effect of unregulated contributions, the power it gives huge corporations over our political process, but I have to say I have some sympathy with the libertarian stance, the attitude that it's always bad to restrict political speech.

And, let's be real. The McCain-Feinhold reforms have been in place for a while now, and have they really made a dent in corporate influence over elections? In a practical sense, I don't think they amount to much more than false reassurance. Corporations will find ways around regulations, we know that.

Like most, I've been reading a lot of articles about this stuff for the last few days, and, though I've learned a lot, I have to admit I'm in over my head. But the more I read, the less convinced I am that the right way to deal with this problem is by limiting corporate contributions to campaigns. I like the idea of requiring disclosure. ("I'm so-and-so, the CEO of such-and-such, and I approve this message.") And I've always liked the idea of public financing of elections as a way to sidestep the issue and make elections more fair.

Here's one of the more interesting articles I've read in the last few days.

A Few Impressions of the Haiti Telethon.

I'm usually very anti-Auto-Tune because I think it kills the performance. But sometimes a performance needs to be put out of its misery.



Justin Timberlake and a Smurf squeeze to see if there's any blood left in this poor Leonard Cohen song. (Not much, apparently.)



And then there's Mary J. Blige. Maybe I was so moved by this because Kate McGarrigle died this week and she was often associated with this great and beautiful Stephen Foster song, but wow. Sublime and brilliant, I say.

Throw It All Away and Start Over?

This essay -- I found it via Andrew Sullivan -- was a slap in the face, in a good way. Here's the pith, but the whole thing is worth reading:
"The best thing that could happen to poetry is to drive it out of the universities with burning pitch forks. Starve the lavish grants. Strangle them all in a barrel of water. Cast them out. The current culture, in which poetry is written for and supported by poets has created a kind of state-sanctioned poetry that resists innovation. When and if poetry is ever made to answer to the broader public, then we may begin to see some great poetry again – the greatness that is the collaboration between audience and artist."
I don't know much about the world of poetry, but as I was reading this essay I kept thinking how you could easily replace poets and poetry with artists and art.

My painting teacher at Parsons, Regina Granne -- a great painter, whose teaching influenced me deeply in countless ways -- told us in no uncertain terms that art was an elite activity for an elite audience. (She could be brutal; she used to say, "Your parents will never understand.") But Regina made gorgeous, figurative, very accessible, paintings that most certainly have a lot to offer a non-specialist audience.

Personally, I go back and forth. I grew to hate the world of art school/foundation grants/academia, etc. that many of my friends at Parsons pursued. I don't blame anyone for trying to navigate that world -- it's the only way to make a living as a painter or sculptor these days. But the kind of thinking and talking and writing about art that's required to get attention and to prosper in that world makes me want to barf. It breeds artists who are very good at talking about art, not necessarily so great at making it. (The reason this is on my mind right now is because a couple nights ago I went to an "artist's talk" at a museum here in Austin. The artist was charming and smart, showed us slides and talked about things that inspire her, talked about "my process," all in a way that might lead you to believe her work would be fascinating. But the work was total crap. In my opinion.)

But, on the other hand, I understand the desire to make and enjoy work of a level of complexity and sophistication that the hoi polloi will not appreciate. ("Your parents will never understand.") I think the trick is to make work which does both things. Which connects with the crowd but offers additional pleasures to a more sophisticated audience. Artists like Picasso or Dali come to mind.

I think of Matthew Barney as a great example of an artist who is incredibly talented, ambitious, and interesting, but most of whose work is cavalier and deadly opaque to anyone who isn't primed to rave about it just because of who he is and which art world institutions have bestowed their seal of approval on him. I often wonder, when I look at his work (especially the films), what he might be capable of if he were subjected to different expectations. If, instead of being stroked and pampered by that clique, what if he had to respond to a general audience scratching its head and saying, "Okay, it's kind of interesting, but it's way too long, and what the hell does it mean?" I think he might do amazing things.

Ka-Ching!

I got my settlement check today! The teller said the funds will be available at midnight tonight. I made a list for tomorrow:

1) pay credit card bills
2) pay back J the money he loaned me last month
3) renew the CSA membership
4) order spices (I buy spices bulk from a shop I love in Denver)
5) get a haircut
6) take my boyfriend out for dinner

I feel like white trash that won the lottery.

Mrs. Johnson's Donuts.

Last night after the show, a group of us went to Mrs. Johnson's because it's right around the corner from the theater. (Okay, well, we didn't go because it's right around the corner from the theater; we went to Mrs. Johnson's because we wanted donuts, whatever.)

I couldn't decide whether to get 1 or 2, because, really, 1 donut is plenty, and I could be an adult for once in my life; but they're only 55 cents and, c'mon, 1 donut?? who ever has 1 donut? So I ordered 2. But -- and this is the great thing about Mrs. Johnson's and I don't know why it's always a surprise because it happens every single time, but it is -- no matter how many donuts you order, they always put them in the bag or the box, hand it to you, and then hand you 1 extra one. Just so you have one to hold and touch. And scarf down while you're waiting for your change.

There must have been some kind of divine intervention, because I managed to save one of them for breakfast this morning. They say your body will tell you what it needs, and my body told me it needs a donut.

What Is My Obligation?

M and I met a group of friends last night at BearBQ at Rusty Spurs, J and D and A and a big group of girls. The name might suggest a room full of fat hairy men eating burgers, but the crowd was more diverse. It was packed and fun and not too cold, so with a little help from a few of those tall gas heaters everyone could be out on the patio.

We talked about the Senate election in Massachusetts and how we're all just weary of trying so hard to hold onto the heady optimism we felt when Obama was elected. My friend D said that if the health care bill doesn't pass, he's ready to emigrate. He's sick of the whole thing. How many times have we all told ourselves and our friends just that? Ever since Reagan was elected, we've been saying to each other, "If [blank] happens, I'm leaving." D has spent the last few summers in Mexico and loves it there.

Very tentatively, because I don't know much about Mexican politics and government beyond what I read in American media, I asked if it would be any better there. I wondered if, even with all our frustrations with American government, it isn't at least more stable and less corrupt here than in Mexico. At least here, things that would be remarkable in many countries happen without fail, like for instance the peaceful passing of government from one party to another after an election.

I'm not one of those who believe that despite its flaws the U.S. is better than anywhere else, but I have for the most part always believed in the potential of American democracy for bringing out the best possible kind of society. I've always believed that as we keep working on it and stay vigilant, it gets better and better. ("The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.")

But my faith has been rocked hard by this story confirming the details of the absolutely horrifying things our government is doing. I'm reading Günther Grass's memoir, Peeling the Onion, in which he tries to come to terms with his membership in the SS as a teenager in Nazi Germany. At a time when lots of average folks knew what the Nazis were doing, lots of average folks didn't do much to stop it, and we smugly condemn them. "Good Germans". But what am I doing?

I know that any pontificating I do comes from a place of relative safety and privilege. Though you wouldn't know it from my income these day, I have some tenuous claim to being a member of the privileged class, at least as long as I hide my sexuality. (But in this age of no privacy I'm fooling myself if I believe I can hide that.) For now, unless the Tea Baggers take over, I may be safe. I will probably never be one of the tortured. But what is my obligation, knowing these crimes are being committed by my government?

It's hard to imagine why our elected representatives are not expressing the level of outrage these revelations call for. The reins of government are peacefully passed back and forth, but is that only because they're being passed back and forth among essentially the same people? Are we fooling ourselves, and how much? Knowing what we know about Bush and Cheney's war crimes, and our system's apparent inability to acknowledge and condemn the crimes, I wonder how it can be possible any more to assume the best of our government.

Away We Go.

I just watched a really wonderful movie called Away We Go. I had this film sort of on my radar a while back -- I think I saw a trailer for it which mentioned it was written by Dave Eggers, one of my favorite writers. And the cast includes Allison Janney, Catherine O'Hara, etc., lots of my favorite actors. Then I think it disappeared, or maybe it was never released in Austin, I'm not sure, but then M, the guy I've been seeing -- I've called him my new boyfriend a couple times recently when talking about him to other friends, such a heavy word, but we've been spending a lot of time together now for several weeks, so what else do you call that? more on that topic later, I'm sure! -- M recommended the film to me and I put it at the top of J's and my Netflix queue.

Much of the conversation with the director (Sam Mendes), the cast, and others interviewed in the "making of" mini-doc on the DVD was about how the story is all about notions of home and family. And I guess it is. (The outline of the plot is that a couple is expecting a baby and they go on a trip to several places with the intention of finding a good place to move and raise their child.)

But for me, the story seemed to be much more about how life is filled with nearly unbearable sadness and that the most we can hope for is that we will have someone to lean on and help us get through it. Which I think is what all of Dave Eggers' writing is about, and which is pretty much my philosophy of life, which I guess is why I love Dave Eggers.

I want to write a bit more about the story, in relation to politics, culture, etc., but I will save that for another post. For now, I think I just want to recommend the film and not say too much about it. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who might want to watch it. It's a beautifully written and acted film, very funny and touching. Watch it! (Don't be fooled or put off by the very Juno-like feel of the graphics. It's a much more interesting story than Juno.)

Finally!

Rachel Maddow makes my day. My friend CN told me about this interview, and I can't remember the last time I was so delighted by TV news. I know I'm a broken record with this issue, but for some reason it galls me, the ignorance of recent history in the gay rights movement. Honestly I don't even think it's that the gay rights movement has taken such a hard right turn in recent years that bothers me as much as the fact that everyone talks about "marriage equality" (don't even get me started on how much I hate that term -- about as much as "pro-life") like it's a progressive cause. If they're going to sign on to this reactionary agenda, at least be clear about what it is.

Maybe the best thing that will come out of the Prop 8 trial is that we will finally be able to straighten out the rhetorical mess. (It occurs to me that perhaps, if the gay marriage people had been honest all along about how conservative their agenda is, they would have made more progress with it by now. Hm.)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy



I said in a comment to CN's facebook post regarding this interview:
The one consolation is that it makes for a very interesting era for queer politics, which excites the history geek in me. What if the right splits into a religious fanatic wing and a traditional conservative/libertarian wing (which looks sort of likely). The gay marriage people will find themselves allied with the traditional conservatives. Will they be able to stand it? Will the gay rights movement fracture as well, with more tradition-minded gays getting married and being subsumed into mainstream America and the rest of us going off to create a new sexual minority movement of some kind?

Our History.

I've been reading Rick Jacobs' excellent live-blogging of the Prop 8 trial in San Francisco (Perry v. Schwarzenegger). It's a shame this trial isn't being televised -- not, as so many have said, because it will expose the opposition's argument as a sham; I guess I'm cynical enough to believe that people's opinions about marriage are pretty well entrenched by now -- but because the plaintiff's side is presenting an amazing, concise history of the institutional discrimination against homosexual people in the United States. Most queer people don't know this stuff, let alone heteros. Learn your history, people!

Of course, Anita Bryant came up, and I was curious to see if the famous pie-in-the-face incident was on youtube. It is.



But then I found something even better. A short film, obviously made by stoners, but intended to prevent kids from trying drugs. Delicious.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, To The Rescue.

I started to blog about this Harry Reid thing yesterday, because it was just so outrageous that anyone would believe his comments about Obama were equivalent to Trent Lott's comments about Strom Thurmond. But I scrapped it. They are so obviously not the same, and anyone who doesn't understand that is playing stupid. Or is stupid.

So, thank god for my favorite blogger, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is infinitely smarter and more patient than I:
Leaving aside political cynicism, this entire affair proves that the GOP is not simply still infected with the vestiges of white supremacy and racism, but is neither aware of the infection, nor understands the disease. Listening to Liz Cheney explain why Harry Reid's comments were racist, was like listening to me give lessons on the finer points of the comma splice. This a party, rightly or wrongly, regarded by significant portions of the country as a haven for racists. They aren't simply having a hard time re-branding, they don't actually understand how and why they got the tag.
I don't like talking to Republicans for the same reason I don't want to teach 1st grade. I get bored and frustrated having to break everything down, simplify every concept beyond recognition, and still see in their faces that they have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.

Still Trying.

There hasn't been any subbing work at all since before Christmas, but I keep checking every day. And I applied for a full-time position teaching high school speech and theater. I should know about that one this week some time. I think I'd be great at that.

Not sure how I missed this op-ed in last week's Times. And here are some letters in response. I've been subbing and looking for a teaching job, and suddenly most of my friends are teachers, so I've been having a lot of conversations about teaching lately.

I disagree with this writer's gripe about the number of days teachers take off. Almost every time I have a conversation with a non-teacher about teaching, he or she gets around to saying that teachers have a pretty cushy job because they get summers off. For what teachers get paid and for the level of stress, exertion, physical danger, number of extra unpaid hours they put in every week, and the amount of their own money they spend on supplies, a few personal days and summers off every year are the least we can do.

Other than that, though, I agree with most of what the writer says.

More On Football.

My last post started a great conversation, most of which migrated to facebook. My friend M, whose status update during the Texas game the other night spurred me to write my original post, posted a note, an essay, on facebook about her relationship with football fandom. (I think if you're not M's facebook friend, you won't be able to read it.)

This is terribly oversimplifying what was a long, thoughtful rumination, but M's main point is that the joy of being a football fan is that it's fun (and maybe therapeutic?) to be a part of a big crowd all enjoying the same thing. She also made the point -- and this was new to me and illuminating -- that a big part of the fun of being a fan is enjoying one's own performance. It's fun to scream at the TV, to celebrate or commiserate with co-workers the day after a big game, etc. It's a thrill to work yourself up into hysterics, to scream and cry. I get that. It's like fainting at an Elvis concert.

My friend C says she loves football for all the theater that goes on around the game, and she sent me these amazing clips. I love this stuff -- and you don't need any specialized knowledge to get what's going on here. I would've been much more into football if they'd had stuff like this at my high school, but I would probably have left after halftime:





So what is football? It's not just theater, not just spectacle, entertainment. American Idol is hugely popular but still doesn't inspire the fervor that football does. It's not an athletic contest. The Olympics is an athletic contest, and, though people get passionate about it for a week every year, there's not the kind of communal frothing at the mouth you see at a football game. People get passionate for sure about some Olympic events and athletes, but it doesn't even come close to the mass scale of the craziness of football fans.

The only thing I can think of that sets football apart, or above, is the risk of injury, the physical abuse that is tolerated (encouraged? expected? demanded?) by the spectators. As M points out:
Training your body to run really hard into another human being has no athletic benefit whatsover. Players get really hurt and except for the small percentage of them who can make a career out of it (and even those guys, but that involves a longer explanation) are totally exploited (even if they do so willingly and are convinced, at the time, that they are having the greatest time of their lives). Athletic departments, TV networks, and advertisers make billions of dollars off the backs (and shoulders and knees and legs)of teenagers who, if you were to really tally it up, receive very little compensation.
It will take a much more knowledgeable scholar of theater and sports to follow the threads from gladiator games to American football, but it seems to me that the human sacrifice element of the game is essential. Without it, nobody would be interested, right?

Football.

My friend M last night in her facebook status update wrote something like "I can't believe this is happening," and I knew right away that it had something to do with football. This time of year in Texas (like during the World Series in New York) I just sort of bear down and wait for people to stop talking about it. (I don't care if they won or lost, just please let it be over.)

From what I understand there was a game last night and Texas lost. People are sad. Other people, obviously, are happy. My first response is something along the lines of "Oh, please, how old are you?" Sports bring out my ungenerous side. I just do not want to hear about it. I can totally channel my mother at the dinner table when I was a little kid railing about how much time and money is spent in schools on sports compared to academics and the arts. And now that I live in a town dominated by a huge university and most of my friends are somehow connected with academia, and I live in a state obsessed with college football, I hear those conversations again. A lot. (The UT football coach makes $5 million a year. Justify that.)

We could trace my negative attitude back to scenes of schoolyard humiliation, gender anxiety, it's all very interesting stuff, but as I've gotten older I've actually made a lot of progress in cultivating a more open and curious attitude toward the sports thing. It's so fucking important to so many people, it has to be interesting in some way. I want to know what it's about. It's like video games and comic books and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Such a big deal for so many people that I think to be more versed in them would deepen my understanding of the world in some way, so I try to find out, read, ask questions, observe. I try. But it doesn't take long before I'm so lost and bored I think my eyes are going to explode. (The fact that all of the subcultures I mentioned above are traditionally male is not lost on me.)

So. Today everyone is going to be talking about what it was that happened last night. I think, okay I'm going to look it up and at least find out what it was that happened. Not that I have any desire to really engage in a conversation about the game but I at least want to have some very basic context for all the remarks I will overhear. Give me the broad strokes. I go to the New York Times sports section and read the story. Texas lost, that's the gist. And I should have stopped reading there because by the second paragraph I'm totally lost:
"On Texas’ fifth snap of the Bowl Championship Series title game Thursday night, Alabama defensive lineman Marcell Dareus leveled Texas quarterback Colt McCoy with a punishing hit on an option play."
What the hell are they talking about? I'm right back in fifth grade gym class. We're playing flag football; there was never any discussion of the rules, yet I'm expected to know them. It doesn't get any better: "In an era in which spread offenses have come to dominate college football, Alabama’s claim to a 13th national title comes with a game won squarely between the tackles." I get the same feeling reading Foucault. There's nothing unusual or difficult about the sentences grammatically, and the words are familiar. But its meaning is completely opaque to me.

So I'm wondering this: Is there any other field besides sports that is covered in the mainstream media using such arcane jargon? It seems to me that a person who knew very little about, say, food, or politics, or theatre, could read a story about them in the Times and maybe he or she would have to look up a word or two but would be able to follow the story in a general way. Am I right? Since I know a bit about food, politics, and the arts, it's hard for me to judge, but after glancing at a few stories this morning it looks like subjects other than sports are written about in plain language aimed at a general reader, not a specialist. If that it true, then why?