Sing Me a Song

Social interactions have changed with the advent of iPods and other mp3 players--we're plugging into machines and losing connections to one another.

More and more often I'll sit and watch people walking on campus and be able to count only a rare few who aren't either plugged into their music (or on their cell phone-- but there's too much to say on cell phone and cell phone usage for this post, so more on this later). Granted, I have often been one of these very people (and when it comes to working out at the gym, I am still very much plugged in--but gym interactions seem to be of a whole other world--maybe more on this later, too, since I'm fascinated by the phenomenon of sweating while working out as cultural expression/communication). This makes me all the more thankful that I was recently able to enjoy some live music.

More specifically, last Monday I headed to Iota Club and Cafe in Arlington, VA to see Laura Tsaggaris, Adrianne, and Julie Loyd. (Thanks to v. for mentioning this event while we were watching Maryland's soccer team defeat George Mason.)

I've lived less than 10 minutes away from Iota for seven years now, but last Monday was only the second time I'd ever been there (the first time was more than 5 years ago when I saw Melissa Ferrick there). It's a damn shame, really, that that's been the case.

I'm glad, though, that I made it back there after all these years. The crowd was small, but we were definitely all fans, and you would have never known from the performances that Laura, Adrianne, and Julie each gave that they weren't playing for a fuller house.

I hadn't heard of any of these musicians before, but after meeting Laura briefly I wanted to lend what support I could. Besides, a quick google search showed that Julie Loyd had performed at some of the same venues as Brianna Lane, who's CD, Radiator, I picked up while wandering around Little Five Points in Atlanta, GA, so I figured the music would be something I could groove to; indeed, none of the three disappointed. The performances were lively, they connected to the audience well, and their passion for music was evident.

I sometimes forget how much I love live music until I'm sitting/standing there, feeling the music course through my body, being ever so attuned to the movement of the artist's hands and the vibrations of the guitar, and just finding myself in awe of the creation of art I'm witnessing. It's definitely a much different (and better) experience to watch music live (and with others) as opposed to simply enjoying it on my own while plugged in.

But, all this being said, if unlike me you don't have the fortune to see these folks in person, you should definitely check them out.

Find their stuff on CD Baby, an overall great place to get indie music:
Adrianne @ CD Baby
Julie Loyd @ CD Baby
Laura Tsaggaris @ CD Baby

(I personally went home that night with Tsaggaris' Proof, Adrianne's Sweet Mistake, and Loyd's All That You Ask For--and in addition to the art of the music, these CDs have plenty of art to offer in their packaging.)

Of course, you can also check out their myspace.com pages:
Adrianne on myspace
Julie Loyd on myspace
Laura Tsaggaris on myspace

"Queers" as/is a Noun

I spent years and years taking graduate courses on LGBTQ issues/theory outside of my home department (or via independent study), but this Fall my department is finally offering a topical course in this area. I'm a little sad that it's come now--when I'm past the point that I should be taking classes--but I am glad to see it (and other topical courses) being offered in my department.

I'm even more excited that the professor teaching the course has decided to try having a course blog because now I can eavesdrop on some of the class' conversations--definitely not as good as being there, but better than nothing.

Check out the syllabus for the course, entitled "Queers and Theory: willfully eccentric modes of being," or the class' blog yourself.

One of the recent questions posed to the class was "Why Queers and Theory rather than Queer Theory?"

In response to this prompt there was a lot of discussion about how the former suggested fluidity, boundary breaking, multiplicity, and a process of being.

When I saw this question, I quickly became fixated on "queers" as a noun.

While it did strike me that decoupling "queer" from "theory" opened up spaces of possibility for what "counts" as queer/theory, I just kept going back to "queers" as a noun that served as an identity marker for particular individuals.

Okay, okay...so part of my fixation on identities is most likely due to having recently read several essays in Identity Politics Reconsidered edited by Linda Martin Alcoff, Michael Hames-Garcia, Satya P. Mohanty, and Paula M.L. Moya (Palgrave, 2006).

Outside of that, I think I'm gravitating towards "queers" as a noun because: (1) it seems such the fashion currently to use "queer(s)" as a verb in a way that's almost becoming tiresome to me; and (2) "queers" as a noun foregrounds the people who not only write theory, but also (when not one in the same) the people who live/use/practice it, thereby collapsing any illusion that there ever was a distance between theory and practice.

"Queering" as a project of disrupting (hetero)normativity is certainly admirable, and I'd even go so far as to say at times necessary. I know I've definitely benefited from others doing the work of queering...challenging norms of not just sex and sexuality, but of so many realms of identity and beyond. Still, I worry about the (postmodern) tendency towards deconstruction decoupled from (re)construction, and the part that "queering" has played in maintaining this very dynamic.

I've always been rooted in/by my identities and by identity politics--I think because I came to know myself in, with, and through identities.

Has this been, and sometimes continues to be, difficult/challenging/problematic? Of course. That hasn't meant, however, that I've wanted to distance myself from those identities. In fact, if anything, it's had quite the opposite effect, making me want to hold identities closer.

Could it be that my reluctance to relinquish identities as such is a result of fear? Undoubtedly possibly. But this isn't a court of law, reasonable doubt doesn't lead to acquittal.

In any case, thinking of "queers" as a noun reaffirms my sense of self, and my soul. Instead of only always in the process of becoming, I also get to (just) be. Okay, so this is possibly backwards thinking in some folks' eyes since "becoming" is often understood (by myself included) as so much more fluid and progressive than "being". I fully acknowledge that there is power at play in who has the privilege to just "be." Still, I also think that it can be downright tiring to be in a perpetual state of "becoming," and frankly I'm tired of just that.

"Queers" as a noun is something I take up as a moment of rest for the weary.

(On a lighter note, "'queer' is a noun" is also my own play on the forthcoming book Butch is a Noun by S. Bear Bergman.)

Avoiding Southern Comfort

Despite having intentionally moved it up on my netflix queue so that I would get it sooner, for the last three weeks I’ve been avoiding Southern Comfort.

The first week I told myself it was because classes had started, and I was too busy with school. The second week I told myself it was because the summer television season finales were on, and I was spending my time watching those instead. The third week I knew I was just avoiding it, but told myself that I didn’t have to watch it if I didn’t want to--that the benefit of netflix was exactly that there were no due dates, and you could keep movies as long as you wanted.

Yesterday, I finally recognized that it was time—that if I waited until I was ready to watch it, then I might never see it. (Besides, just two days before I was telling a friend that she should follow her heart and despite her fear, take the risk of opening her heart, and it just didn’t feel right to not take my own advice. Okay, the circumstances aren’t really comparable, but the point was that we shouldn’t/couldn’t let fear keep us from living full lives.)

As a docudrama, Southern Comfort is far from the romantic comedies and action movies that I usually indulge in as part of my leisure viewing. In many ways, however, Southern Comfort would fit well into my Introduction to LGBT Studies course. I already assign texts about the medical discrimination faced by LGBTQ people, and this movie certainly sheds more light on the subject (especially in its “special features” section). I’ll definitely recommend it to students this semester, and seriously consider adding it to my syllabus for next semester. I don’t know, though, that I feel in a space to watch it with students…to teach/discuss it…

It feels too close to home (literally) and too raw to talk about cancer, and about death and dying. As I watched the film, it struck me that that’s exactly what the film was—the chronicling of the last year of Robert Eads’ life, the chronicling of his dying. Don’t get me wrong, it was a beautifully done film and certainly earned its rewards. I just mean to say that at the heart of the film is not only Eads’ life, but his death.

The film opens up in “Spring” when Eads gathers together friends and family for an Easter celebration. He is clearly joyed to have his friends come to his land and to cook for them, and be in community with those he loves and has made his family. His friends are certainly happy to see him, but it’s also clear that they’ve made this time to spend with him because he is dying.

While there are moments where Eads speaks about his cancer on camera, and where his friends do the same, I don’t readily recall scenes where they talk about it amongst themselves. What more easily comes to mind are confessional type revelations spoken directly into the camera. In this way, it’s not so much a film about cancer, but about the family (biological, and perhaps more importantly chosen) that gathers around and the love shared in the time left, every moment precious.
I guess in the end, while it is still about the words finally being said that for so long had been left unsaid, more importantly it’s about the actions taken--the being there--that counts the most.

(I wonder then, what am I doing here.)

Violating Assumptions

One of the very first assignments I had to do for Katie King, one of my all-time favorite professors, was to make a list of my assumptions that I recognized as being violated as I read through our initial set of texts.

Doing this "Violated Assumptions" assignment definitely surprised me--despite the ways in which I might be more conscious of my surroundings and the way in which I exercise power and are subject to others' powers, still I had assumptions...some relatively benign, others less so.

It was a great way to start off a class because it was about challenging ourselves to think about the way in which we were seeing, interpreting, understanding, and making meaning of things. That's definitely one of the goals I try to accomplish in my introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Studies course.

Lately, I've been finding myself the subject of others' violated assumptions. Primarily, several people of late have found it surprising that I identify so adamantly as Catholic and that I've been regularly attending mass.

Just yesterday an old friend who I hadn't spoken to in quite some time caught me on my cell while I was en route to church. Having found the Lincoln Memorial Bridge closed, my most direct path to DC was blocked, and so I welcomed the chance to catch up with her as I was re-routed around Virginia. When she asked what I was doing and I told her that I was driving on my way to church, she didn't mask her surprise. She asked if there was a holiday that she wasn't aware of, or some other special occasion that was the cause for my sojourn. I told her there wasn't, that I've been going to mass as regularly as I've been able to lately. More surprise on her end.

It's funny, though, because you see, back in January of 2005 I finally admitted that I was powerless over alcohol and realized that my life had become unmanageable and joined the program. In the beginning I made time in my schedule to attend meetings twice a week (if not more on occasion), and even went so far as to rearrange my work schedule so that I could go to meetings on Sunday. She never found this strange (then again, she shouldn't have since my relationship to her and my participation in the program were related). Any how, I eventually got my 30-day chip, my 6-month chip, and reached my 1 year anniversary. Some things had changed, but others hadn't, and didn't look like they were any time soon. Meetings were nice (better than not going to meetings at all), but I also knew that whatever I still needed to make the changes I needed to make weren't happening in the rooms.

That's one of the things that brought me back to church. I wanted more than just a spiritual program, I wanted Church...a Catholic church. For a while I did both, meetings and mass. There were things about both that were similar--the routine, the ritual, the coming together with others, the focus on life and what's good in it.

Eventually, I found mass was more centering, more satisfying, and just overall more helpful, and eventually stopped going to meetings, and stuck with mass. It definitely helped that I felt more "home" in mass...more folks of color, wider age range, more diverse gender expression, etc. Well, and it definitely mattered that going to mass helped me feel more connected to me--particularly my racial/ethnic heritage as a Filipino Catholic, and to my biological family (well, okay, primarily to my mother, but that still counts!).

I guess I'm not really all that surprised that talking about being a queer Catholic violates others' assumptions. I don't think we hear often enough in our LGBTQ communities about religious LGBTQ people who follow/practice "traditional" religions--that is, I definitely hear about more LGBTQ people attending Unitarian Universalist and Metropolitan Community Churches than Catholic ones (and for understandable reasons).

Those churches are great (and so are others, too), but as I've always said to others, I'm Catholic, and I don't want to be otherwise--to do so would feel such a betrayal to my racial identity. One of these days I'll have a better explanation for it...but for now all I can say is that my Roman Catholicism is so enmeshed with how I understand myself as Filipino that I can't imagine being otherwise.

Besides, my Catholicism has room enough for queer, feminist me--something I've seen evidence of more and more which I didn't necessarily have access to in my youth when I'd whine and fake sleeping to try and avoid going to mass with my folks.

(Now, if I could just better see how to make room for myself as a Filipino vegetarian, I'd be set!)

Strange Bedfellows

It's only the second week of the semester (and last week wasn't even a full week), and already I can feel myself starting to get bogged down by school and work. Not necessarily in a bad way--I'm enjoying being back in the classroom, I have been reading some interesting texts in relationship to my dissertation, and working has been fine for the most part. Still, there are several people/friends who I've been out of touch with the last couple of weeks who are due calls, or email at the very least. (umm...yeah...but instead I'm here blogging)

In any case, not wanting to be too dowdy so soon into the semester when I got a text msg from someone inviting me out for Rock Bottom's $1 pints happy hour Wednesday, I decided to join in. It was definitely an interesting night...interesting in the sense that I don't quite know if it was a good or bad night, but it was certainly eventful.

The person who I got the invite from is someone I used to work with and know casually. Her and her wife are really good about texting folks whenever they go out to happy hours and/or to clubs, which is useful when you feel like going out, but don't necessarily want to go alone. For a couple, I think they're pretty social (although sometimes they still do that hole-up-at-home thing) and they definitely have a wide range of friends.

It's this wide range of friends thing that struck me hard last night. The other folks they gathered for happy hour were all nice--we exchanged stories, had some laughs, and of course lots of beer. It crossed my mind during the evening, however, that these are probably people I wouldn't ordinarily meet/know on my own, and possibly wouldn't even want to meet/know. And, at more than one moment, I thought we certainly had collected a table of strange bedfellows.

One on hand, it felt good to just be out with other people. But that didn't stop me from feeling all the ways in which I was different... Appreciating difference is definitely something I see as important, but last night made me think about the lines I draw and that are drawn by others around differences.

In my introduction to LGBT Studies course, I make it a point early in the semester to stress that LGBT Studies is for everyone, not just LGBT people. Similarly, I stress in my introduction to Women's Studies courses that WMST is not only for women. And, it's always a huge component of my classes that we look at all kinds of dimensions of diversity, and work towards acknowledging, respecting, and seeing those differences as powerful.

Still, I found myself at happy hour thinking about how much more fun it would be if it were a gathering of LGBTQ people of color who were at the very least anti-sexist and anti-racist (unlike who I was actually there with).

I've heard of some folks of color saying that they were "done" with white folks, and that they weren't interested in getting to know any, or maintaining any kind of personal relationship with white folks. It makes sense to me why they would, and how they could say such things. I haven't (yet) taken such a stance.

Actually, it's kind of interesting...I've been asked by a couple of white folks in the last six months if I did take such a stance. Apparently, to some I come off in a way that might suggest as much...

In any case, I guess I just feel like my head's still reeling a bit (no, not from all the beer), but from the company I was keeping. I want to be able to hang with folks who I share some interests with, but they don't necessarily have to be interested in everything I'm interested in. Yet, at the same time, I also don't want to spend my time with just anybody--and by this I've just realized I mean I don't want to spend my time and energy with people who are unabashedly and unself-consciously sexist, racist, xenophobia, homophobic, etc. Well, not for fun, anyway.