12/11/07

It Feels All Right

Talking about the continuous present as a gay utility in writing. For instance: Gertrude Stein, Kathy Acker, David Wojnarowicz, Andy Warhol. Smattering of postmodern queer writers using it. The thing about being here all the time is that it doesn't allow for the hierarchy of gendered identities. No past or future means you can't really subject anyone's genitals to psychic torture. Or, you can but it has to be a different thing.

Anyhow, thinking a lot about the continuous present as a tool for queering language and making gay ideas. The thing about trying to "get my life together" is it revolves around a continuous present. I cannot depend on my upcoming vacation to fix everything. Nor can I blame the boyfriend who broke my heart at sixteen for everything bad about me. I'm trying not to smoke cigarettes and I forgot the thing about quitting.

The thing about quitting is that you have to keep quitting.

I read a really inspiring quote from Wynne Greenwood a long time ago about coming out, and coming out again and again. The thing about getting my life together is that I have to keep getting it together and I will not, in fact, have anything to show for it. That I have to make a better decision, and then I have to keep making better decisions. Make decisions all the time.




This is on a list of songs that:

a) I know all the words to and

b) Will always make me feel better




1 comment:

Anonymous said...

don't you think the continuous past is a more typically queer mode of creating and perceiving? camp, for instance, relies entirely on a deep, obsessive knowledge of the past. queerness, to me, has always implied constantly reliving and restructuring past trauma.

in fact, the myth of the isolated present, unhindered by the past, is a typically heterosexist/masculinist response to queer art. i.e.: "why can't you just chill out? no one's attacking you right now." (see "They Want Us To Make A Symphony Out Of The Sound Of Women Swallowing Their Own Tongues.")

i'm feeling you, but i'm just sayin!

xoxo
dan