spring 2022
t-shirts, silkscreening ink
A big tee shirt is also a meaningful shelter. It is a good place to seek refuge and soothe dysphoria, as it's not intrinsically my body that makes me feel out of body but certain eyes.
At recess I would watch the boys play on the soccer field. I saw them recklessly running and screaming and hurtling through the air and around in the mud. I wanted to join, but I was stuck on the grassy hill.
When I run, or I’m caught in a gust of wind, I can feel air flowing around me. I can feel the drip of cotton kissing skin. The sensation of touch corresponds with the movement of the air, the earth around me, like trees swaying, my muscles moving, my heart beating.
I would fantasize in my stillness of this fearless movement towards one another and towards the earth. I retreated into this fantasy as it unfolded before me and as I traveled into boys bodies, I sat very still and I simmered and I seethed and I waited.
The excerpts on the shirts are pulled from the The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell, first published in 1977.
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‘NOTHING CAN DEFEAT THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH
The fairies know that the earth will not tolerate the men much longer. The earth scarred and gouged and stripped and bombed will deny life to the men in order to stop them. The fairies have left the men’s reality in order to destroy it by making a new one.’
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‘Romantic love, the last illusion, keeps us alive until the revolutions come.’
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‘The rule is: You get more warm fuzzies by giving away all your own warm fuzzies. Keeping your warm fuzzies to yourself results in a large accumulation of cold prickles.’
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‘Heavenly blue worried all the time. He worried about the bills and about the roof that needed repairing and the strange men who always watched the house and what the neighbors might do next and about Hollyhock’s unhappiness. He worried most of all that he would go mad. His worrying got the bills paid and the roof fixed and grove the the men away and calmed the neighbors down and helped Hollyhock be happier. And finally his worrying drove him mad. It was the madness of looking inward and being afraid. There had never been enough love and warmth around him and he thought he had gradually dried up inside. He wanted out but he did not know where out was. Lilac and Pinetree and Moonbeam and Loose Tomato and Hollyhock Gathered. They held Heavenly Blue in their arms for days. They let him cry and stare and slobber and scream and be silent. They paid the bills and looked after the roof and watched the street for strange men and talked to the neighbors and Hollyhock kept himself happy. Their house filled up with comfort and routine and gladness until Heavenly Blue could no longer resist and became response-able again.’
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While these exceprts touch on various disperate themes in the book they stay true to the overall arc of fantasy, loving community, and mutual aid as a means of protection and revolt.
In Colorado Springs, I danced for the first time — like really really danced like trashed around cathartically. I felt held and warm and like love was abundent and I could be really gay if I wanted to. I lived in the same house or just blocks away from my closest kin. And when I felt heavenly blue I was held. And I held my friends when they were heavenly blue. Dancing with my friends felt like the expressive explusion of energy I dreamed of when I was little. It was the love that I had dreamed of but never knew was possible.
In March of 2020 we all went home from school. I was creating this work in 2022 when I was about to disembark again from Colorado. In both departures, in both bouts of grief, the absence of community and the pain and heartache it left me I was reminded of my queer elders. In part this project is a feeble way to pay respect to the generation who was made sick, who had to watch their friends die and watch the communties they loved and died for fracture and disapear before their eyes. I want to pay respect to all those murdered by this motherfucking violent empire. I want to thank my queer elders everyday for fighting for this life. Long live the revolution and thank god for queer kinship.