Hold On, Wait a Moment … JK Rowling and the Natives
Hold On, Wait a Moment … JK Rowling and the Natives
Something is going on in the media and the blogosphere that as a native man I have to comment on. We’re talking about an author who has had tremendous success (and rightfully so – this post does not debate that) who has written a new work in the much beloved Potterverse world.
A recent letter from an academic, a Native American woman, has written, what I believe to be, a rather important letter to JK Rowling about the responsibility as an author to “get it right” when writing about a cultural/societal community.
You can read the initial letter to her here.
This has been picked up by the media – of which the Guardian in the UK has had an uproar from Potter fans coming to Jo’s defense. Yet, I say to you, they are woefully off the mark as to what is really in play here. They are blindly defending her (by and large) and attempting to obviate her from any culpability in writing about a specific Native American nation (yes, NATION – we still have some modicum of sovereignty in play here, folks). There is a growing concern from within the Native populace that something is sadly amiss here. Now, no one has seen the work, so it’s speculation at this point. But even so, the letter to Jo wasn’t accusatory (to my mind) but rather a – please tread carefully and consider what you, and your powerful writers voice, are saying to the world about any indigenous population.
For I’ll grant you, no matter where they are – what continent they exist on, ALL native populations are watching this.
Here is my two cents on the matter as a member of that community – I find I can’t sit by and NOT say something (this was my response at the Guardian UK website to those who were blindly defending Jo without considering what was really at play here):
Sorry I disagree with those that think writing fiction is some sort of “get out of jail free card” – the tone of the “letter” to Jo was not in a accusatory manner at all, rather a plea to be sensitive to another culture. How can anyone state that she did NOT do anything to misrepresent Native Americans or their culture? Just the broad use of Native Americans carries a disingenuous tone as we are a collective of various sovereign nations each with our own beliefs and societal mores. Are you from that culture to speak to what is offensive or not? As a native man, I interact with my community (both from my own nation/confederacy and others from abroad). I see the signs of continued oppression from within.
Authors are in the business of communication. Even Jo acknowledges this point herself in that documentary that was about her. When she was writing something new the documentary filmmaker prods her about it. She doesn’t want to say much under the point of “it’s still my world.” She knows the moment it is released it is no longer hers. The world’s readership has the right to absorb and reject what the work as to say. It’s all about communication.
I grant you as an author you can write whatever you want BUT be prepared for how others will perceive and respond. That is THEIR right to take in the works and respond to them. If there is a legitimate concern as to representation then that community has every right to say so. Authors are not immune to responsibility in what they write. They can surely stand by it, but at what cost? Alienating a community who feels misrepresented? Breaking down trust that an author sees them with disrespect?
When it comes to my community remember that #whiteprivilege has been the edict that has oppressed us and misrepresented us in all manner of writings – not just “academically” but in fictional literature (Hiawatha, much?).
Case in point: I am writing a story that involves my own native community. It is a story that on the surface looks like it is magic/witchcraft but it in reality is quantum mechanics in play. Yet because of the witchcraft metaphor, I am off-worlding it to an alternate universe because I am fully cognizant of how my people view witchcraft. To be respectful, I am alt-history and alt-universing it in a LIKE universe to divorce myself from our own reality. That is respectful of my own nation and its core beliefs. EVEN THOUGH IT IS FICTION. I wanted to represent the community and give them heroes that they could see beyond the trappings and identify with the characters.
Just because an author writes fiction, it does not obviate that the community you are writing about doesn’t have the right to say “hold on, wait a minute …” because while even Americans (and I realize I am giving them far too much credit here) may know the barest whispers about individual cultural systems in play with each nation, a kid in Romania may think that what’s there is an extrapolation of how it truly is. Why? Because Jo has rooted whatever she’s concocted in the real world (muggle vs. wizard). Therefore, the reality does play a factor (reality is a “character” in the stories she creates) so the “letter” to Jo from this community is merely reminding her that as a people we still are here, and we watch what’s being written about us (whether in fictional form or not).
Until Next Time …
SA C
When Worlds Collide
When Worlds Collide
Writing is a funny business. And by funny, I mean peculiar.
The reason I say this is that what any given writer writes about has to come from a place of either economics (wanting to survive by your writings), passion (a story that just won’t let its author go), or as a means of vindication (having your opinion heard on a given topic – a reasoning and establishing your point of view in a debate).
But therein is where it gets peculiar (at least to my way of thinking). I am solidly in the middle camp. I write from passion. I don’t give a fuck if it’s embraced. I’d like it to be, but it is not a requirement. I’ve said this before. I am a successful writer because I complete a project. I see it through. It may not find its audience until I am well and truly gone. But it’s out there – my voice among the collective. For all time, as they say, because nothing in the internet really goes away (save a cataclysmic alien invasion that wipes out our tech in favor of their own). Right?
I recently had such an experience come to light with my works. I am writing to explore the institutionalized forms of homophobia in competitive sports – in the case of Angels of Mercy, American high school football. It’s done fairly well, given I don’t expect it to be the next Friday Night Lights or something of that sort. For one, I don’t concentrate on the hetero-centrist bullshit that permeates nearly all of literature and media out there. Jesus, how our straight counterparts are so weak that they have to have so many stories written about them. True, there is a burgeoning interest in our stories, but let’s be honest, it’s still small by comparison. Given the latest study on the GLBT impression in media – we are still in the single digits by way of exposure in the mainstream.
Angels of Mercy – Phoenix In The Fire
Part of that I lay fully at the feet of my own queer community. A large swath of queer men don’t partake of books, TV or movies that focus on our lives to really make their financial impact heard in the mainstream. And when we do have something that speaks to us, about our lives as we live them (*cough* LOOKING *cough*), it is bashed by its own community for not being representational of the whole.
The Cast of HBO’s LOOKING
“We don’t live like that. Not everyone is in the bushes looking for a hook-up.”
True on both counts. Yet, it was bashed so harshly by those of us in the queer community that now it’s gone. Now we’re relegated to tongue-in-cheek facades of Ryan Murphy’s worlds (Glee took a major leap off the cliff after the third season, American Horror Story, while great, is definitely over the top, and if AHS was out there, then Scream Queens left the planet for queer representation years before it aired). Yet with Looking gone, another of our voices became stamped out. And we did it to ourselves. Rather than engage the producers and creatives behind that show (a show I happened to have loved) it was torn apart at the seams.
What is HBO or Showtimes take away? Queer storytelling that focuses on the queer characters don’t sell. Even to our own community.
(Read that last part again, in case you missed just how cutting that is to our own stories.)
That’s beyond pathetic. It’s self-annihilation, or a fucked up internalized homophobia to the nth degree, if you ask me. Self-inflicted. How fucked up is that?
I just recently watched, with my husband, Andrew Haigh’s Weekend.
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It was a brilliant and intense queer story. It opened up so many reasons why I loved Looking as I did. It did NOT have a happy ending. It just ended – leaving you to ponder what happened next. Did the boy left behind pursue his lover to the US? Or did he just simply give up? I LOVED that. I loved the not knowing. Allowing me to decide for myself how it all ended.
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I also want to see Lilting.
Jesus, that one looks like it will emotively crush me. I live for those works. I recently watched Ben Whishaw in London Spy. That one also rattled me a great deal. It was queer storytelling that was epic in how brilliant it twist and turned on a dime. Ben Whishaw was brilliant in that work as well. I love my queer men and their simple complicated lives. I love talking to other queer men about their lives and loves and losses. They hold me spellbound. They truly do. Their stories are far more potent or powerful because they exist in the face of often monumental adversity. I admire them. They are my romance. Every single one of them. Even when we don’t agree. I still love and admire them. How could I not? They are from different mothers, but they are my brothers nonetheless.
This is partially why I rail at romance tropes. Not enough is being done to write about us as we are. It’s why I can’t write those things. Not when there is so much more to talk about. I get that it’s writing to “hope” – well, romance as a genre doesn’t have the lock on hope. It’s also why I can’t get all gushy about Disney fairy tales (though I will say I was pleasantly surprised by Maleficent). Because they’ve applied solid romantic tropes to stories that had none of that in it. Look at all the works those sweet retellings are based on – there’s none of that happy ever after in the original works. Mother Goose and Brothers Grim were outright scare monsters of fictional storytelling. Nothing short of it.
But I’m a bit off topic here.
What I wanted to get to with this post, is that the crossroads of queer fiction (or as I’d like to now call it – just plain literary fiction – because I am all about the equality) and romance. Somehow the works that take a solid look at our lives as they are get bashed because there is an automatic assumption that anything queer MUST have a HEA. Yes, there are genre and sub-genre works out there, but let’s be honest, their sales probably would do a helluva lot better if that HEA albatross wasn’t out there ready to sack any fictional work that has a queer protagonist/hero doing their damnedest to get to the last page of the story.
This came home to roost with a new reader who found my works and seemed to enjoy what I was writing. Or so I thought. I’ve since learned that no matter how much you put out there that the work is NOT romance, the prevailing winds are if it is queer then it MUST BE romance. Another reason why I rail at that genre. It’s poisoning the coffers of other works out there. I don’t fucking care if it sells. It still should not myopically mar the other stories that need to be told.
HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER (ABC/Craig Sjodin)
I write what I like to read, and what I like to watch. To give you context, I like heightened drama – Downton Abbey, ANYTHING by Shondaland (How To Get Away With Murder, Scandal, etc), things of that nature. I like it when characters are pushed to their absolute limits of what they think they can handle. Then we get to see some real character development. Why? Because humans grow from adversity. It’s built into who we are. Whether we choose to collapse and withdraw (which is a choice) or to fight and press on. We evolve to one end of the human spectrum or another. THAT’S powerful storytelling. Safe stories with safe endings don’t provide that. They just provide the candy like feel good moment before it’s dropped and moved onto the next sweet morsel of storytelling. Police procedurals don’t interest me. Mostly because they are formulaic to a great degree. I have Sherlock (the Cumberbatch edition, if you please) that satisfies that far better than any NCIS or procedural out there. I’m a solid card carrying Cumberbitch, and proud of it!
I also come from the world of professional opera. I write operatic pieces set against the normality of life. I like watching my safe characters who, as its author, I want them to find happiness just as much as the next guy, struggle like hell to get there – whatever their HEA is (and it definitely doesn’t have to involve romance or a romantic theme). But in my worlds, as in life, none of it is guaranteed. I’ve said I am a pantser, in that I have tentpoles up that mark where I want the story to go, but I also let the characters drive the drama. Sometimes they’ve even surprised me. Actually, they surprise me a helluva lot.
So this new reader seemed to like what I was doing. But I thought, because I was careful to explain in ALL of my blurbs and marketing about the works, that they are NOT romance reads, that I was covered by that simple statement. I’ve never professed them to be romance in any stretch of the imagination. I don’t do romance. I can’t. I want to push my characters into very, VERY, uncomfortable places. I like watching them squirm and rationalize their own fucked up viewpoints, I want them to explore why they are doing what they are doing. I want my readers to see the dangers of their thinking. They are very, very specific works. Not for everyone.
But again, that is my passion. That’s what I write. Heavily influenced by my years in the opera world telling those types of stories to the masses.
I was once in the wings about to go on for the final tableau setting of Cavalleria Rusticana when one of my opera singing gay buddy besties came along side me. We loved to quietly crack jokes and goad one another backstage before we had to go on and be over the top dramatic. Keeping the balance, ya know? Humor before tragedy and all that rot. So I turned to him and said, just before the ear shattering scream one of our cast members was tasked with when the hero is killed in a duel:
“Why can’t we do a happy opera sometime?”
To which he replied:
“Who’d come to see it?”
He had a very valid point. His response is what’s guided my hand while I write what I write. I write opera. I write drama. No automatics in those works. In fact, it’s expected that shit won’t work out. That the ending will be cataclysmic and disastrous. If I can pull a rabbit out of my hat and give my characters a happy ending that works, then yay me. But I don’t do automatics. Hell, sometimes I only vaguely know how it’s going to end when I start. And even then, that ending is ALWAYS a moving target as I see it finally in my sight at the end of the work.
*Series Spoiler Alert*
Well, I asked this new reader to preview the next release – Angels of Mercy: Phoenix in the Fire. He said he’d love to read it and provide feedback. This book is dark. It’s not a happy book by any stretch of the imagination. How could it be? It is about being the victim of a very horrific beating by your boyfriend’s teammates. That is going to do a number on how you see your world, despite which avenue you choose to crawl out from that terrifying hole: to survive and become stronger (the hardest of the two) or to collapse inwardly and withdraw from everyone you know (sadly, the usual tract most take). I wanted to explore the former rather than the latter. It’s easier to implode from that sort of homophobic beat down. I wanted Elliot to climb out of that hole and find an inner strength to himself. Elliot struggles to accept the love that is freely given to him by many in his life. He thinks he’s not worth it. Many gay men have this struggle for one reason or another. I wanted to have that as part of his inner monologue.
Well, suffice to say that my new enthusiastic reader wasn’t very taken with the new book. In fact, when I asked him what he found that didn’t work (because I truly wanted to explore that) it became very clear to me he was reading it as a romance read. I tried to explain that I wasn’t writing that. It was too late. Phoenix had soured the work for him. I haven’t heard anything since my last email that tried to explain what the works truly are. Other betas advised me to leave it – to distance myself from that situation. But I’ve toiled with it in my head. It’s stuck in my craw, so to speak.
But it did point out why my ire at the romance trope exists. It is poisoning other works. The expectation that ALL stories must have romance tropic happy endings is destroying proper storytelling. It is also setting expectations out there for works that are nowhere near that form of writing.
I don’t do romance. I probably never will. I write us as we are.
There. I’ve stated it once again. Not that anyone is really paying any attention. Those tropic bullshit expectations will still be there. I’ll still rail against them and flip them the big ol’ bird and purposefully write darker works that put a magnifying glass on our community as we are just to spite those Disneyesque saccharine laden pieces of fiction.
I write drama. Operatic drama. Period. Deal with it, or move on. I’ll continue to write either way.
Until Next Time …
SA C
The Pen IS Mightier …
The Pen IS Mightier …
Truly. Who knew? I always thought that was a cliché. Guess not. That shit’s for realz, y’all!
So here’s the dealio … I’ve started this thing over a the Violet Quill Redux, another blog site. Yeah, I know, I KNOW. I barely keep up with this one. But ya see, this blog site is very different. It’s my blank canvas for a new work I am starting to form. This one is very close to the bone. So close that it’s about me. My life – with all it’s beauty, and inherent warts, too.
Totes Clamath Boy.
Me (left) and my bestie, Bobby. We were inseparable back in the day.
And that’s the scary part – the whimsy of it all.
I’m really bearing my soul here. Artistic endeavors aside, this is the real deal, kids: a no-holds-barred, unflinching look at where I’ve been and what I’ve done.
Make no mistake, this is terrifying. It’s also rather liberating. I find that I am resonating with readers, too. I’ve already had more than one person pull me aside (either through email or private message or what have you) and tell me things about their own lives, how what I wrote pulled memories almost forgotten or set aside from their darkened pasts.
Truly epic and deeply felt stories have been brought to me. So it seems I’ve struck a nerve.
But as with all things when it comes to my writings, I think this one will be a slow burn. I think it’ll catch fire though. I’ve led a colorful life. Well, let’s put it this way, there are some thing’s in my past I’ve had to quietly research to see if legal statutes of limitations still apply or not. Yeah, I wasn’t always the good guy I made myself out to be. Love, or rather lust, can make you do some very stupid shit. Sex was the greatest form of self-expression in my youth. I suppose for most gayboys that’s a very true statement. Sex is pure pleasure in our worlds.
But way I figure it, why not put it out there? There are Reddit exposés being released all the time that catch fire. So why not mine, eh?
What good is living all this stuff if you can’t relay it all?
I mean, how many of us live, love and die and our histories are lost the moment we take our last breath? Sure some family members or friends might recount some odd exploit of yours, but really, the bulk of your life fades away, doesn’t it? Those smaller details of every damned thing you’ve gone through simply slip into the ether. But it doesn’t have to, that’s the thing. You just gotta have the courage of your convictions (as they say) to get it out there.
I found I can’t have that; the losing myself to the ether after I am gone. I know I am not a celebrity. Yet, I’ve spent a fair amount of time on the stage as a professional actor and classically trained singer, so I’ve had my time in the sun where that’s concerned. But why not a “common man” tale? I think I am worthy of relating to. Might give some insight for those who aren’t queer to see what it’s like from the inside. But I realized that my thoughts, my impressions and perceptions will be lost the moment I let go of this mortal coil, as it were.
Who will speak for me then? I will, that’s who.
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And I’ve had rocky parts to my life, too. It hasn’t all been a bed of roses, ya know. Not by a bloody long shot, actually. Let’s just say that a few times I didn’t know if I’d make it out in one piece. I’ve been quite lucky. Probably why I haven’t won the lottery. I think I used up all my luck on my fool-hearty twenties and have now lived to tell the tale, as it were.
But that’s part of the challenge, isn’t it? To face what I’ve accomplished, what I’ve failed, where I’ve gone along with, who I’ve done. Make no mistake, and it’s not like you haven’t heard it before, but sex sells.
I just need to put it all out there – to write it all down. They’re not chronological in how they’re presented over on VQR. They need to waffle up from the pit of my belly and demand their time in the sun. Hedonistic weekends that I have to not only face, but write about or else none of it is worth putting out there. I can’t hide from it this time. I have to detail it all.
Why?
Because I am truly embracing my queerness. I am totally reclaiming what that means for myself. My life is queer. Those jocks who teased me back in high school were 110% correct. I am queer. But what I didn’t get, what I was too naive and green to see, was that I shouldn’t be shamed by it. I needed to embrace it. To take hold and ride that bitch into the night.
The thing is, it’s going to hit a fair number of people I know. No man is an island, as they say. Truer words and all that rot. I don’t think most of my friends and family realize that. I mean, it’s not going to be loaded with salacious tidbits of stuff left and right with them. They’re my friends and family. But I led a double-life back then. One way with them, another when I was alone or with my then boyfriend. My twenties and early thirties were somewhat of a voracious sexual rompfest. I was careless, I was brash and unthinking. And I was extremely lucky. But before anyone goes off the deep end with rantings about “self love” and “self respect” – fuck off, will ya? This is MY queer life, not yours. Yes, to a great degree while I didn’t go running off into the night to mimic Rechy’s characters in The Sexual Outlaw, or Numbers, while I was a teenager, I did my fair share of it in my twenties. Two completely different aspects to myself. One the loyal, front and center kind of friend and family member, the other? Yeah, let’s just say I’m amazed beyond belief I am still standing here. With a negative HIV status, no less. ‘Cause muthafucking shit got wild. A form of Russian Roulette that I some how came out unscathed on the other side.
But that’s the thing, I’ve got to put it all down. What was totally euphoric as well as the horrific. I’ve certainly had both. And great heaping spoonfuls of it, too.
And I’ll tell ya this much: I’ve never felt more alive then when I am writing out my past. It’s like a character in my book, like Elliot Donahey or Marco Sforza in Angels of Mercy, except I know this guy intimately. He can’t hide from me, because he is me.
There’s a part of me that is grateful that I severed my ties with my birth name entity across social media. Now only SA Collins exists. I’ve killed the other me. He’s history, well, as much as anyone can be in this day and age. Nothing ever truly disappears when it’s been on the net does it? But in that, he lives on in the posts on Violet Quill Redux.
But that’s cool, too. It’s definitely going to be interesting, that’s for dayum sure!
Scared (’cause Mom’s gonna read this shit).
Totally exposed.
But feelin’ so fucking alive …
Until next time –
SA C
BOOK RELEASE – Angels of Mercy – Volume Two: Marco (The Fall of the Sforzas)
BOOK RELEASE – Angels of Mercy – Volume Two: Marco
(The Fall of the Sforzas)
Angels of Mercy – Volume Two: Marco AVAILABLE NOW!
Hey all!
I know it’s been a helluva long time since I’ve posted. It hasn’t been for not wanting to. I’ve had LOTS to say on stuff. Some of which I did on other blogs or via the podcast. But I’ve also been massively busy trying to get the next book in my series out the door. Well, it’s done. And he’s a WHOPPER of a tale!
Clocking in at just over 265K words (approx 741 pages), it is finally put to rest and is out in the universe now. I always knew Marco’s part of the tale was going to be this big. There were no two ways about it (as he’d say).
For those who haven’t been following along, suffice to say this series is a set of character studies that deep dive into the mindsets of three men’s lives over the course of a violent hate crime born out of homophobia that is still rampant within competitive sports (in this case, the fictional high school varsity football team – The Mercy High Avenging Angels).
The first volume dealt with two boys who during the summer between their junior and senior high school years come together. Two boys who couldn’t be more opposite if they tried. The first volume is told from the shy, and sticking to the shadows, Elliot Donahey. An artsy geeky boy consumed with doing everything he can not to be noticed in a world that keeps saying to him that he doesn’t belong. Only his plans for obscurity in his senior year are completely blown off the rails by the highest profile jock on campus, Mercy High’s star quarterback, Marco Sforza. Elliot’s take brings the reader along on their burgeoning heady romance filled with all the drama a coupling like that can bring. They just do everything they can to remain rooted in one another, holding each other close and whispering how their love will last through the ages. This, despite how many people are circling around them at school that are hell bent on keeping them apart.
Volume Two picks up where the climatic cliff hanger of volume one leaves off.
Angels of Mercy – Volume Two: Marco, picks up the same day as the climax of Volume One, only told from Marco Sforza’s (Elliot’s boyfriend) point of view. This is a character study series where each man in the tale takes the reader on an introspective journey of coming to grips with the horrors of homophobia in competitive sports and the consequences when those scenarios become violent. Part two of a three part series.
“Elliot Donahey is the love of my life.”
Those words become a lightning rod for Marco Sforza, the man who seemed to have it all – looks, intelligence, charm, money, a certain degree of local fame as the star quarterback of Mercy High. But when his teammates beat his boyfriend to the brink of death, Marco will have to learn what “standing by your man” truly means.
How will these boys cope with Elliot’s recuperation as well as find a way to bring justice for the heinous crime committed against him? Deception, lies and intrigue begin to thread their way into the boys’ lives as they struggle to just hold onto one another. All is not quite what it seems as we reach yet another climatic ending that will turn their whole world upside-down. The hate crime Elliot suffered was just the beginning of their woes. Is Marco and Elliot’s love for one another strong enough to see them through?
Read Angels of Mercy – Volume Two: Marco to find out.
Available now from the following locations:
The SA COLLINS ESTORE – where you can even buy a PERSONALIZED autograph ebook edition (sample graphic available from the e-store site)
Please check out them out!
Also, a BIG thanks to my musical muses for Angels – Jay Brannan, Steve Grand and Adam Ray! These amazing musicians are worth seeking out. I am so happy that they give me the added inspiration as I write these massive books of the series!
Until next time (which I promise won’t be so far off) – Baz
Those moments …
Those moments …
“There are moments you remember all your life. There are moments you wait for and dream of all your life. This is one of those moments…”
Vladislav Slavskiy
While that line is from a song in Yentl, it covers what’s been going on lately for me. I know it’s been a while since I’ve been in the blog chair. It’s something I find that I can’t do – just blog for the sake of blogging. I have to want to say something. This one took me a while to gestate and finally take shape.
Thinking back on it though, I don’t think it was because I didn’t know what I wanted to say. But because it was about those moments that are sort of milestones in your life (that sometimes come and go so quickly you scarce sense that they have any real meaning until you reflect upon them much later). I think that I knew I was going to write about them but it seemed the universe wanted me to wait a bit. It seemed that it had moments for me that I needed to observe. Things I needed to take stock of that were milestone moments. To quite simply not be in such a rush to produce.
As a writer, I am purely an artist. I don’t give a damn about whether my story is at the top of the best seller list. I wouldn’t mind it, but it’s not requisite. I’ll publish regardless. At some point I watched as my author friends publish with established boutique houses and think wow. Not because I begrudged them their success at getting a story sold. I am quite happy for them. But it was a moment where I realized I can’t compromise my voice. The stories I write must be what they are. If it means a real slow burn to find readers, well, so be it. I will persevere and write what I want to write. Uncompromising in tone and measure. No punches pulled, as they say. Well, as I say, really.
So yeah, moments.
And some may not have to do with my writing at all. I had one such moment with my granddaughter a week ago.
It was a random movie night at home. Just the grandpa’s and her. Mom was out on a date. What did the granddaughter choose? Some mindless chick flick? Some bombastic super hero or sci fi romp? No.
Selma.
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That was her choice. And I couldn’t have been more proud or pleased with her. So was my husband. So we sat and watched it. It was one of those moments where I watched her as much as I watched the movie. I watched the idyllic world she had as a child fall away as she realized the horrors that people can put upon one another. In a very real way, it was a sad moment. The veil was lifted. She saw the worst in humanity (well, the worst she’s witnessed so far).
It was a moment.
Loss of childhood innocence. A reckoning that had been long in coming, when you realize for the first time the world is not the safe place you thought it was as a child.
Definitely a moment. And she chose it.
The next moment? Another movie (sensing a theme here?):
To Russia With Love.
To Russia With Love
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No, not the James Bond flick of old – that’s FROM Russia With Love.
In this amazing documentary (produced by out athlete, Johnny Weir – amongst others) we encounter Vladislav Slavskiy. His story is emblematic of what our queer Russian brothers and sisters are suffering in that country. His story broke my heart. It also gave me hope. It was a revelatory moment. Why? Because I’ve always wanted to do something for them back in Russia, but my fear was that any communication from the west might make things worse for them. But Vlad’s story does have a happy ending – probably unique when it comes to our queer Russian brothers and sisters. Why was this a “moment”?
Well, because I became Facebook friends with him. I asked and he accepted. I was overjoyed at the prospect of interacting with him. I made a connection. It was just before his birthday. On that day I wished him a happy birthday and thanked him for being my new friend. He liked the post. It was a small accomplishment, but I was happy.
So about a week ago, I finally worked up the courage to ask him if he would come onto the podcast to tell his story to our listeners. Amazingly, he said yes.
A DEFINITE MOMENT. A MILESTONE. One that said loudly – Don’t fuck this up, Baz! This is a gift.
So we record that special ep tomorrow. For the first time in my life, I am nervous. I’ve performed in front of thousands on the stage and not batted an eye or had so much as one simple butterfly roaming around in my stomach. But speaking with Vlad; trying to relate his story? Yeah, I got a whole bag full of butterflies going on in there.
I want to get this right for so many reasons. None the least of which, that my granddaughter watched the movie with me and is just as excited about my talking to Vlad as I am. So yeah, young ears are listening to what I am about to do. Definite responsibility. She’s listening. She’s watching grandpa step into a very important place to help someone tell their story. And she’s a questioning queer youth – so it’s doubly important that I get it right.
Moments.
When I met my very first fan (beyond my family, that is) – Michael Rumsey. You brilliant and loyal man, you!
Like the moment I met Jayne Lockwood and Vance Bastian. Two people I love immensely and can’t get enough of. They’re like a drug I don’t ever want an intervention for. They were definite moments. Milestones. The podcast is a testament to that.
Like the moment last Friday when I got to circle back with Jay Brannan at his concert here in San Francisco and thank him personally for allowing me to quote his works in my book – Angels of Mercy (I am still reeling over that generosity). He remembered the book when I spoke to him after the concert. He was so generous with his time and his attentions about my works. But that’s Jay. He gets the self-promotion – even when I know all he wants to do is go to sleep and rest. But it was a moment of accomplishment that I could provide him with a copy of the finished work. Another moment. One I’ll cherish.
I plan to get back into the blogging chair more. It’s been a while. I need to do this. Not everyday. I don’t want to ramble on about stuff that really doesn’t have much meaning. I’d rather do it when it counts.
Until next time …
SA C