John Brown's Booty

interview with Matmos

culapp — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 23:55:46 +0000

interview took place on 6/2/10 in Montreal, QC

q: What do you think of Lady Gaga?
MC: I think she’s a good indicator of the low point which gay culture has reached. Talk about derivative, uninteresting, supposedly alternative…echk.
Drew: Yeah, i don’t know. I have a bunch of queer media and academic friends who have to write about popular culture, because that’s what they do. They’ve come up with various ways, with great sophistication, to declare how saavy her wielding of the lesbian phallus is in the “Telephone” video, or whatever. I just have to, at the end of the day, dig in my heels a little bit and say that i just get no pleasure from her. I think it’s garbage. I don’t give a fuck. It’s sort of in bed with various corporate interests that i don’t support. I don’t want to give her some kind of ghetto pass, and i think a lot of queers are falling for this idea.
And i mean the problem with that is, coming from me, that just sounds like a standard, avant-gardist person who hates popular culture, feels threatened by it, is snobby about it, rejects the demographics of the people who enjoy it; trashy gays like it, and i want to be a cool gay so i’d better not like it. But whatever. i have to be honest. I think it sucks, so fuck it.
MC: It’s just that everything interesting about her is stolen, straight up, from someone else. So why not go to the source, instead of this sort of pathetic imitation?

q: To me, you make experimental, really smart music seem like something any shmuck can do.

Drew: Yeah, i think that’s right, because in terms of playing an object like a rat cage, you know, you don’t go to a conservatory for years and years and years to learn how to play a rat cage. You just have to stick with the object and kind of see what you get. I think a lot of people just don’t give themselves permission to play with their environment. And, i’m really distracted, cuz…he’s really hot [shirtless stud starts walking in front of us, we all giggle].
See this is where Montreal is kind of upstaging Matmos, you know? It’s like, i’m trying to talk about “me, me, me,” but all i can think about is like, “Damn!”

q: So how did you two meet?

MC: Drew was a go-go dancer. and i put a dollar in his underwear.
Drew: Yeah, it was at Club Uranus in San Fransisco. I was a college kid, stripping for cash while getting my philosophy degree at Berkley.
MC: And i was looking at him, and my friend was like, “You know he makes electronic…i swear this is actually true…he makes electronic music,” and i was, you know…You don’t think about the interior life of strippers when you’re watching them strip.
Me: They’ve clearly got plenty of time to kill up there on that pole.
MC: That’s right, thinking about stuff.
Drew: We’ll have to find out tonight about people are thinking about when we’re at Club Taboo.
Me: Yeah, Taboo’s the best. I worked there for a bit, but i found the conversation part to be annoying.
MC: You did?
Drew: What did you do there?
Me: I danced.
MC: Really? Bless your heart.
Drew: And what songs did you dance to?
Me: Aphex Twin…
Drew: Which one?
Me: Boy/Girl Song
Drew: Oh, nice. Pretty fast, though.
Me: Yeah, you have to do a fast song and a slow song. A fast one for when you’re initially disrobing, and then a slow song afterwards so that your bits aren’t going every which way.
Drew: Right. So what was your slow jam?
Me: Sometimes i would do The Knife, sometimes there was this Natalie Imbruglia song i really got into.
MC: Torn?
Me: There you go.
Drew: Oh, wow. Well, the raunchy implications of Torn are obvious too, right?
[giggles all around]
MC: So are we evil that we want to go there?
Drew: Did you think your customers were just the rock bottom scum of the earth?
Me: No, a lot of them were really decent, and, i mean, i was a customer before i worked there.
MC: It’s funny, because a lot of people, who are generally not gay, register sort of shock and disgust when we mention that specific place.
Drew: I guess it’s because they imagine that the dancers are straight and are just gay for pay.
Me: A lot of them are. It’s supposed to be the highest percentage of gays out of all the clubs in the city. But in the back it was all really gross, straight porn playing the whole night.
Drew: It’s always the shoes that kill me when i see straight porn.
MC: The shoes and makeup.

MC: We pretty much gave up on “gay” when we moved to Baltimore.
Drew: There’s more rocking out, i guess. There’s less gay to go around in Baltimore. I mean, there’s plenty of freaks and weird to go around, but not as much gay.
MC: Given the choice between normal gay and freaky straight, i’m afraid we chose the freaks. Besides, gay bars, thanks to the liberalization of the world, are kind of not so much fun anymore.
Me: Yeah, like a sports bar.
MC: There is literally, in D.C., which is very close to Baltimore… If gays move to the area, or anybody with money moves to the area, they move to D.C., because “it’s okay there,” you know? It’s rich there. There is literally a gay sports bar called “Nelly’s.” I’ve never been to a duller fucking gay bar in my life.
Drew: I guess it’s just a function of gay men’s insane hang-up about masculinity and sort of seeming masculine. and the conformist imperatives that drive it. But yeah, it’s sort of sapping lots of what’s cool about queer culture. I don’t know. I guess boring, un-reconstructed nellyism isn’t interesting either and is just as conventional and stereotypical, but there has to be some third way.
Me: Yeah, it’s sad how being queer doesn’t really count for anything anymore.
Drew: We saw this mcdonald’s ad in France that’s all about feeling alienated from your parents because they don’t know yet that you’re gay. Then it just ends with “mcdonald’s: come as you are.” And it’s so amazing to see that, wow, it’s really over. There is no subversive wedge that that experience drives through what we think about society. It’s just like, “Oh, we understand your queer suffering, you want fries with that?” It’s just so blatant.

q: Queers in the military, queers in holy matrimony, what do you think?

Drew: I feel like queers have a chip on their shoulder and something to prove about masculinity, and so the military’s been this way to do that. And the closet was the price of the ticket. If the closet goes away, i think it might also change the number of queers that go into the military for those reasons.
I knew someone who joined the military, basically, because of his shame about his sexuality. He ended up an alcoholic wreck, and a mess…
MC: …because he killed people.
Drew: Yeah, he fired on protesters in Panama…
MC: …and it broke his mind.
Drew: So i feel like if the mainstreaming of gayness continues in this direction, which i think for sheer fairness it should, it also hopefully is going to force a stronger divide about what is gay and what is queer. Like. when do you go beyond the gay to the queer, and how the queer stay ferocious and not just a demographic?
I see the difference when i talk to my brother. He’s ten years younger than me, and he had boyfriends in high school. It was weird at first, but essentially so much less fraught with this self-hatred and suicidal rage than i felt, you know, because of the closet.
MC: I’ll say to its advantage, that all that certainly makes people think harder. You had to do a lot more self-reflection then, which i think was good.
Drew: When i think of marriage, i always like that fact that being queer meant you made up you own rules and that you were outside of these social norms and institutions, and i thought that was one of the big advantages of it. Not that your picking and choosing because of that, but that its one of the nice side advantages of it. And it’s been weird to see my mother being like, “So when are you guys going to get married?” and really eager for Martin and myself to be married. I just have this strange feeling of why would i choose to have the government validate that, why would i want to do that?
MC: And then there’s god. Yeah, i want to make right with a priest about my gay marriage. I don’t care about any of these people, why do i want them to approve of me?
Drew: For some people, i guess that’s important, and there’s lots of reasons to do it or not do it, but i feel like, after eighteen years, i’m as married to Martin as i’ll ever be in the ways that count, and i don’t need the state to ratify that. In fact, i’ve seen the way that, as friends of mine have gone through divorces, that the marriage part, to the extent that it’s this structural government form, just makes something that sucks on its own terms so much harder.
MC: There’s a handful of practical reasons like hospital visitation, tax benefits. I don’t mean to sound like i don’t live in the real world, because i do, but i still envision a better world,
Drew: You have to start by refusing the things that you don’t accept, rather than just trying to buy into them.
MC: Obviously it’s absurd that people who aren’t your family can’t visit you in the hospital. That’s the problem. The problem isn’t that we can’t get married, it’s why don’t they offer tax blah-blah…whatever, i’m not a politician.
Drew: Maybe the productive thing is to insist on a queerness that isn’t so tied to legible membership in a community. If you start to let queerness mean whatever is exceptional to a situation, whatever can’t get included in it, then it becomes this more fluid idea. But that is going in the totally opposite direction of this buying into the normative persistence of a marriage that’s til death do you part. The stabilizing force of some of these norms that gay culture wants to invest in, they’re going in completely the opposite direction of what was always supposed to be bad about queers, which is promiscuity, effemerality, things that don’t last, that are in the moment. Things that fail, people who can’t live up to these standards of reliability or decency. So it’s kind of funny to see the work of purification that’s happening in gayness and the way that the bad old forms are being scapegoated, and maybe there’s something valuable in some of those things.

i, block

culapp — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 17:45:06 +0000

This blog has been an effort not only to another contribution to the discussion about cultural appropriation and its many manifestations but also a way of forcing myself to write again. When i was younger, there was no stopping me. I had a book and a notebook with me everywhere i went and burned through pages effortlessly. Pages of ideas, master plans, manifestos, rants, doodles, whatever. Everything that came to mind was, if not crucial, better out than in.
Somewhere along the way, the pace slowed. I stopped getting as many ideas, i stopped taking the time to write them down and the whole process came to seem pointless or purposeless. It stopped being fun. On top of which, i became critical of the writing process as my politicization intensified. How could i write about other people without objectifying them? And then Catcher in the Rye’s already been written, so who would want to read another story about an angsty white boy? Blahblah, guiltguilt. Throw in a rapidly developing substance abuse problem, and writing really stopped mattering.
The only chances came in bits and pieces, like when a political group i was working with needed a press release, an email announcement or a written submission. These opportunities i cherished. For example:
For centuries, the theoretical existence of the sequin remained a plaything of physicists and fashionistas alone. When, drunk on a bottle of Channel No.5, intrepid lassoer Dennis Mack finally managed to pull one down from out of the night sky, it shook the world, delivering us out of the Dark Ages and into Homotopia. On this, the two-hundred year anniversary of that fateful day, October 11th 2008, the Ste-Emilie Skillshare proudly launches the latest installment of Bust Out Yer Skillz v.3000. Come check out the studio, take a guided tour, then enjoy some fresh roasted corn & hot apple cider by the fire. See you there lovers.
Nothing special, right, but fun to write. It’s inspired by the kind of books i love, that confuse magic and weirdness and the plasticity of reality. What i try to do is bring these ideas of subjectivity (that there is no one true way of experiencing the world) and skepticism (that nothing is permanent, knowable or ultimately and universally true) together with Sendakian fun times (think Where the Wild Things Are) and an anti-colonial analysis.
But still, there’s no ideas for stories. I try to expose myself to inspiring art, music, movies and experiences. I have cut off the drugs and drink, besides coffee. The coffee helps jump start me into a writing mode (like this particular entry, for instance), which at least gets me typing and thinking and forming sentences. But still no ideas.
A big part of me is still caught up on writing characters. Maybe it isn’t even necessary to describe characters as much as some writers do. Why do people describe a character’s gender, clothes and physical appearance anyway, unless they are trying to access stereotypes in our subconscious. It’s easy to say “this shabbily dressed white woman is walking down the street, a slight limp in her stride” and for the reader to then think they know so much about this person already. We already know her values, her character and how she’ll respond to situations! None of these details are immediately relevant to the story. Maybe down the line, her whiteness or the way that someone reads her femininity become issues and could then be brought up. Until that time though, it’s laziness on the writer’s part. Or is it?
I’m tempted, once i come up with a story line or some situation that begs to be written, to do as little physical characterization as possible. Not to invisibilize people’s differences but to de-prioritize them. This could quickly become a problem of homogenizing people, since in this society, the tendancy is to assume a person is “standard” unless otherwise mentioned. Able-bodied people will not, generally, mention that somebody has lots of body privileged but easily describe the way that somebody deviates from a body that is judged correct and healthy. The same goes for skin color, assumed gender, age variance, accent, etc…… I do not anticipate writing a story with no physical descriptions or mention of gender or ethnicity. Rather, i hope to introduce those variations at a point when they become relevant to the story, giving the reader a chance to get to know the characters from their actions before jumping to assumptions. Or else i could just use animal characters and sidestep the whole thing, though people somehow find ways to make even animal stories offensive.
Maybe i’ll write about a raccoon who’s got the same problems as me and see how he handles things.

victory for the little guys: eska water forced to remove racist ads

culapp — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:13:05 +0000

Racist bottled water adverts pulled | Art Threat

For some reason they thought it would be safer (legally speaking safer, not more respectful or anything) to stereotype and demean Indigenous peoples in general than to specifially steal from and mock one particular culture. Check the video, but it’s really a ludicrous defense. Nobody ever steals from one particular Nation, because settlers don’t think there’s any difference between them or recognize their sovereign political/cultural structures. To mock inidigineity is to insult Indigenous peoples the world over by saying how anything that isn’t colonizer is backwards and ridiculous.

Amazing work, though, getting the ads pulled. From what i can tell from their facebook page, it seems like this was just a couple weeks work by lots and lots of people. Now they’ve issued an apology and are ssslllooowwwlllyyy pulling the ads. Lots of credit to the always brilliant Clifton Nicholas and everyone else that got the word out and harassed Eska til they finally conceded.

Islamophobia is so Gay

culapp — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 04:06:00 +0000

I read this article in fab a couple months ago that set off some alarms for me. This article was about the work of 2boys.tv, some kind of a Gay performance art project. Apparently they have a show called “Pas peur (No Fear)” that has, as a colorful backdrop, a torture scene reminiscent of Abu Ghraib. Front and center, however, we have a funerial drag performance.

Now, I was seeing this other person for a while, a performance artist, who also seemed pretty keen on taking the racist violence in Abu Ghraib and turning into a statement on homophobia. Why people think this has anything to do with queers or sexuality at all is completely beyond me, maybe too much theory? Torture is torture and violence is violence. White supremacy and imperialism are just that and homophobia something else entirely.

I don’t think there’s anyway to come to grips with that kind of hate. It might be useful for some people to think of the random violence or systemic exclusion they have faced in their own lives, as a way to make links and connections with other people’s suffering. It’s important to be able to say that imperial violence on the other side of the world is another manifestation of the colonial control and subjugation we experience here in the belly of the beast. To say that prisoners of war in Abu Ghraib have experienced homophobic violence and are therefore kin; that, by extension, we can relate to their experiences–that completely trivializes both their suffering and our own.

Our respective experiences are much more valuable with their own individual nuances. Rather that trying to equate our oppression, we can use the spaces we have been able to create here (2boys.tv, Buddies in Bad Times, fab, this blog…for instance) to let other marginalized voices speak. Not to take their voice away and claim it as our own, but listening to people whose families and lives are immediately impacted by war and occupation.

the art of protest

culapp — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 01:59:06 +0000

“Through our images we are the creators of culture and it is our
responsibility that our images are of our times…” Beautiful and inspiring art that can make one hate and love at the same time.
http://www.malaquiasmontoya.com
artist’s statement [excerpt]:

My personal views on art and society were formed by my being born into that silent and voiceless humanity. Realizing later that it was not by choice that we remained mute but by a conscious effort on the part ofthose in power, I realized that my art could only be that of protest – a protest against what I felt to be a death sentence.
As a Chicano artist I feel a responsibility that all my art should be a
reflection of my political beliefs – an art of protest. The struggle of
all people cannot be merely intellectually accepted. It must become part
of our very being as artists otherwise we cannot give expression to it
in our work. I am in agreement with Pedro Rodrigues, former Director of
the Guadalupe Cultural Art Center, San Antonio, Texas, when he said,
“Fundamentally, artistic expression, or culture in general, reaches its
highest level of creation when it reflects the most serious issues of a
community, when it succeeds in expressing the deepest sentiments of a
people and when it returns to the people their ideas and feelings
translated in a clearer and creative way.”

Through our images we are the creators of culture and it is our responsibility that our images are of our times – and that they be depicted honestly and promote an attitude towards existing reality; a confrontational attitude, one of change rather than adaptability – images of our time and for our contemporaries. We must not fall into the age-old cliche that the artist is always ahead of his/her time. No, it is most urgent that we be on time.

Las Drogas, Silkscreen – 1992
by Malaquias Montoya

George Jackson, Offset Litho – 1976

Long Before Long After, Charcoal – 1992

Globalization, Acrylic Painting/Collage – 2004

katy acts out

culapp — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:23:00 +0000

What a bad girl, kissing girls. Well, a girl, but still, it’s not what good girls do. But what’s her problem, why does she act out like this? Tsk, she was drinking. Well, you know, liquor is a gateway drug, onto the hard stuff.
She’d never thought about being with a girl before, it’s not part of her life, her concerns, her community. If she had ever even hung out with gay girls, she clearly would have thought about it before getting wasted one night. So this straight girl gets fucked up and decides she wants to try a girl on for size, “her experimental game.” Katy “gets so confused,” tries out some gay for size, does something she’s not supposed to. Will her boyfriend mind or think his life has just become a porno come to life?
Katy Perry is a dead issue as far as i’m concerned, but there is still so much contention about her with other queers. My understanding of the support for her and “i kissed a girl” is that some people are against a queer separatism. The want girls to be able to kiss girls and for it to not be a thing; that gay girls don’t have to prove themselves or their queerness; that queers can have hetero romantic relationships, even primary relationships, and still be queer; that it’s fine for a girl with a boyfriend to kiss a girl, for straight girls to kiss girls.
I wouldn’t disagree with any of that. Queers have enough to deal with without having to deal with queer policing. I know that when i was coming out, i felt this need to shed every scrap of straightness i could. I cut my long hair, got rid of my country hippie clothes, edited the five-year girlfriend i just broke up with to “my friend.” I wanted to broadcast my unearthed queerness and to make sure that everyone knew i was gay as shit. Now, at this point, i know i don’t always get read as gay. I never, rarely, go out of my way to dress straight, but neither do i need everyone to knew for certain that i brake for dick. I’m fairly confident in my queerness and can definitely turn it up needed.
All that is to say that i understand if people are concerned with internal policing within queer communities to monitor who’s queer/who’s not. For myself, i experienced that in my head as a deficiency of mine, but i’m prone to internalize external pressures as my own failings. My criticisms of this song are not the sexual fluidity or promiscuity, because i think those are both amazing. My problem is with a self-confessed straight girl making a career off of lesbian chic. If someone isn’t queer, they shouldn’t make a song about how outrageous they are for playing gay.
Which brings me to the less famous “ur so gay”. Maybe i can’t talk about “kissed a girl” with any kind of authority because i’m not a girl, not a dyke or because the song is clearly not written or marketed towards me. Maybe all that blah-blah above is meaningless and i speak out of turn. I would still call Katy Perry a heterosexist opportunist for penning “ur so gay,” a song insulting fags in every single way she can think of.
The entire song ridicules a boy she likes and doesn’t reciprocate the way she’d like to. To get real personal for a second, as a confused baby fag, i lost so many girl friends because we wanted different relationships. They wanted to date, and i wanted some friends to feel comfortable around. While straight men can be assholes to fags, straight women can be cruel when they think fags are spurning their advances. “I hope you hang yourself with your H&M scarf” opens this fucking song. From there, she attacks this indie rocker for being concerned about his appearance, for being melancholy, for being weak, for not being a correct male. All of these she clearly associates with being gay in both senses, in the “homosexual” meaning as well as the “bad” connotation.
This song is a long, hateful, homophobic rant. As a gay, i wouldn’t ever have written something like this, not if i was ass deep in a bottle of vodka and irony were dripping out my ears. She clearly has no position within queer communities besides colonizer. She gets rich off of our desires and then kicks us in the teeth. All the “anti-AIDS” bullshit marketing in the world won’t change that.

I hope you hang yourself with your H&M scarf
While jacking off listening to mozart
You bitch and moan about LA
Wishing you were in the rain reading Hemingway
You don’t eat meat
And drive electrical cars
You’re so indie rock it’s almost an art
You need SPF 45 just to stay alive

You’re so sad maybe you should buy a happy meal
You’re so skinny you should really Super Size the deal
Secretly you’re so amused
That nobody understands you
I’m so mean cause I cannot get you outta your head
I’m so angry cause you’d rather MySpace instead
I can’t believe I fell in love with someone that wears more make up than…

(BRIDGE)
You walk around like you’re oh so debonair
You pull em’ down and there’s really nothing there
I wish you would just be real with me

(CHORUS)
You’re so gay and you don’t even like boys
No you don’t even like
No you don’t even like
No you don’t even like boys
You’re so gay and you don’t even like boys
No you don’t even like
No you don’t even like
Oh no no no no no no——-
You’re so gay and you don’t even like boys
No you don’t even like
No you don’t even like
No you don’t even like boys
You’re so gay and you don’t even like boys
No you don’t even like
No you don’t even like
No you don’t even like… PENIS!

I KISSED A GIRL

    This was never the way I planned
    Not my intention
    I got so brave, drink in hand
    Lost my discretion
    It’s not what, I’m used to
    Just wanna try you on
    I’m curious for you
    Caught my attention

    No, I don’t even know your name
    It doesn’t matter
    Your my experimental game
    Just human nature
    It’s not what, good girls do
    Not how they should behave
    My head gets so confused
    Hard to obey

    Us girls we are so magical
    Soft skin, red lips, so kissable
    Hard to resist so touchable
    Too good to deny it
    Ain’t no big deal, it’s innocent

CHORUS

I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chapstick
I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right
Don’t mean I’m in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it
I liked it

we are all geeks, or not

culapp — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 23:09:32 +0000

This refrain, “we are all ______,” is what people say when they’re trying to identify with the cause in question. “We are all Palestinians,” for example, when in fact we’re mostly not. I guess it’s a weird way of saying that an injury to one is an injury to all, a very useful sentiment for developing links of solidarity and understanding interlocked oppressions.
My problem with this is that if “we’re all _______,” then who will organize people that are not ______? As people not part of a particular marginalized group, it’s possible to have a separate and powerful vantage point, one that shouldn’t be shuffled off so lightly. To continue the earlier example, as someone who is not Palestinian, i can speak as a member of the non-Palestinian group. As a non-Palestinian, i am still outraged by Zionism and global complicity in anti-Palestinian maneuvering, therefore i can speak to other non-Palestinians from a similar position; not assuming a Palestinian voice but using my own.
Maybe i’ll get into this more later, but i was actually trying to segue into this great posting by Arachne Jericho, “Thoughts on the Cultural Appropriation of Geek Culture and Race”. This is a brilliant analogy for people on the internet, a large percentage of whom may consider themselves geeks, to connect with cultural appropriation. It’s great, because most any marginalized person can think of times that any group that they may be a part of has been caricatured in larger society. By drawing parallels between that experience and the alienation people of colour feel when their culture is used in such a way, i think it makes clear how damaging appropriative behaviour can be.
I also really like the branching into talking about “safe space.” This isn’t a term i really love, though the way Jericho uses it seems to be close to what i would call “closed” or “exclusive space.” I don’t feel strongly enough about “safe space” to dispute it here, but, by “closed space,” i mean space that is solely meant for a specific group of marginalized people (and when members of a privileged group do this, i would call it “segregation”). The discussion around closed spaces is so close to that of cultural appropriation because it speaks to the need for oppressed groups to have boundaries, limits to where the majority can go and what/how they can create or perform. Since colonizers by their very nature go and take whatever they want, we must draw very clear lines across which they/we cannot cross.
My family were european immigrants to what is called north america, Turtle Island or many other names, and so i am a settler. As a queer and a skid, marginalized for my sexuality, gender failure and economic situation, i have had to disregard some of the culture i have inherited in exchange for new ways that make more sense to my life. I can say from both positions how important boundaries are. Some gross breeder jock that tries lisping like it’s funny clearly needs to be shown that boundary, as have i so many times in the past that i over-stepped a line i didn’t realize was there or ignored because it was easier.
So much of the problem with this consumer culture that chews up and spits out one culture after the next is that it constantly goes beyond the bounds of common decency in order to satiate it’s hunger for something new. Like any person who has too infrequently been told “no,” it thinks the world is there for the taking. All it would take is some good, strong disciplining to help people realize to be happy with what they have.

another drop

culapp — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 00:32:27 +0000

This site is my contribution to the development of a praxis for addressing cultural appropriation. That is, to help put these ideas into a working practice, to recognize the theft and recuperation that always happen in oppressive institutions and to help develop ways for us to combat appropriation and build on traditions that don’t rely on parasitism for survival. I am a north american white faggot who thinks that “whiteness” is not an incurable disease and that even heteros can fix themselves if given a chance.

If this seems like a chunky mission statement, so be it. It’s got to start somewhere, yeah?