Don't Call It A Comeback

So I am writing this blog after what seems like eons, more like a year and a half. I am horrible with consistancy.I will try harder this time. Going to checkout Slumdog Millionaire for inspiration as I try to decide whether or not I should perform at this even tomorrow evening for Dominican Trends Magazine. I am ready to push myself as an artist this year but have a hard time with the dressing up for hetero events...It's a tough world to navigate for the gender non-conforming..

Rid of Me

It is 4:06 and i am in the office that i am currently temping at...disclaimer for my long absence...anywho, i have way too much to write about for this to possess any type of coherency so its going to be jumpy and scattered but hopefully interesting nonetheless. On the work front- I am working 2 jobs and am constantly exhausted leaving me little time for artistic expression, but I am more motivated than ever and focused on creating art in whatever shape it comes in...So at the night gig, there has been a**-fingering and eating by two "sopranos" looking dudes who couldn't manage to close the deal with this tranny- lets call her boxer lady since she dances like a boxer..meaning she is constantly jumping around and jabbing when she is not asking andom customers to try and score some blow for her..she is friends with the tall blonde one who is always sooo spaced out she trips walking out the front door...ran into my buddy and former castmate GLENN MARLA (is that what is considered name-dropping?- if you dont know who he is, google him, he is the darling of the downtown/billyburgh art scene). Great seeing him, we are meeting up soon so be on the look out for some interesting collaborations (yes, that is a shameless plug). going to check out the tania bruguera exhibit at the bronx museom of art this upcoming sunday. she tends to be grouped with ana mendieta alot. I think its cause she's cuban and some of her work deals with the inclusion of aspects of afro-disaporic cosmological practices. In order words, she puts a little santeria in her stuff :) or at least imagery an elements of it. That can be scary to the establishment, and than she's also cuban...I have to see more of her work before I can assess the the connection. I am sure there is an influence.

On another note, I seem to be really into reconnecting with music that I used to listen to in the past..Right now I am listening to PJ Harvey "Rid of Me". It is definitely hitting the spot right now, like a good steak or for you vegans- a nice piece of smoked or bbq'd tofu...Bueno, I have to run and do something other write this blog.

TropicAna

I had typed this whole blog on Ana Mendieta, and a book for $20 on sale at the Whitney and how I needed to go and check out the Kara Walker exhibit and pick up the book at the same time and when I went to post it, it was rejected and than the screen was blank. I guess Ana didnt like what I had to say. Sorry Ana. There are artists in our lifetimes that touch us, make us feel alive and never alone. Their work speaks to us and to the temporality associated with the lives we are currently living in ways that extend beyond the academic discourse that permeates the walls of institutions of higher learning and even higher spending-- and you thought the Yankees had a high payroll LOL.. more on that later. Such was the case with Ana Mendieta, her work touched and continues to touch me. I find a kinship in her deterriotorialization, her distinctly Cuban condition of temporal homeland mixed in with the stability of a place you would love to to reject but that is also very much a part of you. I never immigrated to the United States. For better or worse, I was born here and studied here. My travels seem to take me to places I enjoy visiting but can't see myself living in. How does one make home out of strangeness? How does art reflect the very basic need for belonging when one is never going to belong? were Ana have created home-- permanent home, not the transient/temporal one she seeked to carve out of her rock, earth patch or running river-- her work would have changed, her meaning lost. TropicAna was the name she left on her answering machine as she danced around before going out to job around Washington Square Park. The offices I worked in as a graduate assistant faced the building she lived in. I wish I had something mor einteresting to say, I feel like ass- head and chest congestion...more tomorrow

Poppin' My Cherry

or something like that...i was gonna call this blog California Dreamin' (hey, who doesn't love the Mamas and the Papas even if Mama Cass died while eating a ham sandwich, I guess it could've been the coke (the white horse, cocaine) but I digress-- and YES, I KNOW THAT'S JUST A RUMOR but it makes for good copy. I am a PhD. candidate in Performance Studies at NYU and I work as a bouncer at gay bar downtown, I used to work for a lesbian bar and now I am temping...I like to keep things interesting. I'm a spoken word artist, and a lover of ladies as well as a bon-vivant ;) I saw an old lady once with her underwaera down to her ankles lying sideways in the handicapped bathroom at the lesbian spot I used to work at. I helped her up and fixed her wire-rim glasses- Lennon would have been so proud to see his influence extended to drunken lesbianas in downtown NYC- IMAGINE ALL THE PEOPLE....anywho, back to my story. She kept asking me to put her back in her bed, that she was comfortable sleeping. "what are you doing in my room? Who let you in?" huh? and then she started getting angry and slightly belligerent in her drunken stupor. She turned and asked my manager-" who is this man?" "why is he here helping me?" I realized that she was talking about me. That I was THAT man and that once again I was being shunned by someone in the lesbian community. That the only butches they wanted to see and accept were the ones on the L Word that either wore make-up or were delivering UPS packages with their futchy ponytails. That no matter how well I had taken care of this older Latina womyn who looked like she could have been my aunt, she only saw the masculinity that womyn shunned in the '70's. I did not fit the profile for the '70s man-hating lesbian. I cut my hair short, and wore men's underwear, and shaved my legs, and had nicer eyebrows than most femme's...but I don't hate men, and the last tree I hugged was rolled nicely into a phatty. So, put down your hairy-arm pitted fists my '70s predecessors and hug me, but not too close unless the deoderant includes some anti-perspirant. I am just trying to earn a living by checking ID's and if I have to help some old senora up from the bathroom floor when she's had one too many, than so be it, but if you are going to sit there with a look of distaste and give me 'tude, than I will do what I did to her- Hail you a cab, shove yor stumbling ass in a cab and wish you the best of luck explaining to the cabby where I live! At least I put you in a cab, who says chivalry is dead?!