end of the week obsessions 07

a list of ideas, prompts, art & artists, poetry, and other miscellany intended to shout out some inspirational resources and create conversations.

this week’s obsessions:

1. opera. specifically, really good arias. is aria the right word? i’m too lazy to go look it up. (wait…no, i’m not, & yes, it is.) before you roll your eyes and ugh at me, hear me out.

i am literally (a word i’m using correctly) fascinated by watching people do things they love. do you play the accordion well? i’m there. the Olympics? i’ve been losing sleep over them since the era of Olga Korbut and Mark Spitz. i even watch the Sportsball now, since moving to New England, because my partner pointed out that the Sportsball people are working hard at something they love. subsequently, i have a couple of favorite teams and, as a sign of true sportspersonship, i magnanimously forgive anyone who doesn’t cheer for the Bills. those people are still welcome at my table. (if you’re a Tom Brady fan, my table is off limits. don’t even bother coming to my street.)

thusly…opera is the bomb. SportsBall wishes it was opera. just listen to the evil deliciousness that is Diana Damrau singing the difficult Queen of the Night aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. not understanding the language (in this case, German) is a bonus because it allows you to concentrate on the emotion in her voice. want less drama? how about The Flower Duet between Lakmé and Malika from the Delibes opera, Lakmé? who can do that with mere human vocal cords?! (not i, friend. not you, either, i venture.)

want to back down a step from opera? fine. but stick with the idea of music in languages you don’t speak. it hits the writerly part of the imagination differently when you don’t know the words to something sung with that much feeling. try out this duet between Andrea Bocelli and Portuguese fado singer Dulce Pontes. (the video is meh, sorry). want something less in your face? try Bebé. for all i know she’s singing about having her car’s tires rotated, but the sadness in her voice is crazy-inspirational.

2. have you discovered Necessary Salt yet?

Joy Sullivan

has a way of insinuating an image or a smattering of words into my brain that is devilishly smart. her essay Woman In Trouble was my gateway. i’m calling all 3 of my digital detractors “Sad Fan Man” now. i won’t tell you which essay includes the words “crooked unbelonging” and, instead let you find them yourself. Sullivan’s most recent drop is about her beloved Miko, as fine and handsome a gentleman as ever there was. When To Call The Witches is a sharp instrument of grief as well as a wracked acknowledgement that embracing deathwork and rites of passage make it possible for us to continue loving.

3. Ellen Welcker is a US-based poet who has been silent for about a decade but once wrote thought-provoking poems about ecological despair, among other things. her book, Ram Hands, is bizarre and fantastic, in the literal sense of the word. This Day In History is a weighty piece of prose that starts and ends with cauliflower, but has some hefty…hmm…anatomy in between. (i’m always going to be partial to writers who have the ovaries to create their own words – in this case “Zoticist” – especially when it’s clear they’ve researched the origins of their language.)

i’m obsessed by this poem because i don’t particularly care for it. i like the language, but not the piece as a whole. admittedly, i’m not a surrealist (which i think this is; you may have other ideas). to me, surrealist poetry feels like art film B-roll shot through a warped lens. i can see some of the components, i can see a few frames of the A-roll just out of reach, but i consistently fail to make the necessary connections. that’s my loss and, no, i’m not being snarky. i clearly need to spend more time with Welcker’s poetry and that’s exactly what causes my obsession.

i shamelessly LOVE disliking a work of art.

listen. art has a job to do in the world and that is to provoke: emotion, wonder, conversation, confusion, even passionate dislike. if it’s not doing that – if it leaves us apathetic or unchanged – then it has failed to accomplish its sole purpose. Ellen Welcker’s poem has not left me apathetic. indeed, my dislike should be noted as a sign of respect for Welcker’s effort and investment specifically because i know why i dislike it. and that is the thrill of art, if we would only embrace it: it makes us think & feel. but too frequently, the observer doesn’t show up for this artistic relationship. that lack of commitment creates an untraversable chasm between art and the self-proclaimed art “lover.” we often arrive in time and space to read/observe/listen and expect to be “entertained” as though artistic works were some kind of emotional nitrous oxide (which, if you…say…partied with dentists in the 90s, you know is fairly exhilarating. or so i’ve heard). but art doesn’t owe us happiness. it doesn’t owe us “beauty” or “pretty” or (shudder) “nice”. its only debt to the world is provocation and we, as consumers of art, owe the world critical thinking in return. if we declare that we “hate” a book or painting but cannot say why, we can and should be ignored. if, on the other hand, one has thoughtful ideas about why a piece is not to one’s liking, i’m on board to listen even when those ideas aren’t fully fleshed out or if they disagree with my own. frankly, sometimes the things i don’t like are more interesting to me than the things i do like because they’re challenging. one day, maybe i’ll write the origin story of this realization. for now, i’ll end by name dropping the original inspiration for my opinion — Eva Hesse — who appears at the top of my list of 100 favorite creators, and say that i genuinely hate almost everything she made. meanwhile, reflect upon Piss Christ as a worthy challenge. Andrew Hudgins wrote an excellent poetic opinion of the piece and, in 2011, a group of French art lovers were so “moved” by it that they expressed their opinions via pickaxe and other assorted weaponry, inflicting some permanent damage. recently, yours truly wrote a little poem about the irony of hating this particular work of art.

what about you, friend? are there creators of art, music, books, performance, etc that you love/hate and, more importantly, do you know why? drop a bomb in the chat and let the fervor begin.

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what are you obsessed with right now? leave a message in the chat and, as always, remember that the Gay Agenda is real. we’re organized and we know how to find anything on sale.