Hurt Me Daddy, for I Have Blogged

Throughout my entire life I have struggled with the concept that there are parasocially people who connect with my art as a creation and extension of who I am as a human. And throughout my previous career, I definitely struggled with anything adjacent to a “fan,” because mostly it was leering men off the internet and that just made no sense to me on a series of levels—I wasn’t making art for them, no matter how cultural, and no matter what sexytime baggage they brought to the situation. I’ve always had the attitude of “not my problem,” because people do have their own life baggage. So subsequently, parasocial relationships now are still hard, too, because it’s just weird for me when I haven’t built a connection with a person in meatspace. I can accept that maybe my creative work resonated with them, but it’s hard to wrap my head around the idea that they’d want to connect with me as a person because of my creative work; and it’s not because I think my creative work sucks. Just connect...

 I wish I had the deep thoughts for a proper extensive update that I really want to do right now. But I don’t. Anyway gears will shift then shift again no ground is stable I am carried on the waves I am being carried to my destiny I am strapped to the mast you love me I love you back I love many people and that is part of my lifestyle I know it is superior to nothing else I was in a show Thursday now I am not because it has been postponed I do not hold onto anything too tightly I am no longer trying to be successful in a realm meant for feminine people and twinks, BUT, we do comment on the same things (old Hollywood) just in slightly different ways. My words flow like the enthralling cascading of your hair joke is on our readers because you don’t have much I love you and we are joined together for eternity eternity being just one grain of sand that an unhoused-for-today dude is sleeping on top of I arch my back in a gothic archway I am a sexy goth butt in fishnets nothing more I wa...

I think there are some topics out there where it’s just better to acknowledge that my viewpoint on it isn’t going to shift much and instead I’m being open about my asks/requests, and that’s also to say that there may not be a point in history where I take the topic less personally. Some level of detachment seems to often be the objective of being “spiritual,” but I also feel like self-knowledge in situations should be a huge priority. At this point in time, using any “aesthetics” connected to any sort of mass industrialized genocide and really any reference to something like that—I just don’t entirely understand it as an artistic choice. It doesn’t mean that free speech isn’t free and that people can’t choose what they want. Certainly people have deeply disagreed with some of my art and other actions over the years. Loudly advocating for censorship isn’t equal to simply showing up in situations and saying “well hey, if you were trying to be a good friend and advocate to me/marginaliz...

Circling back around to a topic I think about often, "community builder/building" is such an ambitious label. I think it's super ok to not identify with that label or to reject it. I know what role I play in society. It's a personal role, where others potentially see themselves in me and then have the realization about themself. My friend Schreeck and I called this the Showmanic Clown but it's also a basic artist role. I've never held anything but the belief that that role has sacred value, beyond any existing economic system. Nothing to prove with it. If folx are signed on,   great, if not, I get it too. We could be living in caves, the robocops could be kicking me, and it wouldn't make a difference. When you play this role, it's more like community congeals to witness themselves in you on occasion, and then goes home to think about it for a while. It may or may not change anyone's life and you may or may not ever have an impression of whether or ...

CW: self-harm, burning stuff for fun . . . It always strikes me as something funny when my older Gen X friends attempt to explain being a latchkey kid to me. Did I write the book on it? Nah. But instead I had the delicious and contradictory cocktail of no other siblings or even pets, overprotective ethnic parenting and also latchkey experiences starting when I was 11 or 12. I liked to burn things. Didn’t discover the fun of burning myself til much, much later. But at 12 I was a cutter. It was all the rage. You were even cooler if you carved alternative band names in your skin. I didn’t make it that far, but I tried some other stuff. Still have a few scars here and there to this day. Thought of doing all the run-of-the-mill things everyday teens think about doing to themselves. Or are they? Well, as the younger siblings of the Prozac Nation, they certainly were back then. It was because of this that from about 11 or 12 onward, my mother stuck me walking home from school with an emba...

  Another night down from the hills. To the quiet place, the hard wood rough stone dwellings for the twoleggeds with fewer metal rollers. There are still metal rollers, mind you, after all it is still the city. But fewer for me to battle with. Why do I come to the place where more of them are? Them, and barking, howling cousins. Spoiled brats. But I can’t deny my envy of them. I must be a softy, because I resolved not the harm those cousins, the close ones. Yeah, I’m the sucker with ethics, though the twoleggeds like to paint us a different way, like pests. Easy to say when you stole from us. I haven’t ended a twolegged pup in more years than I can count on a paw. Three paws! I kid. But the damn things are so obnoxious, thinking they can out-howl and coo us sometimes! Our bad reputation is unfair. When I’ve been up in the hills near the hard-walled dwellings sometimes I see sharp-toothed sinewy cousins. They wear a neck-chain that I’m certain the twoleggeds gave, to protect. They...

 It's so interesting to observe how "safe" arts and entertainment feel overall right now. Anyone else have any thoughts on this? Boundary: I will not debate either cancel culture as a concept or the ethics of AIs with you. But it's so interesting to observe. I'd love to create a followup video piece to our "Are You There?" short we did last year that explores arts and entertainment as an especially self-soothing mechanism of familiarity right now. Even a lot of the AI cyberpunky stuff that's getting generated has this very fantasy, dreamlike quality. Nostalgia is getting recycled at a breakneck pace. And a lot of the "experimental" stuff out there, at least in my entertainment-based town, is specifically rehashing a lot of the same very fem-leaning stuff. How are fems subverting or playing with or conforming to tropes and expectations? How are historically marginalized people reinserting themselves into utterly Disneyfied, conventional narr...

  Old people rant ahead… Before I begin, I would also like to request that people who’ve never been a part of the goth scene in any location anywhere not participate in this discussion. I actually kind of feel it’s an intracommunity discussion. So at my age right now, I can rest assured that most humans on earth don’t think like I do. I need those regular reminders to humble me sometimes. And of course, inevitably, a lot of us don’t see eye to eye on things like politics. But I guess I’ve always maybe been either naïve or overly optimistic in assuming that Goth subculture should always be, at worst politically centrist, but most likely by default progressive, inclusive and left-leaning. Because I still remember the era of getting screamed at on the street for how I dressed and folx who dressed like me getting threats of violence. I remember my friends in the scene older than me explaining exactly how the queer nightclubs were some of the few willing to host goth clubs at the ...

 I have made a strong decision for my wellbeing right now. This particularly relates to supporting metaphysical co-business owners/entrepreneurs,  I will not be giving my energy any further,  to people who have difficulty standing in community with me as a fellow human. If that is potentially toxic or emotional blackmail, I am open to and ok with that. If you think I am acting exhausting, I might be. But this is also in alignment with what I need right now. I know that I can be problematic and difficult to deal with. I am also coming to terms with the fact that I have muted and tamped down a side of myself for too long-- that I am an ethnic-American. In the 80s and 90s if you were light-skinned it was the legacy of just being whte and wanting to blend in. Well, my relationship to that has changed and honestly this identity has created problems for me through my entire life. I would actually compare it to some peoples’ versions of transness—the constant inability to get tr...

I keep seeing that graphic of "2023 is the year when people show you who they are and you believe them" and I'm sitting here like y'all have already been doing that with people like me, don't worry 😆 Some of us give shit first (or ongoing) impressions but are still ok humans, fyi. I'm more put off by potential manipulators who know how to "check all the boxes" off the bat and show good behavior. No I'm not talking about masking, I'm talking about people who try to effect a social outcome, for survival reasons or otherwise. So maybe 2023 is the year we don't mute people like TV channels just because they say occasional off-putting stuff. I think we could stand to connect better and practice a touch of social resilience without running away at someone else's every misstep. No I am not telling people to put up with harm. I'm saying most people are going about life trying their best and we forget the fuck out of that sometimes. Stop ...

  So I’ve started to work out a lot more around my gender and here is how I’ve broken it down. About 70-80 percent of the time I feel completely agender/gender null as well as somewhat genderfluid. I’m solidly a they/them during that time, and in general that’s always a good set of pronouns to default to. Roughly 20-30 percent of the time I have concluded that I’m a nonbinary woman/multigender person who, ok this is going to be the confusing part…would prefer to take he/him pronouns. Let me see if I can drill down on this a little bit more. AMAB people presenting fem, in either deliberate performance drag, genderfluid expression, or showing that they’re women (aka transwomen/fems, who are women!) have ALWAYS been the foundational roots of my aesthetic influence. The list includes. Adam Ant Pete Burns Boy George (yes I know he’s problematic) Gen P Orridge (yes I know s/he’s problematic) Robin Finck of NIN in the early days RuPaul (yes I know he’s problematic, but h...