Thank Dionysus for performers like Taylor Mac. This past weekend, I’d say I fought my way out of the covers this morning but I couldn’t even be bothered to do that. Post-brunch I strayed dangerously close to the bed and was sucked back in. I eventually emerged reluctantly; the tickets had been bought, the house must be left.
Wedged into rows at the Soho theatre we watched Taylor Mac take the small stage in a blaze of sequins and glitter lipstick. He took on “the violence of comparison”, in his case to Tiny Tim and Ziggy Stardust, through a series of cover songs. Somewhere between Tiny Tim’s “The Other Side” and Bowie’s “Starman” I pulled my head out of the sand.
To get a sense, here’s some of Taylor Mac’s original material:
After his warped description of Tiny Tim singing on a 60s TV show about the icecaps melting (yes, 60s) before a group of children… how could I not Google it? Warped doesn’t even come close:
It’s depressingly easy to discouraged by the feeling of everything having been done before, every exploration exhausted in advance… especially in an era of relentlessly recycled, quickly confused cultural references. As he sang his way through a history of performance and drag, and Tiny Tim and Bowie were joined by notables such as Aristotle, Ethyl Eichelberger, D.H. Lawrence and Justin Bond – I think Jesus may have made an appearance as well – Taylor takes on then kicks his fears of comparison to the curb. It was brilliant fun, it was uplifting and touching and a reminder that there’s nothing new about the anxieties we harbour. As he quoted from Lady Chatterly’s Lover:
“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.” — D.H. Lawrence
I was also reminded of Krishnamurti on the matter of comparison. He asks, in his devastatingly objective fashion:
“So, is it possible to live without comparison of any kind, never translating yourself in terms of comparison with another or with some idea or with some hero or with some example? Because when you are comparing, when you are measuring yourself with ‘what should be’ or ‘what has been,’ you are not seeing what is.”
The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, Vol.17 p.182
Thanks Taylor, for sharing some of what it takes to live that question honestly. And for getting me out of bed. Which is no less challenging.
The Violence of Comparison
Thank Dionysus for performers like Taylor Mac. This past weekend, I’d say I fought my way out of the covers this morning but I couldn’t even be bothered to do that. Post-brunch I strayed dangerously close to the bed and was sucked back in. I eventually emerged reluctantly; the tickets had been bought, the house must be left.
Wedged into rows at the Soho theatre we watched Taylor Mac take the small stage in a blaze of sequins and glitter lipstick. He took on “the violence of comparison”, in his case to Tiny Tim and Ziggy Stardust, through a series of cover songs. Somewhere between Tiny Tim’s “The Other Side” and Bowie’s “Starman” I pulled my head out of the sand.
To get a sense, here’s some of Taylor Mac’s original material:
Lynne Cheney, Saddam Hussein, pulp romance, narrative arc, pathos… I know, right?!
After his warped description of Tiny Tim singing on a 60s TV show about the icecaps melting (yes, 60s) before a group of children… how could I not Google it? Warped doesn’t even come close:
It’s depressingly easy to discouraged by the feeling of everything having been done before, every exploration exhausted in advance… especially in an era of relentlessly recycled, quickly confused cultural references. As he sang his way through a history of performance and drag, and Tiny Tim and Bowie were joined by notables such as Aristotle, Ethyl Eichelberger, D.H. Lawrence and Justin Bond – I think Jesus may have made an appearance as well – Taylor takes on then kicks his fears of comparison to the curb. It was brilliant fun, it was uplifting and touching and a reminder that there’s nothing new about the anxieties we harbour. As he quoted from Lady Chatterly’s Lover:
I was also reminded of Krishnamurti on the matter of comparison. He asks, in his devastatingly objective fashion:
Thanks Taylor, for sharing some of what it takes to live that question honestly. And for getting me out of bed. Which is no less challenging.