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likealittleheartbeat · 4 years

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The Queer Platonic Love of Aang & Zuko

Friend. What a weighty and intimate word in Avatar The Last Airbender. The series’ “found family” is iconic at this point, and is literally established as a “family” by Katara in the third episode. She pulls Aang back from the outrage of the Avatar state, saying “Monk Gyatso and the other monks may be gone, but you still have a family. Sokka and I, we’re your family now.”

As I’ve said before, establishing this central safety net of trusted people is essential to Aang’s healing. Still, it’s interesting to me that they insist on this group as a “family” rather than something that might emphasize “friendship.” Something along the lines of ‘we’re your friends and we’re here with you.’ I can think of several animated shows that have done as much successfully. The show withholds the word “friend” for another purpose. I’ll happily admit that Aang and the others describe each other as “friends” throughout the series, but rarely is the use of the word (through pacing, repetition, or emotional context) given a sense of gravity in those moments.

However, three scenes in the series rely heavily on the word “friend,” and each scene connects Aang more and more profoundly with Zuko, eventually revealing that the show’s entire plot hinges on the friendship between these two boys. In a series so latent with symbolism, what do we make of these star-crossed friends? The relationship between Aang and Zuko, I want to suggest, is meant to explore Platonic Love in all its depth, especially within a masculine culture that not only devalues it, but views its queer implications as inherently dangerous to the dominant power structures of an empire.

Get ready zukaang fans for a long-ass atla meta analysis...

“If we knew each other back then, do you think we could’ve been friends, too?”

The first time the word “friend” is uttered between them, Aang is perched on a branch, waiting for Zuko (who is laid out on a bed of leaves the Avatar made for him) to wake up after his blue spirit rescue. “You know what the worst part about being born over a hundred years ago is?” Aang waxes, “I miss all the friends I used to hang out with. Before the war started I used to always visit my friend Kuzon. The two of us, we'd get in and out of so much trouble together. He was one of the best friends I ever had...and he was from the Fire Nation, just like you. If we knew each other back then do you think we could have been friends too?” The scene stood out for me when I first watched it for the melancholy and stillness. We are not given a flashback like we did when Aang talked about Bumi or Gyatso in earlier episodes. We have to sit with Aang’s loss of a male friend. It echoes a veteran’s loss of a war buddy more than anything a western audience would expect in a children’s show about the power of friendship. Instead of simply mourning, Aang invites Zuko into the past with him. He invites Zuko to imagine a time before the war, a land of innocence, where they could live together. And between them there is a moment of reflection given to this invitation (...until Zuko shoots a fucking fire blast at Aang).

The wistful mood returns when the two boys arrive back to their respective beds. Aang is asked by a loopy fevered Sokka if he made any “friends” on his trip, to which Aang sadly replies, “No, I don’t think I did” before tucking away to sleep. Aang’s mournful moments often stand out against his bubbly personality, but this moment stands out moreso because its the final moment for Aang in the episode. For the first time, he doesn’t receive comfort in his dejection. He doesn’t even confide in his peers. The solemnity and secrecy of this failed “friendship” is remarkable.

It’s in the next symbolic gesture that I think Avatar reveals what’s at stake in the concept of “friendship.” Zuko, in the next scene, lays down to rest after his adventurous night, looks pensively at the fire nation flag in his room, and then turns his back on it. We realize, especially after the previous revelations in “The Storm,” that Aang’s gestures of “friendship” have caused Zuko to doubt the authority of the Fire Nation.

Now all three remaining nations have misogynistic tendencies, but the Fire Nation celebrates a specific brand of toxic masculinity, and Zuko longs to emulate it even after it has rejected and scarred him. In the episode, “The Storm,” which directly precedes “The Blue Spirit,” we see how Zuko failed to replicate masculinity’s demands. In a room of men, he disregards honorifics to speak out in the name of care and concern for people’s well-being over strategy. Though the war room was all men, we later see that The Fire Nation does not exclude women from participating in this form of toxic masculinity. (Shoutout to Azula, one of the best tragic villains of all time!) This gender parity prevents disgraced men, like Zuko, from retaining pride of place above women. So Zuko’s loving act and refusal to fight his father puts him at the lowest of the low in the social hierarchy of the Fire Nation, completely emasculated and unworthy of respect.

Since then, Zuko has been seeking to restore himself by imitating the unfeeling men of the war room and his unfeeling sister, barking orders and demands at his crew. The final redemptive act for this purpose, of course, is to capture the Avatar, who’s very being seems to counteract the violent masculinity at the heart of the Fire Nation. In most contemporary Euro-American understandings, Aang is by no means masculine. He’s openly affectionate, emotional, giggly, and supportive of everyone in his life, regardless of gender. He practices pacifism and vegetarianism, and his hobbies include dancing and jewelry-making. And, foremost, he has no interest in wielding power. (@rickthaniel has an awesome piece about Aang’s relationship to gender norms and feminism).

In addition to the perceived femininity of Aang’s behavior, he’s equally aligned with immaturity. Aang’s childishness is emphasized in the title of the first episode, “The Boy in the Iceberg,” and then in the second episode when Zuko remarks, “you’re just a kid.” Aang, as a flying boy literally preserved against adulthood, also draws a comparison to another eternally boyish imp in the western canon: Peter Pan. This comparison becomes more explicit in “The Ember Island Players.” His theatrical parallel is a self-described “incurable trickster” played by a woman hoisted on wires mimicking theatrical productions of Peter Pan. The comparison draws together the conjunction of femininity and immaturity Aang represents to the Fire Nation.

When Zuko is offered friendship and affection by Aang, then, he faces a paradigm-shifting internal conflict. To choose this person, regardless of his spiritual status, as a “friend,” Zuko must relate himself to what he perceives as Aang’s femininity and immaturity, further demeaning himself in the eyes of his father and Fire Nation culture. The banished prince would need to submit to the softness for which he’s been abused and banished. This narrative of abuse and banishment for perceived effeminate qualities lends itself easily enough to parallels with a specific queer narrative, that of a young person kicked out of their house for their sexuality and/or gender deviance.

I want to point out that Aang’s backstory, too, can be read through a queer lens. Although the genocide of the air nomads more explicitly parallels the experiences of victims to imperial and colonial violence, I can also see how the loss of culture, history, friends, and mentors for a young effiminate boy can evoke the experience of queer men after the AIDs pandemic and the government’s damning indifference. In fact, colonial violence and the enforcement of rigid gender roles have historically travelled hand-in-hand. Power structures at home echo the power structures of a government. Deviance from the dominant norms disrupt the rigid structures of the empire. Aang’s background highlights how cultures based in something besides hierarchy and dominance, whether they be queer cultures or indigenous societies, threaten the logic of imperialism, and thus become targets of reform, neglect, and aggression by the expanding empire and its citizens. Survivors are left, as Aang was, shuffling through the remnants, searching for some ravaged piece of history to cling to.

We begin the series, then, with two queer-coded boys, one a survivor of broad political violence, the other a survivor of more intimate domestic abuse, and both reeling from the ways the Fire Nation has stigmatized sensitivity. But the queer narrative extends beyond the tragic backstories toward possibility and hope. The concept of platonic love proposed here, though it does not manifest until later, is a prospect that will bring peace to the two boys' grief-stricken hearts and to the whole world.

“Do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime?”

“Do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime?” Toph asks before the four members of the group hold hands. Since Toph previously mourned her friendless childhood, it’s easy to appreciate this line for its hopefulness regarding the four central members of the Gaang. They long to appreciate that they’re all connected. As touching as this is, the soul-mated ‘friendship’ concept is actually uniquely applicable to Aang and Zuko.

When does Toph ask the question specifically? It’s after hearing the story of Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin: how their once intimate friendship fell apart; how Fire Lord Sozin began, undaunted, the genocidal attack on Airbenders. After recounting the tale, Aang, the reincarnation of Avatar Roku, excitedly explains to the group the moral that every person is capable of great good and evil. While that moral could easily be ascribed to many people in the series, the connective tissue is stretched directly to Zuko in a parallel storyline. Reading a secret history composed by his grandfather Sozin, Zuko discovers that he is not only the grandson of the empirical firelord but of Avatar Roku, as well. We see how the rift between the Sozin and Roku echoed down across history to separate the airbending culture from the fire nation, and, on a more human level, to separate Aang from Zuko. The two boys find themselves divided by their ancestors’ choices— and connected by Avatar Roku’s legacy.

This is what takes their “friendship” from simply a matter of the character’s preferences to something fated, something unique from the other friendships. The rest of the found family is positioned as circumstantial in their relationship to Aang and one another. Yeah, it’d be cool if they were all connected in past and future lives, but the audience receives no indicators in the series that it’s necessarily true. Only faith holds them together, which allows room for an appreciation that your “found family” friendships might simply be the trusted people you discovered along the way.

Zuko’s friendship is characterized differently. Both his struggle to befriend Aang and his eventual “friendship” are explicitly destined by the story of Roku and Sozin. After this episode, the series depends upon Zuko’s ability to mend the divide inside himself, which can only be done by mending the divide between him and Aang. Their inheritance symbolizes this dynamic exactly. As the reincarnation of Avatar Roku, Aang can be understood as the beneficiary of Avatar Roku’s wisdom (he should not, as many jokingly suggest, be considered as any kind of biological relation of Roku or Zuko). Zuko, on the other hand, has inherited Roku’s genealogy in the Fire Nation. These two pieces of Roku must be brought together in order to revive Roku’s legacy of firebending founded on something besides aggression.

In addition to making the ideals of Roku whole again, the two boys must tend to the broken “friendship” between the two men. As the Avatar and the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, Aang and Zuko parallel Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin precisely. The narrative of the latter pair places destiny precisely in the hands of the former. And since both Aang and Roku expressed the desire for “friendship,” it falls in the lap of the corresponding royal to give up their imperial dreams so they can gain something more peaceful and intimate. For Zuko, this now can only be accomplished when he heals the rift within himself.

Importantly, both the previous friendship and the destined friendship between Zuko and Aang are between two men. The coming-of-age genre has proliferated the trope of homosociality (friendship between individuals of the same sex) and its eventual decline brought on by maturity and heterosexual romance. (Check out the beautiful and quick rundown of classic examples, from Anne of Green Gables to Dead Poet’s Society, made by @greetingsprophet ). The story of Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin replicates this established narrative.

We see them playing, sparring, and joking intimately with one another. The two as young adults were intimately connected, the series explains, “sharing many things including a birthday.” Eventually their intimacy is interrupted by their worldly responsibilities and the spectre of heterosexual romance on Roku’s part.

Now, It’s not a huge leap for one to wonder if Sozin longed for something stronger in their “friendship.” We see no female romantic interests for Sozin. Instead, he continues to demonstrate his platonic allegiance to Roku. When Roku prepares to leave for his Avatar training, Sozin walks into his room and gives him his crown prince headpiece, a gesture of unique devotion that positions his friendship above his politics (which harkens to Plato and EM Forster’s ideas about platonic love that I’ll discuss in Part 3).

One might note, too, how the wedding between Roku and his childhood sweetheart provides the setting for the escalation of Sozin’s violence. “On wedding days,” Sozin writes, “we look to the future with optimism and joy. I had my own vision for a brighter future...” He then pulls Roku away from his bride for a personal conversation, briefly recapturing the earlier homosocial dynamic with his friend. Sozin describes his affection for their intertwined lives. Then he links their shared happiness to the current prosperity of the Fire Nation. He imagines the expansion of the Fire Nation, which would also expand on the relationship between him and Roku. But the Avatar refuses the offer and returns to his wife, insisting on the value of traditional boundaries (both the pact of marriage and the strict division of the four nations). The abandonment of the homosocial relationship by Roku sets the site for the unmitigated empirical ambitions of Sozin. One wonders how history might’ve been altered had the two men’s relationship been sanctified and upheld. How might’ve Roku persuaded Sozin in his empirical ambitions if he had remained in a closer relationship to his friend? In their final encounter, Sozin reacts vengefully to his former platonic love: he lets Roku die protecting the home the Avatar shared with his wife. Sozin’s choice solidifies the divide between them, and makes the grief he’s experienced since Roku left him into actual death.

Instead of Avatar Roku and Firelord Sozin finding a resolution, Aang and Zuko are ordained to reverse their friendship’s disintegration. Yes, they must heal the rift in the world created by the Fire Nation’s aggression, but Aang and Zuko must also reverse the tradition of lost homosociality within a culture of unrelenting machismo. Despite Avatar: the Last Airbender’s ties to the coming-of-age genre, the arc of Aang and Zuko’s “friendship” counters one of its most prominent tropes. “Some friendships are so strong they can transcend lifetimes,” Roku says, and it’s precisely this platonic ideal that draws Zuko and Aang towards one another in ways that are revolutionary both in their world and in the traditions of our’s. To come together, as two matured boys, to form an adult platonic love that can persist into adulthood.

“And now we’re friends.”

Which brings us to the consummation of Aang and Zuko’s “friendship.” Having resolved their previous hostilities and having neutralized the outside forces that would rather them dead than together, Aang and Zuko can finally embrace and define their relationship as “friendship.” Now, if we look closely at Zuko’s expression, we’ll notice a pause, before he smiles and reiterates Aang’s comment. My initial response, with my zukaang shipping goggles on extra tightly, was that Zuko just got friend-zoned and was a little disappointed before accepting Aang’s friendship. When I took a step back, I considered that we are given this moment of reflection to recognize Zuko’s journey, his initial belligerent response to the idea of befriending the Avatar. When he accepts the term of ‘friend,’ he reveals the growth he’s undergone that’s brought peace to the world. With these two possibilities laid out, I want to offer that they might coexist. That the word ‘friend’ might feel to Zuko and the audience so small and limited and yet simultaneously powerful. The pause can hint at the importance of “friendship” and signal something more. This reading emboldens the queer concept of “friendship” that undergirds their relationship. That the hug that follows might be meant to define the depth of the platonic love that is at the very heart of the series.

Saving a hugging declaration of “friendship” for the announcement of peace in the series is quietly revolutionary. In the twentieth century, male characters could connect in battle, on competitive teams, and through crime. “In the war film, a soldier can hold his buddy — as long as his buddy is dying on the battlefield. In the western, Butch Cassidy can wash the Sundance Kid’s naked flesh — as long as it is wounded. In the boxing film, a trainer can rub the well-developed torso and sinewy back of his protege — as long as it is bruised. In the crime film, a mob lieutenant can embrace his boss like a lover — as long as he is riddled with bullets,” writes Kent Brintnall. Aang and Zuko’s hug starkly contrasts this kind of masculine intimacy. The show suggests that environments shaped by dominance, conflict, coercion, or harm, though seemingly productive in drawing people and especially men together, actually desecrate “friendships.” Only in a climate of humility, diplomacy, and peace can one make a true ‘friend.’

In situating the’ “friendship” between two matured males in a time of peace, the writers hearken back to older concepts of homosocial relationships in our fiction. As Hanya Yanagihara has described the Romantic concepts of friendship that pervaded fiction before the 1900s. In her book, A Little Life, Yanagihara renews this concept for the twenty-first century with a special appreciation for the queerness that one must accept in order for platonic love to thrive into adulthood. She writes, “Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together day after day bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified.” Aang and Zuko’s relationship, despite a history that would keep them apart, reclaims this kind of friendship. Their hearts, bound together by an empyrean platonic love, are protected from the political and familial loyalties that would otherwise embroil them.

In addition to Yanagihara, another author that coats the word ‘friend’ with similar gravity and longing to Avatar is E.M. Forster, who braids platonic friendship in his writing with homoeroticism and political revolution. In Forster’s novel Maurice (originally written in 1914 but published posthumously in 1971 due to Britain’s criminalization of male homsexuality), the titular character asks a lower class male lover lying in bed with him, “Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his? I suppose such a thing can’t happen outside of sleep.” The confession, tinged with grief and providence as it is, could easily reside in Aang’s first monologue to Zuko in “The Blue Spirit.”

Platonic love as a topic is at the heart of Maurice. Plato’s “Symposium,” from which the term platonic love derives, is even directly referenced in the book and connected with “the unspeakable vice of the Greeks”— slang for homosexual acts. For Forster, the sanction of platonic love, both the homosocial aspect and the latent homosexuality, reveals a culture’s liberation. “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend,” Forster wrote in his essay “What I Believe,”, “I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” This echoes a sentiment of philial love described by Plato.

Rather than revolutionary ideals, for Forster friendships, and specifically friendships that disregard homophobia, provide the foundation for peace, equality, and democratic proliferation. When Aang and Zuko embrace, they are embodying this ideal. Platonic love and the word “friend” have a history intertwined with queer romantic love, and, while I won’t argue that Avatar attempts to directly evoke this, I will suggest that the series consciously leaves room for this association. Now, the show certainly makes no attempt to imply anything romantic between Zuko and Aang within the timeline we witness (nor any same sex characters, which reflects cultural expectations in the 2000s). And for good reason, the age gap would be notably icky, to use the technical term. (You might note, however, that the show actually allows for crushes to extend upwardly across the same age gap, when Toph accidentally reveals her affection for Sokka to Suki in “The Serpent’s Pass.”) Despite connecting queer friendships to the history of ‘platonic love,’ Avatar provides two critiques to platonic love for audiences to absorb. One is the pederasty with which Plato defined his ultimate form of love in his Symposium. Fans rightfully comment on the age gap between Aang and Zuko as something preventative to shipping them together. And beyond the fact of their ages, Aang’s youthfulness is emphatic, as I remarked earlier. Aang and Zuko are prevented from consummating their platonic love until both are deemed mature in the last moments of the series. And even then, their relationship is directed toward future development rather than conclusion. Instead of cutting away, they are allowed to exit their scene together toward a speech about hope and peace. This stands in stark opposition to the permanence of Aang and Katara’s kiss. The platonic love in Avatar, the kind EM Forster cherishes, is relegated to adulthood as opposed to other kinds of boyish friendships. The conclusion of Avatar, at least for me, actually feels especially satisfying because it settles our characters in the “new era of love and peace.” It is a beginning, and it feels more expansive than the actions the characters choose to take in the episode. Even as our characters conclude three seasons of narrative tension as the sun sets and “The End” appears on the screen, it feels instead as if their stories can finally begin. The characters are allowed to simply exist for the first time. Yes, Aang and Katara or Zuko and Mai are allowed to embrace and kiss, but it’s because the pressures of empiricism have finally been banished. They are now allowed to try things and fail and make mistakes and explore. Things don’t feel rigid or permanent, whether that be one’s identity or one’s relationships.

Ideally, within the morality of the series (at least as it appears to us with no regard for whatever limits or self-censorship occurred due to its era of production and child-friendly requirements), “friends'' are maintained alongside romantic partnerships. Both Zuko and Aang’s separate romantic relationships blossom within the same episode that they declare their “friendship.” In fact, a vital plotline is the development of Zuko’s relationship with Aang’s romantic interest. While anyone in the fandom is well aware of the popular interpretation of romantic affection between Zuko and Katara because of their shared narrative, I have to point out that romantic feelings across the series are made extremely explicit through statements, blushes, and kisses. Zuko’s relationship with Katara can be better understood in the light of the coming-of-age counternarrative. While the love interest often serves as a catalyst for separation for a homosocial relationship, the friendly relationship with Aang’s love interest—seeking her forgiveness, respecting her power, calling on her support, etc—is vital for Zuko to ultimately create an environment of peace in which he and Aang can fulfill their destined “friendship.” In fact, we can look at Katara’s femininity as the most important device for manifesting Aang and Zuko’s eventual union. It’s her rage against misogyny that frees Aang from his iceberg, midwifing him into the world again after his arrested development, the complete opposite of a Wendy figure. It’s her arms that hold Aang in the pieta after his death in the Crossroads of Destiny, positioning her as a divine God-bearer. Afterwards, its her hands that resurrect Aang so that they together can fulfill his destiny. It will be these same hands with this same holy water that resurrect Zuko in the finale. Only through Katara’s decided blessing could Aang and Zuko proceed toward the fated reunion of their souls.

The importance of this critical relationship to femininity becomes relevant to a scene in “Emerald Island Players” that one might note as an outstanding moment of gay panic. Zuko and Aang, watching their counterparts on stage, cringe and shrink when, upon being saved by The Blue Spirit character in the play, Aang’s performer declares “My hero!” Instead of the assumption of homophobia, I wonder whether we might read Aang and Zuko’s responses as discomfort with the misogynistic heterosexual dynamics the declaration represents. Across the board, Avatar subverted the damsel in distress trope. There’s a-whole-nother essay to be written on all the ways it goes about this work, but the events in “The Blue Spirit” certainly speak to this subversion. It’s quite explicit that Zuko, after breaking Aang’s chains, is equally dependent on Aang for their escape. And, by the end of the actual episode, the savior role is reversed as Aang drags an unconscious Zuko away from certain death. To depict these events within the simplistic “damsel in distress” scenario, as The Ember Island Players do, positions Aang as a subordinately feminized colonial subject, denies him his agency, and depicts the relationship as something merely romantic, devoid of the equalizing platonic force that actually empowers them. The moment in the play is uncomfortable for Aang and Zuko because it makes Zuko the hero and Aang the helpless object. Aang is explicit about his embarrassment over his feminized and infantilized depiction in the play. And Zuko, newly reformed, is embarrassed to see, on one hand, his villainy throughout the play and, on the other hand, see how his character is positioned as made out as a savior to the person who has actually saved him.

At the heart of the series is not the idea of a chosen one or savior. Instead, we are saved by the ability for one person to see themselves in another person and to feel that same person equally understands their own soul. This is the ideal of platonic love. Platonic love between two matured boys—two boys with whose memories and bodies bare the scars of their queer sensitivities—is an essential part of the future of peace. Many fans have a sense of this, labeling the relationship as “brotp” and “platonic soulmates.” I simply encourage people to acknowledge that platonic love, especially in this context, is not a limit. There is no “no homo” joke here. When we remark on the platonic love between Zuko and Aang (and across media more generally) we are precisely making room for friendship, romance, and whatever else it could mean, whatever else it might become. While I find Legend of Korra lacking and in some ways detrimental to appreciating the original series, it’s finale interestingly parallels and extends this reading of platonic love in a sapphic vein. And most recently, She ra Princess of Power was able to even more explicitly realize these dynamics in the relationship between Adora and Catra. Let’s simply acknowledge that Aang and Zuko’s relationship blazed the trail: that peace, happiness, hope, and freedom could all hinge on a “friendship,” because a “friend” was never supposed to be set apart from or less than other kinds of relationships. For the ways it disregards gender, disregards individualism, disregards dominion, platonic love is the foundation of any meaningful relationship. And a meaningful relationship is the foundation for a more peaceful world. *Author’s note: I’m just tired of sitting on this and trying to edit it. It’s not perfect. I don’t touch on all the symbolism and nuances in the show and in the character’s relationships. And this is not meant to negate any ships. It’s actually, quite the opposite. This is a show about growth and change and mistakes and complexity. Hopefully you can at least appreciate this angle even if you don’t vibe with every piece of analysis here. I just have no chill and need to put this out there so I can let my obsession cool down a bit. Enjoy <3

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cheladyn · 5 years

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(A piece of) Everything I know about dance

This is an excerpt of a text that may never see the light of day. I’m too narcissistic or something to do a real edit, so here’s some of it as it is. I call myself a contemporary dancer, I’m trained as one and I run in its circles. I don’t know what such title means, and I sure as shit don’t know what my art does. But I persist. I hope you persist too. I hope something makes sense. If not, I hope you’re well.

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Let’s get back to what’s important about dance. This is not an essentialist nor essentializing task. An essentialist illusion would be to believe that I could (or anyone could) determine some positive properties or features of dance that could define ‘dance’ with some permanent essence. Such properties would have to exist and remain the same in all possible contexts, experiences, situations. So, maybe dance can have this definition: Dance is dance.

In its identity dance is always designated by the signifier ‘dance’. The signified of dance (us and all our practices) represent the agency of the signifier. Dance becomes performative. Dance is unstable, unfixed, filled with difference. This makes this text both useless and useful, true and false.

The moment I began to write this text, the utter nonsense of this ridiculous signifier, ‘dance’, displayed itself as meaning, as ideological meaning and practice. And every use of ‘dance’ continues to build on/into a totalizing field of such ideological meaning.

Dance is the dispossession of your fleshy right. The dislocation of your labour and efforts to a place and status unnamed. Dance is the debt full of impossible promises and an impossible payback scheme. Dance is debt and duty. The duty to love it. The duty to be indebted. But dance is pay-back in its own right. Dance is how we come together.

Dance is a refusal of the choice to be with us or against us. I don’t give a shit that you’re against me, I refuse the choice. Dance is re-breaking the breaks that make refusal happen. Dance is how we tear dance’s walls down. Dance is the end of justifying and making sense of violent practices and standpoints. Dance is where labour enters unapologetically. Dance is how we overcome the never ending obstacle of labour that tells us that we are inadequate to the task of destruction. Dance lightens the burden of inadequacy. It rearranges the standards of “adequacy.” I would be content to be adequate to the task of dance, because my tasks also exist beyond dance. I keep coming back, the pleasure too obscure but present to resist.

Dance is dangerous to the development and the wellbeing of capitalism. Dance will continue to develop and nurture good capitalists and good capitalist values. Dance is my wealth and never my poverty. Dance claims to be knowable but the horizon will never arrive. Dance cannot be positivist or normative. Dance is queer.

Let’s get back to what’s important here. Dance cannot abolish its endless detritus of expansive meanings: many things are dance. Dance calls me in as a subject. A queer subject. Dance makes us subjects. Sometimes queer subjects. Dance subjectifies. As subjects of dance, we can dance politically. Dance can queer the political. I am sewn into the concept/practice/signifier of dance. Dance is the bearer of plentitude.

Dance moves us away from the conditions that produced this apocalypse. The apocalypse of now and all those on the horizons. I want this to be my dance, my deep, difficult dance of dismembering the legacy and the bullshit and violence of dance. Dance is not a collection of findings that document all of earth’s extinctions (of species and peoples). But we live with these facts and with our own ongoing creation of geological and biological futures.

Dance is made on a wasted earth and on stolen ground. On ground made steal-able. Ground made own-able. Dance makes things steal-able. Dance must be made kill-able so when we kill it, we the subjects-turned-objects of dance, we can see more and differently.

Dance can see the catastrophe it’s made. Dance is the only response to this catastrophe. More dance is the only prescription. The poison and the remedy; dance trudges on. Dance is aesthetic and the sensorial attention. Dance-moves and light-moves are the making of dance pieces. But not of all dance pieces. Dance-moves and light-moves are of a different kind, of a different class of moves. We are supposed to see one more than the other. A hierarchy of moves, a hierarchy of jobs, a hierarchy of senses and affects.

We adapt quite quickly to the changing terms and conditions of dance. Sometimes so quickly that we find ourselves without guidance, on uncharted ground. Dance can leave these spaces uncharted. But on uncharted ground we find ourselves grappling with how best be. Dance exists in a space of ‘I don’t know’ and it’s full of ‘what-ifs.’ The kind of ‘what-ifs’ that bring inquiry, experimentation, anger, blame, and oppression.

Dance can move away from hierarchy. Dance invites my body to get close to yours. To get sweaty and slippery and sticky and smelly. Dance invites your body to press up against mine, roll up onto mine. I will give you my weight when we dance. As a gift, as a task, as a game, in a structure, in a moment. Dance makes my body open up to you, spread for you, reach for you with tentacular softness. Dance brings me closer to you. Close enough to wrap around your length, up into your depth.

I will draw you into me. Dance makes me pant, it improves the flow. I have no intention of stopping. You will not whisk me off my feet (I’m probably too long for that) but you will catch me and our limbs might tangle. Dance brings the struggle of finding the right angle for pleasure. Who’s pleasure? My fucking pleasure. I will dance a dance fully clothed that, when unclothed, becomes a different dance. Addressed to you.

Everything becomes a threat, a border. I become an empty body without organs; flows endlessly extending in every direction. The desire for you inside me is the desire for dance is the desire for desire is the dissatisfaction. Dance, as immaterial as it is, helps me understand the complexity of material borders. Of being me, not you, of merely being able to smash into each other with a physics of lust and tentative concern.

Dance forces me to think how I fold into you, sluff off of you, out of the center and back into the margins. Dance is a human thing. A libidinal thing. My material borders dissolve, I peel off my words, and again I embrace you. We pant. We leverage ourselves in/out of political mobilizations, (un)clear sexual identities, and our limbs tangle again. I swing a leg, sit on you, unravel myself, push/pull/reach/yield to you.

Dance is an alternative ethical and political framework, it’s a saturated sense of desolation, an interrogation, a kinship. We un-problematize our limbs and mobilize our pelvic floors, scoop our transverse abs to get a bit closer, just a bit. Our historical bodily processes and impulses pulse somewhere else. A trans-corporeal permeability.

My agency is in how I hold you, how I exit the dance, come back for more. Dance rests on a precarious female body. On exploited bodies. On my body sliding back into you, for you. Dance continues a history of surveillance; a better panopticon of surveilling myself.

Dance is the intelligence of the spiralling pinky. Inwards and outwards rotation. A reference to tenderness. Our tender anatomies. Electrified by anatomical proximity. An uneven distribution of risk.

Dance gives me a feeling of unshakeable purposelessness. But not when I crawl onto you, crawl toward you, on my knees, toes flipped, bodies flipped, rejuvenated blood rushing back. I skin-flesh-bone my way towards you, across the marley, across the street, across the sheet. You call and I turn, you interpolate my fucking desire to press into you, to use my tens of thousands of real capitalist dollars invested into dance training to make you come.

Wait. The climax came too soon. Dance is the ride to orgasm and the ride to applause. Nothing more than imagining and practicing something outside a realm of exploitability. Dance asks the crucial question of whether this is enough for transformation… if enough exposure to dance will elicit political transformation. If vulnerability meets responsibility and we can eat each other senselessly… when will dance be vulnerable and responsible. When can I see you again. How can I learn to prepare in the wings, the on-off-stage, for the moment of performative glory?

Let’s get back to what’s important about dance. Turn your head, pour into it, bring your spine into stillness; this is a dance of presence. Choreography is a dance of being told what to do. Dance owns me, turns me into the dancing receptacle. Defined by its waste until dance and only dance can come out of me. This is the shit of dance. Dance is the collisions of constitutions. Tomorrow I’m owned by no one.

Dance is an untheorized freedom. My freedom to wake up beside you in hotel rooms, on studio floors, on rocky-beaches. Dance taught me to follow your lead. A social dance. A social view of the embodied agent where the embodied actor is not just another product of society.

A social significance of bodiliness. We cannot empty dance or a dancing body of its explanatory significance. Dance is my significance under the wall of stars, the specialty I pursue in relation to, in reference to broader theoretical difficulties.

Dance is entangled in the production and recreation of structures. These structures are both the medium and the outcome of interaction. The rules and resources used to make dance repeatable and reliable are structures. Dance structures were made by people now dead, or no longer subject to its walls. Dance is the honouring of endless ghosts. Bureaucratic ghosts. For dance to be inhabited by bureaucratic ghosts means the dance(s) of today will not create anything (new). Dance is a re-membering, a re-creating. Dance invests me with the ability to recognize and transform structures. Dance is agency, an ability to act. Ability is strength, flexibility, control, and sensitivity. Dance makes me permeable to affect and to be affected by structures.

The importance of dance is on the doing of the structure. And on the not-doing. And on the other-doing. On the difference-doing. The structure is the rules and resources. The rule of law and natural resources. Rule of thumb and renewable resources. Approaching dance, there is a ‘usual’ and a ‘normal’ way. This is the structure of rules and resources. Dance is not reducible to to either rules and resources, nor its agencies. These things are mutually constitutive in all its ways. We have built new rules of ‘not yet’ and ‘yes, but’; these rules are the resources to affirm a ‘someday.’

Where is my unruly corporeality? Strained by control, this fleshy vessel is a frontier, the contact zone, the uncontrollable, the approachable. I am unruly and wild, pervious to dance in its multiplicity: as a drive, as an orientation, as an act, as an identity. Slippery, I seep beyond to generate a status beyond Thing. I’d rather remain the object; however, to give up and hand over my object-ness to become a medium, an instrument, a tool is not what I desire. Where is the unruly corporeality; a peripheral investment.

So I’ve accidentally opened something else up: has/is a body. A tool, instrument, medium; something still other than subject or object. I will stay as subject and object. I do not simply have a body quickly/slowly trained by dance classes; my unruly body is the object and subject of postures and judgements. This unruly body won’t be of pure utilitarian value; how else am I to display my investments, these postures and judgements, the unevenness of my animation. This dancing body is the malleability of investments, narcissistic investments into body parts.

Dance shows that a form of care being asked for. All forms of care come to pose problems of representation in their staging of answers. In this way, dance might just be asking for attention to form.

Dance is the social condition of embodied matter and virtual potentials; irreducible, incapable of eradicating choice. Even if it indicates some choice, your choices, their choices. Dance is generous in the constitution of bodies.

This is the dance of a disposable population, of an immune population. Dance is continually generating immunity in certain valuable subjects. Dancers are immune. Take up the identity, sew yourself in, and become immune. Dance is easier for some.

Dance likes status when it doesn’t value risk. It’s just people. The risk of dance, to say risky things, is forgotten, left at the alter, abandoned, when the status and stakes get high and all-consuming. A livelihood in jeopardy, a signature incorporation, an incorporated company, a reliable operating funding. It is a graphic act of re-inscription to lose risk and avoid the heat.

Dance is a skin-knowledge. A knowledge of the world through the honing of the skin that wraps the viscera. A visceral skin-knowledge of data-gathering and uniting cosmological values. Dance is the shedding of skin, itchy skin, calloused skin. It builds bodies to feel and perceive different things over time. Dance is just me realizing things have changed, I have changed; I feel so differently from what I once felt, it’s like I have left that body for a new one. I shed a lot of skin.

Dance pressurizes the non-verbal against the western verbal logos. A proselytizing of your reason, your Reason and Rationality. These double r’s will only go so far; the moving, dancing, breathing body, marks the world in ambiguously satisfying ways. Reason might not adequately convey the nature of embodied experience, or the witnessing experience. Reason is designed not to impinge on our viscera. It does. I dance a dance of Reason.

The craving for a different dance is the assurance that all this is doomed to die. It’s more than craving and desire; dance cannot be possessed; thank the deities that desire ends in death. Dance is desire with more mobility than reality.

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healingtheblackbody · 3 years

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Moe, The H.o.e.listic Health Coach

Friday, January 29th - 3:00 - 5:00pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAscu-hpjwpG9C7KMNoqxQmHLPAx8ly9Oqi

Join Moe for a workshop on an exploration of magical medicine, self and community healing. A 3 part presentation including a Prayer Energy Medicine Guided Meditation, Ancestral Spiritual Nutrition 101 Intro, and Health & Wellness Q&A.

Moeniesha Richelle is the Hoelistic Health Coach! Serving the community through

Pleasure Based Wellness Coaching for QBIPOC+Allies by -Activating Ancestral Cellular DNA w/Mystical Nourishment, Sexological Shamanism, Creation&Play-

Taja Lindley

Friday, January 29th - 6:00-8:00pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEpf-uorT0sGNJWYUTrs5S2-r8__o58bx87

Join Taja Lindley on an Artist Talk and Film Screening!

Can we grow gardens out of graves? How can we recycle the energy of protest, rage and grief into creating a world where indeed Black Lives Matter? What is the role of memory in our movement building work? And who will be responsible for this labor? These are the questions that haunt the work of visual and performance artist Taja Lindley.

As a memory worker, Lindley explores what has been abandoned, erased, silenced or distorted in our individual and collective consciousness. During her artist talk, she will screen her short film “This Ain’t A Eulogy: A Ritual for Re-Membering” and will discuss her most recent projects: “The Bag Lady Manifesta” and the "Birth Justice Podcast NYC." There will be time for community conversation and Q&A.

Through iterative and interdisciplinary practices, Taja Lindley creates socially engaged artwork that transforms audiences, shifts culture, and moves people to action. Since 2014 she has developed a body of work recycling and repurposing discarded materials. Her 2017 residency at Dixon Place Theater culminated in the world premiere of her one-woman show "The Bag Lady Manifesta" and it has been presented at museums, theaters, and universities nationwide. Her films and installations have been featured at Brooklyn Museum; the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Carver Museum in Austin, Texas; the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California; and more.

In addition to being an artist, Lindley is actively engaged in social movements as a writer, consultant, and facilitator. For over a decade she has worked with non-profits, research institutes and government on policies and programming that impact women and girls, communities of color, low/no/fixed-income families, queer people, youth, and immigrants. Most recently, she served as a Sexual and Reproductive Justice Consultant at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, co-facilitating a community driven process that created The New York City Standards for Respectful Care at Birth. She is a 2019 NYC Public Artist in Residence and a 2020 A Blade of Grass Fellow. TajaLindley.com

LINDA LA

Friday, January 29th - 8:30 - 9:30pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUuf-6vqjsuG9S7rz4bxjhaggDsCzphuHN3

Get this healing with LINDA LA’s Performance Ritual!

Adjusting My Crown is a meditative, ritual performance born out of recurring themes exploring self worth and self preservation in combat with societal norms. It is an intimate homage to life before the pandemic, set in quarantine, including original movement, music and poetry. This project is intended to re examine the ways we value stillness, solitude and technology. As well as commemorating queer and trans life in spite of the hardships in love and everyday societal rejection.

Linda La is a multidisciplinary artist, teacher, curator, host and organizer from the Boogie Down Bronx, New York. Born out of the Iconic House of LaBeija, her creative work has been articled in both AFROPUNK and The Fader. She has also been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Timeout New York and W Magazine. This past year, she graciously performed under the direction of Bill T. Jones and Lee Mingwei at the MET and performed in the Obie Award winning The Fire this Time Theater Festival. She is currently working on her first studio project set to include original music and poetry. Her work can be found on all music streaming platforms and archived at the Brooklyn Museum in the “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall” exhibit. Find out more at Lindala.world

Shanel Edwards

Saturday, January 30th - 12:00pm - 1:00pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcvduCrqTIiHtDeOtB01iKGqHQTiizP4vnV

Get this healing with Shanel’s Workshop, How to build a home!

'How to build a home pt. 2' a co-collaborative creative space that asks participants to remember permission, intimacy, safety, play, and connection in our bodies. We are rebuilding a home that remembers our traumas but does not require them, leaving oppressive systems "at the door". We are remembering interconnectedness, remembering care. All black queer and trans folks are welcome to attend, there movement will be involved. Come with a notebook, pen/pencil, any special items to build an altar, and water.

shanel edwards is a Philadelphia rooted, first-generation Jamaican, Black, Queer, Non- binary, artist, and world-builder. They utilize movement, filmmaking, hairstyling, poetry, and photography as channels. Their creations are birthed through their Black queer and trans existence, tenderness, water, intimacy, and collective dreaming. shanel is a 2020 Mural Arts fellow and was a 2019 Artist in Residence with Urban Movement Arts (Philadelphia). They have choreographed for productions at The University of the Arts (2019), and Princeton University (2020). shanel works closely with spirit and their ancestors through herbal knowledge, divination, and channeling through movement to envoke and envision a world where Black trans women are liberated.

Olaiya Olayemi

Saturday, January 30th - 2:00pm - 3:30pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUqfuGppjsoH9FWtBGZQTWe__e07N0k7s_v

throwing the bones and working the roots: a (writing for) performance workshop

this highly anti-disciplinary and experimental workshop/seminar uses writing, image-making, movement, and sound-based exercises to create a brave space where students can excavate and craft their own performative conjurations and divinations; this class explores artmaking as a catalyst for social justice and as a healing modality.

olaiya olayemi is a blk/trans/femme/womxn/anti-disciplinary artist/educator/and organizer who centers womxn of the african diaspora in her performative/literary/cinematic/and sonic works of art that explore love/sex/relationships/family/history/memory and radical joy/pleasure. her work is informed by blk/queer/feminist theories/aesthetics/and politics and african indigenous and diasporic spiritual traditions. she has performed at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, JACK, AAA3A, metaDEN, The Wild Project, The Langston Hughes House, Starr Bar, Mayday Space, and Dixon Place. she holds a bachelor of arts in english/creative writing (with a minor in african/black diaspora studies) from depaul university and a master of fine arts in creative writing from emerson college where she was a recipient of the Dean’s Fellowship. she is a 2019-2020 Performance Fellow in Queer Art’s mentorship program, a Fall 2020 Brooklyn Arts Exchange Space Grantee, a finalist in Fresh Fruit’s Film/Monologue Festival, a 2020-2021 American Woman Fellow in Dramatic Question Theatre’s American Woman Lab, and a participant in Gibney Dance’s Black Diaspora group. her experimental screenplay was recently advanced to second round consideration for the Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab. she currently lives in philadelphia.

Brother(hood) Dance!

January 30th - 5:00pm-6:00pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUocOqvrTMuEtaEM6QX8kLd9ItaiUregeQP

Brother(hood) Dance! will offer a movement experience that engages your full sense of awareness and connectedness to past present and future. We will work through African Diasporic techniques to ground and be rooted.

Brother(hood) Dance! is an interdisciplinary duo that seeks to inform its audiences on the socio-political and environmental injustices from a global perspective, bringing clarity to the same-gender-loving African-American experience in the 21st century. Brother(hood) Dance! was formed in April 2014 as a duo that research, create and perform dances of freedom by Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr. and Ricarrdo Valentine. We have performed our works at FiveMyles, Center for Performance Research, B.A.A.D! (Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance), VCU-The Grace Street Theater, DraftWork at St. Marks Church, JACK, Movement Research at Judson Church, Colby College, Denmark Arts Center and other venues.

As a collective, our work demonstrates how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. By rejecting an objective truth and global cultural narratives, we find that movement reveals an inherent awkwardness, a humor that echoes our own vulnerabilities. Brother(hood) Dance! considers movement as a metaphor for the ever-seeking man who experiences a continuous loss. Brother(hood) Dance!'s work urge us to renegotiate performance as being part of a reactive or – at times – autistic medium, commenting on oppressing themes in our contemporary society.

Sasha Schaafe

January 30th - 7:00pm-8:30pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIvd-qsrDsqHtzkR93WGC3sl2wurizVcTsJ

Whip your herbs out of the kitchen for this magical herbalism workshop!

Spiritual Healing & Protection with Herbs : Thyme & Bay

With respect to necessary uprisings in honor of black lives, while in the space of a global pandemic, it’s absolutely vital to our whole wellness that we practice spiritual hygiene & empower our spiritual bodies with clarity & protection. In this workshop we will focus on two methods & one medicinal preparation, with the support of our plant allies/“plantcestors,” that powerfully heal, cleanse & protect us during these difficult times.

Spiritual baths & headwashes are healing & maintenance methods that have been employed in indigenous practices throughout Afro-diasporic traditions, with special attention to the “head.” We will bring focus to two easily accessible herbs that provide clearing & protective support in efforts of providing our aura & spirit with clarity, removing energy that isn’t our own. We ask that you enter this space as your full & authentic selves, so that we may co-create & infuse our healing experience with powerful, loving intention.

Workshop Materials:

FOR SPIRITUAL BATH/HEADWASH :

- Bay Leaf (Mediterranean- Laurus nobilis OR West Indian- Pimenta racemoca)

- Thyme (Thymus vulgaris)

- Rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus)

- Tulsi/Holy Basil (Ocimum tenuiflorum)

- Freshly boiled water

- *OPTIONAL: Citrus peels (lemon & orange)

- *OPTIONAL: Florida Water or Kananga Water

FOR MEDICINAL PREPARATION:

- Bay Leaf

- Ginger

- White Rum (40% ABV / 80 proof or Wray & Nephew- 100 proof)

- *OPTIONAL: Allspice/Cinnamon/Nutmeg

- *OPTIONAL: Orange Peel

Sasha Schaafe is a spiritual herbalist apprenticing within the Sacred Vibes Apothecary community, under the tutelage of Karen Rose. Her background experience with “food as medicine” is informed by her family’s Jamaican/Chinese roots & upbringing. Her spirituality largely stands on the strength of ancestral connection & veneration. Operating through love & intuition, Sasha commits to being of service to community with a village-mind — honoring her purpose & the purpose of all those who are a part, as we all have a role to play. She concerns herself with being in right relationship with the land & energies within & around nature. She trusts that our planet heals itself & most effectively heals us when we nurture & nourish ourselves with respect to our relationships with nature & spirit.

Kiyan Williams

Sunday, January 31st - 2:00pm-3:00pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEpde-srT0qE9McUbutgFApjaqUmAWvHZ25

Tune into this Artist Talk by the phenomenal Kiyan Williams!

This Bridge Between Starshine and Clay: An Artist Talk With Kiyan Williams

Artist Kiyan Williams will share the development of their art practice, which draws on and is inspired by traditions of Black feminist, queer, and trans creative practice as rituals of self-determination.

Kiyan Williams is a visual artists from Newark, NJ who works fluidly across performance, sculpture, and video. They often work with soil and debris as material and metaphor to unearth Black queer subjectivity.

Ọmọlólù / Ma’at Works Dance Collective / Ricky

Sunday, January 31st, 5:00pm - 6:30pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEqf--vrzwqEtxieIjv_kakBkwjK8c9YoYP

Join the finale of our opening weekend with these three powerhouse healing artists!

Ọmọlólù

Believing in the depth of healing that resounds in blx sonic force ọmọlólù will give a sonic offering. Using harmonized loops and mantras ọmọlólù hopes to welcome folx who bare witness into a state of ease, reflection and blx ecstatix bliss.

ọmọlólù refilwe bàbàtùndé is an educator, african surrealist documentarian, digital griot and blx ecstatix performance artist. A diasporic daughter of blx Southern migration she is in constant practice, reverence and searching for blx sounds in all it’s haptic, visual, sonic, strategic, mobile, logical mutations. Using image, video, prose and sound she attempts to stun whiteness and create a divine glimmer of blx relief, a brief moment of sanctuary for folx to come home into. She is co-founder of rogueTHEIF, an upcycle denim brand/performative gesture which strives to poke holes in capitalist modes of exchange while also being a platform to celebrate ancestors whose memory challenges us to fight for more liberating realities for ourselves and those coming after. She has performed at the New Museum, Northstar Durham, and many intentional DIY spaces. She released her first EP “laiii 222 rest ooo : blx ancestral sonix salves” on Don Giovanni Records in October 2020.

Ma’at Works Dance Collective

This offering is a meditation in nature, a practice of process, tenderness and stillness. A conversation with the tree branches, the stream, the birds and the sky. I'm interested in what helps to heal black bodies and I think mending our relationship with the woods is a great place to begin.

Ama Ma'at Gora is a Philly based dance artist, educator and choreographer. She received her BA from Georgian Court University and her dance MFA from Temple University. She was given opportunities to work with choreographers such as, Kariamu Welsh, Lela Aisha Jones, Earl Moseley, Sidra Bell, Gregory King and more. She now serves as Community Based Learning Director at Drexel University; overseeing artistic civic engagement. She established Ma'at Works Dance Collective, as a way to hold space for controversial dialogue. Her work centers identity, historic trauma and restoration. Thus she intends on crafting spaces which reflect, healing. As co-founder of The Juba House, she’s been able to serve local artists.

ricky

for those in between: a meditation on black mania, magic, and multidimensional living

ricky is an artist, musician, performer, writer, and diviner. last year they released WAHALA, their second solo album as YATTA . the release was accompanied by a theatrical production called An Episode: Ricky’s Room, commissioned by The Shed. this year, they dropped ‘Dial Up’, a collaboratively dreamt up album with philly musician and poet, Moor Mother. ricky has shared a stage with musicians like The Sun Ra Arkestra and Cardi B, creating multimedia performances that tour astrally, nationally, and globally.

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latenightbotanist · 7 years

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I have feelings about the ode to joy and im going to dump them on you

At the time i am writing this part i have suffered through twenty two (22) hours of “ode to joy” repeated in my brains so you are gonna suffer with me now. Srsly, ask @madgronkish i kinda lost it around noon.. Anyways. First thought when i heard it was literally" theyre not going to fucking reunite them to THAT SONG??!?!“ Whilst i was wrong about sherlock driving the car…they still did that. Thanks mofftiss.

Ok now down to business. First off, DISCLAIMER, i am in no way qualified to do this? I dont know much about music and have like half an experience at writing meta? so..sorry in advance, maybe just look at this as inspiration and well..gay feelings bc i have enough of those to go around rn.

I will also tag some lovely people who actually know how to do this whole meta thing, and who knows, maybe one of you actually reads this mess and makes somethin out of it? Possibly? Idk, i dont blame you if you dont, really. @quietlyprim @loudest-subtext-in-tv @joolabee @hudders-and-hiddles @love-in-mind-palace @teapotsubtext @beejohnlocked @kinklock @marcelock @gaytectives @ormondsacker @culverton

So.. for all of you who dont know, ode to joy (originally “freude, schöner götterfunken”) is part of beethoven’s 9th symphony, it is the first ever symphony to incorporate voices, the lyrics mostly come from schillers “Ode an die Freude” and the melody itself has been the european anthem since 1972 (1985 if you insist on EU).

Ok so lets have a quick look at the lyrics(and i really mean quick, these are my notes from this morning, not exactly coherent but enough to get a general idea of my feelings about this, we’ll get into more detail later) i also put both the english and german version bc i felt at some points things got lost in translation, but honestly i dont know what to do about that so yeah, if you speak german, good for you, if not and by the end if this youre not bored to death and still have questions dont hesitate to ask i will awkwardly but gladly try to elaborate (this applies not only to lyrics btw)

O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!

 Sondern laßt uns angenehmere anstimmen,

 und freudenvollere.

Oh friends, not these sounds! 

Let us instead strike up more pleasing

 and more joyful ones!

(Literally lets have happier stories, also the score.. yes lets get the johnlock theme back,please)

Freude! Freude! / Joy! Joy!

Freude, schöner Götterfunken 

Tochter aus Elysium, 

Wir betreten feuertrunken,

 Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!

 Deine Zauber binden wieder 

Was die Mode streng geteilt; 

Alle Menschen werden Brüder, 

Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

/ Joy, beautiful spark of divinity,

 Daughter from Elysium,

 We enter, burning with fervour, (Cant set the heart on fire if its

 heavenly being, your sanctuary! already burning w/ love, yall) 

Your magic brings together

 what custom has sternly divided. (Gayyyy!!!!!)

 All men shall become brothers, (Secret brothers,reunion…) 

wherever your gentle wings hover.

(Idk, mrs hudson is an angel?)

Wem der große Wurf gelungen,

 Eines Freundes Freund zu sein;

 Wer ein holdes Weib errungen,

 Mische seinen Jubel ein!

 Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele

 Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund

! Und wer’s nie gekonnt, der stehle

 Weinend sich aus diesem Bund!

Whoever has been lucky enough. (Luckiest man in the world,

 to become a friend to a friend, my only friend, … )

Whoever has found a beloved wife,

 let him join our songs of praise! (Uh….how bout no?) 

Yes, and anyone who can call one soul 

his own on this earth! (My john…..) 

Any who cannot,

let them slink away from this gathering in tears! (Mary crying,then disappearing)

Freude trinken alle Wesen

 An den Brüsten der Natur;

 Alle Guten, alle Bösen

 Folgen ihrer Rosenspur

. Küsse gab sie uns und Reben,

 Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod;*

(Like.. sherlock died and  came back for john what more proof??)

Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben,

 Und der Cherub steht vor Gott.

Every creature drinks in joy

 at nature’s breast;

 Good and Bad alike

 follow her trail of roses. (Good and bad, rosie, hmmmm) 

She gives us kisses and wine,

 a true friend, even in death; (Or only in death?hey mary)

 Even the worm was given desire, (Mycroft? Nah,probs moriarty)

 and the cherub stands before God. (Sherlock, my lil cherub)

Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen

Durch des Himmels prächt'gen Plan,

(Plans…ominous)

 Laufet, Brüder, eure Bahn,

 Freudig, wie ein Held zum Siegen.

Gladly, just as His suns hurtle

 through the glorious universe,

 So you, brothers, should run your course, (the way it was always

 joyfully, like a conquering hero. meant to be…..)

Seid umschlungen, Millionen!

 Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt! 

Brüder, über’m Sternenzelt 

Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen. 

Ihr stürzt nieder, Millionen? 

Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt?

 Such’ ihn über’m Sternenzelt!

 Über Sternen muß er wohnen.

Be embraced, you millions!

 This kiss is for the whole world! (,!!???? Like???????Yes pls) 

Brothers, above the canopy of stars 

must dwell a loving father. (Or two? Hey dads) 

Do you bow down before Him, you millions?

 Do you sense your Creator, o world? 

Seek Him above the canopy of stars! 

He must dwell beyond the stars.

Well that was……….. kinda gay. Yeah yeah i know its just a queer reading no i dont believe it was intended to be gay by either beethoven or schiller (or was it?? Irdk) but. in the context of the show. which is rather what were looking at. Pretty damn gay, right?

Ok lets have a look at my absolute favourite lines first:

Your magic brings together/what custom has sternly divided.

Well… i think we can all agree that society has, quite sternly indeed, divided holmes and watson, romantically. Homosexuality just simply wasnt a custom, or at least very frowned upon, mildly speaking. It is rather magical to watch this wrong being righted though, i should think. More specifically in bbc sherlock, the divide has come through a custom of not speaking to each other, and guess what?? Yeah hudders is friggin done with that bs these two are talking now!

And then…

Be embraced, you millions!/This kiss is for the whole world!

*shrieking* do i? Do i really need to talk about this? I think not. This just…. yeah. I mean really….. I would like to add at this point that, at least to my ears, embraced sounds like a rather tame option of translation. “Umschlungen”, to me personally conveys a certain vigour, almost as if the embrace might… idk.. come as a surprise to some extend? Take the air from some peoples lungs? Yeah dunno what that could be about……

If you still need more i guess i could just blubber some more about it all but tbh what is structure? so yeah, here we go, feel free to leave anytime i mean its already pretty gay and hurts my heart i wont blame you if you think

•WE ARE NOW ENTERING THE REALM OF JOY… yep thats happening things are getting happy, please, god, let them actually. And this joy that we will feel when John and Sherlock ( finally) get together will mend all the wrong thats been done to those two, and us Holmes fans, during all these years of being kept apart by society and norms and customs, homophobia and heteronormativity. Were entering a sanctuary, we are literally save here!

•General message of schiller’s ode to joy is literally that HUMAN CONNECTIONS ARE THE CROWN OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE like wow yes thank you it is as if human connections were the stuff that…completes you as a human being. Say what?

•Not only is this true for johnlock but also for our entire community, were bound together by the joy of this show, our joy will mend what heteronormativty destroyed, the joy of their kiss will unite us, we will embrace it and the joyfull gayness will embrace us!

•The fact that its literally such a groundbreaking piece of music. There have been symphonies over and over but this is new, this is different, he incorporated voices. Groundbreaking,earthshattering… u get it. Seriously if anyone who has even a slither of a clue about music wants to educate me on what the inclusion of voices could stand for please im begging enlighten me my brains too fried im already struggling to get this done(as you might be able to tell. I am so sorry)

And now, onto some more shit i stumbled upon in the original poem that, sadly, didnt make it into the song but:

•Have patience for a better world to come, god(mofftiss) is good and will give you what you deserve

•Forget hatred and revenge, forgive your (arch)enemy who shall not have to cry or be rueful (ahem mary. Also possibly mycroft to some extent who knows whats gonna happen)

•Bravery even in agony,help where innocence is weeping (hi john)

•Something about oaths and telling the truth to your friends as well as enemies and how lies will bring everything down……

•Narrowing the circle, making oaths with wine and staying faithful(keep believing!!)

•Salvation from tyranns, hope to the dying, mercy in council, forgiving of sins and ENDING HELL well ok then yes to all!

No honestly theres a lot and im horrifically underqualified and have a headache so i’ll stop now. If you actually read this whole mess of a thing.. thank you. Bless your soul. I’ll make you an origami elephant or something

#oh wow look #my first meta #contributing #sherlock #bbc sherlock #s4 #sherlock season 4 #sherlock s4 #tld #the lying detective #sherlock soundtrack #sherlock meta #ode to joy #meta #mine #textpost #my meta

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A Space That Wasn’t Made for Me (My Op-Ed for the Tufts Observer)

I am solely speaking about my experience as a queer, Persian man. I do not claim to understand or hope to speak for anybody else but myself. My experiences have been socialized by the immediate environment in which I was raised, and I fully realize how I have historically been complicit and involved in some of the systems and organizations that I criticize in this piece. My effort to improve as a person and to hold myself accountable for my actions is one that is not devoid of mistakes.

During recess one day in middle school, one of the coolest kids in my class, an attractive White male, asked me who some of my favorite singers were. Anxious to make a good impression, I thought of the Whitest shit I could come up with to please him: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kurt Cobain, and Dave Matthews Band. I think I threw in Lil Wayne as well, because I have found that many White boys love reaffirming their “hipness” by admiring and “identifying” with Black rappers.

I grew up in a predominantly White, affluent neighborhood and attended a “prestigious” prep school in the greater Boston area. I quickly learned to value White activities like theater and tennis, both of which I really enjoyed, but all the while felt excluded from socially. I began to consider White, muscular men with rigid jawlines and blue eyes to be the epitome of attraction and beauty, shaping the way I began to look at myself in the mirror, and later contributing to the ways that I would begin to modify my body.

At the same time, my experiences assimilating to various aspects of White culture seemed to juxtapose with my identity as an Iranian-American. My parents emigrated from Iran to France and finally settled in Brookline, MA. I grew up in a house with Persian art, poetry, and music. I ate home-cooked Persian food every night, spoke Farsi with my family, and celebrated being Iranian by attempting to recognize the social implications that I thought being Iranian would mean.

Growing up, I always imagined that I would experience a universal bond with other Persians. I believed that the experiences we seemed to face as a community would transcend our often divisive, intersectional identities; however, I didn’t recognize how difficult it would be to navigate my Persian-ness as a queer man. I didn’t want to acknowledge the deeply rooted masculinity and patriarchal structure embedded within Persian culture that doesn’t give space to those with divergent and non-normative identities—specifically, queerness.

Identifying as gay, then eventually developing my sexuality to fit my own definition of queer, became an aspect of my identity that began to deteriorate the bond that I had tried to sustain between the Iranian community and myself. Once I began to realize how difficult it would be to find any space where my queerness and race could interact, I began to feel a deep sense of resentment towards myself. Never feeling quite Persian enough became a recurring sentiment at events, vacations, and dinners with my extended family. I found that my queerness seemed to dissuade my desire to “feel” Iranian by participating in the hyper-masculine activities and homophobic discourse that is rampant within many Persian social contexts that I have experienced.

As I sought to develop my identity further in college, something about associating myself as brown and not specifically as Persian began to muddle my identity and prevent me from characterizing my experiences as separate or unique. I don’t know what it feels like to be Latino. I do not identify as South Asian, nor do I consider myself an Arab—and so to experience struggle through the lens of an identity that cannot be located has made me feel that my brownness will not, and cannot, find a space to exist freely. Whether it is being misidentified or having my racial identity questioned, I have developed an uncomfortable relationship with claiming, accepting, and embracing being Iranian.

Whenever people used to ask about my ethnicity, I always responded by saying, “I’m Iranian.” Recently, however, I have begun to use the ethnic origin of my identity as a signifier of the unique culture that I ascribe myself with. Identifying and introducing myself as Persian marks an important and unique ethnic exclamation that has reaffirmed my desire to separate myself from other Middle Eastern and Arab cultures. (Contrary to popular belief, Persians are not ethnically Arab.)

Growing up and hearing Iran described as a threatening or evil country also made me uncomfortable publically identifying as Iranian. The inability for people in this country to disassociate Iran’s government from its people created this self-destructive pattern for me to constantly prove myself as a good Iranian, or disassociate from my racial background altogether. Today, I still find it terribly difficult navigating being Iranian given the current immigration ban that Trump’s administration has brought forth. Beyond the fallacy that the nations listed in the ban have contributed to acts of terror in the US (not a single one has), I also find it disheartening to hear Iran constantly being referred to under a false pretense of danger, terror, and otherness.

Despite the many “diverse” spaces at Tufts that foster important discussions for people of color, queer and trans folk, and women of color, I have found that, in order to join or feel welcomed into these dialogues or spaces, I have had to compromise aspects of my Persian-ness or succumb to adopting a generalized Middle Eastern identity in order to engage in discussions. I think that the socially conscious and active community at Tufts, which claims to create an inclusive space for marginalized individuals, tends to fall short in understanding or acknowledging the nuances of certain intersectional identities that exist on this campus, mine being one of many.

I grew up speaking Farsi, and the food that I have always eaten at home is so specific to Iran that I’m disheartened when our culture is generalized and placed within the socio-cultural landscape of others within the Middle Eastern region. Obviously, I am not angry or even shocked that people don’t know much about Iranian culture. It is rather the disregard or almost a sense of entitlement that many people on this campus feel when trying to locate my identity that puts me off. Surprisingly, people who major in American Studies, Sociology, and Anthropology have been among those who have asked me things like how spicy I like my food or if I know how to make homemade hummus. Iranian food is not spicy at all, and we don’t make or eat hummus unless we go out to restaurants.

Many times when White social justice activists on this campus ask me how to create more inclusive spaces for POC, I find that I want to respond by saying, “Stop trying to speak on behalf of identities that you don’t understand. Stop trying to locate us to fit into your social justice narrative or use us as a token to investigate intersectionality when you’re blindly unaware of the fundamental differences among our cultures.” For example, not identifying as a Middle Eastern gay man but rather as a Persian queer man is often read as commendable or “interesting” by socially active folks at Tufts, but rarely incorporated into important discussions or dialogues about queer POC on campus.

The socially unaware, uninvolved, and generally conservative White population at Tufts is truly, however, the largest demographic of individuals who have contributed to my anxieties, anger, and frustration. Whether it’s the toxic White gays at previous Rainbow House parties who have commented on and fetishized my “exotic” appearance, or White girls who love to tokenize my foreign queerness, you have all failed to recognize your internalized racism and homophobia. From the one frat brother who spat on me and my friend outside of a frat house window next to Moe’s my freshman year, to the multiple athletes who have physically pushed and verbally assaulted me at campus events, you have reminded me that regardless of how hard I try to make myself palatable to you, I am still a Persian faggot.

Despite all of this, however, I am constantly reminded of how privileged and lucky I truly am. My parents worked hard to put me through private school and then a liberal arts education, and I am forever grateful to them for the sacrifices they have made for me. My family has given me the space to explore my identities and embrace me for wanting to hold onto or discard certain aspects of both. Many queer Persians, however, do not experience the same socio-economic security, access to education, and support that I have, and I recognize how fortunate I am to even be able to speak up and feel safe to talk about this on a platform where my thoughts can hopefully be validated.

Luckily, I have been able to surround myself by some incredible Persian individuals on this campus who strive to include the intersections of my queerness and Iranian identity into a dialogue, giving me a platform to exist comfortably. Given the current socio-political climate of this country, I have found an immense amount of strength and desire to make our identities as Persian known. My unequivocal love for Persians is the strongest it has ever been. No ban on earth could prevent us from succeeding wherever we go, and I hope that people at Tufts and those within my close circle of friends will seek to learn more about Iran’s immensely influential history, culture, and society before calling themselves allies.

For me to not speak up after three and a half years of having people speak for me would further detract from the importance of celebrating my overlapping, yet individually valid, identities. Tufts, especially in its attempts to create or foster a space for inclusiveness, does not incorporate the nuances of socio-cultural and ethnic identities into a space that unidentifiable individuals can claim.

To the handful of professors and sociology majors that see my identities as unique and different, I’m appreciative of you. To the greater socially “active” and “progressive” White activists, women, and queer folk on campus, practice what you preach. Don’t think that individuals like me are not constantly trying to make ourselves palatable to you either. And finally, to the ex-lovers, friends, and professors who have pushed me into a space where self-hatred and discomfort have permeated the past 15 years of my life, I look back on my experiences with you not as moments when I wasn’t strong enough to speak up against you, but rather as a time when I just didn’t know where to locate that strength.

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