i am this also

isto também sou eu / i am this also from Joao Galrao on Vimeo.

i am this also

LINK TO ARTICLE IN dezanove.pt (PORTUGUESE)

I am an artist, a reality I still often find difficult to believe. The fact that I sit there, slumped dejectedly over a blank canvas (or whatever my chosen media might be that moment), and try and sell these doodles for monetary value still bewilders me to this day.

I won't deny it's fun though. And in some ways, I find getting to my public as interesting as the work itself. Selling a potentially explosive idea to as many people I can seems so positively audacious and powerful! That's why, for me, the parties and arty, wily shenanigans I have been involved with over the years, CUE VIDEO, initially in New York City, via Virginia, lately in Lisbon, where there is a tangible whiff of creative excitement in the air, seem as legitimate as any pretty picture I may paint.

Curating an entire exhibition of (wince) queer art seems like the ultimate confidence trick to me. I imagined no one would want it, least of all the artists I approached. Well, there are 17 of us, just in the first go round, some pretty damn well-known, so at the very least a lot of alcohol will get consumed the opening night.

I hope to begin commenting on the individuals' work as we go along here.

THE AMERICAN

Some years ago, I dated an American. It wasn't one of my best ideas. This was before I went to America and discovered other Americans, whose simplicity and generosity knew no bounds. No, this was one of those Americans who expected their dates to come fully-formed, waving Y2Ks in front of them. Money was a game he could afford to play. After some months flaying about he broke up with me, citing my lack of a viable financial future as a major cause of concern. Yes, he worked in finance, for a multinational that had to have an office in every country in the world and would then proceed to scoff at their weedy financial muscle.

I was hurt, but imagined he was right. It wasn't my best of times, I'll admit. I swallowed my hurt and soldiered on. I cultivated his friendship; after all, he seemed to know better than me. A year or maybe two passed, and by then I had done the unimaginable and moved to New York! The American came to visit, and in the course of a long, blurry evening, I finally realised he was a balls-to-the-wall alcoholic. He got me more drunk than I'd ever been, and he was drunker still. He could barely stand, so I had to hail us a cab home. He was a mess - I suppose I'd just seen it so often I never really noticed when we were together.

Next day, he was sleeping it off in my roommate's bed at our digs in Brooklyn. I didn't see him till late, so late in fact that if he didn't hurry, he would miss the flight to Chicago to see his fucking Episcopalian pastor of a father. When I finally caught him, he was trying to slink out unnoticed. He informed me with a smirk that he had wet the bed, so I needed to clean up. Plane to catch, see ya.

After eight years, I came back to Europe fully-charged. And today it's my 44th birthday! Shit! Times have certainly changed. I see many, whose once-untouchable surety is looking pretty shabby. These past twelve months were no picnic for me either. I got sick, real sick with pneumonia, and my mum died. That was a wrench. Still, I dug in my heels. And actually, I'm one of the few who can say I'm doing pretty good. I'm firing on all cylinders - no need to go into details. I see so many my age who look like the life has been sucked out of them by circumstances out of their control. But my ideas have never stopped. Never.

So, the American. Not long after the bedwetting, there was another incident which really was TOO MUCH and I told him to take a hike. I finally said to him, why am I allowing myself to be taken down by a closeted alcoholic bedwetter with Aids? Ouch. Because he's financially viable? The American will never lose his job; he's too high up to fall, it is said. Others will be sacrificed before he. He now moves and shakes in London, but occasionally surfaces here. I ignore his stares. Then I think, you know, I should be more grateful. For the night he really lost it in front of me, and showed me the little baby in the Big I Am, was the night I stumbled drunkenly into Lennie, my eventual life partner. I have never forgotten the cab ride back over the Williamsburg Bridge, city glittering, window rolled down and that night city air. Lennie was American too, and the sweetest, sexiest soul you could ever hope to meet.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

I KNOW HOW TO GET TOM CRUISE THAT OSCAR

Tom, in the role of a lifetime, is an old man in a rest home who develops a touching, bittersweet relationship with a beautiful male orderly played by Chris Pine, or some other square-jawed Hollywood wannabe. The big reveal is that Tom in the movie was a child runaway from the midwest who ends up a male hustler in New York just before the Aids epidemic hits. Poignant tragedy ensues. Welling strings. Tom effortlessly plays eighteen and eighty-ish and is Oscar-bound. In the poignant final coda, Chris lets old Tom go down on him (once old Tom removes his dentures). Gus Van Sant or Ang Lee directs. Reese Witherspoon plays matron.

DISCO REVOLUTION

Discodromo - Mercurio from GoldNSour on Vimeo.

I WAITED TWENTY PLUS YEARS FOR THE SECOND GAY DISCO REVOLUTION, and I'm hoping HERE IT COMES.

(Warning: this video is only suitable for the fleet of foot, and the GAY of HEART, BODY & SOUL)

Who?

Veiled in playful secrecy, the rhetoric of Discaire Records would have you believe that the label is controlled by a cult-like group of shadowy subversives. In truth, Discaire is a "homophonic," forward-thinking brotherhood of four like-minded gay men from New York, London, and San Francisco.

Q U E A S Y

I woke up this morning next to my husband feeling uneasy. I sat up in bed and contemplated the source of this malaise. After all, I shouldn't have any more to worry about than your average western citizen in 2012 - job security, financial crisis, perhaps H5N1... But I'm secure, and loved, by my man, and by friends gay and straight.

But no, there is a reason for me to feel threatened, because apparently I am the threat. I throw a party in Lisbon called Pink!, and the accompanying Facebook page is quite the hot ticket. I won't deny we get a little saucy there, but it is a closed group after all and only consenting, mature adults who are in the group can see it. It's actually really cool, homosexual imagery of the arty, balls-to-the-wall variety, faits divers, culture. It makes us feel alive! AND I KEEP GETTING SHUT DOWN. I desperately seek an alternative, where I'm not OFFENSIVE TO PEOPLE WHO CAN'T EVEN SEE ME, BUT STILL HATE ME NONETHELESS. But that alternative DOES NOT EXIST. I need Facebook, apparently.

Like I need cancer.

In the wake of the THIRD shutdown, in which I lost all my friends (if I don't see them online, do they actually exist?), people came to me with stories of how art imagery on their wall - WTF even religious imagery - was removed.

Now this. I guess I feel like Rihanna. (Please click on Andy and Candy, thank you. And fuck you very much.)



Oh, and the Pink Page on Facebook is here. Join the fun, why don't you?