Fieldnotes of Week 1 by Jordan Tannahill

January 25, 2016

Let’s Not Beat Each Other To Death

Do I dance the way I do because I am a queer? Have I always danced this way? I seem to recall dancing with wild abandoned when I was three or four. I seem to recall dancing to wild abandoned in my mother’s heels. I seem to recall dancing with my friends in a living room at my fifth birthday party, and my friends were boys and girls and they danced with wild abandon too. Do they still dance with wild abandon? Where are they now? Are they married with kids? How do their kids dance? I don’t recall consciously choosing to dance any differently at any point in my life. Have I acquired new moves as I have acquired new politics, new friends, and new lovers? Have I always had a limp wrist and spastic limbs? Why has the liberation of gay men always been so closely linked to dance and the dance floor? To dance with an old friend, a new friend, or a stranger. Oh to dance with a stranger with a ball-cap, rat tail and jean jacket what’s your story and where did you learn to dance like that?

An Evening with Harold Budd

Harold Budd grew up in the Mojave Desert, where the ground is a hot white mirror reflecting the sky. Joshua Trees. Abandoned motels. Harold, is this why you make the deserts of sound that you do? The same reason that Agnes Martin moved to the desert to paint grids of white lines on white, space on space, light on light. The void. I went on a road trip this summer with my mother. We picked up a rental car in Las Vegas and drove into the Mojave Desert. A friend told me about a dome built on an energy vortex where hippies gave visitors sonic baths. They say it has the power to heal. Would it have the power to heal me? To heal my mother? Does the desert have what I have been looking for? Last night we took a bath in your sound, Harold. And were all, for a moment, healed.

Re: The Fox Cinema

Does gentrification always require the privatization of public sex?

Suddenly we not iced, like, prostitutes, all kinds of craziness, people getting naked in our doorway. Things happening that don’t seem OK anymore.

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Back before it was a porn theatre, it was the glorious Savoy Theatre. I remember seeing Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein, Parasite, Bwana Devil and a bunch of other great movies there. Afterwards, we used to go to ‘Sticky Fingers Family Restaurant’, which was right next door. Strangely, that establishment shuttered pretty quickly when their neighbours started screening porn movies, I can’t imagine why.

As fas as I could tell, there were no jizz stalactites, but the ceiling was very high.

If every sexual encounter involves bringing someone back to your house, the general sexual activity in a city becomes anxiety-filled, class-bound, and choosy. This is precisely why public rest rooms, peep shows, sex movies, bars with grope rooms, and parks with enough greenery are necessary for a relaxed and friendly sexual atmosphere in a democratic metropolis.

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