I keep meaning to write about music and just what I’m doing/playing/listening to at the moment but keep getting caught up so next time. For now to the Ringtheatere here in Berlin.

“We wanted to come out but didn’t know where out was.”

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So ends the opening monologue in FAGGOT*S, a new adaptation of Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta’s celebrated manifesto The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions. The rewrite, by Hadrien Daigneault-Roy, updates the 1977 tract to fold in thoughts on AI and club jokes (I am a he or she, never a they - they’s are for the straight tourists who want to get in to Berghain). Hassandra brings a Grecian poise to the role and using a vocal mask plug in that is dipped in and out of, is able to swim between roles and identities with glee. The play lays out queerness in its multiplicities through a series of houses, echoing Ball culture, and sets up the forever fight against ‘Grey Men’, to reveal the Pansy Path; a yellow brick road that exists to liberate us. The Pansy Path exists beyond the torpid hems of the Grey, suited, straight world we start in. Of all the houses The House of Angel Flesh was where my heart lay, with its inner room a mattress of support and love.

The use of tech and an influencers ring-light wired up to a selfie screen on the stage echoed the performance of Dorian Gray that Sarah Snook is giving on Broadway at the moment. In that show the use of filters is used to accentuate the Dorian’s eternal youth and link Oscar Wilde’s evergreen tale to today’s world of fillers and screen deep pixel personalities. In FAGGOT*S the voice tech and screen give Hassandra the chance the move between these multiplicities with striking control, amusing notes sung in different registers, wild autotune dribbles between lines, and knowing vamps to camera light up what is a very poetic script. As good as Hassandra is the real star for me was Sascha Cowan’s GORGEOUS costume work. The entire show takes under, over and almost through a vast square of shimmering taffeta. Lacy holes give us arms, a head, a suggestive balloon. The fabric was metaphors galore and ultimately was the world that contains our multitudes. I loved it all.

Dan Friedman

Here are two photos of the same doorway/kitchen.

Its Dan Friedman’s evolving home circa the mid 80s. I first came across Friedman through the Tim Lawrence book on NY music 1980-83 where he’s mentioned in passing in connection with Club 57. He could walk between creative worlds with an ease few manage. On the one hand he worked at Pentagram design agency and was responsible for the corporate identity of Citibank. On the other he was a font of downtown cool who worked in sculpture and mentored a lot of the downtown stars (Haring, Basquiat etc etc). He continually altered his apartment radically. Apartmento mag has a bunch of pics of the work he did on his place and there is a good essay on him on Art Net. There’s a lot to love about Friedman but maybe my favourite thing is his 12 point manifesto, the “Radically Modern Agenda”. 30 years on it’s qualities remain somehow undisturbed by the passing of time and still kinda rad:

number 11 - use the new technologies, but don’t be seduced into thinking that they provide answers to fundamental questions.

is a truth that manages to be uncynical and deeply humane in the face of techno-capitalism. Maybe it’s not surprising coming a couple of points after the observation that careerism is a corner that traps us into being servants. My favourite is 8:

Engage in self restraint; accept the challenge of working with reduced expectations and diminished resources.

So liberating. So kind, both to yourself and all you share this world with. So uncentred and free from ego, self regard and opportunism! A genuine blueprint. For a better everything!

Patricia Lockwood on pee

Finally…

I’m not a fan of cartoons and rarely ever are they funny to me so god knows what was going on in my head the other day. In a twilight dream the other morning I imagined this cartoon so drew it when I woke up. I had been watching Fran Liebowitz talking about Candy Darling before bed and this is definitely giving Liebowitz energy. Twilight Dream… Are you asleep? Maybe. Are you awake? Possibly. Those in between dream states that are sometimes super vivid are twilight dreams to me.

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