Documentaries, Poetry, and Research

Good as Gay continues to shift ever so slightly as I continue to pass through different phases in my own development. It should make sense that a blog style may change as the author himself changes. Unless of course the author is only interested in providing entertainment to the masses and grasping as many followers as they possibly can without any sense of self or meaning for that matter. As I feel a shift of self, I question how to reflect this in my blogging style and a couple of ideas come to mind.

My first limitation seems to be the title of the blog. Good as Gay implies that this blog will have queer related material. However, that doesn't mean that I want to limit myself to the spectacle that is only rainbow colored. More and more I want to use queer topics from the external, media, and the internal, my own experience as a vantage point of reaching into the abstract and theoretical. Lately, I've discovered I have a mind that feasts itself on the abstract and thrives so long as it is allowed to dabble here.

Just a warning, you might start getting more theoretical posts as a reflection of my own interests.

Another way is to just write about the things I like and share with no reserve and let Good as Gay become what I feel it has always been, a personal blog for me. For whatever reasons, 250 people follow it on Facebook so I always have the readers in the back of my mind. So, there is always this balance of my own interests along with the interests of Good as Gay readers. Good as Gay readers seem to be an intellectual bunch with an eclectic ray of interests like myself. So, simply cutting down the emphasis on the queer spectrum identities and going for what the heart calls for seems like a good strategy to me as I go into another year of blogging. Or as I say in person, Blarging.

At any rate, I happened to stumble upon three documentaries which ironically contained gay and lesbian content. I meant to just learn about artists and artistic personalities in general but came to learn that these artists happened to be gay men.

The Legend of Leigh Bowery 

For those interested in the more crude, eccentric, and offensive, Leigh Bowery provides an art form that will be inscribed permanently to memory. The documentary goes beyond the costumes and further into his bizarre artistic character. 

Darling! the Pieter-Dirk Uys Story

It's a great film about an enigmatic man working to educate South African children about HIV/AIDs. Prepare to meet a humorous, passionate, and inspiring character Pieter-Dirk Uys. 

Oh, by the way, I was recently published in an online journal of previously unpublished poetry. Pretty fantastic right? The two poems have vague LGBT overtones. Plus, the rest of the journal is fantastic as well.

Go Away I Love You 
Touching Your Facebook

Lastly, I wanted to give an update on my research proposal. This summer I wrote a blog post about Gay Longhair and was consequently invited to a gay longhair party out in San Fransisco. So I attended and turned my research interests upon it. My symbolic interactionist perspective, (a world conveyed by symbols, or the Shakespearean notion that all the world's a stage) was seemingly incompatible with my English lens. The project has been returned to the good hands of the sociology department and I am neck deep in Solomon's hair, African American hair history, and books/articles about the various meanings of hair and how symbols function in society. Be on the look out for more updates.
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