Let the queer arts bloom! - Brief Article

Our thriving grassroots lesbian and gay culture allows us to be as raunchy, spiritual, or pissed off as we are in real life.

As I dip my spoon into the delicious soup of lesbian and gay culture bubbling away under the Web cam's watchful eye and on our TV and movie screens, I can taste that we queer folks are experiencing our own version of globalization. These days lots of us are simultaneously glued to the TV on W & Grace night while also clocking extra hours at PlanetOut.

Sure, the proliferation of shared mass media has deepened our national GLBT community, but though this centralization has conjured a kind of common watercooler for us all to gather around and kibitz, I find myself always seeking out the messy human immediacy of homegrown culture. As Chairman Mao (or maybe it was Paul Lynde) once said: "Let a thousand queer flowers bloom!" I love when people are gathered in a homo-friendly alternative art space, sleazy drag bar, or independent coffeehouse to have a unique nonglobal experience of the edgiest, purest, trashiest, most amazingly fabulous queer expression that money or love can buy.

There has been oodles of criticism that as representations of our community get more mainstream, the more likely it is they will be sanitized of any messy sexuality or confrontational politics. While I do think that critique underestimates just how valuable these prime-time images are, I also would bet you a round of cosmopolitans that if we ever get Will & Grace action figures, we'll find only asexual flat plastic where Jack's and Will's meat and potatoes ought to be! That's why we can be proud of our thriving grassroots lesbian and gay culture, which allows us to be as raunchy, spiritual, or pissed off as we are in real life.

As a wandering performer who travels to 40 cities a year (from Chattanooga to Louisville to Salt Lake City), I have a front-row seat to the diversity of expression in the nuzzling specificity of hundreds of cities' gay theaters, arts centers, bookstores, choruses, and film festivals.

Our community is blessed with heroic lesbian and gay arts organizers all over the country who are making festivals happen on a dream and a song--and frequently out of theft own checkbooks. If we were to take a tour, we might find ourselves in the steamy basement of a St. Louis church where Joan Lipkin, GLBT culture queen of the Show-Me State, is having another packed night of dyke performance. Then we could head north to see how Howie Baggadonutz has single-handedly made Portland, Ore., a must-stop for every gay touring artist. If we cut over a few states and go east on Interstate 94, we could stop by Patrick Scully's eponymous cabaret in the Twin Cities, where for years he has nurtured a provocative and sex-positive music, performance, and spokenword scene. Then we could scurry down to CSPS arts center in Cedar Rapids, heart of the queer arts in rural Iowa. And if we dive below the Mason-Dixon line, we could check out the feisty Manbites Dog Theater Company in Durham, N.C., which consistently offers everything from Holly Hughes's Preaching to the Preverted to Durham's own Voices of St. John's Metropolitan Community Church Gay Gospel Choir.

Each of these venues--and there are hundreds more--is gathering the artists and energies and audiences in their communities to make the fiercest lesbian and gay culture on the planet. I know this is what George W.'s daddy was really talking about with that "thousand points of light" nonsense a few years back.

These journeys through Gay Culture USA have filled me with a sense of optimism for our tribe's community-based arts, the people who make it happen, and the diverse audiences who gather to be challenged, emboldened, and mirrored. So from time to time, eject that bootlegged Queer as Folk tape, unplug your computer, get out of the house, and check out some of the thousands of lively, sexy, and unique arts events that are happening every day all across America. I promise that it will serve as a poignant reminder of how our lives, our politics, and our community can be transformed as we raise a ruckus through our own neighborhoods of flowering queer culture. Chairman Mao and Paul Lynde got this one right!

Miller is a solo performer and the author of Shirts & Skin (Alyson).

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