The World Was Never Straight

0:00New CBS Tuesday. Me special agent Sam Hannah. It means you're a good thing to school, you're a good thing. From the executive producer of The Pigs. What? It comes in new era. It's called MCIS. Another bad guy down, we got him up. LL Cool J, Scott Codd, Star. Welcome to Brooklyn. You can change that one. Hands up! This is the greatest city in the world. Let's get to work. NCIS, New York. New CBS Tuesday, 9-8-Central. And streaming on Paramount Plus. This fall, LL Bean is celebrating the moment people look forward to all year. The first school drop off, the first sweater weather day, which I'm very much looking forward to, and the first chilly evening around the fire pit. For over a hundred years, LL Bean has been a part of these traditions. Crunching leaves and main, made bean boots, cheering from the sidelines and Scotch plaid flannel, and walking the dog in a rugged field coat. So grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection.

1:02LL Bean. Be an outsider. Hey, girls, it's Zach Saford, and you are listening to ViPcheck. On today's episode, we have a very special guest. They are playwright and performance artist Taylor Mac. And Taylor Mac is so many things. You know, MacArthur Genius Award winner, Guggenheim Fellowship Award winner, everything that you can think of. Taylor Mac has done. Taylor Mac is an artist I fell in love with deeply in the 2010s. And I think it's a great honor to be here. I'm going to be here with you. I'm going to be here with you. I fell in love with deeply in the 2010s. And when I was working at Grindr, I had the opportunity. It's one of the first things I ever produced as a young theater producer. We were able to put up Taylor's show, the 24-dick-aid history of popular music, which is a show you can watch. I think it's not streaming. But what made this show so famous back in the 2010s until today, is that Taylor, when Taylor performs it, performs for 24 hours straight.

2:0624 hours. No breaks. There's maybe a few bathrooms, but it's really straight through with Matt Ray, Taylor's partner in all musical things. And machine dazzle, the incredible costume artist making all these costumes, they sing over through Andrew's song. So if you don't know Taylor Mac, go watch the 24-dick-aid history of popular music. It's fantastic. But that was our first introduction and really a moment for me as a young producer to see that theater was worth putting on and theater can be really radical. So today's conversation with Taylor is about their new book called Barc of Millions, which is the companion piece to the theater piece called Barc of Millions. It's a rock opera that you can see, I think sometimes in Brooklyn, it opened at the Sydney Opera House. It's a fabulous piece that is over 55 songs that are all about queer people written by Taylor Mac and Matt Ray. And what's so important about this conversation today is that you don't need to know these songs to appreciate what Taylor shares. Taylor has always been an artist that's been very clear on why art is inherently political as a queer person and why Taylor's fight in the art world around making queerness evident

3:08is so vital now more than ever. We speak on the day that Donald Trump actually began ripping down sculptures at the Kennedy Center and Taylor Mac was one of the first drag queens to ever perform at the Kennedy Center. So in this conversation, you'll hear Taylor responding to that news and talking about how Donald Trump is just not a curious man and how even though Tim Miller on our show once said that Donald Trump would make a great theater owner, Taylor just doesn't buy that argument at all. So you will enjoy this conversation no matter if you've been to a Taylor Mac show or not and I think afterwards you will want to go see Taylor live. Before we jump into this episode, though, we want to thank all of you who continue to listen to the show each and every week. Don't forget you can email us anytime at Vibech at Citro.com and of course a special shout out to those of you who are subscribed to our Patreon. If you want to join the group chat, you can find us at patreon.com slash Vibech. And now without further ado, let's get into my conversation with Taylor Mac. Enjoy. Taylor Mac, welcome to Vibechek.

4:11Thank you. I'm happy to be here. It's so good. It's like you've been here before. I'm having deja vu. It's weird. Just for listening, we had some technical issues at the beginning of our chat. So we're restarting. So we had a rehearsal, a workshop, I would say. I don't try to make my answer not sound canned. No, do it again. And you know, not to go down a path you've already walked, but it's something about your work because I've been a fan for a while. And I do my own work in theater and producing. And I've heard you had interviews talk about how you do the economics of theater. You sometimes will charge for your workshops that you have people come and see the work. Which I think is so fabulous because workshops are these like fully free things that do cost money to two and people with a lot of anxiety around the capitalist signature of that. Let's monetize practice. That feels very queer. Right. Well, I mean, for me, it's more than I'm an artist in America. And we don't have that much funding for the arts in the United States.

5:14No matter what regime we're working under. So I think I have to kind of create a new model for the expectation. If I don't have enough rehearsal time, then it can either be sad. And you're always in the pressure. You're always feeling stressed. Or you can say to the audience, hey, this is how we do things in America. And what we do is we create in front of you, you know, and, and you're invited to come. And like the ticket price to me is sometimes it shows it free. Like in Central Park, the art upcoming show that it's a free show for everybody in Central Park. But sometimes they're quite a lot of money and sometimes they're $20. So it's just I kind of go, the ticket price isn't as important as that we're all gathering. And we're alive and we're breathing in the same room together. We're not chasing the hem of God, something in the future, let's some goal that we've all tried to achieve through our, through our polish.

6:15We're actually chasing our humanity. And so part of the humanity is being vulnerable and showing that you can mess up. And that you could change things and you could change your opinion, your view, your understanding of the work that you're in as you're performing it, as, as can the audience. So it's really about electrifying the live experience more than trying to create something that can be repeated again and again and again, not after night, the same way. I guess that works, you know, for some people. It does, but not for me. No, and I think for you, you're doing it so beautifully well. And it's very aspirational because it makes me think a lot of, you know, are you familiar with Jack Halberstam, the theorist? Jack Halberstam worth the queer art of failure. And Jack's been on the show before too. So Jack is an old friend that we love talking about, you know, how to fail beautifully in the importance of failure. And you know, some people would see a workshop or the rehearsal as an innate failure, because it's not perfect.

7:15It's not polished, as you said. And we live in a culture that doesn't want to see the work, but expects you to be perfect. Right. A goal of heteropatriarchy, which is like total bullshit. Yeah. I mean, I'm half of the art is the invitation. So how are you inviting the audience into the work? And one of my theories, my practicing theories is that the more that you rely on the audience, and so the more you invite them into the experience, the more they change the experience. And so then how can you polish it without them in the room when you're rehearsing? So, you know, we did this 24 hour show. And there's a whole hour of it where we blindfold the audience. And we had to blindfold them in the course of one song. And then we do all these things with them during the hour while blindfolded. And how do you do that if you don't have an audience to rehearse with? So it really kind of the content dictates the form is kind of the idea.

8:15And so if the work is about sharing with an audience, then you got to share with them from the beginning. And they create the form of the practice. Yeah. Yeah. And it makes the stakes also feel more real. You know, so much of theater is you're watching a story that's a hero's journey or something. And it's all there's a wall, a little fourth wall between you. But I'm there as an audience member. I'm a part of it. I also have feelings and energy that's kind of fusing into the actor or the performer's energy. And to ignore that feels again, very strange. Straight people love to ignore their own pleasures and desire. It is a little straight. Yeah, it is a little straight. It's also a little anti nature. You know, because nature is spontaneous and strange and wobbly. And you know, and so you don't get in the nature. You get in the nature. You're literally sitting in nature. A sitting in nature. You get the nature of much performing nature. So I want to ask you what your vibe is because that's how we begin every conversation.

9:16And I have already asked you that today. So I don't want to lie to our audience. Like we've done this before. We've been down there. But I will take it further and ask, you know, you grew up in San Francisco. In the San Francisco area, a few hours outside. And as a beautiful nature scene, has nature always been really vital to your art practice? No, I think, you know, I dig grew up in California in the Central Valley. We were close to all the beautiful nature of California. It was really a lot of track-tousing bulldozed farmland where I grew up. It didn't feel very healthy. The air pollution was horrible. And then I moved to San Francisco, which is a city. And then I moved to New York City, which is a city. And I've been there ever since. And well, now I live in this country place and the Berkshire. So I think nature is an evolution for me. And understanding that the natural world is queer has been an evolution that somehow, you know, I mean, even the language is that everything is straight. Right.

10:16And eventually there's straight in terms of geometry. Straight is a man-made concept. It doesn't actually exist in nature. And so when people are saying that queer people aren't natural. And then they're telling them to be straight. It's such a confusion because nothing is straight in nature. And again, yes, that's the language that people are using and not what it really means. But language is powerful. And we wrap our whole lives around these concepts. And so, yeah, I think getting back to nature has been about really understanding my queerness and how natural it is. Yeah. And that's really, I think, healing for queer folks to see that representation in nature. To see that, you know, you've been told your whole life that what you want is not okay. It's a natural that you're an abomination. But that you return to the beginning and see we've always been there, which is so much a part of your work across all the different work you've done is that you look backwards and say, holy shit, we've only existed.

11:19But we've kind of thrived for a long time and been making art this whole time. A long time, yeah. Yeah. So we're publishing this book, Work of Millions. And it's a songbook and every song is inspired by a different queer person from world history. And I'm not a historian. So that's not my job, you know, I love all the queer historians that are finding all the queers from out all of the centuries. But I think of it more like because we haven't had them and now we're just starting to really learn about them. We also haven't had all the things that they might inspire like all the songs. Right. So that's part of what the book is about is trying to start the Herculian task of ending the erasure and the emission of all those songs. And why aren't there five million songs about Atum who was a gender queer god, you know, there were millions of people who worshiped Atum at some point. But we had that hasn't been passed down to us.

12:19There are millions of songs about the Christian God because that has been passed down to us. And without those songs, it's hard to understand who we are, even if you don't believe. Yeah. It's still hard to understand that we come from lineage and we do. So that's part of the great joy of this project is doing our part to add to what the daughters of Beledis, which was the first lesbian organization in America. They called the living library of the deviant theme. And so that's what we've done. We've written all these queer songs to add to the living library of the deviant thing. I know you said you're not a historian, but most people do not know the daughters of Beledis at all. You know, that's a very inside queer baseball knowledge. You know, I only know that because I studied queer history in college. So you are a historian in many ways. And I think you're just not interested in all of that. No, I better say it from historians. I would say that I, part of my liberation, I think curiosity is liberation.

13:24So people ask me about Trump, you know, in the mega world. And I'm like, just get curious, get super curious. That is the liberation. The more curious we are, the more we wonder about them and also ourselves. And other people around us, the more we will liberate ourselves. So I think my curiosity has helped. It has brought me to the people that have also been curious, but have actual history and skills. Yeah. Yeah. I love that you bring up the word curious because I would say that is a defining characteristic of the fascist regime that is mag. They are vehemently not curious. They think they know everything and they think their worldview is the worldview. And they look quite dumb when you see them in action. And it makes me think a lot about we were discussing this earlier, but the Kennedy Center, which you were, you released one of the first track wins to openly perform there. And Trump is really not curious about the ways in which the Kennedy Center has existed and has this very specific vision of how it should exist. And today, Jules Shapiro's work, the blue sculpture is being torn down.

14:25And this, I would say that sculpture is not even that politically crazy. It's just about peace. He was inspired from his work and I think India. Peace is political. Peace is political. Peace doesn't give people what they want, you know, and certain people want. They want their greed is a mental illness as far as I'm concerned. And they just want, want, want, want, want. And peace is not about greed. So there you go. You know, yeah, I think it's more just about trying to get at us. Oh, we're going to stick to you this way. We're going to stick it. We know this will piss you off. We know this will piss you off. And maybe there's more to it than that. And I'll keep wondering about them because you know, they're in our world. And we have to, we have to figure this out. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why a statue makes somebody so upset. That's what you're like that. Yeah. I don't get it at all. And we had a guest on recently, Tim Miller. He's from a different show called the Bullwork. And he argued to me, and he's not a theater person at all. He said that Trump is just mad that he never became a Broadway theater owner.

15:28That he just desperately wants to be a theater queen. And I said to myself, I need to ask Taylor Mac about that because it is funny. Trump does love cats. I don't think cats is like the defining piece of theater in the world. But he likes his favorite art or entertainment or celebrities or the people that were famous and the works of whatever you might call them that were famous when he was in his prime, when he was in a physical prime. So he's nostalgic for being in his physical prime. Yeah. And that is just so clear. I, you know, I mean, really cats is a musical that doesn't have a plot. And it's abstract. It's so much, it's so much weirder than anything I have ever made. And, and yet, you know, he likes that. So, you know, it's weird. To me, that's strange because they're obviously there's some crossover and miscommunication about what art is and what entertainment is and what good art is.

16:31But we've never had a president who was understood the theater. Yeah. We never have probably probably the candidates were the most sophisticated and they named themselves after Camelot, the musical. You know, they're not, they're not exactly hanging out with the Worcester group or, or Richard Foreman or, you know what I mean? Like we don't have presidents that are that clued in. And so that, that's, but that's okay. They're doing other things, but we do need, you know, cultural leaders who actually have curiosity about the arts and really the breadth of what the arts are, not just the commerce of what art can do or the economics of art, but what the emotional connection of art and the variance of art. We need all that, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, I cannot agree anymore. We're going to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with more 5-check.

17:31With Cricket Wireless, you can count on reliable nationwide 5G. Because Cricket Wireless is on the AT&T network, which means you can start listening to that new album that just dropped at home. While running errands and at the gym, without any hiccups, find plans with unlimited data for every lifestyle and price point. Switch to Cricket today. This podcast is supported by Nurtek ODT, RemedioPant. We know you didn't ask for an interruption, but Migraine doesn't wait for the right moment to interrupt either. It just barges in, takes your time and throws everything off. So, when Migraine takes your time, take Nurtek. It's for the acute treatment of Migraine with or without aura and adults. Nurtek can provide pain relief in two hours, which can last up to two days. Ask your healthcare provider if Nurtek is right for you, because your time is for you. Not Migraine. Don't take it allergic to Nurtek ODT. Alertic reactions can occur even days after use. Get help right away for trouble breathing, rash, swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or throat.

18:32High blood pressure and rain on syndrome can occur. Get help for high blood pressure, numbness, coolness, pain, or color changes in fingers and toes. Common side effect is nausea. For full prescribing information, call 1-833-4-Nurtek or visit Nurtek.com. All right, back to your podcast, playlist, or whatever is keeping you going today. This fall, LL Bean is celebrating the moment people look forward to all year. The first school drop off, the first sweater weather day, which I'm very much looking forward to, and the first chilly evening around the fire pit. For over 100 years, LL Bean has been a part of these traditions. Crunching leaves and main, made bean boots, cheering from the sidelines and Scotch plaid flannel, and walking the dog in a rugged field coat. So grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean. Be an outsider. We're back and we're jumping right back into this conversation with Taylor Mac.

19:37I'd love to ask you about the beginning of your career as an artist and specifically your time in the downtown New York scene. I was listening to some interviews before talking to you today. And you said something in one interview where you were discussing being downtown in New York, and you were creating work that was very political in the clubs. Because no other theater would have you. Now you are Taylor Mac and Arthur winner all these things. But back then they were not treating you. I still have to work to get people to do my work. It's bizarre, but that is how it is. I think it was true for Tennessee Williams and Edward Aldi. Everybody basically never gets to let up. Why do you think that is because for me to project on to you, your work was always inherently political not because you were queer but because you were actually engaging in a politic. Do you think that was what was happening in the beginning people were like, oh Taylor is a little too political, we're nervous. What did you make of that time period in the beginning of your career?

20:40I think there was such a divide in the beginning between downtown and uptown. Some of the work that we've done over the last 30 years has been a kind of a race that divide for better or worse. I think it was more like, oh you're a downtown artist. You stay in the gutter, stay in the gay nightclub. That's where it's appropriate for you to be nobody outside of that world would be interested in it. What we've found is that a lot of people are interested in that kind of world. I don't know if it was about the politics. How can you separate the aesthetic and the politics and the content? I did a show where I used the war on terror as a metaphor for my love life. How can you separate the two really if you're squishing themes and genres? And also if you're anti-capitalist, then that is really part of the issue

21:44because people galvanize around something that they think is going to be a success at capitalism. If that's not what your goal is, then you don't get a lot of support. That's just how it goes. I don't know. I do know that in 2003 when the war on terror was getting going up to 2004, there was hardly any political work in New York City. Then suddenly it started to happen again. I was one of the only ones downtown who was doing political work. It started to happen again. Then it started to reach out through the larger theater world of America. Now I'm starting to see it shrink again. It's disturbing. It's disturbing, but is it surprising to see right now as Trump regains power? Did you think it would go differently the second time? I mean, the second time I prayed it.

22:44We wouldn't have a second time, but maybe we wouldn't have a first time. But I think it doesn't surprise me because the arts have really positioned themselves in such a neoliberal perspective. So they are so, they almost, the value system is capitalism. And even all the nonprofits organize themselves around. We will be funded by people who have won at capitalism. So philanthropy, you know, suddenly becomes the driving force of the arts in America. And so as a result, you can't really do anything political. I mean, I have a piece about Claire Thomas that I brought to a major institution in New York. And I was slightly told that they couldn't even bring it to the board for approval because the board wouldn't want to be sued. And that's so, that is such a great example of what I've been talking a lot about in the show where why is it that we, some people in this world have fuck you money,

23:53but they're not saying fuck you to people. And that is a moment where an institution you were built to meet moments like this. And yet they're just to cower. And now the onus falls on you as an artist. And I'm sure you're being asked all the time, how is an artist going to save us? And you're probably thinking, save what? What about the board? What everybody has to say about anybody? Like, how are you going to save us? Yeah. The audience is going to save us. I mean, I'm just here to remind people of what they've forgotten, just Mr. Barried. You know, so that's my, that's what I think my goal as an artist is is to be a community organizer, to bring people together. And then just say, remember, we forgot this thing about our, we forgot this thing about our human spirit. We forgot how, how much depth and with there is inside of us. And we forgot our heterogeneity. And so it's just about like trying to remind people of what they actually already know. Or to explore with them, you know, to say, I don't think any of us know this.

24:56And it's a reminder that we don't actually know. So to get more secratic and just ask questions over and over and over again, I think that's really my, my job. You know, I don't think I can solve things as an artist. But I can lay, I can lay an environment where the people who can, the audience, get together to, to find each other. Yeah. And you've done a really good job as an artist, inspiring many of us not to find answers maybe in your work, but to ask more questions that always seems to be a lot of your goals with them. Yeah, that's the main goal. And with your work, I would say that is, I don't ever like saying the most famous, but the work that really kind of like took a lot of us by storm was the 24 decades history of popular music, which is just a rigorous work you've done it to you sometimes you performed it in 24 hours or in its own, in its own setting. And that piece was looking backwards in time and using popular music to kind of find us in those moments, that's this queer people.

26:00What inspired that methodology within the 24 decade history? I mean, again, it really is content dictates the form. So I thought, what's the show about the shows about communities building themselves as a result of being torn apart. And I said, well, who are the communities that have done that and it turns out that all the communities of America have done that. And we've been doing it through our whole history. And so then it felt, oh, this needs to be epic. And I need to put the audience through something where they're falling apart by building themselves at the same time so that the content is dictating the form of the piece. And so that's, that's always how I work. I mean, a little bit of that show was I don't know much about history and I would like to know. And also I don't, I'm not one of those people who can sing, you know, just pull out 100 songs from my back pocket, like Elephant Cheryl, there's so many like that. And I always wanted to be so a little bit of it. It was my, my own personal desire. I want to know more history and I want to learn a lot of songs.

27:00And so then make a show where you learn some history and learn a lot of songs. You know, when we learned, I learned over 300 songs for that show, we sang 240 of them in the show. And it was because of that show that I almost every song we sang was written for the heterosexual year. Yeah. And a lot of them were written by people, but they were all written, you know, basically to get heterosexuals to sing them. And I thought after two learning all those songs from our canon, one after another after another, I thought, I need to counterbalance this with a bunch of queer songs that were written for queer ears. But then in that process, I realized, oh, everyone has a queer ear. And so then the content of the show and the book really is to make everybody more queer to remind them of their queerness. And so I call it a reverse conversion therapy session. You know, our whole goal is to make everybody more queer than what they experienced the work.

28:01Yeah. You actually write, I think, in one of the first pages in the book right in front of me, I think it was page nine. I have a photographic memory so I had to pull that. So you write, we hope this book makes you queer. Yeah. What does queer mean within that context for you? Well, I think that question is queer for questioning. I was saying the book that I used to resent the queue and because the queue stands for questioning, not queer in the LGBTQ. I used to resent it because I thought, you know, the least you should have to do is come out in order to get membership. Yeah. But as I get older and I get, I get a little bit more expansive in my considerations and also my hormones start to change. I start to feel like, oh, no, questioning is the queerest thing that you can do. It is just to think to yourself, you know, I'm a man. Am I? Like that's super queer. To say, I'm only attracted to people of my same gender. Is that true?

29:01You know, I'm only attracted to someone of the opposite gender. Is that true? Like, at what point have I been? And what does attraction mean? And what is sex and all of these different things that we should be asking ourselves on a daily basis, you know, throughout our points. Yeah. Do you know Jose Esteban Munoz, the writer? Yeah. So a little bit back. Well, yeah. He wrote, you know, one of his last books cruising Utopia. And so I keep going, do you know, do you know this is not a test? He's a test to give his name. But he wrote one of his last books that I'm paraphrasing, but he writes about queerness being a horizon event that you'll never, like the sun, you'll never touch the horizon. Yeah. And they always be gazing at it. And I've always found that to be really beautiful because it's kind of like a vision, a mission to get there. But your framework of questioning feels very similar. Like it's never an answer. It's just always what could be, what could be. Yeah, it's a little bit that, but I also think it's in us. I mean, I just, I don't think it's somewhere outside of my body or outside the planet or for often the horizon.

30:06I mean, I think my understanding of it is, but I do think that queerness is in all of us. And we've just for so long denied it. So much of the culture has just squashed it down. And yet it's everywhere. And so in some ways that thing often the horizon is the liberation from where we are, you know, with our understanding of it. But no, I think it's, I think it's more, it's a combination of going in and looking out, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It makes me think of the scene in 24-decade where you have folks dance, I think, to homophobic music. Yeah. To Ted Nugens' homophobic song, Snake Skin Cowboys. That's it. Slow down the song and we turn it into a gay junior prom song. Yeah. And you talk a lot about how that was a moment for, for heterosexual people who were asked to dance with each other. Because it's all about same gender dancing. That you were pushing them to a moment to stretch towards us as queer people instead of us stretching towards them.

31:10Yeah. That can you talk about that stretching? Because I think that that that gets on that that embodiment you're talking about. That there is queerness in all of us and that we can activate it a bit. But look, why do we stretch so that we can be more flexible? Right. And so that we can be healthier. That's why we stretch. So you see somebody who's different from you, you know, so much of our current culture of birth, valid reasons is about people wanting to be seen. And I, my question is, is it not to be seen, but to see? Is it about activating our curiosity so that we can see ourselves? Because you know, we see ourselves in reflective services every day. Do we actually need to see ourselves in other human beings as well or in lots of media or whatever? And that gets down to representation and economics and equality and all of those conversations. But, but it's also about how can you use your curiosity to see others? And in that action, are you seen?

32:11Do you self in the action of your curiosity? So it's so much about not having a hierarchy, not having to compete with each other for whatever the real estate might be. But I'm actually just our generosity of spirit in terms of in terms of wondering about about each other. And that I don't know what the initial question was. But that's the core of that stretching towards, you know, you stretch towards queerness because it might be you, you know. Yeah, we're going to take one more break, but don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. This podcast is supported by Nurtek O-D-T, Rematch a Pant. We know you didn't ask for an interruption, but Migraine doesn't wait for the right moment to interrupt either. It just barges in, takes your time and throws everything off. So when Migraine takes your time, take Nurtek. It's for the acute treatment of Migraine with or without aura and adults.

33:14Nurtek can provide pain relief in two hours which can last up to two days. Ask your healthcare provider if Nurtek is right for you because your time is for you, not Migraine. Don't take it allergic to Nurtek O-D-T. Allertic reactions can occur even days after use. Get help right away for trouble breathing, rash, swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or throat. High blood pressure and rain on syndrome can occur. Get help for high blood pressure, numbness, coolness, pain, or color changes in fingers and toes. Common side effect is nausea. For full prescribing information, call 1-833-4-Nurtek or visit Nurtek.com. Alright, back to your podcast, playlist, or whatever is keeping you going today. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Hi, I'm Sean Evans from Hot Ones and I want to tell you about YouTube Premium. It has offline downloads so you can watch without Wi-Fi, background play, so you can lock your phone and it still plays baby. Oh, and it is completely ad-free. Yes, I said it, ad-free.

34:14Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime. The crispy chicken crunch wrap slider that you love is back at Taco Bell. And it's back with attitude because now you can enjoy the all white meat chicken nuggets inside a slider sized crunch wrap with Hidden Valley Diablo Ranch. What do you love most? The crispy chicken nuggets, the crunch wrap slider, or maybe the Hidden Valley Diablo Ranch? But yes, the answer is yes. The crispy chicken crunch wrap slider, a brand new classic is back, only at Taco Bell. We're back and we're jumping right back into this conversation to really focus on bark of millions in the book project you've done. As I was glancing through all of it when I first got it, I went to the chapter pages and I was really shocked to see, you know, I mean, I wasn't shocked to see Bayard Rustin. I was like, of course, he's there, but then Frankie Knuckles being there so early on.

35:15I was so excited, some of the Chicago, and there's just so many incredible people and you're really stretching how we even see ourselves through these historical figures, both fictional and non fictional. And it just got me really excited because it's exactly what you're saying, you know, when I look at someone to find myself, do I find something of myself of them? And that is such an important part of being a queer person in this world because you and I share that experience here in America, at least that we didn't have ourselves in popular media for many years. So we had to find hints of it everywhere. How did you go about curating this list? Because some of them are obvious, but some are, again, like I'm so interested in how you put that together and why these people? Yeah, I mean, it was a combination of many, many things. Well, first off, the list is finished. It's an ever growing project. So it will never be done. I think when I die, Matt dies, who wrote all the composed of the music, I wrote all the lyrics. And when we die, hopefully we will pass it on or inspire others to pick it up to add to the living library of the deviant theme. So feeling like I have to represent all the queers of all the centuries from all the world in 50 songs.

36:27Like, take that off the table. Like we got time to get to everybody. So that's the one thing. And then the other thing, I just kind of chased my curiosity and the muse. I mean, some of them were just the Queen down the street that nobody knows that I was interested in or who lifted my life in some way. It's very personal on all the songs, but some of them were people that I've met along the way like, like, Squishway was in Myanmar was this Queen that runs a beauty shack in Myanmar where all the queers hang out. And it's kind of a dead mother of the queers of young gone. And so that was somebody that nobody really knows about, but I inspired a song in me. And then they're, you know, super famous people like James Baldwin. And it wasn't about representing James Baldwin. It was about wondering, you know, again, it was about, because I don't know how to represent myself on a stage, let alone somebody else or an entire demographic, but I can wonder.

37:27And so that's what the songs do. They're, they're curiosities. There are offerings of our curiosity and the hopes that you two will be curious, you know, and take it. And they're much more than just offerings. I mean, there were little constructions of queer songs, which she spent, you know, one of your last big projects imagining queerness within popular music, whether we were literally in there or we were the writers for a heterosexual year, but this project is so much about making us effluent. Very clearly. Yes. Why is music such a good tool for combating a racer, especially now, you know, we're talking about Trump taking down sculptures, but it would be hard for him to stop a song, I would say. Yeah, I, you know, we might want to talk to a neurologist about this because I, you know, I think it's interesting that music sits in a different part of our brain, I think, then most of the things in terms of memory. And, you know, people who have dementia that can sing a song from their child all the way through, but don't remember the name of their child, you know, so I think there's something to the power of that where it sits in our brains.

38:30Again, is this lagnets, this philosopher, lagnets who, you know, created this, he kind of had a theory. I don't totally understand it. So please don't think that I know what I'm talking about. But I think it's that the universe is always making music, right? And so it is our goal as human beings. And if the universe is always making music, are we just here to harmonize with the universe? It's a question that I, you know, I have is kind of the center of any kind of spirituality I might have is just to wonder, oh, how can we harmonize with each other and with the ideas and with people that came before us and people that are about to come. And yeah, how can we, how can we just sing with everybody? I think that there's something in that that of all the rights that countries create and laws create beyond that. There is this universal right to make music. And they just can't be taken away. You can't censor it. It can't look at and everything you said just maybe think of the it was, you know, a joke, a ish, but the theory that disco was so popular for queer people was because it was the the BPM, the beats per minute of the heart of the guard.

39:41I don't know if you've heard that before. Yeah. And then it also ties to, you know, the 90s, the rise of house music, when I saw Frankie Knuckles of the book, I just thought it was perfect because, you know, the thinking there and this has been studied is that due to the trauma of losing so many people and how our bodies were seen as as disease as unlovable as things that needed to be destroyed. That dance music rose because it allowed us to touch and it feel really good in the 90s at a time that was really important. So there is something really innate to all this and music is the driver of all that. Yeah. I mean, I would, I definitely felt that, you know, a body and soul, which was a T dance that happened in New York for many years in the 90s. You know, everyone I knew would go and we would just sweat. Just what? Well, that's what I don't, I mean, it was queer people as straight people if there is such a thing. And everyone just all together just it was, it was glorious and it was so healing to just be swept up in it.

40:47And it was on a Sunday. So it was after all the drugs, all the drinking, most people were just there to dance and to connect to each other. And yeah, it was just just loved it. Yeah, that to me is, I mean, it reminds me of that's another kind of queer spirituality for me is just being on a dance floor dancing, sweating. You know, I mean, my dad is new, new album is all about this. Oh, it's so much about that. It's so good. It's so good. It's great. She she she connects back to what it's about. It's not about it's not about bitch. I'm a Donna. It's about when you're on the dance floor, there's another language happening and it's the spiritual language and it's about humans connecting. And that happens because of music. Yeah, it is. Well, that brings us to the final question of the day. You know, you've spent an enormous amount of time thinking of queerness within music, writing your own queer music. Is there a song that you think embodies queerness the most for you personally? From the book for you can say book life anywhere.

41:51Oh, God, there's so many. I mean, what's popping into my mind for whatever reason is this Nick Drake song which will. There's something so longing about it and who knows if he was identified as queer or not. But there is there is this deep deep deep longing in that song and so that that just popped into my head from the other side of the spectrum. You know, I mean anytime Nina Simone opens her mouth. Yes, yes, no matter what it is, it just feel like that whatever genre she's singing in that is a queer anthem. Yeah, I would say definitely all of that disco, especially the disco that came before the commerce of it, you know, the disco that came out of out of wanting to be together and have fun and celebrate and alternative cultures, you know.

42:55Yeah, there's just so. There's so many. I'll go to the blues artists like all of the blues all of the blues really comes from these lesbian blues singers, you know, more it is the root of all of rock and roll is these lesbian blues singers in these little juke joints. So yeah, yeah, it's everywhere. It's it's really everywhere, you know, but sometimes takes one song to make that click for people and for me years ago, the song was a to do fruity when I realized what was actually being said. I said, oh my god, I was just Brian's lyric a little Richard goes a long, long way. Yes, but yes, but it's like those moments like that like, oh, like holy shit. All of America was singing that song, which is about having anal sex and they just had no idea they're just dancing a lot. Yeah, that I mean, that definitely I like the way that music can find its way and you know, I mean look why am C.A Donald Trump made it his theme song.

43:59It's just a song about looking up with guys at the YMCA. So music has is so subversive and and it's so obvious. It's not even hiding. It's just yeah, it's all there. It changes us and gets in us and it liberates us, you know, it does and it all it just takes us for everyone just to listen to what they're thinking. You know, we all know the words, but you just have to listen. Yeah, yeah. Well, Taylor, it's been so wonderful having you. I so appreciate all the work you continue to do. And this is really quite the gift you've given us and I look forward to having my partner play the music on our piano because I know there's two books. So the people who don't read music can follow along on the lyric book where there's essays too. And then there's then there's the sheet music so you can get together with your partner. Your partner plays the sheet music book and you go along with the lyric book. Exactly. I told Craig my partner. I was like, look, you're going to be playing this and he's like, oh, God, really?

45:00Yeah, it's going to be fabulous. I can't sing this shit. It's so good. They're so they're so wonderful. If I do say so myself, they are wonderful. And they are they are in music will withstand the test of time. Yeah. That's true. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Vibeshake. If you love the show and want to support us, please make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast listing platform and tell a friend. As always, huge thank you to our producer, Shantel Holder, our executive producers, can be a Stanley from series XM and Brandon Sharp from agenda and Marcus Humphur, The music and sound design. Big shout outs to our Patreon producer, Julia Leo. We want to hear from you. So don't forget you can email us at 5checkstitcher.com and keep in touch with us on Instagram on our page at 5check underscore pod for direct access to our group chat. You can join our patreon at patreon.com slash 5check. Also, Vibeshake listeners can now get a free three month trial on the series XM out by going to series XM.com slash 5check. Again, that's series XM.com slash 5check.

46:02Stay tuned for another episode. Next Wednesday, bye. In a world divided on who people can be, where pronouns spark debate and rights are treated like an opinion, we see something else. You, working hard, raising kids, loving out loud, worrying about the same things, rent, blood pressure, what's for dinner and needing care like everyone else. That's why at Covered California, you'll find judgment-free support and health coverage that shows up for you, no matter how you show up. Covered California for the love of Californians. This podcast is supported by Nurtek O.D.T., from Agapant. We know you didn't ask for an interruption, but Migraine doesn't wait for the right moment to interrupt either.

47:05It just barges in, takes your time and throws everything off. So, when Migraine takes your time, take Nurtek. It's for the acute treatment of Migraine with or without aura and adults. Nurtek can provide pain relief in two hours, which can last up to two days. Ask your healthcare provider if Nurtek is right for you, because your time is for you. Not Migraine. Don't take it allergic to Nurtek O.D.T., allergic reactions can occur even days after use. Get help right away for trouble breathing, rash, swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or throat. High blood pressure and rain on syndrome can occur. Get help for high blood pressure, numbness, coolness, pain, or color changes in fingers and toes. Common side effect is nausea. For full prescribing information, call 1-833-4-Nurtek or visit Nurtek.com. Alright, back to your podcast, playlist, or whatever's keeping you going today.