Taylor Mac & Matt Ray’s Bark of Millions

Increasingly I find myself interested in mystery. Especially when it comes to queerness (and art). I want to wonder on queerness rather than decide and tell others what it is. I’d like to inspire the same in our audiences. Yet, we must accept a certain amount of reality. Marketing teams will need to attract the audience, press will want to know how to describe it, critics will define it if you don’t, and some people (I’m often one of those people) will want breadcrumbs called a program note. And, if we’re to believe James Baldwin, “The root function of language is to control the universe by describing it” (though this is from someone who didn’t live long enough to hear about the mycorrhizal network). In the end, I love having an audience, try to think of critics as part of the collaborative, and am prone to give Baldwin the benefit of the doubt. So I’ve agreed to control the universe a little. Or at least, define. Give it an entry point.

So what is this you’re about to see (have seen, are thinking of seeing)? What I think I know (though even this might not be true) is: it’s freaking queer. What I mean by that is, this is an artwork that longs for you to wonder on it, in it, and with it. It seems that that’s what queerness, gummed up in systems so long defined by adherence to majorities, also longs for.

What also seems true is, much like a queer, this is a hybrid work. You could think of it as an opera-concert-song-cycle-musical-performance-art-piece-play. It’s certainly structured like all of those things squished together. Maybe this will help: its subtitle is “A Parade Trance Extravaganza for the Living Library of the Deviant Theme”. I’ve never seen a parade trance extravaganza for the living library of the deviant theme, so I’ve no context to measure our success. Regardless, the work is more about the stretching towards than the realization of. And, though we’ve started performing the work, it isn’t finished. I’m not sure it ever will be. It certainly wasn’t intended to have an end date. The intention is for it to grow with each passing year. We started with 55 songs (one for every year since the world’s first Pride Parade). Something you heard/will hear in the show (but in case you miss it) is that each song in the piece was inspired by a different queer person from world history. Some you’ll know. Some you won’t. Sometimes we tell you the names. Sometimes we don’t. The intention is not to teach you about them, represent them, honor them (some are real assholes), or even acknowledge their existence. The intention is to ground our considerations (and song­writing) in queerness.

Here’s something that terrifies me about the work (and also makes me laugh): there’s an unintentional cult-like…motif? It’s some­thing that happens when you get a bunch of queers on a stage and have them harmonize. They seem like a cult. Perhaps more so because of the watchers’/listeners’ upbringing (or flight/fight response) than anything that’s actually happening on the stage. Please know, if it seems like we’re praising rather than wondering…then that might be because you’ve most likely never seen a group of queer people sing songs inspired by queer people for four hours. So the only context you have is…church.

Though, to be fair, we do start with one of the first gods in human history, Atum (or Ra, the ancient Egyptian Sun God) and end (nearly) with Antinous (the lover of the emperor Hadrian, who grieved over Antinous’ death to such a degree that he created a religion named after him). So the whole work is framed by songs inspired by queers who made queer gods. Atum was gender queer. They made themself, if we’re to believe the myth, by uttering their name. What’s more queer than that? Then they birthed humans by crying them into existence. The thing that gives me life, in that consideration, are not the tears themselves, but the fact that a culture defined tears as a form of creation rather than as a form of shedding. All the gods that humans have made seem to pour metaphorical fluids out of themselves to create: tears, blood, ejaculate.

Similarly, what I think I know is, Matt Ray and I (and the entire collaborative and queers of the world) have been storing up our history, pain, erasure, and love, love, love, for what seems like millenniums. In that sense, we’re not queer historians, teachers, or worshippers of Antinous, Ra, or even Kate Bornstein. We’re lovers rubbing out a river Nile. If that rubbing out feels like some form of conversion, well, that’s your kink.

Plus, you’re not entirely wrong. The hope is that we’ll make you a little more queer than when you entered the theater. The hope is, as a result of making you a little more queer, you’ll do the same to others, and then we all won’t have to watch our backs as much. But is that really the show? The tongue-in-cheek, yes-and-no version, yes. Or rather, the version where queerness is considered in a pouring out of song, yes please.

xo

—Taylor Mac