Hooray for You

"You don't have to bend the whole world.   I think it's better to just enjoy it.  Pay your dues.  And enjoy it.  If you shoot an arrow and it goes real high....hooray for you."

          ---Dorian Corey, in Paris is Burning (1991) directed by Jennie Livingston


Today's quote is taken from Jennie Livingston's controversial, award-winning documentary Paris is Burning.  This film documents the black and Latino tranvestite subculture of New York City and their performances at balls.  Livingston introduces her audience to some of the key terms of the ball culture, such as "voguing," "shading," ""mopping," "legendary," and most importantly "realness."   Ball participants perform in a wide range of categories in which the goal is to look and act as much like one's white, straight (and most often upper-class) counterpart as possible.   

Livingston's work has been praised for the way that it exposes identity as largely performative.  Yet her film also underscores the impenetrability of racial, sexual, and class-based boundaries in defiance of the American myth of the self-made individual.

Dorian Corey is one of the older drag queens and his sage reflections provide a unifying narrative thread to the film.  His musings point to the possibilities and the ironies of life, not only within the drag community, but for the white, straight audience that Livingston seems to anticipate may be viewing her film. This quote--the final line before the credits---is not uttered with resignation as much as amusement and the knowledge that comes from years of successes as well as disappointments.  Corey's wry humor in addressing people we might well refer to as life's "archers" keeps his commentary from succumbing to the mere cliche.

Twilight Love

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon these boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self that seals up all in rest
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed where on it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by
          This thou perceivst, which makes thy love more strong
          To love that well, which thou must leave ere long

--Shakespeare,  Sonnet 73

Shakespeare on love and impending loss.  The best of his sonnets, in my opinion.

Memory is the Lining of Forgetting

"I will have spent my life trying to understand the function of remembering, which is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather  its lining.  We do not remember, we rewrite memory much as history is rewritten."

---Chris Marker,  Sans Soleil (1982)

In his documentary film Sans Soleil, Chris Marker casts memory as a creative act as opposed to a retrieval act. 

Be Well

Today's entry is taken directly from the Dictionary.Com Word of the Day.  This is a wonderful and absolutely free service---a little bit of knowledge dispensed daily to your e-mail inbox. 

Wassail is both a hearty beverage and a best wish for the recipient---Waes haeil!  Be Well.

Word of the Day for Friday, October 8, 2010



wassail \WAH-sul; wah-SAYL\, noun:


1. An expression of good wishes on a festive occasion, especially in drinking to someone.


2. An occasion on which such good wishes are expressed in drinking; a drinking bout; a carouse.


3. The liquor used for a wassail; especially, a beverage formerly much used in England at Christmas and other festivals, made of ale (or wine) flavored with spices, sugar, toast, roasted apples, etc.


adjective:


1. Of or pertaining to wassail, or to a wassail; convivial; as, a wassail bowl.

transitive verb:


1. To drink to the health of; a toast.
 Intransitive verb:


1. To drink a wassail.


Christmas often means plum pudding, fruitcake, roast goose and wassail.


-- Florence Fabricant, "Recipes to Summon the Holiday Spirit", New York Times, December 21, 1988


But have you ever tried to spear a buffalo after a hard night at theold wassail bowl?


-- Gore Vidal, The Smithsonian Institution


Wassail is from the Middle English expression of festive benevolence, wæs hæil!, be well!, from Old Norse ves heill, be (ves) well (heill).