Reminder that monthly-ish, this newsletter publishes I Will Always Love You, an advice column for creative collaborations (inspired by Dolly Parton herself). You can read more about the inspirations for this column here.
I’m currently out of letters to answer, so write to me about the painter you’ve had a crush on for years, the singer you long to work with but are intimidated by, the complicated dynamics in your dance ensemble. Send me your juiciest quandaries!
A year ago, Mayday USA, a group of transphobic white nationalist evangelicals, threw a rally in my nice Seattle gayborhood. They played truly atrocious Christian rock and “spoke in tongues”. Speakers included Matt Shea, a member of the Patriot Movement extremist group, who advocates for a civil war between Christianity and secular society, and “the killing of all males who do not agree.” “DON’T MESS WITH OUR KIDS,” read their banners, calling all the queers of Cap Hill groomers. (Hilariously, the banners were the color of the bisexual flag.)
This gross display of violent bigotry occurred in the very park where the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest took place during the 2020 uprisings; the stadium speakers and giant projection screens and baptism horse troughs stood on the hallowed ground where the Black Lives Matter Memorial Garden once rooted.
The pastors, worship leaders, and musicians stood on a large stage. Their 200-strong “flock” stood before them, often raising their hands in frothing, self-righteous prayer. Their music sounded like bad early-2000s emo, but Christian. Behind them, the cops faced the counter-protesters, nightsticks and pepper spray in hand. They used them, too, arresting 23 and sending one to the hospital. My thrice-dislocated shoulder ached sympathetically as I watched a cop drag a young trans kid across the grass with their arm pinned behind them.
Standing facing the police barricades, we yelled and booed. We held signs. We cracked jokes when a woman “testified” about being “lured” into a Lesbian relationship at church camp (“This just sounds like a skill issue??” my girlfriend quipped; we gotta up our luring skills).
But this arrangement created a theatrical problem: the cop barricades positioned us like a second audience, like we were yelling at the stage from the nosebleed seats. We were protesting, but we were also subjected to their performance. Their city-sanctioned permit, protected by state violence, allowed them the power of the proscenium, making us 200-odd queers a captive audience. Their vile rhetoric made me want to puke. Their “less lethal” weapons were both pepper spray and Christian rock. Were we fighting back or enduring their hatred? Were we making them unwelcome in our neighborhood or giving them the satisfaction of our rage? It didn’t feel like winning, but it would be worse to do nothing. It seemed like a trap—both literally (the arrests), and affectively (the afternoon enduring their abuse, the heavy downbeats of their guitars, their key changes). “Our God is an Awesome God” was an earworm for days.
Photo Credit: Alex Garland
However, if you turned your back on those fuckers and walked 40ish feet, you entered a cross-fade zone, where the interminable chords of “our god is an awesome god” intermingled with raucous, fun punk rock. A group of (I’m assuming?) teenage queers had set up a generator and were playing a punk show on the grass. They moshed, screamed, and played guitar to drown out the fascists. Everyone was singing off-key, but the Punks were doing it on purpose.
The night before, on a balmy Friday, they had played a show in the park’s skatepark, serenading neighbors playing soccer, gays dressed up for the bars, straights walking their dogs, street vendors grilling tacos, my girlfriend and I getting ice cream. On the eve of a right-wing invasion, these kids claimed the neighborhood.
I wish I’d become a punk in high school. My angst found a home in musical theatre instead (alas, much less cool). But I aspire to get more interesting as I age, so maybe by my fifties I’ll get there.
Last year, my teacher Raechel Anne Jolie wrote about hardcore shows, and how, to her, they feel like church:
Everytime I watch a crowd at a hardcore show, my heart does this thing where I feel it press against my chest and a little bit into my throat, and without realizing it, my arm will shoot in the air and I will fingerpoint with the crowd, which sounds lame and fragile, but I assure you, it is the opposite. Fingerpointing the air is like singing to god, maybe not everybody thinks that, but I think that. I think fingerpointing is like speaking in tongues, I think it’s something holy and divine and when I watch these videos I am so moved by what moves these bodies…. The people in the front row who brace themselves against the stage!! I think they are Archangels, guardians, their arms outstretched like wings.
Turn away from evil, the punks seemed to say, shattering the power of the proscenium, luring us away from those who would destroy us in the name of the holy spirit, drowning out hatred with generators and guitars. Instead, with our backs to those motherfuckers, the punks called us to counter-worship, summoning a rowdy, gay God who loves us unconditionally (even, I pray, those of us uncool enough to know all the lyrics to Rent.) Our god is an awesome god, goddamnit.
