Visual Notes of My UnPresenting workshop
Friday, July 31st, 2009<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/deathtogutenberg/“>Austin Kleon’s<a>very cool notes on my <a href=”http://heathergold.com/speaking“>UnPresenting.</a>
Archive for the “life” Category
San Francisco has a pie truck
Friday, July 31st, 2009
Just one more reason to be homesick.
Frederick Douglass on Power
Friday, July 24th, 2009If there is no struggle
There is no progress
Those who profess to favor freedom
And yet depreciate agitation
Are men who want crops
Without plowing up the ground
They want rain without thunder and lightning
They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters
There is no progress
Those who profess to favor freedom
And yet depreciate agitation
Are men who want crops
Without plowing up the ground
They want rain without thunder and lightning
They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters
Power concedes nothing without a demand
It never did and it never will.
-Frederick Douglass, 1857
The Dish (sullivan readers) speculate on romance.
Friday, July 24th, 2009I speculate on queer vs straight differences in approaches to dating in this interesting Dish (Andrew Sullivan’s blog) post on dating and deception. I think you can “lie” to get (unethical or mutual projection fantasy) sex, but not romance.
Pep Talks + Solicited Advice: Coming Out for Kari
Monday, July 20th, 2009RIP social space of indie bookstores – Toronto’s Pages closes
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
photo by Matthew Kim
I just got back from Toronto. It was my first summer visit there since the summers when I came out there..at 19 and 20. It’s been a long time.  A lot has changed. There are lots of new museums and buildings and lofts but as I strolled down Queen Street West, where I used to hang out back when it was far grittier, I noticed that Pages bookstore is just about to close.
Pages was a beautiful indie bookstore with lots of large coffee table books in the window and a mix of academic, indie and arty stuff. There were more magazines than I’d ever seen and more gay, lesbian and generally sexy material than I’d ever seen outside of the porn section of the family corner store where I sometimes worked. There was nothing about those magazines that was for me.
It was a clean, well lit place for cruising. I was terrified coming out back then. It was 1986 and there was nothing generally acceptable about being attracted romantically or physically to someone of the same-sex.
There was one lesbian bar and a feminist book store that carried ear cuffs, women symbol earrings and cassette tapes full of songs about spilling up and over like a waterfall. I tried all of these. I admit it. But how else were you supposed to meet women or more specifically womyn? How would you know thy were gay?  How did you even know what it was that you felt inside? Until our feelings are mirrored, we aren’t sure it’s ok to have them.
I didn’t like to drink and I wasn’t going to the Michigan Womyns Music Festival (one woman I met gushed about how people there braided their armpit hair). Pages was much more my speed. Dorky and thinky, it was a place where stylish, chunky glasses and footwear prevailed. It had gay stuff but it wasn’t only gay. It was maybe the first space I was even in that had room to be gay and not gay together. I could try it out without having to give myself entirely over to it. At Pages I could stand somewhere and be excited about ideas and cute women.
Richard Nash is right that books are social objects, social glue (as are all artists and our work…especially performances..more on that to come). But bookstores are social spaces. And Pages was a great one. I never did meet anyone in its aisles. But I could have. Just being in there meant a lot to me. There was some place that felt right. Some place I belonged.
Goodbye Pages. Many thanks.
Don’t Go To Law School: The Army of the Middle Class
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009Great post on The Stimulist about why you shouldn’t go to law school.
I have a law degree. It’s the one thing I keep in my closet. There is really only one main good reason to go to law school and that’s because you really really want to be a lawyer. Those people do exist. But the only way I think you’ll know if you are one is to work with real lawyers first. it’s very much a question of temperment. And that’s something fancy schools generally don’t teach you about. You can only find out, like you say, on your own. And law school is consuming. And it does reward fearful thinking. And the very process of being there can make it harder to know yourself if you’re giving every waking minute to memorizing the 8 part Lemon Test.
Law school is the army of the middle class. It’s where people go who don’t know where else to go. And it saddles us with a different kind of injury or disability than a war, without having served anyone or anything but our fears.
“Aw but you must find that degree really useful?” I get asked all the time. Well, I did start stand-up in law school. And I’m making a show in which I teach all of law school in 70 minutes.
Here’s the cartoon I drew to get me through the experience.
heather + Lt Dan Choi at Meet in the Middle in Fresno
Sunday, June 7th, 2009
It was a thrill to meet Lt Dan who is a powerful speaker and person. He actually saluted me when we said goodbye, then apologized and explained that it was out of habit.
If you somehow don’t already know, he is a West Point grad who’s completed 2 tours of duty in Iraq. He’s about to be discharged under Don’t Asked Don’t Tell even though he’s an Arabic linguist. He’s one of the few people in the military who could actually ask or tell people in Iraq anything.
It was literally 100 degrees. That explains the hair.
My speech at the NYC Prop 8 Marriage Equality Rally yesterday
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
Speaking after me was a Fordham law professor who was also legally married in California.
