PHOENIX a'FIRE: In Rehearsal

When my application was accepted by SINS INVALID A.I.R. Program Director, Nomy Lamm, thus clearing way and confirming my participation in the inaugural 2010 SINS INVALID Artists In Residence (A.I.R.) Program, I found myself immediately embarking upon a long and exceedingly adventurous journey in discovery of perfection in performance-based self-portraiture through storytelling and song.

Little did I know then where it would lead me; however, I must say that truly I enjoyed every subtle step and bounding leap forward down that path I took from mere obscurity toward meager-to-maniacal celebrity, even if only within a very small, intimate community of disability activists and performance artists/aficionados, here in the Bay Area, alone.

The exact date that I happened to happen happily upon the NIEHS Sing Along Songs Children's Website and discovered their substantial collection of musical "midis" (i.e., simple, electronic instrumental versions of the vocal melody of a song recorded without audible lyrics, but rather with accompanying lyrics attached as text), I do not specifically recall.

Yet, I will not forget the tremendously joyous, spontaneous impulse of creative genius and pleasure that came to me when I fell serendipitously upon the musical midi of Alan Menken's "Part of That World," from the Disney masterpiece, LITTLE MERMAID.

Straightway, I knew just want I desired to do with this song. Thus, from that point just about a year ago today, when I did "stumbleupon" this particular melody and its lyrics, I endeavored to do meaningful justice not only to the song and songwriter himself, but also to my own audaciously bodacious and bawdy, unkempt, uncontrolled and unadulterated, quasimodo, quasi-grotesque, imperfect and ugly story of the destructive force of careless sexual device and drug abuse and my almost mythic – certainly, quite blessèd!! – rebirth as a "not hot, not well-endowed," but still quite sexual creature, deservedly so!!

With a spit-bit of pride, pomposity and yes, even perversion, I have the unique honor and privilege to premier a video recording of PHOENIX a'FIRE, a workshop rehearsal version of the song I performed as a live drag-burlesque musical number for the SINS INVALID A.I.R. Show: RESIDENT ALIEN.

Please be advised, as the title credits indicate, this video-recorded song is not intended for all audiences; the recommended minimum viewing age is 17 years. With PARENTAL ADVISORY, the video is given a Content Rating of NC-17, and all youth below that age are urged to seek parental permission before viewing this short webcam recorded musical video.

For those of my fans/followers who are of adequate age to view the film directly, I invite you now to enjoy a curiously compelling retrospective look back at my own creative process at work. And, I also encourage you, please, to share your thoughts on my original lyrics, as well as on the philosophy behind this "Musical Reconstruction," either by emailing me directly at matthew@qherekidsf.com, or simply by commenting directly on this blog post.

Otherwise, you also have the option of visiting my YouTube® Channel, where the video has also been posted for mass audiences and the world public at-large: http://youtube.com/qherekidsf. Please ENJOY!! Comments and feedback are duly encouraged! Thanks...

PHOENIX a'FIRE: In Rehearsal

COPYRIGHT © 2011 QHereKidSF | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

(recorded: San Francisco, CA USA; September 19, 2010)

http://www.youtube.com/qherekidsf

PHOENIX a'FIRE

Lyrics: Matthew Blanchard

Score: Colleen Nagle

Presented by SINS INVALID

2010 A.I.R. Performance:

RESIDENT ALIEN

Look at my face! Isn’t it gross?
Wouldn’t you think 

I’m much worse off than most?
What do you think of my grin, 

so grotesque & frightening?
This is my story; secrets revealed…
If I had lips they’d be loose and unsealed.
Looking at me you must think, 

“Shit! He’s lost everything!”
True - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

I once had good looks & was handsome.
But, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

I was a barebackin’ tweaker whore.
I often begged for big cocks, 

“Cum inside me!”
Truth be told! Shame on me! 

I want MORE!!
I wanna fuck raunchy, nasty and wild!
I wanna cock raw, wet, deep inside me!
My ugly face would be frightful for
Licking. Sucking. Bareback Fucking!
Wearing a mask I don’t get too far;
Lips are required for kissing, sucking.
Can’t fit my mouth 

‘round a cum-dripping cock!!
Me sucked! Bare fucked! 

Tweaked high! Me DIED!!
 I smoked Tina first for the thrill;
I smoked her ‘til AIDS came for the kill.
Death had its aim; Meth was to blame!
Still I SURVIVED!!
As the myth goes, from ashes I rose
Like a great big fiery bird.
Nothing may spoil my heart unfurled
I’m a Phoenix a’FIRE!!
No I’m not hot! Not well endowed!!
But next to you, I can laugh & be proud.
Love me dearly! Do not fear me!
Dare just one glance at my pretty ass!
Just tell me… (spoken)
What is desire, and how does it 

What’s the word? – BURN?
Please hold me dear! Kiss me right here!!
My heart’s a Phoenix of DESIRE!!

RESIDENT ALIEN: 2010 SINS INVALID A.I.R. Performance

January 28 & 29, 2011 at Mission Cultural Center

2868 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110-3908

© 2011 QHereKidSF | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Respectfully submitted,

Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF

Matthew D. Blanchard

matthew@qherekidsf.com
http://qherekidsf.com
http://bit.ly/qherekidsf

San Francisco, CA USA
[20110311T010356PT]

Alien Annuciation: Unearthing My Sacred Self

The following is a dramatic monologue I prepared for my SINS INVALID Artists In Residence "Resident Alien" Performance Showcase; however, this exact text will NOT be performed the evening's of the show. I therefore am now at liberty to share some of the copious work I have been preparing for performance during the last nine months for review by my peers. Please indulge me with your insights into this work; provide your own critical response and feedback, and I will be happy to take whatever you have to say to heart when considering revisions of the piece for future performance.

ALIEN ANNUCIATION:
Unearthing My Sacred Self

Fuck! Face it!! I’m a fagged-out, ferocious, Fog City funambule Freak Show — or Peep Show, depending on the scene [chuckles] — fabulously fucked in the head — HOLE! — for far too long [laughs outright]. FUN? For sure!! If by chance, you get some crazed, cracked-out, masochistic satisfaction from — OH! SO SAD! — strangely spiritual & surreal stories of catastrophic crystal-lined “Quarter-Life” crises, then maybe I’m your man!!

The mindflux & mayhem of this “MATTO” Matteo manifest as anxiety, manic depression, numerous non-specified personality disorders, coupled with devastatingly detrimental drug dependency and HIV/AIDS disease — BAM! Axes one through five, in no specific order!! My psychiatrists would all be proud. During the long-stretched syndrome of illness, disease & disorder that is my dismal, abysmal life, I was only ever once lost to languid torpor; torpor which turned out tantamount to torturous (i.e., id est… the ten to twelve days I laid unconscious, inactive & still; the skin & bone of my once boyhood beautiful face pressed flat, flush, firm & dying against a putrid, pestilent pillow).

Yet, for a time, prior to my tragically traumatic end, back before my whole “Fuck! Face it!!” mantra came into play, I once touted myself better than plainly pretty & princely. Back before my very real ruination ripped apart my smile; before antipsychotic psychotropics pretty much fucked up, tore down and all but annihilated my lachrymose libido, I spent my days super-speedy, sexed-up & salivating for raucously wild & raunchy “fag-fornication” – E, K, G… Crystal Methamphetamine sure’nough spewing from my sweaty, slimy skin!!

For lack of food, lack of sleep, but with no shortage of insanely over-indulgent fucking, I was led libidinally through a caustic, quixotic, voraciously vivacious and virulent six month schizoid-delusional messianic mania (i.e., id est… “crazed and cracked-out,” I told you!!). Here’s how the story goes…

After twenty-four-plus hours of positively preposterous unguided, temper-tantrumed and tweaked-out tantric yoga, I found myself falling flat on the floor from a backbend. In a glorious instance, I could both hear, feel and fear my mightily tight military neck flicker from firm to flaccid to flat with a couple of cracks and a crunch. 

Then, out of nowhere, but to my tearfully giggled and enraptured delight, the “cycloptic” serpentine energy force of my kundalini uncoiled itself three & 1/2 fold from deep within the pit of my scrotum, as if a cataclysmically massive monster cock was fucking me from bottom-end to top-end entirely. My phallic kundalini snaked its way like speed-lightening straight up my squarely smacked flat spine, erupting explosively through each of my leveled & loosely lain chakras. Past my shoulders. Into my head. All with a sparklingly celestial shudder of glee!!

My voraciously virulent kundalini energy force broke the blood/brain barrier with the cracking and collapsing of my never near too straight again neck, and was free!! At that moment, deep from within a blinding, brilliant light, I saw the rebirth and renewal of all life, the reunification and redemption of retaliatory religions of the World, embodied as a dying leafless triple-branched tree: a familiar scenic device of Beckett’s brain, symbolizing the existential nihilism inherent in “waiting for God…”

But, the tree at the center of my powerfully immaculate vision was quite unlike the grey, lifeless, hollow-trunked, death-determined tree that so thwarted the mindless meanderings of Vladimir and Estragon. The tree at the center of my celestial light budded a new growth, new birth branch with a single, glowing emerald green leaf which dripped dew of heavenly angelic gold from its tip.

Two Men Contemplating the Moon, ca. 1830
Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774-1840)
Oil on Canas, 13 3/4 x 17 1/4in. (34.9 x 43.8cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
Wrightsman Fund, 2000 (2000.51)

My kundalini force thrust me thankfully toward my heavenly father – at least, I’d hoped it would – through ungodly, goliath insanity and bliss. Thus began the potent perversion of my intellect, my psyche, as I set off on a profoundly esoteric and spiritually pious six month search for the “One,” Almighty God.

Six days to six weeks, I spent alone, shut up in my sparse, stark and sullen studio apartment, spiraling my insanity into a chaotic hoarded mess, savagely searching for God. No, I didn’t find him…or her…or them. Well, maybe them!! If you’re one to consider the sublime god force a pluralist spiritual entity, then I’m almost certain that my schizoid-delusional miscomprehension of individual life forces, as being all parts of a prophetically benevolent community of angel/aliens who had come calling for me as a veritable “MATTO” Matteo, would have intrigued and enticed both your own spiritual and intellectual curiosity.

So, I didn’t find Him (or “Her”) in my search for the Divine, but I did find my own angelic alien annunciation as a “Gift of God” : Matthew, for I believe with all my kundalini life force that during this six month psychosis, I was being suited by a community of angel/aliens for my god-given, divinely apostolic duty to proclaim to the World the imminent arrival of a purely peaceful, nonviolent, anti-diabolic Armageddon.

I was called upon, or so much I wholeheartedly believed, to return from the “deathspace” transexualized and impregnated with an angel/alien Christ-child to usher in the climactic rebirth, re-growth and cultivation of a global unifying force: a “Garden of Eden,” Elysian Fields, Les Champs Élysées leading into more than just a city, but rather into a World of lights, illumination, rapture!!

I speak of chakras and kundalini sparingly here; even though, these words as psychic phenomena seem to predominate my prose. But, don’t get me wrong! I’m a good faith, good Catholic, Christian boy of Franco-Polish Hebraic descent; therefore, the word “RAPTURE” should make more sense!

You’d sooner find me carving a Cherokee totem disparaging my colonial heritage as self-proclaimed proudly pompous, well-educated elite alum of Jefferson’s own “Alma Mater of Our Nation.” Hell! You’d sooner find me rigging a home-made I.E.D. car-bomb in my Fresno-based meth-lab storage garage while bowing toward Muslim Mecca – No, not GAY MECCA!! – as I pray in istikhara, and offer supplication for divine guidance on how best to cripple and destroy Judeo-American neocolonial forces.

You’d sooner find this white-bred, white trash, euro-mutt, slut, goy-boy American speciously boasting either indigenous or Islamic roots, rather than spiting my own just and good Judeo-Catholic heritage by following blindly the wisdom & stricture of Sanskrit/Hindi yogic faith teachings, if not just as a Eurocentric fad of the intellectual and spiritual post-colonial diasporas…

Yet, sadly still, contrary to my Judeo-Christian biblical heritage and learning – if even as a namesake, merely!! – I did neither see nor encounter my single almighty God, the Father: The Maker of Man, of me, of my mindflux, mayhem and misery. But, I swear on the last remnants of sanity and semblance of beauty that this mad, mad monstrosity of a man may have, I swear…

I saw something! Something real. Unimagined. Something immaculate. Holy. Sublime. In fact, I saw many things, which I remember vividly and in distinct detail, despite near half a decade of dutifully downing each dawn & dusk the fists full of psychotropics my doctors order me to take to keep pace of peace and order in my boyish, good goyish brain.

I could go on and on and on without a single smile – I could, and I should, but I wont! Anyway. – I could catalog… In fact, I HAVE cataloged pages and pages describing the many multitudinous manifestations of my immaculate enlightenment. I could retell my rapture. I could narrate my nirvana; translate my transcendence for you all – I could, and I should, but I won’t! Anyway…

And, why not? Because, trust!! You’d only spurn and scoff at my seemingly spurious, counterfeit, tall, tall torturous tale; even though, it be not torturous, but tender, touching truth!! Unless, of course, you are curious, and have come across us angel/aliens in our own right with open minds and open hearts, then there’d be no point in proclaiming the snippets of specifics of my all too perturbing albeit prophetic schizoid-delusional messianic psychosis.

Respectfully submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
Artist In Residence
SINS INVALID
San Francisco, CA USA
http://bit.ly/qherekidsf
[20110111T235237PST]

Star-Spangled KITSCH, by C. BROWN (1975)

"Camp mocks bad taste..." | Dictionary.com

In short, camp mocks bad taste; kitsch exploits it. Camp arouses our sense of the ridiculous, and we respond with amused tolerance. When we see Bette Davis or Ruth Gordon, fine if sometimes flamboyant performers relax their self-discipline and over-extend their acting technique in a superfluity of ineffective gestures �— finger-twitching and hip-switching, hand-rubbing or hip-protruding — we label the sum total as camp. Mae West, whose nasally provocative delivery, eye-rolling, lip-pursing, and pelvic tics parody the conventional invitation to dalliance, is never out of control and is camp, pure and simple.... Camp was also the stock-in-trade of Carmen Miranda, whose retina-searing Technicolor® get-ups, skyscraper headdresses bearing a season's fruit harvest, clomping platform shoes and garbled English projected in a voice that could be heard on Mars, all came together beautifully in her campy personification of Exaggeration. Had we been blessed with the Brazilian Bombshell's own blazing interpretation of Joan of Arc, the grotesque, if fascinating, result would surely have been kitsch.

CURTIS F. BROWN, "Is It Kitsch or Is It Camp?"

Star-Spangled Kitsch (Universe Books, 1975)

STAR-SPANGLED KITSCH
[Universe Books, 1975]

In his essay entitled, "Is It Kitsch or Is It Camp?" from his collection of short works entitled Star-Spangled Kitsch (Universe Books, 1975), Curtis F. Brown eruditely elucidates the defining distinction(s) between that which is "KITSCH" and that which is "CAMP," all in one cohesively concise construct of written communication, saying, "In short, camp mocks bad taste; kitsch exploits it."

Brown buttresses his thesis with reinforcing remarks and observations about four infamously celebrated female film performers of the early B&W turned Technicolor® era of American cinema: Betty Davis, Ruth Gordon, Mae West and Carmen Miranda.

The "kitsch/camp" theorist discusses in a mellifluously colorful and contemporary manner the conventions of that which is most distinctly "CAMP," pointing out that the flamboyant, quizzically quixotic & chimerical (Oh! Just call it straight up as it is: QUEER!) gesticulations and glaringly gaudy "get-ups" (i.e., accouterments, accessories, costumes, clothing, etc.) of these brazenly garish gals often served as parodic personifications and pasquinade of archetypal character traits, concepts, customs, behaviors or mores.

Mae West, for example, "whose nasally provocative delivery, eye-rolling, lip-pursing, and pelvic tics parody the conventional invitation to dalliance, is never out of control and is camp, pure and simple....," writes Brown, in his deliberately descriptive and constatively conclusive manner.

These parodist-performers personify not real or fictitious characters, personalities or people, but caricature in a conspicuously comedic fashion, with flagitiously flamboyant, frivolous fervor and right raucous, rambunctious repugnance, the conventions contrived of by our own seemingly sophisticated society, thus satirized it/us on stage and screen as "CAMP."

Were the performers actually in fact meant to interpret an historical personage, character or role writ from real life, the resultant (re)presentation would be ultimately defined as "KITSCH." Brown explains this distinct concept explicitly by referencing Carmen Miranda: "Had we been blessed with the Brazilian Bombshell's own blazing interpretation of Joan of Arc, the grotesque, if fascinating, result would surely have been kitsch."

Thus, then, and therefore, Brown describes two definitively dueling depictions of parodic satire "à la burlesque" and deems the two archetypal performance styles either distinctly "CAMP" or distinctly "KITSCH" (i.e., Brown's "kitsch/camp" thesis or theory).

I highly recommend to anyone interested in the study and/or performance of parodic satire "à la burlesque" by the infamously venerated female celebrity actors of the "Old Film" era or otherwise in the dichotomically "camp/kitsch" performances of contemporary female celebrity impersonators (i.e., drag queens!!) of the "Old School," at least to link to this abstracted quotation from Curtis F. Brown's definitive discourse on the dichotomic binary between all that is "CAMP" and all that is "KITSCH."

I myself find that this quotation intrigues the mind enough to motivate the reader immediately to seek out the source-text for further reading. I myself am going straight to the library today to check out Star-Spangled Kitsch, by Curtis F. Brown, so that I might completely immerse myself in the study of this profoundly erudite performance discourse; thus, then, and therefore, to inaugurate finally my fanatically fervid, right reasonably well-directed and derived research into the art of drag performance and of female impersonators as entertainers, both historically and contemporaneously, or could be possibly even maybe more.... We'll see!!

Thanks Dictionary.com for having serendipitously set my path of discovery in the direction of this dichotomic "kitsch/camp" discourse, so that I might delve deliberately even deeper into the subject matter as it relates to the art(s) of DRAG!! I never knew nor thought that this so easily navigable virtual reference library would spur on my determined effort to educate myself so thoroughly, dutifully and delightfully, all at once...

"In short, camp mocks bad taste; kitsch exploits..." Columbia World of Quotations, Columbia University Press, 1996. 10 Aug. 2010. Dictionary.com http://quotes.dictionary.com/In_short_camp_mocks_bad_taste_kitsch_exploits.
 
Respectfully submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
San Francisco, CA USA
[20100810T094249PST]  

http://qherekidsf.yelp.com
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YouTube® - DIRTY LITTLE MERMAID!!

UP WHERE THEY BANG. UP WHERE THEY BONE.

This ludic, lascivious and salaciously sex-ified, unadulterated pornographic version of Alan Mencken's Part Of That World from Disney's animated masterpiece "The Little Mermaid," is rife with explicitly raunchy content that is only tempered by the calm, quaint, quintessentially Mencken balladry of its melodic serenade, its tender timbres and tonalities. 

The new lyrics, apparently written and performed by a Brown University sketch comedy group "Out Of Bounds," strike the perfect chord contrary to the adolescent nature of the music, to create something quite perturbing, post-pubescent and like was said, pornographic. The explicit nature of the lyrics juxtaposed with the original score is strikingly hilarious, riotously ridiculous; it soils the tongue and wounds the ears with perfect antitheses... What an amazing PARODY!! I'd recommend it to anyone!!



http://youtu.be/sNYDpH0Jors, posted by Nuclearknight77 (Oct. 23, 2006)

"Betcha on land they'd understand, and they don't f*ck over their daughters!
Wouldn't I love, love to f*ck like they do up above!... What is gonorrhea and why does it (what's the word?) -- BURN?... What would I give if I could have a VAGINA?..." 
A perverse, ludic, lascivious rendition of Alan MENCKEN'S  Part Of That World, from Disney's animated masterpiece "The Little Mermaid," with parodic lyrics by Boston University's sketch comedy group "Out Of Bounds."

Care to catch a glimpse of / listen to a right ridiculously point-on teaser to my Sins Invalid A.I.R. performance piece?? While the "Out Of Bounds" version of Part Of That World remains loyal to the balladic tempo, rhythm, melody and tune of the original, my deconstruction of the song will be resoundingly more punk-rockish, given the background, proclivity & inclinations of my accompanist & composer: Colleen Nagle. Check her out at http://subamerica.org or @subamerica on Twitter®!!! 

Can't wait to debut Phoenix a'Fire!! Our even more ludic, lascivious, salacious, sickeningly perverse and pornographic version of this song. Wait for it!! We'll be showcasing our work at Theatre Artaud (San Francisco, CA) sometime in December 2010...

Respectfully submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
San Francisco, CA USA
[20100807T030327PST]

http://qherekidsf.yelp.com
http://transom.org/?p=8424
http://bebo.com/QHereKidSF
http://twitter.com/QHereKidSF
http://qherekidsf.blogspot.com
http://qherekidsf.myspace.com
http://qherekidsf.spaces.live.com
http://qherekidsf.stumbleupon.com
http://www.last.fm/user/QHereKidSF
http://www.youtube.com/qherekidsf
http://www.facebook.com/mblanchard79
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/User:QHereKidSF
http://www.flickr.com/people/mblanchard79
http://www.visualcv.com/matthewblanchard
http://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewblanchard
http://www.google.com/profiles/mblanchard1979
 

UBIQUITY OF MY UGLINESS...

Years before a corrosive, killer HIV/AIDS and Crystal Meth Combo cut a gaping hole in the middle of my face, stealing of me my beauty in one nightmarish turn of a page, a more curious and less caustic HIV/AIDS Crystal Meth Combo calamitously curtailed my intellectual and creative development.

The first chaotic combo interrupted and/or either suspended my bright young life for a good long while by stealing of me my sanity, my serenity and by forcing me into a manic messianic schizo-delusional psychosis.

Coincidentally, while my second doomsday downfall damn near destroyed all real remnants of my tangible, physical beauty, the AIDS & Crystal Meth Combo of my first foray with death through delusions brought be into a celestially sublime connection with the pure essence of beauty.

Back when the better bastion of boyhood me beamed smiling and sexy, you would have heard me brag in brash whispers of secrecy that my unmitigated drug dependency, coupled with my not-yet-medicated, unmonitored manic depression and HIV/AIDS disease likely stole a few good inches from my inseam and waist line. Drugs, depression and disease had turned me into the tweaked-out top-hungry twenty-something twink slut barebacking bottom boy I was better off born to me. By God!!

With legs freshly shaven, I used to like to try my way at prancing and dancing in heals. I had the posture of a princess back then, or better yet, of a QUEEN!! Taut, toned, tender and tanned, my thighs tightly tucked into tawdry, sultry, see-through silk-striped stockings, topped with frilly, flamboyant, fluorescent pink tutus & leotards, a black leather-laced bodice and breasts of bagged basmati. I dreamed of doing DRAG!!... And, my delusions brought me as close as I'd ever be to a diva's starlit status.

What are the odds that a poor, sorry, solitary, sad, sick, insane queer kid for sale on the streets of Skid Row, new to San Francisco, might remember in rich vivid clarity, in multi-dimensional Technicolor timbres and tonalities, his actual psychological demise from climax to cure, from onset to overture? Well, I do!!

I recall with great delight the drug-induced, yet truly transmundane delusions that seemed — For six months, let's say! That's a safe bet. — more reasonable and real, more true to me than ordinary and onerous everyday life, thanks to the immaculate bliss and beauty that back-lit every waking instant of my insanity.

Yet I couldn't, wouldn't waiver on the whims of consciousness long enough to remember much the long stretch of days three years ago that would prove to be so much more dramatically life-changing for me: twelve days of comatose confinement caged up in my stuffy, sterile studio, asleep, unconscious. My face pressed flat onto a putrid, pestilent pillow, under the heavy weight of my aching, dying brain. Saliva dripping down my cheek and chin to the sullied, soiled, sickening sheets only to invite infection in!!

Context may help! ... Here goes!! Far before October 2007, when I was found alone, half-dead in my apartment; on the brink of dehydration, starvation and brain damage; desperately in need of dialysis; having survived only by some heavenly happenstance the devastating detriment of PCP pneumonia and a necrotizing poly-microbial bacterial infection of the face... Far before a team of California's leading diagnosticians, doctors and surgeons attempted valiantly yet albeit failed so sorely to salvage my once so cute and charismatic, gorgeous gay boy grin...

Far before I woke from coma to gasp and gawk at my godforsaken, gruesomely grotesque, ghastly, ghoulish gaping hole of a grimace, I was so long ago quite blessed — Or cursed? However the story goes! — to have had a right entrancing, sexy smile.

Before my brutal, bestial, ferocious fall from grace and yet thanks still then too to drugs, depression and disease, I could boast the beauty of a primped, polished pansy boy physique made potent by the unrelenting rush of salacious, sex-crazed hedonism which happened to hammer out haphazardly into hormonal hot flashes and "meth'merized" highs.

Oh!! And shan't I forget the illicit, alluring beauty of my tight little tush and thighs that tempted and fed far too many a head-spun, tail-furious tweaker top tucked away either between the bathhouse backrooms of Berkeley or beneath the bent, broken branches and burning bush there best past bedtime in Buena Vista Park.

Now, today, post-op eleven-fold with twelve more surgical reconstructions on the books, I'm nothing but a torn, tattered tapestry of scars, skin grafts and flaps of flesh festooning my funny, freakish face.

My legs, once softened and smoothed by the razor's edge, are now covered in patches of naked, hairless, flimsy flesh only a few layers fine. Coincidence now predominates, for the large surgical scar that defiles to devastating depths my sorry specimen of a lower left leg seems to be far smoother and softer, far more delicate and lady-like that it e'er had been before, despite the patterned ripples of a serrated texture that rises and rolls along the "miscontours" of my crippled calf.

I should be thankful then that hair still groups from the pair of embossed rectangular skin graft scars that are slowly fading from the front of my lower left thigh. But, I'm not grateful to have my torso tarnished by the twisted pucker of a scar in the middle of my gut where a G.I. tube once hung for fourteen months, two weeks and five days past the point it first proved futile at feeding me.

I call it my "Octo-Orifice!!;" although, it's shut tight & leaks no more. I call it also my "Second Bellybutton," because in all actuality, that's exactly what it is. Yet, instead of being nourished by placenta pumped to my stomach through an umbilical cord, I was this second time around, at the moment of my rebirth, fed synthetic, high-protein, carb-loaded "blender'ized" slop seeped into me through a twelve foot long number three plastic tube that hung between my belly and an upside down bottle of so-called sustenance like a drip-line. In all actuality, that's exactly what it was...

Moving onward and upward, we arrive at the loosely bandaged, still wide open hole in my neck, where my tracheotomy tube once hung. Honestly, I don't know whether or not I am more grateful to be rid of the tube that took so much time and attention to tend to, or if I am madly resentful of my own eight layers of healthy, still living skin and of the thick musculature of my tender trachea for taking so long a time to heal up and seal up.

So, still I wait... Committed to a daily ritual of stripping Xeroform® and four-by-four gauze sponges from the sweaty, scratchy hole in my neck, still I wait... I wait only still to be enslaved to a stolid, chin-strapped schedule for showering, in which I must each morn tightly velcro a water-hazard choke-guard security-sheath above my shoulders and below my chin, before stepping in to let my cleansing begin.

No wonder that I avoid the shower spigot like SARS or Swine Flu: the plagues which passersby suppose sicken me. ME! The sorry, sad face behind the surgical mask who meanders mindlessly, miserably amid mankind's miscreant misjudgments of much of my own mad, mad melancholic misfortune.

And, By God!! I sure as hell am not one infinitesimally small grain of grit grateful for this muddled mutant monstrosity of a quasimodo mouth I've been melded into for the moment. I don't have enough fingers or toes or hairs growing from my forehead flap of a nose... There are a lot of them; mind you! Bet your life on it! Hairs grow hoggishly long and hamstrung from the impenetrable depths of my makeshift nostril, nose and septum to curl down the coarse discolored curvature of my leg flap look-alike lip. And, Hell Man!! Fuck!! Do they itch or what??

Truth be told; I don't even have enough holes, appendages, protrusions, flaps of flesh, scars or skin grafts on my body to be able to begin to count the magnanimous mind's eye momentum of hatred and disgust that I have for this gruesome, ghoulish, ghastly grin of mine!

And, Yet Alas!! I've stayed safe, sane and sober over one full year, and for what reason? Because despite the ubiquity of my bitterly unbecoming and brutish ugliness, I've somehow retained remnants and remembrances enough of a time in my life when in my bitterly unbecoming and brutish insanity, I discovered the true meaning of beauty.

Beyond the awkward, obtuse, abstract, anthropomorphic aesthetic of the Tina-torn, AIDS-quilted, quizzical contours of my monstrosity of a mouth, I seen endless opportunity for elaborate beautification and solemn self-betterment. Buried not too deeply behind the dug-out disfigurements of my blasphemed, begotten, brutalized body and face — For sure! I'm certain. — there lies alive immaculately innocent, blessedly beautiful baby blue boy eyes...

Respectfully Submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
San Francisco, CA USA
[2010.07.14@20:29PST]

AIDS IS A PERVASIVE PANDEMIC THAT BLEEDS THROUGH
THE LINES OF COLOR, CREED & CAPITULATES TO NO ONE BUT
THE POSITIVELY AWARE & PREVENTION-MINDED SURVIVORS.
— Matthew D. Blanchard

THE SUBJECT NO LONGER HAS TO BE MENTIONED BY NAME.
SOMEONE IS SICK. SOMEONE ELSE IS FEELING BETTER NOW.
A FRIEND HAS JUST GONE BACK INTO THE HOSPITAL.
ANOTHER HAS DIED. THE UNSPOKEN NAME, OF COURSE, IS AIDS.
— David W. Dunlap

OVER & OVER, THESE MEN CRY OUT AGAINST THE WEIGHT OF
SO MANY LOSSES — NOT JUST A LOVER DEAD, BUT FRIENDS,
AND FRIENDS OF FRIENDS, DOZENS OF THEM, UNTIL IT SEEMS
THAT AIDS IS ALL THERE IS AND ALL THERE EVER WILL BE.
— Jane Gross

"Language Or A Kiss" : YouTube.com

People like to tell me that I am a gifted writer; however, more often than not, I dismiss the compliment as shady, insincere flattery, nothing more than a mere measly attempt to win over my good graces and high esteem. I'm not easily moved to accept such praise as genuine; instead, I seem to enjoy being so cripplingly self-critical that I find flaw in nearly all of the creative work that I produce. Flagrant masochistic introspection and judgment are the most debilitating characteristics of my intellect.

Recently, I've gained a very acute, salient awareness of this fault of mine when I sat down to begin laboring over the writing of a narrative for the experimental documentary short film in which I will be featured as part of The HIV Story Project. As soon as I put pencil to paper, I arrived at a major road block. As Daniel Cardone, the director of my documentary short, expressed in his proposal of narrative beats for the film; he said (I paraphrase, albeit only slightly!), "How 'bout you tame up on the emphatic use of alliteration?"

YUP!! Semantic syncopation of syllabic constructs seems superficially smart; although, aggressively assertive, obtuse alignments of the Anglican alphabet in alliteration are ever so much more unabashedly awkward and asinine than astute or impressive. Alliterations heavily harangue the human ear e'er so often in my hand's writing as to be yet another aspect of my aimlessly affected artistic arrogance. AWFUL! I am more than mindfully aware...

So, I have to harness the potency of my "emphatically alliterative" writing style to produce something coherent yet stylized enough to sound like spoken word when read aloud, when performed as narration. The challenge has proven ever so garishly gargantuan and heavy-weighted that I've been more apt to toss my text o'er my shoulder and shudder in exacerbated ennui than to scream excitedly in the act of forcing a fluid flow of whimsically written word on whatever pad of paper presents itself to me so pleasingly to be prettified by my elaborately eloquent enunciation.

YIKES!! There I go again! Can't you see? If crippling not be my self-criticisms then these confounded constructions of collected consonants ought clearly be called out as such: CRAP!!

Failing at first to find a friendly unfettered flow of thought from my fabulously and freakishly flamboyant frame of mind to a much more mellow, mundane manifestation or monstrance of my mind's majesty e'er writ in words of wistful wisdom, I set out alternately to ponder and play with possible themes, motifs and concepts that could in effect guide my writing away from excess and more toward realism, or at least toward naturalism.

After speaking at length with Nomy Lamm, the Artists In Residence (A.I.R.) Program Director for Sins Invalid, about my background, back story, and of the context in which arose the opportunity for my story to be featured as part of a compilation of short films commemorating the thirtieth year of acknowledgment of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), I discovered my own overriding affinity for an idea that I had been incubating ever since said opportunity presented itself to me.

Today is a very important milestone for me. The Fourteenth of July (i.e., Bastille Day!) marks the anniversary of my sobriety (i.e., my CLEAN DATE!), and to celebrate, I'm a convening the production of my experimental docu-short, lead by a superbly talented team of queer film production professionals all associated pro bono with The HIV Story Project. In fact, there only remains a few more than thirty minutes before their arrival to my home to begin shooting.

As I celebrate today my one-year anniversary of sobriety, I have all but been able to ignore the crescendo'ed confluence of my creative energies and impulses around the progress of both my recovery and my reconstructions. All is explained in lucid detail by the video blog I posted to YouTube.com about ten days ago, entitled "Language Or A Kiss" after a beautiful acoustic ballad I discovered that morning, only after more than a decade of listening, on Indigo Girls' album 1200 Curfews (Live).

The ten minute home-made webcam movie features "yours' truly!" pontificating the plentiful platitudes and prettiness of a poignant, powerful idea: that of using the foreboding, intimidating, meaningful act of kissing (Romantically, that is!!) as the central motivating action of my docu-short film narrative. The YouTube.com video explains in detail the significance of this convergence of energies and ideas. The webcam movie monologue also describes the profound meaning behind this particularly challenging choice around which I hesitantly aspired to shape a cinematic sketch of my life. My aim would have been to create a piece that might have touched, moved and inspired an audience perhaps to live safer,  healthier, more sane and sober lives be they suffering or not from either HIV/AIDS, drug dependency or disfigurement.





Language Or A Kiss: QHereKidSF (a.k.a Matthew Blanchard) contemplates the
convergence of his creative energies around his one-year anniversary of clean
time. With sobriety comes sanity and surety enough to explore either
"language or a kiss" both in experimental theater/film performance.
(i.e., http://sinsinvalid.org/; http://thehivstoryproject.org/; etc.)

[TIME ELAPSE] » As I type, my production team is shooting extreme closeups of the interior textures of my apartment. The cinematographer has just lifted himself from the crouched near-fetal position he took to "get lost in a bunny" rabbit knitted Christmas ornament that hangs from the cord of my venetian blinds, swaying ominously in a shadow of light just in front the sullied, dirtied retractable screen that props my window open. I'm not sure what they're filming now, as my back is toward them while they traipse around my studio capturing the phenomenally complex idiosyncrasies of my mundane, boring abode.

Turns out that my director, Daniel Cardone, hasn't yet had a chance to view the YouTube.com video I've posted above; so, in all likelihood, there will be no true central motivating action for this film narrative. We have no plans today to shoot me kissing anyone, and it is far too late in the game to go out on the street to find some random Polk Street callboy we could pay twenty dollars to try their damnedest at getting romantic while maneuvering their lips gently and with compassion onto my muddled monstrosity of a mouth. HAH! Could you imagine?

I've never simulcast the writing of a blog entry with live action. To be frank and forward, it's quite nerve-racking and unsettling. I wonder whether or not anyone in the room knows that I am writing about them as they toil around my studio on a voyage of cinematographic discovery

As I type, the warmhearted, bundled-up in a sweater and gloves, uber-zen sound technician is recording "room tone" with his boom microphone perched as ominously as my bunny rabbit just over my shoulder, so as to capture the sounds of my fingers tap, tap, tapping away on the keys of my laptop. I am terribly conscious of the fact that I tend to backspace a lot, which probably dashes his hopes at capturing a cohesive rhythm. Alas! Oh well...

"Alright! Stop. I've got another idea now...," says Daniel, the director, as our cinematographer completes a rack-zoomed extreme closeup of the grains of wood on my floor. Now, the production team is duplicate-framing a similar shot of the MUNI Metro & Busline map than hangs on the wall in the hall way next to my front door.

It is indeed a very good thing that as an artist, I've learned how not to be too utterly disappointed when one's vision is not wholly and fully adopted by every member of a production team. Blame the absence of a ironically romantic kiss between tweaked-out twink Polk Street callboy and my still quite sane and sober Skid Row mutant, monstrous, alien, Audrey II-like lips on the capricious whims of the film artist's mind. Although, unlike the sound technician's hopes which fizzled with the realization that I am not quite such a melodic typist, my dreams have not yet been dashed.

You see! I still have the theatrical medium with which to toy around salaciously and sexy-like. The kiss could still come to pass as I see it! I've got six long months to workshop scenes for Sins Invalid which perchance could center around this challenging, compelling, confrontational act of compassion and enduring, caring love. Those who follow me in the blogosphere must just wait patiently to hear word soon of the developments that unfold with my experimental ensemble performance work.

And in the meantime, both all of you and I must also patiently await the post-production work on and premier of my experimental documentary short film, entitled "(TBD)!" If the work we have completed already today is any testament to the quality and caliber of Daniel's artistic vision, then I'd have to say that we are surely heading in a "positive" direction (pun intended!). A thousand thanks to Daniel, Jörg, Josh, and Doug: my production team! It's been a real joy working with you all. And so the work continues... Who's a Movie Star? I'm a Movie Star!!

Respectfully Submitted,

Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF

Matthew D. Blanchard

San Francisco, CA USA

[2010.07.14@15:03PST]

SINS INVALID : A.I.R. Program

SINS INVALID: AN UNCLAIMED SHAMED TO BEAUTY IN THE FACE OF DISABILITY, is "a performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and queer and gender-variant artists as members of communities who have been historically marginalized. conceived and lead by disable people of color, [they] develop and present cutting-edge work where normative paradigms of 'normal' and 'sexy' are challenged, offering instead a vision of beauty and sexuality inclusive of all individuals and communities."

SINS INVALID "present multidisciplinary performances (video, poetry, spoken word, music, drama, and dance) by people with disabilities for broad audiences in the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere; organize multidisciplinary performance workshops for community members with and without disabilities; and offer political education workshops for community-based and educational organizations that share [their] commitment to social justice principles as a means of integrating analysis and action around disability, race, gender and sexuality."


2010 marks the inaugural year of the SINS INVALID Artists in Residence (A.I.R.) Project, a performance development and incubation project through which new, up and coming LGBTQQI disabled artists of diverse color and/or creed are invited to come together to collaborate, mentor, workshop and produce solo or ensemble performance pieces to be premiered as headlining entertainment at a showcase performance event this coming December.

For the last two weeks, I have been anxiously awaiting response back from the SINS INVALID A.I.R Project Coordinator, Nomy Lamm on her decision to accept me as an participating A.I.R. performer. Even though the application process was quite comfortable and relaxed, I had to turn it into a grueling, anxiety-filled affair, imbuing the whole ordeal with an overbearing sense of urgency and enthusiasm.  With fingers wound round each other in superstitious anticipation, I prayed that my exhaustive energy would impress the judges, and so it did!

Today, Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at around 11:47AM PST, I received an email from Ms. Nomy Lamm, congratulating me on my selection and welcoming me into the program. Now, finally, with great relief and still even greater excitement, I'm able to post my application and a brief synopsis of my interview for the position without preempting any alternate outcome.  I post the following, as I like to say, for the sake of posterity and perpetuity, to be made accessible to the world wide blogosphere through the cyberwaves of my communiques.

SINS INVALID ARTIST IN RESIDENCE APPLICATION
DO YOU IDENTIFY AS LGBTQ OR GENDER VARIANT?
     Yes, and proudly so.
     Though I spent the majority of my childhood and adolescence closeted in immense shame of my "deviant" sexuality, I knew from an early age that I was in fact a homosexual. It took me until my Junior Year Abroad in 1999-2000, while I was studying Performance ARts in paris, France, to "come out" as gay, to find romance and in that same year to seroconvert.
     coming back to Williamsburg, Virginia, where I had lived and studied as an undergraduate for five years, was incredulously difficult -- torturous even, for the simple reason that I was bitterly rejected by my peers because of my abrupt, albeit completely sequitur, shift in sexual orientation.
     I was a handsome young man, back then. I broke the hearts of many young women, who had fallen amorous of me, as well as those of many young men, you desired me sexually, but for whom I held no dutiful, profound attraction.
     Now, I realize, through the spite of circumstance, that I've lost most of my concrete, tangible, physical beauty (so integral to successful gay male relationships, or so it sometimes seems).
     Most of those young gay men, who once rejected me because I ostensibly rejected them, would still reject me today, even though I'm a proud, resilient gay man living a dream. Or maybe, during the practice of performance so integral to the Sins Invalid syllabus of study, I will (re)discover my beauty and either again ostensibly or forevermore actually find that I can and do and will attract love, admiration, desire, lust, sex, romance, etc. We will see; won't we?

WHAT IS YOUR ETHNIC BACKGROUND AND/OR RACIAL IDENTITY?
     I'm a "white trash" mutt of a man, bred of third-generation Eastern European and French-Canadian immigrants.
     I usually abstain from answering such questions, because I find that more often than not polls and surveys, such as this year's foreboding, omni-force of social study: The 2010 Census, insinuates prejudice against "Caucasians."
     NO! I'm NOT a Neo-Nazi -- God Forbid!! I do, however, always answer "other" in these instances. Any racial or ethnic minority is welcomed to object or claim that I am merely projecting my own internalized racism through reversed racism inferred. Yet, I lay steadfast and stubborn claim to the notion that "not all Whites live in an Ivory Tower."
     So here, in this instance, I call myself "White Trash." Because, without any degree of self-loathing, I can easily recognize from where I was born and to where my race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability and disease(s) have lead me: not up the social ladder, be even further down from where I started -- to San Francisco's Skid Row.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR ART: WHAT DO YOU DO? WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO YOU?
     I was once , so long ago, an elite and very fortunate student practitioner of a refined artistic performance craft. My study of the theatre and performance arts earned me a place in the pantheon of student artists at my alma mater: The College of William & Mary, '02.
     During my undergraduate studies and immediately following the emotionally debilitating shock of my HIV diagnosis in my senior year, I was honored with the privilege of studying abroad on full scholarship in Europe.
     I studied extensively the art of Mime Decroux at L'Atelier de Belleville and at l'École Jacques LeCoq, Shakespeare and Chinese Opera with l'Association de Recherche des Traditions de l'Acteur (ARTA) under the direction and tutelage of company members of the Théâtre du Soleil and acclaimed contemporary Taiwanese opera and dance master, Wu Xing Guo. I studied with and was directed in the lead role of Les Mamelles de Tirésias by a graduate of the Tisch School for the Arts Experimental Performance Workshop and French national. I traveled to the South of France to study and perform with a bilingual Franco-American contemporary performance company at the Festival d'Avignon: Europe's most sumptuous, most popular, and most time-honored celebration of the theatre, dance and performance arts.
     I also was honored with the privilege of studying on scholarship the traditional and contemporary traditions of theatre in Florence, Italy, including the pinnacled canon of commedia dell'arte, as well as the theories and practice of acclaimed Italian theatre masters, Fo & Strehler.
     The combined force of my experience(s) studying on foreign soil, directly in the muck of mayhem and mischief of mainland European student life, greatly influenced the birth on my passion(s) for the modern & contemporary cinemas of France and Italy.
     I found that in preparing for my directorial debuts in the theatre, upon my return to The College of William & Mary stateside, much of what I had studied of Le Film Noir, Neorealism and the cinema of Jean-Jacques Jeunet integrally influenced my artistic choices. Truly, my directorial debuts were infused with a synthesis of all of my theatrical and cinematographic studies, transforming into a culmination of work of immense impact, value and valor.
     As a French Literature and Theatre Arts major at The College of William & Mary, I honed my artistic skill and craft with the direction, scenic and costume design of two prominent works of Eugène Ionesco and of the Theatre of the Absurd: The Lesson, and The Chairs.
     After undergraduate and after some time in Italy, I came to San Francisco, where I returned to my humble, modest roots as destitute and delusional "White Trash," living in the Tenderloin, under the care of numerous HIV/AIDS service organizations.
     Through my ties to Larkin Street Youth Services, I met Peter Carpou (former member of the Board of Directors of the Intersection for the Arts), who in turn facilitated my acceptance on full scholarship into the 2004 Hybrid Project performance workshop series. that was my last theatrical experience to date, as shortly thereafter, my multiple disabilities truly debilitated me.
     For the years following that major milestone performance opportunity for me, my life has been marred by physical, mental, emotional and behavioral deterioration, destruction and disease. Thus, i have been on somewhat of a forced sabbatical, and in a state of what seems to be terminal separation and disjuncture with my art.
     Only in the last year have I been blessed with the great fortune of finding the necessary guidance to be led through a long and arduous rehabilitation and recovery process; which, in turn, I would like to see culminate this time in my participation as a Sins Invalid Artist In Residence.

WHAT IS YOUR DISABILITY, AND/OR YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO THE DISABILITY COMMUNITY?
     I'll approach this question systematically and succinctly, to defer all elaborate provocations to my other answers.
     I have lived through debilitating, disabling HIV/AIDS, a nine month schizo-delusional messianic psychosis induced by use of crystal meth, as well as substance abuse and HIV/AIDS-related PCP pneumonia and a poly-microbial necrotizing bacterial infection of my face, which subsequently led to the state in which I find myself now: disgruntled, disfigured, dismantled and deformed -- devoid of all natural, tangible beauty -- left only to fight furiously and ferociously through my own "faggotry" and foggy memories to find my beauty again.
     My relationship to the disability community has thus far been tangential and only dictated by the circumstance(s) of my hospitalization(s). I have for a long while (since my injury & illness, and after witnessing the atrocious destruction of my face, my nose, my jaw, my mouth, my lips, and my smile) refused to associate with the "disfigured" community. I have feared reprisal by those plenty proud people who have suffered trauma after trauma far worse than mine, and who have been torn to pieces physically.
     I can and do wear a mast to cover my reconstructed contortion of a face, while many other victims of facial or body trauma cannot (or simply will not!) wear masks or costumes to hide their "variances." Shocking! -- the contrivances, consequences and coincidence of how the study and wearing of a myriad of masks and costumes has profoundly defined my artistic and personal life (or plagued it!), all along.
     But, i have begun to reach out, more recently. I was introduced to Sins Invalid and the AIR Program by a burn survivor and new found friend of mine: James Anthony Bosch. It is with his support and encouragement that I am taking a gargantuan leap forward into the (hopefully, as he says they'll be) welcoming arms of the disabled and disfigured communities.
     I want to use my participation in the Sins Invalid AIR Program to reconcile my own immense tragedies and turmoil with the tremendous amount of talent and blessing with which I have been gifted throughout my life, even still now.

WHY DO YOU WANT TO BE AN ARTIST IN RESIDENCE? WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO BRING TO THE PROJECT? WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO GET FROM THE EXPERIENCE?
     Upon viewing the Sins Invalid website, with accompanying photo and video documentation of past performances by the company, I have been mesmerized and dually inspired by the profoundly beautiful artistry the organization evokes in its work: "AN UNSHAMED CLAIM TO BEAUTY IN THE FACE OF INVISIBILITY!!" Beauty within! My creative energy has been critically and conspicuously resuscitated by the images and sounds, pictures and poetry that I have witnessed by Sins Invalid, and I most deeply desire to be part of this phenomenon, this movement, this corpus of performance work, and in the company of this genuine and genius mastery of craft.
      More importantly however, I crave the opportunity to use my participation in the Sins Invalid Artists In Residence Program as a vehicle and/or mechanism for reconciling myself with my myriad of disabilities and disfigurement(s).
     I have known for years that the story of my life and my struggles could ans would easily lent itself to the creative process of artistic performance and storytelling on stage. With a full year (or more!) of committed rehabilitation and recovery under my tightened belt, I feel entirely ready now to be led on the journey toward discovering the "evocative enunciation of my sacred self."
     What I have to bring to the project are the highest standards of professionalism and the study, practice and mastery of diverse performance traditions; as well as intellect and creativity of stellar proportions; courage in face of a face deface and disfigured; a desire to grow and change and further develop my craft, my psyche, my spirituality, my sobriety, my sanity and my health. I also will bring ambition, determination, enthusiasm, and an ostensibly blank slate upon which might be sketched or etched or sculpted the next masterful Thinker.

WHAT IS YOUR ARTIST DREAM? DESCRIBE THE BOOK, PLAY, SONG, PERFORMANCE OR PROJECT YOU'D LOVE TO CREATE...

1. SEMI-AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL EXPERIMENTAL PERFORMANCE PIECE : that would prove an affront to aesthetic prejudices and judgments of the status quo, by confounding an audience through the "evocative enunciation of my sacred self." I'd like to use this performance project, as I've said previously, to reconcile with my demons and to demonstrate that true beauty transcends the physical. I can't say much more on the subject, because the idea is still percolating in my mind. But, I know that the Sins Invalid AIR Program would be a pivotal, integral platform for creating such a piece. 
2. CRYSTALINE: NYMPHO, NARCOTIC FEROCIOUS FIEND OF A FREAK SHOW (a.k.a., "TWEAKER MONSTER") : Incorporating much of my LeCoq and mime training along with situational real-world improvisation technique and the modern Japanese Butoh tradition, I dream of creating an androgynous drag persona that can be "performed" interactively in popular night clubs and gay sex dens; one which is characterized by absurd nymphomania, absence of human touch boundaries, and ultra-concentrated sexual and emotional perversion. I envision that the persona might live amongst the crowds in these locales to breakdown walls and stereotypes and above all to frighten/shock/disgust subjects into realizing that crystal meth is a destructive, disruptive, deranged, debilitating, disfiguring, demonizing disease of an addiction: a monstrosity!! This persona might be something I'd be compelled to workshop as a participant in the AIR Program, in addition to or instead of a semi-autobiographical piece. Perhaps, the two projects could be synthesized and meshed together into one unified performance motif. If not, then I'll just incubate this particular idea until further opportunities for its development present themselves.
3. A NATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL QUEER PERFORMANCE CONSERVATORY : I aspire to obtain a PhD in Performance Studies either from Berkeley, Brown, NYU, Northwestern or UCLA, with an overarching focus on variant forms of contemporary experimental queer performance and with an emphasis on the aesthetic, historical and theoretical analysis of the art of Drag Performance around the globe. The Conservatory, which I hope to found once I earn a reputation as one of the nation's leading academic experts and performance masters of these variant genres of theatre, would offer BA/BFA and MA/MFA degrees similar to those which were award by the Experimental Performance Institute (EPI) of New College of California at San Francisco, when it was still extant. Tracts of study would include: a.) Social Activism & Agitprop in Performance, b.) Gender, Sexuality & the Stage; as well as specializations in c.) The Performance of Disease, Disability & Stigma; and of course, d.) DRAG!! I want the Conservatory to be breeding ground for drag ingénues and masters of the craft, where they might be able and invited to (re)define/refine their technique and practice ... where the common colloquial drag performer can come to learn and apply time-tested performance traditions and methodologies to the creation of multiple personae and in multiple performance styles. The Conservatory would be a platform upon which young and old drag performers, alike, could gain the skills and creative tools necessary to create art that transcends the kitsch and camp (while still respecting the kitsch and camp roots of the craft), thus entering or accessing the noblest pantheon of performance arts.
4. THE HARROWING, HILARIOUS HISTORY, AESTHETICS, ANTICS & HOW-TO'S OF DRAG PERFORMANCE : an interactive, illustrated academic/instructional book on the complete history, globally variant aesthetic traditions, diversity of performance styles, subject-matter, song-choice, practice and culture of DRAG Performance. This book, I envision, will be somewhat of an interactive, instructional anthology of drag performance studies, written entirely in partnership with acclaimed drag artists and authors. This book would be kitsch and classy, camp and contemplative, challenging to the nth degree, but coy and cute, sexy and sultry: an astutely academic, scholarly work disguised as a coffee table trinket or toy.
5. TRANSLATION, DIRECTION & DESIGN OF AN EXPERIMENT QUEER or GENDER VARIANT PRODUCTION OF LES MAMELLES DE TIRÉSIAS : The Tits of Teresias!! I think I want to save this for graduate school!! But, who knows? It could be my ticket into graduate school....

To my delight and equal opportunity of surprise (shock, even!), this rather sterling example of my put-offish verbosity and pedantry shined in the eyes of the judging panel for the Sins Invalid AIR Program, enough so that they were compelled to schedule me for an interview.  I was overwhelmed with anticipation, when I found out that I had made it to the second round of the selection process. I counted the days, the hours, the minutes until the moment I say "nomylamm" pop-up on my SKYPE® Contact List, and shortly thereafter received her incoming video call.

In my opinion, however harsh and self-critical I may be, the interview seemed a bit disjointed and convoluted on my part, as it was happening. But I found some comfortable in the fact that Nomy kept asking me to repeat word-for-word what exactly I had previously said, so that she could write it down.  At first, I thought this quite awkward and unconventional of her, but then it became clear to me that she was so intent on recording my exact words, because they must have been well enough construed (and my statements well enough constructed) to have an impact and to impress her. 

So, for me, in my impression, this was a good sign. Apparently so... But, I'll have to ask her about that in person.  Maybe, she'll shoot my ego down back to ground zero, admitting that she was only following procedure, but until she diminishes my feeling of accomplishment (however gently she may coax me down from aloft!), I will stick with my gut feelings.

See, I didn't have any previous works to exhibit to the Sins Invalid AIR Program judges. There exists no real, tangible record of any of my past performances. Trust me! I went to great lengths to search out photos and videos or even audio recordings of my past performances, but to no avail. I kept coming up short, at every turn. All the judges could go off of was my application and the blog to which I am posting said application at this moment. And of course, my blog has video and audio embedded into it: all original "productions" by me, of me, about me, featuring me. If anything, they found some distinguishable value in what little I had to show for myself and of my work.  And for that I am grateful.

Now, as things progress forward, I just have to walk light footed, but hell bent on staying serious about my art and about playing, creating, experimenting, imagining a whole new world to come alive on the stage. I couldn't be more excited!  The group of AIR Program participants seems like a phenomenally diverse, eclectic and talented group  of artist.  I'm a bit intimidated, to tell you the truth.  Most everyone who is participating in the inaugural Sins Invalid AIR Program is a professional or semi-professional writer.  I, on the other hand, just dabble.  

And oh damn, don't I dumbly display my minimally megalo-magnificent meanderings through doodles and droolings of dastardly devious dexterity of wit? If you would call it wit, wonder if it be pitifully witty to wander wayward with unwavering wise-ass-ity to widdle away a wee few words of way wrong wisdom, leaving the long lost laboring minds of many to wander with me wondering what this wacko for there went.  EWWWWWWWWW.  ALLITERATION IS MY DEMISE! Quote me on that... And with that, I am outtie!  Cheers! Ciao! Namaste! 

Respectfully submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
San Francisco, CA USA
[2010.05.12@15:25PST]