This has been a hard week for everyone.
We stand at the precipice of something dark, as if we are at the top of some horrific rollercoaster we’ve been forced onto. The horror in front of all of us is only matched by its absurdity and stupidity. The idea of joy and fun seem impossible as when we feel powerless to the reality that so many people voted for what seems so clearly cartoonishly evil.
I’m reminded of the quote from James Baldwin that’s been making the rounds, and it’s best to hear it in Baldwin’s own voice:
“Love has never been a popular movement. And no one's ever wanted, really, to be free.
The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people.
Otherwise, of course you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be.”
So how do we do that? How do we not despair?
That’s what Elysian Revel is about. In the midst of Jim Crow, the midst of yet another rise of American xenophobia, In the midst of a world where homosexuality was a crime, people still found joy. The people of the era were pushing culture to new heights. They were finding new ways to think. New ways to love. New ways to be. And they were doing it together.
I want to learn from them. I want to do my best to see what it was like to be them for a little while. I want to bring that back to us, in the present, and learn how to bring that sense of communal joy into the next few years. It’s going to take all of us.
I went to look for Joy,
Slim, dancing Joy,
Gay, laughing Joy,
Bright-eyed Joy,—
And I found her
Driving the butcher's cart
In the arms of the butcher boy!
Such company, such company,
As keeps this young nymph, Joy!
-Langston Hughes
The Weary Blues 1926.