Temporary Utopia

The Speech I Gave Last Night at the Brooklyn Public Library

Last night I gave the following talk to several hundred people at the Brooklyn Public Library. Afterwards, so many people asked me for a copy of the text I decided to print it here. Longtime followers of my substack may recognize a few lines; this is because I figure out some of my best matirial with you. Love to the newbies.

As always, you can support my work by getting a paid subscription or by buying books and prints from my shop. The above print of Max Fractal, for instance.

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It is 4 am in the Chelsea Hotel and Sage Sovereign is lighting my best friend on fire.

Sage is a fire performer by profession. She wears tall leather boots, and her face is dotted with crystals. She piles her scarlet dreadlocks atop her head like a crown. She walks before the velvet curtains of the makeshift stage as if she is the high priestess of some old and glamorous god. She could serve Ishtar. Oya. Astarte.

Sage carries a dish filled with flammable bubbles, which she spreads on my best friend Max Fractal’s hands. Sage lights the bubbles. They burst into flame. The fire springs up until light gilds Max’s cheekbones. Max is a musician, and for a second, the flames like they are talent made material. A metaphor for art itself, transformed into fuel, oxygen and heat.

The room where we watch this rite belongs to Tony Notarberardino. It is a red lit, crystal strewn utopia, and he has built it for moments just like this. My friends and I are jammed together on his couch, me drawing, Camille shooting photos, the rest of us merely lost inside the moment. Sage the priestess. Max the rockstar. We the worshipers, safe inside our temporary utopia. All of us breathe as one.

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I came of age in this sort of demimonde, and it will always be my homeland. I had read about it in books since I was a kid, and I finally entered into it at nineteen, when I painted my naked body white and posed for tips at an underground loft party. The tips were so good that I swore off honest employment forever. I knew the demimonde’s lessons well. I learned how cut through a crowded club in ten-inch-tall platform heels I got at the sex shop. I learned to improvise a headdress from thrift store tat, and how to smack away an unwanted hand hard enough that the hand didn’t return.