antony and the johnsons

there is a music that always sounds like it belongs in the middle somewhere pulled in directions where it never seems to reach. not a man yet not a woman antony of ‘antony and the johnsons’ is a new discovery. through a rufus wainwright connection i discovered this strange beautiful voice singing songs of longing and loneliness- songs that lies in the interstices of genre and gender.

in them i heard a longing to be defined- as one or the other.. or is it a longing to be recognized as complete in spite of being consciously in-between? regardless- the fact is that his is a voice that belongs to a space wider and more all encompassing than the boundaries of gender would allow. the songs seem somehow more pure as he sings saturated with the yearning to become more than what one already is through possessing another or amputating oneself.

this violence never lets the songs settle down into the campy kitsch that could very well have been the result of performing a role that ‘his kind’ is meant to perform in culture- the circus clown or the performing monkey. the longing that he feels is not a joke nor is it up for ridicule- it is real and felt as real- and deserves treatment as such.

i remember meeting the only person i know to have had a ‘gender reassignment’ and talking to him, being able to empathize but not completely understand this discomfort with ones own body that pushed him to change his very identity. ‘i am a bird now’ is flushed with this desire to be able to push past the boundaries that pull us down to the ground making us terrestrial beings- the weight of our bodies and the forces of nature- neither of these seem to be able to control or determine the spiraling arcs of our desires.