Queering Mythology, Queer Mythology, Mythologizing Queerness
written by Grey Grant
2019 GLFCAM Lucy and Jacob Frank Fellow, Cycle 10
Preface
Throughout my residency at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, I’ve been focusing my thoughts and creative work on composing works that surround themselves in mythos. I workshopped an aria from an opera I was writing at the time which focuses on a queer narrative steeped in mythos, and so I have written this essay on the subject.
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I am concerning myself with the subjects of queerness and mythology. I am allowing myself to be an ocean, be visible, be invisible, be known and unknown. I am concerning myself with how the subjects of queerness and mythology intersect. I am allowing them to come together in front of my eyes, to observe their interaction, to learn a history, to learn a mythology, to the history of a mythology. I am becoming a history of queerness and of mythology. I am writing to say something about these topics and how they converge, these topics of mythology and queerness.
I will begin on the topic of queering mythology. On what it isn’t and what it could be. I will then begin on the topic of queer mythology, this history of mythos, especially when it is coded as queer. I will lastly begin a discussion on mythologizing queerness. I will discuss how it can be a bad thing. How it must happen. How it can be a good and very beneficial, very nice thing.
I will begin by defining, in part (as mythology is a world of understandings, many of which I know I do not know), what mythology is and is not. Mythology is a story of beginnings. Is an explanation for the unknown. And by unknown, I mean not permanently unknown: things, that at the time of origin of mythos, were unknown, or at least, unknown by some. Mythology isn’t folklore. Isn’t always legend. Mythology is sacred. There can never be a queering of folklore or legend, as queerness is sacred. If one queers folklore, queers legend, it becomes mythology. How do I know queerness is a sacred thing? All things must be sacred, or must not be sacred. This is a mindset. If one believes in the sacredness of all things, then trees, rivers, cottages, cities, pavement, dog excrement on the pavement, birds, planets, are sacred, all. If one doesn’t believe in the sacredness of existence, then one really has no use for mythologies. This essay relies on the principle that all things are sacred, as mythologies concern themselves with the sacred. Without acknowledgement of the sacred, mythologies would be folklore, would be legend, would be falsehoods.
I will begin by queering mythology. A woman turns into a tree, to escape a god. This is an act of transformation. The body is only a vessel. The woman was always a tree, as the woman always had the capacity to become a tree. This woman is a trans-woman. She knows she is magic, is sacred, and acts on it to escape her turmoil (Apollo) and find peace (being a tree). A shepherd turns into water. Here, his lover transforms him into water. Though perhaps, he always had the capacity to become water. Adonis becomes the spokesman of the gay-male community. Sappho becomes symbol, the goddess, the origin story of Sapphic women.
I am concerning myself, at this beginning, of the queering of mythology. I will begin by discussing what queering mythology is and what it is not. Queering mythology isn’t a bastardization of mythology, isn’t saying that your older interpretation of mythology is not correct. Queering mythology isn’t trying to interfere with anyone’s relationship with myth, mythology, mythos, mystic entities.
The beginning of queering mythology was mythology, as mythology concerns itself with the origin of things. Since then, queering mythology has continued to be an action taken, and so, has moved beyond mythology and into the realm of the present day informing mythology.
I am beginning to concern myself with queering mythology, to make queer a thing that has kept queerness quiet, has only coded queerness, has made queerness an antagonist at time, has made queerness non-existent. I am beginning to see queering the institution of mythologies as a way of making space for queerness, yes, but also revitalizing these mythologies, making them relevant for one more go-round the modern age.
I am beginning, at my present age, to surround myself with queer persons who queer mythology. Those in particular are queer, and are very ordinarily queer. They go about their day being non-extraordinarily queer. They are but queer and yet not queer person who very ordinarily queer mythologies, in a way that make extraordinarily not queer mythologies extraordinary. They go about making extraordinary queer mythologies and yet not particularly. They queer particularly those mythologies, making clear queerness is a mythological entity, is a making queer thing. Is making a queer mythology a very un-particularly mythology, surrounding queering. Is but a mythology that is extraordinarily queer and particular. Is not particular, but is clearly surrounding mythology in queering. They surround in a way that queers the making of a particular one. They are not particular in being particular, wherein they queer mythologies concerning particular subjects.
I will begin this portion of the essay, which concerns itself with queer mythology by telling a queer mythology. This mythology is the mythology of an opera that I have just written. This opera, entitled Michigan Trees: A Guide to the Trees of Michigan and the Great Lakes Region, named after the very popular guidebook on tree identification in Michigan and the Great Lakes Region, concerns itself with a woman, whose name is Orna, which has its origin in Hebrew. It means pine. This woman’s origin is her mythology. She is a trans-woman. She lives in a real place: Ypsilanti, Michigan, though upon being called upon by the mother of trees, she travels north to Chapel Rock along the shore of Lake Superior to turn into an Eastern White Pine Tree. The Eastern White Pine Tree is the state tree of Michigan. It is the tree that was heavily logged in Michigan at the turn of the 20th century; which caused many fires to burn across Michigan, such as the Kingston Plains fire, that burned so hot that it killed all the organic matter in the soil, so that to this day the only evidence of existence there is lichen and blueberry bushes which thrive in highly acidic soil. This knowledge exists outside of Orna’s mythology, but informs it.
When she reaches the rock she begins her transformation, at the climax of that transformation, she splits into two halves of herself: how she sees herself, and how she feels she is seen. The first half concerns itself with self-acceptance, with the ideal self, with the most beautiful tree-trans-self. The other embodies gender dysphoria, internalized transphobia, the ever-floating state of fear for safety trans women experience living-while-trans. Orna, how she feels she is seen travels back home, in fear, while her other half wilts upon chapel rock. The mother of trees intervenes with the half traveling backwards, warning her of her other half’s state and the fate of both of them if they don’t reconcile. Orna, how she feels she is seen travels back north. They fight, air their feelings, reconcile and transform once more into a tree, standing tall and impossible, overlooking it all.
This is a modern mythology.
This is a mythology for trans folks, to say that they are extraordinary. This is a mythology that concerns itself with displaying one particular way in which trans-persons exist. This mythology is particular in being sacred, in being an origin story of how the white pine that sits on top of chapel rock got there. How its roots grew bark and stretches over air. It concerns itself with the creation of real life, and the existence of real persons, though its hero and its mystic guide are figures of mythos. This is a mythology for non-queer persons, for they exist with trans folks, and sometimes see them as trees in a forest, meaning they sometimes don’t see trans-folks in a crowd of people, they see trans-folks, though they do not know it, like a person who sees a forest but cannot identify a white pine from a red pine, from a hemlock. I am surely not saying it is important for a person to be able to pick out trans person from a crowd. I am saying that it is important to acknowledge that trans persons are in the crowd.
Another queer mythology is Angels in America by Tony Kushner. However, this essay is not about Angels in America, apart from that it is mythology. It will not be a major part of this essay as I am unable to discuss with great confidence or knowledge the play, other than to say that I have seen the HBO series, and read it once, and finished reading it at Bethesda fountain when I first moved to New York City, in my first month where I wandered the city alone knowing no one. My experience of Angels in America was that of mourning, wondering a city of ghosts of those taken from this existence by HIV and AIDS, and of joy for living in such a fantastical mythology where dying queers ascend to heaven, where angels don’t know it all, and where people dying from a modern plague get more life, and more life, and more life.
I am subject to discuss mythologizing queerness and I am beginning an understanding, I am beginning to define what it is and is not, and what I am not saying it is. I am careful to say that it is not certain things, that is does not imply certain things, things specifically concerning the non-mythological, real life existence of queerness. That is to say, I have not particularly come to any neat and very nice conclusion on the matter of mythologizing queerness, and I understand it to be a topic that divides queer persons, particularly queer artists, who engage or critique the mythologizing of queerness as a technique for communicating a particular subject within their art; which, within this polarizing topic of mythologizing queerness in art concerns queerness.
Mythologizing queerness is not making real life persons and events untrue. It is not an erasure of the lived experience of queer persons. It does not make them “myth” in the pejorative sense. It is not making fun of queerness. I do not mean to say that queerness is a myth. Nor do I mean to say that queer persons are fake, false, fraudulent, untrue. I am not saying that queer identities are any of these things either. I do not mean to imply that mythologizing queerness is admitting to anything particularly devious. Though sometimes-queer mythologies can include actions that are in fact particularly devious, as sometimes mythologies include devious actions.
Mythology is a story of beginnings. Is an explanation for the unknown. And by unknown, I mean not permanently unknown. Things, that at the time of origin of mythos, were unknown, or at least, unknown by some. This is a real-life state of queer persons: being unknown, not permanently unknown. People, who at the origin of existence were unknown, or at least, unknown by some, though obviously known by themselves. That is to say queer persons have always been around as mythologies have always been around, though they have gone unknown, avoided, undiscussed, and so the mythologies concerning queerness have been (at least directly, as much as I know, though I know, I don’t know much about all mythologies) unknown, avoided, or undiscussed within the realm of mythology.
The present-day act of mythologizing queerness is a beneficial and very good thing for the visibility, or known-ness, of queer persons. Is beneficial or the origin, the beginning of beginning to understand queer persons; that, for those who are not queer. For the engagement with empathy towards queer persons, to understand that they too struggle, and love, and fight heroic battles (though since they’ve gone invisible all these years, many have been battles concerning the self: self vs. self, self vs. others, self vs. nature, self vs. machine, and so on). Like Arjuna on the Battlefield of Kuruksetra, we fight on Kingston Plains, we fight at Stonewall. That is not to say that these places are myth, they are very real places. Yet, places of the heart. Places of deep emotion that springs mythology, can spring forth mythologies such as Angels in America.
Mythologizing queerness is a beginning of codifying queerness in the non-mythological world as a beneficial and very good thing. We know already that queerness is a beneficial and very good thing, but this mythologizing is the origin of new art, new stories, new sacred places that are innately queer. The sacred queerness is only beneficial to mythologies, wherein mythologizing queerness is an obvious action to take. Let’s not mind ourselves with non-queer mythologies, for they have always existed in non-queer spaces (which is most space). It is right and good to mind ourselves with queering mythologies so that we can queer other spaces that have been hostile, or at least unknown to queerness.
I begin to queer mythologies and mythologize queerness to make a queer mythos of where I live, and of the place of my origin. I currently live in the Midwest, which is not a monochromatic landscape; which I see as a very queer and very beneficial and good thing. In these (queer) mythologies of the Midwest, such as my opera, I paint this Midwest with watercolor, and sparrow bird, and queer stories, heard. In North Carolina, where I once was born, I was surrounded by the foreboding culture of “the south,” full of its own folklore (which is really just mythology, as it is sacred), which is quite fantastic in and of itself. That said, queering southern mythologies is a particular method of occupying a space with the reputation known to be hostile to queer persons. Is an act of revolution. This is a task I have seen many queer Appalachian southerners take ownership of, and one I would like to join in kind.
Queerness and Mythology have a particular relationship that is not particular innately, though can be a very good and very beneficial thing, when particularly non-queer mythologies exist and exist and exist, queerness exists too and so it is natural to see them exist, and to be created with the understanding that it is not certain things, and does not imply certain things, though it does imply particular things which are certainly quite fantastical and very good things.
Grey Grant (she/they) is a composer, performer, and poet, whose work frequently involves an interdisciplinary, collaborative effort between themself and other artists. Learn more from Grey’s bio page.