LARKER ANTHOLOGY Issue 4: Love Upon Love Edited by Patrícia Silva www.larkeranthology.com Published by Shambalissima Editions New York, NY, September 23 2016 Cover: Film still from Les Nuits Fauves, Cyril Collard, 1992. Cover: Inamorata performing at Too Queer: A Bi Visibility Cabaret in Toronto, Canada, 2016. Photograph by Blaize Thomas. This page: Lausanne, general view, with Savoy Alps, Geneva Lake, Switzerland, ca 1890. Detroit Publishing Company, 1905. In a 2011 interview with Monique Moultrie, Dr Ibrahim Abdurrahman Farajajé described his time as a Senior Researcher at Institut des Sciences Bibliques, University of Lausanne: “I became a teaching and research assistant in Lausanne, which is a city up the lake from Geneva, so I moved to Lausanne. And that was really important because that’s when I started to develop a circle of friends who had been involved in queer stuff, women’s stuff, anarchist stuff, eco stuff, all that everything, and I got involved in this theatre collective. That was really life-changing for me.”
Thinking of you from my hospital bed, documenting scary journeys and never ceasing to do the work of loving. Every single one of my caregivers has your eyes, or your skin tone, or the shape of your fingernails.
You are beloved, still You are missed, still My gratefulness remains for your touch on my life, always —Faith Cheltenham
I’ve been thinking of the way you brought the Black Lives Matter movement into your teaching of the history and spiritual legacy of a 13th century Persian poet. I’ve been thinking of how you taught me to pray. I’ve been thinking about the power of intersectionality and how much richer your teachings have made my life.
Just got home from giving Saturday morning Dharma talk at the Berkeley Zen Center, on “Spiritual Friendship and Bravery.” Connecting the dots, as Baba Ibrahim asked religious leaders to do, I quoted Baba and invoked his presence and blessing at the end of the talk, which I am doing these days as a practice.
— Abbey Tennis
—Patricia Ikeda
— Noach Dzmura
Once more, I lift my prayers for your soul... As you always say, love upon love. — Idil Baysal
Dr. Ibrahim Abdurrahman Farajajé December 19th 1952 - February 9th 2016
Countee Cullen in Central Park, June 20 1941. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten
G.B. Jones, in a video still from She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column
Josephine Baker rehearsing for a New Year’s Eve show at Amsterdam’s Theater Carré, December 27,1964. Nationaal Archief Gelderen, Photograph by Hugo van Anefo
Tamara de Lempicka, Skyscrapers, 1929
Kate Bornstein in New York City, 2015. Photograph by N. Maxwell Lander
Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux by Man Ray
Katie Sly, New York City, 2016. Photograph by Patricia Silva
Kay Francis, 1930s
Sandra Berhard by WHO WHO WHO Honeybird (Monique Mizrahi). Photograph by Bianca Bourgeouis
June Jordan
H.D., Egypt, 1923. Photograph courtesy Norman Holmes Pearson and New Directions Pubilshing.
Tangible History
A selection of bi+ newsletters from the private collection of Melinda Brown
club and that gay club. But I haven’t. I sometimes wonder if it would be nice to live up to my reputation. ‘I got raided the other day by the police. But they didn’t find any drugs. I’ve hardly ever smoked as a matter of fact. As it happens I think I know who tipped them off, and it relates to what I’ve been saying. There was a rather hysterical lady who was upset because I didn’t fancy her. I think it was her.”
Dusty Springfield interview with Ray Connolly in The Evening Standard, 1970. Photograph: Philips Records Advert for Billboard, 24 June 1967
“But I know that I’m as perfectly capable of being swayed by a girl as by a boy. More and more people feel that way and I don’t see why I shouldn’t.‘There was someone on television the other night who admitted that he swings either way. I suppose he could afford to say it, but I, being a pop singer, shouldn’t even admit that I might think that way. But if the occasion arose I don’t see why I shouldn’t.‘...I’m always hearing that I’ve been to this gay
Clockwise from left: Miles the Bisexual, 2016. S. B. Swartz photographed by Tina Tintera. Tre Melvin, 2016. Nadine Angerer at Euro Cup 2013
H.D., Egypt, 1923. Photograph courtesy Norman Holmes Pearson and New Directions Pubilshing. Eric Emmerson leaping, Ronnie Cutrone watching
J. R. Yussuf, New York City, 2015. Photograph by Patricia Silva
“How fortunate I am to be able to fall in like or in love with beings, inhabiting their various physical forms, no matter the mechanics. Bisexuality leaves me in awe of the curious core that is humanity and how we are composed of so much more than what is on the surface, the physical. Physics, yes but also so much more, so much that we cannot visibly see. I believe bisexuality really leans into that, the unseen.” —J. R. Yussuf
Rorie Kelly. Photograph by Bryan Downey
“I learned how to be myself as a friend, instead of an enemy. I wrote my way through that.” —Rory Kelly on The BiCast, February 6, 2016
Vivek Shraya, Toronto, December 31, 2015. Photograph by Adam Holman
Teeg R Spectrum and Juba Kalamka at Kalamka’s first San Francisco Pride, June 1999. In the background: Linda Howard Valentine (right), Jack Whoisnotrandom (left). Photograph by Amy Conger
Stephen Donaldson was then 49 and dying of AIDS, without regrets. He’d led a wild life. Born Robert Martin Jr., he had been discharged from the Navy for homosexual activity, and in time had become a bisexual, Quaker, poet, Hindu, Buddhist, punk rocker, non-racist skinhead and gay-rights activist. In the early 70’s, Mr. Donaldson was arrested in Washington, D.C., during a pray-in against the bombing of Cambodia. He was mouthy and a little out of control, and his jailers meant to teach him a lesson. They put him in a ward where he was repeatedly raped. “Donny was the first prisoner-rape survivor I know of who went public, and he did it immediately,” said Tom Cahill, who was himself raped in jail. Mr. Cahill and Mr. Donaldson ran an organization called Stop Prisoner Rape. “Rape of any kind is torture and it’s crazy-making,” Mr. Cahill said. “Donny and I and a lot of others are examples of how crazy-making it is. It often creates multiple personalities in the survivor.” They did not invent the antirape organization. Its founder was a black Midwesterner named Russell D. Smith, who had been sexually victimized beginning as a child in reform school. But after a few years as an advocate, Russell Smith simply disappeared. Mr. Cahill took over his files.
“We suspect he’s long dead,” Mr. Cahill said. “But we’ve been searching for him for years.” Text from “Uncovered Prison Rapes Show Failure of Media,” Phillip Weiss. The Observer, April 30, 2001
Tom Cahill and Steven Donaldson AKA Donnie the Punk
Rudy Loewe, Self-Portrait, 2015
Scene from Tiggy Upland’s Upland, a web comic of miniatures
Stella Gardiner, Self-Portrait, 2016. London, UK.
“Only when I came out as being transgender and learned to accept my true feelings, and not the just the ones that seemed acceptable for a man to have, I found that I had sexual feelings about men. None of which really came as news to me, but it was a relief to admit it, finally, after so many years. And that’s not the only way that my bisexuality has been erased. I now find it very difficult to talk about or learn about my bisexuality because within LGBT circles it feels over-shadowed by trans issues. I have a boyfriend and I’m either seen as a straight woman or a gay man by those who do not accept me as a woman. I’m sure the time will come when the trans side of me feels less overpowering, but generally people do see me first and foremost as trans. Bisexuality always gets mentioned as an afterthought, but arguably it is being bisexual that defines me most nowadays.” —Stella Gardiner
Veneita Porter, photograph by Robert Giard, Yale Collection of American Literature
Gia Marie Carangi, c. 1980s.
Leigh Bowery, 1988. Photograph by Werner Pawlok
Rome. Photograph by Matthew Sandusky
Chogyam Trungpa smoking a cigarette. Photograph by Karen Roper
Bowie was my out, bisexual hero as a teenager in the late 1970s-early 1980s, and beyond. I loved the boldness of his being and staying out, and his refusal to be defined by others. I loved the way he played with gender and persona. I felt empowered by the power of his amazing, self-created presence, and still do. —Rev. Francesca Maria Bongiorno Fortunato
Installation view of “David Bowie is” exhibition, V&A Museum, London. Photograph by Mariko Chiba
“I read enough Rolling Stone to know about Bowie. His becoming a racist fascist In ‘76 made me turn away from his music for years. I had to make peace with a symbol who was “complex”, but he the first I knew of who proclaimed bisexuality. Without words, I saw myself as a “David Bowie sexual” because bisexuality and gender presentation didn’t have words in my world and time. —John Clark
“I came of age in the late 80s, early 90s, so Bowie was cultural ancient history for me but, as a bi group runner, he is probably the inspiration name I’ve heard quoted by more first timers across 20 years than any other” – Jen Yockney
Cydni Keels, Untitled, 2016. Acrylic on bristol board, 9”12”
Daphne Du Maurier, ca. 1922. Photograph by Ruth Bartlett. National Portrait Gallery, London.
ISSUE 7: LOVE UPON LOVE