Antony and the Johnsons, Sexuality and Superstition
Say what you will, but I love Antony and the Johnsons. I love his unabashed immersion in his emotions, the complexities of his sexual identity, his yearning for love, his acceptance of pain, and dammit his flamboyant presence. I love that he pours every ounce of himself into his songs, that he cries, that his whole body becomes a thunderous shuddering torrent of emotional expression. And his songs are beautiful and touching.
I have two things I want to note in reference to listening to Antony and the Johnsons lately.
SEXUALITY. Sure, for the most part his songs are about body identity and sexuality and pain and tenderness and yearning. Sure, these are things that heterosexual men tend to shy away from. There is no doubt that Antony and the Johnsons is about as queer as queer gets in contemporary music. But does that mean that his music is unapproachable to heterosexual men. Are heterosexual men “put off” by Antony’s “gayness,” or does his honest exploration of is emotional life allow heterosexual men access to things that sexual culture don’t allow them to express comfortably. Certainly, women like Antony and the Johnsons, but it is culturally acceptable for women to be emotional, to lay themselves bare for art.
Frankenstein:
Click to view“Frankenstein” is one song by Antony and the Johnsons that always strikes a tender chord in my heart. Like I said in a recent post, I am a closet romantic. Even while living in the most horrific of times on the streets, I always held out a sliver of hope that “my prince would come in.” Antony’s “Frankenstein” is about the most pure form of expression that I have listened to that delivers the yearning that I always clung too. Because, honestly, given my life and the things that happened to me and my body since I was young girl, I have always felt like a bit of an atrocity, a monster stumbling through life patched together with a lifetime of bad history written into my body. But I never gave up on love. Most monster movies are love stories, following the beauty and the beast narrative, except in my version, I was the beast, the monster, the abomination who always clung to some kind of romantic ideal, probably because in a way my “horrific” life experiences kept the innocent part of me innocent. I always protected that kernel inside of me that could still believe that someone could find this monster and love her. So I have listened to this song and cried on more than one occasion.
I am sure that gay men can identify with that thread of emotion as well, feeling like the sexual outsider, the outcast, the monster. But what about heterosexual men?
SUPERSTITION. This brings me to topic number 2: life, death, superstitions and limbo. I was talking to a friend the other day about ghosts, given my recent experiences at the Widow’s House. I was wondering (a.k.a. obsessing) as I continue to do whether there really are ghosts at the Widow’s House, what kind of ghosts they are, and why they are there. This is when I had to out myself for yet another superstitious side of me - my fear of limbo.
I mentioned when I wrote about the Widow’s House that much of the haunting I experienced in relation to that house was from the ghosts that haunt me in my life. The big three are my brother, biological father (who I now just refer to as “Al” which is what I called him when I was a kid, and my paternal grandmother. But my brother is probably top of the list, largely because he most likely took his own life. He died of a heroin overdose, but he shot heroin until he died. He dumped his entire paycheck into his arm and then checked out. Forever. One of the many reasons his death has haunted me is because I worry that his spirit is unsettled, that because he took his own life he is trapped in limbo, hovering, caught, unable to find peace.
I remember one time when I was really suicidal, an Italian (and therefore raised Catholic) friend told me: “Kim, you can’t kill yourself. You don’t know what will happen to you. Maybe there is a Hell. Maybe there is a Limbo. You don’t know.” And he was right. I don’t know. I can sit here and intellectualize and rationalize all I want, but the truth of the matter is that I don’t know. Maybe life is just a biologic occurrence, a coincidence of electricity and biology, and when we die, we die. Or maybe we will be reincarnated (another superstitious belief that I hold onto). Maybe we need to live life over and over and over again until we get it right and can move onto the next state of consciousness. I think about all these things because, like I said, I’m superstitious, and also because maybe I’m trying to make sense of my own life. Why was I dealt the deck of cards I was dealt? What did I do in a “past” life? How evolved am I on the consciousness evolutionary scale? No, I don’t have any answers, and does anybody really?
When I was running today, Antony and the Johnson’s “Hope There’s Someone” came on, and after my recent experience at the Widow’s House, it really touched me even more. It seems that Antony shares some of my superstitions as well as my complex relationship to my body and my sexual history. In fact, it’s all connected. I am probably as superstitious as I am because of my history. It’s not just from growing up Italian American, but many times superstition or mysticism or whatever you want to call it gave me tools to try to understand my life, a life which often seemed beyond comprehension.
Hope There’s Someone:
On a final note, I have two polls here for a little cultural research. I’d love to hear what you have to say on these topics.
Poll Antony and the Johnsons Poll