Three Days Book·Shanhaiwu #1｜Queer Stage

第一天：放開想像，如果你有各種條件和資源，可以建造一個理想之地，那個地方會是怎麼的模樣？

After having lunch with my friends and sitting in a coffee shop, we made an appointment to work together this afternoon. I am going to slowly collect my thoughts and write down what I want to do. My first move was to check the news on various platforms before starting work. After I opened Matt City and saw this plan, I suddenly felt extremely relaxed and happy. The topic I wanted to organize my thoughts happened to be! It was as if there was a hand of fate on my back. It was a well-kept fate that brought this opportunity to me. It was another signal sent by the universe to me, asking me to write it down.

I happened to mention it to my friend during lunch. I feel that human cultural paradigm always promotes "soul mate", praises those self-evident tacit understandings, and pursues relationships that can convey feelings without words. But I feel that as I get older, What I value more and more is not this kind of relationship, because I feel that there are actually a lot of presuppositions in the "self-evident", a lot of assumptions and assumptions that may not be correct, a lot of "we are already very familiar with each other, I I think you are such a person, I feel like I know what you mean." Therefore, I cherish more and more those who are willing to leave sufficient space and time for each other to speak clearly and listen clearly, and form a sincere dialogue through listening and speaking without presuppositions and paradigms, and then see The real relationship between each other is something more valuable than "self-evident". Sincerity, authenticity, and seeing are more valuable things in this tense and weird era.

So I want to speak slowly, sincerely, about my ideal hometown, because this is not just a dream-like existence for me, but something that I am actually ready to start doing. .

I originally planned to leave Shanghai in the summer, travel and adventure around Asia for a while, and then go to Berlin in October to start a new life. But I learned a lot during the month-long solo trip. Through conversations with strangers, I gained the most authentic understanding of China and the life of the local people; I also understood more and more I myself understand the laws of my body and the connections between my lesions, and I am becoming more and more skilled in self-care. And through all of this experience, the most important lesson I learned was that my body was not ready to go to a foreign land alone and create a new world. I know I will definitely be able to make a beautiful career, just like I went to Shanghai alone five years ago with 10,000 yuan and a suitcase lent me by a friend, I will definitely be able to build a beautiful life, but looking back The first five years were too hard and painful, and what those years brought to me was that I have now become a person with more choices, so I choose not to force myself anymore. I don't have to force myself when my eating disorder has not been cured, my appetite is as weak as a candle, and I can't fix three meals a day.

So I want to stay here longer. So the question that ensues is, how am I going to spend this time? Of course I could find another job, but I don't think I would be able to learn anything new from this industry, from working for other people, and I'm not in a situation where I desperately need to work for a living. So how do I spend this time other than treating and healing my body with more gentleness and kindness?

Another thing I realized during this period of traveling alone is that people are natural cultural creatures, and this has nothing to do with any identity, but with class, origin, occupation, gender, identity, region, education level, sex Inclination, or even the circumstances of the times, etc. have nothing to do with it, because people are human beings. People naturally need love, need to be loved, need to establish connections, need to feel belonging, need to talk, and they all naturally pursue happiness and happiness. Wish has nothing to do with anything else, because this is human nature, so people may sing, dance, party, chat, create, read, or perform. Everyone in the world has their own cultural activities.

And I also deeply understand how these cultural activities and these theatrical effects helped me survive that painful quarter of my life, how they helped me find the rhythm of breathing and help myself in the waves of complex trauma one after another. Find more and more lightheartedness.

I have loved acting since my early youth. I would imitate a little devil under the shower head in the bathroom to accept an unfair trial, and yell "And I know I will have NO JUSTICE here" through gritted teeth. I also love to write, and I have written There are countless youth texts that look like fandom and self-projection; I often sing on the school stage; I am also keen on dark jokes about sexual assault and sexual minority topics in hysterical comedies; I am also crazy about them The Batman series, loving the broken Jason Todd, found a way out of my pain through his pain and his reinvention of himself through the Red Hood.

I've been watching local comedies again recently. When Black Lantern talked about the "stigma" of blindness on stage, and when Echo told the story of walking out of the mountains and the story of my second sister, I laughed hysterically and shed tears. I think this is the great significance of performances and cultural activities: through theatrical effects, we discover, validate, and reinvent ourselves. We explore, reflect, and precipitate past experiences and feelings, affirm them, understand them, digest them, and accept them. They, confirming them, finally bridging them, using them for me, becoming a gorgeous shawl, a guitar, or a microphone on the stage at this moment. And after the story is treated and told well, and after the story is well heard, we grow into a more determined and stronger version of ourselves.

I think in the previous Seven Days book, when my story was read by everyone, everyone’s likes and claps also greatly helped me bridge the gap in my past life, help me survive the quarter life crisis, and grow into the great person I am today. Cute Bodhisattva (self-proclaimed). Thank you for meeting Matt City, thank you for your fate, and wave to you.

And this is what I want to do. In China, the most populous country, there are naturally so many places where queer people truly live, but there has not yet been a stage for queer people to speak out about themselves. life stories, there has yet to be a cultural space that allows queer people to gather, for narrators to come here to perform, and to meet audiences who can understand their stories; for audiences who long for a moment of connection to come here and see their own stories. . I want something like this, a place like this, to happen.

Just like what I wrote at the end of my comedy manuscript: I have grown a lot after going through the quarter life crisis. I understand that "good things happen" is a wonderful blessing. Good things will not happen by themselves, but I will Use my own power to create good things and make them happen.