Tampa Pride parade…
A couple of things that hit me big from the last few days: the Tampa Pride parade, and getting consumed by a new creative work.
The Tampa Pride parade happens early, in March. I’m not sure why and couldn’t find any easy answers, but I suspect that a) having it NOT in summer is a good idea for everyone involved, and b) having it near in time to the Mardi Gras parade is practical for the Pride parade organizers and participants.
If you haven’t been to a Pride parade, it really is just like any other parade. There’s a lot of representation from public institutions, local businesses, nonprofits, marching bands (yay!), and a bunch of extroverts who need to extrovert. You act like you would at any other parade, unless you feel the need to go a bit extra, which is mostly fine.
This is the first time I’ve been to anything LGBTQ+ while being even a little bit “out.” It was nice, not because I needed to do things I normally wouldn’t, but because I didn’t have to pretend to have, or to empathize with, “straight” person reactions.
I don’t think of myself as masking my true self–I stopped actively lying about my personality a while ago–but I do filter quite a bit.
Example of not having to have straight people reactions: I took a bunch of pictures of aesthetically pleasing butts without regard to who they were attached to OR whether or not they were covered by anything more than a thong. (I ended up deleting/not posting most of the ones with a lot of skin, because it felt like the people involved wouldn’t be interested in having their butts on Instagram. A few, though, were pretty obviously pro-butt, so I kept those.) I asked people for their pictures when I particularly liked their outfits, too. But normally I’m very hesitant to take photos of people; I get caught up in thinking that they’ll find it intrusive. But at the parade it felt very natural. (I even got a picture of an enby dressed up as a mushroom version of Ms. Frizzle!!!!)
I wore my Yuri!!! on Ice shirt, pan pin, and rainbow Keen shoes, but that was it. Ray had her Invader Zim shirt with Gir on it. I think her whole existence just screams “neurodivergent butterfly” anyway; she had tons of people come up to her and compliment her on her shirt. (Okay, here’s her total outfit: orange Crocs, blue and white ruffled palazzo pants, Gir shirt, bright yellow taco-shaped fanny pack, aqua and neon orange hoodie with a black cat on it, gray-ace bat pin, rose gold hair. Oh yeah. And long black and purple umbrella.)
We bought earrings, her with Zim and me with Gir. She had to get clip-on backings for them, which they gladly did for her, and she G L O W E D.–Zim stuff was all over, too, and Ray kept pack bonding with people over it. SO CUTE. I got several Papa Bear “respect” nods at my shirt, so I didn’t feel too left out.
Observations about the parade itself:
–I took a ton of pictures and posted a bunch of them, but nowhere near all of them. The photos involving the parade itself were super tricky to pull off! The sun was bright and shining right into the lens, so a lot of what I took, I didn’t see until I was weeding out photos. Most of the shots of the floats didn’t turn out well, but a lot of the shots of the mini human dramas I saw really did. Lesson learned?
–There were a lot of cops. A LOT of cops. Both watching the area and in the parade itself. I felt weird about both. Glad they were there, worried that they were there.
–Lots of people had these sassy fans and I wanted one. Or two. But they looked flimsy and I really just wanted steel-boned fans. Possibly so I could hit people with them if necessary. They made this lovely frrrrrip noise as they were opened or closed that was both pleasing rather than annoying, and louder than clapping.
–A lot of politicians, too. Again I had mixed feelings. Used and counted, maybe? But that’s what politicians do, show up and shake hands at public events.
–There were multiple companies represented. Some of them clearly had LBGTQ+ members and others, not so clear. They seemed very stiff, like they had to be there. I hope they felt more comfortable by day’s end.
–There were multiple Mardi Gras-style crewes with their floats. With these, it was more a question of whether everyone on the float was white or not. Hon, when you’re in TAMPA and everyone on your float is white, it’s a choice, no oops about it (and definitely no inclusive Pride flags with the triangle for PoC and trans folks). I tried to weed out all the pics of the racist floats. No other name for it. Pride, do better.
–I still have a flautist’s pipes, I guess: growing up copying coyote howls out on the farm taught me how to howl; being in pep band for all kinds of sporting events taught me how not to get hoarse; being a flautist taught me breath control and how not to hyperventilate. I completely fubar’d some of the video I took by howling. Super fun, though, especially when I unleashed it on the marchers who looked self-conscious. Be thou fierce! Howling is infectious. I started teaching Ray how to finger whistle. She needs to practice, but there was sound coming out.
–It wasn’t as crowded as I feared it would be. We didn’t lose Internet over cell, the way it does during Gasparilla. I was both pleased and displeased. MORE people should have been there.
–Food: honey mead for me, strawberry cider for Ray; mac’n’cheese with honey-sriracha chicken from a food truck; iced coffee; suckers thrown from the back of a fire truck.
–The smell of weed was EVERYWHERE. And lots of vaping. But not swampily so, if that makes sense.
–I collected so many beads that I got tired of it. I picked up so many broken sets off the ground and tossed them in the garbage that I got tired of that, too. By the end of the parade, NOT wearing beads was a Choice, mostly made by the goths and the punks. Next time: I’ll probably do the same thing. SHINY. I caught a feather boa in a package and gave it to Ray. On the way back, I spotted a string of large pink beads and pounced on it. Yep. Am crow.
Good parade. Fun experience. Will do again.
…
Do you get taken over by other people’s creative work? I do. I recently got consumed by a song called “Who Are You, Really?” by Mikki Ekko. Ray played it for me on the way home from Pride. By the time I got home and played it again, I was hooked.
Sometimes works of art hit me that way, hard enough to make me pivot somehow. It’s a weird experience, but also a really fun one.
At first, I go, “Oh, this is nice,” and just experience the thing. Then something flips and part of me goes, “Oh, I must HAVE this,” and I start taking it in on a deeper level–me consuming the thing and analyzing the thing. After that, something else flips and I no longer feel like I am taking the thing in, but that it is consuming me, taking everything I have into consideration, analyzing it, and rerwriting parts of it. (I know it literally can’t do that, but it feels that way.)
I used to resist these things, or at least try to. I’d get embarrassed at how consuming it feels. It “wasn’t normal.” Then I started poking around more into neurodivergent stuff, and realized that I am by far not the only person who does this, whatever this is, tossing themselves off the deep end into a piece of art. I’m not alone.
I also observed that I tend to get a fresh perspective on MY creative work whenever this happens.–I wrote an entire novel, The House Without a Summer, using the consumption of Peter Murphy’s Cascade (which I probably listened to a thousand times while writing, at ten loops of the song per hour), and I picked up writing romance during consumption of the anime series Yuri!!! on Ice, which I watched straight through five or six times in a row.
I’m not sure where this one’s going, past wanting to dance it.
It does feel like what I need for the next section of the WIP. I’ve danced it so many times that I ended up recording a video of me dancing to it. I just did the feet, because I’m not sure what kinds of thing I like for the rest of it; I suspect it’ll be new movements by the time I’m settled (maybe some pop locking?–ooh, tribal fusion! that’s a thing I just found out!).
At some point I just went, “I don’t have to be so hesitant about who I am, I talk about dancing all the time, so why not?” I still don’t know what all the lyrics are; the song is addictive to my feet.
–Okay. Ray’s left the apartment now, so I’ve put the song back on. She’s already been through her obsession over the song and didn’t want to get re-infected, so I’ve been trying not to play it on repeat while she’s listening.
Lots to do today. Good thing I now have waaaaaay too much energy and can do it.
…
Here’s the dance video I did for “Who Are You, Really?” Just my feet. I can now say that I’ve technically been in a music video. Yessssss…
Hahahaha!
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Image inspired by the song (which I’m currently playing). Prompt: multiracial, trans nonbinary, dancing with a skeleton, musicians in the background, teeth, bone, who are you really, 1950s, small town, children, suspicious, surreal, pastel
I made a Korean dish, tteokbokki, for the first time! Somewhat un-traditionally, I added cocktail wieners and bell peppers. YUM. I also covered it with a couple of slices of American cheese, the same way I got it the first time I had it (from a Korean deli). SO GOOD. Spicy and tangy and…cheesy 🙂