Leave it to me to have an existentialist dilemma at the gay bar.
Back in Florida Carlos and I would trek up to Wilton Manors to the T. Palace drag show.
This is one of the best performances we saw:
That’s Noel Leon.
I remember thinking how strange it felt recording the drag show. An amazing performance was going on in front of me but I was watching it on my camera screen. It was a tradeoff though because without the video, no one would remember the show.
This implicates that whole art vs. life / creation vs. consumption dichotomy that I spent way too much time thinking about during undergrad. It’s something that Oscar Wilde and Truman Capote grappled with too. It goes like this: you can either be out partying and socializing or you can be at home, working and creating. Each can fuel and yet compromise the other.
So my experience at the Noel Leon show was compromised by the recording, but that recording preserved the memory and allows me to share the experience years later. Fair trade?
