the lavender libretto
This is an image of the book cover for the Lavender Libretto (the LL). There are four pictures on top of one another of a nude woods transitioning from le corpse poêtique to Le Corps Poetique. There are strategically placed blocks of photos atop woods’ chest and sacral regions. At the top of the page, in uppercase sans serif font, reads, “The Lavender Libretto.” At the bottom of the page in lowercase sans serif font, the text reads, “love, woods.”
The Lavender Libretto is a singspiel, a book of poetry and song that traces not only my nonbinary transition from silence to sound, but also pluto’s transit from capricorn to aquarius.
It narrates my discovery of a novel personal path from addiction to intentional consumption (to take together), consent (to feel together), and conspiring (breathing together).
It is a story of leaving a world characterized only by desecrated sex and being reborn under a new sun that knows only sacred sex.
The LL, one part of Sunflower Moon, was completed in two sessions, each done in one take, after a year of deconstructing the compulsory cisheterosexism that had sedimented in my voice - turning Lecoq’s Le Corps Poétique into le corpse poétique.
It is a rebirth into a type of physical economy of movement that is undisciplined; abolishing discipline in favor of a playful flow between indulgent diligence and diligent indulgence.
It is a ‘proof’ of concept for my play magic praxis; it is an ethic rooted in the pleasure of playing with your voice and a celebration of releasing vocal inhibitions.
This, along with the rest of Sunflower Moon, is meant to be a libretto, a teaching tool, and an apparatus for accessing le corpse poétique and bringing it back to life.
Along with the use of respirators as neutral masks of relationality, it is my hope that we can usher in a new ethic of care into the theater, an anti-eugenic ethic of which the Phantom of the Opera would be proud.
While I hope to publish this, along with the other librettos within Sunflower Moon, you can access the poems and lyrics themselves here in ‘the purple notebook’ chapter.
Though interspersed with levity, these audios can get heavy. Please take care of yourself as you need!