decentre
decentre is about living with instability. If we’re not curious about what’s accepted as “normal”, we won’t learn to embrace each other’s differences.
Artists can provide new perspectives by decentering what’s been normalized and focusing on the margins.
This is my platform for getting curious and fleshing out fragmented ideas. I write about how queerness informs my work as an artist and arts administrator.
Natural Shine
Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash. There’s a lot that I’m learning at this time in my life, as with all times of lives (lol wut?), but one persistent lesson I’m running into is the importance of discerning between others’ negativity and my own self-worth. Someone threw me a few comments a while ago that keep buzzing around my head: “Other people have problems with you,” (who?? What can I do to stop bothering these mysterious people?) and “we never say…
Time Blocking
Ouf, what a change! I’ve been spending some time each weekend blocking out my “ideal week”: categorizing the hours in each day so that I know where to direct my focus. I start with some casual “coffee time” every morning, for about an hour, where I drink coffee and do whatever creative stuff I want. These days that means watching YouTube or reading a novel. Nothin’ fancy, but it gives me some time to wake up. Then I…
Creativity Is…
What is creativity to you? I’m partial to how we discussed it in many of our university drama classes: creativity as innovation; finding new ways of unpacking the human condition. I also think creativity is specifically the process of finding new ways of understanding each other. And we can’t truly get to know one other unless we’re willing to be vulnerable and step outside our comfort zones. In that sense, creativity necessitates a level of personal risk. Stretching…
Passion vs. Skills
I’ve recently come across the work of Cal Newport. While I haven’t read any of his books, I’m especially drawn to So Good They Can’t Ignore You, his argument that it’s how we work rather than why we work that leads to fulfillment. Even reading the book’s description has made me rethink a few things. Of course I’m passionate about directing theatre, but I’ve yet to commit to pursuing it as a full time job. I’ve been working…
I M1 with the Force
One of these days I’ll figure out how to envelop my fascination with technology within my passion for creation, instead of the other way around. For now my desire to create is often superseded by a near-addiction to checking my phone. Or watching the 7,654,865 YouTube videos about the MacBook M1 chip. Also this title is a Star Wars reference and I’ve never seen Star Wars. Call me a fake.
Find What to Say By Starting
One of the beautiful things about writing these posts (almost) every day is that I’m discovering what I want to say as an artist. It’s not as if I already have something to say and am writing to communicate it… it’s that the act of confronting a blank page (or screen) is helping me develop something to say. I find it’s important to remind myself that I don’t need to reach some unspecified level of brilliance in order…
Organizing the Interesting Bits
I sometimes worry that the breadth of material I’m consuming on a day-to-day basis is one of many horrible symptoms of living in a distraction-filled world, and that as a result I’m now lacking the ability to focus my attention on what matters. OK so that’s less of a worry than it is a reality, but there’s also a message there somewhere. It’s fine to be interested in a variety of topics. In fact, the more we take…
Being Sure of Yourself
Artists are people with something to say. And it often takes guts to speak up. An unwavering confidence in your story, in what you bring to the table, is necessary. We have to have an almost delusional level of conviction to take the risks needed to make an impact.
The More We Discover
I started decentre with what I thought was a clear intention to help queer artists in Atlantic Canada. But the more I work on it, the more I feel the project shifting. I’m sure it’s clear that this blog is more of a personal blog than anything: I don’t purport to be an expert on queer art, but I can certainly try to articulate what it is I’m doing as a queer artist. And the more of these…
Being Despised
On mornings when I wake up remembering that vague bit of information about an anonymous group of people not liking my behaviour, I inevitably begin to spiral. “Who? What did I do? How can I fix it? Why can’t they tell me? Who are they? What did I do? How can I fix it?” And yet I know logically that in a life of perusing personal goals we’re all bound to step on someone else’s toes. No one…
Just Spittin’
The words pouring out are profoundly ugly. And yet they’re words carrying some sort of meaning. That’s a start. I try to find time for stream of consciousness writing as often as possible. Just write, y’all, with no judgment and no expectations. Weird stuff. It helps.
Make a Statement Or Else
One of the many reasons I’ve left social media, or at least severely limited my use of it, is the ever-increasing pressure to have an opinion. Not only to have an opinion, but to have the right one. I’ve learned the hard way that in a heated and divided world, complicated emotions can easily be misconstrued. But despite that risk, if you don’t act fast and make some sort of statement about injustices, you can quickly become a…
Me Me Me
Many seem to be resistant to centring themselves in their own work. I find I write about myself all the time. In fact, during my undergrad, a group of close friends rewrote the lyrics of “You’re So Vain” to “You’re So Luke.” I thought it portrayed me fairly well. I don’t think it’s selfish to write about yourself if it’s done correctly. Glennon Doyle talks about the difference between diary and memoir: if you are just writing to…
Vocabulary
One of the things I’m working on during the pandemic is improving my vocabulary. I find when I’m trying to communicate to a group I’m not as articulate as I’d like to be because I’m constantly overthinking my word choices and worrying that they’re too boring or ineffective. Writing on a computer is another thing entirely because of course I always have a thesaurus open in another tab. As I’m reading the New Yorker I’m writing down the…
Forgive Me But, Um, No.
One of the keys to happiness, or at least contentment, in my opinion, is boundaries. Boundaries are clear delineations of what is and is not OK. In my experience, people (myself included) tend to struggle with the “clear” bit. We all have our ideas of what is needed and what isn’t; what counts as productive work and what doesn’t. The more we can be clear about both of those sides in ourselves, the healthier relationships we’ll have. When…
Longer Lifespan
Much like many queer characters in the current canon, queer work often dies too soon. I’m thinking of a play I directed and dramaturged in 2018 called Re:Construct. It’s a beautiful play about growth from a trans perspective, and it had a successful run at the Ottawa Fringe. But it could go much further. And perhaps someday it will! I’d like the work I do here on decentre to help expand the lifespan of queer-focused art. Not sure…
When Time Kicks In
When I was around ten or eleven, I wrote a song that had the following lyric: They say a broken heart can mend When time kicks in the pain will end But how long does it take, For time to come? Heavy. A bit too saccharine for me, even now. But I think about it whenever I feel my anger rising: whenever the iconoclast in me perks up and wants to protest the injustices, however small or unintended…
Theatre: An Empathy Playground
Let’s not forget, in this relatively short blip of time when humans aren’t gathering to experience live theatre, the powerful effect that the art form has on our communities. Theatre encourages empathy by acting as a playground for emotions. In that room, together, we put ourselves in different shoes. As a group, we’re imagining what our lives would be like if we ourselves experienced the stories presented on stage. We feel beautiful sparks of connection when those around…
Standards of Lifting
Marginalized people face a disproportionate amount of forced introspective work: the desperate search for purpose, or an innate “goodness”, that will counterbalance the shaming we face from those in power. After swimming through oceans of ignorance and deeply engrained biases, we’re often left dripping with diffidence. Maybe if I work harder at articulating my personal experiences, phrasing them in ways that those who’ve never faced adversity can understand, then those blessed with better fortune will say “Oh, I…
Gender Reveal Parties
Gender reveal parties do nothing but reveal the close-mindedness of the parents. Sure, you might get some “woke” parents who say “But you’re making a big deal out of nothing! Stop getting offended! I don’t care if my baby grows up questioning their gender! They can be a radish plant for all I care! I just wanna celebrate!” And to the lazy, less compassionate minds, that’s a good argument. But the fact is, a gender reveal party is…
luke brown 