Tears of laughter taste sweeter
and other good medicine
I sometimes feel rude. Bringing my tail over here, sharing my little essays. My ideas, my this-my that. Often, unsolicited. At a time like this?
I imagine I’m not alone in this feeling. I imagine sharing art for so many of us right now feels silly, at best. Like the most irrelevant thing to place your focus on as white supremacy tries it’s damnest to burn us all down with it. But if we’re being honest, art is the only thing keeping a lot of us alive.
Still. It is only human to want to stop everything else and gawk in silence when watching something giant collapse.
Creating feels like the most irrational choice but I suppose I resign to the irrational. Because there is no new beyond collapse without creation. What does balance look like in the middle of an end? What does rest, peace, solace, look like? I have no answers yet. I am creating through confusion. Creating as medicine, sharing as resistance to facist demands to cease. It is usually exhausting.
I am exhausted. My exhaustion makes me delusional. My delusion makes me laugh. I laugh a lot. So in honor of our collective need for art, paired with that exhaustion I mentioned, I offer you things I’ve written before that might make you laugh, too:
My interview with comedian Sheria Mattis as part of my ‘Why Are You Funny’ series. There’s audio and text.
My now award-winning (!) memoir PANSY. I’ve been told it’s got some good ‘lil laughs in there (thank you,
, for its most recent review!).That time I imagined I was a time traveler and did a Reddit-style AMA
I was briefly a high school cheerleader, and I lived to tell the tale.
And finally, I don’t mention my chapbook A FLAMBOYANCE, enough. It’s a playful collection of prose and poetry that (loosely) addresses the theme of flamboyance.
Alright, I’mma leave y’all with this new poem, related to the above, that will surely go through several other iterations. But this is it’s first…
I laugh
ain’t shit funny but
I laugh
and loud
till my belly aches
and my jaw hurts
and I feel
a different kind of pain
cause tears of laughter taste much sweeter
and heal the hurt
as they flow down the curves of my skin
seeping in again as epsom salt
all strain evaporating
much like grief
Thanks everybody for reading. I will talk to you soon,
Jasper
Loved, felt and received all of this