Do you know this book? GAY SOUL: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature? It is interviews and photographs by Mark Thompson
It’s Gay History month so we thought we’d post something about this fabulous book, with an excerpt of what’s inside. It’s a book you’ll want to have on your shelf. It’s rife with gems from 16 gay writers, healers, teachers, and visionaries. Including the surprising Ram Das. (At least it surprised me.) (All book contributors are listed at the end of this article.)
James Broughton’s interview is the first one in the book. And the following is an excerpt.
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Are you proposing a new order of masculinity?
Don’t you think it could use a new order? First of all, how about dumping the brutal and greedy drive toward career, riches, or empire? A man should be more than an aggressive mind with an embarrassed cock attached. A man who fails to develop compassion and tolerance is not completely human.
A man who expresses his sensitivity and imagination is closer to being a whole man than a one-sided, self-censoring man. These are the men who enliven and enrich the arts, for instance, for they value wit and beauty and outrage.
The majority of men resist acknowledging their own tenderness and empathy, preferring to project it onto another person who will carry it for them. This is called, “falling in love.” When the real person doesn’t fit the projected image– end of love affair, end of marriage. A gay spirit doesn’t censor his sensitivity, he enhances it.
Gaiety has no gender barriers. Isn’t joyfulness available to all sexes? I do not condone heterophobia any more than I do other prejudices. I am uncomfortable with the dichotomy of Them against Us. I believe in the potential redemption of all men’s souls. Wouldn’t everyone benefit from more enlightened consciousness?
As the rap song says, denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. Men have denied their softness and suppleness, their tenderness and sensitivity. They have taught their sons to be tough, contemptuous, and inflexible. This is a perversion of masculinity. Can we transcend the cynical thinking that denies value to the soul and to the quest for significant meaning?
I would plead for loving friendships. Keats called friendship “the holy emotion.” Can we deepen our sense of friendship to be unafraid of trust and devotion? “The clasp of fond friendship is life’s greatest collision,” I once wrote.
Look for all that is beautiful in men, despite appearances to the contrary. Look for the radiance behind the mask of every face. Though you may not want to believe it, every other human being is as divine as you are. Rub against fellow creatures of all stripes, shapes, smells, tints. How else will we end the civil wars of the world and inherit a friendly future?
How does one maintain gaiety in a cheerless world?
“The world is on fire, and every solution short of liberation is like trying to whitewash a burning house.” The Buddha said this centuries ago, but it is still true. The cure for the woes of the planet remains perennial: cure men’s souls.
Do what you can. Begin by curbing your sneers and complaints. Heighten your spirits. Celebrate your existence, don’t deplore it. Live in your body, not your mind. Eat more chocolate than beans. Fuck often. Follow your bliss over hill and dale.
Gay soul dances on the grave of the dead serious. Think of yourself as a dolphin child in a sea of light. A dolphin is swift and free and full of humor. A sense of humor is a divine grace. Be generous with joy and juicy with ripening. Keep your soul uncontaminated. Watch out for conformity. Middle-class morality is ever ready to kidnap you. Support erotic workshops, Radical Faerie circles, rainbow gatherings.
Gaiety makes us gods, said Frederick the Great. And love is what enriches gaiety. Nothing works well without love, and anything done without love is irrelevant or drab. Nietzsche called the practice of lovingness “the gay science.”
This part is essential to our souls. Since we have treated it with ruthless contempt, doesn’t that indicate how we regard the whole family of man? Loving the earth is the only way to redeem it. Love is the only solution to every problem. Pity that there isn’t more of it available.
Be not shy of the love you can share with other men. Fear of love is fear of the sublime. Put lovemaking before moneymaking and troublemaking. To be a lover is to practice the major art of life. You must love even if it hurts. It will hurt more if you don’t love.
When love makes the heart sing, nothing exists but courage and trust and the delights of fruitful action. Then you have gaiety of soul.
My “Ode to Gaiety” includes these lines:
Without gaiety freedom is a chastity belt
Without gaiety life is a wooden kimono…
Wrap killjoys in wet blankets
and feed them to the sourpusses…
Long live hilarity euphoria and flumadiddle
Long live gaiety for all the laity.
-James Broughton
(Along with James Broughton the following others are included in this lovely compendium: Will Roscoe, Paul Monette, Richard Isay, Harry Hay, Malcolm Boyd, Andrew Ramer, Ram Das, James Saslow, Ed Steinbrecher, Joseph Kramer, Andrew Harvey, Guy Baldwin, Clyde Hall, Robert Hopcke, Mitch Walker)