Queer and Mumbling: Fragments of Philosophical Faggotry is an attempt to exorcise a style of language from my writing, hopefully pushing that language to its limit by introducing a kind of dynamics to it through “fragmentation” which is really just the necessary tension and release natural to music. Philosophy is all presence, having to paranoiacally cover up every counter argument, every potential for inconsistency—I just wanted to get that white noise out of my system. When I was a child my father would have me print out every book report, every essay, that I’d ever write, and he would go through them with a red pen and mark all my stylistic mistakes. This was mind-fucking mainly because it was just wasting paper and killing trees. If I’m a mother it comes out through the nonsense of my words, my “motherese,” which is possible regardless of whether or not I actually have ovaries and a womb etc. How are we going to perform our music and poetry when we don’t have access to electrical grids, computer parts, printing equipment, paper, and more importantly food and shelter in the coming collapse? This book is like massaging that last little chunk of my brain, squeezing it until, finally, it turns to that bright bright pink that I want it to.
Yvonne LeBien is a trans poet and performer living in Queens. They have published two books with GenderFail Press, Scores for Performance Poetry and Betraying Authority: Fragments on Queer Art, as well as the poetry book cumflower with Wendy’s Subway. Their music can be found at yvonnelebien.bandcamp.com.
