George Bernard Shaw once said that the two tragedies in life are to lose your heart’s desire, and the other is to gain it.  I think that the allure of utopias is their very intangibility and unattainability. Propped up by the infrastructure of unspoken fantasy, the dream of utopia has been seeded as a quest for guaranteed happiness.   I’ve been thinking a lot about happiness recently and how a queer happiness can be constructed (or deconstructed?).  In Sara Ahmed’s writing, in The Promise of Happiness, she notes there are coercive social scripts that “align bodies with what is already lined up” (2010, p.91).  She posits that heterosexual love assumes the cultural and social signifier of life’s happy ending, and therefore becomes a purpose or drive. 

Audio from Paris is Burning can be heard about 6 minutes in, citing Venus Xtravaganza and her construction of a personal utopia. Unlike Venus, I’m not sure if I believe in the same social institutions that she does as a purpose or drive in life.  Furthermore,  I’m ambivalent towards the prospect of any script in life that can guarantee personal happiness.  And, for me, that’s ok.  Venus’s musings made me think of Andrea Long Chu’s piece, My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy, in which she refuses the concept of transition as an inherent promise of happiness, but instead argues that the happiness of it is bound up with the agency and freedom to do so. 

“Left to their own devices, people will rarely pursue what makes them feel good in the long term. Desire and happiness are independent agents.”   

I was also thinking of how the subtle erosions in landscapes caused by either human walking or animal traffic are known colloquially as “desire paths,” and how these geographical lines generate purpose and meaning through desire.  But also how these lines reveal a potential for happiness through deviation from what is prescribed. And lastly, as I reflect upon my thesis (finished some months ago) on finding “the utopian” within nightlife and rave culture, I think it bears repeating here: the word itself stems from the Greek word “ou-topos,” which means “no-place.”  So, if there is no utopia to arrive at with no explicit moment of revelation, then maybe utopia is instead just the matter of free choice of desire.

VENUS - Jack Scollard

1- Denki Groove - Niji (Paul van Dyk's Pot Of Gold Remix)
2-the irresistible force - space is the place 
3-Drum Club - U Make Me Feel So Good
4-Holy House - The Power Of Love 
5-the secrets of meditation b1 trancesetters
6-HERBAL INFUSION - The Hunter [Herbal Club Mix]
7-Lord Of The Drums ‎– Slept 2 Gether 
8-Loners Crazyness - Drifting 
9-Ephedra - Eve (Ceres Mix)
10-Tim Ogood - Mahalonovis
11Mega Mind - Transconnecting
12-Shi-Take - Don't Look Back In Anger (Road Rash Club)
13-Outdance - Move Your Tetas 
14-Drop it-Scoop

VENUS - Jack Scollard

Emerge

Related tracks