A GIFT FROM SANTA BY JOHN REMINGTON
An interesting and very enjoyable story. What started out as a fun lark slowly developed and matured and became more serious. Like Peter Pan, though, I couldn't help but feel a little sceptical about this growing up business.
Santa spoke a lot of sense—sex and literature are joined at the nib—but I’m not sure about this one: “while an artist need not pursue an exclusively homosexual lifestyle to be effective, any repression of the homosexual component could seriously cripple his creative impulse.”
The link between homosexuality and art is undeniable, but the relationship is as hard to pin down as an Emerson essay. No culture has worked harder to repress homosexuality than the West, and it hasn’t prevented an impressive artistic legacy. In our day we’ve seen a great big friendly welcome-mat put out for the androphile homosexual. It has certainly not provoked an efflorescence of artistic genius. Pete Buttigiegs by the score but no Donatellos or Leonardos.
I sometimes wonder if a distinction can be made between the boysexual and the gay, when it comes to art. The boysexual is more creatively productive when operating in a tolerant culture, such as ancient Athens; the gay man is more creatively productive when coping with rigorous repression.
The molly, grandmother to today’s gay, was forged in the severely homo-repressive London of the early eighteenth century. Art for the molly was an important tool for survival, nurtured amongst underground networks of the like-minded. Pederasty, as an age-old human and pre-human institution, produced its best when the cultural parameters were set to encourage its better angels, when it was in tune with the zeitgeist. Suppressing pederasty doesn’t create close-knit underground communities, it denatures the energetic bond, splits man from boy, dries up the wells of creativity and leaves nought but ashes behind.
So right now we have a perfect storm of sterility.
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All the pics of the Vienna Boys' Choir are cool. But I couldn't help noticing -- there doesn't appear to be a single girl in any of 'em. Weird. Was this a thing?
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