Ocean Vuong on Beauty and Queerness

Okay, maybe a really difficult and very obvious question.

What is queerness?

I think queerness is the north star of possibility.

And I think as soon as we understand it, it is no longer queer.

So I think for me, I can't move talking about it because I think it is...

It is not a coincidence that a group of people that have been so shunned and rendered useless to the dominant culture, that has been told that they are abject, that they are defiled, that they are criminals, it's not a coincidence that that group of people would then be so focused on beauty and innovation to create a system wherein what is most valuable is what's ahead and never reachable, to center possibility above reality.

And I think to me queerness is something always ahead of the culture.

Queerness is never here, It comes from here.

We are the source of it, but it's never here and we never arrive at it.

It's this thing that we're moving forward towards because we have decided that the world that we live in right now is not enough.

And I think that becomes more than just an ontological question.

It becomes an artistic question.

Queerness taught me that Nothing that was given to me should be what I accept.

Just because the heteronormative system is there doesn't mean I have to say yes to it.

Just because the road is there doesn't mean I have to go straight.

I can jump over the guardrail and wander into the forest.

And when you walk in the forest, you realize, oh gosh, I thought this was a wilderness.

But there are footsteps here.

And it's made by Nan Golden, Peter Hujar, James Baldwin, Judith Butler, Juna Barnes, Emily Dickinson.

I said, oh, I thought I was so alone.

I thought I had to take this big leap of courage to jump off the road.

But there were elders and ancestors who have already made this little path for me.

And so I think it's about this.

To me, queerness at its heart is a vehicle rather than a place.