Saul-Yuan Calvillo and Vei Darling

Recorded September 12, 2019 Archived September 17, 2019 02:39:29
0:00 / 0:00
Id: dde001624

Description

Saul-Yuan Calvillo (25) and their colleague and friend, Vei Darling (24), talk about life and communities in New York, queerness, and the city's influence on identity.

Subject Log / Time Code

VD & SYC discuss witch vs. alien culture on the West vs. East Coasts, the alien elements of queer culture, their childhoods, and digital natives.
SYC & VD talk about New York Fashion Week, its impact on people and their identities, fast fashion, and the exploitation and fetishization of artists.
VD & SYC discuss colonialism and what "American" is. VD & SYC discuss sex worker culture and the campiness of holidays.
VD & SYC reflect on the connection between femininity and death, queer spaces in New York, and the communities they could find in New York vs. where they grew up.
SYC & VD reflect on their hopes and wishes for their communities, especially the queer community.

Participants

  • Saul-Yuan Calvillo
  • Vei Darling

Recording Locations

Playground Annex

Venue / Recording Kit

Partnership Type

Outreach

Places


Transcript

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00:04 Hello. I'm so we'll even calvillo. I'm 26 years old and today is September 12th, 2019. We're here at playground coffee shop in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, and I'm here with my colleague and friend V.

00:24 It's September 12th, 2018. We are playground coffee shop and I am also with my friend and co-worker. So how's it going? How is going to be my question to you? It's going it's actually today has been a really good day. I was telling Edward like today is just like a really good day. Yeah, I kind of feel that young and I woke up really late today, but there is just like some weird energy in the air that was kind of like he's actually going to be pretty decent, you know, even though it's going to be it's all raining in like a dreary right now outside. Are you more like a sunny weather kind of person? I'm a mix. I mean, I love the sunny weather just cuz it's in my system because I grew up in California. But I mean, there's a Certain Romance to this especially in New York in the colors that pulls out with these blues and I always feel like

01:24 Their brains out. It's like it makes the world so contrasty and Sue The Greenery to stands out against everything and I really appreciated that when I'd like when I was in high school, I was just like go on walks 4 miles for like exercise and I didn't like it became part of my meditation practice, but where I grew up is very nice to be like farmland. And so it's very like lots of cheese or is a forest near my house, but it was just so beautiful and it felt he'll like things were supposed to be for me. So I really love this weather. I'm not meme that's like everybody else is crying cuz it's like Summer's over and I'm just like stirring a cauldron true that which weather coming.

02:24 I feel like the West Coast when I was there. I felt so much more of an alien energy. I could see that I think it comes from the deserts that deserted Ness, but there is a go with you cuz I mean in San Francisco when I looked at the community there is huge and everyone comes from all over just to come to the Area 52 it to ya really dreamy. I'm fascinated by Lake all of the lake imagery of geckos icy lake on the west coast and I guess yeah, it is definitely because of his dad, but then also I think a lot about the indigenous cultures stories like they're Legends why I prefer to call him stories actually the stories that they told about Lake aliens essentially and Lake I guess any

03:21 Angels would be aliens. They would be extraterrestrials books true demons are extraterrestrials as well. Literally a moon rock is an extraterrestrial. It's just not the same sentences us but like, how do you do you feel like that's at all impacted you and like anyway, so extraterrestrial design or like the alien culture. I just don't feel like there is much of an alien culture in on the East Coast.

03:55 It seems like much more of a West Coast thing.

04:03 I guess so. I mean I haven't looked on the East Coast long enough to really survey a proper kind of conclusion to that.

04:13 Alienation type of vibe but it feels more industrial. I don't know its internal in like isolation forgettable. I mean, that's literally ad.

04:33 A lot of ideas like a lot of Freudian Theory and in my phone class we watched psycho yesterday, which is my first time watching it. There's no wrong time to watch exactly end.

04:50 Just this idea of like isolation isolation itself Trove Norman mad, but like the death of his mother when she couldn't handle but like I feel like New York is so much more of Lake you see that we are truly social animals. And so who's the top of the pyramid and a social animal hierarchy the sociopath and that's how you have Lake American Psycho and like stuff happening out here. I don't know where the murderers are there closer than you think they're murder is more Insidious and that's why it's a very slow burning genocide as opposed to Lake.

05:37 It's going to leak kill you today, you know.

05:49 Kind of on the subtopic of it cuz earlier before we were talking about queerness and I want to ask me about alienation me lay my head. I was thinking about like queerness as being like alienation are being alien visualized in a creative sort of way. It's more kind of alienate like alien like the early 2000s kind of like futuristic. Yeah, but now we're kind of adding color to a kind of vibe early like computer like graphic and it's really been programmed into us through media that like that is what the future supposed to look like. So I feel like we're also acting out like our childhoods of seeing play Britney Spears in like latex and like I definitely dress like a Spice Girl Like, New York.

06:49 Did uni. I like definitely dressed like Daria like I straight and I remember washing it on MTV when I was like 4 cuz my siblings are like Mad older and leg schoolgirl skirt check oversized sweater. Check military jacket check huge Lake glasses check and one day. I look in the mirror and I'm like you I'm really tired right now. I think a lot of it has to do with that. But then I also just feel like we are very alien in the way that we interact with the world even with the Jenna which is next which is coming up right now. I'll just right before I'm excited to see what they do though. They're already doing so many amazing things. I know it puts a lot of pressure on us, but we

07:49 We are the Trailblazers just like Gen X are like led us to this place. Like the MTV generation is the reason why I am the person I am like that.

08:01 Access to media and that way change the world in Lake my I'm your digital native, right? I'm a digital native, but my sister who's 9 years older than me is not a digital native league. Would you want explain what that means to be? So it digital native is somebody who was born in the time of Technology like having information technology. So we eat. There's never been a time where we didn't have cell phones or like if we did we it didn't actually impact us relief or like specifically computers and the internet and so like our parents and our grandparents are definitely not digital native Gen X, they're not but we are and Lake it's really mind-boggling to watch my niece who's 9 years younger than me and her interactions with Lake media and like internet. She's like this amazing like she can do graphic design like on her phone with her finger and she's really good at it.

09:01 Route to see how to use like iPhone in the computer so easily but it's also weird what they're watching. Like my nephew has been watching like gameplay videos.

09:11 Remain, everything is gave him I gave have you played any of these games that my sister is like and now he has and I'm like, all right. All right all to Lake watch people play with toys other people play with toys. I guess it could be like a manifestation kind of thing because like cribs was a big deal. Why do I need to see what you're doing in your Rich fancy house? I'm going to play this game. And when I play it I'm going to know how to do everything. I wonder if that's going to be a thing. I feel like a lot of these like the generations that are coming more and more into themselves. I feel like there's only kind of topping out of it. I think so but yeah, I like when you're born into and you had it since as early as you can remember, it's like yeah and for us it is because I mean, we had a good couple of years or we didn't have a screen to like play with like we actually had to

10:11 Yeah, I feel like even when I got no I definitely stopped going outside more Lake. Once the iPhone came out and Lake once they started having leg and internet a real creating my internet identity and I would go outside all the time as a kid, but I still very much was on the computer if I was inside, but I think that's also just because there's a level of Lake immaturity associated with Lake being outside and just exploring outside for no good reason when you get older and less you're like shaking when we we were introduced to like my space, which is one of the first kind of things before Instagram and all of us that are out our age or like maybe one or two years behind like they all talk about it talk about it. Like also are most people are generally at like most of our generation generally have an idea of how to approach Lake how to code cuz I mean that literally we would be

11:11 Working hours as making your own profile xanga. I remember I had a friend put me on to xanga in lake fourth grade. She's dating an older guy. He wasn't 6th grade. They may not sure if you ever think about you you put it on to xanga and Lake.

11:37 Blogspot StumbleUpon addictive it was so do you remember what is that app called that like they try to make it like all this is going to be the next Tumblr and then like everyone downloaded it and it's like no one ever usually have to be invited to eye thing being this cool space is like it's free, you know, and everyone has like access to one of exclusivity to just being able to find certain things.

12:37 I mean we can talk about Cloud we can talk about the New York Fashion Week.

12:48 Party, always thought you did, you know someone I guess he got there pretty late at another level. It was just like I missed the DJ that I really wanted to see the DJ who was playing was not like

13:04 My personal so I'm never out that lately. She left really late and I like to be home at the time that we were leaving and it is sending out but honestly feel like the vibe is dead on Lake New York Fashion Week and it's been dying for a while. I'll say that I just started at Hunter and leg that room that's been where my focus has been and leek think I have my priorities. Literally I saw so many kids about like we're clearly art students just like trying their best to get on the list or like weasel her way into like the after Cloud hanging out when you're young and you live in New York that Spirit tickets Lake accessing that world and Sleek, but that's when you're young over. This is the issue that people don't grow out of Lake being that young and leak seeking things and it

14:04 Entertaining things requiring things through more mature means they stay operating in that space cuz it's like so it works for me then if it's not working at this moment then fuck that person. Is it actually maybe fuck you? I mean valid I feel like it's also feeding on all these kids like still trying to like find their identities and they feel like if I go into this like a very popular like after party or events like this is where I'll find my people in like this must be the thing that I need to do because like I'm an art student like these are all our people these are like some famous people that are here to like I need to be yeah, but what is the quality of a lot of those people and that's a thing?

14:51 Is literally not important. This is a

15:00 As myself just like in my life practice week my creative expression in my expression of self very much takes place through my clothes and leg. I value it so much but it's not a fashion industry of fashion is not necessary know another way more of Lake a fuck you too common people but it really hit me until you just said that cuz I mean, they're the ones that determine its like all we do these twice a year at the fashion shows and like that's the only time that you can showcase your stuff and blah blah blah granted. There are people that are doing it outside of that realm. It's also been linked now, there are so many different fashion spring-summer resort.

16:00 Designers are exhausted by it like that all the time. What is the quality of your work going to be when you have to live up to these standards? And also how much money is needed to perpetuate that conversation about the money and it makes fast fashion worse.

16:21 Common people that's disastrous like literally for the planet for the environment. It's just for like 1 week of just like one week for a show that last like 15 minutes. That's the guy puts money going to be tonight. I do not have it goes to a lot of the kids that really need it. I was talking to his and not about it cuz my big issue is a lot of hypocrisy with like a lot of friends are like friends that are queer or friends that are part of a minority group. It's just

16:54 They're working for these companies and think that's great like that is like helping cause a little bit of change but then they go in like a star friends to help them for these projects and they're just like, oh it's an unpaid internship or we can pay you or Bubba Bubba blah and it's just like that's not helping the cause at all. Like that is pure hypocrisy like the whole purpose is to kind of level everyone up. It's like it's a stupid phone thing. It's just like why is what is what's the word?

17:24 I'll have it on the tip of my tongue accessibility now.

17:31 Like the prophet instead of like money pop at the giving them a social thing right now to see if I can maybe barter some things as social currency like yeah, you can do my hair. That's like if prostitution that's real now being in spaces where like I'm literally giving so much of myself and it's very sacred to me and important to me but being in spaces where it's like a party like you're not respecting the work that I'm doing you are just like wanting me to give so much like this very intimate part of myself to you for fun. And it feels like probably like I'm prostituting myself physically exhausted them to their just like it's to this practice that is like generally done in the more kind of private space or in the more kind.

18:30 Intimate space and bring it out to the public in this kind of just very it's just very not show me. I don't know that everyone it's very much other from Modern Western culture did not at all because they like

18:58 As they said it is sacred to me. It's like literally my life's work and most importantly there's no V without my practice. You know what I mean?

19:11 Art history. I don't remember exact. I think it was like the Victorian. Or like right around the Victorian. Around the time of Latham. Even if you are a ballet dancer, you were considered on the level of a prostitute that you did with your body to make means like that was considered prostitution and I think about that now and how we don't really think that way now and how we shouldn't because it's stupid and I mean, honestly that time. Was obviously very very sexually repressed. It's like characteristic of that time. And buttoned-up we talked about this and I do love the Victorian area Les kerras fashion, but

20:02 Yes, that is what I kind of see this as to and like the entertainment industry in general being just like you are pimping yourself out like how they keep artist with just enough money to maintain image and comfort so that they'll keep great lake on that rat race, but not enough money that they'll ever stop touring capitalism and that's like and now we have social capital and that goes back to like the murderer thing. It's like here it's mental isolation. Like there were in a city where there are way too many people and yet we feel so alone. Oh, yeah, that's like and if you don't kill yourself and you're going to do something which is just ridiculous again, it's just kind of like why am I feeling this way? Cuz it's the pressure is this is miserable pressure that's on me that I want to ask you but I really can't cuz especially if you're with

21:02 Not industry you really can't get away with it and everything here is transactional and that's not how life Works life is just like it's not. Okay. So life-and-death. It's just like No Life Is Life Death is death those two things are mutually exclusive but also like overlap and he's just how Lake that's how existence works. It's very much like you start to really really qualify yourself and quantify yourself and like

21:35 Put yourself into a position of Lake. This is like you value yourself and you're always devaluing yourself. If you're setting those kinds of standards for yourself. Anyway until you can only take so much. You can't keep a straight like medium of like confidence in like Assurance of what you're doing or where you're going especially here worth constantly shifting in the fashion industry. It's like ages of thing to if you are over 25, like that's allegedly done for you to just kind of relaxing now, but exactly which is not a thing anymore being a model career is not really a thing everyone hear it does it for like 5 minutes and then they're done. I mean, it's good to get yourself out there for sure and like people know about you get paid more if you do other things with a viable career option everyone knows that and that's why Lake Mary Rockstar.

22:35 DJ exactly toxic youth culture where that's what we live in is a toxic use cold. I mean America's super young to end like this is very young colonialism is literally a Cancer and it's like maybe it was colonialism. Yeah. I mean, let's talk about that though because people like talk about the pilgrims and

23:17 Yo, it's like you don't need to feel bad for them favorite like trying to escape persecution. But like for what why did they hate them in Europe? Because I literally throw history look at everything that happened here. They burned women for being intelligent.

23:41 Grateful Dead backstabbed a bunch of brown folk who are giving them everything just because they're just like you're naked because you're doing

23:51 And that's a problem to me understand like the infinite it always gets back to that issues. Like when we forget that like that's our reality.

24:06 Infinity and it's like this whole mentality that has swept the world because like whiteness is ideological. It's not actually ethnic the world from this very small group of people that now are subservient to this culture. That's not even necessarily their culture because American culturing Supreme whatever American culture is not something I've been thinking about a lot lately to just like what is American there's no such thing as appropriate crashing Quest. It's Tabu if a culture of America like

24:56 Represents how I feel about America in what way what's a metaphor?

25:07 I was a kid. I watched a documentary on VH1 of Jenna Jameson Stars other than Lake Ron Jeremy pinky is another one there lots of them, but I watched it and it seems really fun and I was like I want to do that.

25:32 Okay, I just always been attracted to Lake like this fairy Las Vegas, like one neon light stripper stripper culture or sex working culture. I guess like I saw show girls at a very young age on VH1, you can see that they had so many stripper stores on Lake Hollywood Boulevard, and I just I know a lot of people hate Hollywood Boulevard by actually really loved it. It scampi pasta thing at the camp we live for the camp.

26:16 I know you don't act like no dude, really really all the Puritans were just very surprised whole College course in the making that.

26:41 Chris some people call Halloween gay Christmas and the sky was like but Christmas is already really gay and then I thought about it and it's like every holiday that we celebrate like the way that we celebrate it is very like I'm like as a queer person. I'm receiving this as gay or like Christmas is gay because it's campy as fuck and it has to be because it's such a Cash Cow Lake appeal to our most childlike mind and children to indoctrinate them run into the holiday and also into spending like we celebrate all of these things like this very bright colors, there's tons of candy and sweets and lake and Lake, isn't it gorgeous playing I love it.

27:33 They've got my Halloween. Yeah. Oh my God, I can't wait to see you two things together. What are you going to be? I'm still trying to figure it out. I need to go through like my list of like film characters that I want to get inspiration from. I've never done so dry before, so maybe I'll do that like a b q I could eat you up.

28:19 But the 80s would be a good time. To look at because your hair is very like a lot of women had like haircuts Lake have a lot of options with my hair right now. It's like that's all we were already listening almost almost on the point of life Sharon like at 88th, and she was wearing that like dominatrix outfit.

28:44 Right. Oh my God, I love share and then I've liked my mental image. I tried to picture share and then it turned to Elvira and that's all I have. No no, no, no virus that is always been an icon to me. And whenever people tell me that I look like Anjelica Huston. I cry little bit on the inside. There's one particular photoshoot that you did that. Everyone always tells me and they're just like this looks like you because she had like full like kind of like it like face paints and she had like his twenties haircut very often. I like gel my hair back into a kind of like a 20s credible. Yeah, so I would definitely want to be like if I'm going to be compared to her Yeah Yeah Yeahs II wasn't at the two of them in know it was Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her.

29:44 We have to watch it. I need to watch that Robert zemeckis directed brookheimer. I don't know either way. It's incredible my residency last year was called that's what comes her because it was inspired by the I feel like death and femininity are two of the lake big enemies within Blake the current Paradigm. We live in a society like death in femininity and like how they overlap with one another and like the more you choose to put yourself to align yourself with femininity. The more likely you are to die.

30:28 Or be like really real that's actually that's another thing. I've been thinking about a lot lately, especially when I was living in before. I was kind of like border Ridgewood in Lake Bushwick and prior to moving the kitchen orcas dressing kind of like more like feminine and

30:52 As well take a little sketched out just like walking around cuz I would get like a few things that to me here and there within walking down the one street that lived on a particular. I had a lot of guys just kind of like things should to me at one point one night where I can about the screen cuz I was just like, okay, I don't really feel saved. So definitely has a blade of notice of kind of been driving back from it kind of a standardized normal like what it is to be more feminine like walking in heels or like wearing lipstick. But if I have been thinking more like also it's growing my hair out. I'm just like this on me and like it just doesn't make sense cuz I'm like I could still

31:25 Identify as kind of more feminine aspect you just wish you were here just like not even dressing that way and it's just interesting. It's been like a very like constant like battle within my brain works. Just like how do I do this?

31:42 To make myself comfortable but also for safety purposes NE City NE City in these times are people are safe to take pocket bike turbo for if anything happen like we have someone out there, but that doesn't mean that there are exactly exactly where Donald Trump supporters who live in the city immediately. The next day after Trump was elected. There were hate crimes like I don't even think we're right here Staten Island Long Island, you know, I definitely feel like this is like the mecca for people like us so because latex dress not so much.

32:42 About Lake being in New York per se because I could find something that makes me happy anywhere. It's about the community and having food like I can just go out and like fine people who like identify similarly to me without having to try all that hard where I was like growing up in Germantown, Maryland Gomery County, Maryland, Moco people were very I didn't all of my friends are like me in some aspects but none of them are like me and the way that my friends here are like me in every aspect like me enough that I still fuk with them because I will always remember the rest of my life. Yes. Yes.

33:33 I don't know. It's so unlikely that if we met now that some of them that we would be friends or that Lake.

33:41 We would even ever be with one another except Lake in the train station queerness around like in San Diego. We have an area called Hillcrest and that's kind of like took wait. It's like the Castro in San Francisco is like a gay district, but it's more it's even more nice and it's very white very like cisnormative. I never really had access to a growing up and it just like I never Associated to it cuz it's literally just like a bunch of like white mask men in like a few lesbians like here and there but there is never anything like in between or like anything that I really identified with and I was just like what the hell is that? Sounds like the dream of a white man his silly live in a town with only other white men and then League

34:29 I mean patriarchy and Lakehead Patriot. He's very homoerotic. Yes. Why is that like the ones who are like super homophobic realize like that's what your dream looks like actually Scratch by Dave Chappelle. He finds Clayton Bigsby is a black guy who is also a klansman cuz I remember that he was a klansman and so then they are like take off your hood and he's like, okay why not and his friend was like no don't take it off and he's like no I'm going to take it off and he pulls it off and someone in the crowd like they're all like, oh my God, and someone's head explode. I feel like that would be the exact.

35:29 Same thing if you show them if they really like you were asking them like what do you want out of your town and then like they get a list and then you show them and it's like this is what it is and it's just a bunch of gay white cyst is around going to Fire Island lot of fans out there this year. I mean what time all these things I guess but I don't know. I feel like

36:03 We also need to be we should also focus on like reading like our own kind of spaces. So in our last few minutes, I wanted to ask to Lake. What do you want to like just like what is One Direction that you see the queer Community going in right now and Lake what is one wish that you have for just like if someone came up and asked you for a wish anyting where is it going right now is honestly very hopeful I'm seeing a lot more fighting a lot more fighting in a lot more people being Unapologetic and more.

37:03 People coming together to really take care of the communities and it's really not focusing with helping it on the outside just like staying with it. And cuz honestly, that's something that really needs to happen right now. Yeah for sure in one wish I would have is just like a little bit more.

37:23 What's the word a little bit more unifying? Cuz another thing that has come with these times has been a little bit more kind of a segregation within the communities and we a creepy kind of like sub-sector of like colonialism because it's now like we're kind of targeting one another because of what's Happening from the oppression and that's why identity politics exist, but I want to drive that back to you too, though. Yeah. Unity is always my thing. I'm doing this project called my three wishes when they ask people what just for three wishes can be anything and keep we've been like I do want to say I feel like it's selfish and say cat doesn't matter. It's just your heart and you know, but I just want to know what Blake like if we can figure out

38:23 But everyone's wishes are in like, how can we do this? You know, how can we I want to help people turn their wishes into reality project and I've been thinking a lot about what my wishes are and so

38:44 The resources like unlimited access to an ability to utilize resources and I think it's a true important to say like resources and not money cuz I don't actually need money. No, I just need it to be given to me in the way that I need to do it to use it. If you want to give me a factory. I'll take that. You don't need to give if it's like, oh, I do want to give you money, but I want to give you like this. Like if I were you I would prefer a lot of people have that trip up with manifestations. It's like manifest resources.

39:31 We need Reese the revolution needs resources. And that's just what it comes down to I see it going in a very positive place. It's very beautiful. But thank you so much for sharing. This conversation is always a pleasure.