Kopkind Colony

CineSLAM lgbtq Short Film Fest, Sat. 4 pm

Late Brunch & Roger Lancaster, Sun. 2 pm

Kopkind is raising the Rainbow flag, literally and figuratively, this Pride Weekend with two sumptuous public events. Be there!

We start off on Saturday, June 27, with our annual CineSLAM, Vermont’s LGBTQ Short Film Festival, at 4 pm at the Latchis Theatre, 50 Main Street in Brattleboro. This year’s selection of national and international films spans genres, subjects and emotions, a kaleidoscopic expression of lgbtq life and experience. There will be comfortable seating and, at intermission, Pride Cake. For tickets, see filmfreeway/cineslam.com.

The next afternoon, Sunday, June 28, we are revisiting a beloved tradition for a new season with an early summer Raising the Rainbow Late Brunch with the extraordinary writer and thinker Roger Lancaster, at Tree Frog Farm, 158 Kopkind Road in Guilford. There will be a yummy spread beginning at 2 pm, followed by a talk on some themes central to Roger’s most recent book about working-class gay life, The Struggle to Be Gay, in Mexico, for Example: ‘the urgency of desire’, the salience of class and material want in the creation of identity, the universal necessity of ‘vistas of freedom’, connection, a better life. The talk to be followed by discussion and birthday cake!

There is no charge for Sunday’s event (donations will be gratefully accepted). People must make a reservation, though, so that we have a count for food. Please reserve by writing to JoAnn Wypijewski at jwyp2000@gmail.com.

Roger Lancaster, a professor of anthropology and cultural studies at George Mason University, is the author of Life Is Hard and Sex Panic and the Punitive State, among other works. His writing is thrilling for its combination of stories, ethnography, historical and political analysis and polemic. In the conclusion of his latest book, he presents the image of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Two-Part Inventions as a metaphor for the way he puts sexual identity and class in conversation — the Rainbow, one might say, and the rainbow, historic symbol of rebels united against kings and capitalist oppressors:

‘On the one hand, I acknowledge the depth and specificity — the authenticity — of gay life, of what people aspire to or refuse when they approach the question of identity, of how gay men desire and love and connect or are frustrated. How could I not? This, the struggle to be gay, is a big part of my life, too, after all. On the other hand, I try to show how the very real dilemmas and partial resolutions — the storylines — of gay life could unfold only at this specific moment, under the social and political-economic conditions, in conversation with the long arcs of other happenings and narratives. Among those immediate material conditions are the speeding-up of capitalism and the intensification of brute exploitation. This, the contemporary class condition of society, furnishes our collective imaginations and sets the horizons of the imaginable.

‘Bach, a master of contrapuntal music, was no stranger to the so-called deceptive cadence, a musical progression in which the dominant chord does not resolve to the tonic chord to give a sense of closure but instead seems to leave things up in the air, suggesting that this is not quite the end of the piece (and sometimes opening the way to lengthy digressions). Many of this book’s chapters come to this sort of open-ended ending … [Here, I] will not close off a set of arguments about the unfinishedness of struggles with a pat ending, a tidy pronouncement on where the human condition is headed, or even a clear delineation of a line of march. The dialectic is not yet played out; we can only mark some of its valences and take stock of our understanding of it. Class struggles surge and retreat; social movements rise, stall, and fall. We can only hazard a few guesses about what forms any of this might take on the near horizon. We are headed for another world, one way or another, but whether the future world will be better or worse than the present one is unclear.

‘It is said that Bach contemplated the human condition, up close and empathically, with “benevolent understanding.” I hope that something similar might be said of the work of this sentimental gay socialist.’

So welcome June! Welcome Pride Month! And welcome all for an insightful, provocative and joyous weekend, Raising the Rainbow!