1000 Beautiful Things:

a series of recommendations to beautify your queer life.

“Is there anything you’d like to listen to?”

Most of my photo sessions begin with this question, and it proves time and time again to be a difficult one to answer. If the model is unsure, they may tell me to choose something myself, and I usually draw a blank. It is such a big question for me. What do I want to listen to? 

I sometimes do that RuPaul thing where I drop references that are totally lost on the younger models. Actually, as a Gen Xer, a lot of Ru’s references are lost on me, but some of them are really important to queer history and so I’m happy to explore them. This is how I found Paris Is Burning after all. I don’t feel compelled to endlessly quote Mommy Dearest, but I think every living being should know the film Serial Mom. Generational wisdom! Anyhow, my taste rarely aligns with icons of gay culture, unless a Byzantine icon counts (or a Madonna or Magdalene from any era or medium). My taste has been cultivated through exposure to less popular things. Bjork is my Ride or Die. Kate Bush is Mother. Laurie Anderson slays. In other words, I have excellent taste, thankyouverymuch, but I do not think it is superior- although…. I just think there are things people may like if they were exposed to them. And there are indeed things I believe you should like, just because they expand upon the expected. I’m indignant about gays who don’t know Perfume Genius or Moses Sumney. I’m incredulous about alt-presenting queers who only listen to the most basic pop.  How groundbreaking to be a gay Swiftie in 2024.

All snark aside, I hope you enjoy this series. I’ll write about books, movies, music, fashion and more. High and low, new and old. In truth, I’m writing these for myself. As the world gets darker I have shut out a lot of the things I have always found to be beautiful. I stopped listening to Arvo Part when my hearing loss happened. I stopped watching certain movies when Trump was elected. I don’t seem to want to mix my beauty with the ugliness around me so I do this bazaar self-punishing where I trade beauty for doom scrolling. Lately I find that my passions are reawakening, and I need to feed them with beauty in order to remember what is worth fighting for. 

“I never want to close my eyes again.” Annie Lennox

This post is mostly an introduction to the series, but I will make my first recommendation here. The namesake of this series is A Thousand Beautiful Things, a gorgeous song by Annie Lenox from her 2003 Grammy nominated album Bare. Annie’s voice is among the most distinctive in pop, with a tone that is velvety and strong and a whole vibe unto itself. She is probably best known for her work with the Eurythmics in the 80s. I remember that a lot of American media spoke pejoratively about Annie’s androgyny, and for me this added a sense of danger and intrigue to dark and moody hits like Here Comes the Rain Again. Her solo work stood out in a 90s dominated by straight men yelling, when volume was valued over vibration, and her later work has matured without falling into the Adult Contemporary ditch where artists like Sting have found themselves. She was cool then, and has remained so by staying the same as she ever was. I want to shout out the fact that she is bravely, passionately and relentlessly speaking about the genocide in Gaza; follow her IG and ask where is everyone else? My selections in this series will be about aesthetics, not politics, but Annie Lennox’s powerful voice cannot be separated from the way she chooses to use it as a mature, yes, Icon.