On learning to embrace failure

Can you tell me more about what Mama Celeste has allowed you to do?

I had performed in New York, I was underaged sneaking into bars using drag as a way to get away with not having a good ID that looked like me. I never cracked the scene there. New York is hard, it’s very much like a ladder that you have to climb. When I moved to the Bay, all that immediately just disappeared. There were, especially when I came into the scene, a lot of amateur nights that had slots for new performers. There was a lot of opportunity to just jump in and fuck around. Being part of that, meeting those people, taught me who I was. So, I feel like everything that I’ve done since is just giving back to that community and that feeling and creating more spaces for that to happen. Something like Oaklash, which is a huge festival, [that] we invite everyone [to] but it’s curated, [is] something to strive for and that was important to me after coming into a scene where there wasn’t anything to strive for beyond reality TV.

I wanted to speak to you because you’re an artist with your own creative practice but you also nurture community with Oaklash and balance a day job as a director of programming at a nonprofit. When I reached out, you mentioned you’re leaving your day job to focus on Oaklash and are in the middle of a career transition. Can you talk a little bit more about that and what’s been going on in your heart and mind right now?

Yeah, I’m figuring out a lot [of answers] to questions [of how to live] for myself right now. I like to say that not every party has to be a non-profit. A lot of people are just throwing parties to pay the rent and afford to live in the Bay Area, it’s fucking expensive. And that’s a totally fair way to operate in nightlife.

Oaklash has always had a mission of providing resources to the city of Oakland and of providing resources to the queer and trans community out here. That was built into the first year of the festival, so it made sense for us to become a nonprofit. But of course, we had no idea what we were doing. I had worked in nonprofits, but I didn’t understand what nonprofit management was and how to grow an organization. We just grew really fast and there were a lot of moments in working with Oaklash where I just sort of had to listen to the tides of change and know when to strike. The nonprofit industrial complex is inherently flawed, but there’s a reason it exists and there’s a way for queer people to use it and reclaim it. That’s what’s happening right now, it’s another wind of change and period of growth for our organization and I just need to listen to it. I’ve invested probably tens of thousands of dollars into this festival myself, not just materials but also my time, in the last eight years.

I’ve always had a full-time day job that let me put my time and energy into other things so I’m really glad I did it that way, but it’s also a time for me as an artist to start paying myself for my labor in this and I think Oaklash has the ability to be a much bigger resource. People learn about [us] and it gets bigger and we have a bigger budget and bigger headliners and bigger stages and I want that. But in terms of growth right now, it’s going back to where we started and going back to listening to the community and seeing what is needed out there.

It’s not like any nonprofit is going to solve these problems, but there’s nothing being done about it. There’s no resources in the city of Oakland to invest in it. The state sends the California Police and the highway patrol to mess up our streets and kick people out of their homes. There’s a lot of bigger structural issues that just aren’t being addressed in my specific community of queer and trans folks working and performing in nightlife. We need resources because I want those people to stay here. I don’t want The Bay to be a place that people come [only] for as long as they can afford to. I want to figure out a bigger ecosystem that we’re trying to build here. I think we’ve done some of that, just teaching people how to do what we do, sharing skills, creating networks beyond the also really important work of creating spaces and events and parties that allow queer and trans people to feel like they can be themselves. Central to what we do is celebrating this community.

How has it felt making the leap of leaving your day job and committing to this?

It’s crazy. I’ve always had that nonprofit full time gig backing me up and [now] it feels very vulnerable. Just like the inconsistency of gig work. I feel like I became an arts administrator in order to do the things that I wanted to do. And in the process, [I’ve] had to sacrifice a little bit of myself as an artist. So [I’m] giving myself that space of building a creative practice into whatever I’m about to do [next]. I have no idea what I’m about to do, I truly have no vision for my next six months and that feels crazy because I’m such an organized person, I’m such a control freak who’s been able to do all these amazing things because I had a vision.

I do know what I want out of this, I know where I want Oaklash to get, but how do I as a person and an artist do this? Because yeah, it requires me having a public persona and putting myself out there more and just being vulnerable in a way that having a separation of my home self versus the public figure that is Mama Celeste has to get blurred a little bit. I have to get more comfortable with that getting blurred in order to really get myself, as an artist, to the work.

You’ve described the concept of the party like it’s an art piece. Can you talk about that more? What are the elements that go into a party that make it an art piece?

That’s been a big reframing for me, especially for applying for grants. That’s probably what you’re hearing, a lot of my grant speak coming out. I’ve had to do a lot of work to convince funders that what we’re doing is art, because it looks frivolous, right? I mean, people [think] they know what drag is, right? Drunken old men wearing frocks, right? And to me it’s really so much more than that, like the community that’s being built, the intention that goes into that kind of space from the sets being built, to the design of the street, to the performances curated, and the order of things, and the pacing of time and space between multiple stages, and where the different vendors are, and the way an audience moves from one space to the next. There’s a level of orchestration that goes into it that’s really a creative process. There’s so much thought work that goes into it.

I think the fact that it is a party doesn’t mean it’s not an art piece and the fact that it is an art piece doesn’t make it not a party. It’s our job to toe that line. One piece of advice that Kochina Rude gave as she was leaving–she used to be on the board of directors at Oaklash–is that Oaklash has to always be cool. If it stops being cool, it stops being what it is. It has to stay cool, and [that means] it needs the voice of that next generation. If I’m going to [become] an old fucking white drag queen, I should not be the person making these decisions, I will not be cool, I’m already kind of not cool. But in order for it to feel like a thing that the community needs, the community has to be the one curating it and deciding what it looks like and telling us what they want. I think year one to where we are now, it’s like one consistent art piece that has grown. It’s the same thing with the same ethos and vibe and has continued to amass people, and our job is to make sure it is as cool as it was year one.

When you’re thinking about putting together a performance or putting together an event, what does the beginning phase look like for you?

One of my biggest pieces of advice for people who are starting parties is to never throw a party by yourself. It’s too much work. It’s exhausting. You never want to be the first one there and the last one out and solving every problem. I’m a really strong believer that everything is better with collaboration. So that’s really what I’m excited about, that’s always been a part of my artistic process, finding collaborators and finding people that I want to do stuff with and then just shooting the shit and then just [making it happen]. My problem is I’m a person that people pitch ideas to, and I make them happen. People approach me with projects [all the] time and I’ve learned to say no. I don’t have a lot of capacity to give to every single project. But I’m excited for that, just opening my arms and waiting to receive. I fully believe that something will approach me that will strike my inspiration.

In terms of performance based work, drag for me used to be a very visual-based thing. I started my practice as a visual artist, I was doing sculpture in school and painting and graphic design and that’s how I got into doing makeup and costumes. But I think what’s exciting me more now in terms of putting together performances is listening to the music and letting the music guide the performance. I mean, drag is really like a remixing of pop culture. It’s like the snake eating itself, it’s taking a pop song and then [turning] it on its head. I’ve been getting more into DJing and being on that end of the party, controlling a room with music, and I think that’s reframed the way I do drag now. My focus is on the music and listening to the source material and turning that on its head.

What does collaboration mean to you? I’m curious who your regular collaborators tend to be and what working with collaborators is like?

Oaklash started with me and Beatrix Lahaine. Beatrix is an Oakland born and bred–emphasis on bred–Mexican drag punk clown performer. Bea was doing what I thought was the first cool drag that I’d seen in Oakland, at least when I came on the scene. She was throwing a party called Tragic Queendom which was more punk, more subversive than what was happening at Club BNB or Club 21. [They] were doing more pageant imperial court drag. Bea was doing all the kind of stuff that I love, and is an amazing artist and amazing convener of people and brings together worlds. But she’s not an admin person, I don’t even show her the spreadsheet. I think my role in the community has become utilizing all this nonprofit administrative high executive function brain that I’ve been blessed with and using that in service of the vision of other artists.

Bea is the north star of Oaklash. All creative decisions, artistic direction, promo performers, everything goes through Bea. But someone’s gotta make that shit happen. It’s just a different role. I’m working on such a bigger framework when I’m putting on something like the festival that I love just handing the curatorial stuff [over] and letting her brain do the part of it and be the artist.

I was collaborating a lot more before the pandemic with an artist named Cash Monet. We did a zine project that turned into a production company and now she’s off on her own. That’s a really strong example of someone who’s similar [to me], she had a photo degree and I had graphic design experience and we were doing all these [projects] and created a production house for queer folks in the Bay Area. [I’ve] missed that level of collaboration and visual art collaboration as well. Nicki Jizz is a big collaborator of mine. Nicki and I throw a party called Rollin’ With the Homos down at the Oakland Township Commons, a roller skating drag disco which is just the most fun that anyone can have in a day. It was a party that we started during the pandemic because the two of us were just hanging out roller skating all the time and we were like, wait a minute, why don’t we just invite literally everyone we know to come hang out with us? Again, it’s those sort of bullshit moments in time, because we fully expected that party to dwindle after bars opened back up and the fad of roller skating died after the pandemic, but it hasn’t. It’s as big as it ever was and the crowds we pull are insane for a monthly public show that happens in a park. I love people who plant those sorts of seeds.

How do you define failure?

Controversial question because I love failure. Truly one of my goals right now in this phase of trying to reinvest in myself as an artist is to go out and create more shitty art.

In the role [I’ve had] as an arts administrator, I have facilitated so much shitty art in the world. And I’m someone who also thinks that 90 percent of art is bad, and it should be! Because 90 percent of the time means that the 10 percent is fucking genius. As I’ve built my public persona and grown my influence here, I’ve gotten more reserved again. Drag taught me to really express myself and the more I was in the public eye, I started to draw myself back in and not put things out publicly.

Maybe I don’t need to put things out publicly, but I want to make more shitty art. I love failure, that’s a huge thing that drag has taught me, to love to fail. Get up on stage and fall. [With] Rolling with the Homos, our joke is that if someone does a cool trick, you clap, but if someone does a cool trick and falls, you clap and you laugh. It’s better, actually, when someone falls. Because it’s what you’re waiting for. It’s like a tightrope walker, you’re waiting for someone to fail. That intensity of, “how is this going to fail?” is actually what makes it so interesting. I want to go out and make more shitty art. Probably a lot of it is not going to see the light of day, and even if it does, I need to be okay with it being cringe and putting myself out there and trying new things. I need to give myself that liberty.