Throughout the course of their decades-long career, performer, writer, and activist Justin Vivian Bond has been an artistic trailblazer, as well as a vocal advocate for transgender equality and visibility. Their work has taken them from Broadway to Carnegie Hall, from the Ethyl Eichelberger Award to a Lambda Literary Award — among countless other accolades in that time. This past October, they were named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and awarded its prestigious “Genius” grant, which is given to “identify extraordinarily creative individuals with a track record of excellence in a field of scholarship or area of practice, who demonstrate the ability to impact society in significant and beneficial ways through their pioneering work or the rigor of their contributions.”
I spoke to Viv at the end of October as they prepared for their most recent cabaret show, Oh Well, at Joe’s Pub, which ran from November 7-10, an ode to lesbian singer-songwriters like k.d. lang, Joan Armatrading, Janis Ian, the Indigo Girls, — artists Viv has performed and been inspired by throughout their career. This show was also inspired by the most recent Erdem collection and Radclyffe Hall’s famed lesbian text “The Well of Loneliness.”
This interview was conducted prior to the election, but rest assured, they opened their November 8 performance with Fun Boy Three’s “The Lunatics (Have Taken Over the Asylum).” Not lesbians, but obviously relevant! Viv’s next show, Flakes, is a holiday show that will run December 12-22, also at Joe’s Pub.
Here’s Justin Vivian Bond on winning the “Genius” grant, queer artmaking, and glamor as resistance.
What happened when the MacArthur Foundation called?
They had been trying to call me, and I’d been ignoring [laughs] the number because I didn’t recognize it. Finally, I answered very sharply, Hello. They said they were from the MacArthur Foundation and was I in a place where I could talk? I said, I’m driving across this bridge. They said, maybe you should pull over so we can have a discussion. That let me know what direction [the call] might be heading. They called me back and said I was a recipient. I think I sounded very nonplussed because I was just like, “Okay.” They asked if I was surprised. I said I was–I didn’t really think cabaret singers were on their radar. They said that I do much more than that, which was nice of them to say. They asked me if I’d ever considered myself in that arena before. I said I hadn’t really, but Sarah Schulman had been saying I should get a MacArthur, and I think Sarah’s very smart. I always had a chuckle and was very flattered by that, but I never thought it would actually happen.
I had to keep it a secret for over a month–if you’ve seen my shows, you know I don’t really keep secrets. I didn’t tell my best friend because he doesn’t think I can keep secrets [laughs]. I think, to be perfectly honest, he was more impressed I kept that secret for over a month than that I actually got the fellowship. So that was satisfying [laughs]. Since then, it’s been starting to sink in more. A friend of mine said the other night, “Well, girl, you got your Certificate of Authenticity as a genius!” [laughs] That made me laugh, I’m like somebody in the Franklin Mint. It’s been endlessly amusing to be categorized as a genius. What has sunk in is how happy people seem to be for me. They seem genuinely so pleased and really believe I deserve this, that I earned it. I’ve been filled with this incredible warmth and appreciation for the support that people have given me over the last 30 years of my career. It’s put me in a very good mood…for me.
How do you think about it beyond the support of others?
I have very successful friends who are way more famous than I. They’re there for two reasons: one, they work incredibly hard; and two, they have, for the most part, extremely healthy egos or extremely needy egos [laughs]. I work very hard, and I feel like I have a healthy ego, but not an extremely healthy ego. So I’m just very satisfied with where I am in my career. I had a lot of goals I wanted to achieve: to perform off-Broadway, and I did with Kiki and Herb, and then I did other off-Broadway shows; to perform on Broadway and at Carnegie Hall. All of those things happened. I have this wonderful, 25-year long relationship with Joe’s Pub, and that’s where I get my joy, performing there, singing my songs. People say, now that you’ve won this grant and you can do anything, what do you want to do? I just say, well, if I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do already, I’d be doing something else [laughs]. But walking to work, performing, coming home and going to bed, that’s really a terrific lifestyle, and then going to my house upstate to get away. As a 61-year-old, it’s been weighing on my mind as I get older, what’s going to happen if for some reason I can’t sing or need to stop working. I’m so grateful because now I can keep working as long as I want, but if I have to stop, I am not completely terrified of falling into an abyss and living on the sidewalk in a cardboard box, which seemed very possible to me, until, you know, last month [laughs].
Has winning affected the way you view your work?
[Starting my career,] I saw that the people I admired most were extraordinarily unique–the best way to emulate them was not to copy them, but to become thoroughly and genuinely myself. By being myself, telling my stories, singing the songs of my feelings and my life, I could never be accused of being derivative or copying anybody. Having my voice acknowledged [by the MacArthur Foundation]–and I think when they said it’s more than you just being a cabaret singer, I think they were talking about my visual art, my writing, and the way I’ve hopefully influenced other people to find their authenticity. That might come with time.
When I’ve been on stage since the announcement, I’ve felt somewhat self-conscious that people are expecting me to be a genius. I’ve always banked on the fact that I can act like a complete idiot and they’ll be fine with that. I have to get over that. Once the audience laughs, I feel like that anticipatory bubble has burst, and I can go back to being myself. That’s part of the strength of how I perform. I try to address whatever’s going on in the present. I’m not stuck to some old script. I can tell people how I feel and what I think, and then they can just let it go. That’s the benefit of being a genius [laughs]. It gives me something else in my sewing kit to stitch with when I’m on stage, which is fun.
I also realized over the years I’ve been offered residencies in very prestigious places and had to say no because I didn’t think I could afford to take the time off to let my mind expand, contemplate new ideas, create things. Hopefully I’ll be offered some opportunities like that going forward and be able to accept them. I think that’d be a great way to meet and collaborate with other artists. The foundation was on my radar, but it wasn’t until some of my peers received it that I thought, well, it’s quite possible I could get it. One recipient, Jacqueline Woodson, and I went to college together. I’ve admired her since then. I guess they told some of the other past grantees who were in the upcoming class. She sent me a message and I was feeling very anxious. I wrote her about it, and she sent me this reassuring message about how it had been such a positive thing in her life. It put me at ease.
What made you anxious?
They said we tell you a month in advance so you can get yourself mentally prepared because this is a life-changing situation, and a lot of people are going to know about it. I liked my life. I didn’t want it to change that much. Also, I do feel there are certain situations people think change your life but don’t. For example, Kiki and Herb had a huge profile in The New Yorker many years ago. That didn’t change my life. And when my autobiography came out, I had another huge profile in The New Yorker. That didn’t change my life. I starred, directed, and wrote a show that was nominated for a Tony on Broadway. That didn’t change my life. I was in a film that didn’t change my life. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I am an extremely out queer person, and my art is based on that. The experiences of being trans, of being queer, are what I use as inspiration for a lot of my work, and why I feel my community has been so vocal and supportive about me receiving this award. I like doing what I do. I have a successful career. I make enough money to survive. Now I’ve got this little nest egg to retire on. I don’t want to be more famous.
There’s enough that separates me from other people that I have to overcome in order to be intimate with people that it adds just one more thing to make me exceptional. I don’t always want to be exceptional. Sometimes I just want to be a part of a group, to feel at home and like everybody else. The luxury of normality, as I call it. I was worried about that, but I’ve come to appreciate how it’s actually been a very warming experience. My M.O. has always been, keep it pretty, keep it shallow, keep it moving. I don’t really see that changing. I think that’s a powerful position to be in–what I have experienced in my life is that as queer people, we have discovered every kind of work-around in order to thrive and be ourselves. Part of that is being able to keep it shallow, keep it pretty, and keep it moving. So this is a very solid thing, this MacArthur Fellowship, which is wonderful, and it is not shallow. It’s literally saying that I’m not shallow, but as a strategy, it seems to work. I have every intention of continuing to keep it pretty, keep it shallow, and keep it moving.
What do you feel is the significance of winning an award like this in our current cultural moment?
I live in a very privileged bubble, in New York City. There’s support for queer artists here. When I see what’s on the news [laughs], and then I’m told half of the country agrees or isn’t bothered by it, that’s a sobering thing. The hatred and vitriol directed at our community in the last few years feels a lot like the 80s and 90s, and yet we’ve achieved so much. I see younger people having opportunities I never imagined I’d have as a trans person. It’s confusing, actually, but hopefully things like this make a difference to other people, to encourage young people to just keep going. This is what I’ve considered myself to be doing — holding space for people coming up behind me, so they have the opportunity to continue making progress, which I feel I have made in my life, and they’ll continue the progress. It’s not a straight line. It’s just a struggle that never ends.
I’ve heard you say multiple times that glamor is resistance. What does that mean to you now, especially after having won this grant?
To be fair, Kenny Mellman wrote that in a poem many years ago, and he said, that’s your line, you take it. I say in a joking tone something that’s actually very real, that part of what has kept me going and performing, that motivates so many of my choices is pure vanity [laughs].
David Wojnarowicz said many years ago — I’m paraphrasing — that part of why people and artists struggled so much during the AIDS years was to get past the hatred, the horrors of the world, to go back to what we do best and love doing, which is creating beauty and creating joy. You can’t take creating beauty and joy for granted. There is so much ugliness in the world. So many people threatened by beauty and joy can’t create either. The easiest, cheapest way to feel powerful is to destroy, which is the perfect example of Trump and his cadre of fascists. That’s the only way they have power–the only thing they can do is to tear things down because they’re incapable of making anything beautiful, of having ideas that elevate anybody. Our job is to resist that by constantly doing what we do, which is fighting our way to beauty.
