years flow by like water
wo chan
“Years Flow By Like Water” by Anita Mui is a digital drag act I created in 2020. I filmed this at the end of summer as the city started bracing itself for a second shutdown. Because of COVID, I filmed it alone. It was the first week where I noticed myself wearing the same light jackets & sweaters I wore the March where the city first shut down. Sad and amazed by the passage of a full year in bubbles, where life changed irrevocably for millions, I spent that fall evening hauling aux cords, mini speakers, LEDS, & feathers up and down the ladder to my rooftop. I moved barefoot in my qipao trying to rig the right light, taping a sawed-off protein powder container to create that circular stage halo.
The song is about time’s passage—it’s an incredibly poetic song. You can look up the lyrics. Like a lot of Cantopop, the ballad is melancholic, sung bittersweetly and with a low, poignant strain. I was born in Macau, so Cantonese is my first language, a language I began losing when I came to the States. Whenever I hear it spoken though, something aches inside me. It’s fundamental, large, & open, like a well that still holds water.
I always try to be sincere in my art, even when I’m being absurd. I pair the song w/ excerpts of my own incantatory poem, which I pose as lower thirds. Cinematic language tells us that an Asian face onscreen paired with English words is subtitling, but these aren’t really that. I don’t literally understand the Cantonese lyrics when it’s sung, but my impulse isn’t to try to translate them. They’re not trying to be explained. Who is the audience who gets to understand everything anyways? Maybe words can do drag too.
But this is a nakedness I can’t intellectualize, at least not meaningfully. I’m painfully aware that I’m an Asian drag queen in the US performing as a femme dressed in the vintage clothing of most likely dead white grandmothers. I’ve never seen myself on screen lip synching Cantonese. I can’t even speak it anymore. And it’s the first thing I knew. It’s a lot of feeling, thinking about another life I never had.
To take something like drag, a medium poised for cleverness, poised for campy recontextualizations, & to turn it towards something mournful—it scares me. Whatever impressionistic idea I have of my first culture, this fabled key that unlocks where I truly belong—it's gone, and in its place is the negative space of diaspora. What do you do with that? Is it pure absence? I think you play in the mystery of it. You can't let it overwhelm you. You have to enjoy it as the most precious and meaningful thing that you have yet to learn about yourself. And you never have to translate it if you don't want to. That's poetry isn't it?
vol. 01
summer 2021
Photo of performer Wo Chan cropped from the waist up. Wo Chan stands, leaning against a green wall that appears to reflect their image. Behind them is an orange wall. Wo Chan has a black bob with blunt bangs. They wear lavender and champagne eye makeup with rhinestones and a mauve lipstick. They wear a metallic bronze and gold sweater dress with a cowl turtle neck. They also wear black satin gloves.
about the artist
Wo Chan is a poet and drag performer. They are a winner of the 2020 Nightboat Poetry Prize and the author of TOGETHERNESS (forthcoming 2022). Wo has received fellowships from MacDowell, New York Foundation of the Arts, Kundiman, The Asian American Writers Workshop, Poets House, and Lambda Literary. Their poems appear in POETRY, WUSSY, Mass Review, No Tokens, and The Margins, . As a member of the Brooklyn-based drag/burlesque collective Switch N' Play, Wo has performed at The Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, National Sawdust, New York Live Arts and IG live. Wo is Editor of the Lambda Literary Review. Find them at @theillustriouspearl.
VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Wo Chan as the drag queen “The Illustrious Pearl” sitting on a chair with their legs crossed on a rooftop at night with dramatic lighting while wearing a black sequin evening gown with gold flower detailing on the chest, and red feather boa, their hair up and orange Crocs on their feet White text on a black background appears that says “Years Flow by Like Water”, the title of the song that is about to be sung in Cantonese.
The Illustrious Pearl is squatting by the light presumably to turn on the music, now in beige pumps instead of Crocs, they stand up and walk to the chair to sit. The wind is blowing which makes the feathers on the boa whip around along with their hair which is put in an updo. The light casts their shadow against a white wall that has graffiti at the bottom of it. Elevated train tracks are close in the background, and trains pass during the video.
The video goes back and forth from a shot showing them at a distance and a shot that is up close of mainly their face with a bit of shoulders in front of a white painted wall. These shots overlap in a double exposure type of way. The Illustrious Pearl touches their face delicately, plays with the boa, and overall looks glam and dramatic in both shots, but the shots are simultaneous but are not synced. Sometimes one shot fades more, but it goes back and forth smoothly and slowly. The Illustrious Pearl is wearing gold eyeshadow with large glitter, big false eyelashes, and red overdrawn lips along with dangle rhinestone earrings. They have purple nail polish with flowers and are singing to the song passionately. Sometimes their lips quiver when they hit the vibrato!
There is an Incantatory Poem in English in bold yellow text pops up as if it were subtitles for the song:
“I resume my dailiness tacked with rhinestones, failings, and neck pain
I reside in the idea of someone’s paradise. Should I move, I’ll tell you
I represent myself on the street and in the people’s court
I report back: some lights, tunnels, weightless singing - but I saw this in this life too!
I remain unfastened on this aircraft, unbothered by the turbulence,
And unmoved by my mother’s prayers
I receive a letter from the Department of Homeland Security stripping me of my citizenship
I rely on love three or four times a week. So much love - I set it on the floor
I resuscitate hope - my mouth full of feathers
I reaffirm that I am not essentially empty, that I can be happy with what I have, and that it is Tuesday
I reexamine my beliefs surrounding destiny. Fortune, talent, ruin, luck?
I recall very little of my childhood
I relieve myself around the corner from my house. Tears stream down my face!
I rediscover old defenses as they flare up, and I question,
“Why am I petulant? Why do I need?”
I redo every bad moment I had with you
But pretending you are my best friend,
and that I understand you
I repress the impulse to blurt old idealisms no longer true to me,
And yet I recite those lines like a minor in my own life
I regret never doing that”
Subtitles end
At the end fades to black with the music.
Credits scroll by that say:
Years Flow By Like Water
Performed by The Illustrious Pearl
Song By Anita Mui
Subtitles by Wo Chan
Venmo @wochanofficial
IG @theillustriouspearl
Thank you for the love and support [emoticon of a heart]