Earning It

Buster Keaton and Steamboat Bill, Jr., 1928

Every so often I remember that I owe my life to Buster Keaton¹. He was one of the first figures I felt compelled to write about within the context of cinema, and watching him will always be a nostalgic act for me. He's important to me because of what he unlocked, which was a sense of masculinity as performance art: an acquiescence to the potential fluidity of masculinity itself.

Silent film called to me and said: There's a world you can live in without pain—sort of. The way that sinking into the bathtub after a long, aching day relieves the body of pain by granting weightlessness to heavy limbs, so silent film worked on me. It still works that way.