Poetry, Power, and Perspective with Daniel WK Lee

Daniel W.K. Lee

I think the role of the poet these days is at this point the role that has been surrendered by the journalist at least in the west which is to articulate a truth to or to speak to truth western journalism has become really just stenography to power so i think there is a tremendous role for poets in that regard i want to fulfill that to a degree hello.

Melodie KG

And welcome to power beyond pride a weekly queer change making podcast bringing you voices and ideas from across our fierce and fabulous spectrum to transform our world i'm melody kg a minneapolis based artivist.

Kate D'Adamo

And provocateur and i'm kate former gayb and gifted kid and we are your co hosts on today's queer cast journey on this episode of power beyond pride we're sitting uh with renowned multi talented poet author activist third generation refugee immigrant the beautiful soul the all around witty mister daniel wk lee welcome daniel oh.

Daniel W.K. Lee

My god you said i had a soul i've never had such libel ness libid how dare you i have no.

Melodie KG

Soul thank you so much for being here with us today on power beyond pride daniel as one of our hosts it's great to be able to flip you in this seat and just chat with you get to know you a little bit better welcome to august how's the weather down there in the crescent.

Daniel W.K. Lee

City it's it's as usual set to cremation so and for some reason the air conditioning is not working very well at the moment so i'm uh not going to quite yet but there's a possibility unfortunately the listeners won't be able to enjoy i may take off my shirt no promises that's actually the plan.

Kate D'Adamo

For the start of our patreon is just filming in the summer and the video of just various hosts being like i'm hot i gotta take it off.

Melodie KG

I'M sorry yeah we'll move to onlyfans and that's how we'll fundraise exactly so.

Kate D'Adamo

Tell us about your relationship with new.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Orleans it is a i think with a lot of creative people that settle here it's a very fruitful and ah maybe it enchants us in a way that helps us overlook the truly horrific maybe not horrific that's kind of overstating it but the really dysfunctional infrastructure in this city but like i before i moved here i lived in seattle and before i was seattle i lived in new york and in that seattle interregnum period which was five years i i wrote five poems and as a poet that's pretty problematic and when i moved to new orleans i wrote five poems in five weeks so whatever the drawbacks are i kind of am able to kind of say oh i can live with that and for the most part i can live with that fortunately i live on a street that doesn't particularly flood even when the rains come so there are a lot of things that i can bear and and uh the payoff is that i can keep on writing yeah right now i'm doing something called the sealy challenge which is a a challenge to read a book of poetry every day for the month of august and it's kind of helped open the the floodgates well the floodgates for me in terms of how prolific i am in terms of writing poems the more i read the more i write and i i don't really know if i could have been as prolific if i were still in seattle even doing.

Melodie KG

The seal yeah that's so interesting what do you think it is about new orleans especially in contrast to seattle that allows you to do those things and tap into that creative energy well there's.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Two things i think one is that there is intensity here there is uh the intensity of the heat the intensity of the kind of the dynamic of a city that is historically very very diverse but also it was a kind of clash of energies too while it also mixed and so i uh think that yeah that intensity is part of it and the other thing would be the struggle i think one of the things that kind of made perhaps made me not write as much in seattle is that i had a very easy life it was there wasn't much struggle and maybe because for the most part i've written from a place of some kind of internal struggle or something that since i had it such an ease i didn't really i didn't know what i was actually going to tap into i wasn't i mean this is no no jab at my ex boyfriend but uh like usually it's the a like an intense thing that like i will kind of write from and after we were no longer together we after a period of time we were able to become friends again and that recalibration kind of i guess nullified that like being able to write out of anger or sufficient pain or something so yeah i would say the difference for m me at least uh it was is struggle.

Kate D'Adamo

And intensity interesting and so just knowing a little bit about your history so you were born in kuching malaysia and then crossed some water came over to the united states and since then have lived in chicago you lived in new york you lived in seattle now you're in new orleans and to me that is a story about motion a story about contrast and even now even in what you were just sharing about uh shifting that relationship with your ex that's still kind of motion and contrast how has being in motion shaped you your experience how you see the world in.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Your writing yeah that's an interesting question i don't consciously think much about that even though i would say it's a hallmark of the trajectory of my life certainly multiple displacements being refugees something that fundamentally inherited from my parents and their parents and a kind of general restlessness that i think i had as a child even now i'm kind of one of those people with the supposed shaking leg syndrome i'm like i don't really know how to stand still that didn't really stop me from staying in like new york for so long which it became the city that i lived in longest but maybe because again like new york is very intense and very dynamic and uh all those things that kind of can contain or at least hold hold what i was kind of doing or how i was transforming but and the reason why i went there i think is also because i didn't think that uh what i wanted or how i imagined my life would be able to be or to become while i was living in in in chicago so or chicagoland so it i guess in a way it's always been uh moving from one place to the other to seek or to experience something new my the final kind of impulse to or push for me to leave new york was i want to do more outdoorsy shit like i wanted to do more camping and all these things that it's not impossible to do in new york but it's certainly kind of less cultural milieu to do those things and despite my what i call it like i said the seattle interregnum even though it wasn't particularly fruitful creatively it did it was worthwhile you know i definitely learned to love the outdoors enjoy things like bouldering and that kind of thing and i do like camping even though i again now and i'm back in a city where it's that's not really a uh kind of focus it's not really the culture but i do look forward to those kinds of things and i'm not afraid of that so yeah i guess in a way that that motion is part of this ever persistent desire to experience new things and i kind of let my myself get animated by it and also be taken like a wave to those places to those things.

Melodie KG

If i'm not mistaken daniel did you not just participate in the annual red dress run in new orleans what was.

Daniel W.K. Lee

That like yeah it's the first time i actually bothered to do the running part even though we didn't really run either we kind of walked which is kind of a very uh new orleans thing just kind of like making it our own parade to a degree so the red dress run is produced by a group of runners they say for a drinking group with a running habit that's amazing that's right and so they yeah at nine am they open up the taps for the beer and that's an hour before we kick off and run it's fun it's like you get everyone in this not everyone but uh so many people in the city donning a red dress and doing this thing again plenty it's a fundraiser plenty of people do not run they just put on a dress and they go into the quarter and they just party which is very new orleans so yeah it was fun i enjoy it every year part of it is kind of you're supposed to just get a dress from consignment shop or something like that like just find something you can see that people put effort into it and so you get to see some of that creativity i saw a photo of a a friend who made a red dress out of red solo cups and had a headpiece that was one of those giant red solo cups it was really impressive and so yeah i mean it's that kind of like diy fashion or joy and uh creativity that's a hallmark of new orleans and really love seeing that so that's why i just love participating in that kind of thing that.

Kate D'Adamo

Feels like everything i know about new orleans is now we're all going to make gowns and turn into our own parade what what was it a fundraiser.

Daniel W.K. Lee

For by the way it's usually a they just raise an amount of money and then they kind of regrant it to a number of organizations and last year they had made a point to um to grant money to a trans organization i believe because they got into some hot water as a former i guess board member or something from this organization had made some dumb like disparaging remarks or something i think trans people and so that actually last year kind of there was a kind of protest bar crawl called the blue dress bar crawl that happened and then they kind of sort of righted their ship and um made amends but you know it's we can talk a lot about how organizations do more or less bandaging pr damage spin and whatnot and the question of whether or not they're very earnest is a whole other thing i love.

Melodie KG

A counter protest or a counterparty oh.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Yeah we do that well so we recently had a a beloved restaurant kind of they were told by their new the building's new landlord from new york sent them a text saying that they needed to vacate completely in sixty days well that nothing is you can't hide that kind of thing in new orleans and so that mobilized a whole bunch of people in the city to make a stink and someone i know uh decided to kind of throw a party or a protest called the night of a thousand monas because it was the restaurant's called mona lisa's or mona lisa and the italian restaurant in the border and it garnered a lot of media attention and uh we were before the actually the landlords had kind of changed their mind this was going to be this big protest and party and everything there's been uh earlier this year there was a a person who complained that a restaurant their bubble machine was blowing bubbles into his beverage or something like that he's not from here either but he moves into the quarter actually i guess he's actually not no this i'm mixing up my stories i think he's the i'm gonna put him on blast i think he's the owner of the of cafe du monde and he complained about this bubble machine and it's like everyone no one we weren't going to take that and so we did like this counter protest at his house people brought bubble machines like bubble blowing guns it was the entire they took down the street i mean we're so petty here but it's like funny and joyous like bubble machines and everything like the entire block like people having a party in the street with bubbles just to say oh no you can't do that you can't just you can't complain about uh vibrancy the culture of the city just because you what you don't know how to put a cover over your martini glass or something you know it's so silly but yeah it's that's kind of our way wow that's so funny.

Melodie KG

I love that i can't believe it but it's already time for us to take our first quick break so please listeners stay tuned to this incredible episode of power beyond pride where we are in conversation with daniel wk lee welcome back this is power beyond pride a queer change making podcast and i'm melody kg here with my co host kate d' adamo hello daniel uh we talked in the first segment about how you being an immigrant coming to the united states how does your experience help you relate or give you sort of lived experience context with the current political climate especially of immigration with ice and all of the things happening around our administration.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Well i mean one i mean i will parse that i'm not an immigrant i'm a refugee and that is a a specific distinction that i uh think we we should recognize because the reasons why anyone becomes a refugee is often something beyond the person or the subject or the family's kind of control immigrants can decide that they want to leave where they quote unquote came from and uh construct a new life uh my parents their parents were subject to war and so we were leaving and those conditions brought us here i mean there are certainly choices that my parents made i could have certainly like my cousins been australians instead rather than americans or whatever but yeah uh being a refugee has given me a lot of empathy towards people who are displaced outside of their own agency and has been a driving force for my uh agitation because i'm kind of resistant to call myself an activist in this regard but my agitation for palestinian liberation m certainly they have not been given any kind of enfranchisement or agency over what happens to them um not just as a people but personally to their bodies to their anything so yeah i mean and with respect to policy of for immigrations and or uh not immigrations immigrants here are not even immigrants ice has attacked us citizens kind of asking questions later but racially targeting brown people left and right and although it i've been lucky enough to not experience that firsthand at the moment i can only imagine the fear that it engenders to people just trying to make a living or or have enough money for the next their next meal i'm completely aware of the the lack of kind of brown bodies that used to kind of hang out near the certain uh parts of the neutral ground or near a hardware store which would be typically you have a place typically a place where you might find central uh americans or people of mexican descent or south americans trying to find day work so yeah those people have been living in fear of what the state apparatus would do with them and i'm very empathetic to that because certainly those were the kinds of conditions that my parents would have experienced huh because ultimately my parents would have were expelled from vietnam because they're ethnic chinese in the late seventies the communists had targeted ethnic chinese for the most part because they were really the martian class that had outsized economic and economic power political power and so there was an expulsion where i mean we're boat people we became boat people and yeah so just kind of reiterate i'm just very empathetic to to that plight and it i i try to connect kind of the those things they're being targeted by our government at uh this question of immigration and ice detention and everything and making those connections with kind uh of what's kind of transpired in palestine we have to see those connections that we can strengthen and create more solidarity absolutely and.

Melodie KG

Thank you so much for making that distinction here between immigrants and refugees certainly there's a a particularity there that is is worth noting and as we all know this sort of the mechanism of ice being deployed by our administration has never really been about any sort of legal status immigrant refugee or otherwise it is truly about this this racial class dynamic where people just the administration doesn't want to see brown people and it sort of doesn't matter whether folks are here as citizens or escaping turmoil or war it's really sort of violent regardless so thank you for uplifting that daniel.

Kate D'Adamo

And so i'm curious with everything going on in the world and also your life going on day to day what are you writing about these days how is that shaping and maybe shifting your.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Writing yeah i'm writing a lot about uh the gaza genocide it's kind of been the ever present thing that's not that occupies that fully resides in my brain i i consume a lot of social media about it i in a way my feeling is that we and i owe witness if we are unable to force the governments to do something of consequence that that i owe witness to what's transpiring and i watch i've watched more horrific things i've ever watched in my entire life and it's that intensity that forces me to write right i don't usually write from happy places so it's that's kind of what i've been writing and like there are kind of i guess moral dimensions to it that i've kind of wrestled with the kind of idea of disaster or like this disaster porn which i guess is which is valid and i think it has especially when we talk about messaging and communications and certainly with fiction i'm not certain it necessarily applies with poetry at least if we're trying to just account or make a to testify so to speak of what's happening but i am conscious of that i don't want to uh center myself in their struggle but actually the most recent poem i wrote is my or drafted poem kind of questions this idea of creating empathy by guiding your audience or a reader through your own your own trauma or your own experience of pain in order to facilitate them them meaning your audience having compassion and empathy towards those being genocided so yeah the poem says that in a way you're kind of fucked up like we have to what i say in there is kind of a laundering laundering laundering their pain through me and it's uh yeah it's a curious thing and i don't really i don't have a conclusion other than i wish that our sense of compassion and empathy could tran could transcend that need to be like oh i i understand daniel's particular experience about this uh let the images show let the uh let the receipts do the receding and really be able to let that empathy rule because i think what's really been fascinating is this backseating of compassion for the uh for self interest oh we need like why should i care about palestinians we have to think about abortion access and stuff like that which is true that's also happening but a failure to see how the the desire to control the state's desire to control bodies that idea is also animated with genocide you see like the state in palestine or israel wants to control bodies in palestine so uh those connections i mean i i can't help but see the genocide in gaza and palestine not as a boutique idea but actually the actual intersection of all intersectionalities you can't talk about bodily autonomy when you enable a state to control all bodies you can't talk about climate when you bomb some a an enclave that is basically six atomic bombs and has an uh has a climate environmental fallout you can't talk about children and women and all these things without also recognizing that those people in palestine are also experience those things disability justice etcetera like over eighty percent of people in gaza who uh need assistance with like a like a wheelchair or something like that they don't have it they or they have lost it so that place is also the moral compass and the intersection of all these all these struggles in a way a failure to to to me a failure to grasp that is to put national borders on our compassion on our empathy and not see those interconnectedness and that ultimate intersection and even though it's not within our borders that just kind of speaks to again this idea that oh our compassion and our empathy has borders which is to me fundamentally and morally bankrupt absolutely.

Kate D'Adamo

I love how you're shaping it in that way of talking about these cross regional these cross sectional because i think it really highlights how arbitrary these national borders are like we can say consider them so sacrosanct and they're brand new and they don't really care about the climate change doesn't stop at uh the border of the united states it's going to float over to canada it's going to float over mexico um and so i appreciate you shaping that empathy within.

Melodie KG

Such global terms i also appreciate daniel your sort of connecting the dots and lines for us and for the listeners because i think one of the hardest things that i see the general public kind of can try to contend with is that exact thing right is well why should i care about x y z that's happening over there what does that have to do with me and the things i care about uh and i think part of our work as activists and certainly as queer activists we tend to uh we tend to see that interconnectedness in a different way and act on it and you know i've really felt like our work the royal hour my work has sort of been to try and help folks connect those dots for themselves because because you're exactly right those issues are not uh they're not siloed they're not they're completely indicative of bigger issues that are all all deeply connected so m thank you yeah.

Daniel W.K. Lee

I mean there's always these ideological guardrails that can like distort our vision and our move our actions for compassion and empathy and we have to be able to look past them or to throw them away if they're no longer applicable right pink washing which is this idea of like a propaganda tool that israel uses to kind of position itself as an lgbtq haven for for lgbtq people in the middle east it's always like this talking point where oh if if you were in gaza or if you were in palestine they would throw you off the roof or and the reality is that when you don't have food to eat water to drink or anything no one is thinking about it no one cares like without your hierarchy of needs i think there's actually a there's a sociological term about that like in your hierarchy of needs like we're just trying to survive and no one gives a shit about whether or not like you you kiss boys and stuff like that not to say that there isn't peril and there isn't antagonism or conservatism m or things that can be antagonistic towards your identity but ultimately you can't indulge we'll say and the intricacies of your identity when you when you're just life is at peril yeah and there are we're palestinians they live and they thrive and they exist not just here in the diaspora but also there and their concerns are the same as everyone else's there will i survive a bombing will my child or my kin survive so yeah i mean the that ideology has a can be or can be really horrifying and it behooves us to always be introspective of the way how an ideology might be blinding us and becoming a obstacle and a hindrance of our ability to feel compassion to see people as humans etcetera and i kind of feel like we're at this moment where we are in a human we mean we meaning humans are in a at a moment of reckoning of do we want to be the kind of creature uh on this planet that continually chooses to look away uh when truly the most vulnerable are being violently well having that violence meted upon them yeah.

Melodie KG

Absolutely let's take a short break here stay with us because we will be back in a minute to share some fun facts plus a speed round of questions to get to know daniel wk.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Lee foreign.

Kate D'Adamo

Welcome back to power beyond pride where we are talking with our fellow host and literary genius uh daniel w kaylee so just to uh change up a little bit here and shift our focus you are currently involved in a bunch of different community organizations in new orleans especially around poetry and spoken word and literary societies how has that been what is working with those groups.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Like well i would say i mean i'm not particular to one group i think what's so amazing about new orleans poetry community is that it is as uh one of our kind of local writers maurice carlos ruffin said we're not a rat race and we really do celebrate each other's wins when i first moved here i just started going to literary readings and that kind of thing and i just kept on showing up and then eventually people would ask me if i was interested in reading or whatever this is after the pandemic because i had just moved to new orleans i had moved to new orleans in december of twenty nineteen and then we had the ponder replay and then i was actually doing a lot of readings virtual readings which helped me because i had not been doing any readings in seattle for sure but helped me become a better reader and gave me the confidence to do the readings to read in public here in new orleans and yeah there was just an opening open community that is very inviting it it incur it's encouraging again it's not oh that that person won an award there were and we don't i don't understand like their work sucks like no one as long as i've been here i've never really heard people like be that way and so that's really amazing and i think that our ethos is the is to raise the water so all ships rise on a situation i i i honestly don't think that anyone um has identified nemeses and and just kind of work out of or animated by i don't know a petty competition maybe i don't know but i haven't really seen that or experienced it myself which makes the kind of the the whole thing like the whole community and experience of being in a creative discipline within the city so nourishing and if anything if you want to be in in a community of creatives i mean i would hope that you want to be even if it's a micro community that they nourish you creatively or at least emotionally so that you can thrive in your art or your creative production so yeah i mean i fully i mean there are plenty of people who are from new orleans who probably won't love me saying come on down come on in they're like oh you can stay wherever you are at we have plenty of carpet baggers but the uh if you are a creative though this i think that this city is special for creative types and being i don't know magical and inspiring and kind of getting you to want to write and to be able to find community with other creatives who are also encouraging so you can be the the most creative you.

Melodie KG

Can be that's great i love a uh supportive artist community so good to hear are there any particular authors or artists or activists who have sort of influenced you in your life your writing.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Or uh your other work for sure i mean the two of my favorite poets are really they did write political poetry one more famously than the other one would be audre lorde who i think is so consequential that she should be taught alongside james baldwin i think their insights in the world are on par with each other and i love baldwin and i think that uh lord should be elevated to there i was disappointed to learn that i mean looking back uh through history i was disappointed to learn that lord's fallout with june jordan had a lot to do with her lack of solidarity with june jordan and her solidarity with the palestinian people and they never really kind of like healed that tremendous wound which is unfortunate but june jordan has become more of a a later influence aga shahad ali who was my favorite poet all time he i don't think he set out to write political poetry quote um unquote whatever that means but if you read his work i think especially the love poems he wrote they are political the uh it's he just writes such spectacularly that it kind of it changed my writing completely there is a poet named chan chen who writes what i call profound levity or uh he writes poems that are very seems very light and often very funny but then he brings up something so insightful so profound and it just is and jarring in a good way and uh i'm just ravenous to read his work and i've been lucky enough to meet him and everything and he's delightful and charming there's just so many writers out there that really we should hear them we should read them um it's unfortunate for the i would say for most of our kind of reading public that we don't even think of contemporary poets unless we go to unless we go to grad school or something like that because otherwise poetry education in this country is like dead poet dead poet dead poet dead poet and then maybe more dead poets so find a poet that's alive that you want to hear and then start like spreading out from there who are they reading who inspired them and then and keep on going you i think you will be enriching especially because i think the role of the poet these days is at this point the role that has been surrendered by the journalist at least in the west to which is to articulate a truth to or to speak to truth and uh through writing figure out the world in a way that western journalism has become really just stenography to power so i think there is a tremendous role for poets in that regard i want to fulfill that to a degree my next manuscript is very much that it's very different from my first book anatomy of want it is decisively political and i'm excited for it to get into the world at some point as i continue to refine and rework it and everything like that my first book cause it took me like fifteen years to write and this one's taken me m five six years so i feel like i mean i'm not sade or adele where i can put out some things every ten years oh well maybe but i think i have to be a little bit more prolific.

Kate D'Adamo

I'M going to be mulling over that concept of poets taking the role of journalists for a while i really enjoy thinking about that and how both of them it's about the act of witnessing and one is now just seen as kind of a spokesperson as opposed to witnessing the world and putting language to that that's a really it's a really interesting idea it's a really impactful idea and it shapes a lot i think about how we should think about art right now so thank you for.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Offering them um for sure i mean honestly i didn't really come to that insight until i went to i went to new york to speak to the students or at nyu gallatin where my former writing teacher who was also very influential scott hightower i went to his class to just to talk to his students and one of the students asked me what is poetry and i just off the cuff kind of said poetry is just trying to make sense of your world and it all kind of like came together for me in my own brain that yes that's exactly what it is you're just trying to figure out the world and your place in it and even the world's place in itself uh and there's been a little bit of a vacuum where journalism is just regurgitating the narratives that existing power wants you to hear and the receipts are out there in the world and to see that western journalism for the most part has kind of failed that way and so we ought to look to the poets to articulate to envision the world that it is now if i were a uh an alien coming to the us and all i knew or what i would learn about the us was through mainstream media really i would just be as clueless as the people who run this country so that.

Kate D'Adamo

I think is a beautiful place for us to uh wrap this conversation which has been really beautiful but to think about telling the story of the place we're in the world and telling the story of the world's place within itself uh so thank you for offering so much today so we are going to turn to our speed round question where we get to know you even a little better so this is where we ask some questions and you don't get any time to think about it you just need to give us the first answer that comes to you are you ready to be on the other side.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Uh yes i'm going to try to get that reptilian brain going okay here.

Melodie KG

We go what's your favorite city to.

Kate D'Adamo

Live in new orleans what is the last thing that made you laugh really.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Hard oh goodness oh i am fortunate that i am around a lot of funny people and i've always been around a lot of funny people and it's just constant so oh i don't know it's probably oh i was watching i was watching i think a tiktok earlier today oh yes it's it was uh this content creator was like saying this very gay stuff about oh this is mother mother was like serving she was serving see see you next next tuesday and so and then the next person was saying trying to say those that and also a queer person like trying to say say those that kind of like vernacular was but completely misfiring it was just reading so horribly but it was so funny because it just wasn't making any sense or was just so completely offensive uh but it was so funny i was just watching it earlier i was like i was crying it.

Melodie KG

Was so funny amazing uh do you have a favorite midnight snack i.

Daniel W.K. Lee

No i don't think so i mean i love savory salty foods if if i weren't so i mean i'm not that lazy but if i were just to wake up and eat something which i would just pull uh whatever was in the refrigerator it uh just be something.

Kate D'Adamo

Savory i think thanks what's your ideal.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Date my ideal date would i don't i've learned something very profound when on a date about eight years ago in seattle i kind of went on a date with a guy from san francisco he can't come up and we were talking about dating and he said to me dating is just getting to know someone and it's absolutely true and if you kind of embrace the idea of going on a date or dating is just this process of getting to know someone all the kind of like expectations and everything just kind of fall away and then you can just be like oh this is what i learned about this person and maybe tonight like what i've learned i just want to freak them like maybe there's just gonna be sex at the end of it or whatever or maybe there's something more interesting that i kind of want to learn more in a specific context and so like a the perfect date is a kind of i guess for me a funny but slow unwrapping of that person oh that's interesting like you i took off the bow and you showed me this and as we talk i'm seeing something else um so that yeah that unwrapping process uh where we just are vibing we're kind of getting each other the conversation is good it can be in any context there's nothing entirely prescriptive i think the kind of one on one quality of discovering each other that's so intentional and wondrous and invested and open i think that's what makes a date a really good date at least.

Melodie KG

What'S your favorite way to make someone.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Laugh sarcasm you know i'm at the knees and so i have i wrote a poem recently about cantonese being sarcasm's mother tongue and i really with sarcasm everywhere and so i love being sarcastic i love also embarrassing people and like very slight subtle ways are uh our producer shane can attest i have a lot of compunction when having to do with that kind of thing so yeah it also gives me a lot of joy to see someone turn various shades of bright red by embarrassing them what.

Kate D'Adamo

Do you think is the sexiest song.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Um ooh the sexiest song i want to say it might be a tricky song it's called overcome it has this very dark deep uh baseline the vibe is very dark it's like it's a it's a sex jam for sure if you wanted to like get freaky with will bring you back to the aughts i'm sure because it's like what they used to call trip hop but it's pretty phenomenal so i would check that out that's one of my favorites trickies.

Kate D'Adamo

Overcome the gift of trip hop to elder millennials yeah.

Melodie KG

Okay who has the best bloody mary in new orleans ooh.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Best bloody marys mhm i haven't had a lot to be honest i've been drinking a lot less too i i i don't know i uh or beignets.

Melodie KG

Who has the best beignets in new.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Orleans this is these are this is the real question we're waiting through troubled waters best beignets we're trying to get.

Kate D'Adamo

You in trouble is really uh yeah.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Okay i mean not i don't okay well i'm mostly plant based but vegan beignets have been severely disappointing in my life uh i would say it's been a while but i do enjoy or at least in my memory i enjoyed the beignets from cafe des beignet on royal street more than cafe du monde i would be remiss not to mention uh the stuffed beignets at the vintage on magazine street where my friend chris works at those are quite spectacular but if you want to actually try something that's super new orleans that that actually precedes beignets you would try callas calas c a l a s i think and they're kind of like beignets but they're made out of rice flour and those precede the existence of the beignets and there's a little shop in treme near the quarter that they make them and it's right kind of right on the street so to speak well it's not on the street but they have like tables and everything on the street i wish i remember what that what that uh company or whatever was called but colors yeah amazing good to know.

Kate D'Adamo

What is your favorite color to wear.

Daniel W.K. Lee

My favorite color to wear is red but i also love a deep purple i did live in new york between the ages of eighteen to thirty five so i wore a lot of black as well there was definitely a period of my life especially while i was at nyu where my entire closet or wardrobe was either black dark blue or gray that's it so but i did break out of that but i would say red is or actually bright pink i love an unexpected like hot pink especially because i get dark i'm one of the steep tea chinese not like porcelain chinese so if i wear pink or a light blue it look it.

Melodie KG

Looks really pops yeah amazing uh what's something unexpected that you find deeply liberating.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Unexpected but deep oh i recently become a person who does thc drinks and so i've not really been like a a weed person only because i would fail i would not get high and ah edibles would not typically get me a high either but yeah it's we have a fantastic company a uh local company i believe called crescent uh nine and they make a phenomenal tea tea drink that doesn't have that like weedy aftertaste so they're very uh especially their ginger lemonade flavor and i know my limit i if i have more than two i get the munchies which i hate and or that cottonmouth thing which i don't like either so th e seltzers have become kind of my thing i guess that's in a way that's more expected right i love it maybe.

Kate D'Adamo

A little and we still appreciate the flavor recommendation yeah that's true finally uh what does power beyond pride mean to.

Daniel W.K. Lee

You power beyond pride means that we look outside of ideas of just our um or centralizing our sexuality to kind of harness political power or that we can inhabit other kinds of spaces that are adjacent to our identities and those can be primary and they can be liberating that although important our sexuality isn't always everything and it doesn't have to always be the or kind of organizing principle of our lives i guess and what i'm really just trying to say is to kind of give ourselves a lot of leeway to continue to explore ourselves and our identities and let that empower us and uh and it's okay if our kind of sexuality which is in so many ways driven us especially as we're young and so forward in so many ways that can take a backseat and we can still find empowering creative wonderful ways to enjoy our lives that influence and empower others that aren't just about lgbtq bride and uh daniel.

Melodie KG

Where can people follow you and your.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Work they can follow me at daniel wk lee that's l e e on tiktok i'm trying to become a little bit more of a tiktok person as i try to um deplatform myself for meta it's not going well but as i also mentioned that you can find me on strong plum on instagram but i or daniel wk lee at uh bluesky or you can join my patreon which i would really love it helps even if you're just like uh a contributor which is like five bucks a month or something like that like those little those little contributions do help me with kind of like being able to go to readings in different cities and that kind of thing so that's patreon dot com patreon daniel wk lee as.

Melodie KG

Well daniel thank you so much for being here we're out of time for this conversation but we hope you'll join us again maybe in some sort of.

Daniel W.K. Lee

Host capacity absolutely this is so much.

Kate D'Adamo

Fun daniel thank you so much for everything you shared and um i just love getting to know you better and everyone can follow your work again it's daniel wklee on tiktok and bluesky and please do follow on patreon and i'm your co host kate former gaby and recovering gifted kid and you can find me at ah reframehealthinjustice dot com or on instagram arm reductionfemes and i'm your.

Melodie KG

Co host melodykg minneapolis based artivist and provocateur and you can follow me on instagram elodiekg on substack elodiekg and a few other places do your digging remember to subscribe and get your friends to subscribe to power beyond pride on spotify apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and check out our site at powerbeyondpride dot com power beyond pride is.

Kate D'Adamo

A project from a great idea a queer owned design and content agency learn more about them at a great idea.

Melodie KG

Dot com this episode is produced by shane lucas maddie bynum is the project developer our editor is jarrett redding with support from ian wilson and we're both.

Kate D'Adamo

Part of this podcast awesome host team which also includes daniel and we invite you to send in your questions and comments at uh powerbeyondpride dot com check.

Melodie KG

Out our new episodes each week and we look forward to queer change making with you next time thank you from all of us at power beyond pride.

Transcribed automatically and lightly checked. If something is wrong — a name especially — tell us and we will fix it.