Quickie with Colin Self

Evan: What the BUTT is this?
Colin: It’s a music video that was the final product of a collaboration with my friend Bobby Solomon, who helped me develop this character called “the Nameless Ghost”, this spirit of a drag queen that gets conjured and ends up not just possessing one person, but an entire group. We just got in this look and jumped on the train in Berlin and improvised it. But then I wanted to have the format of choir or ensemble – which I often do in my projects – so I put out a call for performers to shoot the rest of the video at night at the Veil of Cashmere.
The Veil of Cashmere, the cruising spot in Prospect Park in Brooklyn?
Yeah, exactly. It’s extremely difficult to find. If you’re there at night, there are no signs. I was so impressed that everybody found it because a lot of them had already been cruising there. (laughs) There were a couple moments when other people encountered this group screaming and running, dressed like this, in nature. They were so scared of this weird nighttime drag queen militia. (laughs)
In 20 words, who are you?
Freak bitch diva. Puppeteer, composer. Outrageous, altruistic. Community organizer, artist and performance maker who believes in the possibility of what we can do as humans.
What gets you off and why?
Being big and big guys, muscle and chunk and that type of thing. I used to be a small woman when I was younger and now I’m very physically not that. I’ve become daddy for many people – I love being in a dominant position, being worshiped, crushing people. Now that I’m bigger, I love twinks. I like a narrative thing too, someone who’s good at propelling a fantasy.
Are you into role play?
I’m into role play. I’m often in full orc gear, from the world of barra and those types of illustrations. I have an alt called @intlgayorc, and it’s basically me naked in different fantasy situations. I have this whole community now and we’re doing a party at Bear Week in Provincetown this summer called Club Orc, where we get dressed up and paint ourselves green. We’re all, like, Dungeons and Dragons gays.
If you could be anyone for seven minutes, who would that be and why?
I’d be Elon Musk, so I could kill myself.
What are you working on? Give me the elevator pitch.
My album, respite ∞ levity for the nameless ghost in crisis, just came out. It really started as a solitary journey. I was thinking a lot about friends of mine who passed away. Part of the process was making music in honor of them and asking myself what kinds of decisions about certain songs they would have made.
I love the sculpture on the album cover.
Yes! It’s a shrine by Agosto Machado – he makes these incredible shrines that he calls “the ensemble of life” for people like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, the Warhol dolls – and I really want this record to be a sonic shrine, a place to come and pray and meditate. I owe so much to all these unnamed people who came before me, who made the queer, countercultural world that I live in. That was kind of the idea behind the Nameless Ghost. Like, drag queen ghosts out there who’d hopefully find these songs funny.
How quickly do you fall in love?
In the words of Sam Banks – my collaborator/friend – I fall in love every day. Love can be long and short. I met my boyfriend on an app called Growler and then went on our first date the next day and by the end of the first week we had gone on four dates. Then after a month we were boyfriends. So that’s a good indication. (laughs)
What’s next for you?
I think I make pretty good records, but performance is really where I shine. I’m working on a live show called Gasp, which is the theatrical version of this record. I started a performance school with my friend Monica Mirabile, which is in its third year. And I’m in the beginning stages of doing contracting work to renovate a church.
Wait, a church?
Yeah, it’s born out of this desire to create sanctuary for other queer and trans people. I’m actually looking for one around New York or rural Pennsylvania. I have so many friends who need a job and don’t have vocational training and I want to be the person to say, ‘Okay, I need 10 people to come help learn how to pour concrete.’ And then we’re going to lay the foundation of this building. Eventually, I plan on having my own queer/trans contracting group that can build all sorts of things.