GAYLETTER

Michael Love Michael was attending a poetry workshop in Provincetown, MA when they penned the first lines of “American Flag Bikini.” Eileen Myles was leading the week-long workshop. It was the summer of 2017, and that same week the former president scuttled out of his golf resort in Bedminster and excused the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Although Michael felt the reverberation of this event, their peers at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center did not feel similarly. “American Flag Bikini” was distilled from that moment’s personal and political alienation and given a new setting – the beach between Cherry Grove and Fire Island. With the help of co-writer Natti Vogel and co-producer Reuben Butchart, the poem grew into a protest song. Michael Love Michael grew into their power, and with the help of director Maddy Talias, “American Flag Bikini” has grown into a music video, premiering here.

It begins with Michael Love Michael as a Black version of Uncle Sam, eyes downcast beneath shimmering eyelids done in metallic ocean blue. Next, in a crucifix and locket, as well as the titular American flag bikini, Michael opens their arms in a posture evoking a Pieta, but standing. An American flag is draped around their shoulders like the pelt of the Nemean lion. (Michael is a Leo/Cancer cusp.) On a phone call this February, remembering words of Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, Michael told us, “The way to be seen is to make them see you. Them is everyone. I am wearing this thing that is a symbol of queerness, Americanness, my Blackness. I’m adorning myself with this thing that has been used to divide and conquer me and people who look like me.”

In August 2020, Michael released their debut album, XO. The record documents Michael’s self-discovery and healing amid trauma, alongside a satirical snap that dresses down a man without apology. The album is experimental, haunting, and at times encrypted. On “American Flag Bikini,” Michael comes closer, drawing a languorous melody along a roiling, tipsy production. The lyrics careen from allure to rejection, contradiction to resolution. The listener is coaxed into shifting positions.

Although it was begun in 2017, “American Flag Bikini” was released the day before the Inauguration because, as Michael observed, “Many people still want to move on, but without addressing what got us there. One can’t exist without the other. You have to address everything that created the conditions of the last four years in a brutal way, and you have to be willing to confront those things before there’s this Pollyanna hope for the future.”

“Just this week, I was physically attacked on the street. As long as that’s happening to people like me, or as long as Black trans women are being murdered, then these are things that we’re gonna need to address. If I don’t get to move on, none of you hoes get to move on.”

Toward the end of the video, resilience and renewal are somehow captured in a Mickey Mouse doll. “My nickname for many years was Mickey, before I started going by Michael again. I was working with a shaman for a while. They guided me back to myself, and I chose to reclaim Michael. It’s also my father’s name, and I walked away from it because I’d had a fractured relationship with him. As that relationship began to heal, I thought of the possibilities Michael could be. That it’s not such a man’s name, which is part of why I resented it for so long. It can be like the Archangel Michael. Michael can be soft, and beautiful. Sensitive.”

Michael, trying it out, articulates every letter in their name. “Michael. It’s sensual, even.” Agreed. Watch Michael’s “American Flag Bikini” on YouTube, or hit play below:

Video directed by Maddy Talias.

Concept by Michael Love Michael.

Michael Love Michael was attending a poetry workshop in Provincetown, MA when they penned the first lines of “American Flag Bikini.” Eileen Myles was leading the week-long workshop. It was the summer of 2017, and that same week the former president scuttled out of his golf resort in Bedminster and excused the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Although Michael felt the reverberation of this event, their peers at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center did not feel similarly. “American Flag Bikini” was distilled from that moment’s personal and political alienation and given a new setting – the beach between Cherry Grove and Fire Island. With the help of co-writer Natti Vogel and co-producer Reuben Butchart, the poem grew into a protest song. Michael Love Michael grew into their power, and with the help of director Maddy Talias, “American Flag Bikini” has grown into a music video, premiering here.

It begins with Michael Love Michael as a Black version of Uncle Sam, eyes downcast beneath shimmering eyelids done in metallic ocean blue. Next, in a crucifix and locket, as well as the titular American flag bikini, Michael opens their arms in a posture evoking a Pieta, but standing. An American flag is draped around their shoulders like the pelt of the Nemean lion. (Michael is a Leo/Cancer cusp.) On a phone call this February, remembering words of Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, Michael told us, “The way to be seen is to make them see you. Them is everyone. I am wearing this thing that is a symbol of queerness, Americanness, my Blackness. I’m adorning myself with this thing that has been used to divide and conquer me and people who look like me.”

In August 2020, Michael released their debut album, XO. The record documents Michael’s self-discovery and healing amid trauma, alongside a satirical snap that dresses down a man without apology. The album is experimental, haunting, and at times encrypted. On “American Flag Bikini,” Michael comes closer, drawing a languorous melody along a roiling, tipsy production. The lyrics careen from allure to rejection, contradiction to resolution. The listener is coaxed into shifting positions.

Although it was begun in 2017, “American Flag Bikini” was released the day before the Inauguration because, as Michael observed, “Many people still want to move on, but without addressing what got us there. One can’t exist without the other. You have to address everything that created the conditions of the last four years in a brutal way, and you have to be willing to confront those things before there’s this Pollyanna hope for the future.”

“Just this week, I was physically attacked on the street. As long as that’s happening to people like me, or as long as Black trans women are being murdered, then these are things that we’re gonna need to address. If I don’t get to move on, none of you hoes get to move on.”

Toward the end of the video, resilience and renewal are somehow captured in a Mickey Mouse doll. “My nickname for many years was Mickey, before I started going by Michael again. I was working with a shaman for a while. They guided me back to myself, and I chose to reclaim Michael. It’s also my father’s name, and I walked away from it because I’d had a fractured relationship with him. As that relationship began to heal, I thought of the possibilities Michael could be. That it’s not such a man’s name, which is part of why I resented it for so long. It can be like the Archangel Michael. Michael can be soft, and beautiful. Sensitive.”

Michael, trying it out, articulates every letter in their name. “Michael. It’s sensual, even.” Agreed. Watch Michael’s “American Flag Bikini” on YouTube, or hit play below:

Video directed by Maddy Talias.

Concept by Michael Love Michael.

Michael Love Michael was attending a poetry workshop in Provincetown, MA when they penned the first lines of “American Flag Bikini.” Eileen Myles was leading the week-long workshop. It was the summer of 2017, and that same week the former president scuttled out of his golf resort in Bedminster and excused the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Although Michael felt the reverberation of this event, their peers at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center did not feel similarly. “American Flag Bikini” was distilled from that moment’s personal and political alienation and given a new setting – the beach between Cherry Grove and Fire Island. With the help of co-writer Natti Vogel and co-producer Reuben Butchart, the poem grew into a protest song. Michael Love Michael grew into their power, and with the help of director Maddy Talias, “American Flag Bikini” has grown into a music video, premiering here.

It begins with Michael Love Michael as a Black version of Uncle Sam, eyes downcast beneath shimmering eyelids done in metallic ocean blue. Next, in a crucifix and locket, as well as the titular American flag bikini, Michael opens their arms in a posture evoking a Pieta, but standing. An American flag is draped around their shoulders like the pelt of the Nemean lion. (Michael is a Leo/Cancer cusp.) On a phone call this February, remembering words of Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, Michael told us, “The way to be seen is to make them see you. Them is everyone. I am wearing this thing that is a symbol of queerness, Americanness, my Blackness. I’m adorning myself with this thing that has been used to divide and conquer me and people who look like me.”

In August 2020, Michael released their debut album, XO. The record documents Michael’s self-discovery and healing amid trauma, alongside a satirical snap that dresses down a man without apology. The album is experimental, haunting, and at times encrypted. On “American Flag Bikini,” Michael comes closer, drawing a languorous melody along a roiling, tipsy production. The lyrics careen from allure to rejection, contradiction to resolution. The listener is coaxed into shifting positions.

Although it was begun in 2017, “American Flag Bikini” was released the day before the Inauguration because, as Michael observed, “Many people still want to move on, but without addressing what got us there. One can’t exist without the other. You have to address everything that created the conditions of the last four years in a brutal way, and you have to be willing to confront those things before there’s this Pollyanna hope for the future.”

“Just this week, I was physically attacked on the street. As long as that’s happening to people like me, or as long as Black trans women are being murdered, then these are things that we’re gonna need to address. If I don’t get to move on, none of you hoes get to move on.”

Toward the end of the video, resilience and renewal are somehow captured in a Mickey Mouse doll. “My nickname for many years was Mickey, before I started going by Michael again. I was working with a shaman for a while. They guided me back to myself, and I chose to reclaim Michael. It’s also my father’s name, and I walked away from it because I’d had a fractured relationship with him. As that relationship began to heal, I thought of the possibilities Michael could be. That it’s not such a man’s name, which is part of why I resented it for so long. It can be like the Archangel Michael. Michael can be soft, and beautiful. Sensitive.”

Michael, trying it out, articulates every letter in their name. “Michael. It’s sensual, even.” Agreed. Watch Michael’s “American Flag Bikini” on YouTube, or hit play below:

Video directed by Maddy Talias.

Concept by Michael Love Michael.