NOW MEET THE MAN…YEAH, WE SAID MAN…

HHNLive: Can you give us a brief background? Where are you from? How old are you? What is your background?

Tay Zonday: I live in Minneapolis. I’m 25 years old. I’m not sure what you mean by “background.” Is that a code word for “race?” The straight-faced answer is that I’m Martian. They don’t have a box for me on the census form. I’m the write-in candidate that the government leaves no space for when you have to choose your race.
Seriously, is race something you choose? The whole point is that I don’t choose it. It is somebody else’s shortcut to my soul. So journalists ask “what’s your background?” like I’m supposed to retell someone else’s story about me as though it’s a fact of who I am and where I come from. As long as I talk about myself in fiction that someone else wrote, I might as well write my own fiction: I’m from Mars. Most believe the story that I’m a black mulatto.

HHNLive: For all the ladies out there, is Tay Zonday single?

TZ: Oh c’mon, relationships are so twentieth century! Why do we imagine ourselves in these pairs? There’s the economic reason: If I don’t have a partner to take care of me in rough times, I might not get through. So when things like Katrina happen and you know the government isn’t going to be there . . . you’ve got this insurance policy of a loving partner who will take care of you. When you can’t afford the surgery you need, you’ve got this insurance policy of a loving partner to take care of you because you have no healthcare. You can say it’s love. You can say it’s sex. But economics and getting by day-to-day are the main reason to label yourself based on the relationship you are in. You better have a committed lover there for you when your government isn’t.

So when Rush Limbaugh talks about the dangerous breakup of the family, and when gays are talking about recognizing same-sex relationships . . . they are actually talking about the same thing. The Human Rights Campaign (pro-gay marriage) and the Christian Coalition (pro-traditional family) agree: We need to spend our lives labeling ourselves based on what relationship we are in. But when you stop being afraid that nobody’s going to be there to support you if you become disabled; When you stop being afraid that you can’t live a decent life without two incomes; When you stop being afraid that life is so hard that you’ve got to have an ally at your side just to stay afloat . . . then you stop worrying about relationships. You stop labeling yourself according to your own relationship. You stop worrying about what other people are doing in their relationships. It no longer matters whether Tay Zonday is single.

I’m not dogging stable relationships. I think they can be fantastic. But when relationship status totally dominates the way we think about each other, there are bigger reasons than love and sex. Heaven knows those can happen without a relationship. You asked this as a very simple question. But I connected the dots. In music and life, you’ve got to connect the dots to see how simple things relate to power.

HHNLive: When did you first start recording music? And what prompted you to begin doing this?

TZ: I started playing around with recording audio when I was thirteen years old. I got a brand-new Pentium 90. I goofed off with Windows Sound Recorder and the awesomely cutting-edge MP3 file format. About two years later, I noticed that a friend of mine used actual sequencing software to edit MIDI and record audio. So when I upgraded to my next computer, I got a higher quality sound card and imitated his rig. I don’t think anything in particular prompted me to explore recording music. My Dad has always been a gadgeteer. Tinkering with the limitations of the hardware in front of me was standard behavior in my family.

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