Los Angeles-based artist, musician, and filmmaker Rachel Mason recently received an Emmy nomination for the Netflix documentary “Circus of Books,” which chronicles her life story about growing up as the child of pornographers who were at the center of the gay community. Mason’s first feature film, “The Lives of Hamilton Fish,” premiered at the Raindance Film Festival in 2016. Aside from filmmaking, Mason is also a prolific musician who has written three operas, recorded 14 albums, and performed or exhibited at venues like the Whitney Museum, the Hammer Museum, the Queens Museum, LACMA, the New Museum, the Park Avenue Armory, La Mama, and Dixon Place. Her last large-scale performance, a meditation on black holes, premiered at the Disney Redcat Theater in Los Angeles and featured a collaboration between Oguri, a famous Butoh dancer, and Kip Thorne, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. While she has a lot of irons in the fire, Mason’s connection to the queer community runs through it all. Her message to the community is clear: find who you are and be that person. “There is no one way to be queer and there is no rulebook for coming out,” Mason tells GO. “Every single person is entitled to their unique choices that work for only themselves and their own situation. And coming out is also not mandatory to one’s family, work, or any other social group. It is entirely your decision.” —IL
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