Dollee Go Lightly

Based on a performance of Dolly Parton singing “My Tennessee Mountain Home” (1974) on the Porter Wagoner show. What interested me was the complex power struggle between the host and the performer, and Dolly’s display of what Sianne Ngai calls “minor” or “non-cathartic feelings that index situations of suspended agency”, and my own conflicted feelings when thinking about my Tennessee home. I made my own cover of the song in Garage Band as an homage to Dolly Parton, and perform as my avatar Dollee Go Lightly as a cathartic way to play with racial, cultural, and gender identities and to convey the messy and uncontrollable process of becoming yourself.