unthinkable
In the lead-up to Michael's birthday this weekend, I've gone back to the music and yesterday found myself listening about seven times to I Just Can't Stop Loving You, so drunk on the sex and love of it, the total intensity of it, all the magnificent soars and dramatic breaks and strings and softnesses.
And it got me watching Bucharest but then I got all choked up cos he's so powerful and energetic and I just want to reach out and gather him into me and protect him and never ever ever let him go cos it's just impossible to live in a world without him.
My mind still can't contain such an enormous ridiculous thought.
That reaction baffles me. This inability to grasp baffles me. Why am I struggling with this loss when I've lost people so much closer to me? I know why. Intellectually I know it's because I'm still interacting with him the way I was when he was alive. Only through the stereo and the DVD player and the computer. There is no physical absence of him so it's not an inescapable reality. I can go hours, days and not remember that he is gone. And then when I'm reminded, it's bewildering and baffling all over again.
And my mind doesn't WANT to know. It keeps shying away from the pain and that is so strange. I've never done that before, it feels awful, weak and pathetic and DISLOYAL! How dare I not accept the fact that he's gone?! His family are grieving, his children are grieving, what gives me the luxury to avoid that pain?
This man was there for me since the age of nine, watched over me when I slept in an abusive home, provided a place where I could be safe with my emotions, a refuge of creativity and fantasy, taught me to accept and develop my ambition into artistry. This man shaped my social conscience, my sexuality, my musical aesthetic, my sense of creative cultural history. For the most important formative years of my life, he was the only positive male influence.
How dare I not grieve the reality of him gone?
I don't know. Maybe this is the best and only way I can. As close as I felt to him, he was never in the same room with me. We never spoke. He never looked back at me. There is no presence to miss.
But then it hits me every now and then what we --- I --- have lost. It's the hope for the future. Of course. Just like Syd Barrett and Michael Hutchence and Jeff Buckley. I watched him last night move and dance and roar and reach out and it was a piercing pain to realise I'll never see him do a new dance routine, never see him in a whole oufit in a whole new show. He will never evolve.
I don't want to leave him behind me. He was always several lengths in front of me and, whether I liked what he did or not, he was always moving forward. It's like realising you are now older than James Dean.
Everything I say is trite, has been said a billion times about a million billion deaths. And each time they're new awful shocks of truth. Each time is like it's never happened before, like Death has never happened before. Because it was never this death, this person, this relationship, this particular bond severed. Each death happens to a different person even though they all have my name and my face because I am a different person with a different history at that particular point in time. And so I find myself gasping out the same things like I've never realised them before, brought to my knees once more, breathless with the shock and pain.
He is mine. Only I know what he was to me and that makes him mine. When I was young and blithe, I wore my love for him with pride, displayed his colours and sang his songs and walked with my head held high.
And slowly it changed. What happened to him happened to me. When he was hurt, I defended him but I was hurt too. When he was ridiculed, I was shamed. When people questioned him, I felt judged and gullible. So eventually when people ridiculed me for loving him, I began to move away. Told myself I was growing up, finding new interests and new people to inspire me but the truth was I was ashamed of him and ashamed of myself for loving him so much.
As it happened, I returned long before the 25th of June. And for that I am grateful. I had a year or more of loving him without guilt, without shame, clear-eyed and quietly proud. Didn't stay silent when people ridiculed him, I spoke calmly and directly about his significance to me. Just how deep my love went didn't need to be exposed, it was enough that it was there and I wouldn't hide it, wouldn't deny it any more.
But it still felt like I was alone in the incomprehending wilderness. Yes, there was the suffocating oasis of an MJJ forum that I happily wallowed in for a while. But around me were only two people who could engage me on this.
At least by then I had gotten to the point where I didn't mind that so much. The joy of rediscovery was enough. Once more I had my friend, my love, my guardian. Only this time our relationship was changing. He wasn't so far above me. I could bring all I'd learnt in my time away back to shine on him. So I listened with new ears and wrote fic and made visual art and discovered all these new so human and adorable facets to him, thought about him in new and enlightening ways as a man and an artist and someone I could sit down and talk with. It was like getting to know your parents when you're both adults, that sort of frank evolved appreciation of your monstrous childhood influences as people, just people, wonderful unique people.
But I didn't fly my colours high. Was it lingering shame? Or prudence? I didn't want to expose my rediscovered affinity to random persecution and ridicule. And I didn't want to inflict the visuals of him, however much I loved them, on friends who didn't like him, didn't get him and were repulsed by the sight of him. I joined only one LJ community, an icon place that was almost deserted. I kept my wallpapers to myself and the MJJ forum. I kept my icons to a minimum and carefully discreet. And so many times I wanted to feature a treasured picture as a header for my LJ, I made myself choose someone else and keep him as the much smaller default icon. I flew my colours under the radar.
And then he died and the LJ community exploded. At first, it was a shock and baffling too when the moderator said she was closing the community to new members. It was a two line post of such anguish my heart totally went out to her. Because yes, of course it was understandable --- all this while nobody was interested in him or the community and now that he's been stolen from us, people are battering the door down, eager to tout their wares. But then I thought "Wait a minute, it's more than that ..." And clearly the moderator realised or was told that too because she relented and in came the flood.
It was marvellous to see, a thing of such wonder to discover all these people in my very own virtual backyard who loved him and delighted in the visuals of him as much as I did. Icons and headers and wallpapers and colourbars and banners. All this beauty made and displayed of him, for him, to please our eyes, to delight our souls because look, that's from my favourite video, that's my favourite photoshoot, oooh I've never seen that pic before, where's that from, how did you do that?! Celebrating him, unafraid and there, right out there for everyone to see! God, that's so wonderful.
Did we have to lose him for this to happen? We did. It's like his death has liberated us. And I hate that so much.
And yet that's completely understandable too. Because so many of these posts come with prefaces of how much the iconmaker misses him, how confused and hard the grieving is. It's an overflow of energy that needs outlet and it's the crazed nature of grief that bulldozes all notions of restraint and shame and discretion. It's wild, this sense of loss, and the only thing that gives it full voice and some succour is the creative celebration of him, the sight and sound of him.
So now I finally have a header that features my Michael. And my default icon is him too. I look at my LJ and the first thing I see is him, and that soothes and satisfies me. That is how it should be right now. My life continues below him in all its messy schizophrenic ricochet of interests and activities, and that seems right too.
But there he is, beautiful and present and the way I love to think of him. Elegant and timeless. And I fly my colours high and proud now. But I hate that it could only happen now. I should have been braver, stronger, prouder a year or more ago. I should have.
We have nothing to lose now. It's the peculiar selfrighteous pomposity of grief: "you can't criticise me, I've lost someone." There is that aspect which I don't like one bit and I hope that's not what I'm doing. But what's true is yes, we have nothing left to lose. You can't hurt him now so you can't hurt me. You can say whatever you want but I know now what he was to me.
He was human and he was flawed and he was painfully vulnerable but I loved him and I love him still and that can never be changed now. His memory is incorruptible.
I just wish they'd choose some other day than this Saturday.
And it got me watching Bucharest but then I got all choked up cos he's so powerful and energetic and I just want to reach out and gather him into me and protect him and never ever ever let him go cos it's just impossible to live in a world without him.
My mind still can't contain such an enormous ridiculous thought.
That reaction baffles me. This inability to grasp baffles me. Why am I struggling with this loss when I've lost people so much closer to me? I know why. Intellectually I know it's because I'm still interacting with him the way I was when he was alive. Only through the stereo and the DVD player and the computer. There is no physical absence of him so it's not an inescapable reality. I can go hours, days and not remember that he is gone. And then when I'm reminded, it's bewildering and baffling all over again.
And my mind doesn't WANT to know. It keeps shying away from the pain and that is so strange. I've never done that before, it feels awful, weak and pathetic and DISLOYAL! How dare I not accept the fact that he's gone?! His family are grieving, his children are grieving, what gives me the luxury to avoid that pain?
This man was there for me since the age of nine, watched over me when I slept in an abusive home, provided a place where I could be safe with my emotions, a refuge of creativity and fantasy, taught me to accept and develop my ambition into artistry. This man shaped my social conscience, my sexuality, my musical aesthetic, my sense of creative cultural history. For the most important formative years of my life, he was the only positive male influence.
How dare I not grieve the reality of him gone?
I don't know. Maybe this is the best and only way I can. As close as I felt to him, he was never in the same room with me. We never spoke. He never looked back at me. There is no presence to miss.
But then it hits me every now and then what we --- I --- have lost. It's the hope for the future. Of course. Just like Syd Barrett and Michael Hutchence and Jeff Buckley. I watched him last night move and dance and roar and reach out and it was a piercing pain to realise I'll never see him do a new dance routine, never see him in a whole oufit in a whole new show. He will never evolve.
I don't want to leave him behind me. He was always several lengths in front of me and, whether I liked what he did or not, he was always moving forward. It's like realising you are now older than James Dean.
Everything I say is trite, has been said a billion times about a million billion deaths. And each time they're new awful shocks of truth. Each time is like it's never happened before, like Death has never happened before. Because it was never this death, this person, this relationship, this particular bond severed. Each death happens to a different person even though they all have my name and my face because I am a different person with a different history at that particular point in time. And so I find myself gasping out the same things like I've never realised them before, brought to my knees once more, breathless with the shock and pain.
He is mine. Only I know what he was to me and that makes him mine. When I was young and blithe, I wore my love for him with pride, displayed his colours and sang his songs and walked with my head held high.
And slowly it changed. What happened to him happened to me. When he was hurt, I defended him but I was hurt too. When he was ridiculed, I was shamed. When people questioned him, I felt judged and gullible. So eventually when people ridiculed me for loving him, I began to move away. Told myself I was growing up, finding new interests and new people to inspire me but the truth was I was ashamed of him and ashamed of myself for loving him so much.
As it happened, I returned long before the 25th of June. And for that I am grateful. I had a year or more of loving him without guilt, without shame, clear-eyed and quietly proud. Didn't stay silent when people ridiculed him, I spoke calmly and directly about his significance to me. Just how deep my love went didn't need to be exposed, it was enough that it was there and I wouldn't hide it, wouldn't deny it any more.
But it still felt like I was alone in the incomprehending wilderness. Yes, there was the suffocating oasis of an MJJ forum that I happily wallowed in for a while. But around me were only two people who could engage me on this.
At least by then I had gotten to the point where I didn't mind that so much. The joy of rediscovery was enough. Once more I had my friend, my love, my guardian. Only this time our relationship was changing. He wasn't so far above me. I could bring all I'd learnt in my time away back to shine on him. So I listened with new ears and wrote fic and made visual art and discovered all these new so human and adorable facets to him, thought about him in new and enlightening ways as a man and an artist and someone I could sit down and talk with. It was like getting to know your parents when you're both adults, that sort of frank evolved appreciation of your monstrous childhood influences as people, just people, wonderful unique people.
But I didn't fly my colours high. Was it lingering shame? Or prudence? I didn't want to expose my rediscovered affinity to random persecution and ridicule. And I didn't want to inflict the visuals of him, however much I loved them, on friends who didn't like him, didn't get him and were repulsed by the sight of him. I joined only one LJ community, an icon place that was almost deserted. I kept my wallpapers to myself and the MJJ forum. I kept my icons to a minimum and carefully discreet. And so many times I wanted to feature a treasured picture as a header for my LJ, I made myself choose someone else and keep him as the much smaller default icon. I flew my colours under the radar.
And then he died and the LJ community exploded. At first, it was a shock and baffling too when the moderator said she was closing the community to new members. It was a two line post of such anguish my heart totally went out to her. Because yes, of course it was understandable --- all this while nobody was interested in him or the community and now that he's been stolen from us, people are battering the door down, eager to tout their wares. But then I thought "Wait a minute, it's more than that ..." And clearly the moderator realised or was told that too because she relented and in came the flood.
It was marvellous to see, a thing of such wonder to discover all these people in my very own virtual backyard who loved him and delighted in the visuals of him as much as I did. Icons and headers and wallpapers and colourbars and banners. All this beauty made and displayed of him, for him, to please our eyes, to delight our souls because look, that's from my favourite video, that's my favourite photoshoot, oooh I've never seen that pic before, where's that from, how did you do that?! Celebrating him, unafraid and there, right out there for everyone to see! God, that's so wonderful.
Did we have to lose him for this to happen? We did. It's like his death has liberated us. And I hate that so much.
And yet that's completely understandable too. Because so many of these posts come with prefaces of how much the iconmaker misses him, how confused and hard the grieving is. It's an overflow of energy that needs outlet and it's the crazed nature of grief that bulldozes all notions of restraint and shame and discretion. It's wild, this sense of loss, and the only thing that gives it full voice and some succour is the creative celebration of him, the sight and sound of him.
So now I finally have a header that features my Michael. And my default icon is him too. I look at my LJ and the first thing I see is him, and that soothes and satisfies me. That is how it should be right now. My life continues below him in all its messy schizophrenic ricochet of interests and activities, and that seems right too.
But there he is, beautiful and present and the way I love to think of him. Elegant and timeless. And I fly my colours high and proud now. But I hate that it could only happen now. I should have been braver, stronger, prouder a year or more ago. I should have.
We have nothing to lose now. It's the peculiar selfrighteous pomposity of grief: "you can't criticise me, I've lost someone." There is that aspect which I don't like one bit and I hope that's not what I'm doing. But what's true is yes, we have nothing left to lose. You can't hurt him now so you can't hurt me. You can say whatever you want but I know now what he was to me.
He was human and he was flawed and he was painfully vulnerable but I loved him and I love him still and that can never be changed now. His memory is incorruptible.
I just wish they'd choose some other day than this Saturday.