Yesterday I spent World Mental Health Day having a self-care day, which seems
appropriate. In reality you ought to be good to yourself every day of course, but
that’s just not plausible for most of us, so for those who need it, it’s important
to put aside special days – or even just some hours or moments if that’s what
you can spare – to prioritise feeling good and being kind to yourself.
The reason I need self-care days is basically down to anxiety. My
approach to controlling my anxiety these days is preventative, because once it’s
there it’s basically a straitjacket and the more you struggle the tighter it
winds around you. I know the circumstances that set off my anxiety and when I start
to eliminate them – coffee instead of food on an empty stomach, alcohol, being
disorganised, running out of money, lying – my quality of life gets measurably
better. Other anxiety triggers are unavoidable – guilt, emotional friction, fear
of violence, bad health, running out of money – while some episodes have no
tangible origin whatsoever and you just have to have your tactics to hand for
when they arrive.
Two things are definitely true for me: the more I look after my body
– yoga, exercise, sex, good food, less alcohol and caffeine – the less anxiety
I will have to go through; and the more I look after my mind – yoga, reading, learning,
meditation, art, new experience, conversation – the less anxiety I get and the better
able I feel to deal with the way I live and the world I have to live in. Self-care
days help me to sustain all of that.
What my self-care days are
Necessary.
All mine.
An opportunity to think about my mental and physical health.
An opportunity to learn from people going through similar.
A chance to think how far I’ve come.
Truly lovely times.
What my self-care days are
not
‘Treat days’. It shouldn’t be a big treat to want to go for a walk for
no reason, or make a 5 hour playlist just for yourself, or make imaginary
AirBnB wish lists. They’re just simple pleasures that I deserve and that harm
nobody.
‘An excuse to bunk off work’. I’m a freelancer, that means I work
hard and I work long hours, but I work them when I want to. Also there ain’t
nothing wrong with bunking off work anyway.
A day to get over hangovers. My self-care days are all about
improving on my default condition, not struggling to get back to an emotional ‘norm’
after self-abuse. If you’re only ever recovering, then you’re never improving!
Things I like to do on a
self-care day
Ride my bike with no destination and in any weather.
Notice really small things.
Meditate.
Take ages to do things.
Watch, read, listen to bell hooks. She is my intellectual icon, she
theorises love as a survival tactic, she is teachable, she makes me think about
my own political accountability, she loves conversation as a method of teaching.
All this sustains my brain, I am very grateful to her.
Listen to every single version of a single song that I can find.
Watch TED Talks, listen to On Being.
Yoga, either at home or at a class if I feel like facing people.
Classes are great because people pay attention to you in a caring way and
everyone is there to feel good.
Reciting Victoria Wood.
Trying to learn ‘Billy in the Darbies’ off by heart.
Getting in touch with friends I’ve not seen for ages.
Comedy comedy comedy.
Long baths.
Give money to charity if I have it.
Re-read things I love.
Write fiction.
Make really insanely optimistic plans for the future.
Things I don’t do on a
self-care day
Shopping.
Drugs.
Check messages if I don’t want to.
Read the news.
Worry about money.
Waste time.
I hope you gave yourself some quality time on World Mental Health
Day. Try a self-care day, they are fun to curate, fun to do, and have seriously
good repercussions. Put one on the calendar, you’re worth it.
Our old dog came to see me in a dream this morning. Maybe he knew it
was my birthday! He was sitting next to me on the couch, growling and whining
because I had gloves and a hat on. He never liked it when you wore them. I took
them off and his eyes were sad and stubborn like they used to be and his snout
was wet. Oisín woke me up because I was ‘beeping’, the anxious sound that I make
when I’m having bad dreams, but actually I was having a bit of a sleep-cry. I got up
to fetch some water and in the kitchen I could hear a single bird from outside having
a riotous sing. He’s still going now. It’s 5.45 am. He has no idea how old he
is, how old the world is, how long birds have been singing, he’s just doing his
thing.
I’m 38 today, I can hardly believe it. I still wanna throw my bonnet
over the windmill and rush into the sea at midnight (Pat Phoenix). I remember
leaving home at 18 with absolutely no idea how to do anything at all but read
books. Things have gotten much better. I’ve been in Manchester 20 years now, I’m
the IRA bomb generation. I’ll have a big party in September to celebrate my
anniversary I think.
I spent time with my Mum last week and found out my biological
Dad made a conscious decision not to see me again quite a short time after I
was born. It doesn’t make a big difference, and it started before that
because he never came to get us from the hospital when I was born or anything. I’m
so much older now than he was when he left that it seems churlish to even think
about it but it has hurt me a bit. I’m lucky though because I’ve been so
loved my whole life by lots of people. Even now, on occasional days when I’m
still in my pyjamas and my anxiety is out of hand and I haven’t been able to
pay rent, Oisín will tell me not to worry, I’m a unique handsome genius and Manchester
would fall apart without me and why don’t I become a famous singer or something?
I never do a jot of work on my birthday, this is the only thing I’ll
write today. Weather permitting, we are getting on our bikes later and cycling
out to look at a 1920s street or something, and then having a massive vegetarian
feast at Lily’s Indian restaurant, then a pint, and then I’m going to read Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. There’s
a cake too, I could smell it baking when I got back from DJing last night. Good
morning everyone, happy birthday!
It’s been a rollercoaster of variety already: funny, serious, questioning,
confrontational… Here’s what I’ve got up to at this year’s Queer Contact so far.
Life’s A Drag is a piece by artist Jez Dolan looking at Manchester’s drag
history, and present day, and these live performances represent the first
fruits of an ongoing project. Written with playwright Chris Hoyle, Life’s a
Drag is a meta-comedy where we see two drag queens preparing backstage for a
show. While they bitch, kvetch, laugh and take us on a journey back in time via
the make-up box, they teach one another about the relevance of their own particular
school of drag and gayness, from Polari to RuPaul. We encounter legends and
legendary nights out, from Foo Foo Lamaar to the Hulme drag ball, and it’s all done
with such a light touch that it feels like a genuine eavesdrop, even as they
kick down the fourth wall with heels. There’s a superbly moving moment with a
pair of earrings that crystallises what the piece is about for me, plus an
astonishingly good musical medley at the end, sung across the decades, but no spoilers
as to the songs…
FAdoubleGOT and The Daily Grind worked well on the same bill. The former is Jamal Gerald’s very personal story,
encompassing bullying, education, a second-generation immigrant experience,
youth, sexuality and life in a Northern town. Using monologue, symbolism, music
and pop culture, it’s performed with a charming combination of earnestness and
sass that perhaps even its very young creator isn’t fully aware of. He’s also a
terrific poet and his verse threads neatly through the piece as he goes. The Daily Grind is the work of a slightly older, very serious theatre maker, all about life on dating apps. Don’t be surprised
if you feel vulnerable and discomfited as much as moved to laughter. The dissonance of the performance comes from its single performer and writer,
Laurie Brown, flitting between friendly, camp, menacing and monstrous. For
anyone in the know it mirrors convincingly the Jekyll and Hyde nature of online
encounters. The last five minutes of the show were a borderline genius move.
A personal highlight so far has been Outspoken, the poetry and spoken word event. A real triumph of
curating, the breadth of writing styles and extremely high standard of performance,
not to mention the content which ran from surreal to sad to hilarious to
too-damn-true, made for a really inspirational evening. Such a treat to see Jackie Kay
perform, and a first real life encounter too with my online favourite, poet AJ
McKenna. Also introduced me to astonishing work from Paula Varjack and Keith Jarrett
too. Seek them out.
Another personal favourite was STUD,
a bizarre and hilarious journey through masculinity and the world of horses (yes,
horses). Created and performed by a truly confident and accomplished performer,
like no other show on the bill the audience were in this performer’s hands
from the opening seconds. It’s hard to even describe the show or why it works
so well, suffice to say after twenty minutes you stop even noticing the
glorious pubic bush that’s constantly on show. It’s a piece that gently
terrorises gender, with a handsaw, a raw carrot, whatever comes to hand or hoof. Eilidh
McAskill, I salute you.
Still to come for me: Our Lady J, which will be a Valentine musical weekend
sensation, and a religious experience in the shape of Jesus Queen of Heaven, on
a Sunday of course… Full line up is here,
and check out the pics from my own Queer Contact event right here.
See you soon…!
Gender isn’t a exactly new
frontier for queer people, it’s always been a frontier. The law that got to be
too damn much at Stonewall – as we should know by now but as Laverne reminds us – was that all patrons must wear three items of clothing ‘appropriate to their
gender’ otherwise the police would crack skulls.
Gender and its multiple expressions
are deep in the heart of queer history and art. It wasn’t long ago that homosexuality
/ drag / transgenderism were talked about as a continuum of expression. You encounter
it in contemporary accounts of the Stonewall era, right up to Paris is Burning. The scare queens, butches
and femme queens of yesteryear might not necessarily connote cis or trans precisely the way we think of those terms today. Our connections to one another as
queer people of all genders are deep and abiding and vital.
Timely as ever, this year’s
Queer
Contact Festival puts together a broad and exciting programme where gender
is frequently at the artistic frontier. Transparenthas
been one of the most radically queer mainstream shows ever created, winning
dozens of awards as it interrogates ideas about sexuality, history and identity.
It’s something of a coup that one of the writers and series advisors, Our Lady J, is appearing at
Queer Contact 2016. Her original musical show ‘For
the Love of Gospel’ will help demonstrate why she has worked with everyone from Sia to Debbie Harry, via Antony Hegarty, Lady Gaga, Cyndi Lauper and Scissor Sisters.
Next, from high-femme to bold
and butch, Eilidh Macaskill’s ‘STUD’
puts a queer woman’s perspective on the traditional gender binary as she performs
a series of hyper-masculine tropes, exercising her ‘penis envy’ with full
comedy intact.
For a more local
perspective on the performance of gender, Jez Dolan and Chris Hoyle’s ‘Life’s A Drag’
is the beginning of a year-long project that celebrates Manchester’s drag culture
and its deep roots with performance, oral history and maybe even some
participation, so get your foundation right.
If the Pet Shop Boys are ‘The Smiths you can dance to’, Erasure
are the Pet Shop Boys you can really camp it up to. Singer Andy Bell’s Contact show
will take him on a somewhat different route as he explores the vexed polysexual
character of ‘Saint
Torsten’ through a song-cycle written especially for him and lately performed
at Edinburgh Fringe. It’s a chance to see and hear a legendary gay pop voice as
never before.
Another Queer Contact highlight
is the return of Debs Gatenby, star of the much-loved Hi,
Anxiety, whose new solo show looks at those journeys, inside and out,
in search of ‘A
Place Called Happiness’.
A dose of raw comedy can
be had in the Comedy Playground
where seven stand-ups battle it out for your love and lolz, including Bethany
Black of Cucumber/Banana fame, Suzi
Ruffell from telly and a familiar flamboyant host...
As for me, I’ll be
throwing a Queer Contact launch party in the shape of A Queer Revue! at Band
on the Wall, featuring international and local trans, gay, lesbian and queer
talent, including contemporary dance, singing drag queens, Kate Bush and Bowie
tributes, poetry, pop videos, comedy and a big old party afterwards.
As for the rest of the
programme, you can tuck into the full
listings here, or use my handy taster guide below…!
