merman: dedicated to matthew shepard.

11 years ago tonight, a beautiful young wisp of a man lay comatose and bleeding to death in a hospital in Wyoming. 10 years and 364 days ago, I realized for the first time that there were people in the world whose hearts were so black they would want to kill me simply for being gay.

This was not one of the usual demons I’d read about: parents who’d renounce you or kids whimpering “faggot” in the hallway. This was a real monster. There were people in the world who would beat you until your bones broke so you could not run and your face bled so badly you would not be recognized. They’d strip your humanity away until you didn’t even look human anymore. And they’d tie you to a fence with your own shoelaces and leave you there to die.

When I think of Matthew Shepard I hurt. There is very little separating me from him other than the random elemental geography of where I happened to be born. We were both born close to the same time and both in the vast middles of our respective countries. We lived in small towns in long, wide, flat, open places where the sun sets for days and the sky never ends. And we were both gay. There but for the grace of God go I…

His legacy to us is both a freedom and a burden. His murder unlocked a societal door and in the last 11 years, for all of our turning, we have not opened it. We do not always carry this weight well. We get lazy, we let shit slide. And each time we don’t stand up for ourselves, we let Matthew bleed a little longer. We let Lawrence King’s wound rip deeper. We let Sean Kennedy fall to the pavement and break a little harder.

We owe the dead an absolution. It’s no longer enough to just remember them. We need to fight for the rights that their deaths have paved for us. If we are more free now, it’s because we walk on their backs. If we are less free, it’s because our apathy and stasis will dig our own graves.

Remember, there are people in the world who’d be only too happy to help us slide into them.

I promised myself that if I ever developed any kind of voice I would use it to encourage and gather the kinds of decent, humane, forward-thinking people that have always been the ones to find their own personal strength before they can fight for a social one. Caustic, divisive, violent people have no inner-voice; they are hollow and so their emptiness leads them easily, thoughtlessly, and rapidly to attack and decay. Their hatred is so fast.

The kind, the good-hearted, the caretakers of humanity – our first reaction is shock. Dismay. Disbelief. Though we are filled with love we wait too long. We are gilded with the will to create, not to destroy, and we look inward first. We are slow to respond because our deeds are imbued with thought. We move forward with grace and vision. But while we take our time some of us are killed, more of us are beaten, and all of us are denied the rights we deserve. For no matter which country we live in, and the laws and protections some of us are lucky enough to have, when one person, anywhere, is denied their equality we are all fundamentally less equal. Our humanity wanes.

So we must move faster. And as we do we will gather and we will take a step forward, along the path that all decent people have tread before us, towards making things solidly, purposefully, permanently better.

It’s no longer acceptable to let a muttered “faggot” slip by. It’s no longer acceptable to leave our boyfriends and girlfriends at home while we sit at the Thanksgiving table with our families. It’s no longer acceptable to pass for straight when it’s convenient for us. For if we do so then we will sit and wilt and erode while our rights are slowly, secretly denied by our own governments and our love becomes locked inside our homes and is never allowed to shine.

If you’re anywhere near Washington this weekend you need to go there to scream, shout, and march with all the vigour and passion you feel when someone hates you for nothing more than the person the universe crafted you into. Turn their hatred into your rallying cry.

We are whole. We are right. We deserve to love openly. We belong here. We’ve done nothing wrong except, perhaps, to let our innate goodness lead us to not be vehement in our own defense.

So now, for Matthew and all of those gay men and women who cannot, we must fight.

Please visit The Matthew Shepard Foundation. Please read “Losing Matt Shepard” by Beth Loffreda.

In honour of Matthew, I want to end with a moment of beauty. In October 1998 my favourite musician, Tori Amos, was touring and started playing a B-side called “Merman.” Though the song wasn’t written about Matthew, she began to dedicate it to him during her live shows. She told Attitude Magazine in 1999 that “A lot of guys were asking me to sing it for him and it just kinda took a life on of its own.”

It’s not hard to see why:

go to bed
dream instead
and you will find him
he’s a merman to the knee
doesn’t need something you’re not willing to give
he’s a merman
doesn’t need your voice to cross his lands of ice…

…let it out
who could ever say you’re not simply wonderful
who could ever harm you
sleep now

tori amos: “comic book tattoo”.

I always hesitate to tell people about just how much I love Tori Amos. The inevitable reaction is something along the lines of incredibly insightful comments like “she’s weird!” or “didn’t she write a song about cornflakes?”

It’s not always easy being a Tori fan. Misconceptions abound, although I think the main problem is that in a world that loves its little boxes it just hasn’t been hasn’t been able to figure out to do with someone as expectation-busting as Tori. She doesn’t fit in anywhere. The woman simply defies all limits of what we consider to be an acceptably predictable famous person. She is, in all true senses of the word, an artist. This is not only because she’s talented, not only because she has an uncompromising vision of what she’s creating, but most importantly because she doesn’t give a fuck what any of us think.

The groundbreakers, the true thought provokers, never do. Jackson Pollock, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell – none of these artists could give a shit if we thought what they were doing was valid or not. They knew it was. In their blood, in their nerve endings… they fully believed that what they were creating was honest and true. And so the rest of us could either give them their due and examine what they were doing, or refuse and be left behind in their wakes. In this pantheon of great artists, I wouldn’t hesitate to include Tori.

All pics © Image Comics and their respective artists

Her fearless pursuit of new artistic horizons is being proved again with “Comic Book Tattoo”, a 480-page, foot long, full colour anthology adapting her songs into, as quoted by the book’s publisher, Image Comics, a “lush volume of sequential art”. Show me someone that doesn’t want to check out a “lush volume of sequential art”, and I’ll show you a total fool.

Some of today’s greatest graphic novelists and comic book artists have each taken one of Tori’s songs and transformed it into a visual story. The name of the collection itself comes from a lyric in her song “Flying Dutchman”, and even though I don’t know much about comics, all the comic blogs are saying that the list of contributors to the project is a who’s who of that genre. To check out the whole list, there’s a big-ass article at Comic Book Resources.

I don’t own any comics, I’ve never read any, but this whole thing has me freaking out a little with anticipation. Because, as we’ve come to expect from her, it’s just so different. Amos recently said about the growing reaction to the book, “I have been surprised, excited and pleasantly shocked by these comics that are extensions of the songs that I have loved and therefore welcome these amazing stories of pictures and words because they are uncompromisingly inspiring. It shows you thought is a powerful formidable essence and can have a breathtaking domino effect.”

C’mon! “Thought is a powerful formidable essence” – how can you not love this woman?

All pics © Image Comics and their respective artists

“Comic Book Tattoo” is being released on July 23rd, 2008. Now I’m going to have to find a comic book store near me. And I’m going to have to buy a tent. Because I will be camping out…

tori amos will kick your ass.

Tori Amos is the shit. She’s spent literal years touring and plays live music in a way that most people just don’t do anymore. That should command a certain respect from an audience.

Tori is my favourite human being on Earth. Most people I know also think she’s crazy. Not totally bat shit crazy like Björk, but still pretty special. I was hesitant to post this when I first found it because I was worried people would take it the wrong way. That lasted about half a second because this clip brings me happiness in a way I can’t fully express.

Play the vid and fast forward to 2:25. Basically, Tori kicks two girls out of her show in the middle of a song…

That’s right bitches. Up and out the door. In case you didn’t catch it, she said “Get the fuck out of my show! It’s a privilege to sit in the front row and I reserve those seats for people who appreciate music.” As someone who was lucky enough to sit front row at a Tori concert and not get kicked out, the only logical conclusion to come to is that Tori personally feels that I appreciate music. I always knew she understood me.

Via Dlisted