Sunshine and Sighs

Back in 2002, I went to see TABOO, Boy George’s musical about his rise to fame, mirrored by the story of the fall of performance artist Leigh Bowery. I had been an off and on fan of Boy George for some time (the first record I ever bought as a kid was Karma Chameleon). On first hearing about the show I expected to hate it, but once I did actually see it, I was blown away (rather like my first experience of Hedwig and the Angry Inch). With the songs revolving in my head time after time after time, I went back several times, becoming quite obsessed with the show – so obsessed that when I heard it was transferring to Broadway, it convinced me to sign up for the Stonewall New York Equality Walk and kill two birds with one stone.

Fascinated by the peculiar phenomenon of Boy George himself playing Leigh Bowery (I say this because people I know who regularly went to the club Taboo assure me that he and Leigh rarely spoke and certainly were not friends, as he claims) I wrote a song called ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ and roped in some friends to make an accompanying pop video. I was fascinated with the idea of one performer taking on another performer’s persona – Leigh Bowery has such an iconic image that it has almost become a product in itself – and as Boy George made a facsimile of it – was I copying Boy George, or copying Boy George copying Leigh Bowery?

The video was filmed on location in my mum’s house (with original 70s wallpaper), the director’s Italo Ali’s flat in Vauxhall and at the Cambridge Theatre, where we managed to take over Michael Brandon’s dressing room before he came in to play Jerry Springer in Jerry Springer: The Opera.

It gathered dust on Italo’s computer for a long time, not really being shown properly until my one-man retrospective show ‘Three Zero’ in 2009, so I am very pleased to announce that video artist Nathan Evans has included it in Sunshine Night Time, a celebration of Leigh Bowery’s life and work at the ICA on Friday April 1st. It will be such a thrill to have the film shown in such an auspicious setting. In fact – it sort of is a ‘coming full circle’ moment. In the lyrics of the song, when I say ‘I met you once and you were cold, balding fat and looking old’, I am referring to meeting Boy George many years ago in the ICA bar. Spooky!

But before we get to that, Wednesday March 30th is also an auspicious night. I feel very proud to have been a regular attendee to INCITE, a new LGBTQ poetry night held at First Out Café.

Led by Liz Willows of Camden LGBT Forum, Cel West and new addition James Clement de Grandprey-Hodge (yes, it’s his real name) the night is an intimate forum for established and emerging poets alike. I’ve been going since the first one last year and I have found it a really good motivation to write something new each month, plus it's a very diverse crowd which is always inspiring. So much so that after seeing the Allen Ginsberg film ‘Howl’ (which I would definitely recommend), it occurred to me that it was about time I had something to send out to prospective bookers and some ‘product’ to sell at the handful of spoken word gigs that come my way.

So I am very pleased to announce the launch of SIGHS TEN, a small collection of my writings from the last ten years. There are ten in total, with the title piece a new one written for the collection. As it’s not quite a book and the word ‘pamphlet’ sounds a bit throwaway to me, I was worrying about what to call it. Wikipedia brought up the term ‘chapbook’. As all the pieces are about men, I think that’s rather appropriate. So if you are free to come and celebrate the birth of my first chapbook, please do come down to First Out on Wednesday March 30th from 7 pm, where copies will be available after my reading for £3.00. Entry is free and it gets very crowded, so you’ll need to come early to get a seat. I will also be appearing on Out In South London on Resonance 104.4 FM with Rosie Wilby on Tuesday March 29th to talk about it.