2 minute read
Billie Gold..Golden Hour
A New Perspective
I’ll be 30 this year. I had so many things written down on very lovely stationery for what I wanted to accomplish in my last six months of being 29, unfortunately Covid-19 has not only ruined all of it, it's kicked it so hard in the proverbial twigs and berries it may as well be like this time didn't exist, or so I thought.
Like so many of us I am at my best when I am doing what I love - I can’t do it the way I want to right now - and I had been resigned during this lockdown to thinking that I would be forgotten, that I would create nothing, and that it would suck my life and career down the drain with so many others, and I’d be left a petulant child on the floor crying for my old life.
However, the position that we find ourselves in at the moment has done strange things to me, apart from talking to household appliances, the toaster’s new name is Barbara. Far away from the loud, sweaty, cornucopia of our rainbow of bars and clubs that we have all come to know as home, I realised that I hadn’t allowed myself a moment of peace in five years. I’ve seen each person take this journey together, but in very different ways, personally I’m isolating alone, meaning that I have to sit with myself as a person, off the stage. Daunting? Yes. Necessary? Yes. A one-way ticket to alcoholism and compulsive sock pairing? Absolutely. But far from the disconnect I had anticipated, my friends, colleagues and fans were not gone, only moved to a place of safety.
My family had not forgotten me but had only wanted to connect more. I am learning that it doesn't always take just the one way I know how to make people happy, that I and all of us as a group have more to give. Our community did not disappear, it’s buzzing in the background, anxious to create something outrageous from the fire. The LGBTQ+ community has never been quiet. Nothing has managed to silence it, or stop it moving forward, it simply adapts, coming back louder and stronger than ever before.
The internet has blown up with performances from our favourite artists, some people are being brave enough to create something they never thought would’ve been possible without the time to be bored out of their minds. Essentially this unprecedented time in our lives has taught us to adapt, our old way of life isn't relevant anymore, and when we can all run out and rejoin each other again it will be a chance to take what we’ve learned while sitting on our asses at home and use it. Whether that's newfound kindness, a new skill, or just old parts of ourselves that have been forgotten. It’s up to us to not see this as a part of life gone missing, we are not losing time, we are gaining a new perspective.
