Buchanan

When we decided on the prompt for the first week of the project, I was pretty stumped as to what I could do for it. I was excited to figure out how I could communicate the idea of my personal community through an image, or to try to come up with some elegant way to boil down the myriad of things I consider my community into some scant few paragraphs or a poem of some sort. Then the rest of the month happened, and– being as honest as possible– I had no idea how I was going to approach it. I had some vague ideas about an artwork, but felt I didn't have the skills to do it and ultimately didn't have the time to commit to the scale of a piece I would have felt did the topic justice. I did try to get a few paragraphs down too but none of them made all that much sense, and then the rest of the month ran away from me. I worked on other projects and important life goals while simmering on the vague idea of “community”. 

As I simmered on it, and as February and all its news slipped by, my thoughts and feelings about how I could present my community through an artwork instead turned into thoughts about what my community actually was. I realised that part of what was challenging me the most about the prompt wasn't any kind of block in creativity or the subject itself, but instead that the sheer scope of it was complicating things.

There is no one single community that is Mine, though I belong to many. Large, small, and tiny all the same, I belong to communities and groups that are all very different from another, though all of them are so vibrant and rich.

It meant that, when I was thinking about my community, my first response was: “Well, which one?” 

Is it the local community of where I live? A bundle of hamlets that orbit villages, which in turn orbit a tangle of towns, all scattered around one or two final buds that, as a child, I considered to be cities. Is that the community I talk about? I knew it wouldn't be, because I never felt like I was actually part of the weft in this picturesque corner of the tapestry of the Midlands. I left it, and came back, and I remain feeling more like a stubborn knot in instead of a stitch in its story. 

Is it the nationwide community of the hobbies I participate in? I did really consider this one, but felt cowed away from it for all its nicheness. I adore my hobbies; I have made and maintained incredible human connections through them, have learned modern and heritage skills and crafts as a result, and have reignited my interests in history, costuming, garment-making, all things theatrical. I've met some of the most incredible people doing these amazing things, and treasure those bonds. However, it felt at once fad too large in scope to do justice in just one artwork but it also felt far too niche of a topic to cover in this medium, to this audience, because I wasn't sure who would even get what I was talking about. Whenever I introduce what I do, it's always in half-truths. “It's like a re-enactment, except none of it has ever happened and we don't have an audience” gets quizzical looks, and “historical costuming and theatre” isn't necessarily incorrect but feels disingenuous, because the hobby is so much more than that, but how can you explain something like that in just one image? Just one paragraph? 

Would I speak about the international community of LGBTQ+ people? I felt initially that this was probably the best bet, but started combatting complicated feelings about it. I certainly would be out of place talking about the local LGBTQ+ scenes, because I have never participated in them. I know they're out there, doing amazing things and hosting wonderful events, but I have spent so much of my time living trying to minimize this very important part of me in an attempt to soften the blow of being transgender and queer before people even meet me. It was a safety mechanism when I was a teenager, and even though I'm bigger and almost able to handle myself, it remains a safety mechanism now as a young adult. I have never been to a Pride parade, lest it draw attention; I have never been to a drag performance, lest it draw attention; I own one item with the trans pride flag on it and it is sequestered deep under a pile of clutter in my belongings– and I didn't even get it on my own volition. It was a gift. How can I say the local scene is my community when I know that I haven't been part of theirs? How can I paint or write about the joy of being queer and rural when I have spent so much of my time here showing as little pride as possible?

Is it then being part of subculture communities? I've always hovered on the sort of goth, sort of punk, sort of nothing periphery of my style sense. I've listened to metal and other subculture staples for as long as I've been able to listen to music independently. Again I ran into the same problem as identifying with being part of the LGBTQ+ community; I have never had the courage to put it to the sticking place for much longer than six months. The window in which I embraced it, graduated from the sort of punk sort of nothing clothes to the denim, the spikes, the mohawk, I had so much fun and felt so good and overwhelmingly felt terrifyingly seen. 

I am fat, I am trans, I am a sort of goth, sort of punk, sort-of-nothing person with strange niche hobbies who has spent an overwhelming amount of time trying to fade into the background of the myriad of beautiful places I orbit around. Claiming a community in the open, and being claimed in turn, involves the horror of being seen by the rest of the world and all that comes along with it. 

As I thought about that, reckoning with my reluctance to be seen, I thought about the people who had the courage to be seen as nothing less than their authentic selves. I thought about how they paid the ultimate price for it.

In 2007, Sophie Lancaster was murdered at the age of twenty. She was part of the alternative movement, and she was killed for being different. She and her boyfriend were both savagely attacked by five strangers for nothing more than their dress style and fashion. Her mother Sylvia Lancaster founded the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, with the tagline S.O.P.H.I.E– Stamp Out Prejudice, Hate and Intolerance Everywhere. This is not a problem of the past– as of writing, a young alternative boy was chased and had stones thrown at him by a gang of strangers in Leeds on the 4th of February, 2024.

As for those I consider my cousins in the LGBTQ+ community, there are far too many of them to name. Thousands of us have paid the ultimate price of death; thousands murdered for their authenticity. Hundreds of thousands. Some reported, some investigated, some slipping into the ethereal mass of names and faces. The one I think about most in writing this is Nex Benedict. He was sixteen years old, Choctaw Native American, going to school in Owasso, Oklahoma. Can you imagine being sixteen years old, using a bathroom, retaliating against people who have tormented you by splashing water on them, and being beaten so brutally that it causes a lethal head injury? LGBTQ+ people don't have to imagine that. They have been killed for less. 

I keep thinking of the privilege of being invisible, of my desire to slide into the background of any given community. These people were bravely themselves out in the open, had the courage to live authentically. I am safe(er) back here in the sort-of-nothing, where I refused to claim anything as my own in the open where people can see it, and in shoving myself into the background I denied myself community. Is it safe to step into the light, to claim it and be claimed, and in turn endure the terror of being seen? 

Sophie had the courage to be authentic. Nex had the courage to be authentic. They were parts of two communities I hold dear to my heart even as I stand on the edge of them, and I mourn that if I only had the courage to stand in the middle then I might be able to have pride in my own authenticity.

In thinking about my communities, the many gardens that have fostered me and let be grow on the edges like some stubborn garden rose that doesn't quite have the courage to flower, I want to do better. I want to grow with them, not just adjacent to them. The garden is always being wounded– it's up to us who are here to nurture the memories of those who are taken by refusing to give ground to those who would turn a meadow into a lawn. If there is any community out there that will have me and all of my sort-of-nothing thorns, it is all of the ones I thought warmly about while trying to boil myself down to one neat image or stanza. I can't afford to be sort-of-nothing anymore.