I’m particularly disappointed in Julie Andrews this week. It’s been exactly 20 days since I named her as part of the Government of the New World Order and I’ve not heard a thing from her yet. I expect she’s too busy beekeeping or making plum jam or having her toes sucked by wild ponies or something. But it really is quite slack.
Julie is a busy lady though, having to appear in so many memes and uplifting videos right now. It’s one of the reasons I chose her for the role in the new world Government – she has the ability to soothe the entire planet whilst also not taking any shit, not even from Captain Von Buttclench Trapp with his whistle. But as for the other members of my nominated Government….Brian Blessed has absolutely NO excuse for not stepping up. I haven’t seen him in a single Coronavirus meme or public outreach video. For all I know he’s probably sunning his furry tits somewhere in the British countryside eating everybody else’s Easter eggs. I may have to do a cabinet reshuffle at this rate.
Apart from all the obvious horrors of death, suffering, terror, hunger, domestic violence and so forth that is absolutely going on in the world like a shit tsunami, there are many aspects of the planet that are shaping up really nicely.
I’m loving the cleaner air, animals invading town spaces, being able to hear birdsong instead of traffic, the unity with my fellow humans around the world, the acts of kindness, the people of Britain coming together to sew scrubs for NHS workers, or 3D print protective PPE. I’m loving the children’s paintings of rainbows in windows all around our town. I’m loving how fellow humans say hello to each other now when out on our permitted socially-distant exercise walks. I’m loving the ingenuity of manufacturers using their skills to design and build new ventilators.
But most of all, I’m loving that people are embracing the crazy.
Yes, I spent 47 years of my life feeling like I was on the margins of society, stared at for so much as wearing a jaunty hat in Maidstone High Street (shock! horror!), gawped at for singing quietly to myself as I walk down the street, judged for not fitting in, not toeing the line, not following the crowd, not following the current fashions. But finally….FINALLY…this is my moment to shine. Because the wierdos are coming into their prime right now, people. Tragedy aside, this is the moment the oddballs like me have been waiting for our whole lives.
From the guys dressed as Spiderman for their morning run, to the dinosaurs going for a walk...the people of the world are embracing the beauty of crazy right now.
The other day, when I had to collect my asthma medicine, almost no one batted an eyelid at me wearing Andre’s custom-made welding bubble helmet. As it turned out, it was completely impractical as it steamed up inside, I couldn’t wipe it down without risking infecting myself with the Dreaded Lurgy and couldn’t see a thing. But I didn’t take it off, because this may be my one chance to walk around with a spaceman style welding helmet on my head just for the shits and giggles. I was going to rock it and milk it for all it was worth.
Even knowing full well that our thin flimsy skiing balaclavas offered us no protection whatsoever from the virus, André and I then decided to walk the dog dressed like THIS.
….Just because we can now. We always could, actually, as it turns out, but instead of being social rejects because of it, or scaring old ladies who might assume we were going to mug them, people now smile at us and welcome our bizarre fashion choices.
If I could fit in my old ballgown or wedding dress I would totally be wearing it to Tesco right now to shop for tampons and gin. And as well as drawing a moustache on my face for home working, in recent days I have also rocked a tiara, a pair of pants on my face, and selotape facial augmentation for the sheer hell of it. Because I can. Because.
Truth be told I was wearing the tiara with my work dungarees for the last several years when I felt like it. The perks of working alone from home and all that. But in reality, is there ANY reason that on any given day any one of us from judges to bin men to banana farmers shouldn’t wear a tiara? If it makes you feel happy, pretty, fabulous or funny then why not wear what the fuck you like whenever you like?
Life is short. Way too short for many people, and we’re learning that now faster than any of us would like to. So if it’s not harming anyone then why can’t we draw moustaches on our face or wear ballgowns to the office or a big ridiculous hat any time we like when all this is over?
I’m really hoping some of the crazy will stick.
It kind of reminds me about my early career, before I became a fabulous artist famous for turning wobbly bits into works of art, when I worked for a digital media company in the very early days of the internet. We were involved in a big collaborative research project, funded by the EU (thank you), between the BBC, Sony, Microsoft, and BT, looking into the creation of 3D virtual reality online worlds where people from all over the world could interact via simple avatars in imaginary spaces that we had designed. These early experiments formed the basis for many current multiplayer online gaming environments and social spaces like Second Life.
We were pioneers in a new digital age and my main role, other than some of the initial concept design, was to be ‘goddess’ of these worlds – hostess with all the power – luring people in and keeping them there, making the rules, dishing out rewards and punishments, keeping the inhabitants entertained with the earliest versions of online game shows, celebrity interviews, virtual art exhibitions, plays, and other social events.
Our creative and technical team of talent was accompanied by multiple clever people with PhDs popping out of every orifice who were studying the community interactions, analysing our every conversation, the flow of our online populations, what kept people coming back, what drove them away, how people formed virtual relationships. All standard stuff nowadays but back then this was cutting edge never-before-seen stuff and the big names in online tech needed to understand it to turn it into the kinds of online communities we take for granted today.
And what we quickly came to understand was that by providing people with an avatar, by allowing people to communicate over the internet from the safety of their homes, the invisibility of their keyboards and monitors, was that many people suddenly felt able to be their true selves.
In that time I made great friends with introverts burdened by such intense shyness that in ‘real life’ I doubt we’d have got so far as a passing hello in a corridor. But freed behind the ‘mask’ of the new digital age, these introverts shone. Their true bubbly personalities, wicked senses of humour and wild imaginations were released onto the world after having kept them under wraps for so long. Why? Probably for fear of social judgment, rejection…being seen as getting something ‘wrong’ or people laughing at them.
And I think the masks and disguises and dressing up clothes we are now wearing (whether under the loose category of protection or just a bit of tension release under the current lock down) are actually allowing us to show sides of ourselves that were always there, in many cases longing to come out.
Speaking for myself, I know I have often commented how I envied children their expressive freedom. When you are seven, no one really bats an eyelid if you windmill your arms down the bakery aisle in Sainsbury’s, shouting MEEP MEEP at the top of your voice. But when you are 47, doing the same might get you escorted out of the shop, or at worst arrested.
But there have been many times in my life I’ve wanted to shout MEEP MEEP just because I felt like it. And society has made it very difficult for me to do so.
The other day, walking the dog with my lion mask on, I started acting up as we walked up the street and shouted a few things. Mainly about selfish arseholes having bonfires in the middle of the day, but I felt able to raise my voice and blurt and blare as much as I wanted.
André, on the other hand, had a completely different part of himself liberated. Behind the safety of his dog mask, as we walked past people’s houses and gardens towards the nature sanctuary, he kept pointing and saying, ‘Look, they’ve left their bike out….shall we nick it?’ or ‘Look, there’s a scooter….we could ‘ave that?’ (NOTE: I did not let him).
Honestly, you don’t know who you’re married to until you see them in a mask.
The ancient Venetians discovered flirting and probably (let’s face it) orgies were more fun in a mask. Even if we can totally still see who you are, there’s something about wearing a disguise that enables us to express ourselves.
So why is this happening now? Well, there are a few reasons, I think. First is that people need to laugh. The situation is far from funny, but laughter is a great stress reliever, so anyone odd is entertainment, and welcome entertainment now more than ever. Secondly, anything that breaks the monotony of the lockin days is absolutely celebrated and appreciated. And thirdly, choosing what to wear is one of the few things we have some control over right now in a world that feels out of control.
I can’t protect my family and friends.
I can’t create a cure.
I can’t bring the dead back to life.
I can’t wish this away.
But I CAN wear my pants on my head any day I choose. And I can make people laugh sometimes. And I can do a comedic walk up the street bending my long legs outwards like a cartoon cowboy with a bad case of testicular chafing.
This is my bubble and in it I am once again goddess and queen. I’ll wear a tiara any goddamned day I feel like it (I do anyway). I will wear mouse ears and bear hats, and onesies and odd socks and silly wigs and if I want to wear my bra on the outside of my top (the way my sister once did by accident when walking her son to nursery school and back) then I bloody well will. Nobody is going to stop me, and what’s beautiful is that nobody seems to want to stop me. Because right now, oddballs are just about as beautiful as they’re ever going to be.
It’s about taking control of your own little bubble. What can we actually DO to make things just a little bit more bearable?
Well, in an effort to make myself feel better and a bit more in control of something small, I’ve planted some veg seeds in the garden, because…well…fear of food shortages yes, but also because in this time where we are all brushing so very close to death, it feels good to bring the hope of new life into being, even if it is just a butternut squash that would make an eyewatering dildo for some time in the summer.
I’ve started relearning French on an amazing app called Duolingo, and I’m top of my virtual class. Why? Well, because it feels less of a guilty pleasure and shitty means of procrastination than my other method of self-soothing – maths puzzles.
I told you I was weird. Yes, the world may be going to hell in a handcart but I’m taking comfort in numbers. Not statistics (they are grizzly). But the soothing reliability of numbers. You can order and group numbers endlessly and they are relatively controllable. You can shuffle numbers around to make all the beautiful patterns in the universe. Numbers feel safe, there is logic to them, there are rules to them. And yes if you are ultra clever you can bend or break the rules but only in ordered logical ways that are also somehow brilliant and beautiful and reassuring.
So if you didn’t already judge me for my other eccentricities, what I am revealing from behind my lion mask/fake moustache/bubble helmet is that I am so much more of a closet nerd than I have cared to admit the last few decades.
And my fellow introverted geeks actually seem to be doing pretty well in this crisis – they are used to the solitude, to the virtual communication methods, the emotional independence. My fellow hyper-anxious friends, like me, seem to have calmed the fuck down because…and here’s the embarrassing admission of the century…this is the crisis our brains have been practicing for our ENTIRE LIVES. And my fellow weirdos and oddballs are totally rocking the opportunity to let their little stars shine like a supernova and be seen as the beautiful weird little souls they are…that we ALL are before we are taught the cruel, restrictive, unspoken rules of society that stop us windmilling and twirling around the supermarkets wearing dinosaur masks shouting MEEP MEEP MEEEEEEEEEP for the pure joy of life.
Embrace the crazy, my fellow humans, this may be your only chance to discover who you really are inside, and change the world so it accepts all kinds of differences and realises humanity comes in a whole rainbow of beautiful versions.
Unless you’re a cunt, of course. In which case, keep that shit well hidden.
Until next time, my beautiful oddball nerdy introvert hyper-anxious buddies and all you other regular folk, stay safe, rock your tiaras and see you on the other side.
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