I stay up all night Thursday night. Friday, I am in daze of exhaustion and disbelief. Saturday is pride.
I decided to go this year after the massacre in Orlando. It felt important. It’s also the first planned protest since the vote. Almost all LGBT rights come from EU law. I search for something coherent to put on a sign, but draw a blank. On the way out of the house, I pause to get my pink Union Jack flag, but then don’t, in anger. Looking around the march I see that most others have made the same choice.
My dog’s tail has been dyed rainbow this week. There is a university LGBT staff and student group marching behind us. Some of the students come up to pet my dog. Their university has lost more than 60% of it’s research funding overnight. I let them put a sticker on my dog’s collar.
After the march, we go to the pub. Everyone is speaking about the referendum and the air force’s planned flyover. The person seated next to me is an EU national who doesn’t meet the extremely narrow requirements to be prescribed hormones in their home country. They’ve lived here for 2 years and will have two more years after the shoe drops. It takes 5 years to get permanent residency. I want to say something reassuring, but I can’t think of anything.
The Red Arrows streak overhead, blowing coloured smoke behind them, in the colours of the trans flag. This is unexpected. Most people at the pub cheer, but I don’t. This is coming from the same government that made transphobic clauses in the new marriage law. The same government who put migrant humanity up for a vote. A large public display of trans inclusion from their military fills me with mixed emotions. For a moment, I fear I may cry.
This has been the first year we’ve been cheered at pride. My first year, the crowds were openly hostile and have gradually become more welcoming. This year, we are one of them. It is North Carolina and Orlando that have made this true. The deaths of Americans over there have brought LGBT togetherness over here.
I spend the rest of Saturday drunk. I go to a friend’s house where the others are drinking chocolate milk. I drink all of their beer and come home and drink whiskey, looking at Twitter through the night. Reports of racist attacks are trickling in. I wait for a political leader to do something decisive, but no one on the national stage does. It becomes apparent that nobody in the country has made contingency plans. Everyone expected this to fail. We are in recession and leaderless.
On Sunday, my choir is singing in a festival dedicated to Minimalism, but I am not singing with them. I have missed all of the festival until Sunday evening, and drag myself to the venue, hungover and exhausted. I am enlisted to sell CDs.
They sing Pauline Oliveros’s Lullaby for Daisy Pauline. I have sung it with them many times, but never been in the audience for it before. Their slow movements are mesmerising. The piece is transformative. The magic of the piece is in the changes, as the choir slowly moves through the sections. Change in music is so beautiful, but change in life is so painful.
Afterwards, the festival director interviews the composer. He forgets what he’s talking about for a moment and says the piece made him feel high. He talks of Deep Listening as a source of hope and empathy almost mystically. But Pauline is from America, where no shoes have yet dropped. ‘We’re in a dangerous time’ she says. Listening is how you sense danger.
She leads us in a listening meditation. The entire audience, breathing, listening and singing together. The sound comes in waves, as people sing for one complete breath and pause to listen. By some spontaneous consensus, the piece stops, as everyone independently decides it was the right length.
The choir returns to the stage to sing pieces by Meredith Monk, which are about the Holocaust. The programme seems starkly timely. We return to the present- to the real from the possible.
I go to the bar afterwards. I’ve promised myself not to drink more, but I do anyway. The choir director says their last rehearsal had been Thursday. The music had changed completely in the mean time. Everything seems to carry more weight. I cycle home wondering what minimalism meant in the 1960s. Then I return to twitter, as if my following of news might change something.
On Monday, I struggle to pay attention to my to do list. The pound falls further. I have a rehearsal that I need to fix a piece for. I am still hungover. In the evening, we go to my mother-in-law’s house for dinner. Her father was born in Ireland, which means my wife and her sisters can apply for Irish citizenship. Their mother has the needed documents. She’s made fish pie, but I was not expected. We stop by a Polish shop to get extra food on the way in. There are reports of anti-polish violence around the country, but none in London yet. I stand outside with the dog and everything is completely normal.
While my sister-in-law eats, I hold the baby. She did not register before he was born, so his only nationality is British.
We’ve been talking about moving to Ireland, but my wife asks me if I’d like to buy her mother’s house. We come home and argue about moving to Canada. My Spanish friend has said she may go to Spain. Most of my friends are migrants and I wonder how many will leave.
