The Midas Touch: stories we live by. Al Head

I haven't written in this blog for a while. I want to, and I try to when I can, and try to encourage others to as well. It's important to us that we have a diversity of voices here, just as we have a diversity of people at Queer Spirit Festival. Recently, I've been wanting to write something about what is happening in the world. I'd like to do that here, because so much of what is happening is directly impacting our communities. We are suffering, we are scared, we are angry.

And because so much of what is happening is directly impacting the earth, which we are part of, and which we work for and honour. I'd like to write something helpful, something supportive, maybe something insightful! I'd like to write a response, not a reaction. I'd like to help myself, and others, to make sense of it all, to maybe say something that will give us hope.

But I don't know if I have any hope to share, any insights to reveal. How can I make sense of it all when so much of it makes no sense?

(I started writing this before the latest news, about the UK supreme court ruling, flattened me and my trans, non-binary and intersex communities. I'm raw, grief-stricken, scared for myself and my loves, my lovers, all the networks of people of which I am a part. I've been holding space on Facebook, in individual connections and in the energy-webs. I haven't got many words for this yet, but I need to acknowledge it here, and acknowledge it as part of the picture that I am talking about.)

We are living through awful, awful, chaotic, transformational and hard, hard times. We are living through history, through herstory, theirstory, queerstory, ourstory. We are living through a time that will be written about in the history books; if there are any books by then, or any humans left to make the books. In times to come people will look back and talk about the times we are living in now. If there are any of them left, they will know how it ended.

I first had this sense at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. At the beginning of that first lockdown we didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know if we, our loved ones, our societies, would survive. Some of us, some of them, didn't. We were at the beginning of a story, or perhaps in the middle, and we had no idea what the ending would be. I have a sense that we still don't know the end of that particular story or the long term effects of the pandemic. I sense that the fear and uncertainty, the isolation and loss that humans carry from that time will have long reaching implications, lasting effects on the human psyche and on human societies. And yet these very feelings seem to have made most people, most sections of most societies in the world, want to 'return to normal', to ignore what has happened and to move on.

But ignoring the past and moving on is exactly what humans are unable to do.

Even the seeds of hope that were planted amongst the anxiety of lockdown seem to have been forgotten. I had hope that the need to ask permission to touch, to approach each other closely, would lead to a greater awareness of consent, a greater respect for the autonomy of people's bodies and personal spaces. I had hope that more people, through the outside time they were taking, would connect themselves back to the land of which we are a part. I had hope that we would remember what it is like to slow down, to take our time, to connect in new ways. But many of these things, too, seem to have been ignored and moved away from. 

Perhaps some of the awful things that are happening around the world now are a direct result of the ignoring of our feelings, and our lessons learned, during the Covid pandemic. Ignored feelings will surface in unexpected ways. If we do not learn lessons we may have to learn them all over again. At the very least, there are likely to be more pandemics if the world continues to go the way it is going. At the very least, we should be using what we learned – the mistakes as well as the successes – to prepare for the next one. 

The things that are happening now will also be in the history books, if such things exist in the future. The rise of fascism in the USA and Europe, the attacks on the poor, the marginalised, the dispossessed, all these are symptoms of a time of huge change. All these things have happened before, and if we look back at history we can notice the other times they have happened. The similarities with Germany in the 1930s are all too obvious. But there have been many other times that these things have happened. For example, I have been thinking about the fall of the Roman Empire: the increasing irrationality and disregard of humanity that featured then, as well. There seem to me to be correlations between the granting of power to unvoted in 'friends in high places' in the UK and the US, among others, and in the Emperor Caligula promoting his favourite horse to the position of senator. Although his horse probably had more sense!

What is happening now is on a bigger scale than what has happened before. But it has happened before. Sections of the earth have been turned to desert before; because of the disconnection, disinterest and mismanagement of humans. Disabled people have been killed off before. Refugees have been turned away before. Trans people have been denied, vilified, criminalised and attacked before. Those who protested, who fought back, who objected, who tried to bring in sense and compassion, have been imprisoned, murdered and tortured before. The history books are full of it, if we read them in the right way.

But never before have humans had the capacity to destroy the entire human race, along with the majority of the other species and the overall health of the beautiful planet that we are as much a part of as we are part of each other. 

Joanna Macy, who runs workshops and writes books about 'the great turning' has an exercise in which people say what we did in the turning, how we helped to save the world. But when I did that exercise it was the 1980s, and we were talking about the next 30 years being crucial. Now we are well beyond that point. We have not reached the time, if we ever do, when we can look back and say, this is the part I played in the earth's survival. In many ways, it seems that things have only got worse. 

If this time is ever written up in history books, the people reading will know the ending of this story. They will know what happened. They will know if things turned around, if our efforts bore fruit. But we are still only, perhaps, in the middle of the story. We may not know what happened because the end may not come in our lifetimes. 

In any case, the end is only the point when we choose to stop telling the story. The story always goes on. Or does it?

Part of why I didn't know what to say in this blog was because I didn't want to just repeat how awful the things happening in the world are right now. We all know how awful they are. We all carry the weight of what we hear on the news, what we hear from our friends, what we feel in our bodies, what the Earth tells us. The fear. The grief. The horror. I don't know whether it is helpful to just repeat the things that have gone into my head. Perhaps it is useful for me to unload them from time to time. But I'm not sure it helps others to continually hear them. I see posts about terrible things reposted again and again on Facebook. I don't tend to repost them, because I'm not sure if it helps. I fear re-traumatising us over and over, without any healing or conclusion. I fear us becoming so numb we are unable to feel, unable to act. 

Then again, I've not been sure what will help. I've been reposting other people's analyses of what's happening if I found them useful. I've been showing where people are working for change, protesting, regenerating. I've been sharing other's insights, words of hope. But I've not found much in me to write myself. 

One insight, for example, that I found helpful was the concept of billionaires as addicts. No-one needs all that money, far more than is needed for a person, or a family, or even a community, to have good lives: enough to eat, places to live, some nice things. So why this pull to have more and more money, more and more power? Only people with serious addictions would feel the 'need' to accumulate so much more than they could possibly need. Although I find it hard to feel compassion for those who are doing such terrible things, I do wonder what trauma, what unfulfilled needs of childhood, has led them to this place. 

Money does not, ultimately, exist, it is a symbol for power. And those with money are showing us that they can use it for power. Think unvoted-for-billionaires guiding US foreign policy. Think JK Rowlng funding the supreme court case.

All this led me to think about the Ancient Greek myth of King Midas, him of the Midas Touch. As far as I remember, he had done one of the gods a service, as often happened in these myths, and in return was granted a wish. And he wished that everything he touched would turn to gold. All started well, with lots of gold all around him, plenty of money for what he wanted in life. But it didn't stop there. How does one eat when the food in your hand turns to solid metal? And the story tells of the deep grief he felt when he touched his own daughter, and turned her into non-living gold. I imagine it going even further: that he touched his own body, turned his own living, breathing, pleasure-loving self into a golden statue. And so died, surrounded by wealth.

A myth for our times, perhaps? 

Greek myths have a lot to tell us about excess, about addiction, about hubris; about what happens when we ignore the gods and the natural order of things. Right now the ancient Greek gods seem seriously absent just when their presence might be useful! (Or are they?!)

Myths and stories are important. They can reinforce the status quo, the ruling narrative. They can rile people up, ramp up oppression. The stories that have been told about trans women in public toilets, although there is no 'reality' in them, are part of what has led us to this place in the UK. Those who tell these stories know the effect they can have and deliberately use them for their own ends. 

When we listen to or watch or read the news we are hearing the stories that people in power want us to hear. The stories are chosen to make us feel powerless, overwhelmed and despairing. They are chosen to perpetrate the system and to diminish opposition. 

There is a lot of hope in the world, although we usually don't hear it on the news. For example, I recently saw a film called 'Six Inches of Soil' about regenerative farming, that brought me hope that there is another way to work with the earth. There are many people protesting, working for the earth, supporting the people who are being targetted, making new communities, finding new ways to be. Some of my tears over the last week have been prompted by the countless statements of individual and organisational solidarity towards the trans communities. These tears are part of what helps us to heal, to move on, to keep working for a better world. The community we make at Queer Spirit Festival, and the communities that are its offshoots and feeding streams, are part of this hope. It is important that we don't underestimate what we are doing here. It is much needed and it is world-changing.

As community-builders and protestors; as people holding onto care and diversity, inclusion and earth protection, we can also make use of stories. We can resurrect and transform old myths. We can tell stories of hope, of guidance, of courage, of power. We can write the solutions that we dream and the endings that we need. We can tell the stories that show who we are and how we feel and what we need.

In my song, 'The Ballad of the Gendermorph', I tell a story of how forcing people into binary genders was, and continues to be, a patriarchal act. The actual story told in the song may not be factually true, who knows? It is a myth, a fairytale, and as such it has its own power. It reflects my belief that trans, non-binary, intersex and genderfluid people, human and non-human, have always existed and will always exist. 

I want to tell stories about how there are no binaries; only infinite varieties, realities and choices. I want to tell stories where there are no 'us and them', no 'good and evil', where human beings are perceived as a wonderful mixture of identities, emotions, memories, sensations, insights, creativities and essences. How rich would such stories be?! How can we dream, create and express a new/old future in the centre of this judgemental, punitive, controlling, destructive system?

As magical/spiritual beings we can enthuse these stories with energy, give them the power to transform, to strengthen, to bring hope and sustenance, to create the realities we vision. In our ritual spaces we travel between the worlds and make changes that will affect what is happening on all the levels. For example, a group of us , back in February, created and energised a beacon on the astral plane for trans people: for strength and protection. It is still there and we can travel to it when we need to.

The sharing of stories is a magical act. It brings people together, creates community, takes people into different realms and into new possibilities and different realities. Along with music, dance and all other forms of creativity, stories bring joy, laughter, tears, release; they strengthen and empower; they give communities a shared identity, a shared hope. They nurture our spirits.

Stories don't need to be positive to do this. Sharing our truths, our lives, empowers us and those who we share with. Telling our stories brings us together, helps us understand each other, helps us understand ourselves. They create identity and purpose, they strength us to act.

In all these, and so many other ways, we are working together to create alternatives to the ruling narrative. This can be joyful and full of energy and power. And it can be hard work, because we also need to work on ourselves, on how we have internalised the ruling system, on our ways of working and relating, if we are to sustain the communities and organisations we create. The old ways of being can so easily become part of our new realities. To make sustainable and regenerative cultures we have to continue to notice where the binary, us/them, good/evil paradigms are embedded in our psyches and work to replace them. We have to deliberately change the stories that we tell ourselves and others.

This seems as close as I'm going to get to anything approaching  insight at this time. There are a few things I know. And there are many things that I do not know. We will work this out together, each of us bringing what we can.

Whatever I believe, whatever I want to share, I want you to know this. That through it all, through the confusion and pain and fear and anger, I want to say simply that I am here. I am here for us. I am holding  us through this time. And that I am not doing this alone. We are all holding each other, all here for each other. The connections and communities we make at Queer Spirit Festival, online and everywhere, are holding us.

Hold on to each other. Love yourself for who you are and what you do. Do not believe the hate-filled things that are being said about us. Know they are not true. And continue to do the work of support, protection, protest, magic and transformation. For us, for our communities, for the Earth. We don't know the ending. But we know that, whatever we do now will become a part of it, a part of the story. And maybe that can be enough.

Blessed be.
   Al Head