Eyes In The Back Of Your Head

If you needed any more convincing that the world we live in is a bloody amazing place, take a gander at the Macropinna microstoma (big ear small mouth?) fish. It has cunningly adapted to the murky depths where it lives by developing a transparent head with eyeballs which can rotate within it, so that it can, literally, look out the top of its head. Now all I need is a genetic modification which replaces my shiny pate with a transparent one...

Various Voices - What's It All About?

This Pink Insider has been busy as a member of Team London working on Various Voices London 2009 for a while now, and from its inception there has been so much to worry about, from getting venues, to organizing the performances, to sorting out hosting, to planning a programme. The most recent development is the preliminary launch of the VVL public website as opposed to the long-standing delegate website. So it is with some pride that we are seeing how it is all coming together and looking so professional it us too. There is still so much work to be done, but at the end of the day I know it is all worth it. Here's my shortlist (entirely arbitrarily and in no particular order) why!

1. It is a gay and lesbian festival.
In case you missed it somehow, Various Voices is a gay and lesbian festival. There will be about 2,000 LGBT delegates taking over the Southbank Centre and the city for a long weekend. What's not to like? More importantly though, it is a chance for people to be proud of who they are, and perform in a very public space. And this is not a one off performance, it is one in a series. I went to my first Various Voices in Paris four years ago, but there have been many before that. Philip R puts is best in his brief history of the Pink Singers when he says:

The Pinkies have forged close links with other European lesbian and gay choirs, taking part in the third European Lesbian and Gay Festival of Song in Stockholm (1987), and the fourth in Berlin (1988). In May 1989 we hosted 14 European choirs in London for the 5th European Festival of Song (now known as Various Voices) at the Hackney Empire.

This concluded with a big benefit concert for the Terrence Higgins Trust at Sadler's Wells at which Michael Cashman first announced the formation of a gay lobbying group called Stonewall - whatever happened to them? My favourite memories of that night are the massed choir of 500 voices singing We'll Meet Again and special guest Sheila Steafel singing Send in the Clones! Also appearing that night was Barry Cryer (of Radio 4's "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue") and Gordon Kaye of TV's "'Allo 'Allo" making his first public appearance after being outed by the Sunday newspapers.

We have since sung at the Various Voices festivals in Hamburg (1991), Zurich (1993), Groningen (1995), Munich (1997), Berlin again (2001) and a very successful appearance in Paris in 2005 (where we received a standing ovation). This was our second appearance in Paris.

2. It is a festival which appeals to everyone.
One of the wonders of Various Voices is that it is a singing festival, and song is something which touches everyone. This time round we are making a deliberate effort to get as many members of the public, straight and gay, involved. The Pink Singers' recent success at Voicelab really drove home the point to me that singing moves many people at a fundamental level. Now just scale that experience up from one choir performing two songs to sixty choirs performing four hundred songs, and you will have an idea of how exciting it will be.

3. You make loads of overseas friends.
Anyone who has been on an overseas trip with the Pink Singers knows that one of the real pleasures is getting to know our host choir: sharing their food, sharing their city and sharing a song or two. This time we are the hosts, and not just of one choir, but sixty! It is a real opportunity to make friends and build bridges, and who knows? We may be invited to sing with a couple of choirs from Germany, or Switzerland, or Sweden, or even further afield next year.

4. It's not just about the concert.
This kinda goes with the above point, but it is almost traditional that visiting choirs organize parties of their own over the course of the festival. They usually take over a pub, preferably with a piano or karaoke system, and invite everyone else to come along for an informal drink and sing song.

5. It's a chance to strut your stuff.
Although choral singing isn't really about competition, it is a chance for us to really "show off our wares". We don't usually see many other choirs for a long time, even the ones in our own country, and this is a great chance to catch them all in action at once. Of course it works both ways too, and the Pink Singers are working on a repertoire to really glitter.

6. The singing doesn't stop when the curtains come down.
My one abiding memory or Various Voices Paris is finishing out choir block and streaming into the foyer of the Trianon theatre. All the other choirs were there as were most of the audience. Then one of the choirs started singing, and this was followed by another, and another, and the Pink Singers! The bar was open, the sun had set but the large french windows were open, and it turned into a merry evening of carousing. Memories truly are made of this.

Summer 2009 With The Pinkies

Yep! Summer's here, for the Pinkies at least. We have taken on nine new members and are running at our full complement of 80. Welcome to all the newbies. Looking forward to a smashing season ahead!

Symphonik Sounds In Malta

I had a chat with Andrew F yesterday about our trip to Malta, and he was telling me about our host choir there called Symphonik (horrible Flash website warning!). They seem to be a relatively new choir, but, obviously being quite young as well they have their Facebook and MySpace pages up and running too. These two pages are of particular interest because they have sample music on it so we can hear them in action. And they are indeed unlike any other choir we have performed with. They appear to be a bit more of a backing chorus, and their performance includes a rock band and solo singers as well. I'm a bit old to classify the music but to me they sound a lot like 80s synth. Everything seems really chirpy and fun, and I'm looking forward to what should be a really interesting juxtaposition of sounds.

Teardrop

I'm a fan of Massive Attack, and I love Protection, the song they did with Tracey Thorn from Everything But The Girl. This season Andy M from the choir decided to arrange Teardrop, of which the original and frankly bizarre music video is embedded above.

We rehearsed it for the first time yesterday and what can I say? I think Andy's arrangement goes beyond the original. His arrangement emphasises its wistfulness and seems to heighten the tinge of sadness even further. I love it!

The New Tottenham Court Road Underground Station

Now that G-A-Y has finally seen its last dance, I'll bet you are wondering what is going to take its place. Well, as you may be aware, the Astoria is going to be torn down, and Tottenham Court Road tube station is going to be redone and made into a glorious, spacious and light-filled jewel at the east end of Oxford Street. That is the plan anyway. In this artist's drawing I like the fact that they've gotten rid of the really ugly and pedestrian unfriendly fountain at the base of Centrepoint, and replaced it with the glass entrances to the tube station and a large pavement. Hooray for public transport!

And So It Begins!

No, not the snow, the Pinkies' summer season of course! I realise it is a bit odd referring to "summer" when the streets are blanketed with a few inches of the white stuff, but we are kicking off a little earlier this season for what is essentially one the busiest six months in the history of our choir. This season we have no less than two concerts in London, one in Scotland, and two overseas in Paris and Malta.

It being the first week of rehearsals we also had a number of potential new members coming along. I imagine it is all somewhat overwhelming entering an enclosed room full of noisy, boistrous Pink Singers (not to mention the odour of nearly 80 bodies in a space with too little ventilation), but I hope they enjoyed themselves. People get really worried about the voice checking, but it is as informative to the newbies, as it is to the Mladen and Michael, and being at a rehearsal is as much an opportunity for the newbie to get a feel for the choir as it is for us to see how they fit in with us. Several of them came along to the pub afterwards, and it was fun hearing their stories of why they wanted to join and how they heard about us. Judging by yesterday's potential Pinkies, it looks like a good season ahead!

The First Gay Prime Minister

Sunday, which was the start of our new season, also marked an important milestone. It was the first time an openly gay person was elected to the role of prime minister. The courntry? Iceland. The person? Johanna Sigurdardottir.

This is all the more relevant, considering how I just ranted about the importance of being out after having seen the film Milk. Now we are not just your workmates, your teachers, your friends... we are also your prime ministers.

In context though, Iceland is an extremely progressive society where being gay is like being blue-eyed. Something you are aware of, but which makes hardly any difference in the grand scheme of things. A quote from the Beeb's article on the appointment:

What is really historic about this new cabinet, says Skuli Helgeson, the general secretary of Ms Sigurardottir's Social Democratic Alliance, is not the fact that its leader is a lesbian, but that for the first time in Icelandic history it boasts an equal number of men and women.

"I don't think her sexual orientation matters. Our voters are pretty liberal, they don't care about any of that," he told BBC News.

You go girl!

Land Of Milk And Honey

Last Wednesday Gary organized for a bunch of Pinkies to go watch the new Sean Penn film, "Milk". I had never heard of the person upon whom the film is based before, but it is one Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the U.S. He became one of the city supervisors of San Francisco back in 1978. It has been 30 years since that event, and, as a mark of how time has moved on, this film has been made as a celebration of his achievements.

I first heard about the film from one of the episodes of the Totally Rad Show, and I guess it is a mark of progress that what is essentially a video podcast about video games, gadgets and cartoons, i.e. boys toys, can rate any film about a gay man so highly. I loved this film too.

For me it was a perfectly presented window into life in 'Frisco in the late 70s, bell bottoms, hippies, and all, but especially into the life of gay men and women at the time. Gay people had gathered in the Castro for the safety of a community, but it was far from safe, with violence and queer bashing a sadly frequent occurence because of a strongly homophobic and bigoted society.

The main source of conflict in the film is the attempted passage of a law in California banning all gay men and women from teaching. It is interesting how the argument then (as now) is that being gay is somehow being 'anti-family'. What does that even mean? Anyway, Milk is tries to lead a political campaign to turn down this amendment, called Proposition 6.

At one point members of his team argue that it is important to let people have their privacy. But Milk's answer is that it is this privacy which is the problem. If people are secretive about being gay, it means that gay people can be seen as 'the other' i.e. not like me and therefore an easy target for discrimination. It is only when you come out that people realise that gay people are your brothers and sisters, your children, your colleagues, and sometimes even your parents and grandparents. So gay is 'us' not 'them'.

I'm not generally the activist sort, but coming out of that film with tears in my eyes I felt really proud to be gay, and proud to be out. But I also know that three decades down the line there are many people who still live in fear, and kids for whom coming out is still not an option. It is for them that Pride is so important.

"If a bullet should enter my brain, let the bullet destroy every closet door."
- Harvey Milk