creative

  • I’m Gay Therefore I Am… Creative

    Open window in an outside wall of a house
    Let’s go outside (Photo by Katerina Pavlyuchkova)

    Face it. Being gay makes you more creative*. The straight world just doesn’t always like to admit it. 

    On BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, an academic said how the family of Spanish writer Federico Garcia Lorca was silent on the subject of his sexuality until well into the 80s, after the fall of the fascist dictatorship. 

    Even then, his Sonnets of Dark Love were still published with a cover depicting a woman’s body – as if encouraging the reader to imagine they were written to a woman. His homosexuality was buried. 

    I am Generation Metrosexual 

    I imitate gay culture. I love the sense of style and beauty that pervades it. I ♥ gay (or bisexual or pansexual or, do we need a label?) artists from George Michael to Oscar Wilde, Christine and the Queens to Robert Byron. 

    It’s what makes those moments of social suppression so strange. Lorca’s family hushing up his sexuality. George Michael being made into a safe mum’s heartthrob for most of his career… 

    We are all indebted to gay cultural icons. But more than that, straight society needs to lighten up. The more rigidly defined by stereotypes it is, the less anyone can express themselves authentically. 

    Does homosexuality make you innately creative? 

    I’m being flippant. But hey, look how the ‘gay minority’ punches above its weight every day across the arts. So if it’s not just that being gay gives you a supercharged creativity gene, then what is it?

    Is it something about being on the social periphery? Being an outsider? Seeing the fluidity beneath the surface more clearly? Seeing a world outside the box? 

    I think that helps. 

    *Disclaimer: Yes, I know. You can be gay and totally uncreative. It’s a hook to make you read. 

    While we’re talking about the power of identity, spare a thought for Being Middle Class Man