…or at least the music industry has.
Wouldn’t you know it, just as I’m in the right headspace for doing The Wyrd Ways Rock Show regularly, things are winding down towards the end of the year? But then again it has meant I’ve had to work harder to find material to play. And that turns out well for up-and-coming stuff. I’ve been hitting Bandcamp pretty hard (click on that link, follow me and you’ll be able to see what I’ve been buying – I’d especially recommend you check out Wailing Banshee, The Haunt and Celavi) and also scrolling through Instagram Stories. The adverts for various bands turning up in the feed has found me some decent stuff to play over the last few weeks.
Of course, part of this burst of music-hunting has probably been precipitated by the dive my mental health took a couple of weeks ago.
There I was, pulling into the car park at work, managed to pull straight into a spot with a charger (I drive a Nissan LEAF and I’m not planning on going back to driving an internal combustion engine car), so that was good, and then I just started crying. Pretty much out of nowhere. So obviously there was something wrong.
Right about now I feel like I need to thank a couple of sex workers, namely Hoopsy Daisy (also a jaw-dropping circus performer – check out her Instagram and YouTube videos – the hula hoop stuff especially is amazing. She’s also very, very funny) and Reed Amber Thomas-Litman (co-presenter of ComeCurious and sex educator). They were friends in that moment when I needed someone to talk to, for which I am very grateful.
That’s something I feel needs to be talked about. I’ve met a few women in the sex industry in my time, going back to the late 90’s and early 2000’s in Leeds (DV8 and Purple Door). With no exceptions, they’ve been among the kindest, most generous and intelligent people I’ve had the privilege of knowing. Reed and Daisy (obviously a stage name!) are just new additions to the list that includes names like Emma and Faye (aka Paige). I have very fond memories of those two women. It’s just a shame for me that this is an almost entirely parasocial relationship. I doubt they know who I am beyond being a client. But you know what? That’s OK. That’s how it is. If I ever get to physically meet either of them, I’ll get to thank them in person for the company and help they’ve given me when I hit some bumps in the proverbial road.
I’m going to be accused of being woke and probably of being some sort of moral degerate now because I fully support the decriminalisation of sex work, and have written to my MP about at (and you should, too). The way I see it, everyone sells their body and mind for money when they do any kind of job. Some more literally than others. It just seems a bit misogynistic that an industry that relies heavily on something that only women can do is, in a roundabout way – let’s not kid ourselves, whether you’re looking at the frankly ridiculous, and proven to be more dangerous to the women involved, Nordic Model, or the labyrinthine, contradictory laws that put women in danger, we have now, illegal. Or it might as well be, because to have any level of safety for the people providing the service, they have to put themselves at risk of violence and/or arrest. That’s just not right. And we in the Metal community, marginalised outsiders that we are (or in some cases pretend to be), should really be sticking together with people who are in a similar situation (although theirs is more dire, since being into Metal isn’t illegal in the UK).
Can we be more like Belgium, please?
Anyway, thanks to my wife, Satah, the NHS, copious amounts of Heavy Metal and people I’ve already mentioned above, my mental health is improving back towards my functional baseline. I’ve got some Cognitive Behaviour Therapy starting next week as well as links for online group therapy through the UPRAWR Foundation, so everything’s in place to help me get my brain functional again (or as near as it gets).
Incidentally, something else that Daisy inadvertently put me onto was burlesque. Not something I was hugely interested in until I found out more about some of the acts and what they do. There are safe, sanitized versions that use cultural touchstones set up by strippers and other sex workers, but deliberately obfuscate the origins, like the sort that plays at Town Halls and so on and then there’s the edgier, more interesting, more authentic ones. Like Darkhaus and the shows run by Sexquisite. They tend to play smaller venues and are a bit harder to find. But I’m interested now, so anyone who knows me knows what that means – I’ll find stuff out, and if I like what I see, I’ll talk about it.
Stay tuned, ladies, gentlemen and non-binaries.
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