PS: I want to talk about identity, because we're heading into Pride Month, and I think you're a real role model, as an artist and on a personal level. Something you've said that I love is, "Queer is about intense questioning that can't be made nice and glossy."
We celebrate Pride this month historically, but it looks very different this year if we aren't together physically. As a queer person, what does it mean to you, to have pride?
"I'm always intrigued by people, queer people who really don't like Pride — the concept of it — because I'm like, 'How can you refuse joy?' This is all we have at some points: to just be joyfully present to ourselves."
C: For me, it means the end of shame. It really does mean that, because I think shame is something systemic that is built: it's something imposed on bodies and minds that escape a really normative, patriarchal construction. And I think shame plagued me when I was younger, for example. My worst enemy at some point was me, because I was deeply ashamed of not fitting in. I think pride is the opposite of that. It's the beginning of healing through self-love, and through that joy of being actually out of the norm: that joy of escaping definitions that can be possibly threatening. It means life. It means something that runs like water, and it is unstoppable. For me, it's really like that, and this is why I'm always intrigued by people, queer people who really don't like Pride — the concept of it — because I'm like, "How can you refuse joy?" This is all we have at some points: to just be joyfully present to ourselves.
Image Source: Courtesy of Gold Atlas