I’m weird, not queer: (Not) Performing music as an outsider to an outsider’s world

leon clowes

London College of Music

Supervisors:

Dr Cathy Sloan

London College of Music

Professor Simon Zagorski-Thomas

London College of Music

Since the late 1980s I have yearned to produce electronic pop songs which I wrote as an identifiably young gay man living the onset of the AIDS crisis. In over two years practice research time at London College of Music, I have failed to do this. In this oral paper I will examine what might be the causes behind this musical failure, and my failure to be queer.

By autoethnographically travelling back in time to reflect on how my creativity derailed as active addiction took hold in the 1990s, I will then trace further back to pinpoint causation from the homophobic teenage bullying and societal shaming during 1980s school days. Finally, I return to the recordings I originally made from 1987 until 1991 to show how the salvo of creating electronic pop music during the mid-80s provided personal catharsis and comfort through isolating times.

These ‘failed’ songs act as a touchstone for what should be left in the past. They retain meaning only as symbols of misguided previous beliefs that I once held. I will scrutinise how cultural practice, and broader engagement (or not) within the arts can act as a barometer of mental security. This examination of artistic failure will be an opportunity to examine what Sloan considers ‘messy connections’ with others (2024) and Zagorski-Thomas (2022) would describe as an activist turn in music practice research.

While my social position then, as it is today, remains outsider and ‘weird’ to both straight and queer circles, it was the making of electronic pop songs that saved me during that challenging period. In the present day, the unrepeatability of these songs has helped provide a path to difficult self-analysis and a critical resolution in the now.