A message from a Belfast attic about not waiting

For the past few days, I’ve been staying in a bougie-bohemian attic in Belfast. The nights have been freezing, but this morning there’s some hopeful sun smashing through my smudgy skylight. I’m here for my first time at Outburst, a radical queer arts festival that’s been happening here since 2007, bringing together queer artists and activists from across Ireland and far beyond, and one I’ve had countless glowing reports of from mates who’ve attended in earlier years.

The queer family and community I have access to at home are a gorgeously fortifying source of love, encouragement, care, opportunities, energy and inspiration, and I am endlessly grateful to and for them. That in itself is a form of safety and home, one I craved and searched out for years before I found it. And it’s been so comforting and affirming I haven’t wanted to venture much beyond it, since even before the pandemic.

If you’ve been here a while, you know I’ve been in a creative existential crisis for a while, obsessively reading, thinking and talking about queer failure; and fantasising about shaking shit up in other big ways elsewhere in my life. And while coming here may not be the entire answer, it’s helped me sort out and get closer to part of what I’ve been hungering for.

Connecting to other queers, creatives and activists has been one of my most consistent sources of meaning and joy. And part of that is because what always comes from those connections is the reminder that so many of the barriers we face are systemic rather than individual. Healing old wounds. Giving ourselves permission to follow our creatives drives and desires. Finding our way past the gatekeepers or starting parties or sometimes entire other cities outside the gated city walls. Grappling with access to funding, or lack of. Grappling with how to make things sustainable. Doing it anyway, even when your project is too ambitious, too weird, not commercial, not marketable. Out of sheer stubbornness and necessity, the queer arts community is an endless source of defiance, tenacity, resourcefulness, courage and creativity. And while in isolation or smaller ecosystems that can get exhausting, getting out her and reminding myself of the scale, power and imagination of this globe-spanning family and community has been a true tonic.

Earlier this week, my mate and I followed the map to an independent queer bookshop hidden away on the fourth floor of a labyrinthine building on an industrial estate behind a West Belfast petrol station. You’re definitely gonna feel like you’re going the wrong way, someone told us earlier that day, when we’d told them about that evening’s mission. And the more lost you feel, the closer you are to finding it. It was a cryptic clue that made sense later, when we finally traipsed to the end of a twisting corridor and found the adorable sanctuary of Paperxclips, its walls lined with shelves of books, zines, comics and art, and a makeshift semicircle of chairs around a squishy settee, set for a Q&A with Orla Egan, author of Diary of an Activist.

Orla, I discovered through the talk, is a writer, film-maker, activist and archivist, the founder and director of the Cork LGBT Archive, and the author of Queer Republic of Cork, a history of the LGBT communities in Cork from the 1970s to the 1990s. Diary of an Activist is her memoir, a graphic novel created in collaboration with artist and illustrator Megan Luddy O’Leary; a cross-generational labour of love to tell Orla’s story and give a unique insight into anti-nuclear, environmental, queer and feminist campaigning in Ireland and beyond during an era before mobiles, social media and even the internet. From the first moments of hearing Orla speak, her passion, warmth, integrity and conviction came through loud and clear, with a real recognition for the importance of documenting the stories and histories that might otherwise be hidden or lost.

I was full-on sobbing at one point, and not only from being knackered and hormonal. But for me the real gem was an anecdote Orla shared about the uncertainty she initially felt when developing the project that would go on to become Queer Republic of Cork. I didn’t think I could do it. I didn’t know enough. I wasn’t the expert. Through both research and participation, Orla had collected a huge amount of material, but there was still some apprehension about being ready, about having all the answers. Then she described being in Gay’s the Word bookshop in London, looking at a second edition of a history of the Gay Liberation Front. An expanded second edition had been compiled, the introduction explained, because after the first edition was published, readers had come forward in significant numbers to share their own stories, photos, and ephemera of the time. The first edition — far from perfect, telling nowhere the entire story, as if any attempt ever could — had been the catalyst for something which eventually became far richer and more expansive than might ever have existed otherwise. And Orla described this moment of holding the second edition of that book and coming to understand how it had come to exist as something like a permission slip. Our projects don’t have to be definitive. They can — and arguably always will, whether we intend or acknowledge them that way or not — be part of an ongoing and ever-evolving story and lineage.

Demanding impossible standards of ourselves keeps us grasping and uncertain. One day, when I know more, when I’ve done more, when I’m ready, when I’m bulletproof. Invincible. Safe. So not yet. Maybe not ever. Perfectionism is the same violence we experience from the harmful systems we live within, but turned inwards. An addiction to the myth that we need to be not only good but beyond reproach in every way to even start to tell our stories. And I’ve already seen and survived enough violence to let myself get away with doing that shit to myself any more.

Here’s a confession of something you might already have put together: I’ve been procrastinating with getting stuck into my next big fiction project. And seeing Orla speak helped me recognise how much of my inertia and frustration has been to do with fear. Fear about not having all the answers yet. Fear of the depth and commitment the research might involve. Fear of how ambitious my idea feels. Fear of somehow getting it wrong.

So what if I could allow myself to explore beginning an imperfect, incomplete version? What I could give myself permission to get started, knowing full well that I might have a long, messy road ahead, and acknowledging that not having the answers and stumbling about in the dark is all part of the adventure? Practising unlearning and resisting perfectionism is radical to me, but a form of resistance I know I need. I get so, so much from the other creatives I see putting that practice into action. I want to be as brave as them.

I booked this trip with no knowledge of Belfast or what to expect from my time here, but curiosity, accidental discoveries and unexpected outcomes have been the things that have given me the most joy, connection and meaning. I want to make space for that in my writing too. And to do that I need to stop waiting. That’s what I need to practice now.