Creative Writing

The Art of a Healing Heart

RobertLeave a comment

Oof. Donald Trump president, again. But enough about him. I want to reflect a little on this blog and what it means for times like this. It’s called humanconditioned and the ‘About’ page sums it up nicely (which is convenient, because I wrote it):

The human is a highly conditioned being. We’re regularly told who to be, how to behave and why it’s best to just fit in. Yet all this cajoling and moulding is anathema to the one thing the frail human condition craves – freedom. But not freedom from being human but freedom to be human in as many different ways as there are people (with a few important caveats around not hurting other people and the planet).

Back when I started the blog in April 2015 the little title beneath the big one used to read “Because the human is not the humanconditioned” and now it reads “Human unconditioner: apply liberally”. And while I didn’t always know it at the time many of my posts have been expressions of the things I’ve been discovering and learning on my journey. That journey to uncondition myself from the toxic beliefs and behavioural patterns instilled into younger me and to find freedom beyond them.

And let me tell you it’s a wild ride. I am letting go of the fear and anger that used to dictate so much of my behaviour. I am better able to navigate uncertainty. And I have so much time for joy and love and patience and liberation. Fundamental to this journey is an exploration of my past, so as to find the pain and trauma there, and bring to them healing. And when my heart heals, it changes. If anything, it gets bigger. Something else that has grown is my imagination as I take the time to imagine stories and worlds underpinned by queer, intersectional feminism. And throughout all of this I do one of the things I love the most – I write.

I write plays about queer teenagers changing the world they live in, I write novels about a queer guy solving murders in 1920s London, and I write blog posts like this. Unconditioning, healing and changing have unleashed my imagination and heightened my confidence to take creative risks and explore new worlds, and my art is the better for it. To be clear – my writing, including this blog, is not a how-to guide for healing but it is an expression of healing and an exploration of what it takes to change. What it takes to uncondition the fragile human heart and set it free. At a time when so much of the world seems committed to violence and so much art reflects this, it’s vital that we continue (or begin) our journeys of healing. In times like this I think healing is necessary, I also think it is meaningful – especially in a world where it can be so hard to find meaning. Just like love and truth, healing counts, and it has taken me places that a younger me couldn’t even imagine. And I use those experiences as inspiration for my writing thereby creating the art of a healing heart.

Photo by Neal Fowler

Thank You For Still Reading ☺

RobertLeave a comment

It’s been a long, long while since I last posted on this blog. To be precise it was on January 18th 2023, a post called “Cabaret Is Really…Straight, Part 1”, about how much blooming fun the current London run of Cabaret is (and it’s still going!) but how surprisingly heterosexual it is despite its entry in the queer pantheon. And in a funny sort of way, the observations in that post link to why I haven’t written in so long. Because while I could spend my time critiquing the lack of nuanced queer representation in plays, novels, TV shows etc, I have another option – to write plays, novels and TV shows containing more nuanced queer representation.

Which is precisely what I’ve been doing. My play Dumbledore Is So Gay played at the Southwark Playhouse in south London last summer and it was an absolute blast. In other good news, I have my first novel coming out next summer. But more on that another time. Criticism is important in the artistic world as pieces of art are held up to scrutiny and analysed according to different standards and expectations. Nevertheless, there would be no criticism without creation and that’s what artists do – we create. And for many of us, we absolutely love it.

And I say this because we are living through a time of near constant destruction. For me, a UK resident, having just seen a Labour government take power, almost immediately (and entirely unsurprisingly) many Labour Members of Parliament began doubling down on their transphobia, trying to make the lives of trans, genderqueer, gender-questioning and non-binary people of all ages so much harder. What a waste and an abuse of power. But for those of us not committed to destruction there is the chance to create, hence my prolonged absence from humanconditioned.com. And I hope, in time, to be able to share more about the joy of creation and its absolute necessity in the face of destruction. Of course we must critique – of course the contemporary production of Cabaret needs to be analysed from a queer, intersectional feminist perspective…of course! But before I get back to editing my novel and writing my next play I would like to say thank you. I get to see the ‘back end’ of this website and I’m thrilled that so many folks are still clicking the links and reading the articles. It means so much to me that the words I write get read and, for that, I am deeply grateful. Thank you for still reading 🙂

Imagination Is The Best (Now, Go Read A Novel)

RobertLeave a comment

Imagination is defined as “the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses”. Or, as Ursula Le Guin put, “imagination acknowledges reality, starts from it, and returns to it to enrich it” (Making Up Stories, 2013). An idea, a hypothesis, a lyric, a harmony, a story, a poem, a thesis, a recipe, it’s as if imagination is vital to almost everything we do. Which is why, as I mentioned earlier, the new Cats movie and the current state of politics are symptomatic of a dearth of imagination. Yet, the New Stories of our times, while brilliantly critical of business-as-usual, can still end up sounding a bit old-fashioned, a little unimaginative if you will. So, I think most of us could do with stretching our imaginations a little (or a lot) and we can start with reading a novel.

Because novels come in all shapes and sizes, and many, many genres, and all these genres have a thing or two to teach us. Say, you’re one of those Silicone Valley tech-guru types offering a vision of an all-singing, all-dancing, wizz-bang future, then you’re flying in the space of science-fiction, looking to an imagined future to help inform the present. Or maybe you like harking back to the glory days of yore when England was England or even further back to a time before the Romans invaded and wiped out our pagan heritage, then you’re riding through the realm of fantasy, looking back through history and giving it your own spin. Or maybe you don’t truck with fiction and prefer to focus on the “facts”. Then let me refer you to realism, as equally fictitious as the other genres, but working just as hard to engage the imagination of the reader with concepts a little more familiar than space ships and trolls. Other popular genres for modern storytellers include dystopia – the world’s going to sh*t; uptopia – the world will be great again if we do it this way; whodunnit – who’s to blame for all this; and romance – how to fall back in love with yourself in ten easy steps. I’d say a book like Homo Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, shelved in non-fiction, manages to engage all these genres yet despite professing to have a written A Brief History of Humankind he barely mentions a single novel, no poetry either.

Ideas need the imagination because it’s the faculty that allows us to engage with them. As Ursula Le Guin put it, “Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling.” So if you want to get stylish in your telling you’re going to have to do better than a bullet point list and would do well by exercising that imagination of yours. And if you want an imaginative workout, you could start by reading a novel.

blue art painting, fantasy, photomontage, aircraft, book, reading, dream, imagination, flying, cloud - sky

Queer Warriors & Fierce Allies

RobertLeave a comment

A group of thirty had gathered at Hawkwood College in Stroud, Gloucestershire, for two days of storytelling, workshops and community building. As part of this I offered to run my first ever Queer Warriors and Fierce Allies workshop. So, picture the scene: a sunny Monday afternoon in the library where ten of us had gathered; a mix of ages, genders, sexualities and nationalities. Some of the folks I knew well, friends of mine, and others I had only met that day. So I was nervous but I was ready.

For the next hour and a half we unpacked the various and varying definitions of the LGBTQIA+ acronym and I created a space for questions and, for want of a better word, ignorance. Because a lot of people want to be allies to/within the queer community but often lack the right education. And learning requires being able to ask questions, sometimes “silly” questions but important nevertheless. So a lot of questions were asked and I, with the group as a whole, tried to answer them. After this we met the Gender Unicorn and explored the differences between gender identity & expression, the sex we are assigned at birth, and physical & romantic attraction. Then we got to some writing and crafted our own Queer Warrior or Fierce Ally characters. We gave them names, genders, sexualities, gifts and fears. We confronted them with those fears and, when all seemed lost and they were on the verge of being overwhelmed by that which scared them, we gave them some help. Maybe in the form of another person or an animal or something else entirely, the point is that our characters could overcome their fears because they had help.

And that’s what I want. Help. If you’ve ready some of my previous posts you’ll know that, as a gay and queer man, I sometimes struggle with living in a heteronormative world. Sometimes I get angry or depressed and at other times I get defeated. But, to date, I have always got through these difficult times because I’m still here. I’ve done this because, yes, I am strong but also, and always, I have had help. Having been raised male and internalising a lot of those lessons I often struggled to ask for help, seeing it as weak and shameful. Even the notion of “admitting” defeat implies some sort of failure. And even the notion of being defeated implies life is a competition. But over the years I have challenged that shame and, slowly, become much better at asking for help. And that evening, empowered by my experience of the workshop, I announced to the whole group that I was gay, not something I’ve ever done before, and I read them a poem. Then later, a friend of mine did an amazing performance of a theatrical piece of hers and included a blessing for the queer community. The next day a new friend sat and talked with me about my experiences and told me about so many of the things he’s learned as a straight person keen to be an ally of the queer community. Then two more of my friends, who told a story of Jumping Mouse, finished the tale by calling the mouse he, she and they. And I came to realise that sometimes when I speak as a gay man people do listen and sometimes when I ask for help it arrives. And, for that, I couldn’t be more grateful.

Link and his trusty steed, Epona, from the Legend of Zelda