the northern lights will shine again and again

The obviously planned interactions with the audience; how Stewart repeated the same talking points that he always does in other interviews; how the sheets of paper with questions from the audience were obviously picked through before the second half of the show; how it was the same presenter for a good portion of the shows; the same damn brown chairs and the same damn lamp. Is this performance art? What was it even being advertised as? I enjoyed it but was left craving more. Not too sure what that “more” was.

Near the end of the show, I looked for the entrance in the back just to chat with him if he wanted to. I was unable to purchase the meet and greet ticket because they were (A) sold out and (B) too expensive. I love Stew, but I am not paying $150 or more to talk to him for two minutes in a sterile environment. It feels wrong, and I don’t like treating people as commodities. Might as well do this the old fashioned way. Upon arriving at the entrance, I was soon surrounded by older white men. In fact, the entire audience at the show was composed of white Gen X’ers both male and female. Once again, I am hyper-aware of my race, gender, and age in these interactions. My keffiyeh is woven tightly around my neck. I had nothing to sign and had nothing to give besides my Palestine zine and my fan mail that I had given to a stagehand earlier: meant for Stewart himself.

Stewart exited looking like himself in the 80s; a perpetual look of anger and tiredness. I suddenly felt awkward as the men surrounded him like a pack of hyenas around a dying ungulate. I felt something in my hand as one of these men thrusted his phone so that I could take a picture with his idol. Stewart reluctantly agreed and said with a deadpan voice, “No flash.” The man whined that he had a bit of flash on his phone. He asserted himself by stating something like, “I’m not kidding. No flash.” I groaned and took the picture of the two together as the other men ran off, cheerful that they got some sort of autograph from an elderly auDHD man. (Apparently, the picture didn’t even turn out right. Karma, I guess. Flash is pretty overstimulating).

Somewhere in the background, my fiance said, “Assert yourself! Take up space!” So, I stepped forward and said, “Hi Stewart!” He stared at me with a dead fish eyed expression and said “Hi.” We stared at each other like this for 5 seconds.

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It was very odd. He muttered bye as he went into his car and I walked away with a sense of… I don’t know exactly what I was thinking about, but it wasn’t admiration. It was pity.

***

I’ve been into the Police since I was a teenager, and I always found myself attracted to Sting more. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more of a Stewart fan. He excels at composing music, his strongest point, writing music for both movies and video games. He is pro-Palestine and is proud to be Lebanese-adjacent having grown up there during his formative years. He is awkward, shy, bad at interacting with people, and often blurts out things that he instantly regrets. He values his privacy above everything as seen in his memoir, hating how people treated him like he was a shiny jewel meant to be traded around. Very relatable.

So, that’s why I was surprised to find out that he had adopted a…very outgoing, overtly caffeinated personality when he left the Police. It made me confused at first; maybe it was just because he was more comfortable with himself. After the show though, I mulled over that he was perhaps masking the entire time during the show which made it feel scripted. Maybe masking became a necessity during the Police reunion. Who knows. But I had theorized in my head that this rambunctious personality was a mask. I recalled an interview where the interviewer was terrified as he couldn’t tell what Stewart was thinking most of the time. He always had a deadpan stare on his face. Not to mention that he was also more suspicious of others (the Ebay incident, and the interviewer sleeping in his driveway!).

But I saw a glimmer of that old self of his last Friday. He made no attempt to hide how tired he was and how he typically spoke in a flat voice. The Stewart who I’ve always joked about was a depressed piece of sh!t back in the Police. But I understand why now. Having everyone constantly pay attention to you all the time and treating you weirdly is awful especially when you’ve been treated as irrelevant for most of your childhood. At first, I thought I was being a bother by saying hello. After a while though, I started to cherish these moments when people aren’t afraid to be their authentic selves around me after a lifetime of heavy masking. Even if they aren’t necessarily the nicest.

Would people have still liked Stewart if he didn’t adopt this golden retriever personality? I don’t know. It’s hard to live in a world of neurotypicals. Most neurotypicals don’t really like neurodivergent people; our energy is too odd for them. We attempt to gain social acceptance through conforming or attempting to be comedic or both. It usually doesn’t work out as seen with me for instance. Stewart was also seen as someone who was cold, aloof during the 80s; people were more focused on Sting and Andy, the more talkative ones out of the three.

I still love you Stewart even if, most of the time, you have no urge to talk to people. I don’t know about the others though. I hope you get to a point in your life where you don’t have to mask so much anymore. I hope people start treating you more like a human being and not an extraordinary bright spark. Fuck everyone else if you’re not hurting anyone. That’s my philosophy.*