#purple zone

It’s a weird sense of Pride watching the filmclip to Purple Zone. It’s beautifully coded, in an older language for a lot of us in this age of marginally-acceptable Queerness, but it’s also striking looking at the age perspective. Part of it is the standard “oh god I’m old/passage of time” whinge when you look at  Marc Almond and think despite yourself “christ he looks like he’s melted”  but intertwined with that is the very very Queer realisation - something we know, we speak of, but somehow escapes being fully realised despite being an ever-present fact - that a lot of our elders are...not there. Queerness is seen as providence of youth, and that’s entirely due to society. AIDS killed so many beautiful, passionate children, and those who survived to don the mantle of “old” were lucky, or deeply closeted in an age that quite happily saw us killed with no loss to them.   Those of my age (40′s), came to ourselves in to a hellish landscape of moral puritanism and targetted plague, but we also came at an age where the slow rise of the sun was starting to appear on the horizon. It’s still not fully risen, but trust me, things have changed, and have changed for the better.  It’s still very jarring for someone of my age, raised in the 80′s to see an Old Queer.  More jarring still to realise that you are becoming one.   It’s something a lot of us were robbed of, and simply wasn’t a viable possibility for so long, the narrative was self-destruction and death in youth.    I’m very proud we’re still here, I’m very proud we things are moving, but oh, the anger.

NEW SINGLE : SOFT CELL announce 'amazing pop moment' as they collaborate with PET SHOP BOYS on new single 'PURPLE ZONE' - out 22nd March 2022