We awoke hazy after a night at the Deaf Institute, Red Bulls in hand ready to tackle our first acoustic show.
'SBB' is a tough one. It brings back a lot of personal memories that I am only ready to divulge in with my inner circle. It's a song about loss and struggle. A lot of its content is actually inspired by my late friend 'Lady Die'. Who was drag artist on the Manchester scene, that we lost too soon.
But when your sole existence stands up and breaks down the patriarchal paradigms, you should live as loudly as possible — and that's precisely what Lady Die did. As a queer man in conservative Ireland, that's a radical proposition. When he found out he was HIV positive, I never questioned whether he would share his status publicly or not. Instead, how was he going to do it? And when? We sat there on a cold January evening and discussed the prospect of how he didn't come out of one closet just to go back into another one.
First, he told his closest friends and then his family. They took it well. His dad's best friend had passed away from AIDS about a year or so ago, so his parents understood the implications of a positive diagnosis: that Undetectable = Untransmittable. Nevertheless, they advised him to keep it private, not because they were personally ashamed of him, but because they were worried about how others would react.
For context, he was born into a conservative, Catholic Irish family. Evangelical Chistianity has always had a prominent place in Irish culture, bringing some very conservative political views.
By turning 13, Lady Die had told his parents that he liked boys. That was followed by nightmarish teenage years of concealed sexual orientation. After a full 5 years of trying to be his best straight self, he came out to his parents once again. They accepted it, but
"Asked me to keep it private."
I guess his parents weren't being harsh; they were just reflecting a society that really held no place for people like us.
And that's the inspiration behind 'SBB'