Brendan Maclean Gives Us Isolation Chills
While there are plenty of digital prophets keen to call live-streaming the future, Brendan Maclean isn鈥檛 one of them:
鈥淚 cannot stand it, darling. It sucks, and not in a good way.鈥�
Of course, Maclean鈥檚 still doing live streams because, like so many queer artists, he wants to give back to his community during these terrifying times, but he acknowledges the gigs we are missing so terribly will never be replaced by the regimented coldness of the digital world.
鈥淣o matter how many comments you get, or how many love hearts that pop up, there is nothing that compares to being at a gig and, even more importantly to me, being in a queer bar with my community and sharing that intimate presence with each other.鈥澨�
If you鈥檝e ever seen Maclean perform or watched one of his music videos (House Of Air is a good place to start, but not at work) you鈥檒l know he鈥檚 no luddite. He knows how to use digital mediums to spread bold, queer, art.听
That need for intimacy Maclean talks about is something we鈥檝e all been feeling. That absence of one another. But in the queer community it feels like we are not just missing individuals. It鈥檚 something bigger. Some part of us.听
听Isolation chills. The cold we鈥檙e feeling isn鈥檛 just the onset of winter. We鈥檙e missing the warmth of seeing one another in the flesh. The warmth of one another. And the warmth of sharing moments with one another. Perhaps it鈥檚 because our stories are so rarely told in other media, perhaps it鈥檚 because of the long rich tradition of queer spaces and their role in helping us find not just one another, but pieces of ourselves we don鈥檛 get anywhere else.听
If isolation has offered us any blessings, perhaps one is the extra time artists like Maclean have had to write. To gather up these stories and craft them.听
As he says, 鈥淚 never used to write lyrics down. But I’ve been a really good boy. And I get out my little books now, along with lyrics of songs written and unwritten and released and unreleased. And they’re all actually in a bound book now, so I’m very proud of that鈥�.
When the deep freeze of coronavirus finally begins thawing at least there鈥檒l be plenty of amazing music to tell our stories.听
Sharing them together will warm us up again.听
