Artist Brian Oldham discusses his sexuality and art, and how they inform each other.
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I feel like I’ve died so many times
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growing up I was sent to Catholic
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schools the kind where they tell you
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that masturbation is a sin and the girls
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were short pink skirts homosexuality
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forget about it
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gays go to hell and masculinity was my
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armor everything feels safer when he
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checked the boxes of what people expect
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you to be so I never even admitted to
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myself that I liked boys in high school
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I told my friends that I was straight
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and tried to play the part of the
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masculine teenager when I was 18 I gave
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into my sexuality for the first time I
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fell in love and people found out the
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ones who are worth keeping around or
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supportive I was still acceptable to
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most of them because even though I was
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gay I was still a man and that’s easy to
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digest the curtains were pulled back but
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I was still running for myself in my
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darkest times I wanted to die but
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somewhere along the way I realized that
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I didn’t want to kill myself I just
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wanted to kill the person I’d been
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pretending to be I had died by my own
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hand and all of the self-loathing died
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with the old me
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every once in a while you have to kill
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who you were to become who you are
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[Music]
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the world is quiet when you wake up
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as queer people we have to give birth to
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ourselves and I’ve had to be my own
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mother for a long time we’re all born
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once by our parents and then again when
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we break down the walls of who we were
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supposed to be when I killed that part
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of me that wasn’t real
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I rebuilt myself stronger more honest
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feminine and free figuring out which of
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your pieces belong to you can be sticky
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and my art helped me to sort through the
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muck
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[Music]
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sometimes it can be easier to speak
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without words
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[Music]
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I tell all of my secrets of colors and I
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found myself and my self-portraits
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[Music]
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I’m a romantic at heart but the kind of
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falls in love with ideas instead of
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things
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I’m defined by contradictions in these
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days I keep the outlines of myself
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sketched lightly becoming Who I am
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is loving and accepting herself as I am
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every day gentle and strong masculine
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and feminine quiet and assertive
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I’m non-binary and every sense of the
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word
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[Music]
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[Applause]
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[Music]
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people tell me I look like a different
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person every day but I know exactly who
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love to me comes from within like a
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light a color a brilliant shade of
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whatever you are who are you
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who do you want to be find that light
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that’s already inside you
◊♦◊
Have you read the original anthology that was the catalyst for The Good Men Project? Buy here: The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood
◊♦◊
Talk to you soon.
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