Matt Glamorre | A Thousand Words (Part 1 of 3)

Jake Fern (0:00)

Hi everybody, we just got back from the 20th anniversary of Shindig in Plymouth. Vicky and I wanted to say thanks to everyone who came up to say hello.

Matthew Glamorre (0:07)

That was a great first question, because actually, I've never considered myself to be gay.

I don't consider it as anything that I would want to be associated with. And being around the cathedral, being around high Anglicanism, but also just the power of the cathedral itself. So there was the whole levitation craze going around, and we were very good at it, I was incredibly good with the Ouija board. She just started telling me stories of the land, stories of the river, story of the trout and the salmon, and the story of the hawk and the kite, the story that we began on, the stories of the trees, the ash, the elm, the oak.

And I was completely entranced by all this. I had this incredible other world in which I was speaking to spirits. And I had a very magical, imaginary world. Incredibly blessed. However difficult I was finding it, however, whatever pain I was suffering then, in comparison to what my people are suffering now, I have nothing but gratitude and thanks. I believe that as an elder in my community now, bearing that memory, carrying that memory with me, to others, expressing it to others, of the world that I had that they have been denied, yeah, that is a deep, deep sense of duty.

Jake Fern (1:59)

Matthew, Jake, you described yourself as an outcast amongst outcasts, haven't you? Yes. I've done a bit of research, that's about it.

Brian Gerrish (2:09)

That's the amount of your research.

Matthew Glamorre (2:11)

You're pulling me in from the fringes.

Jake Fern (2:14)

Which I think is a very interesting way of describing yourself, because it's something that I identify with as well, because the more you actually get into this space, the more fractious it becomes, and you're put in this position where to be sovereign, you actually have to become a bit of an outcast within an outcast, and that's what I refer to as second matrix stuff as well, trying to navigate the second matrix, so you think you've found your gang, and then it seems to get smaller and smaller.

Brian Gerrish (2:45)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Jake Fern (2:47)

But your story is really interesting, and I think we'll start off with your journey and your experience with what became a weaponized kind of identity politics. Tell us, well, right back from when you were little, I mean, did you know you were gay as a young boy? Because that must have been the first thing to put you in that kind of outcast position. Already, you're a bit of an outsider, aren't you? If you're not identifying the same as your classmates and all that.

Well, I know you don't like the term gay.

Matthew Glamorre (3:29)

I was going to say, first of all, that's a great first question. Because, actually, I've never considered myself to be gay. I don't consider it as anything that I would want to be associated with.

I would refer to myself as a stately English homo.

Jake Fern (3:46)

Okay.

Matthew Glamorre (3:47)

So, you know, being a homo is one thing. I mean, I don't mind being a fag. I don't mind being a poof. I don't mind being any of those things. But gay, I've seen, is the greatest slur of all.

Jake Fern (4:00)

Okay.

Matthew Glamorre (4:01)

So because it's such, to me, it signifies mediocrity, conformity.

All of the things that I find reprehensible and repugnant. Until it became synonymous with insanity, it was also synonymous with consumerism. So as the plague began to pass in the early 90s, so the idea of the pink pound arrived.

Jake Fern (4:34)

Are we talking about AIDS?

Matthew Glamorre (4:35)

Yeah. So after AIDS, when combination therapies arrived on the scene, and people started to survive, there was this immediate commodification, this immediate corporatization of this rainbow identity.

Jake Fern (4:53)

Yeah.

Matthew Glamorre (4:53)

And that was just yet another thing I found repugnant, so.

Jake Fern (4:58)

So the term gay was that, even when you were younger, did you feel it wasn't...

Matthew Glamorre (5:02)

Well, it was the first kind of swear word I ever heard when I was, I think I was probably about eight, when I went to primary school in Wales, someone said, one of the first things someone said to me is, hey, you speak like a girl, you gay.

Jake Fern (5:16)

Okay.

Matthew Glamorre (5:16)

I remember thinking, and I said, yes, thank you, I'm very happy.