也住夏都∥Summertown

To be or not to be, it's a serious question. This time it's not about killing, but about the queer identities of our "beloved" ones.

Everyone loves Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the legendary band, the Doors. He died young, remaining an abstruse mystery for us. As his biography was about to sell on amazon, people started to dispute over his being gay or not.

" He is gay, for he had a gay experience in St. Petersburg before enrolling at FSU. And it was witnessed. " " He is not gay. He had a girlfriend at FSU, and he brought her to parties. I know that improper behavior was because he was too drunk." "He can't be gay, for I had known him so well for years!"

Everyone loves Wilfred Owen, the greatest English antiwar poet during World War I, or maybe the most "succesful" antiwar poets in the world. November 4th was the date when he died in 1918. For the past 77 years those letters written in the front line had been controlled by his family carefully. Some of them were published, but some destroyed.

No one knows if he did had "that kind" of relationship with Sassoon at Craiglackhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. It's the adorable caring relationship between soldiers. This young god can't be gay. If so, please make him a closet one. Of course his "not-so-succesful" brother, Harold, envied him. But he also had the privilege to mould the figure of his celebrated brother. Of course this is another chapter.

Morrison was a rock star in the iconoclastic 1960's. With fame and wealth, he became self-indulgence with perversions, alcohol and illicit drugs. Owen was a talented, highly commended young poet, raised in a middle class family in the conservative, pessimistic Victorian era, with his mission to demonstrate his masculinity to protect his family, and to act against any fear and evil.

But the thing is that we love them too much. Actually we love or hate those should be loved or hated by ourselves. We love that brave and bright Jim on the stage, and fearless, infinite Wilfred in his poetry. However, we also discard, or pretend not to see the negative parts they actually possessed.

I kind of like the last words told in the film, The Hours, "Always look to the truth." When the facts have been already there, why avoid them? Jim himself said, "Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free."

Most of the time we fear of the danger being negatively regarded by others. We are afraid of ourselves being not decent enough. And then we are anxious. We repress, deny, and reject. We become terribly self-loving and other-phobic. Hence we arm ourselves. The the issues of "is xoxoxo gay?" become endless. And or loving ones finally become what they are not. Getting real is never easy.