I read in the paper that Uganda has backed off its anti-gay legislation under international pressure. This makes me uneasy. While I thank Christ that the many, many gay people who live in fear in Uganda are not now going to be subjected to what amounts to ethnic cleansing, the fact that it’s only because it will destabilise foreign relations is…well, frightening. Interestingly, the final impetus for the legislation seems to have come from a conference hosted by three evangelical clerics from the US. And this is not something that concerns only non-heterosexual people. Under the proposed legislation anyone not reporting homosexual activity to the police within 24 hours would face up to three years in prison. I wouldn’t blame someone for shopping me under that law. It’s a witch hunt.

Next Gay Pride can we please ditch the pink hot pants and cowboy suits and actually get active? This isn’t about visibility, it’s not about acceptance, it’s not about marriage. It’s about the right to live. We have shit to do. We can party later.

Something I’ve learned since coming to university: an appreciation of the machinery of art. Deleuze wrote of cinema that it is only by coming into contact with the machine (the anti-human) that we can move beyond ourselves. On my very simple level I’m finally accepting (and doing) the painstaking nuts and bolts that need to exist before I can truly knuckle down to what I’m writing. Goodbye Nietzschean bolts of inspirational lightning, hello actual work.

Art is separate from artist. But if a work is born of trauma, how does the relationship alter? Would it be inappropriate, for example, for me to sing ‘Me and a Gun’? It has a powerful message, and Tori’s a different woman than the one who wrote that song. Part of me thinks the song needs to make its way alone now. Another part of me balks at the thought that I might be appropriating someone else’s pain for my own ends.