Person of Difference

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DIFFERENCE BLOG 4

3 July 2024

7 minute read

There’s just over a week to go before we take A Brief History of Difference to the wonderful Yorkshire Dance Ageless Festival in Leeds. A month after that and we’ll be off to the Edinburgh Fringe for a 12-show run at Summerhall. I feel nervous. I feel eager. I feel scared. I feel lucky.

The shows we did in my home city of Newport and neighbouring Cardiff earlier this year are a distant memory. The slice of time since the final show at the beginning of March to now has been thick with other jobs, other challenges, other conundrums, other people. Such is the life of a freelancer. The copious amounts of post-show reflection I engaged in for a while - some might call it over-thinking - have distilled into two distinct sensations. The first is a sense of incredulity that this – the show – happened and is about happen again. A David Byrne-esque ‘How did I get here?’. Fairly predictable given my limited previous experience in this world.

The second is…what is it? It’s not quite a sense of belonging. Belonging might be a step too far for me. I think it’s a memory, more of the body than the mind, of connection, of shared understanding with the people who came to the shows. Not predictable at all. Whilst I’ve connected deeply with many precious individuals throughout my life, I have yet to find ‘my people’. I don’t expect I ever will. I’m not wired for that kind of belonging.

The belief/feeling that I am different in some way is the most enduring aspect of my sense of self. Other aspects of my identify have fluctuated and morphed in relation to my circumstances and the availability of useful words and concepts – ‘queer’, ‘non-binary’, ‘autistic’, ‘free-lancer’, ‘bass-player’, that sort of thing. But the feeling that I am different, that I am slightly out of place, has persisted, unchanged, for decades.  

Sometimes, when I tell someone that I have always felt different, they inform me that everyone feels like that. It’s normal to feel different, they say. And it’s normal to worry about this because everyone wants to fit in. At which point I tell them I don’t want to fit in but they’ve generally stopped listening by then. I don’t hold that against them. I do have a tendency to go on about subjects that interest me.

My belief that I am different is evidence based. When I was a child, I arrived at this conclusion on the basis of what people told me about themselves, what I observed about their behaviour, and what was portrayed as normal on the telly and in newspapers. As an adult and a researcher by training, I’m able to add other types of data to the evidence base. I know, for example, that in a recent government survey*, 95.5% of respondents between the ages of 50 and 65 (my age bracket) identified as heterosexual. And that the 4.5% of people who did not, included gays, lesbians, bisexuals, ‘others’, those who did not know and those who refused to answer. We ‘other-than-heteros’ are a minority without a shared core. This could lead to a sense of feeling different, a sense of unbelonging, right?

And yet I know that not all ‘other-than-heterosexual’ people feel the way I do. Some feel ‘normal’. Or ‘regular’, if, like my mam, you don’t like the word normal. The relationship between protected characteristics (sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, and so on) and the personal experience of feeling different or out of place is complicated. Some people just seem to be well-adjusted to the context in which their lives play out. So there’s got to be more to it than the boxes we tick when filling in government surveys, right?

Our aim in making A Brief History of Difference is to produce a show about being different that presents opportunities for connection alongside self-reflection, new perspectives, compassion, acceptance and resistance. We’ve attempted to do that using my middle-aged body (which includes a neurodivergent brain), written recollections of my past, my stuff and clutter, my working-class, Geordie heritage, my queerness, some nuggets of wisdom from my favourite dead French philosophers and my lack of experience and training within the arts. Oh, and my love of the band Talking Heads and of pigeons.

The specific me-ness of me is, undeniably, a key ingredient in this show. It’s a risky strategy when your aim is to provide opportunities for connection to a broad range of humans. But, somehow, thankfully, it does seem to be working so far. Several people who have seen the show have told me they were able to see themselves and their own histories in mine, that they felt seen. Given the diversity of bodies and personal histories amongst the audiences, I suspect this sense of recognition and representation has little to do with the specifics of my story. It’s something else.

I wonder if it’s because a higher proportion of the people who came to the shows were people of difference. Maybe some were regular people who reconnected with their inner person of difference. Sorry, I should explain. ‘Person of difference’ is a term I’ve invented to describe myself and people like me. The term ‘people of difference’ describes the other ‘Others’, the people without a people. A group with a mysterious shared core. I’m not even sure what it is. A shared sense of loss? The knowledge that we don’t quite fit into roles available to us and don’t want to? Maybe it’s something to do with the hope and even joy that can spring up when we meet someone who is, in some small but significant way, a bit like us? A shared distaste for small talk? I’m not sure what it is, to be honest. I know it when I encounter it though. I think people of difference tend to recognise one another when our paths cross.

And even as I am writing this, I wonder, does everyone have an inner person of difference? Because, let’s be honest, all humans are complicated and full of contradictions. Maybe. Maybe not.

If what I’ve said above resonates for you and you want to try the term ‘person of difference’ on for size, be my guest. Bear in mind, though, that I might change my mind. I might conclude that I’ve gone too far in neatening up the lovely, messy, unfathomably complex nature of interaction. I might come up with another word or term and leave you with ‘person of difference’, if you still want it that is. Maybe I’ll attempt to represent this way of being using dance or a sculpture made from clutter rather than words. I wouldn’t put it past me.

This is how life is for me - constantly trying to find or forge a path through a landscape cluttered with paradox, inadequate language, confusing entanglements of ideas and points of view and overwhelming sensations. It’s exhilarating and exhausting.

Is it like that for you too?

*Annual Population Survey from the Office for National Statistics (September 2023)

Photo credit: Becky Davies

The photo shows an item from the Brief History of Difference set created by Becky Davies. It's a bright blue bird cage set on orange legs. Rather than containing a bird, the cage has pair of wings and a little painted chair on top of it. The back of the little chair has a pigeon face painted on it. Overall, this gives the impression that the cage is, in fact, a pigeon! Inside the cage are lots of images of pigeons, and an trouserless action man who is sitting on a branch that hanges suspended like a perch. At the foot of the cage is a wooden plaque with a carved pigeon and the words Think Pigeon painted on a carved banner below it.