The Thin White Duke - the leader of the freaks and misfits

I guess this is a kind of a 1970's and 80's eulogy: the world was different then, and oh how different was Finland, a remote wounded country painfully slowly entering modernity. Now everyone can do it and does, and it's great and if it's not, you turn to the next one, you are free to turn whichever way. But he did it then: broke codes, very important codes, religiously guarded central codes - of sexuality, gender, of identity, of personhood. He evaded the dead categories with seeming ease, with grace. And aided me and undoubtedly countless of others also trying to find a path away from that deadness, and not with ease, not with grace. That is not a small thing to say of anyone, and next to that, his person, is his marvellous, glittering art: defiant, ever changing, evading, slipping away from all your attempts of definition. He was much too fast for that. So, a very sad day this.

Of course it is the land of all teenagers and young adults: the inner freakhood, the pain of not fitting into the world but it really can feel extra sharp if you cannot even begin to think of a compromise, a gradual adjustment as your very being is a radical rebellion against the liveless past certainties that still did then control thoughts and expectations.