From One Fire To Another - If You're New Here, Welcome.

Things That (Still) Don't Suck

me and the Lady G, warmly welcoming you here

Maybe the internet is one big house, and in that house there are a seemingly infinite number of rooms, and in those rooms, there are a seemingly infinite number of corners. Some feel staggeringly different, like wandering from a secluded Japanese onsen in the middle of a serene forest into a thumping rave somewhere underground in Berlin.

Some, feel soothingly similar, some, feel like home.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed the arrival of a lot of new faces, a lot of new souls. I don’t know where all of you came from, I don’t know precisely how you found me, but I have an idea, and it’s that one of the most amazing people to ever grace this planet with their presence saw something in me to somehow deem me one of the “Things That Don’t Suck.” They recommended me, to you, because maybe this place, this Signal Fire, felt like it could be a corner in the beautiful room they created.

We are all navigating grief in the ways we know how with Andrea’s tender rise into all that comes next, we are all feeling the weight of it, we are all coated in awe at the grace they never, for a moment, stopped showing in their life. We are all feeling lucky for the words they left us, the library of truth and beauty and poetry, the poetry that is still not over, not fully written, and will never stop being written. We are all here, glowing faces turned to their warmth, because of the light they carried, and we are all here, to carry it still.

I called this place Signal Fire, from its conception, knew that I wanted it to be a beacon in the dark, wanted it to be something that not only alerted you to the presence of light but encouraged you to share it. I called it Signal Fire because I saw it as one fire that would start another, then another, then another, until there wasn’t a place left that wasn’t reminded that light was, is, and always will be, all around us.

They called their little home on the internets “Things That Don’t Suck,” for the same reasons, though they were painted in different colors. Weeks after committing to writing their newsletter, their cancer diagnosis came, and somehow in a way only Andrea could, they still chose to write it. Gratitude in place of anger, a giant spotlight onto everything in this stunning world of ours that isn’t awful, doesn’t suck, and an attempt to remind us all that there’s enough horrible news, enough terrible shit clogging our timelines. That we don’t need any more. In the face of all that dark, they just offered light.

If you landed here through that light Andrea always carries, I just want to say simply: Thank You, and I Promise. To all you who are new here, thank you, for trusting them and their recommendation that I don’t suck too. Thank you for believing in the power of light, theirs, mine, and that spreading it is what matters most in this broken, broken world of ours. I say also, I Promise. I promise to continue what I’ve always promised, what they promised too, I promise to practice radical tenderness, I promise to be an ally, to be an advocate, to be a truth-teller—through poetry, through the images I make, the life I lead.

I promise to honor their light with mine, to keep tending the Signal Fire I have created and try my best to get more of you to light your own. We never know who needs to see the flames we’ve created, we never know who is lost and fumbling through a night that they swear will never end.

Sometimes, ONE PINPRICK OF SHINE is all it takes to save a life.

I promise to keep showing up here, with honesty. I promise to make this room, this corner of the room that I believe Andrea and I shared, one of softness, one of resistance, one of joy, one of acceptance, one of safety for all you beautiful members of the LGBTQIA+ community, one of love.

Of love, of love, of love.

I’ll close this welcoming with Andrea’s words, their perfect words that embodies every single thing I’ve ever wanted this place to be. I’ll say them like a promise, one they already made, but I’ll make again because the best way to keep a promise is to repeat it, again and again. In “Bone Burying,” they said:

Before I die, I want to be somebody’s favorite hiding place, the place they can put everything they know they need to survive, every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, and be absolutely certain I will keep it safe. I will keep it safe.

I will keep it safe. I will keep the light they lit burning.

I promise.