Freddie the Fake

“My own position, in any event, is not that the artists I write about are tricksters but that there are moments when the practice of art and this myth coincide" (14).

Trickster Makes This World - Lewis Hyde

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide, No escape from reality
Open your eyes, Look up to the skies and see,
I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy
Because I'm easy come, easy go, Little high, little low
Any way the wind blows doesn't really matter to me, to me.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" - Queen

"I went to bed with the disconcerting knowledge that almost everything I had assumed about my life was incorrect, that I had been baptised in blood and raised on secrets and misconstructions which had, obviously made me who I was" (133).

My Life as a Fake - Peter Carey

Reading Hyde and the backstory of poor Boofy in Carey has led me, via strange and circuitous thought processes, to Queen front man, Freddie Mercury. This stems from more than the fact that they are both British (a fact which Freddie came by through India) and the hidden-or-maybe-not-so-hidden hypersexual notoriety both men shared. Like Lord Wode-Douglass, Freddie "did not discriminate" (127). Lover Mary Austin was his lifetime partner, but Freddie's passions flamed brightly elsewhere. Both knew the burden of "living a lie." But this is just one aspect of the tragedy of the trickster within, the one that tries to outwit itself, and destroys itself in the process.

In my trickster class we talked about first lies, and the lies we keep to ourselves, the transgressions that haunt us and bedevil us through life, and hoaxes. Queen's hard rock image could be said to be one of the great hoaxes of modern music, putting on an aural show of the testosterone rich, head-banging variety while embracing the nail-painting, sequin-wearing, gender-bending visual nuances of glam rock. The group intentionally poked fun at the ultra-masculine suppositions of the corporate rock enterprise. There was something of the jester in Freddie especially, his ability to make a mockery of himself while embracing his musical and theatrical genius. Perhaps Slater was more like Freddie in this regard, as "the thing about dear old Johnno [was] he always did exactly as he damn well like[d]," going where he pleased, basking in the spotlight, the fun-loving face of the trickster (10). Freddie even performed on stage with the Royal Ballet, not just singing, but dancing, and not a soul would nay-say him. In fact, they gave him a standing ovation. The lyrics to such songs as "Stone Cold Crazy" and "I'm Going Slightly Mad" also reflect the reality-bending aspect of Freddie's inner trickster.


But for all his bravado, Freddie could not admit publicly to having AIDS until literally the day before he died, perhaps a reflection of the lyrics to "The Show Must Go On", perhaps just a last lie as significant as a first lie. What must we do to make the unendurable endurable?