Bad Religion—Frank Ocean
#365Songs: June 15th
“I feel like a free man. If I listen closely… I can hear the sky falling too.”
On July 4th, 2012, Frank Ocean came out as bisexual — a monumental pop culture moment that still echoes. He wrote in his Tumblr, “4 summers ago, I met somebody. I was 19 years old. He was too. We spent that summer, and the summer after, together. Every day almost, and on the day we were together, time would glide. Most of the day I’d see him, and his smile. By the time I realized I was in love, it was malignant. It was hopeless.”
Fader’s Alex Frank summed up Frank Ocean’s coming out to perfection: “For me, Ocean’s post symbolizes the entire potential of the internet in a single moment: a self-published, identity-forging, community-building piece of content. He could not have set a better precedent for regular young kids sharing their lives online — gay, straight, bi, trans, questioning, whatever. ‘As a writer, as a creator, I’m giving you my experiences,’ he told GQ in that same interview, sounding every bit the modern, blissful hippie. ‘You can’t feel a box. You can’t feel a label. Don’t get caught up in that shit. There’s so “much something in life. Don’t get caught up in the nothing. That shit is nothing, you know? It’s nothing. Vanish the fear.’ And vanish it has, in countless ways in which the world feels more open. There are about 90,000 notes on that original Tumblr post, which seems so small in retrospect. No amount of reblogs or likes could count how big it has always felt.”
Taxi driver
Be my shrink for the hour
Leave the meter running
It’s rush hour
So take the streets if you wanna
Just outrun the demons, could you?
Many of us question how to talk about the blurriness of our sexual identities, and many of us withhold, mask, or fear ourselves to protect others as much we do so to self-preserve. Frank Ocean’s world is filled with a long history of vitriolic homophobia, a culture that breaks boundaries as well as any and yet remains very behind in embracing queer artists. The rapper T-Pain said in 2014, “I don’t think urban music is getting more gay-friendly because if that was the case, Frank Ocean would be on a lot more songs.”
After the June 12th, 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting that ended 49 queer lives, Frank Ocean posted to Tumblr: “Many hate us and wish we didn’t exist. Many are annoyed by our wanting to be married like everyone else or use the correct restroom like everyone else. Many don’t see anything wrong with passing down the same old values that send thousands of kids into suicidal depression each year.”
He said, “Allahu Akbar”
I told him, “Don’t curse me”
“Bo Bo, you need prayer”
I guess it couldn’t hurt me
If it brings me to my knees, it’s a bad religion, ooh
This unrequited love
To me, it’s nothing but a one-man cult
And cyanide in my Styrofoam cup
I can never make him love me
Never make him love me
Love me, love me
Love me, love me
Love me, love me
Love me, love me
Love me, love
Here’s his statement, in full, which feels more vital today than it did at the time. “I read in the paper that my brothers are being thrown from rooftops blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs for violating sharia law. I heard the crowds stone these fallen men if they move after they hit the ground. I heard it’s in the name of God. I heard my pastor speak for God too, quoting scripture from his book. Words like abomination popped off my skin like hot grease as he went on to describe a lake of fire that God wanted me in. I heard on the news that the aftermath of a hate crime left piles of bodies on a dance floor this month. I heard the gunman feigned dead among all the people he killed. I heard the news say he was one of us. I was six years old when I heard my dad call our transgender waitress a faggot as he dragged me out a neighborhood diner saying we wouldn’t be served because she was dirty. That was the last afternoon I saw my father and the first time I heard that word, I think, although it wouldn’t shock me if it wasn’t. Many hate us and wish we didn’t exist. Many are annoyed by our wanting to be married like everyone else or use the correct restroom like everyone else. Many don’t see anything wrong with passing down the same old values that send thousands of kids into suicidal depression each year. So we say pride and we express love for who and what we are. Because who else will in earnest? I daydream on the idea that maybe all this barbarism and all these transgressions against ourselves is an equal and opposite reaction to something better happening in this world, some great swelling wave of openness and wakefulness out here. Reality by comparison looks grey, as in neither black nor white but also bleak. We are all God’s children, I heard. I left my siblings out of it and spoke with my maker directly and I think he sounds a lot like myself. If I being myself were more awesome at being detached from my own story in a way I being myself never could be. I wanna know what others hear, I’m scared to know but I wanna know what everyone hears when they talk to God. Do the insane hear the voice distorted? Do the indoctrinated hear another voice entirely?”
Frank Ocean isn’t the most prolific artist, and he has a tendency to slip away in mysterious absences from culture, but when he drops new music it matters. Not just because of his artistry, but because it brings back in the spotlight a man who is unapologetically himself, who reminds of the power of breaking boundaries while holding the door open for others. And yet, it’s still rare for a male Hip-hop artist or rapper to come out, even as their female counterparts grow more and more comfortable — and embraced. The same is true in professional soccer: 12% of women have come out, whereas ZERO men who played for the 2022 World Cup were out. You don’t need to be a statistician to know that ain’t a real number.
Taxi driver
I swear I’ve got three lives
Balanced on my head like steak knives
I can’t tell you the truth about my disguise
I can’t trust no one
And you say, “Allahu Akbar”
I told him, “Don’t curse me”
“Bo Bo, you need prayer”
I guess it couldn’t hurt me
If it brings me to my knees, it’s a bad religion
Oh, unrequited love
To me, it’s nothing but a one-man cult
And cyanide in my Styrofoam cup
Our masculine world is unsafe for far too many, and heroes like Frank Ocean don’t just create space for the rest of us, he takes the punches on our behalf, too. And while I’m sure there are plenty of would-be fans who posture up publicly in protest against queer celebrities, I suspect it’s just that: posturing for the sake of preserving a public image, to alleviate any speculation about their own sexuality within groups still nurtured to demonize differences.
I can never make him love me
Never make him love me
No, no, ah
It’s a, it’s a bad religion
To be in love with someone
Who could never love you
Oh-oh-oh, only bad, only bad religion
Could have me feeling the way I do
The song Bad Religion is on Frank Ocean’s iconic, perfect 2012 coming out album, “channel ORANGE.” Though the most obvious lyrical interpretation is that the song is about unrequited love within a relationship, it’s so much richer than that, so much more layered: it’s about erasure, a religious and cultural reaction to non-normative sexuality, the judgment thrown upon anyone who shows up as themselves in a world that wants them to be something else. Bad Religion is about letting go of those who can’t love you for who you are, letting go of the institutions that won’t welcome you.
I think about this a lot these days: with whom, and where, am I safe to be myself. And how to stop caring when those most unaccepting of me are disappointed in my absence—even when they’re “family.” I haven’t always been good about staying out of spaces that drain me, that ask me to show up as some version of myself that pleases them at my own expense. But I’m also at odds with myself: to show up as Frank Ocean does is to create representation, to force others to recognize non-normies as still human, still interesting, still family; and yet, to show up is more often than not to feel their unwillingness to accept anything beyond what’s already comfortable, and to ask of those of us who are “different” to reframe ourselves around their narrow worldview. It’s a lose lose, more often than not, and for now, at least, I’d rather slip into the shadows and out of the spotlight. The way Frank does.
“I don’t have any secrets I need kept anymore,” Frank wrote at the end of that 2012 Tumblr post. “I feel like a free man.”
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