Actor Andrew Garfield penned a moving
essay in response to the Orlando shooting and how it relates to LGBT
Pride.
Garfield (The Amazing Spider-Man,
The Social Network) was asked to weigh in on what Pride means to him
following the tragedy by Time
Out London after he was spotted at the Soho vigil for
Orlando.
“In the wake of Orlando this is a
matter of life and death, and Pride is a celebration of the miracle
of life,” Garfield, 32, wrote. “A celebration of a community who
have had to fight and are still fighting for their basic human
rights. A community of lovers who are outrageously forced to
continually say: 'See me. See me deeper. Accept me. No, don’t just
accept me – love me. Celebrate my presence on this earth. Welcome
me, don’t just tolerate me. See me as I am and love me as I am:
your brother, your sister.' This community is a vital blessing to our
diverse world.”
“It’s also an opportunity to
transform our feelings and longing into generative human action. To
stand, talk, protest, march, sing, dance and be generally fabulous
and fierce as fuck in the face of forces designed to make us full of
terror. It’s an act of viscerally unifying as a people, in a world
and culture that is constantly, insidiously (and sometimes
horrifically overtly) trying to separate us and make us irrationally
petrified of each other. Trying to keep us numb. Trying to make us
forget the fact that we all desperately need each other and that we
are all desperately needed.”
Garfield said that he was moved by the
London Gay Men's Choir singing Bridge Over Troubled Water at
Monday's vigil.
“I found myself with my closest
friends, temporarily soothed in our grief for our brothers and
sisters in Orlando. Soothed only by a mass of humanity given the
sacred space to pour out their heartbreak, anger and love together in
action. Reassured: some faith in humanity restored that this kind of
ritual is still possible when it’s more longed for and needed than
ever.”
“In a modern age when a Twitter post
seems to count for activism, my experience is that there is nothing
quite as healing and life affirming as hands on hands, tears with
tears, flesh with flesh, sorrow with sorrow. Love is a verb.”
“It feels like the time, more than
ever, to stand with love, to fight fiercely for love, to build
bridges across these imaginary divides that are trying to keep us
segregated in fear of what is 'other' than us.”
“Pride is an opportunity for the deep
ritual that we hardly ever get in these modern times – and, maybe
most importantly, to dance like the freaks we all are. To dance the
joy, the pain, the rage, the love. There are no rules in this dance
but to be your true self. And celebrate everyone else being who the
fuck they are too!”
“We can show there is nothing to
fear, and kiss each other all over London,” Garfield concluded.