To the Beat of My Own Drum

The din of the protestors outside grew faint as I stepped onto the festival grounds. 2024. Seoul. My first Queer Festival as a giddy 16-year-old ally, heart beating wildly. Anticipation swelling for weeks at the thought of the colors, the community, the chance to immerse myself in a vibrant queer world I so longed to support.

Boom. An explosion of hues assaults my senses. Rainbow flags undulating merrily, mocking the dull gray concrete sprawling underfoot. Laughter ripples, layered over music pulsing from stages in every direction. Sheer elation electrifies the air. Down winding paths, an endless promenade of booths beckons, a kaleidoscope of causes and voices. 

My feet move of their own accord. Tugging me to a gaggle of bright young things at the Dding Ddong booth. Bi teens preaching affirmation in a world intent on isolation. Their words buzz in my brain: be the friend you wish you had. Secrets held dear in closeted hearts, aching for an ally’s embrace.

Then, an unexpected tableau. Camouflage meets carnival in a riot of rainbow and stars. Soldiers’ stories spill forth, a catharsis decade overdue. A colonel’s confession: a life caged by conformity, now unshackled and unafraid. 

His first festival happened just one year prior. A baptism in belonging, an awakening to authenticity’s power. Advocacy now his armor as he battles to dismantle the very machinery of his oppression. So that no one else needs to serve in the suffocating silence of a hidden self.

My heart swells, brimming with a newfound knowing. The necessity of showing up, of standing alongside, of amplifying unheard voices. In this space of solidarity, hope hangs in the air, as palpable as the bass throbbing from distant speakers. 

Change comes in waves, in metered steps forward and disheartening lurches back. But here, now, surrounded by a sea of faces filled with joy and purpose, the path is laid bare. Brick by brick, story by story, hand in upraised hand, we will build the world we wish to inhabit. A world where every heart is free to love without limits, and every soul can dance unencumbered to the beat of its own wild drum.