THE BATTLE

“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

So did George, the Boy Beauty, the “glamourous bitch”, the bi-sex, a fundamentally gay guy whose extraordinary artistry hits us right between the eyes, has ever asked when good ends, does evil really begin?

Perhaps some of the good ended when Gemini George struggled with heroin addiction and was arrested for possession. He had not only dabbled with druggy darkness and off-the-wall sexuality. but was sued for libel by a guy who denied the love affair between them, the hot relationship George revealed in his autobiography “Take It Like a Man”. George had to “take it like a man” when he was convicted for the false imprisonment of another guy, a certain Audun Carlsen, a Norwegian male escort and was required to wear an ankle monitor on his release from jail.

“Boy George”, or George Alan O’Dowd of Eltham, London, was born with his Sun in Gemini and Moon in Cancer. The extreme sensitivity of an intense moon ensured he just felt too much, far more than he would have wished during the heady eighties. He is now older and wiser creative sensitive with spiritual overtones. He would agree he stepped beyond most people’s moral boundaries, but back then, he was overwhelmed by addiction, and self-control remained an “elephant in the room”. He is highly intelligent but with a twist; some might say he was a prisoner of his past; a guy who felt his soul but could only express it through his music. Certainly, he wanted it all. He had beauty, and he fought for fame but in the end, the trauma of his boyhood pulled him into the darkest abyss. Never mind, help was on its way. The guy who considered himself the “pink sheep of the family”, the Dood who once wanted to be a lookalike for Shirley Bassey, would touch the stars, and the curse would be lifted. He said, “When you’re younger, you think you’re in competition with everyone. You think everyone’s success is a threat to you, and this is a thing you grow out of. You get older and you suddenly realize the only person you’re in competition with is yourself.”

A POP ICON AGAINST ALL ODDS

In the meantime, his androgynous style won over more and more fans, he had successfully reinvented himself, and the hurt boy had become a pop icon against all odds. Once a traumatized man-child, he admitted, “My father was a terrible father and a terrible husband”. George’s mother wrote a biography that confirmed familial abuse, George’s dad was physically and mentally abusive and beat her even when she was pregnant with George. A violent upbringing might have been the reason George’s youngest schizophrenic brother Gerald was convicted of killing his wife in a fit of paranoia.

Whilst talking to Eileen Shapiro from Louder than War, he explained the track “Bad Blood” from his CD “LIFE”, revealing the downside of fame and the effect addiction to love, drugs, and self-annihilation had on him.

“It’s quite a dark track. There is a saying, “Tragedy always seeks a hostage”. You want people around you who agree with you. I wasn’t sure about it as a track, and then when it arrived mixed, there were a lot of things in it I couldn’t hear before. It’s one of those tracks that totally took me by surprise, I thought I wasn’t going to like it. But when I heard the final mix I thought, “Yeah, this is really good”. It’s kind of weighty and dark, it’s not obvious.”

Certainly, Boy George’s inner shadow was not obvious when Culture Club first caught the public’s imagination with its hot rhythms, originality and Boy’s unique “pretty lad” look. Yet, the joy of his music turned to horror as his fans watched him fall down the rabbit hole to meet his personal Mad Hatter. No doubt about it, someone “up there” was looking after him when good old Pluto started to show up in his psychological nightmares. So could an Aquarian-style angel have gifted him with those mystical tendencies, those psychic abilities, underlining his worship of personal freedom, his extreme choices; his “off the wall” genius? Could it be that his definitely “not in the box” Uranus energy has pushed Boy’s life towards understanding some of life’s mysteries? “

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

I’ve been practising Nichiren Buddhism for about four years,” he told HuffPost Live. “What it does is it gives me a period in the morning and in the evening to really focus on what I want to do and how I want the day to go.”

“One of the main practices of Nichiren Buddhism is chanting mantras, primarily “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo,” or “I devote myself to the Lotus Sutra.

“…..the most important thing about chanting is that you’re constantly praying for peace, and you’re praying for the happiness of other people – even people that you’re in conflict with,” Boy George explained. “If there’s anyone that you have a problem with, put them in your prayers. It’s amazing what it does. It kind of dissipates any of that kind of negativity.”

The Grammy Award Winner told Christian Today, “I’ve always been fascinated with spirituality, religion… I always say I’m Catholic in my complications and Buddhist in my aspirations. I was raised a Catholic, so I have a Catholic sensibility.”

Perhaps his Gemini mental dexterity, his high voltage sensitivity and soul searching were the reason he finally told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014. “There’s a lightness about me; a certain kind of reflectiveness and humour I’ve attained and have been hard won.”
The George Boy has won the prize… he is now a “man of the heart” who has had his all with self-destruction, having chosen personal enlightenment. His traumatic childhood no longer casts a dark shadow over him and he has enhanced his ever-present gifts to this day.
He admits there is a toughness to him. Notwithstanding his sensitive moon, he stood up to his fears. In fact, Boy George is no longer a boy but a strong, knowing man. “I am what I am, and there is nothing I can do about it!” he once said. He knows his truth, and we are happy he is sharing it with us at last.