My Gay Uncles
February 10, 2015 11:04 AM Subscribe
Writer John Reed remembers growing up as a kid in New York in the 1970s, when his mother, artist Judy Rifka, was friends with queer artists like Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat and David Wojnarowicz, under the lurking presence of AIDS.
This is one where I'd say -- DO read the comments.
posted by leesh at 11:14 AM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by leesh at 11:14 AM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
For some reason he doesn't mention his mother by name, but I figured out who she was from his Wikipedia article. Here's an interview with Judy Rifka.
Also, thanks for the comment to read the comments, which are good. Not sure if there's an existing Metafilter tag for that, but for now I will add #doreadthecomments
posted by larrybob at 11:17 AM on February 10, 2015
Also, thanks for the comment to read the comments, which are good. Not sure if there's an existing Metafilter tag for that, but for now I will add #doreadthecomments
posted by larrybob at 11:17 AM on February 10, 2015
This is great, although his timing is a bit off. AIDS wasn't called AIDS until mid-1984, but that hardly matters to the context of the piece.
The CDC was calling it AIDS by 1982. The earliest reference to "acquired immunodeficiency" in this specific context I can find in Google Scholar is from 1981.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 11:58 AM on February 10, 2015
The CDC was calling it AIDS by 1982. The earliest reference to "acquired immunodeficiency" in this specific context I can find in Google Scholar is from 1981.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 11:58 AM on February 10, 2015
Also, cover mentioning AIDS from a 1982 edition of New York Native.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:05 PM on February 10, 2015
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:05 PM on February 10, 2015
His dad is the equally great painter David Reed.
It is harrowing how thoroughly that entire generation has been forgotten. That New York, of the 80's is my favorite New York, not only because I was teenager then. It was the city of infinite possibilities : where you could meet Insert name here at Insert restaurant club bar here And not even know, maybe for months, that they were making /singing/ dancing etc that thing you just fucking loved.
The city's inability to deal with the AIDS crisis was fucking criminal, and (as mentioned in the comments) a huge portion of that blame should sit at Ed Koch's feet.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:06 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
It is harrowing how thoroughly that entire generation has been forgotten. That New York, of the 80's is my favorite New York, not only because I was teenager then. It was the city of infinite possibilities : where you could meet Insert name here at Insert restaurant club bar here And not even know, maybe for months, that they were making /singing/ dancing etc that thing you just fucking loved.
The city's inability to deal with the AIDS crisis was fucking criminal, and (as mentioned in the comments) a huge portion of that blame should sit at Ed Koch's feet.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:06 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
The city's inability to deal with the AIDS crisis was fucking criminal, and (as mentioned in the comments) a huge portion of that blame should sit at Ed Koch's feet.
Absolute truth. Unfortunately, that hasn't prevented a lot of ahistorical whitewashing...
Neil Barsky, director of "Koch," says criticism of his relations with the city's blacks and his response to AIDS crisis are more about style than policy.
Style? Style? Are you kidding m-*head explodes*
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:30 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Absolute truth. Unfortunately, that hasn't prevented a lot of ahistorical whitewashing...
Neil Barsky, director of "Koch," says criticism of his relations with the city's blacks and his response to AIDS crisis are more about style than policy.
Style? Style? Are you kidding m-*head explodes*
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:30 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Something I happened across from what I did not know existed, David Wojnarowicz's autobiographical comic:
Words can strip the power from a memory or an event. Words can cut the ropes of an experience. Breaking silence about an experience can break the chains of the code of silence. Describing the once indescribable can dismantle the power of taboo. To speak about the once unspeakable can make the INVISIBLE familiar if repeated often enough in clear and loud tones. To speak of ourselves—while living in a country that considers us or our thoughts taboo—is to shake the boundaries of the illusion of the ONE-TRIBE NATION. To separate tribes in this illusion called AMERICA. To keep silent even when our individual existence contradicts the illusory ONE-TRIBE NATION is to lose our own identities. BOTTOM LINE, IF PEOPLE DON'T SAY WHAT THEY BELIEVE, THOSE IDEAS AND FEELINGS GET LOST. IF THEY ARE LOST OFTEN ENOUGH, THOSE IDEAS AND FEELINGS NEVER RETURN. This was what my father hoped would happen with his actions toward any display of individuality. And this is the hope of certain government officials and religious leaders as well. When I make statements like this I do not make them lightly. I make them from a position of experience—the experience of what it is to be homosexual in this country. What it is to be a man who is capable of loving men, physically and emotionally.
It's so strange that time passes - we're going on and these people are not; they're getting turned into nostalgia, books, images, fetishes. The language and look of what they did is frozen into an idea of that time; it will come unfrozen, maybe, when that time is forgotten or has less meaning, or to people for whom it has less meaning. I don't know how to feel about these things, this kind of nostalgia. It makes me really angry because I feel like the nostalgia and the telling of memories can't contain or do justice to the many things that this art and that time really were; that you can look at all these paintings and photographs and books and it is not enough, not big enough. I think about the stupid banality of my own life and think that there should be a way to donate my time; how blunt and meaningless a universe where I can eke out my time doing my very best not to feel and to be alive as little as possible, while people who were so alive are falling away into the past.
posted by Frowner at 12:36 PM on February 10, 2015 [11 favorites]
Words can strip the power from a memory or an event. Words can cut the ropes of an experience. Breaking silence about an experience can break the chains of the code of silence. Describing the once indescribable can dismantle the power of taboo. To speak about the once unspeakable can make the INVISIBLE familiar if repeated often enough in clear and loud tones. To speak of ourselves—while living in a country that considers us or our thoughts taboo—is to shake the boundaries of the illusion of the ONE-TRIBE NATION. To separate tribes in this illusion called AMERICA. To keep silent even when our individual existence contradicts the illusory ONE-TRIBE NATION is to lose our own identities. BOTTOM LINE, IF PEOPLE DON'T SAY WHAT THEY BELIEVE, THOSE IDEAS AND FEELINGS GET LOST. IF THEY ARE LOST OFTEN ENOUGH, THOSE IDEAS AND FEELINGS NEVER RETURN. This was what my father hoped would happen with his actions toward any display of individuality. And this is the hope of certain government officials and religious leaders as well. When I make statements like this I do not make them lightly. I make them from a position of experience—the experience of what it is to be homosexual in this country. What it is to be a man who is capable of loving men, physically and emotionally.
It's so strange that time passes - we're going on and these people are not; they're getting turned into nostalgia, books, images, fetishes. The language and look of what they did is frozen into an idea of that time; it will come unfrozen, maybe, when that time is forgotten or has less meaning, or to people for whom it has less meaning. I don't know how to feel about these things, this kind of nostalgia. It makes me really angry because I feel like the nostalgia and the telling of memories can't contain or do justice to the many things that this art and that time really were; that you can look at all these paintings and photographs and books and it is not enough, not big enough. I think about the stupid banality of my own life and think that there should be a way to donate my time; how blunt and meaningless a universe where I can eke out my time doing my very best not to feel and to be alive as little as possible, while people who were so alive are falling away into the past.
posted by Frowner at 12:36 PM on February 10, 2015 [11 favorites]
It is harrowing how thoroughly that entire generation has been forgotten.
I do often wonder what would have happened if an entire generation of artists and audiences hadn't been effectively whiped out by a plague.
posted by The Whelk at 12:54 PM on February 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
I do often wonder what would have happened if an entire generation of artists and audiences hadn't been effectively whiped out by a plague.
posted by The Whelk at 12:54 PM on February 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
Frowner, is that Wojnarowicz quote from 7 Miles a Second, fortunately republished in 2013 by Fantagraphics?
Part of what Antony Hegarty does is remember that generation of New York artists lost to AIDS.
Also, Sarah Schulman's book The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination is about the effect on New York of the generation lost to AIDS, particularly as it regards gentrification.
posted by larrybob at 1:12 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Part of what Antony Hegarty does is remember that generation of New York artists lost to AIDS.
Also, Sarah Schulman's book The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination is about the effect on New York of the generation lost to AIDS, particularly as it regards gentrification.
posted by larrybob at 1:12 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Some of the comments are also heartbreaking:
Not that long I was helping a friend move some boxes around her (hoarded) apartment. One of the boxes I came across was filled with old playbills, programs and cast lists of productions she had worked on the late 70's and early 90's. I started going through it and asking her about it contents and she got very quiet and solemn. I asked her what had happened to the people in the pictures and in the programs and she asked me to read the names. It seemed like every other name I read she responded with "gone."posted by Halloween Jack at 2:24 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I don't know if it's the lecture I just gave on HIV to a bunch of younger MSWs or if I'm just in a funk, but this article put me on the verge of tears, and I don't cry much anymore.
I was in the thick of it here in Los Angeles. It was painful and I have no idea how many friends of mine died. I never stepped back to take an accurate count. But they still come to me when I pass a certain hospital that so many friends died in, or an apartment that I helped clean out after other friends were gone or an old pizza place we used to hang out in.
The amount of energy, talent and love, just disappeared from the earth....I'm not sure I'll ever be able to express my sadness and anger accurately or appropriately.
posted by Sophie1 at 2:45 PM on February 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
I was in the thick of it here in Los Angeles. It was painful and I have no idea how many friends of mine died. I never stepped back to take an accurate count. But they still come to me when I pass a certain hospital that so many friends died in, or an apartment that I helped clean out after other friends were gone or an old pizza place we used to hang out in.
The amount of energy, talent and love, just disappeared from the earth....I'm not sure I'll ever be able to express my sadness and anger accurately or appropriately.
posted by Sophie1 at 2:45 PM on February 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
The "dark side," which my mother also says was there—Haring with his boys scene and Wojnarowicz with his hustler past—but my brother and I never saw it.
This nasty smear doesn't belong in the article. If he has a substantive criticism of Haring's behavior to make, he should make it. Implying there was a "dark side" to the painter's relationships with adolescents is a shitty thing to do. I know a couple of people who were friends of Haring when they were teenagers, and they have nothing but fond memories of their experiences.
posted by layceepee at 8:59 AM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
This nasty smear doesn't belong in the article. If he has a substantive criticism of Haring's behavior to make, he should make it. Implying there was a "dark side" to the painter's relationships with adolescents is a shitty thing to do. I know a couple of people who were friends of Haring when they were teenagers, and they have nothing but fond memories of their experiences.
posted by layceepee at 8:59 AM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yes, that is a pretty nasty line.
On Haring, I would suggest reading Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails, which is based on interviews with Juan Rivera aka Juanito Xtravaganza, a Puerto Rican who was Haring's lover; the book takes a sociological approach. My review.
posted by larrybob at 2:30 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
On Haring, I would suggest reading Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails, which is based on interviews with Juan Rivera aka Juanito Xtravaganza, a Puerto Rican who was Haring's lover; the book takes a sociological approach. My review.
posted by larrybob at 2:30 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
I took "dark side" to mean 'adult/ pertaining to adult sexuality,' - seeing as he is writing of his understanding of the world and these men from the point of view of a ten year old.
posted by From Bklyn at 11:28 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by From Bklyn at 11:28 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
I took "dark side" to mean 'adult/ pertaining to adult sexuality,' - seeing as he is writing of his understanding of the world and these men from the point of view of a ten year old.,
He specifically references his mother as the person who said the "dark side" was always there and specifically identifies it as a "boys scene," which would be an odd way to describe adult sexuality. And Wojnarowicz's "hustler past" was something that happened when that artist was a kid, so again it doesn't really fit.
And why would you describe adult sexuality as the "dark side"? Do you think he would describe his parents' relationship at the time as the "dark side" of their character?
I don't think your reading is supported by the context.
posted by layceepee at 8:17 AM on February 12, 2015
He specifically references his mother as the person who said the "dark side" was always there and specifically identifies it as a "boys scene," which would be an odd way to describe adult sexuality. And Wojnarowicz's "hustler past" was something that happened when that artist was a kid, so again it doesn't really fit.
And why would you describe adult sexuality as the "dark side"? Do you think he would describe his parents' relationship at the time as the "dark side" of their character?
I don't think your reading is supported by the context.
posted by layceepee at 8:17 AM on February 12, 2015
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posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:13 AM on February 10, 2015