Standby I'm going to whine about being an old fuck. Right. Look at that gay button on my fridge. "1975" Everybody,...mostly, I knew from that time is dead missing in exile overseas or nuts like me now.
This includes Ralph Hall the artist who did the button,...lost in the AIDS Pandemic. If he had lived the world would have heard of him. Such was his talent.
I miss them.
I miss my Queer faggy commie small press printing gang. I miss my radio career pals...more gone than here now. I miss my family. I miss my dog.
I miss drawing all them weird happy Queer Angel books. No point in doing anymore since no one will carry or touch them...I found that out over 20 years ago.
I miss the world I used to live in.
Granted old fucks for all time have said this stuff to no one listening or caring. Why should they they're busying living their lives, and piling up stories, and adventures like we did.
There.
I feel better now...not really, but I'm okay.
4 comments:
Things were still pretty good then. But I think it was something of a watershed year. The fundamentalist nasties were beginning to bestir themselves, and would soon appear on the political scene in a big way. ‘75 was just one year before Anita Bryant started to hammer on the theme of “Save Our Children,” which I think marks the beginning of very bad things. Also, AIDS was as yet unheard of, several years down the pike. So it was very near the last glimmer of the light, as I see it.
‘60 to ‘75 was a pretty good slice of time. Nearly all that has followed is shit, or actually makes shit look pretty damn good.
Z
1960 to 1975 was indeed a "golden era". The decline began in 1975 and started to accelerate in the 1980s and it began in the USA. Later it spread to Europe and now the world with few exceptions that no one dare speak of.
Milkboys has a link today to an article in the Advocate in which this sentence appears and indicates what effect the Nazis had on Berlin in the 30s. We too may well be living in an age that is even more fascist, in many respects, than the Nazis could have ever dreamed of.
"Visitors both German and foreign, such as the two English writers W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, felt almost magically attracted by Berlin – by the city’s great size, by its rhythm, but most of all by its gay scene. “Berlin,” Auden remarked, “is a dream for pederasts.” And Isherwood, years afterward, expressed the city’s fascination most succinctly: “To Christopher,” he wrote, “Berlin meant boys.” Everything seemed possible; everything was possible."
As it happened I just re-read Christopher Isherwood's book. "Christopher and His Kind". So this passage is fresh in my mind. I met Mr. Isherwood at the Oscar Wilde Memorial Book store in 1976. He kindly signed my edition. That shop btw at that time carried my 'Zines of Angels boys, and assorted subversions.
The proprietor at the time was welcoming to me, and my work.
This changed just a few years later. 1979 or '80 I think. First under pressure from his partner, and the lesbians on his staff. He put my 'zines under the counter. Later he just refused to carry them as did the two other Gay bookshops. All saying that it was not Gay. ...or rather no longer "officially" gay.
Harry Haye Allen Ginsberg Walt Whitman, and Rimbaud would have disagreed with them.
Collaborationists are everywhere. Notice that the chilling effect as regards your work and others’ similar works amount to an abnegation of free artistic expression, turning it into a hollow joke and a sham.
John Henry Mackay also loved Berlin: one of all-time my favorites.
Z
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