play and ideas: "Something was badly amiss” Birthdays and Pride Weekend

JC Augustin

"Something was badly amiss” Birthdays and Pride Weekend

Pride weekend was a blur.

So was the summer.

Drag march now and forever, marching from east to the west, as the sun goes down. At Stonewall we sang, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, recalling Judy.

The rituals of Summer.

“We are superfluous as activists, now we are more cheerleaders,” said Brian before the church ladies serenaded the dykes at the annual dyke march the next day.

35 years later the Church Ladies are still, “A pantheon of radiating splendor!” says Brian.

“Hungary's President Orban outlaws Pride, 100,000 march anyway,” says the news.

Mom was sick.

She's always been around. But less and less here, looking at the trees outside her window, wondering if she will wake up.

Monday,

had a colonoscopy,

Amazing day in the life.

Saw Sarah Schulman talk about solidarity. And rode to Elizabeth Street, where Patti, Joseph and company were celebrating. Strolled about, greeting friends, taking in the sweet sweet feeling of victory. We can have win win solutions, saving the garden and creating affordable housing. Thank you for your leadership on this Council Member Christopher Marte. Hallalulia said Norman Siegel, the lawyer for Elizabeth Street Garden Inc.

Never give up said Norman. Elizabeth Street Garden is sui generous. One of a kind. What we did today, we preserved a green gathering space, a work of art, a place to chill, to be alive, to read a poem.

I walked looking about with people I've been in this fight with for a dozen years. Save the garden, save the city, we said years ago.

Still true. Hot New York City.

Thanks for your support advocates. I'm glad people sought an alternative site for housing. It was never housing vs gardens. Healthy cities need both. They also need leadership which supports win win not win lose solutions.

It had already been that kind of a week.

Strange days. Talk of bombs dropping. History repeating.

1979.

Hot out, Biked to 103rd street to a show that wasn't there. Fire Hydrants open. Water straying through the air. Summer. And back to Village Works and Howl Happening. Greeting Jamie and Damian and Jim and JC and gene. B-2 bombs moving. Laughing before the news arrived at dinner. Pictues of emotions in a moment in time.... Meet me here, i wrote, sending Eva's note...

..THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ENGAGED

co-curated by Eva Mueller & Heidi Russell

Opening reception: Sat, June 21 · 5–8pm

HOWL! HAPPENING, 6 East 1st Street, NYC

For over 50 years i have kept an ongoing practice of personal art diaries: mixed media drawings, including typographic explorations for prose and poetry, design studies, and graphics concepts.

I have always loved Stuart Davis’s observation about the importance of an older artist reviewing drawings from earlier in one’s life, to access what ongoing/evolving themes exist throughout different life stages. I was also lucky enough at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop to participate in legendary founder Paul Engle’s last workshop, where he stressed that the most important responsibility of an artist of any medium is journaling in any way. So, crossfade to 70-year-old me, with many boxes of art diaries; often wondering how loved ones will have to deal with disposing those after I croak!

… so when Heidi and Eva invited me to be to exhibit at HOWL! HAPPENING with a number of artists i hold deep respect for, i decided to submit a few favorite drawings from those art diaries … and an odd simmering dream occurred. They generously offered me a large display vitane, and immediately i decided to use the actual notebooks to build an installation of sorts a 360° campfire “tipi fire lay”. The work, ‘Kindling’ is intentionally a peekaboo dervish, featuring themes that affected my entire body of creative output: political, personal, anguished, and giddy. I have always sought to be as much of a chameleon of style as possible, and viewers will see that on display in this installation (which i will re-curate during the exhibition run, revealing a whole different set of images)...

Tuesday, quiet, teenager coming and going and coming and going.

Off to DC Wednesday to fight the Big Horrible Bill.

Thursday.

Arrived home at 230 am from DC, protesting Medicaid cuts. Got some sleep, yoga, and joined my buddies for our Satanic Verses pool party, back to the hood for the big wrench piano jazz on hoyt street. Sweet summer.

Court in the am with my bestie, charges dismissed. Snacks in Chinatown. Trying to survive it.

Bad decisions from the court.

"Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet...Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.

Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

Drag weekend popping.

Sunday, Reclaiming Pride.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters in the street.

The cops everywhere.

Sarah posted a note:

Sarah Schulman

“Gotta say: As a co-founder of the Lesbian Avengers - co-creators of the original Dyke March - I am so proud that 33 years later, yesterday thousands marched through New York behind a huge “Dykes Say No To Fascism” banner, and in open support of Palestinian Liberation, still without any corporate sponsorship. Still organic. Still ahead. Still holding a freedom vision.”

The Supreme Court is getting worse and worse. Democracy on the ropes.

Jonathan Walker posted a note to rise and resist:

We spoke last night in the meeting about whether or not and how to possibly focus, or not focus on ICE agents. I say we have no choice. They are developing into the “brown shirts” of our era, dirty deeds squads, Stephen Miller’s private force he’s more than likely put his very personal stamp on. We will discuss further, naturally.

“They didn’t identify themselves. They just came out. They didn’t even say anything. They just started trying to open the doors,” Reader said. “I kept asking, who are you? What are you doing? And they wouldn’t answer.” Reader said that agents would not tell her what immigration laws her employee violated, threatened her with assault of an officer for asking questions and told her she was not allowed to follow their cars or know where her employee was being taken.

People are posting the old Anne Frank quote:

"Terrible things are happening outside... poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared." - Anne Frank (Jan 13, 1943)

Across the country, people are doing everything they can do to stop the big ugly bill that will gut medicaid for more tax cuts for the rich, adding 3.5 trillion to the deficit. People are already dying as a result of the DOGE cutting the PEPFAR program. We will see the same if the big ugly bill moves forward.

The Senate and House passed it

A Birthday

Back in Brooklyn, we walked to the water, looking out at the people everywhere.

It felt like the world was here.

That morning we looked at old snapshots of when you came. 19 years ago seems like a wonder. But it happened.

After you arrived, we stayed at Princeton for a few days, then off to Long Beach for a year, cruising up and down the coast with you.

And then back to New York, where you grew up and learned to fight. Off to Berlin for a year, then back to NYC. You hung out in Chinatown and Tompkins, went to Boston, and everything changed. You stayed up all night painting, studying archaeology, tracing stories of the lesbian flaneurs of the lower east side. And you found your tribe.

Back for a summer, back to Coney Island, back to the water, back to the hero’s journey, into the summer.

You told me about harm reduction in Chinatown and did impressions of anthropologists.

And we got arrested at Trump Tower.

And Wylie got our charges dismissed for facial insufficiency.

And your journey continued into the summer.

As Joseph Campbell says: "The hero's journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, 'Look, you're in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that's not been touched. So you're at home here? Well, there's not enough of you there.' And so it starts."

Off to Berlin. Moms sick. Strange summer.