The stories of June were many, out dancing, a memorial, a poetry reading, on and on.
It's a bit of a blur, between cities, Brussels to Antwerp, to Berlin to London to Brooklyn. Back home, people out on the street, enjoying the evening, dreams about poems, picking the wrong poetry books, awake, greeting the cats and kid, looking at the cards from the galleries, from Antwerp when I had a magic afternoon, pics of Lotte and Hannah and Mad Meg, to yoga, the sun saying hello summer.
Out into the day, singing into the night with Brennan, walking through the East Village summer, thinking about where summer had already taken me over the Solstice weekend, a few scattered dates and reflections, beyond a narrative, scattershot images of the month in time, a day here, a day there follows:
Monday the 22nd
Trip to Berlische Gallery, my favorite gallery in Berlin. Located in Kreutzberg, it is a half century since opening its doors in 1975: “We seek to portray Berlin’s art history in new and surprising ways with room for every genre and style. This sometimes reveals unexpected threads in the fabric, and international networking by the art community is part of that weave. Berlin is a city of artists, and here you can sense it. We show the classics, but we also respond quickly to the latest trends in contemporary art. Our programme is undogmatic, thought-provoking and sometimes controversial – but then so is Berlin.”
As much as anything, this museum provides a glimpse of a divided city.
Walking in, I was struck by Emilio Vedova's "Absurd Berlin Diary 1964". Filling a gallery space, the sprawling works trace a divided city as a: "clash of contradictions" ... a "madness that rises from within"... "a fear that stands at our doors".
That fear never really goes away.
I certainly saw it in the video installation down the hall:
"I came as a guest worker but I was never treated as a guest" said a voice in a video film, "looking back" by Daniel Asadi Faezi & Mila Zhluktenko, Aralkum. The film "connects three time periods: The Olympia shopping center in Munich was largely built by so-called guest workers in the 1970s and was considered the largest shopping center in Europe at the time. In 1982, the Iranian director Sohrab Shahid Saless made the film "Address Unknown." He was responding to the increasingly visible hostility towards people marked as "foreign" in West Germany. In 2016, nine people were murdered in a right-wing terrorist attack at the Olympia shopping center. Zhluktenko and Asadi Faezi link these time periods together and show that racist violence is not an isolated event, but part of an ongoing continuity."
Upstairs, I walked to the permanent exhibition that I adore. Found myself moved by the special room for "Hannah Höch" , an homage to the famous Dadaist artist, black and white photos, her collages, montages, books, journals, stories. Walked up to the portrait of Otto Dix, a beer bottle with a flower in it demonstrating the ways we find beauty in small gestures, says the director, when the Berlinische opened in 1975, our history, ever evolving.
Bought a few postcards and walked to the Schwules Museum (Gay Museum) "one of the world's largest independent institutions dedicated to preserving and showcasing LGBTQ+ history and culture."
A show on Susan Sontag, images of her in Berlin and Sarajevo, where she staged ‘Waiting on Godot,’ waiting for a savior, for meaning, or in the case of Sarajevo 1993, for the US, for the world to help. Another American, the subject of the show.
The museum and archive is one of the premier institutions for LGBTQ+ history in Germany. They house the official ACT UP Berlin and Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe physical and digital collections. Berliner AIDS-Hilfe: The local branch of the German AIDS Foundation, which continues to provide support, education, and advocacy.
I had to ask a few times, write a few emails to get access to the archive and library upstairs. Still, they revealed the papers for the Amsterdam and Berlin International AIDS Conferences, files of papers, meeting notes and flyers and posters for international AIDS activism there, many heroes, stories of far too many losses, documentation of their direct action and boycott campaigns I'm not sure why it has faded out here and still going in the US. But there is plenty to contemplate on my way to Kotti and football at 6 at Lenaustraße 7 with Berlin buddies from Georgia and Italy here.
Some of my friends from the Freie Universitat are there, as are several others from several summers of Berlin trips.
I love the diversity, said a young woman from Georgia, who just got her citizenship here.
Messi will score two, she said. And he did.
"I'd really like to join the hedonistic internationale," said Stef. Emilio dropped by after finishing his show. We talked about Berlin as home, Berlin as a meeting place, an excluding place, a welcoming place. A long conversation into the night. My sixth summer, visiting you, connecting Berlin stories with my story, Berlin friends with New York friends, AIDS losses here and there, activism and its tributaries through time.
On the way back, I thought of the files I’d explored, on ACT UP, AIDS and Berlin. ACT UP Berlin was the German chapter of the international grassroots AIDS activist movement, co-founded in the late 1980s, that I have been a part of for well over three decades. Modeled after the New York organization, the chapter fought against stigma, restrictive immigration policies, and the slow response of the government and the Catholic Church toward the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The group’s work in German is preserved primarily through historical archives, such as those I explored at the Schwules Museum, rather than active street demonstrations.
With a strange disease thought to only target gay men, and paragraph 175 still on the books, rendering homosexuality criminal, HIV represented a space with a lot of silences in East and West Germany. What were the silences? What were the responses? What was the activism? What was the art that followed?
The story pops in countless directions. On the way back, I wrote to Sawyer and Jay Blotcher, the old ACT UP media coordinator whose work and correspondence was also mentioned here. We went back and forth a bit, Blotcher feeling alternately complemented that the work “helped to illuminate the way in their own local battles,” and a little sad. I’m not sure they found more footing after the international conference there, I wrote. Didn’t seem much after the 1993 conference. Aldyn, Andy, and Sric Sawyer of ACT UP NYare all over the files. Aldyn Mckean died shortly afterward the conference.
“And sigh, just the next year we brought Aldyn's ashes to the International Conference on AIDS in Japan and scattered them on Yokohama Bay,” Jay continued.
“Andy - Alden and I, along with ACTUP Berlin, had major influence over the Amsterdam and Berlin international Conference’s NGO and Civil Society Programming - the conference flew us there multiple times for week long planning trips - it was amazing - Jay Blotcher was also involved but to a lesser degree,” said Eric Sawyer, co-founder of ACT UP, who I am writing a book about.
I spent the day looking at Aldyn Mckean’ obits, stories of his life as a Vietnam vet, a protester, actor, Harvard grad, and man who died in 1994 before the cocktails changed everything. ACT UP NY was and is international. Its leaders knew it was not not over till it was over for everyone. Others thought it was over when treatments became available. ACT UP Paris and New York and Philly kept going, pushing forward in countless directions. It’s not clear where the rest of AIDS activism is moving in Germany, or if its moving at all. There would be a lot to think about.
There is a long complicated history here, says Michael Bochow in his essay “Political Activism and AIDS Activism Among Gay Men in Berlin.” In it he (2009) writes: “Because Germany continues to show a low prevalence and incidence of HIV and AIDS in comparison to France, Switzerland and the UK, there are grounds to fear that, in the coming years, AIDS will not be given the same prominence in public health policy. From this perspective, the irrefutable successes in AIDS prevention to date would lead to a weakening of the AIDS-Hilfen, perhaps even their dissolution in the long run.”
Reading Aldyn’s obit, I was reminded of the poem my friend Ray Diskin Black read the week before at his poetry reading at the Center in New York: “Just Before the Cocktails Came”. A haunting story about saying goodbye to a friend who did not survive before the cocktails transformed the landscape around AIDS.
Writing Ray to ask if I could publish his poem in honor of Aldyn, Ray noted, “I loved Aldyn. He was such a wonderful guy and one of ACT UP’s best facilitators. Somewhere I have great photos of him that I took at the 1993 March on Washington for LGBT rights....It was the day before the actual 1993 March on Washington. I was standing on a street corner in DC with some friends. Aldyn appeared out of nowhere in this red fringe outfit and climbed up on a planter and started belting out I AM WHAT I AM as a crowd formed. Obviously pre-iPhone but I had a camera with me and snapped this picture.”
His poem could have been about him:
Just Before the Cocktails Came
It was unexpected to find myself young during a time of war
When the bombs fell selectively, precisely,
And strangers sitting near me on the subway knew nothing at all.
There were two cities then, AIDStown and New York.
A person lived in one place or the other,
Two universes running parallel within the same world at once.
We met as the eighties wound down,
You all muscles and sarcasm and impatience underneath a mop of punkish blond hair.
We’d both found our way to ACT UP and jokingly calling it ACT UP High,
The queer teenage experience we finally got to have
If high school had been the French Resistance
Taking on the Great Bubonic Pestilence.
You were a sexy cool kid,
Bartender, musician, Rock N Roll Fag Bar star.
I was less cool, tentative, wandering in and out of ACT UP meetings,
Lingering at the edge of protests.
I was an alley cat raised by wolves sniffing trash cans in the alley for the first time,
A little afraid, a lot excited, by finding finally the alley and the cans.
The end came sooner than we planned.
I remember how your skin felt when I last touched your hand,
Paper-thin and willowy like an old man.
You’d moved to San Francisco, so I hadn’t seen you in months.
As I approached the corner of Ashbury and Haight you stood there smiling, leaning on a cane,
Having gone from muscly to emaciated in the span of one winter and two weeks of that spring.
It happened back then before the good drugs came.
1993, 1994, 1995 – guys our age still died in droves
Disappearing from Chelsea, the Village, Cherry Grove.
Not like the early days when no one knew anything, and everyone was in shock
But a dying on the eve of salvation when the cocktails came out,
Highly active antiretroviral therapies that would save millions of lives.
You missed it. Just missed it. We had no idea then how close we were to that,
Still in the Dying Years when you accepted your looming death and rehomed Godzilla, your cat.
As you slipped in and out of consciousness, unable to stay,
Your beautiful body ravaged by AIDS, the pandemic that ravaged our gay salad days,
You asked of me one thing, dear Howard my friend,
To write about you, not leave you lost in the fray.
June 23
Spent the morning exploring. Walked to the German Resistance Memorial Center for a show I saw an ad on the subway: "this enemy is on the right!" The fight against National Socialism before 1933. "Founded in 1919, the Weimar Republic was under pressure from the beginning. Authoritarian ideas and nationalist thinking were deeply rooted in parts of German society. Numerous democrats in the political and societal sectors, however, warned from an early point of the dangers posed to the republic by its völkisch, antisemitic, extreme-right, and National Socialist opponents. They feared for the basic rights and social achievements of the country’s first parliamentary democracy. The exhibition uses biographies of 27 dedicated men and women to show examples of the fight against National Socialism before 1933. It spotlights various fields of action, motivations, and forms of confronting the rising Nazi movement, making clear that the Weimar Republic was by no means a “democracy without democrats.”
A number of brave people fought National Socialism here, many of them perishing.
"Never again Germany" read the graffiti as I was walking there.
Onward, I walked to Neue Nationalgalerie, for the final show before I left, spending the most time in “Ruin and Rush Berlin 1910–1930”. “With Ruin and Rush, the Neue Nationalgalerie highlights selected works from its Classical Modern collection that explore Berlin in the 1910s and 1920s. These decades – shaped by the First World War and the Weimar Republic – were marked by constant tension between extremes: excess and poverty, emancipation and extremism, all coexisting in a rapidly growing, cosmopolitan city.”
June 21
Met my buddy Johanna for bunch on Karl Marx Alee, for a conversation about Antwerp, and its show on the "Antwerp Six" fashion...And other artists who influence her, including pipilotti rist, mariko mori, and james turrell.
A city full of characters, Berlin always surprises, she walked me for my next stop at the Admiralbrucke to meet Nicholas, where we talked about history ice and the US, Astrid Proll, and the Red Army Faction, the activists that fought the legacy of National Socialism in postwar Germany.
Musicians were everywhere, street corner after corner for Fête de la Musique, a massive, city-wide free music festival held annually in Berlin to celebrate the summer solstice.
Grabbed the train to meet Federico for a late afternoon of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s musical The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper), the story of the gangster Macheath Mack the Knife, questioning the morality of our world of money money money, but buy buy, sell sell sell with Brecht: "You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy, but till you feed us right and wrong can wait. Or is it only those who have the money who can enter the land of milk and honey?" We sat in the first row by the orchestra pit, chatting with the trumpet player, with his tattoos. Macheath later screamed at the orchestra, breaking the fourth wall, reminding us all to keep our wits, just as we'd expect with the Berliner Ensemble, founded in 1949 by Bertolt Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel, and its "epic theatre" of critical audience engagement.
Back to Laidek Cafe for a beer, speaking with a few more queer activists here, about AIDS in Germany. Its over they suggest, now that we have treatment. But not everyone can get it, I think. The conversation does not go there. That’s more a USA problem, they suggest.
A strange and lovely day in the life, with music everywhere, ideas swirling about Germany and the US, history whirling about us, ever moving and shifting.
June 19 -20
We sat watching the US play Australia in a pub in Brussels, a French woman and I talked about the US and France, 250 years "Louis XVI formally allied with the American colonies in 1778, providing crucial funds, weapons, and naval support. This massive financial investment nearly bankrupted France, ultimately sparking the French Revolution..." Up half the night chatting, dancing, and running about. And then off to Berlin a few hours later. Trains from the airport to Hermannplatz, in the northern part of the Berlin district of Neukölln, pick up keys, run back to the train, well two trains, to Ostkreuz,where the tram line is down, the bus is late, but i still make the afternoon teaparty at Sisyphos, my favorite techno club Berlin, Germany, famous for its non-stop weekend parties. Fed meets me, dancing away the afternoon, meeting friends, chatting about music and life, people from Germany, Peru, locals going dancing all weekend, talking about where to go later, outside, into the late evening, people arriving, we could dance and sweat all night, some people roll a joint for the dj, who winks and smokes it, dark techno on one floor, house the other, ideas and feelings, sweat and energy released into the night. People in barely anything, skirts, a bra, boys in skirts, short skirts, Finally a few of us make our way to the bus to Ostkreuz, where the city’s circular Ringbahn crosses the city, back to Hermanplatz, thinking of everyone, all the stories, the cute dj, into the dreams.
June 19
Brussels to Antwerp, the city is like a museum. First stop Maagdenhuis, a former orphanage, housing Breugel's Mad Meg, was she a real person, I wonder walking across town, stopping at a lovely bookstore, named Damian, and keep on walking through a magic courtyard, vines, trees, an old church, students sitting about, inside the Royal Academy of Fine Arts
Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten. On the way to kmska Antwerp, back past Demian Books on Conscienceplein, 16-18
Antwerpen, B-2000, a group of kids drinking next door, to the "Antiquarian and second hand book shop Demian" that "shares a wall with the baroque Carolus Boromeus- church at the centrally situated H. Conscienceple in Antwerp." Inside book lovers peruse this collection of Kurt Sphitters and Beat literature, "art and poetry... international literature, and more obscure findings can be discovered here." At the museum i am mesmerized with the northern masters, Moms favorite period in art history. Hustle back to make the 4:55 train.
June 18th to 19th
Ran into a friend on the way out of town, thinking about a few others on their way from here to there.
Brussels Norde to St Catherine to Le Grande Cafe for a stella to Bozar
The Grand Café is located on Place de la Bourse, a stone's throw from the Grand-Place in Brussels' city center. In 1994, the building was listed as a historical monument. Its Art Nouveau decor blends classicism and modernity, and the beauty and uniqueness of the place only increase with time.
June 23
Just a few days later, I ran into Ian from New York, chatting between here and there, on the way to the airport, on the way back home.
The mysteries and divides continue, Anita Berber’s portrait, what happened to her, these thoughts with me all the way home, from Berlin to London, London to New York, back to the USA. Crazy facial recognition software at the airport in New York, they don't even ask for my passport. Still there was a lot to think about.
June 17th
Nico joined us for dinner, but missed the ride over the Carroll Street Bridge, through the strange redzone neighborhood on top of my old neighborhood.
June 16th
Looking about, Alley greeted onlookers at @villageworks. Most of us hung over from a weekend of emotions, poems on Sunday with Ray, basketball and memorials Saturday, dancing, summer magic light, here, there, gone piles of poetry, books and zines, moving to and fro...on St Marks Place.
June 15
Sunday, world cup in Brooklyn, poetry reading with Ray in the West Village, and karaoke in the East Village. Ray reminded us of the wonder of it, the greetings and departures of it all, poem after poem. Listening, I thought of James Wagner, the veteran of action tours, who took his last breath the week before, years of running into each other, critical mass bike rides, zaps with the radical homesexual agenda, long talks about activism, his act up days, blood on their hands in Albany, watching Berlin Alexanderplatz, art, the craziness of it all, a glass of bubbly before he left, and we kept on, wondering about it all, singing into the afternoon, the whole city popping with energy.
Later Jack Rudin posted an update about the reading at Bureau of General Services-Queer Division: “ Raymond Diskin Black gave another reading for his new poetry memoir THE NIGHT OF SWAYING GRASS last weekend at the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division and it was another triumph. Yes, I am bias because I love Ray and I really love this book, but I'm also crazy about the way Ray transports us back to his childhood sharing his thoughts, his fears, his joy and his pain. His openness and vulnerability is so touching and poignant. Nice also to have his dear friend Benjamin Heim Shepard there in conversation again to help expand and navigate the sweet path these poems take us down.”
Democracy Now reports:
“Thousands of Albanians took to the streets of the capital Tirana over the weekend as anti-government protests opposing the development of a massive resort linked to President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner entered a third week. The multibillion-dollar project would turn an abandoned Soviet weapons base, known as Sazan, into a luxury island resort. Demonstrators on Sunday chanted "revolution" and called for the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama.”
June 14
Hot people read poetry, on this weekend when we said goodbye to James and Iris and Virginia and the Knicks won, we whirl into a Sunday afternoon of poetry and stories. Join us at 3 pm at 208 West 13th Street, room 208.
June 13
I remember them losing game 7 in 1994, losing in 1999 to the Spurs. Seeing Patrick, Charles Oakley, Allan Houston out there. What a run. The only time they lost since mid April was when Trump came. 'My mayor is Muslin. My bagels are Jewish. Trump ruined the vibe. Knicks in five!!!!!'
RIP James Wagner... so glad I got to see you and snap this pic in February. Godspeed James! ACTUP!
I posted my note after Kate sent me Sarah’s note:
RIP James Wagner. “ACT UP, Fight Back, Fight AIDS!” Love to his husband Barry and all his friends.
Replying Brian Griffit wrote:
Brian Griffin posted:
This is heartbreaking. Such a hero. The brains behind ACT UP affinity group Action Tourists and a stand up mensch good guy.
June 13
We met at Palmer House, celebrating the life of Virginia, looking back at the life of a friend. Mom and Virginia met at the stacks at Princeton Library, comparing notes on their respective finds, manuscripts of secrets, from interlibrary loan, hidden in abbeys and temples, they traveled together, touring China, Virginia later moving in, once she was sick, years of friendship, years of greetings. Life's one god damn thing after another she told me after we watched Chinatown together. You were always curious about us, but what about you? What about love, the one that got away at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, the former classmate giving a talk at Kalamazoo? What happened? Those four years living with Mom came and went, that old friendship after Dad and David left... That trusty friend with a smile and a greeting... I see you now here, in all those familiar places, in all those familiar places, ... seeing you...
And the pain ended, gone.
We walked to the museum, by the Henry Moore statue we climbed when Dad graduated all those years ago, through the museum of treasures, by Dad's old office, on our way back home.
June 12
Friday went on forever. A demo and IRB trainings during the day, a paella party and a downpour into, sunny afternoon into night time, saffron and Spanish rice cooking over an open fire, friends from all about my life dropping by, before a trip to Williamsburg for book club radio. No pics, lots of dancing. Summertime.
About that demo:
"Jamie Dimon is throwing Elon Musk a party, and the Nasdaq is playing roulette with millions of Americans’ financial security.
Join us to disrupt the party!
With the launch of SpaceX's IPO, Musk is set to become a trillionaire. SpaceX is attempting to go public on June 12th, the same day of Dimon's soiree.
The SpaceX IPO could dramatically expand Elon Musk’s personal fortune and accelerate the emergence of trillionaire-level wealth in the United States while millions of people face housing insecurity, medical debt, and low wages.
Working people are having SpaceX forced into their 401ks and pensions thanks to rules rigged to benefit Musk and billionaire investors at their expense
Join us June 12 to disrupt their party!"
June 11th
And so the summer begins, a trip to Brighton Beach, a guy wanted our cans, swimming, working on our tans, eating Russian food, a ride on the Cyclone, strolling by the Wonder Wheel. Summer time rolls.
June 10th
The cats took in the Summer feeling, before we biked to the Lower East Side, stopped for a pickle, took in the day, the sad and glorious moments, the things not quite working, the things that still do, the chaos, the ups, downs, 29 point deficit to the Spurs, hitting three pointer after three pointer, two fouls against Karl Anthony Towns in the first minute, 'thats the game' said Al. But still slicing into the lead in the second half, Josh Hart missing the dunk, and a one pount lead with 1.2 seconds to go. Knicks in five to stay alive
Betsy seemed to understand, writing:
“Donald goddamned fucking Trump who we all hate forever put the bad juju on the Knicks by reminding them of who their fuckhead owner really is, and now they’re screwed. Send good revolutionary energy to these guys right now!”
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