THURSDAY NIGHT IS HEALTH CARE CHANGE NIGHT: a weekly DailyKos Health Care Series
Two amazing things happened to me in Austin.
A group of high school students caused me to examine my prejudices. And so did my friend, dadanation.
While Netroots Nation was underway in Austin, teen-agers persevered, producing Texas' first high school performance of Rent.
The performance preceded by a week a CDC announcement that the number of new AIDS cases in the US each year is 40% higher than the government has been estimating. About 55,000 new infections occur in the US annually, according to the report. Experts in the field stress the need for an increase in prevention efforts.
"Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes,
How do you measure, measure a year?"
In daylights, in sunsets
In midnights, in cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife
In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life?
dadanation is is an extraordinary artist. He's gay. And until recently he's been living with medication-resistant AIDS. He diaried the suffering and elation resulting from his recent participation in a clinical trial here and here. dadanation's clinical trial was an act of physical endurance that saved his own life along with the lives of others.
Loosely based on Puccini's La Boheme, Rent prods us to re-evaluate the way we judge others' worth. The protagonists of the musical are New York's forgotten people: homeless men and women, strippers, cross-dressers, artists, and queers. Rent is partially autobiographical. The playwright, Jonathan Larson, shared an unheated loft in New York with a clique of "off-Broadway" roommates. Larson intimately knew the desolation associated with terminal illness: he suffered from a chronic condition, finally dying of an aortic aneurysm in 1996 when he was 36 years old.
I met dadanation for the first time in a comment thread on DailyKos. After two frustrating years of publishing carefully researched, widely unread diaries, I posted a trashy story about a male judge arrested for drunken driving while wearing fishnet stockings and a woman's dress. Most of the "facts" in my diary turned out to be incorrect. The judge was not an incompetent, closeted political operative building his career by persecuting gays. He was a thoughtful, respected jurist who buckled under the strain of hidden identity, accusing no-one other than himself. He had never spewed hate. The diary shot straight to the top of the coveted DailyKos rec list.
What a dilemma! My first recommended diary and it was utterly vile! The comment thread quickly degenerated into a cesspool of anality. Not knowing what to do and feeling increasingly ashamed, I turned off my computer and went to bed.
"Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes,
How do you measure the life of a woman or man?"
The next morning dadanation suggested that I "delete that piece of shit diary" in an open thread. I asked another blogger, AndyS in Colorado, to help me do so. Once the diary was excised and I'd sent out apologies to those who'd been offended, dadanation showed up in a defunct comment thread. "You have integrity," he told me, providing his email address. "You're my hero. You rock! And you're serious about writing. You can contact me anytime you like."
And I did.
dadanation does not like his moniker capitalized, even if it headlines a new sentence. He signs off on his comments with an evolving stream of Gaelic sayings. Translated, they turn out to mean things like, "an empty sack cannot stand on its own."
His self-effacing habits are unusual in an accomplished activist and community organizer. As an original member of Act Up, dadanation once helped to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge. Along with many other accolades, dadanation was Co-director of the AIDS Policy Research Center at UCSF. He convinced Mayor Willie Brown to open Magnet: a center for gay social and physical well being. dadanation served as a member of the Health Commission in San Fransisco and as the Mayor's advisor on AIDS and HIV policy. He is on friendly terms with the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.
dadanation unfolds over time, revealing himself slowly, like one of his exquisite photos of dahlias.
One day I published a diary about community organizing. "You may remember from the Odyssey," I wrote, "that it was "Nobody" who blinded the Cyclops." I meant that a group of "nobodies" acting in concert can change the world.
dadanation, who has his own take on "nobody," sent me OY TIE. "It's one of my autobiographical paintings," he explained. "It's my coming out story."
"OY TIE is Greek for 'no man' or 'no body,' and literally is what Odysseus says to the cyclops as you noted in the diary. When asked '...who are you?'" by the cyclops, Odysseus says (in Greek) 'OY TIE.'"
"The ideogram roughly translates into 'a man upon whom the sun has gone down...'"
I was/am a poundian so he shows up in all my stuff one way or the other...a very troubled, flawed, spiteful, generous, brilliant and gifted artist and the best poet of the 20th century to boot.
The ideogram and the greek phrase are both independent of, as well as lifted from, one of the cantos in Ezra Pound's, The Pisan Cantos.
Sometimes dadanation composes his own poems. They appear, perfectly finished, in his mind and he jots them down. No scratch-outs.
While the students and principal of McCallum High School were dancing and singing on stage (along with guest artists from schools throughout Austin), dadanation, OrangeClouds115 and I strolled down to the 16th street bridge to observe the evening bat migration.
Thousands of people thronged the bridge and lined the river, straining for a glimpse of bats.
As we waited, dadanation struck up a conversation with a burly blond who looked as if he had misplaced himself enroute to a Lynard Skynard concert. A thin ponytail streamed down his back. A mustache protected his upper lip. A look of alarm crossed his face when dadanation asked, "It sure is hot in Austin, isn't it?"
dadanation does not look like your average Joe. "I'm gay as a goose," he once said to me.
"I didn't know geese were gay," I shot back. "I thought they honk because they're horny."
dadanation walks with a Southern accent. His entire body rises and falls with each step as he struggles for balance. He cannot feel his feet, and waits for his weight to shift to be certain he is planted on firm ground.
He wears thick, black horn-rimmed glasses and a fishing hat covered with buttons. A camera with a huge telescopic lens often obscures his features. He looks like a skinny NASA mission control scientist on a fishing expedition.
The putative Lynard Skynard acolyte glanced at OrangeClouds for reassurance, but she didn't notice. She was leaning over the bridge searching for bats. He turned his hesitating eyes to me, a toddler who has strayed ten feet from his mother into uncharted geographic terrain. "Are you here for the blogging convention, too?" I supplied helpfully.
His face brightened, his thoughts so loud we could almost hear them. Oh, they're geeks!
"Yes," he answered with newfound confidence. "It is hot in Austin."
At that moment, a small handful of bats emerged from beneath the bridge, eliciting an excited gasp from the crowd.
Jonathan Larson's father penned a letter to the students in Austin:
Thank you for writing to tell us about what's happened with the high school production of RENT in Austin. In many ways it's a sad story, yet for me it's personally invigorating; one more reminder that virtually always "the glass is half full". It's certainly unfortunate that the School District withdrew the [support], but that says more about some members of that [district] than it does about the school system itself, or about the remarkable group who are going forward with the production of RENT. The show, of course, is about community as much as anything -- about individuals banding together with love and understanding.
And you're all doing just that!!!
Art is the language dadanation adopted to deal with unsettling experiences in his life: violent childhood trauma, and, later, the ravages of AIDS and interferon. I wondered what it would be like to lose bits and pieces of myself to mistreatment and disease. Would I, too, feel as though my greatest act of individuation, my presentation of myself as an artist, a woman, and an erotic, loving being, made me "oy tie" (no one, no body)?
"One of the rules I follow consistently with my art" dadanation explained, "is to stay as honest and true to my experience as possible. Telling the truth, however, is not always easy. And somewhere within this tension is where I find myself when I am writing or painting," he said. "Staying honest when I am creating an image or writing means having to sit with and work through nervousness, tension, anger, fear, and ultimately my limitations. My art is my way of naming demons, of finally standing up for myself, for finally letting the past pass."
Would I be able to produce exquisite and passionate works of art as I disappeared? Would I treat with compassion a community that had placed me in the stockade? Would I forgive those who have misled us about the extent of the AIDS epidemic? Would I continue to celebrate my life? Would I, as dadanation has, wield a camera with kindness?
In response to a question from the audience earlier in the day, Nancy Pelosi stated:
Abstinence only is a bad policy. It is dangerous to the health of young women. They should not be held hostage to political considerations...If you don't like abortion, you should love contraception. I had five children in six years. I can speak with authority on this subject and I am a devout Catholic. It is absolutely wrong to cater to the right wing, and it should be stopped now.
The consignment of young women to back alley abortionists is a terrible thing. It is equally unthinkable that anyone would deliberately withhold information about AIDS prevention to vulnerable persons or deny medication to an AIDS victim. Mrs. Pelosi's statement about abstinence-only approaches should be extended unequivocally to AIDS prevention efforts.
A group of high school students caused me to examine my prejudices. And so did my friend, dadanation.
What makes a man? Is he defined by what's between his legs? Or by what's between his ears and in his heart.
Dadanation taught me what it means to be a man.
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POSTSCRIPT BY EDDIE C
Last night another kind photographer, eddie c, emailed me. He asked to add his lovely, candid photos of dadanation, our skinny NASA mission control scientist gone fishin', to my diary. Eddie c took the photos at Netroots Nation.
Eddie c lives in New York City. He regrets that he won't be able to post the photo table himself in a comment, but he probably will not be joining us tonight.