When I was in high school, I knew I was gay and never breathed a word of it. Back then the motto of AIDS activists was "Silence = Death." It could have wound up being my epitaph. Because, during my moratorium of gay expression, I found myself growing ever more isolated and depressed. I entertained thoughts of suicide. One day while looking through an art exhibition article I discovered the image and text reproduced above: a work by David Wojnarowicz.
It changed my world.
The dark vacuum of my experience burst into a litter of stars. All these points of sunlight that linked me to persons and ideas that came before, a constellation of freedoms denied and desired. I knew I was not going to extinguish myself, because that was not the correct answer to any of the questionable punishments the world might try to inflict on me. It's all made clear in Mr. Wojnarowicz's text, and I knew it was true in the heart inside my head.
After that I found Mr. Wojnarowicz's memoir, Close to the Knives. Perhaps the most significant book I've ever read. You will search and search for something as shimmeringly beautiful, heartbreakingly honest, and vigorously pitiless--and likely come up empty. Everyone should read it. In my opinion, everyone on planet Earth should read it.
When I found out that the Smithsonian was pulling the David Wojnarowicz work "A Fire in My Belly" from the National Portrait Gallery's landmark Hide/Seek exhibition, my heart sank. Because it was possible that someone who needed very badly to learn from Mr. Wojnarowicz would not have that opportunity. They would be stymied by uninformed Republican leaders and bigoted religious leaders, now, when a message of hope is ardently necessary for gay (and straight) youth.
If you can do something, please do it. If you can help someone, help them now. Don't follow the shameful example of the Smithsonian directors and detractors. Censorship has never helped a single person in history. But people die from what can't be found in sight every day.
I can't watch that cock-fighting scene. If everyone wants to get all pissed off and censoring-like, they should be so about that scene, not some dumb ants. Maybe this controversy will get people interested in his work, at least.
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