Author: Taylor

Date: 2 February

Time: 18:82 (for those uncultured [re: non-”pretentious”] Americans–4:22pm)

Place: Diag

The bells oddly tolled a few minutes late, marking the time the artist arrived to when he started as a waiting period. He stood with brush in hand, close enough to the canvas to look like he was touching it (but there is always room for Jesus), and stood completely still. Dead still.

The frame was 3×3 and white—white like the frail, thin hands of the woman who stood a distance aways, flaming red hair. 3×3 like her mouth as it made a “C” to read the first word, “Lily…” She started from the top of the steps of the grad library and descended at a rate of one step per 3 minutes. After she had reached and tapped the bottom step, she repeated her motion backwards up to the top steps and topped the topmost step, and then she repeated her motion forwards down the steps and tipped the bottom step…

The man was too aware of her movement and each time a tap, top, or tip rang through his ear he jolted the brush in a circular fashion that obscured the staircase from being a staircase. In the end it resembled a face, a foetus, a flower, but really the staircase turned inwards. It was filled with color: light green, dark green, medium green. He was dressed in black and smoked a dark-chocolate brown cigar (rebel) that was shaped all to phallically for the passersby dressed in head-to-toe white.

Her hands quivered. The snow was falling over the scene and gently smudged the green into green into green. He w(h)ip(p)ed the mistakes out of the canvas and the wooden frame began to morph. But he couldn’t go too crazy. He stepped back and stared through it as if it were a window looking out onto the scene. As if he were paces behind the woman’s frame, safely inside the stacks of white pages, staring as if the blanket was coming down all too fast against his feet, and before long his eyes would begin to close over the white landscape of his eyes.

But they hadn’t any time and the chimes struck again. Her mouth folded into a “C” as she whispered–this time, “She was fast asleep.”

He quickly moved from the center of the “M” and grabbed, from behind a garbage can full of rats, gray paint. A gray that would paint the London sky on a rainy afternoon, a grey that would splash the sidewalks and sewers, the grey of cityscapes, and the gray of a fog that won’t quite lift. He took the gallon and dumped it onto the art. No canvas, no frame stood in its way and once the entire gallon had dissolved onto the canvas he got a spray bottle full of vodka. He sprayed and shot and shot and sprayed and now that the two were just buzzed enough he picked up the frame and brought it near to her. It was her 13th time on the 1st step. She picked up her foot and sent it crashing through the grey/gray/green stair-fa-foet-case.

“His own identity” as the artist “was fading out into a grey” canvas and all he knew to do was to rip the frame from itself. He could not have done it soon enough because as she read aloud the last word, the whole scene became “dead.”

These events I find most odd, peculiar. I can’t help but laugh and ask for forgiveness when something like this happens close to me. Guilty by association. I felt that it was…different…and some would even say…but I’m not them and I’m not to say. It is on these afternoons at 19:41 where I can only think that this was a “portrait” told by an artist, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The bell chimed.

I was in Clarkston. I was in St. George. I was in Las Vegas (airport…).

None of them are quite like Ann Arbor. I live in this weird not-city city where hippies dance outside, maybe-professors play weird instruments on the diag, hipsters angstily smoke through campus, and I model-walk down State St. all while my circle scarf blows in someone else’s face.

But I thrive here. In this magical haven/hell.

I got back from break, unloaded all of my belongings, and then blared Bastille mash-ups while I lit incense, steeped some herbal tea (the one instance my life isn’t caffeinated), and read Hardt’s book on Deleuze. Some people have the gall to tell me that I live a delusional life that once I leave Ann Arbor I will never be able to function in society.

And to them I raise my wedding-ring finger, which in my book is as dirty an insult as it gets.

This city builds people who will run corporations—sure—who will cure cancer—woo-hoo—and who will build really tall buildings—gasp. This city also creates those that will be on Broadway, write the next Howl, and describe this post-postmodern/whateverthehellyouwanttocallit society we live in. It creates people who make culture and those that destroy culture. And thankfully, all so humbly, I hope to leave here creating and critiquing “culture.”

Or ontological variations thereof.

It’s also way more than this. Ann Arbor is an emotional feeling. You can’t deny that pulling off of M-23 and heading your way to Main Street doesn’t bring a certain joy to your heart (a certain burning to your bosom—which is often 3am pizza). It’s the feeling walking across the diag in a herd of people and trying to run one floor down Dennison and almost being late to class. It’s the feeling where I have a community of friends I can turn to and a community of strangers I will just maybe meet.

But let’s not get utopian too fast.

Conceptualizing much on a deep level on any type of plane is still difficult. I still scream to myself on the streets and still see violent acts of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ableism, ageism. I feel uncomfortable walking home alone whilst wearing beadazzled short shorts and for good reason—people throw insults like/with objects from cars. And I’m privileged in all ways except for identifying as gay. How would it feel to not have all of this privilege?

Ann Arbor allows for conversation. In some spaces a safe dialogue is all I want and usually get. In classrooms I can actively debate those that I unapologetically oppose. In hookah bars and coffee shops and discotheques I can converse. Above all, Ann Arbor is a place that I can talk to people and usually be heard (even if it is only myself that will ever listen).

My thoughts are “free” here.

But it’s not just about me. There are so many poetry readings to go to where people’s words, if but for an instant, are free to be heard. We have art galleries (UMMA to unknown) that have Monet and have porn folded into paper sculptures—images are free to be seen. We have boom boxes and spoken word and symphony orchestras and jazz combos and acapella where notes are free to be felt.

In the most cliché of ways: Ann Arbor is a place where the cage is semi-loosened. The bars are bent just enough so I can stretch my limbs. And it feels so nice to be home.

There is something magically beautiful in something that can never be.

I’m not talking about reading all of Ulysses in a night or not finishing a box of cheesy bread. I’m talking about the past in the most nostalgic, clichéd, Midnight in Paris-esque way. Tragedy drips from this impossibility like water from a roof—slowly forming a puddle that will soon submerge my foot as I’m running late to a meeting and which will leave me cold, numb, and sad for the entirety of the day. That is my impossibility. That is my art.

This never-can-happen thing, however, was just within my grasp by a few years. It’s not ancient Egypt, it’s not revolutionary France, it’s not even the roaring 20’s.

1980’s America in the midst of the AIDS Crisis is my impossibility.

[Sidenote: Do not misunderstand me though. I’m not nostalgic for a time when I most likely would have died. I’m not nostalgic for a time when I would have seen my best friends and lovers suddenly die in front of me. I’m not nostalgic for a time when the government refused to say the word “AIDS,” nor for a time when AIDS only “affected” men, nor for a time when the AIDS only “affected” gay men, nor for a time when AIDS was seen as a punishment to gays. This is not my nostalgia.]

My nostalgia is for community.

I had the opportunity to watch “United in Anger,” a documentary by Jim Hubbard. It played at the Michigan Theatre and was an amazing way to spend my first time in that space. Now, as I’ve seen many a film on AIDS (having taken English 314: Culture of Aids, with David Halperin) I was prepared to cry. To shout. To literally shake in my seat. To want to light the world on fire. To love like I will never be able to love. And this movie made me feel all.

It put me in the action and perspective of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) in such a fresh way. It showed me how the group started, transformed, and how they were able to achieve their goals. And the film even did more than that. It showed me a sense of community. These people faced death everyday; they faced active discrimination and a government that did absolutely nothing. And to see a group of people protest is one thing. To see a group of people do a “die-in” in St. Patrick’s Cathedral is another. They didn’t care if anyone liked them (because in my opinion, had they been liked they would have been doing something wrong). ACT UP was ruthless in their attempts to save their own lives and the lives of those they loved.

This is my nostalgia.

I long for the period when identifying as a gay man meant so much more. It meant community, it meant family, it meant weird and different, it meant being tied to a disease that would kill you (even given the fact that sex doesn’t cause AIDS but HIV does). And it meant action. It meant anger.

What I’m trying to get at is: gay people weren’t fighting to be assimilated into a heteronormative culture dominated by the belief that gay marriage is something interesting to fight for. They weren’t fighting to be normal. They were fighting for survival. And in doing so, they created a way of life that is beyond my imagination.

I crave a community that is tied together intrinsically and I will never have it. I’m lucky to live in a time where there is vast knowledge about HIV prevention and where antiretroviral drugs are not only effective but also accessible. I’m privileged enough to never have to experience sheer terror and I’m thankful for that. I’m so lucky that I can feel safe.

But still, there is something so artful in something that can never be.

Stepping into a burning house, boarding a train that will inevitably wreck, walking down the middle of the street when a bus is hurdling towards you. This is the end of semester.

It changes you.

Days you would regularly go to bed at (gasp!) before midnight or close to 1am are now transformed into late night logic sessions that happen only at 3am. Or you find that you are most awake only at 3am. So you start shifting your schedule later and later so you can work while most of the world is in REM. However, it leaves you sleepy at 4pm while at work, so your world thinks that you’ve become a deranged zombie that smells like coffee and pens and who’s skin is permanently smudged with highlighter.

It’s almost like a marathon. No, it is the marathon—the only one I will ever be in. Every meal is an opportunity to carb load and pack on the protein, which translates into protein shakes made with coffee taken multiple times a day. It is my medicine for survival. Who has time to cook when one needs to philosophize? Who has time to sit in a public restaurant when all you can do is scream is “POWER STRUCTURES”?

Coffee shops turn less into cool-chill-zones-of-wonder and more into frenzied areas of distress. The baristas learn to disregard any of your facial expressions and comments because all that matters are the five words you shout out (shout because you haven’t talked to anyone in hours and don’t realize what volume is), “I’d like a small COFFEE!.” They have learned to not read into your reply, “thank you so much, you have no idea what this means to me,” nor into your actions when you get stuck in your snood and almost fall over whilst spilling coffee everywhere.

Professors start to actively oppose you as you forget what class you’re in and forget that life isn’t your term papers. So when you scream about Islamic Democracy in Poetry or about Foucault in Philosophy of Language, they frown and ask, “how is this related” and all you reply is, “society.” Then you realize that you are awake. Living. You must cope by fleeing the room and getting yet another coffee.

The end of the semester is a time to play around with your mode of life. Embrace the crazy, embrace the spontaneity, embrace a you that only appears every four months.

But keep in mind it is every four months. Either one semester is ending, another one is ending, or summer is ending. Something is always ending four months from now and the determined feeling of emptiness is only a third of a year away.

This isn’t a sad fact though. To me it’s become a way of life. Every so often I allow myself to live differently. Create a new existence that opens up new experiences (write proofs during sunrise), new forms of pleasure (coffee and protein shakes), and new ways of living (not caring about anything else besides thinking). It not only gives perspective for my “post” end-of-semester life, but also allows for a little break from the mundane and banal.

It creates a new existence and transforms you into something fresh. End of semester is a chisel and I am a huge mound of marble.

Carve me till I’m beautiful.