Speaker 1: Coming to you from the dining room table at East
Speaker 1: Barbary Lane. Welcome to a special episode of Full Circle
Speaker 1: the podcast.
Speaker 2: I am your host Charles Tyson Jr.
Speaker 1: And I'm your host Martha Madrigal. Our special guest today
Speaker 1: is the author of seven books, including Glass and The
Speaker 1: Pleasures of Memory in Shakespeare's Sonnets. In twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: he was named a Guggenheim Fellow. Today we're discussing the
Speaker 1: book Red Hot and Blue from the thirty three and
Speaker 1: a third series. John S. Garrison, Welcome to the Full
Speaker 1: Circle Table.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 2: We're so glad to have you. So you have written
Speaker 2: this awesome book about Red Hot and Blue. And you know,
Speaker 2: the Red Hot and Blue project was in nineteen ninety,
Speaker 2: so I was in the tenth grade, shut up, but
Speaker 2: as a high schooler, you know, in the nineties, who
Speaker 2: was not yet out to himself, not to mention anyone else,
Speaker 2: and then a project like this coming out, it gave
Speaker 2: me a lot of a lot of feelings. But why
Speaker 2: don't you talk about your what the project is, and
Speaker 2: your introduction to it and what it meant in your
Speaker 2: life at that time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, It's interesting. I was sort of in the
Speaker 3: same place I was, let's say, nineteen ninety, just graduating
Speaker 3: high school, entering college, and I was.
Speaker 1: I am so old in this feeling it too.
Speaker 3: But I was also like not out to anybody, kind
Speaker 3: of out to myself, but not I mean, no one
Speaker 3: talked about queerness or being gay or whatever and something
Speaker 3: on the way they do now. So yeah, for that
Speaker 3: album to come out and all of a sudden, have
Speaker 3: I don't know, YouTube, Thompson Twins, David Byrne, like all
Speaker 3: these people think singing about in some cases queer love,
Speaker 3: Katie Lang, in some cases singing about the epidemic. Just
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, I thought, like, WHOA, Like, if
Speaker 3: they all talk about gay things and about HIV, then
Speaker 3: maybe it shouldn't be so scary for me to do it.
Speaker 3: But the album itself came out as the first major
Speaker 3: response from the music industry to the AIDS epidemic. There
Speaker 3: hadn't really been anything as big beforehand. There have been
Speaker 3: a couple small things, and it came out at the
Speaker 3: time of the sort of height of the pandemic. This
Speaker 3: is before the Triple Cocktail, before effective treatments. It was
Speaker 3: around the time that AIDS was the number one killer
Speaker 3: of Americans twenty five to forty four. So it was
Speaker 3: really kind of the hindigal of the epidemic, the kind
Speaker 3: of a crux time for me in Charms of my
Speaker 3: own coming out, and it was just it was time
Speaker 3: for action, and the music industry stepped.
Speaker 2: Up for real, definitely, and it was you know, a
Speaker 2: lot of the heavy hitters in the industry, and it
Speaker 2: was pretty brave of them, what was considered let me
Speaker 2: say that was considered pretty brave of them all to
Speaker 2: attach themselves to this project, because lord knows, the stigma
Speaker 2: towards the disease was still very heavy at the time.
Speaker 1: Well, and the stigma toward queerness was very heavy at
Speaker 1: the time, right right. Yeah. I came of age a
Speaker 1: little bit younger and you know, in the early eighties,
Speaker 1: so you know, I was there when we were just
Speaker 1: starting to talk about it and figure out what it
Speaker 1: mean and how did we contract it, and you know,
Speaker 1: just in this moment in time in America. You know,
Speaker 1: I had a discussion with a whole bunch of trans
Speaker 1: people last night, and you know, we were talking about
Speaker 1: the pandemic that you know, ours lasted fifteen years. Yes,
Speaker 1: and this really was the center of it. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the stigma was around us existing. The stigma was around us,
Speaker 1: you know, daring to defy anyone and realizing that we
Speaker 1: had to be loud. We didn't really have a choice.
Speaker 1: So the project itself talk a little bit about that
Speaker 1: surrounds Cole Porter's music, and ironically there's not really a
Speaker 1: mention of his queerness.
Speaker 3: In the project. In the project, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: super interesting. So this was the Red Hot organization and
Speaker 3: would go on to make a whole series of albums
Speaker 3: supporting funding to combat the AIDS epidemic and then later
Speaker 3: funding efforts towards same sex marriage in Southeast Asia. Now
Speaker 3: they have a new album where they's supporting trans rites
Speaker 3: with trans performers doing duets with cystandard performers. But this
Speaker 3: was their first album and it brought It really came
Speaker 3: about because there was a someone in the arts community
Speaker 3: in John Carlin who was friends with Keith Haring, David
Speaker 3: Wan Aerobics, similar high profile queer artists who were dying
Speaker 3: or died of HIV, and he partnered with David Byrne
Speaker 3: of the Talking Heads, whose sister in law was ah
Speaker 3: TOV positive and she would actually die shortly after the
Speaker 3: album came out, and they got together with a filmmaker
Speaker 3: named Lee Blake, and the three of them just went
Speaker 3: out to musical artists and said, we need to do something,
Speaker 3: and we need to raise awareness, we need to get
Speaker 3: some funding out there to fight the AIDS epidemic. And
Speaker 3: they brought a bunch of bus together to do covers
Speaker 3: of Cold Porter songs. And you're exactly right. It's a
Speaker 3: kind of a it's a kind of a curious choice
Speaker 3: because Colporter, you know, lived and died before the AIDS epidemic,
Speaker 3: lived and died before a stone Wall, was a semi
Speaker 3: closet dude, gay man. And nonetheless, they chose to resurrect
Speaker 3: his music for the album. And you're exactly right, they didn't.
Speaker 3: What they didn't overtly talk about Coldporter being queer. One
Speaker 3: of the requirements from the cold Porter Family Foundation. I
Speaker 3: guess the folks who owned the rights was to was
Speaker 3: that they wouldn't mention his queerness. But I think it's
Speaker 3: still it comes out nonetheless, when you listen to the
Speaker 3: songs in this context and you realize the he's talking
Speaker 3: about loss, forbidden love, secret love the kinds of thing
Speaker 3: that were offered people.
Speaker 2: And what's very cool about that is, you know, when
Speaker 2: I'm fifteen years old, I don't think I really clocked
Speaker 2: that the project was centering around Coalporter's music. And then
Speaker 2: later on in life, I saw the movie to Lovely Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's when I realized he wasn't being really that subtle,
Speaker 2: even though he was being very subtle with his with
Speaker 2: his lyrics. And so once when I'm reading the book
Speaker 2: and I'm putting all the pieces together, I'm realizing how
Speaker 2: perfect of a choice that actually was. You know, euphemism
Speaker 2: upon euphemism upon euphemism, and it also gave a lot
Speaker 2: of room for interpretation when it came to the videos.
Speaker 2: Before we sat down, I sat and I watched them all.
Speaker 1: I found.
Speaker 2: A good deal of them, not all of them, but
Speaker 2: many of them on YouTube, and there were such works
Speaker 2: of art. The one that stuck out to me, well,
Speaker 2: the two that stuck out to me the most one
Speaker 2: was Nana Cherry got you under my Skin for one thing.
Speaker 2: That was the only one from that project that made
Speaker 2: its way to me on its own, just by virtue
Speaker 2: of it being something that Nana Cherry did so of
Speaker 2: course I wanted to know what it was. And the
Speaker 2: other one was too darn Hot, which was erasure. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I believe, Yeah, And that was such an artistic piece.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: It was so much, so many ways to express us
Speaker 2: the feelings of Coldporter's music and what was just going
Speaker 2: on in the time. Talk a little bit about the
Speaker 2: pushback in terms of what could be said, what couldn't
Speaker 2: be said, and how.
Speaker 3: Yeah it's funny, you know, kind of same as you.
Speaker 3: When I first heard the songs, I think I didn't
Speaker 3: even I didn't even reached them as Coldporter songs, Like
Speaker 3: I thought, oh, this is like a cool new song
Speaker 3: by you two. I mean, just sound naive. A lot
Speaker 3: of us are, or at least I was, as kind
Speaker 3: of a young queer person about our past, like we
Speaker 3: don't realize that they're the queer people, trans people, non
Speaker 3: binary people like have been around forever and it's so powerful,
Speaker 3: or it was for me at least, just realizing Coldporter
Speaker 3: and always people in the past who lived queer lives
Speaker 3: contributed so much to what we think of now as
Speaker 3: just kind of straight society in a way, like Cold
Speaker 3: Porter authored so many of the love songs that haven't
Speaker 3: canonized or thought of today as like these great kind
Speaker 3: of I don't know, wedding songs or whatever, but we
Speaker 3: realize it. Oh, it's like queer people have always been
Speaker 3: there in this long history. But yeah, you see this
Speaker 3: in the Lovely film and that there's there was pushback
Speaker 3: against Cold Porter's open sexuality at the time, you know,
Speaker 3: when the album came out. Dannina Cherry's song is one
Speaker 3: of the standouts, I've Got You under my Skin. She
Speaker 3: uses that song alters some of the lyrics to have
Speaker 3: it speak directly to the dangers of injection drug use
Speaker 3: for HIV transmission and they need to not share needles.
Speaker 3: It was seen as totally radical to redo the song,
Speaker 3: even though as you hear the title I've got You
Speaker 3: under my Skin, you realize, oh my god, it's the
Speaker 3: perfect metaphor, I guess, for virus transmission, for thinking about
Speaker 3: just like why not to share needles? Like it's really basic,
Speaker 3: don't get someone else under your skin. But the song
Speaker 3: controversial for a couple of reasons. One because this is
Speaker 3: the early days of rap, so a lot of the
Speaker 3: reviewers said, oh, the album's really great when it stays
Speaker 3: true to Coldporter's music. But when they try to do
Speaker 3: a rap song with Coldporters music, like, it doesn't work
Speaker 3: because rap isn't even music. So it was kind of
Speaker 3: this early period where there was all this prejudice against rap,
Speaker 3: which of course is totally wrapped up and prejudice against
Speaker 3: folks of color.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that song was.
Speaker 3: So radical that when the television special for Red Hot
Speaker 3: and Blue Air in the US, which had the videos
Speaker 3: and the songs, they left out and in a cherry
Speaker 3: video because it was just like, I say, want people
Speaker 3: speaking so frankly about how AIDS is transmitted, even though
Speaker 3: the way to stop AIDS from being transmitted is to
Speaker 3: speak really frankly about how you get it now you
Speaker 3: don't know, you don't get it right.
Speaker 2: And that would explain why I came across that video
Speaker 2: separate from the project.
Speaker 1: God it okay.
Speaker 3: Totally please get My dog may make weird noises at times,
Speaker 3: so just please ignore.
Speaker 2: That ours is going to at any moment too.
Speaker 3: It's fun probably, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got a kick out of you. Also, the Jungle Brothers,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they did a lot of work with the lyrics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was the That was the only other song
Speaker 3: where they changed the lyrics besides an ind cherry and
Speaker 3: it's that song's really interesting because they changed it to
Speaker 3: be overtly about kind of sexuality and how sort of
Speaker 3: hooking up without using a condoms interest. But it's a
Speaker 3: it's a really interesting song because that one also had
Speaker 3: pushback where folks didn't want to play it, didn't want
Speaker 3: to showcase it because they spoke so overtly about sex.
Speaker 3: But Cold Porter's original was about cocaine. So yeah, so
Speaker 3: the kick in the song was about it was about
Speaker 3: doing cocaine and that, and that was censored at the time.
Speaker 3: It wasn't at Coldporter's time. It wasn't playing the radio
Speaker 3: and went on to become one of his biggest hits,
Speaker 3: but he had to change the lyrics. So it's funny
Speaker 3: that like in the modern day or whatever, like people think, oh,
Speaker 3: that song's too controversial by the Dunker Brothers, we can't
Speaker 3: play it. But it's like that song has always been controversial.
Speaker 2: It's not a new thing, right, And it's interesting seeing
Speaker 2: that video for the first time today. It totally fits
Speaker 2: into where hip hop went shortly after, because so many
Speaker 2: artists made a point if not doing an entire song
Speaker 2: at least having a message about using a condom and
Speaker 2: practicing safe sex. So that might have been like, you know,
Speaker 2: opening the door for that, or it just happened. Yeah.
Speaker 3: One the hip hop community wrapped community. You know, we're
Speaker 3: one of the most affected communities in terms of HIV
Speaker 3: where access to healthcare and access to different kinds of
Speaker 3: messaging wasn't getting to folks of color as readily. And
Speaker 3: you know, thinking back even before Red Hot and Blue,
Speaker 3: one of their early pioneers in terms of it was TLC. Right,
Speaker 3: song Let's Talk About Sex was a song overly about
Speaker 3: just having honest dialogue about sex and sexuality. Oh sorry,
Speaker 3: that's a sorry. Yeah, I mean I was petting the
Speaker 3: dog trying to keep them from barking at the same
Speaker 3: time losing.
Speaker 1: My history multitasking.
Speaker 3: But but but sorry TLC. But the TLC also is
Speaker 3: really invested in early AIDS messaging. They would wear condoms
Speaker 3: on their clothes and their videos and besides save sex.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember they got in trouble because they all
Speaker 2: looked like they were like teenagers and they're wearing condoms
Speaker 2: on their faces and on their clothes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it.
Speaker 1: Really was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this project definitely seeing it now with My Today
Speaker 2: Eyes really was the opening the door for that style
Speaker 2: of activism in music, which became much more prevalent in
Speaker 2: the next two years, I would say, And it's this
Speaker 2: project started the was this was the Red Foundation first
Speaker 2: and then it became this or this started the Red Foundation,
Speaker 2: this started.
Speaker 3: So yeah, the Red Foundation Bona's major global organization fighting
Speaker 3: against HIV that came out of this project. So for Bono,
Speaker 3: for Annie Lennox of The Rhythmics, it was really this
Speaker 3: album Red Hot and Blue that was their start of
Speaker 3: being global leaders in the fighting and st HIV nic
Speaker 3: So it's pretty I mean, it's a great It's really
Speaker 3: interesting to know how being invited to be part of
Speaker 3: a project like this is often the kind of first step.
Speaker 3: Once you invite someone in thy can all of a
Speaker 3: sudden become one of the really major pioneers and major
Speaker 3: leaders for a issue they just might not have known
Speaker 3: that much about before.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So you mentioned Bono the most, you to the most.
Speaker 2: Is it safe to say that that is your favorite
Speaker 2: entry in the project?
Speaker 3: I definitely, yeah. So their song was Night and Day,
Speaker 3: which is in some ways one of Colporter's most famous songs,
Speaker 3: and it's the song that's been the most re recorded,
Speaker 3: the most adapted of all the songs I think. So
Speaker 3: I love that song and that song's about. That song's
Speaker 3: about sort of obsession, desire, thinking about someone night and
Speaker 3: day like that. For me, I don't know, maybe sorry,
Speaker 3: maybe all of our experiences of teenage love, but that
Speaker 3: really speaks to how I felt when I was a
Speaker 3: teenager in my early twenties was like love and passion
Speaker 3: was just such a big part I think of coming out,
Speaker 3: being young, getting into music. So that song from me
Speaker 3: really speaks to kind of what it's about to have
Speaker 3: feelings and on the one hand, I want to resist
Speaker 3: them and on the other hand, I want to talk
Speaker 3: to everybody about that part.
Speaker 2: And yeah, definitely, because you know, you were a couple
Speaker 2: of years older than me, so you were in that
Speaker 2: space which I didn't get to until I didn't come
Speaker 2: out for until ninety three ninety four, and by that point,
Speaker 2: you know, we were even further along into the saga
Speaker 2: that was the epidemic, and I really and I never
Speaker 2: really went back to Red, Hot and Blue, And it's
Speaker 2: a shame because looking at it now, I'd have been
Speaker 2: all over it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, you know, just like.
Speaker 2: The imagery in like the Erasure video just speaks to me,
Speaker 2: Like the family, the little white nuclear family sitting in
Speaker 2: front of the television with the red blindfolds on, just
Speaker 2: so powerful. So it came the project aired, Was it
Speaker 2: in the UK first?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, the project. The project was sort of multifold,
Speaker 3: so there was there was the album that had the
Speaker 3: twenty covers of Cultporter songs. There were videos made by
Speaker 3: really leading filmmakers Jonathan Demi Vendors, and those videos were
Speaker 3: then put together into a television special which was meant
Speaker 3: to raise awareness by HIV. It aired first in the
Speaker 3: UK with very little concern about showing all the videos
Speaker 3: speaking frankly about sex, and then it also aired later
Speaker 3: in the US. In the US it was sort of
Speaker 3: dialed back. In the UK, it was very much an
Speaker 3: AIDS awareness special that sort of had cul porters of
Speaker 3: through line. In the US it was a cul porter
Speaker 3: special that also mentioned the AIDS epidemic, but it still
Speaker 3: was groundbreaking. Distinctions exactly and such. I mean, it's weird.
Speaker 3: It's a distinction that speaks so much to I think
Speaker 3: all of our experiences as queer people, as trance people,
Speaker 3: as gay people, where like, we're so familiar with that
Speaker 3: trend where our lives are mentioned and briefly we're a
Speaker 3: side character in popular media where a character who dies off,
Speaker 3: where the uncle, aunt whoever, who like you never hear about,
Speaker 3: who doesn't come to Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: A cautionary tale.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, yeah exactly, Yeah, no one talks about Edna
Speaker 3: anymore or whatever.
Speaker 1: Whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the I mean, The Special kind of did
Speaker 3: that same kind of work where it kind of in
Speaker 3: the US it mentioned US but also sort of tried
Speaker 3: to downplay US, but still it was radical. It was
Speaker 3: the first time that the word condom was ever used
Speaker 3: on primetime television outside of the news in the US.
Speaker 3: Richard Gear was the host, so definitely a big name
Speaker 3: who sort of raised awareness about the frankness talking about sexuality.
Speaker 3: John Malkovich was also host. So on the one hand,
Speaker 3: at prime time you had actors you recognized talking about
Speaker 3: things like AIDS such a transmit disease. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: it was the US one was a much more vanilla
Speaker 3: version of what was broadcast globally, which makes.
Speaker 2: Sense considering a the US and B that time totally
Speaker 2: And it is really interesting because you think it would
Speaker 2: be for lack of a better word, more palatable coming from.
Speaker 1: Uh these beloved celebrities. Yeah, you know, but apparently not
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 2: What were other parts of that project that stuck with you?
Speaker 3: There was also well, I should say also like part
Speaker 3: and parcel of the Red, Hot, and Blue project was
Speaker 3: a public awareness campaign that had posters and wheat pasting
Speaker 3: and what not about HIV prevention. And that campaign was
Speaker 3: radical to one because it showed unclothed and naked straight couples,
Speaker 3: gay cut queer couples, but also it showed mixed race couples.
Speaker 3: It was bilingual. It was this kind of early moment
Speaker 3: in the pandemic where a lot of the prevention messaging
Speaker 3: was just about white men because it and that was
Speaker 3: like because it wasceived as a gay male disease. Like
Speaker 3: part of this project for me was going back to
Speaker 3: all this stuff I had kind of forgotten. I had
Speaker 3: forgotten that when HIV first emerged, it was referred to,
Speaker 3: you know, by the White House as a gay plague, right,
Speaker 3: and even in medical circles it was called gay Gay
Speaker 3: related immune deficiency syndrome GRID.
Speaker 1: GRID came before.
Speaker 3: It D I mean, and if you listen to that name,
Speaker 3: gay related. I mean like it sounds like, oh, because
Speaker 3: you're gay or related to the gay quote unquote lifestyle,
Speaker 3: you get this disease, like like gay itself is sort
Speaker 3: of a disease or attracts disease. Gay is a sickness.
Speaker 1: And there was course well, and it was you know,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that in the book. It took him til
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three for it to you know, be removed
Speaker 1: from the DFM.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah, it took and you know
Speaker 3: there's this lag time. So you think just because it
Speaker 3: is taken out of the DSM in the seventies doesn't
Speaker 3: mean that all the way through my I don't know
Speaker 3: when I was growing up or even today, people don't think, Oh,
Speaker 3: isn't it sort of something you catch? Can't people be recruited?
Speaker 3: Like all those all those ideas are still there. So,
Speaker 3: you know, writing this book really took me back to
Speaker 3: that era. I don't know if I blocked it out
Speaker 3: or if things are better now so I've forgotten how
Speaker 3: bad they used to be. But I mean it was
Speaker 3: it was hard to go back to thinking about what
Speaker 3: it was like in the late eighties early nineties. But
Speaker 3: it was also good for me to remember that. I mean,
Speaker 3: all that stuff was so readily available, all that kind
Speaker 3: of prejudice, all that homophobia, trans phobia, all that racism,
Speaker 3: like it is immediately bubble to the surface with the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Yes it did, Yes, it did because we had the seventies, right,
Speaker 1: So we had Stonewall and other uprisings in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties that kind of led us to a brief era
Speaker 1: like you know, it lasted about as long as Disco
Speaker 1: when we were we were there, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: celebrated and part of the culture and and you know,
Speaker 1: the village people and all of that. And then here
Speaker 1: was a nineteen eighty one and a lot of people
Speaker 1: believed that that was our come up and like see
Speaker 1: that's what you get from that kind of behavior, celebrating
Speaker 1: all that faggot for me, right, And that really was
Speaker 1: the way it looked, you know. And so for all
Speaker 1: the strides we made, we took a huge, huge step
Speaker 1: back for you know, most of the eighties and the nineties.
Speaker 1: It changed the conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so tragic. Yeah, I think on the one hand,
Speaker 3: people forget that actually before AIDS, there was so much
Speaker 3: progress around queer rights, around queer people being accepted the AIDS.
Speaker 1: Epidemics come out wherever exactly.
Speaker 3: The AIDS epidemic I mean, of course took a huge
Speaker 3: toll on queer people in terms of their health, but yeah,
Speaker 3: it allowed all this like Jesse Helms, all these sort
Speaker 3: of fig versus Westborough Church, all these figures and organizations
Speaker 3: and lost all of a sudden surf because they could
Speaker 3: take advantage of all people's fears that, oh, gay people
Speaker 3: are spreading diseases, gay people are doing all these sort
Speaker 3: of horrible things. People just seized on that, and then
Speaker 3: all of a sudden we had this huge backslide.
Speaker 1: How important to you How important do you think queer
Speaker 1: history is right now? Learning it, going back over it,
Speaker 1: realizing where we came from, you know, to get to
Speaker 1: this point in time.
Speaker 3: For me, it's super important, And you know, it's funny
Speaker 3: it hasn't always been. Like at one point I thought,
Speaker 3: I don't know, like our lives were so radically different
Speaker 3: than queer people that came before us that they couldn't
Speaker 3: have ever seen what we'd be like. That we need
Speaker 3: to kind of recreate ourselves in the present. But now
Speaker 3: as things get sort of more chaotic, more precarious. I
Speaker 3: really take solace in the idea that queer people have
Speaker 3: before us. Queer people have survived, queer people have thrived, Yes,
Speaker 3: but also but it's also important to let people know that,
Speaker 3: you know, queer people have been under duress for a
Speaker 3: very very very long time, not like, yes, things are better,
Speaker 3: maybe getting worse, but let's not let's not sort of
Speaker 3: dismiss queer suffering by saying, oh, like everything's good now.
Speaker 1: Like you all have Oh no, you know, and this
Speaker 1: generation is kind of seeing that, you know, things can
Speaker 1: be precarious totally. You know they were then, they were
Speaker 1: you know, before then, nobody was out in the fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties, very few people, you know, unless you couldn't
Speaker 1: pass as anything but who you were, right, you hid
Speaker 1: because that was the only way to have a job
Speaker 1: and a life and a place to live with. I
Speaker 1: want to say a little exception, you know, And just
Speaker 1: as I've contemplated, you know, we're sitting down just a
Speaker 1: few days after the twenty twenty four election, as I've
Speaker 1: sat with with you know, young queer and trans people
Speaker 1: who are hurting right now, that was the message that
Speaker 1: came to my mind, is I need you to know
Speaker 1: we are resilient people that you stand on the shoulders
Speaker 1: of giants. You know, we are We are not new
Speaker 1: to controversy. You know, our people were tempered and raw shit.
Speaker 1: And I feel like reaching back and understanding that this
Speaker 1: is not even the first time we've been targeted. It's
Speaker 1: not even the third time, right that part, and we
Speaker 1: emerge and we continue, you know, and we still bring
Speaker 1: you all of your color, art and culture and that's
Speaker 1: not going to change. I feel like that's the message,
Speaker 1: you know. And looking back at this, I was like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it helped me to remember those times and what that
Speaker 1: was like and totally different world, totally different world, and
Speaker 1: we a lot of us felt like we had to apologize,
Speaker 1: you know, until we kind of saw act up when
Speaker 1: we saw like we better get loud or die right, And.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, I mean that all was so inspiring for me.
Speaker 3: I remember, you know, when I was when I was
Speaker 3: seventeen or whatever, and I saw on TV my first
Speaker 3: kiss in like folks would get like big crowds of
Speaker 3: people will get together and they'd like make out in
Speaker 3: front of I don't know, city hall or like conservative politicians.
Speaker 3: I can remember my first instinct being, oh, don't do that,
Speaker 3: that'll make people feel uncomfortable, Like that's what people don't
Speaker 3: want to see that, Like that's going to make them
Speaker 3: think that gay people. Because I had internalized all those
Speaker 3: messages of gay people should not stay in the closet,
Speaker 3: the pine, closed doors. I don't want to hear about
Speaker 3: what you do in bed. I don't want to see,
Speaker 3: like we don't need public displays of affection. And now
Speaker 3: I think things like kissing's or something are so powerful
Speaker 3: because it is saying, you know, there's nothing wrong with
Speaker 3: me holding hands with or kissing or whatever a same
Speaker 3: sex partner like this is totally natural. But as young people,
Speaker 3: I think we internalize all that kind of shame, all
Speaker 3: that desire to keep ourselves invisible, and it just does
Speaker 3: so much damage to young people.
Speaker 1: It absolutely does. It's just, you know, conversely, having not
Speaker 1: experienced any of that, a lot of them are just
Speaker 1: really feeling mode over right now. Yeah, like why would
Speaker 1: they do this stuff? You know, why? Why? And it's
Speaker 1: like they've always done this stuff in one way or another,
Speaker 1: you know, we've I find it interesting. Another conversation that
Speaker 1: has come up is you know that the fight for
Speaker 1: marriage equality. In large part, the message was assimilation. We're
Speaker 1: just like yeah, which doesn't really leave a lot of
Speaker 1: room does it for actual queer love, for actual queer stories. Right,
Speaker 1: it's no, no, no, Well we're safe. It's okay. We
Speaker 1: want to pick a fence too, and some of us don't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, totally, yeah, that it's funny. You don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that that that we're just like you argument.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It denies the truth of love, like what love is?
Speaker 3: I think I don't know, or in Colporter's music, what
Speaker 3: love is is like when the Cult's most famous songs
Speaker 3: is anything Goes.
Speaker 1: I know, I'm right on that page. Okay, I'm right
Speaker 1: on that page, as you say it. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the truth of love is that everyone
Speaker 3: loves differently, everyone wants different things, people change their mind
Speaker 3: throughout their life, people express themselves differently. So yeah, same
Speaker 3: sex marriage. Well, it was a whin I think a lot.
Speaker 3: I think so much to the argument was gay people
Speaker 3: are just like straight people, therefore we deserve equal rights. Okay,
Speaker 3: you know in some ways that's true, but it ended
Speaker 3: up blocking out but love is, which is wild uncontrollable, passionate, undefinable, changeable,
Speaker 3: and Colport, like a lot of Colporter's music is about that,
Speaker 3: that that love is fun, love makes us do crazy things.
Speaker 3: Love is Charles as you were saying, love is too
Speaker 3: darn hot, like it takes us into this place of
Speaker 3: like excess, extremity, passion, wanting more, getting outside of ourselves.
Speaker 3: That's what's so exciting about love, and that's that's what's
Speaker 3: so scary about the AIDS epidemic was, at least for me,
Speaker 3: like I'm coming out, I want to experience falling in love.
Speaker 3: I want to I don't know, kiss people whatever, And
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, there's this virus out there and
Speaker 3: it makes it extremely dangerous to make love to anybody.
Speaker 3: It makes extremely dangerous to fall in love, especially as
Speaker 3: a queer person. It makes extremely dangerous to be a
Speaker 3: queer person because with AIDS there was violence against queer people.
Speaker 3: And it was so hard to make sense of that
Speaker 3: at seventeen twenty, where I thought, wait, no, love is
Speaker 3: like cool and positive and fun and amazing, and all
Speaker 3: of a sudden it's like no, no, no, It comes
Speaker 3: with all these disclaimers.
Speaker 1: Now right right, and it did you know it felt
Speaker 1: a lot change over a very short period of time
Speaker 1: from you know that those brief moments in the late
Speaker 1: seventies to you know, a really stark contrast, Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the early eighties. I love that. You just weave in
Speaker 1: pop culture and history throughout the book. You know you
Speaker 1: mentioned Paris is Burning. Oh yeah, I love it, and
Speaker 1: then they're on the same page. You know, you talk
Speaker 1: about Oshe simply Yeah, much more recent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I tried to. I mean, part of what
Speaker 3: the book was for me was really just sort of
Speaker 3: thinking about like both what music does for us or
Speaker 3: for me in terms of thinking about what love can
Speaker 3: be and what should be, but also like just thinking
Speaker 3: about how I learned about love and how I learned
Speaker 3: about of who I am and how to be proud
Speaker 3: of who I am. So because of that, one of
Speaker 3: the reviews and early reviews of the book described it
Speaker 3: as a mixtape, and I think that is very much
Speaker 3: what I tried to get at, was that what kind
Speaker 3: of makes us us is a whole kind of collection
Speaker 3: of songs. We've loved, movies, we've seen comments people have
Speaker 3: said to us, people we've dated. It's the whole assemblage
Speaker 3: of who we are is all the kind of stuff
Speaker 3: we've collected, the people, the memories, the song lyrics, the
Speaker 3: things we've decided are our favorite things. You know, going
Speaker 3: back to Julie Andrews out of music, the things we
Speaker 3: listened is our favorite things. Like actually tell other people
Speaker 3: who we are and tell us who we are because
Speaker 3: we look and we say, I love this song, I
Speaker 3: love this movie. I love Shakespeare, I used to love
Speaker 3: to you know what it go hiking and whatever, whatever
Speaker 3: it is, it's the list of who we are? Is
Speaker 3: it kind of a love letter to ourselves in terms
Speaker 3: of who we want to be?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that, you know, just in the in
Speaker 1: the last words in the book you talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: music is the ideal vehicle not just to move people,
Speaker 1: but to energize a movement, red hot and blue, standing
Speaker 1: as it's inspiring foundation. You know. I think music continually,
Speaker 1: especially times like now when words are just failing and
Speaker 1: meaning less and less and there's such a cacophony of
Speaker 1: misinformation in the air, music still does speak to everyone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, amazingly so. I think when you say that,
Speaker 3: I think of not even necessarily queer rights movement or
Speaker 3: the AIDS fight against AIDS. But even back to songs
Speaker 3: against the Vietnam War and songs for peace. They came
Speaker 3: out in the sixties. These sort of songs allowed people
Speaker 3: to kind of express what they were feeling, what they
Speaker 3: wanted to have happened. I don't know, Marvin Gaye, what's
Speaker 3: going on, John Lennon, Imagine these songs that kind of
Speaker 3: move us because we think that's what peace feels like,
Speaker 3: that's the world I want to live in, and it
Speaker 3: moves us to imagine a more peaceful world, and it
Speaker 3: can make us want to say in the book, join
Speaker 3: a movement towards peace and too. Also, yeah, when you
Speaker 3: said that, I lovely you put it out.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about how certain songs will come on
Speaker 3: in a queer context, like we are Family, even though
Speaker 3: that song isn't necessarily about queer people, are necessarily about
Speaker 3: the queer lives we live now. The minute a room
Speaker 3: full of queer people here, we are family or I'm coming.
Speaker 1: Out like I'm coming out yeah or mean.
Speaker 3: Or ymca like it is. Its kind of a queer
Speaker 3: joy because we feel like well, like yeah, we may
Speaker 3: not be loved or maybe we are by our family
Speaker 3: of origin. But we all found family with each other.
Speaker 3: And it was for all the hardship and all those sadness,
Speaker 3: it was just an exhilarating feeling for so many of
Speaker 3: us to find queer community, queer family, to find people
Speaker 3: like us who might actually not look or act like
Speaker 3: us at all, but like they have a certain feeling
Speaker 3: we have and all that's so powerful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I one of the most important things and themes
Speaker 1: I think of the next four years is going to
Speaker 1: be community. Yeah, you know that schosen family. I had
Speaker 1: a a friend say, I spent my birthday with everyone
Speaker 1: that I love. I had my biological family on Saturday
Speaker 1: and my logical family on Sunday. I had never heard
Speaker 1: that before.
Speaker 3: I've never heard that before. It's terrific.
Speaker 1: My logical family. Consider it stolen exactly.
Speaker 3: I would be using that today.
Speaker 2: You know, I.
Speaker 1: Talk often about the need for shorthand right queer people,
Speaker 1: trans people. You know, we need queer and trans fends.
Speaker 1: We need people for whom we don't have to explain ourselves.
Speaker 1: I don't have to educate you in order to have
Speaker 1: a conversation with you, right, because we can meet and
Speaker 1: understand who we are and where we are, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's so important. Books like this are so important. It's
Speaker 1: a lovely, fast read that's packed with so much and
Speaker 1: you're telling a story, but again weaving so much history
Speaker 1: into the way you tell it. I love it.
Speaker 2: And what I also appreciate is in reading it and
Speaker 2: then going into the footnotes and then going and doing
Speaker 2: a deep dive there. I had this total, like deep
Speaker 2: dive in queer history that was in that time period
Speaker 2: that was such a sweet spot for me. And so
Speaker 2: it was like things that I was aware of as
Speaker 2: a young queer person but didn't necessarily follow. Like you
Speaker 2: mentioned the documentary Tongues Untied, which talks about the epidemic
Speaker 2: from the black gay mail perspective, which was, you know,
Speaker 2: largely overlooked, even though, like we said before, that was
Speaker 2: one of the hardest hit demographics of the community. The
Speaker 2: press conference, the White House press conference where we're trying
Speaker 2: to get a statement from the White House using the
Speaker 2: word aids and being met with laughter. You know, those
Speaker 2: those moments that's.
Speaker 1: Six years yeah, yeah, six yeah. We waited for him
Speaker 1: to say ye, yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: It was on the day Rock Hudson died that Reagan
Speaker 3: finally talked about AIDS. I don't know, but yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: glad to hear you say that, because yeah, I really wanted.
Speaker 3: I wanted to write a short book a because all
Speaker 3: of our attention spans are shorter, but also because I
Speaker 3: wanted to sort of capture a feeling. But I also,
Speaker 3: exactly as you say, I wanted to point people in
Speaker 3: different directions. So if you want to learn about the
Speaker 3: sort of long history of Reagan's White House press conferences
Speaker 3: around AIDS, you can. The book takes you to a
Speaker 3: place where you can listen to the actually listen of
Speaker 3: the actual briefing is gonna be the transcript. You can
Speaker 3: go and watch Marlin Riggs's film to hear an articulation
Speaker 3: of black frustration around the AIDS epidemic. You can go
Speaker 3: and watch the videos as you did, and that might
Speaker 3: spark another exploration. Okay, you know, when did Katie Lane
Speaker 3: come out? And how did her video read to queer
Speaker 3: people even though she wasn't publicly out, but her video
Speaker 3: was showing herself as a woman whose female lover it died.
Speaker 3: So the book, I hope, kind of opens up all
Speaker 3: these avenues. And in fact, I've spoken to lots of
Speaker 3: young people who have read the book and said, I
Speaker 3: was so grateful to read it because you know, I
Speaker 3: knew the AIDS epidemic existed, obviously, but I just had
Speaker 3: no sense. I couldn't make sense of it. And I
Speaker 3: think it's one thing to read a long history book,
Speaker 3: which you can about the AIDS epidemic, and that's great,
Speaker 3: but I wanted to capture what it felt like to
Speaker 3: be living through it. And I think for a lot
Speaker 3: of readers I've been happy to hear like that, listening
Speaker 3: to really transmitted they feel like I now understand what
Speaker 3: old for people and other folks who lived through it,
Speaker 3: what it felt like for them to live through that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you definitely did capture it. It took me back
Speaker 2: to that time. And you know what we're trying to be,
Speaker 2: what we're afraid to say we are. It's it's really powerful.
Speaker 2: This is a really good book and it's going to
Speaker 2: have a special place on our bookshelves.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, well, thank you for having me on to
Speaker 3: talk about it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely. You know one of the things that I
Speaker 1: am always reminded of. We talk about the timeline, and
Speaker 1: you know, ninety six is such a pivotal year, right
Speaker 1: when the cocktail came out. What we don't talk so
Speaker 1: much about is how long it took that to filter
Speaker 1: down to the street level and impact the lives of
Speaker 1: folks who didn't have insurance, the lives of folks who
Speaker 1: I didn't have the money to pay for it, And
Speaker 1: that took several more years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that took a while. And the other thing I remembered,
Speaker 3: which I'd kind of forgotten about reading this book. There
Speaker 3: were people for whom the cocktail came soon enough, Magic
Speaker 3: Johnson being a famous example, and they got the cocktail.
Speaker 3: You know, they're living with the chronic disease, but they
Speaker 3: ended up living a full life. And there were people
Speaker 3: who had just who were alive when the cocktail arrived,
Speaker 3: but they were so advanced with HIV disease it couldn't
Speaker 3: help them. So, yeah, there was the insperance piece. There
Speaker 3: was the access to information. There was knowing if you
Speaker 3: were infected. There's the whole other part of this, which
Speaker 3: is that folks in the developing world couldn't get access
Speaker 3: to it. So on the one hand, it was about privilege.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, I feel like there was like
Speaker 3: a tragic roll of the dice because I can remember
Speaker 3: friends who were achio positive. The cocktail came out. This
Speaker 3: is so great, but it just wasn't i mean even
Speaker 3: within months kind of, it just wasn't in time to
Speaker 3: save them, and it was so heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and you know, one of the things we
Speaker 1: don't realize in twenty twenty four is there are still
Speaker 1: people who diabate. Yeah, because by the time they're diagnosed correctly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it happens. It still happens that it's too late. That's why,
Speaker 1: you know, knowing your status. I mean, you know, we
Speaker 1: volunteer with the AIDS Fund every we have for years.
Speaker 1: We stage managed the Philadelphia AIDS Walk cool and you know,
Speaker 1: watch the quote displayed and we talk about the stigma
Speaker 1: that still exists. You know, there's there are so many
Speaker 1: stories still happening. You know, there was so much resistance
Speaker 1: to prep initially from the large AIDS organization, and it
Speaker 1: was like, what come on, come on, and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: still happening, happening, and we still need awareness, we still
Speaker 1: need to care for one another, We still need to
Speaker 1: keep removing stigma, you know, and saying it's so important
Speaker 1: to know.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, I'm so glad. I had forgotten that there's
Speaker 3: so much stuff I forget, which is why I think
Speaker 3: it's so great to talk with queer people about queer lives. Yeah,
Speaker 3: when PREP came out, there was a lot of shame
Speaker 3: around PREP. Yeah, people felt like, oh, if I say
Speaker 3: I'm on PREP, then then I'm sort of announcing to
Speaker 3: the world that I, you know whatever, like like what,
Speaker 3: like I have sexual desire.
Speaker 1: I'm a whore. Yeah, yeah, I'm a whore. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I can't control myself sexually or I can't control myself
Speaker 3: in terms of having safer sex. And you know, looking back,
Speaker 3: like now, it's just sort of normal to hear that
Speaker 3: someone's on PREP. But like, for all the work we
Speaker 3: do to instill pride and queer people and to talk
Speaker 3: openly about sex, we can still just do it to
Speaker 3: ourselves and all of a sudden be so ashamed to
Speaker 3: talk about the fact that I'm a human being who
Speaker 3: wants to experience love and sex and a fully realized life.
Speaker 3: Like for some reason, claiming that can make us feel
Speaker 3: it still feels so umbarrous, sometimes not all of us,
Speaker 3: but like it can make people react that way.
Speaker 2: That shame campaign was effective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, certainly, totally. Yeah, another one to the bookshelf.
Speaker 1: I love that you have chronicled this story so well
Speaker 1: and so beautiful. Thank you and uh yeah. The book
Speaker 1: is part of the thirty three and a third series
Speaker 1: Red Hot and Blue john S Garrison, It's been amazing
Speaker 1: talking with you.
Speaker 3: I love talking to both of you. Also, I love
Speaker 3: this kind of connection.
Speaker 1: Who warns my heart? Yeah, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us.
Speaker 3: Thank you, take care, take you too.
Speaker 2: Full Circle is a Never Scured Productions podcast hosted by
Speaker 2: Charles Tyson Junior and Martha Madrigal, Produced and edited by
Speaker 2: Never Scured Executive Produced by Charles Tyson Junior and Martha Madrigal.
Speaker 2: Our theme in music is by the jingle Ares. All names, pictures, music, audio,
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