And now, in 20-fucking-10, we have part two of the NEA/Mapplethorpe “Controversy”. This is sickening, and makes me want to walk down the streets with piles of acid to pour on the world so we can all just melt into the goddamn earth, maybe starting over again in a millennium or two. Or use the combined psychic distress of everyone who has been marginalized ever to destroy the world. Or write fan fiction about a “post-rapture world” where bigoted Christians are finally gone and Real People can live in peace. Because I’m tired of having to ignore shit like this just to be able to convince myself that doing anything is a worthy pursuit. Because if I actually remind myself of how terrible people can be I find it really, really difficult to just be alive.
Maybe this is our church, Congressmen. Maybe art is our religion. Maybe artists like David Wojnarowicz, as Mike Kitchell beautifully and astutely writes better than I could, have been prophets for lost and wandering kids in all sorts of ghettos, for the tragic and beautiful fuck-ups and and queer poets and poet-hustlers. You are decimating our church. You are decrying our religion. You have offended me and others like me.
More than anything this is making me feel full of fury, glorious fury, and realizing that V. Woolf was wrong - and her character Septimus Smith a sort of Cassandra - we must make art, ragingly political art, out of the red light of fury. We must piss and shit on all the sacred christs and cows of this stupid and tragic society and only make art and only write things that are urgent, urgent, urgent, that responds to this shitfilled world we live in, that so often makes me want to tear off my clothes and run down the street naked.
UPDATE: A gallery associated with Wojnarowicz is making three versions of Fire in my Belly available on their youtube channel. Got to love the anarchy of the Internet, versus all of the straightlace of the spindly institutions. As of now, it's not yet up, but hopefully will be soon. .
