The following column was first published in WCT, July 21, 1988; reissued as Angels Into Dust in 1997 and to be re-released by Firetrap in late September along with Fo ( u ) rth Quarter Poems: Virtually Insurable But Not Yet Terminal, a collection of Damski's poetry. More information and excerpts can be found at: firetrap.com .
© 2001 The Estate of Jon-Henri Damski
After witnessing the quilt at Navy Pier Saturday and Sunday, I found the experience sad, exhilarating, breathtakingly colorful, gay, kaleidoscopic, amusingly promiscuous, and intensely moral.
At the entrance, I hesitated going in. just looking at pictures of quilts of guys I didn't know makes me cry. To come face-to-ground with memorial panels of guys I have known and loved...I didn't know if I could do it.
Larry Bommer, after we hugged, reminded me of an obituary I had written over 10 years ago...before AIDS...about a young man in his building who died mysteriously. Ten years ago we would experience maybe two or three deaths a year. How the pace has quickened! Now it can be two or three a week. In those days we had time to digest and sort things out. Today it is emotional drain on an everyday basis.
I reminded myself that sad comes from the same root word as sat, meaning "full." You have to go though a lot of sadness to have a full life.
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Once in the hall, however, my spirits changed. There were tears, but also a feeling of exhilaration. I was overwhelmed by the color, light and brightness. By all the wonderful people there. By all the helpful volunteers. By the fact that the organizers had wisely decided against playing funeral-type music. Each of us could be there in our own mind to concentrate, without intrusive noise, on our own memories. And the beautiful long pier gave you a half-a-mile walk, in and out, space and time to sort out your mind before you had to confront the city again.
The sign at the entrance said, "A Celebration of Life." And it was. A celebration of our life, of gay life. I have always known and believed that the important thing is what you live for, not what you die from. The quilt in each varied panel shows what each of them lived for, not what they died from. The quilt is an affirming experience: it shows our lives in their kaleidoscopic range, from teddy bears to leather bears, in all its "dragogeous" splendor. The proof of our existence is in the quilting.
I must also confess that I took some perverse delight in the "promiscuity" of the various panels. Some plain, some complex, some rich, some modest, some cluttered, some with a single statement. Some done by many hands for one. Some done by one person for all the unknowns, the suicides, and the Third World immigrants.
Promiscuity means mixture, not numbers. The mixture in our soul cannot be quantified. We are a promiscuous community because we easily and lovingly mix station with station. There was a panel for Liberace, and panels for some of the "hillbillies" who used to lounge around his pool. A panel for Roy Cohn, and a panel for some of the deck hands who used to work on his yacht. There were panels for bar owners and bar backs, opera directors and singers in a chorus. Panels for black and white men together. Panels for pacifists and panels for sheriff s deputies. Panels for voters and gay activists, and a panel for a Republican congressman from Connecticut.
Above all, I found the experience of visiting the quilt intensely moral. I take my idea of morality from the early Christian thinkers who used to argue, "Morality is strictly a human affair, not God's affair." God does not have to be moral; God only has to be God. But we have to be moral in order to be human.
Ironically, when men like the Holy Father and the Cardinal take on a God-like pose, they become less human, less moral. When they judge our morality, our gay life, they stand outside the human circle, outside morality.
Morality is what you do with and for humans. Granted, once you are a Cardinal your vestments and trinkets of self-importance make it almost impossible for you to be human. That's why it is almost impossible for Cardinal Bernardin to talk to us on our level and in a human voice. He usually talks to us through an interpreter like Sister Joy Clough.
Can you imagine Cardinal Bernardin putting on a plain, purple and white ( good Catholic colors ) NAMES T-shirt and assisting quietly as a volunteer at the NAMES Project?
Yet to me, each of the thousand volunteers who stayed all those hours comforting and guiding us through our grief and joy were the representatives of true universal morality.
I think particularly of Gabor/Painter because I know him best. Like many PWAs, he now has put his life into his life and made it a work of art.
The proof is in the quilting. When we with our hands make these panels, we sew a transcript of the life and art of these brave souls who have put their life into their life. I celebrate and love them.
QUILT PANELS
SET FOR DISPLAY
NAMES Project Chicago, a chapter of the NAMES Project Foundation, will host the largest indoor display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt this year during Labor Day weekend, Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 1-2, from 9 a.m.-7 p.m. at Navy Pier. The display, presented by Smirnoff Twist, will feature for the first time the largest display of Quilt panels from Illinois residents who have died from AIDS. In addition, in opening ceremonies on Saturday, Sept. 1 at 9:30 a.m., 25 new Quilt panels will be added and presented by their family and friends from the Chicago area.
Call ( 773 ) 472-1600 or on the web at www.namesprojectchicago.org .
