Get Used to It: Ep. 106, "Experiencing Death"

(mechanical keyboard clacking) (funky music) - Hi, welcome to "Get Used To It. I'm Sheila Kuehl your hostess, host? I don't know ever what to say, but "Get Used to It" is a show about things that are of interest about the gay and lesbian community, the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning community. And the reason that I'm going on so long in this introduction today is because our subject is a difficult one, for me, for America, I think, for our community and probably for everybody. And that issue is death. Don't touch that dial because it's an interesting, textured issue. And the reason that it's come up for us on "Get Used to It" is because last week we lost one of our co-producers, a wonderful woman named Jody Curley, and we're going to do a tribute to her next month. She was a wonderful activist in our community and you'll learn a lot more about her in our next show, but it just got me thinking about the way our community has experienced so much death. And certainly in the lifetime that I've had because of HIV and AIDS and question about whether that made a difference to our community, in our community, in the face we showed to the world, the lessons that we learned, et cetera. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. Probably even more wide ranging than that because I have two incredible guests, Michael Kearns, who is an activist, an artist, an actor, a writer, a philosopher, a good friend, a dad, and actually a man who has not only gone through the experience of so many of us, of losing so many friends to this epidemic, but has also spoken and written about it in his work, in the theater. Welcome, Michael. - Thank you. Thank you. - And my other guest, Torie Osborn, one of our stalwarts on this show because she always has something great to say. Torie's the executive director of the Liberty Hill Foundation, former executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center and young as she is a long time activist, who also went through this epidemic and others with our friends and neighbors, and has a lot to say about it as well. So I'm gonna start with you, Michael. You heard my introduction and it's an awkward subject, death people don't talk about it much. Our producer said, I mean, our director said, "Gee, I think I'll be totally bummed out at the end of the show." - No, I don't think so. - I don't think so. - I think that death is beautiful and passionate, dramatic, romantic, sweet, bittersweet, energizing. I think it's a lesson. I also think it's ugly and horrible and sad and tragic and something to be afraid of. However, we have to look at both sides of it. And I think if anything, AIDS taught us that it's not just an ugly to be feared thing that happens, it is going to happen to every one of us. And I think that we need to look at the balance in the situation. I think that what has happened now in the past few years is we've taken a rest from death because we were so... the onslaught was just simply too great. And I think that we're back in sort of a denial phase that nobody's gonna die and we're not gonna die. And as long as we have muscles and tan and you know, we're gonna hide this epidemic. And I think that that's a danger in and of itself, but I think that there were many lessons to be learned. I have always been attracted to death in some way. I mean, as a kid, I used to visit graveyards and I loved the drama. I loved looking at those headstones, figuring out why, what was the year? And then, oh, his wife died after him. How many years? And I mean, it was like a novel was contained in just two or three headstones. And if a kid died, you know, oh my God, why, how did the kid die? It just seemed to me to be such a rich subject. So I've never, I've never really had those feelings. like, don't talk about it. I like to talk about it. I mean, why do people go see "La Bohème?" Why do we, you know, we love it in movie. Why did they go see "Love Story" and you remember? I mean, we love it when it's separate from us, but maybe it's the fact that, you know, when you have to touch it or sit by it or hold it, it becomes pretty confrontive. But I also also think that's where the beauty is. - But you made a point to me earlier today when we were talking about how we were gonna talk about this. There may be some distinction between talking about death, which is very personal because it often starts with thinking, oh, but what about my death? Or I just lost somebody and the process of dying, which you were also talking about, which is really "Love Story" and "La Bohème," and the stories that we think about, about how are people facing their death. And we think that that's a brave thing or a sad thing, but it's really because of the way we think about the end. I mean, we had a lot in the community to do with learning about that process. - And what did we learn? I mean, you know, all the platitudes about having your house together, your life together. They, I mean, I hope we learn from that. I mean, you do have... I mean, all the corny things, you do have to tell people, you love them. I remember at the height of AIDS, I mean, this is the truth during that period of say 85 to 95, I remember almost every phone call ended with, I love you because you didn't... some of these guys that I would talk to, I did not know if I would ever see them again. That's over, now. That doesn't happen. Why am I not saying I love you now? They could get hit by a car? But I remember I love you, I love you. You know, and it's just, am I gonna lose them any minute? You know, who's gonna not be here tomorrow. And that taught us to express those things that now have gone unexpressed again. And that, you know, I sort of miss that. I certainly don't miss the people dying. I'm not saying that, but you know what I'm saying? And that whole process of learning to be compassionate, learning that it didn't really matter, you know, how much money you were making that week. It mattered that you were sitting by this person's bed who was dying, you know, screw everything else. I have to be with this person holding his hand or her hand. I have to be present in this moment. We've lost some, I've lost some of it, I'll admit. I've lost some of that, you know, really focusing on what's important. That's it, prioritizing our lives. That's what people who are dying learn. They also become more of themselves, which, you know, I mentioned to you, we always used to think that death would make a horrible person sort of wonderful. No, no, no. It makes them more horrible. - Only at the Memorial service. - (laughs) Right? Forget it. - Where suddenly they really are a wonderful. - Monster in life. You'll be more of a monster in death. But if you're funny in life, you'll be funnier when you're dying. If you're sarcastic in life, you'll be more sarcastic. And that was just like this great realization for me thinking, well, I might die tomorrow. It's like, I didn't want to change. You know, I wanted to maintain who I was. I didn't wanna be maudlin. I wanted to be silly and funny and you know, whatever it is, I am. (laughs) nuts. - And wonderful. Well, I mean, we were very young to be having this experience. I mean, this was a community going through what our grandparents go through every day or every week where they are losing their friends. They are thinking about death, thinking about their own death, wanting to do it well or not do it well or whatever. Although we, as a community, we came to the point where we really did want to do it well I remember people would gather around someone's bed and would go through the ceremony of letting them go. You remember? - [Michael] Unbelievable. - Because we really believed they couldn't die unless we allowed it. - Well, you know, it's like that line from Boys in the Band, you know, it takes a fairy to make something beautiful. I'm paraphrasing it, but we did glamorize death in a certain way. I mean, we made it respectable. We made it beautiful. We made it lyrical. We made it romantic, all those Memorial services, I mean, they got more and more outrageous to a certain degree, but they had taste and style and class and fun and passion, you know, and I really think that, I mean, I always say that I think that the straight community out there learned a lot from the way we memorialized people. I think that now there's much more of a freedom to not follow by some rules, you know, to really look at who the person is and really depict them. And if you wanna laugh, laugh. If you wanna show a movie, show a movie, you know, we've gone off the track of this is the way a Memorial needs to be and it needs to have a minister. And you know, I think that we we've taught lessons about how to die, how to celebrate. I think that was our word celebrating lives. I think that came from the Gay and Lesbian community, I don't think. And now you hear that all the time having a celebration of life. So as tragic as it was, and God knows, I mean, there are many of those deaths. You know, I wish they were here, but they're not. And you have to learn from it or something. I wanted to get something out of it. I mean, the loss was so great that I wanted to balance the sheet somewhere. - Well, you, I mean, you, in designing the theater pieces that you did, all about people who were, who had HIV, who were affected by HIV or AIDS, it was also about people who knew they were facing their death. And I'm certain that you, at some point before we started doing better around drugs and things thought about this yourself. - And, believe me, even with the drugs, the thought process doesn't change. It's that period of time, whatever that length of time was, let's just say it was from 82 to 93, 11 years, 12 years of thinking I'm gonna die tomorrow. The drugs don't erase that thought. I still think there's a chance I'm gonna die tomorrow. And that's not so that way of thinking has its positive elements. I mean, when I say that, I used to wonder whether I should order 500 pieces of stationary or 5,000, I'm not kidding. I would be at the stationary staring at now. Well, how long will I be around? And how many letters will I write? That's true. It sounds funny. It's true. And you would think like that, well, how much longer will I need to have? How many more shirts do I need for the rest of my life? That's part of it's kind of over, but the gnawing sensation that this thing is in me, you know, or coursing through my body and that those drugs are no picnic either, I mean- - [Shelia] No. - You know, we know that that the reality of that is that they're causing some kind of damage. I still think about the fact that I could die sooner than later is the expression I use now a lot. And mostly now it's in regard to, you know, having a nine year old child. - Well, let's talk about Tia. People were probably surprised that you decided to take on the role of parent and yet Tia wasn't the first time you had cared for a child. - I'd done foster, but all the time- - Talk, talk about that a little bit. - Well, it was very audacious and it was maybe a little selfish and the accusations were extreme. You know, I mean, vicious, horrible, mean spirited comments that, you know, he's gonna die and this kid's gonna be abandoned. Well, nine years later, I'm not dead. And I didn't know that, of course, but also this was a kid who, you know, could have been in 38 foster homes by now, could have been killed in the foster system that we live in. And so I didn't take a child from a perfect environment and snatch her away and, you know, from a white picket fence in three car garage, and I took a child who had a questionable life to start out with, as it is, it's turned out great. You know, I said that I had been around so much death. I'd seen a person go, you know, with had 25 more days and 23 more days and 12 more days and six more days, I wanted to see that in reverse. I wanted to see somebody go from day 6 to day 10 to month 12 to 3 years to 5 years to 7 years. And it's been the best thing that I could have possibly done. Is it selfish? Yes. Is it more work and heartache and trauma and stamina needed and energy required than anything I've ever done in my life? Yes to that too so. - Well, of course, I think it's wonderful. - [Michael] Well. - Well, the other part, Torie of the community that we hear kind of stories about in terms of the HIV/AIDS epidemic is the women's community who was not affected at least physically by the epidemic. But there has grown this kind of story about what happened to the women, the lesbian community, which had been quite separate, really from the men's community, kind of facing this, seeing this, the guys go through this and how allegedly it brought the communities together in a way that's been very powerful. Now we call it the Gay and Lesbian movement, et cetera, but I'm not sure, is it mythology? Did it happen? What happened? - Gosh, well, a lot of things happened. I think a lot of the myths were at least the original myths were kind of sexist myths. Like the guys were dying or there were two, one was the self sacrificing self abnegating feminine put the men first ahead of their own needs. That was like lesbian, feminist myth, number one Kind of gay male myth, number two was, as the guys died, then the women, (clears throat) excuse me, took their places in kind of as leaders as if leaders by default in our institutions. In fact, I think it was both more simple and more complicated. I think the simple part was that if you look at the demographics of who's in the healthcare professions, there are a hell of a lot of lesbians. And so what you had was a lot of closeted nurses and docs, doctors and researchers, and sort of, and gym teachers and public health professionals who are disproportionally represented by lesbians as well as gay men, by the way, but who were kind of called by sheer virtue of being in a profession, in the profession of healthcare. So you had a massive sort of stepping up. I mean, I always tell the story about, I was involved. A bunch of my friends in San Francisco in the early '80s were lesbian nurses. There were a lot of lesbian nurses and before they knew what AIDS was, before they knew how it spread, you know, the San Francisco hospital was finding all these gay men were getting sick and nobody wanted to work on the ward. Nobody wanted to work on the floor because they didn't know how it'd be transmitted. It was a dangerous assignment and the entire support group of lesbian nurses, there were nine women who all volunteer, they quit all their other jobs and volunteered. You know, the epidemic is filled with stories of this kind of Shero-ism by the lesbian community. So part of it is that we were in healthcare. The other piece of it was we were so many of us through our feminist, our connection to the women's movement and our grassroots, between our grassroots organizing our advocacy, our understanding of sort of family issues and our broader political vision and history brought that too. I mean, if you look at, at the political strands that tied together to form Act Up, you had powerful gay men who came from, you know, wall street and the professions who were privileged, who had education and power in the world and suddenly faced, oh my God, discrimination. And you know, hell has no fury like people of privilege who suddenly experience a fall from power. And so, but they knew how to take power. And they were fearless about power and they had skills about power, mix that with the lesbian influence, really of grassroots organizing in 25 years of advocacy, whether it be in healthcare or on feminist issues. So those two things came together and made Act Up. I mean, if you really look at the genesis of Act Up in terms of sort of the politics or how meanings were run or how it happened, it was two very different sort of across class, across gender, across political and actual life experience. But anyway, I think, (clears throat) excuse me. So the simple part was we were where the epidemic was happening in healthcare, in political organizing and advocacy, which was necessary given the genocidal neglect of the Reagan/Bush years. But the other piece of it, I think was, you know, we were coming out of the gendered '70s. We were coming out of a world where in a sense, it had come to the end of itself. I mean, nothing stays the same, there's life cycles in every community, in every movement. And I can speak for myself. I mean, I'd been spending the '70s doing lesbian feminism and women's music, and I was ready to do something different. And when AIDS came along, it was, you know, it was a moral calling. I gotta tell you, I knew no gay men in 1982, when those lesbian nurses were sitting in my apartment in San Francisco, talking about quitting their jobs and going to work at San Francisco general, I had zero gay male friends. We lived in two separate worlds. We were Mars and Venus. I had not one gay male friend. And, but when the AIDS epidemic came along, I sure as heck knew as a long time social justice organizer and advocate, I sure as hell knew that we had a fight on our hands and that it was the right thing to do. I was not a healthcare professional. That wasn't my route into it. It was through activism, you know, it was a calling, it was the right thing to do. It was it wasn't self-abnegating, you know, like some sort of weird nurse Florence Nightingale trip. And so, but I think the truth of it is that I was thinking actually, when Michael was talking, because we did, lesbians did have a different experience of that 10 year of that sort of the bell curve of the epidemic at its height impacting the gay community. And because it wasn't our bodies for the most part, you know, for the most part, we used to exaggerate every lesbian that got HIV, sort became, you know, a much bigger deal than it was - Oh, we've got it too. - But the reality of it was we were, we were allies, we were sisters, we were leaders. We were not experiencing for the most part, the virus in our own bodies. We were not experiencing our own lovers dying. And in fact, as I used to say, I never even liked gay men. And suddenly I fell in love with gay men and suddenly they were all dying. And it was a very bizarre experience to open up one's heart and have, and come out of the corner, you know, out of from Venus to and meet Mars or from Mars and meet Venus and suddenly be going through this intense experience together. I actually once got a, a phone call from, I won't name, her name, but from a New York times reporter who called me up when I was head at the center and had some public visibility on the AIDS issue and said to me, "My name is so and so. I'm a lesbian at the New York Times. How do you deal with being a lesbian in the middle of this epidemic? I mean, how do you deal with the survivor's guilt, the stress?" Because we weren't allowed to have our own trauma about it in some way. And it was really, you know, it was a very strange experience now, but here's the thing of it that I think it did knit together and new movement, new possibilities for a new movement, a new community. It absolutely obliterated differences that had meant so much, 10 years ago, 5 years ago, 3 years ago, our cultures came together. We had a lot to teach, we knew about advocacy. We knew about organizing and we knew about family. And we knew we had tested our medal in the '60s and '70s and gay men needed our skills and our leadership. The piece of it that we shared, even if it wasn't my lover, whose hands I was holding, it was my new brothers. You know, these guys that I had come to love who suddenly I lost in such a short period of time, the intensity, the power of purpose, of a sense of something larger than ourselves, of uniting shoulder to shoulder, you know, that extraordinary experience where you really don't notice gender or race or differences that society puts, where what you know is that you have a cause and that you're building something that together day in and day out, you're building the community response to AIDS. We knew we were at the edge of something, we knew we were taking on the FDA, you know, this bureaucratic encrusted systems. And we took 'em down, you know, and it was actually the first time since the war in Vietnam, since being part of a generation that ended the war in Vietnam, that I felt a similar sense of solidarity with other people and having an enormous impact on society. And that meant a lot. - Well, I saw also a kind of a sort of a crossover feeling in a way, and again, experienced from the sort of lesbian side of the coin, but lesbians thought that gay men were so trivial were only interested in sex, were having parties, et cetera, before this epidemic. - [Michael] They were. - May not have been far from the truth. We, on the other hand, a lot were dealing with things that were, if they were not quite death, they were severe battering of women. - [Michael] Absolutely. - Sexual assault. - We had no humor. - They had no soul. - Right? - I think that one of the things though, and you touched on this is, I think it's the body as a battlefield, the body as a political- - Which is the element. That was the similar thing. - That well, women had endured it, right? Their bodies had been, you can't have an abortion, you can't do this with your body. You can't do that with your, and any gay man who doesn't make that correlation and who doesn't stand by his sisters. I don't think we used brothers and sisters before AIDS by the way's. I'd love to see the documentation of that, but who doesn't stand by his sisters in terms of things like abortion and women's rights is loony. I mean, this comes from the same source of wanting to control a woman's body or a man's body. And I think that that's where we learned a lot. And as you pointed out, women had been battered. They knew this situation. - Well, you dealt with this depth of feeling that we had been turned into a kind of movement. Do you know what I mean? That it wasn't just one woman, it was a lot of women. And then it turned into this movement and we had this seriousness incredible seriousness intensity about it that I think we brought to it because we already understood that this would be a battleground, be a political battleground, an organizing battleground- - [Michael] Sexual. - And We saw the man change around this. Don't you say? - [Michael] Absolutely. - Oh, completely. And I mean, but let's talk about death. Let's talk about what actually happens when you experience death in daily life. I mean, your heart breaks open, you know, you feel the capacity to love in a more intense way. You feel more spirituality, whatever that means to you, you learn about, you know, about God, surrender, loss of ego, priorities, what really matters. I mean, how many of us, how many people said to each of us that they learned that friends mattered, lovers mattered, act up demonstrations mattered, money didn't matter, I mean, how many times did we matter? - [Michael] Fame didn't. - Matter, materialism, individualism, fame, all the things, the society values, just didn't matter. And I think that the beauty that Michael talked about about living day to day with death created a kind of an intimacy, a connection and intimacy, a bond. You could go to any gathering or party any time during that and have kind of an intimate conversation with anybody with any stranger because of that shared experience. - And often it was specifically about Paul's dying, and then you had an immediate connection with that person that was deep and layered and textured, and you could just go right into their harder soul, just in saying, Paul's dying two words. We all know if Paul's Paulette. I mean- - Now we have a lot of young activists now in our community, they were not alive or active during this time that we remember, do you see a difference in their approach to this? Or, I mean, do we know? It would seem to be very hard in a way for them to kind of get it, not having gone through it and death doesn't have much meaning for young people. Anyway, unless they're right in the middle of an epidemic, like, you know, suddenly we were. - No, and in terms of HIV/AIDS, I mean, it's just there's a lot of judgements can be easily made about, oh, why aren't they all having safe sex? And why are they doing this? And, oh my God, those stupid kids. And they didn't live through it. They're 20 years old. I mean, even gonna read a manual on sex and it's a gray area sex, it's not black and white. It's not Nancy Reagan saying, just say, "No, it's a complex, complex, complex." And they didn't sit by those bedsides. They didn't deal with vomit and diarrhea and all the horror of it that we had our hands in literally and figuratively. And you can't expect they have to live their own, learn their own lessons. I mean, God help us. I don't want to see another generation dying, but I don't want to judge them either and expect them, we can't cellularly pass on what we've learned unfortunately. I think some of it's probably there, some of the pain, some of the anger, some of the heartache, some of the... But I don't know what's going... I'm the one who said, at one point, I said, when I found out I was positive, it was like the movie went from black and white to color. And I got a lot of flack for that. He's saying, it's a good thing. Why wasn't saying it was a good thing. Color can also be horrific. If something goes from black and white to color, it can be scary and too bold and too technical. But it did change me in a way that for whatever reason it happened and I am now grateful for it, you know, I've said that to you before in some way. And I'm grateful because I learned in and if I die tomorrow or today or whatever, it now, clearly AIDS has made me who I am. No question. - Well, it's just like the natural state, maybe the natural resting state of human beings is not to think about death, not to have it in their daily life, not to have it in their daily, anything. - [Michael] They're missing out. - You know, I mean, even though when I was a kid, we used to, we were taught that prayer that you say, before you go to sleep. Now I lay me down asleep. I pray the Lord, my soul to keep you, if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord, my soul to take. And I thought, I don't think I ever thought about what I was saying. You know, it. - [Michael] Was pretty complicated. - Something to say, I certainly never thought I was gonna die before I woke. You know, but maybe the natural resting state of human beings is not to think about it is not to live in that. - I think that's probably true. I think that denial is a very human and functional coping mechanism. I'm just struck by the society that we live in today. Which has such a taboo on death. I don't know enough about other cultures and lots of other cultures to know, but I bet we have one of the most death denying cultures. We also have one of the most violent death dealing cultures. We have, I mean, if you look at what's happening in the United States, the sole empire in the world and the one economic and military power pushing its weight around, in a sense it's, I mean, the values of the society, materialism, individualism, you know, money, we worship money. Money is God in this society, it is the exact opposite of those spiritual, or if you will, just those human lessons that we all that we learned as a cohort during the AIDS epidemic that anybody learns on an individual level when they face cancer, or when they come, when they leave a funeral. The human lessons that come from dealing with death are about love, about family, about purpose, about meaning they absolutely challenge the core values of society. And the thing I like to see 'em, and I don't know about young kids. I mean, I remember when I was young, I was sort of obsessed with death in my teenage years, like in my own little goth weird way, but then I was terrified of it in my 20s. And then I lost my best friend at 27. And they always say there's no death after the first. And then I kind of had to accept it at some level. And I think in if I do see more kind of strength of character, more maturity, more they're the young kids, the young kids today, they are our kids. So they are the next generation of immigrants. If you will coming home to America, they bring with them. If they haven't had our experience with spirit and death, they bring with them a lot of strength we didn't have. So they bring their own assets, they will face their own, you know, they'll face death and spirit and learn about God and all that stuff in their own time. But I do think that between our generation, those of us who survived and continued to survive, cuz how many lesbians do we know dying in their 50s of cancer. I wanted to make the whole other piece of it is where we're, it's not in the same thing, like a mass death near death, it experience, but it is encroaching, in our friendship circle. And I and for me, my experience of my 50s is like death is mortality is very, very close. I mean, it's a whole different thing than one's 30s and 40s for me. - But, well it's very true. I think aging, we were talking about this earlier, although, you know, I mean, no one would say we're sort of aged. I mean, I think of myself as middle aged, no matter how old I get, because fortunately a lot of people are living longer and therefore I am that's right middle aged. You get younger every year in order to be middle-aged I have to live to be 126. But other than that, no problem. - You probably will. - I would give a about try, but it is true that there was a point for me where the people that I knew that died, it was an aberration. They died too young. This didn't mean anything except that they had died too young. This decade, now that I'm in my 60s, when I lose friends from elementary school and high school and college, I just got this sense that this is the beginning for me of that part of life, where you do, where I was talking about our grandparents. - [Michael] It's not an aberration. - Where it's not an aberration where it's just on the cusp at that age to be, well, maybe you might expect it, but this cancer epidemic that we see, it's very difficult. We just know more and more people, you know, that we have to let go. - You know, Sheila, one of the things that I wanted to talk about, which you had mentioned was the... Also the link to homophobia and the deaths that aren't AIDS in HIV related like the Matthew Shepherd death instance. And the fact that, to some extent, really what people were saying at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic without saying was, well, they deserve to die. I mean, who cares about them? I mean, that's what Reagan was basically saying by not saying anything was well they're expendable who cares about those dying of this disease, you know, they're sex addicts and they're alcoholics and they're hedonistic. And you know, which of course is the same thing that propelled the death of Matthew Shepherd and hundreds of other gays and lesbians. So this issue of, you know, our immortality is a big issue that extends way beyond HIV and AIDS. And to some extent also, I mean, society set us up in many ways and we allowed ourselves to be set up. And I think that this is where the change is occurring to feel extendable and unworthy and unvaluable and you know, so to some extent it was a self-fulfilling prophecy in some respects. - Well, you were talking to me earlier and I wanna go back to this cuz you touched on it at the beginning. When I said to you, you know, I wanna talk about this issue of death and dying in our community, what we've learned. And I sort of focused on the HIV/AIDS epidemic. And you said to me, oh no, we already had a lot of experience with this. And we started to have this conversation before the cameras rolled. And I think it's good to have it for the audience because I want you to expand on that point about what it was like for our community when we were all in the closet. - Untold suicides, I think untold, I don't think that you could possibly count the number of gay and lesbians who killed themselves for various reasons in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, before Stonewall, before AIDS, before HIV, not to mention drug and alcohol related deaths based on being homosexual. How many of those were there murders that we don't know of untold murders of some guy going in a bar and putting his hand on some, we to shoot him in certain cities in this country and around the world. So I think that we've courted in some way, just by being homosexual, the idea of possibly dying earlier than later, I think it's been part of our makeup. Now, do we have to change that to some degree? Yes, because we have to consider ourselves too valuable and too worthy to allow those circumstances to happen where we are bashed murdered, not allowed to be where everyone else is allowed. So it really comes down to a huge, huge political issue. And one of the words, Torie gave a litany of beautiful words that we've come to embrace as a result of HIV/AIDS. Well, another one is peace, not war. We don't want to hear somebody say, I'll bring him in dead or alive. We know what that is dead or alive. - Yeah, you know, I was just thinking of that when we were talking about kind of the issues about priorities and values. And I mean, I shouldn't have been surprised, but I have been in was incredibly gratified and surprised last year during that brief preemptive peace movement before the war in Iraq, how many gay people who I had associated, not as activists or not people, people who had been involved in AIDS work, but were out in those demonstrations and were emailing furiously. And we're, they totally get it on some like intuitive level. The way we do business in the world is death and it is not right. And it's not about the values that we learn, the hard way to lift up. - [Michael] I think that's one of the lessons. - And one of the things that you said, I was so struck by the silent death of just despair and self destruction and how many of us loathing and self destructiveness and the alcoholism and the drug addiction and the just the self-loathing and we all know, and the closet is this death. It's like a coffin, right? It' closet is a closet closet coffin. And so that in a weird sense, the whole process, just even of coming out and let alone finding oneself, you know, at a peace demonstration when you only ever did something about AIDS, but is there's a continuum that you can see, that's kind of been telescoped over the last 10 or 15 years of extraordinary blossoming of the community. - And making the connections, I mean, and making between different issues. What is our favorite t-shirt? - What is our favorite t-shirt. - Silence. - Silence equals death, right? And then I think when you said the closet was really a coffin, that'll- - Be our next t-shirt. - I'm so sorry. Could you get on that? So a little get used to it story, but I was also thinking when you were talking about the people, making the connection about not wanting to participate in death, dealing like a war, there was another example, I think two years ago, the death penalty statute in California, in addition to a number of mitigating circumstances allows the death penalty to be death penalty, to be applied when the it's a hate crime murder based on race or ethnicity. And we wanted to add sexual orientation, disability, and gender. And it was, I didn't want to add it because I'm not for the death penalty. And there was a big discussion. As a matter of fact, we did a show well. - And Lambda came out against it. - Which was Lambda came out against it. Matthew Shepherd's parents came out against it, but it wasn't a big fight. Like, oh, I really want the death penalty. But the consideration was subtle GDO. Does it make our deaths cheaper? Because you can't give the death penalty. If you kill a person cuz they're gay. But the community actually, after a very thoughtful and long discussion decided they did not wanna participate in the death penalty and they wanted it to be an aggravation of a crime and therefore it's parole without I mean life sentence without the possibility of parole, which is also the most serious we do next to that. But it was such a statement about not wanting to participate in giving or doing death. - I think the AIDS epidemic for those of us who survived and continued to survive, created a whole generation, a whole cohort of people who I mean, I think right now we're in a very activist conservative time. I mean a little bit around the presidential election, but more perhaps around kind of the movement that hopefully will reinvigorate kind of the good guys and progressive organizing. And, but I think that there is that we haven't yet begun to see the impact of the AIDS epidemic of those values of peace and love. You know, it sounds, so it sounds sort of dorky, but the, the, and the spirituality, we haven't begun to see the cumulative impact of that translated into leadership because one of the main things, so we touched on it in your private life, but I see this as a revolutionary transformation, the gave boom the amount and I absolutely connected to the AIDS epidemic. It would've happened anyway because people were coming into a certain age after a certain amount of generation being out of the closet and it would be natural to have a of parenting, however, you know, coming together as it did on the heels and the aftermath of this extraordinary experience of death. It was the most life-affirming thing to have a community dedicated self in all kinds of ways. And that's where the revolution is happening. It's happening in the PTAs and it's happening, you know, on the playgrounds of these schools with all these kids of gays and lesbians, that that really is the front lines of the next generation. If you will, of the gay GLBT rights movement. And it's completely linked to this question of values, of creating leadership to represent those values, the values that stand in stark contrast to, you know, materialism, consumerism, individualism, unbridled, imperialism, they're now proud of that. You know, it's insane. And the gay community hasn't, it's because it's become so much, I think part of private life and people, it takes a lot of work to raise kids and it becomes kind of set. It's not as much of a kind of collective or political collective activist moment for anybody gay or straight. But I really think we haven't begun to see the impact of a young generation of queers coming up who have more grit and more stuff because they're the second generation and the middle aged ones that survived, who were raising those kids or being aunt and uncle to those kids and who when the next moment arrives for sort of wide scale activism and social movement, which I think is on the horizon. I think you're gonna see a lot of queers right up front and center. - And a lot of these people who were not maybe friends with queers who are as a result of being on those playgrounds, I mean, my being gay is not the point when I'm with all these kids than these parents. It really isn't. I mean, it's much more about advocating peace and advocating kids being creative and problem solving. And they're evolving at a rate that is healthy and culturally, et cetera, nobody cares that's and- - You know, it's absolutely true. Michael, when we went to the Memorial service for Jody, our friend that I mentioned at the beginning of the show at the after, you know, party or whatever at their house, the entire second grade class in which her son participates was there with their parents. And they had actually done an entire program at school with you know, with their teacher, they had a workbook like a coloring book on when you lose a friend, you know, what does that mean? And how do you feel about it? And then they asked her son to, in the class to talk about her. What did she like? What was her favorite color? And it was an experience that these children had together. And when we were at her house, they were the kids were taking care of him. They were playing wildly up, incredible down the stairs and everywhere, but it was like, you know, oh, come play with us and come run with us. They were so aware and all the parents were there and it wasn't because it was. - And when one side of the room and on the other side side of the. - And were the parent that had gone. - And the point was to take care of each other, right. It didn't matter what color you were or how much money you had the point is to take care of each other. If we learn nothing else, It's to take care of each other. - Safeness and in health. - Which is, seems completely subversive in this day and time where, you know, people are just obsessed with money and getting ahead and thought it's beginning to change. I mean, I sense changes in the air. I think we're beginning to it's. - Beginning change. Don't you think it's always a struggle. I mean, we ignore death a lot. We don't wanna think about it. We don't wanna think that our life's gonna end and we don't wanna only do good because we think our life's gonna end. I mean, it should be, I'm gonna live forever and I'm gonna do good today anyway, but it does focus you. I mean, I think, I can't even remember whether it was Shakespeare or someone else you might know, Michael that said, you know, nothing focuses the mind, like impending death. I use that for lots of things deadlines. But I think, I don't know whether it's kind of a struggle to keep that in mind, you were talking about spirituality and how much more it's a part of your life, you know, as you get older, but I don't know. Is there a relationship between mortality and spirituality. - Completely the ultimate letting go, what is death? It's the ultimate letting go? What is, what is spirituality? It's kind of surrender. It's faith. It's believe in something beyond yourself. It's the loss of ego. - I'm not humility. It's the ultimate humility. I mean, that's and there have been days they haven't come recently, but where I just thought I'm ready to die. It's okay. If I die, it's just okay. I, to even, I have them now, but when I look at that kid, I don't have them so much. Yeah. But that's, that's as much about me as it is about her. That's, my selfishness too, because you know what, she'll be fine. I mean, ultimately, you know, and she can talk about it in a certain way. I mean, we've talked about the HIV and stuff now, since the last time I was on your show and you know, she kind of gets it, they get it. They're so they're so smart and so unfettered. And so unburdened by the stuff that we burden ourselves with, you know, that it's much clearer to them to talk about something like dying. I I'm sure those kids were pretty clear about what happened at that party. You know, they were sad and happy and yeah. - They didn't wanna talk about it. Kids don't talk, you know? I mean, they just feel harder. - Yeah they played a little harder and they were a little more exuberant or whatever. But yeah. It's they learned something. - Well, do we, I guess the question of preparation, you know, people say, I don't wanna think about death because I think it'll interfere with my living my life to its fullest, because what you said, Tori, about it being a, a kind of defense mechanism. We don't think about death all the time. 'Cause if we did, we might just be frightened or we might be paralyzed or whatever. So often we don't even prepare for it in any way. And we're kind of talking about that too. - I think it allows you to live life to your fullest. - Yeah, think thinking about death it opens the door to living life to your fullest. I really do. - I mean, I think it's a process, you know, like anything else I think you, you go through, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I was really scared of death and it inhibited for years for a couple of decades and it inhibited my capacity to live. I mean, it really did. I was afraid to grab life because I don't know why, but I know it was connected to being afraid of death. I somehow I just hadn't worked through it. And at some point I reached acceptance of death and I was able to live much more fully. And somehow there's some connection. And then losing friends first, my best friend from college and then the AIDS epidemic and sitting at all those bedsides and going to those Memorial services and dealing with bereaved people and finding the best in myself because I am not a caretaker. I mean, I just don't have a caretaker bone in my body. And by the way, so third time you've said that you're something selfish regarding your parenting. And I have to tell you I have seen more selflessness and generosity and caring. You used to give it to the world through your art, but the way you do for your friends and for your daughter now it's like get banished that idea from your but excellent. But you know, I just, I think that, I mean, I think there is some functionality to not being obsessed with death. On the other hand, I do think this thing about how you learn what matters you learn about intimacy. You learn to not be afraid to love you learn to not be afraid to be awkward. You know, social pretenses, social game playing is devalued and authenticity matters above all. When you were sitting at that, that last time that you spent, how many times have we spent, what we knew might be, we may not knew that it was, but that might be the last day with Markopoulos or Gabe crooks or Paul Manette and the magic. I mean, I can remember every minute, every second, everything that was said to me, every note that was written, that's what life is about. It's about what we give each other at those moments of intimacy and authenticity. And we all know it. And so does anybody who's dealt with near death experiences or with more with life threatening illnesses, this is a human experience. Now why? The world continues to be constructed in a way that isn't the ultimate human experience, but like getting ahead and buying things and having more power and winning the war somehow get lifted up is more important than that. I don't think so. And I think underneath it people know that, there just hasn't been an articulation because liberals or moderates don't like to talk about, it's sort of like the right wing knows that if you talk about God and spirituality and religion and values, that you really touch people's hearts and they have done a far better job of dealing with that, they've seated the moral terrain, we've seated the moral terrain to them. Well, it's time to take it back. I mean, and when we speak on those levels, I mean about just the daily about real life stuff, whether it's with children or with people dying, it's a whole different conversation and you can't not be your best and you can't not wanna care for each other, and that leaves to a whole different society than this insane one that we're in. It's quite revolutionary. - But it's also in a way, okay, as a Martian anthropologist, it also seems to me that it might be an extraordinary kind of coping behavior. You know, how we it's angels in America, you know, how we make do with it. And we learn our lessons and we say, "Those are the lessons, it's like a breakup." You know, after a breakup, that's really awful. And you say, "Well, you know, I'm actually a better person because we're best friends and it's really better than it was. Maybe it is better than it was." But I was thinking while you were talking, what about the losses? Remember sad when you said the women kind of the myth was the women get a leadership opportunity because of this death of men. But remember, we also talked about what we had lost in the community in terms of community building or leadership or whatever. - Well, the entire ecology of the community was destroyed and a generation of male leadership was lost. I mean, God, I mean an untold artist, assets. - And the artists, exactly the theater. - That we didn't get ballet. What did people talk about the impact on entire institution's death? You know, decimated entire our community was decimated, but I have to tell you, I mean, you wanna talk about kind of survival and human greatness. I mean, we have emerged again stronger and are continue to move forward. Is this not still the most vibrant social movement today in America. - Even culturally and artistically? I mean, it's amazing that it has continued and triumphed under these circumstances. - I mean, it really is say more about that. - Well, probably maybe to some extent it is a reaction to I mean, again, I think that the people who survived and those who observed this are now just they're louder, they're more vociferous, they're more impassioned motivated, et cetera. I mean, that's hopefully these people didn't die in vain. That's the only way I can possibly accept their deaths that somehow their deaths mean something, in the big picture of the world. And I don't mean just the big gay lesbian picture. I mean the big picture. - Same politically it mean- - Yeah, politically, socially, morally. I mean, you know, I really feel like we are living in two worlds and the new one is kind of, it's like chaos. It hasn't yet been formed and it doesn't have names. And it's global. This is not just about this country. It's a global, there's a new world being born, but it hasn't come out of the ether yet. It's in that creative chaos form. The old world has hardened its grasp on the institution, whether you have fundamentalist, right wing of every major religion in charge of its political state, whether it's the Christian in the United States, the Right Wing in Israel or in Islam, the three major religions of the world, their political arms are in control of the right wings. I mean, and then you have this unbelievable, out of control global monopoly capital that like is now completely hegemonic. There's no alternative economic system. So it just gets to and the, it gets to just railroad itself. Global is in the name of globalization across the world. You have increased poverty, you have increased environmental destruction. I mean the 12 Nobel scientists who said you, "We basically, we have 20 years guys before the climate global warming permanently alters climate change. Hello, talk about death." We are facing mass destruction. And yet underneath it, there's this life force because there's always a life force and there's something else happening. I think we're kind of on the cusp of a new kind of global movement. - Well maybe what you're saying and we're down to about two minutes. So I don't want to, I mean that would be a whole show in itself, but I was thinking while you're talking about, if we are brought to think about that more and the impend really come to believe how they wanna deny all this global warming stuff while the hole in the ozone gets bigger and bigger and bigger, it's- - Started the show about denying men. Death is denying global. - Humanity, human beings men mainly are killing mother earth. Mother earth is the nurturer of all of us. So we face death on a big scale. So this conversation ought to be written large because only in having it only, there's a lot of hope. - Well, I don't know where we could go from that. That was any better. So I just wanna thank you both very much. This is a selfish act on my part. I invite the two of you to have a one hour conversation about a really good and heavy topic and never, never am disappointed. So thank you Michael. Thank you to Torie Osborn. Thank you all for sticking with us. I hope you did, because this was really interesting, incredible, and I guess in my signature sign off, I'd have to say death, "Get Used to It." (laughs) (upbeat music)