Hard to Read is a literary social practice founded by author Fiona Alison Duncan in 2016. “Continuity, Hard to re-Read” was organized by Duncan with assistance from Chase Bell. It will be livestreamed on Montez Press Radio. Sarah Schulman’s books Let the Record Show: A Political History of Act Up New York, 1987-1993 (2021), The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination (2012), and Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair (2016) will be available for sale with all proceeds forwarded to Palastine Legal, an advocacy group focused on defending people who support Palestinian rights. With thanks to Sarah Schulman, Jackson Howard and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Hard to Read. Select texts by Etel Adnan, bell hooks, Sylvère Lotringer, Greg Tate, Dave Hickey, Joan Didion, Eve Babitz, and Fiona Alison Duncan will also be for sale, with proceeds forwarded to Hard to Read’s operational budget.
Continuity, Hard to re-Read Act 1 Arthur Jafa & Greg Tate Alisha Mascarenhas & Etel Adnan Iris Klein, Chris Kraus & Sylvère Lotringer Muna Mire & bell hooks Thora Siemsen & SOPHIE Act 2 Sarah Schulman * With introductions from Fiona Alison Duncan Q&A with Sarah Schulman lead by Fiona Alison Duncan and Chase Bell This event is a part of the current exhibition Looking Back – The 12th White Columns Annual – selected by Mary Manning
I’M SORRY FOR THE PERSONAL ESSAY I’M ABOUT TO READ BUT IT’S BEEN RETROGRADE SEASON OKAY
The Thursday before Halloween last year, I performed a reading at KGB bar. I came in costume because that’s what the flyer said to do and because I had a Halloween party to go to after, Glam at the Jane, just around the corner from here. I dressed as Julianne Moore in the second half of Todd Haynes’ 1995 film “Safe,” when she’s at the healing retreat wearing eighties athleisure and a nasal tube to deliver oxygen, Kaposi’s sarcoma-like lesions on her otherwise bare face. My friend Steven Mark Klein had died three days prior to my reading. He was 71, sick, uninsured, and chose to take his own life. Steven was the fourth person in my life to die since early 2020. His was the only loss I knew how to deal with. My two younger friends who had passed were some of the most beautiful, inspiring, and original people I had ever met, alllllll the adjectives really, sexy, lovely, funny, smart. Both were queer, among other realities, like being an artist or half-Black from a white tight-knit neighborhood (our hometown), that can make life unjustly challenging. The 25-year-old was a suicide, the 35-year-old died in an accident. My grandmother and I were estranged. In her last letter to me, she had called me a whore. “Blonde would suit your complexion better,” she wrote. “You’re washed out, and what you put on the Internet will follow you forever…” From a young age, I adored my grandmother and understood she was some kind of evil. She was glamorous, the only femme in my family. A life-long alcoholic and a striking bitch, racist, classist, misogynistic, homophobic, and any other -ist or -ic she could mimic, my grandmother, Audrey Shade, was cunning, cruel, and chic. Skilled at word lashings and financial manipulation, she, a dedicated Republican, was “the bad one—” the family scapegoat—whose cartoonish cruelty was used by other, Liberal and Leftist, adults in my family to bypass their own accountability, to distract from their contributions to a noxious family matrix. My friend Steven’s death was different from the others in my life because he loved life so much and he died on his own matured terms. Born at the right time in the right privileged body to have his version of a blast in New York City, he did just that for seven decades. In his sixties, he ran the best fashion blog of the fashion blog era. It was anonymous. I had written about Steven and his blog a few times in my twenties. I thought he was hilarious and that his everyday, throwaway shit talk should be archived. When I learned he had died, I remembered I had an unpublished short story in my files that documented a dinner we had in 2013. I dug it up, edited it, and read it dressed as Julianne Moore in “Safe.” The place was packed. Waves of would-be attendees were turned away. None of my friends could get in. Violating fire regulations, the bouncer let people stand in the stairs outside of the bar, listening from a distance. I made this thick throng laugh at least eighteen times. I have never experienced this in my life. Maybe twice a year I’ll make someone genuinely laugh out loud. But here, I had a whole bar and staircase of people rolling in it. It was Steven’s shit talk that got them. I knew exactly how he had spoken it and could mimic his intonation: “Art” is over, “Cool” is over, “Fashion” is over, “Design” is over. Done, finished, the End. It happened, move on. He was a really funny person. The applause was outstanding. People bought me drinks after, bought copies of my book, told me that mine was the best reading of the night (and there were local literary stars on that roster…). I felt like Steven would be so proud of me and that I had done him justice. I was practically mute when he and I had first met, now I was booming like the Boomer man he was. I walked to the next event dressed as Julianne Moore in “Safe.” It was only October 28th, so costumes on the streets were scarce. Strangers smiled at me, looked me in the eye, and made room for me on the streets. At the party, I got more smiles and kind energy. I thought this was because people could sense my new loving grace, the spirits of Steven and Sophie and Audrey and Julian and the real me emanating from me. Acquaintances and unknowns talked to me, I made them laugh. Hot girls danced with me and told me I was beautiful in the line for the bathroom. I was Steven Mark Klein. I was Julianne Moore. I understood my practice better, suddenly. I document real life characters, I listen to them and set stages for them. That’s what my first book did, and that’s what Hard to Read is. I used to be ashamed of this, I thought it demonstrated my lack of creativity and character. But if it weren’t for me, too few people would’ve gotten access to Steven’s genius. He ranted in the streets, he didn’t document himself. So I’m feeling good. Death can be a celebration of life, remembrance can guide us forward. On my subway ride home, I get more gentle smiles and accommodations… A month and a half later, I go to a holiday party of someone I’ve only met once. As it happens, a number of people there had been at the KGB reading. They tell me how great it was and how everyone thought I was really, actually sick. My complexion is washed-out, naturally (my grandmother knew nothing hurts like the truth). I remembered that only 10% of the people at the reading had been in costume and that my costume was expertly executed. I had ordered medical equipment and Brandy Melville sweats for it. I had emphasized my pallidness by putting brown eyeshadow where concealer should be and vice-versa. For my sores, red lipstick on my pimples. At the end of my reading, when the hosts asked me to tell the audience what my costume was, apparently, those present were so relieved that I wasn’t very, very sick. They thought I had been the whole reading. “Oh,” I asked, “Did I get… pity laughs?”
When Mary asked me to put on a reading in this context, “Looking Back, the White Columns Annual,” where one person re-exhibits what they saw the previous year—this is Mary Manning’s perspective floating, like the social butterfly they are, around New York City—I wanted to parallel the curatorial premise but for writing. I had Sarah Schulman on the line. When her schedule lined up with this exhibit, I was thrilled. Sarah Schulman has published at least 24 books by my count, including last year’s “Let the Record Show: A Political History of Act Up New York, 1987-1993,” published by FSG and editor Jackson Howard. Other titles you might recognize: “After Delores,” “Maggie Terry,” “The Gentrification of the Mind,” “Conflict is Not Abuse,” “The Cosmopolitans.”Schulman’s books are vital always but especially in a moment like this as they teach us about New York and the history of health and housing discrimination; about remembrance and resistance; and about community accountability and care, how to be with others through crisis and conflict, including the importance of understanding our political circumstances so we don’t unduly blame each other for the pain we are going through. The deaths of so many loved ones of late has been challenging, and I know I’m not alone in it. This event is testimony to it. In the first half of tonight’s program, we’ll “Look Back” on 2021 by re-reading great writers who died. In addition to my Steven Mark Klein, we will honor five, beginning with the musician, journalist and critic Greg Tate, represented by his friend, artist Arthur Jafa, who is tuning in from France. Then we’ll have poet and translator Alisha Mascarenhas reading passages by poet and artist Etel Adnan. Followed by Iris Klein and Chris Kraus in remembrance of their husband (at different times), the writer, editor, and founder of Semiotext(e), Sylvère Lotringer. Then writer, comic, and critic Muna Mire will represent bell hooks. And finally, Thora Siemsen will read SOPHIE lyrics. Joan Didion, Eve Babitz, Giancarlo DiTrapano, Janet Malcolm, Dave Hickey, Desmond Tutu, Virgil Abloh, and Jenni Crain—these are just some other names we could’ve included… The second half of tonight’s program will belong to Sarah Schulman, who is very much alive, and here tonight, and who I hope isn’t too offended by my KS lesion Halloween costume. (If you are, you’re welcome to smack me!) Many of Schulman’s books contend with HIV/AIDS and its effects on individuals, communities, politics, and city life. You all know Todd Haynes’ “Safe” is said to be a fable about the AIDS crisis right? Streaming of this film was way up in early Covid. So apparently now—a Hollywood informant told me—a famous “Star Wars” actress has the rights to re-adapt “Safe” as a TV show and with a contemporary spin… They’re shopping for a spin! When asked of a year-end recap, Hannah Black wrote: In 2021, we learned things we didn’t want to know about mass death, singular death, the weakness of affective ties and the near-impossibility of social transformation. This was an evil year. Let’s never forgive those who made it so. It’s such an accurate summation and, between our roster of re-readers and then Sarah, I think all of it will be addressed tonight. Tonight, maybe I’m started to get over it, but for the last month of 2021 and the first of 2022 (are you sick of time yet?), I was DOGGED by the last two things on Hannah’s list: “the weakness of affective ties” and how they co-relate with “the near-impossibility of social transformation…” There are people I love (and hate but love) who I can’t be around right now because our coping mechanisms trigger one another or maybe it’s that our personal crises feel totally irrelevant to each other, given the sudden and extreme, different ways this pandemic is affecting each of us… I don’t know what happened exactly, if I did it wouldn’t be dogging me, I’m a cat, dogs are dumb, and so was that, okay, but I know I’m not alone in this. I’m hearing similar stories of interpersonal angst from peers near and far. It seemed like in 2021 a lot of people got on this individualistic trip. “If there can’t be structural change, let me at least change my life,” kinda thing. The changes people sought for themselves were often at odds with those of their intimates. At the same time, we’re all crunched; caught between a viral pandemic and a system that’s forcing “back to normal.” So we get a rise in divorces and affairs; friend, family, and comrade breakups; mass career manic, relapses, and new addictions, to ketamine, to TV, to therapy… Fearful of what will happen when the climate really tips (crisis will just keep coming right? this is the rest of our lives), many people I know are desperate to make as much money as fast as possible and by whatever means. (Have you noticed that many of the rich kids who masked their wealth in the Trump and early Covid years are really into being rich again? Luxuriating among each other exclusively, and putting it on Instagram like it’s 2013?) A fiction writer once told me that an efficient way to introduce a cast of characters is to have them go through the same thing together and to show how each person reacts to that event. A cute friend said, “2021 sucked because we had such great expectations for it.” …mass death, singular death, the weakness of affective ties and the near-impossibility of social transformation… I have NO idea what the next years will bring, but I think re-reading brilliant people like those we will tonight, can give us clues into how we can find agency or clarity within whatever will be.
JUST LIKE WE NEVER SAID GOODBYE by SOPHIE We were young and outta control I haven’t seen you since I was about, mm, sixteen years old But then you called me up the other day I was shocked, but what could I say? And your voice exactly the same And it makes me feel, makes me feel Oh, just like we never said goodbye When you spoke to me in that way Oh, just like we never said goodbye And it makes me feel, makes me feel We went out the very next day You still remember my favorite place And we laughed, just like we used to And did everything we like to do And now we’re holding hands and running And it makes me feel, makes me feel Oh, just like we never said goodbye When you looked at me that way Oh, just like we never said goodbye And it makes me feel, makes me feel Oh, just like we never said goodbye When you held my hand that way Oh, just like we never said goodbye And it makes me feel, makes me feel We were young We had everything we wanted Running wild through the night We were young We had everything we needed And I see that now that you’re here with me I’ve got everything that I could ever need And it makes me feel, and it makes me feel And it makes me feel, makes me feel Oh, just like we never said goodbye When you held my hand in that way Oh, just like we never said goodbye And it makes me feel, makes me feel Still got that glint in your eye Like you did the very first time Oh, it’s like we never said goodbye And it makes me feel, makes me feel, like everything that I could ever need And it makes me feel, and it makes me feel, like I don’t ever wanna say goodbye