This is a sad

song. I was interviewed for a 1985 movie about AIDS called No Sad Songs. My big quote: “We are told to watch out for mucous membranes. What the hell is a mucous membrane?” As a gay man my situation is not unlike the those black men who were tortured in the USA Tuskegee Experiment from 1932-1972. They were secretly infected with syphilis and left to die in order to facilitate research on the effects of untreated venereal disease. Similarly, when AIDS appeared, gay men were demonized and told that God had punished them. And for years the medical establishment — even when they finally figured out how the virus was transmitted -- were so incredibly nonplussed by any sort of sexual detail, and particularly by the details of our repellent sex lives, that they neglected to give us the practical information that might have saved us. Thus it’s difficult for me to trust the medical establishment. So here’s a fact. The CDC itself does not report the number of deaths from COVID-19 -- only from COVID-19 and 'co-morbidities,' ergo, it’s impossible to tell what anyone is actually dying of. Another fact — the number of deaths in Sweden from COVID-19 — where they never locked down — are approximately equivalent to the number of deaths in England and France — where they did.  To be sure, death is a constant; what has changed is our attitude to sickness. If you don’t trust the facts (and I wouldn’t, if I were you) the anecdotal evidence is much more persuasive. (Nothing could be more convincing than a daughter speaking on CNN -- of her 90 year old mother dying ‘of COVID-19,’ while holding the trembling hand of her 91 year old husband.)  So here’s this overhead on the GO train: “I don’t mind if they lock us down like this forever. I mean I do all my shopping at Walmart anyway.” Or this, from one of my friends: ‘You won’t find me going back to a bar when this is over — I’m going to drink at home.” It is evident that after nearly a year of lock down a sizeable portion of the population could care less about leaving the house. They are addicted to their diet of digital drugs — porn, fake news, celebrity gossip, video games, tic-toc, social media and endless Disney family fun; ergo, therefore, ultimately it's the end of art.  Gee, I’m sorry for mentioning it—how quaint, antiquated, and irredeemably irrelevant the term ‘art’ seems now.  But I’m not talking about the friggin’ Art Gallery of Ontario here.  I’m talking about the God Dionysus, I’m talking about the all consuming drunken orgy that is, or should be, art, which lies at the origin of human consciousness — the darkness, as well as the blinding light, the mandatory exploration of the hidden recesses of the soul that beckons us — through tears, through the gut, through our dicks and cunts, though laughter, through an intoxicating attraction to violence. I am talking about accessing our anger — plunging our fists deep into the irrational, and yanking out all the hurt, the hate, all our dissatisfaction with this world in which we are born astride a grave. (The only answer for many of us, is  to perch on the edge of that grave and have cocktail.) This is the world I lived in; this is the world of art. No it had nothing to do with polite fundraising activities or arts council debates over funding (I was never much good at fundraising and hardly ever asked to be on a jury) —  nor  the world of ‘issue’ plays about the environment or trans rights. When there were artists, we followed our suicidal urges to plunge deep into our own mutilated psyches and pull out what is not acceptable, or nice, or reasonable. People are not clocks, or test tubes, or are they meant to always do what they are told. They stay up late and drink, and shoot up, and screw — enjoy illicit drugs, joyous orgies, obscene poetry, scandalous plays, bloodthirsty movies, the stuff that shocks your grandmother (yes art itself might turn out to be a ‘co-morbidity' of  COVID-19) — the random eloquence, hands groping, probing seeking — and finding — you guessed it satisfaction, which we ‘can’t get no’ — as the poet says — but still we yearn for it, because it is this yearning for the il-lit corners (I won’t tell you what I left once in the il-lit corner of a bar in Key West) that keeps us alive. Where do you think conspiracy theories come from? From our fundamental need to connect with something that makes sense only in our hearts and in our assholes. If you take that away, if you demand that we live in a spanking clean, sexless, non-violent, rational, happy, family-oriented, yoga-inspired, cookie-baking, child-obsessed nightmare of domestic tranquility — well don’t worry, people will still find the dark. They will find what is alien to you — and they will shove it back in your face. On the street yesterday two boys accosted me. One was quite attractive, I assume that he had been sent on a mission to query the sad old fag in hopes of being financed. 'I’m not going to ask you for money’ he said and then: 'But we’ve been kicked out of our house and I wonder if you could give us any advice.' Wow, was it written that clearly on my forehead: 'I am an old fag with a big house — if you are young and needy and beautiful you might come and stay with me?' — if so, maybe that’s what caught his eye. I asked him why he had been kicked out of his house and he said ‘because our parents accused us of stealing.’ So because the plot was now as thick as pea soup; I suggested he try the youth hostel up the street. A man was walking behind me talking to himself. I tried to ignore him, but soon he was beside me, and at precisely the moment when he passed by, he mumbled 'get some bullets and shoot everybody.’I kid you not. He was an older man wearing fatigues and a cap that said MAFIA on it. Of course these are the kind of encounters that set my mind reeling; but don’t worry, I will not  turn them in a novel or a play —  because you will not want to read a book, or enter a theatre. You are happy safe at home on your digital morphine. That’s fine. But do please remember when you cozy up under the coverlet that the rats are scratching in the ventilation system. No worries— for you need not let them in. Someday, somehow, they will find a way.