I have not written much on this blog because I had a lot of problems with access to the Internet for a month - I will not go into details here, this is totally trite, but when I received my new Freebox, I took the opportunity to put on my site a lot of old photos of the 80 items and pus lately, causing a peak of visits ever seen since the launch of this site. Briefly, the gag is that new Internet kidding and I told myself that there must be someone up there (I take it with humor) that wants me to stop downloading photos dating back 25 years , images that elicit reactions both entertained and moved, but also embarrassed, as if we had a hard time seeing younger, more beautiful, more carefree.
An article in the NYT spoke on July 21 last, this need to forget, which is also challenged by the Internet, in "The Web Means The End of Forgetting . With all these images that people put on FB or elsewhere, our past resurfaces sometimes without asking. Internet encourages us to share aspects of our private life earlier that attracts and disturbs at once. In every society, oblivion is used to move because forget his mistakes, but also lessen the bad memories that haunt us. Personally, I feel that my privacy is not very private and I have a lot of embarrassment over these old images. For a long time, I did not like the pictures me, especially when I was poorly dressed or lean. Everyone knows that in my family. But time and age is that it all takes a turn calmer, wiser, and I finally enjoy photos that I did not like when I took them. For example, I had a hard time looking at pictures of dead boyfriends, or those who had plated. Not anymore. My friend Yves
Averous, who lives in San Francisco for almost twenty years, is in France right now to see her family and friends. He went to Paris, he walked and I can not resist the urge to reproduce his message on FB. Because it says a lot.
Hello Didier,
Yesterday I arrived in Paris, I showed your blog full of nostalgia for the 80s to the friend who put me up hotel and later in the evening, I walked up the banks of the Seine to blast gay cruising areas from the time of your pictures, or even that of the return of the carnival when I've found the "infamous" Gael, to lose it later due to HIV status . More Gay
one around, as in Malibu, where my friend Lawrence last week it grieved the loss of beach scene (referenced in "Don and Chris "and" A Single Man "). Our colleagues are now in front of their screens, or I do not know where.
But the beauty of the city last night, I could not help but feel" Empowered "and so lucky to be able to return to these places, a quarter of a century later, and sample the delights of a stroll in the garden, which after all, was too much fun. Then I had a big rise in sorrow, thinking of those of our former relations and friends who are not so fortunate and have been having, as Luke Coulavin. I wanted to share this little thought with you.
I embrace you Fort Paris,
Yves Yves
talking here of Luke Coulavin among photos taken Gay Foot in 1985, where we see, mysterious and sweet at once, almost 25 years after his death. See this picture where he is healthy, makes me happy, and provokes in me these questions, which are always the same face of someone who has disappeared. I wonder what would be the guidance of Luke today? What would Luke Coulavin in 2010? What would he say about politics, the gay world? Luke has always been an important advisor to me. He was the only person of my age in the '80s, who gave me spiritual guidance, but also political. It He paid me in what was holistic, not as a mystical whole shebang. He took his own advice with great humor, it forces you to do anything, but he had a certain look when I was an idiot or stupid, when I made the wrong choices in life, when I said something huge. It was my conscience, as Jean-Marc Arnaud later became my conscience, even if this moron is in trouble (a kind of consciousness that refuses to see you, super). There are friends who were awarded the right to have a judgmental about what we do, as if there were limits not to exceed. For example, Arnaud was the first to tell me that I should not choose the name "Paradise Garage" for the compilation of the name. In 1991, when Luke became lower because of AIDS, he stepped back to ACT UP (one of three co-founders) because he was critical of the atmosphere within the group that grew without stops too soon he said. There were internal disputes that hurt him. I understood what he was saying, I've wanted him inside because I needed him, I do not want him to depart, I knew he was right, but I also knew an act Up would go ahead, it could not slow this machine, it was too full of energy, even if this caused internal clashes.
I digress. Yves said that in his message is that we're over the pain of the death of friends and lovers. It has hardened with age, but the pictures remind us of those that do not provoke nostalgia in us, as Yves said - although I know he does not even think it's nostalgia, Yves uses this word to make faster, he knows that's not it.
These images of the 80 are not made to provoke nostalgia. For now, I did not clarify my idea is in sharing them with us to see. These images are not meant to glorify a time or place particular value. There are 20 year olds who tell me they love these pictures because it is an aspect of homosexual life they have ever known, they were not born. They ask me if it was better before and I do not know what to answer. What I know is that these images, even intimate, with my boyfriends, it's no longer mine. I made these pictures, they bear my signature, but they are real people in these photos and I think I must be a point in their lives they may have forgotten, when they were young, beautiful, carefree.
I did not think to explain that I wanted to do with these pictures because I wanted to show as if it were a family album. This is not a nostalgic album is one aspect of what was happening, as these walks in the Tuileries and the places mentioned by Yves cruising on the Seine's banks, which have virtually disappeared. It is a time in the past, among many other moments of the past. Today there is more open place in Paris where gays can go for a walk, not necessarily to dredge elsewhere but to take the air to discuss, to dream, build on one of these trees that grow Tata Beach, near the Jardin des Tuileries. Everywhere we go today, there is a commercial establishment. In London, there are plenty of gardens, parks Berlin are integers, there is in Montpelier Peyrou, places where, inevitably, as soon as it happens, it opens the mind, because it beautiful, it's open, there is a prospect. It is not as dark yews dredge between the Carrousel du Louvre, with these passages worn by the coming and going gay, with a few rats who spend time in a while. This is not the Golden Gate either, which only serves to drag.
I mean a place where one could read, or dredge, or come with friends. Gay life today is a lot of consumption whereas before there was practically nothing to eat since the business was not really born gay. Ultimately, we behave like the Arabs of the Mediterranean, we deceive our boredom by great affection, his back against walls or trees.
These photos is a way of remembering, not in the sense of memory and archives, but in letting go the past. It's kind of scary dream some, I know. But it is a way to accept ourselves as we were. Leaner, poorer, younger. It is also a message to those of my generation. After all, we who have forsaken places like Tata Beach or the Tuileries. We stopped going. We went elsewhere, thinking that the Tuileries are still there, as they have been for centuries, since it drag in the corner ever since. It was thought that the Tuileries were an achievement that would never disappear. I wonder, since our society is totally governed by the idea of revival, as Lady Gaga is the ultimate symbol of this concept of reappropriation, why not gays do not just choose to reclaim the Tuileries?
And I am also talking especially to young people who are fascinated (well, a minority) with the flair of the 80 and 90 which attracts them. Why would they not the leaders of this revival, to make something new? All the queer, transgender and whatnot, instead of making picnic Republicans, why do they not invade again this part of the Louvre would be a showcase of their differences, to see, fun, parade, make foolish or flash mobs of funny videos for YouTube?
is a place free. This is invaluable in our time. This place is here, nobody goes, it could be the equivalent of Piers in New York with kids and boom boxes and eat discs. This could even become a fashionable place, as it was before, when gays came to see and be seen. And one last tip breast, as Luke had Coulavin. Go to the sun, fresh air is the best way to produce vitamin D. A few moments of exposure to sun and light produces the daily amount of vitamin D. And I assure you, gay friends and others: you need it. Me okay, the campaign, I have more than my share. But you, the wild today, it's not in the Marais you will find your vitamin D.
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