HEAR ME:
VOICES OF THE EPIDEMIC
INSTALLATION @ NYC AIDS MEMORIAL, WORLD AIDS DAY ‘20
The following text was taken from the NYC AIDS Memorial Project Website:
Hear Me: Voices of the Epidemic was an original, open-space, experiential sound-and-light based installation which ran December 1-31, 2020. The soundtrack was composed of historical texts, poetry, speeches, music, and more that capture the history of the epidemic. Examples include a powerful speech by Vito Russo (1946-90), a song composed by Michael Callen (1955-93), historic recordings of an ACT UP-led protest made by artist David Wojnarowicz (1954-92), and poems by Melvin Dixon (1950-92) and Kia LaBeija, who was born in 1990 at St. Vincent’s Hospital, on whose former site the Memorial sits today. Visitors were welcomed to hear the program, accompanied by a distinctive lighting installation, through December 2020. Hear Me was preceded each day, beginning at 10 a.m., by a recording featuring the names of over 2,000 New Yorkers, representing a fraction of the 100,000+ lost to AIDS, and read by What Would an HIV Doula Do?, a group of activists, caregivers, friends, long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS, and people living with HIV today.
A self-recording of my poem, [ for the + ], was included in the installation, for which I feel both grateful & humbled—to be quite literally threaded like a bead onto the chain of my ever-expanding HIV ancestry. I include here only the text & recording of my poem, to respect the integrity of the NYC AIDS Memorial in actualizing the work as a whole, though I strongly encourage anyone interested to visit the HEAR ME: VOICES OF THE EPIDEMIC website, where you can watch a recording of the installations as well as download a complete timestamped transcript of each component of the piece.
[ for the + ]
O Lord how blessed are my frozen toes, my
winter socks, the doorways & my keys that fit them.
How wicked the truth that now I am made to remember /
re-search instead’a getting to meet on account’a those I might of met are
dining down with Death—they got their invites too early. Blessed O Lord
are these compounded seeds that daily repair my internal unmaking.
How wicked & unfair that so many were never offered a taste. How blessed these
systems & wicked their overburdening. How wicked that I am only aware’a these
systems on account’a now I belong to them too. How blessed & how wicked
O Lord the number’a folks who felt the need to say to me—
It’s not the way it was 20 years ago, it’s not like it was back then.
How absolutely unpardonably wicked O Lord that for some’a these folks
this particular back then is also right now & will forever always be ongoing.
O Lord how blessed how brutal the stacking of time onto time. It’s true
I have done actions not even a poem could condone. I expect no absolution.
O how generous the well & how wicked the drought—
the worst we seen in years. It’s only 1 ride left on my 2-way ticket O Lord
& where do I board from here. Blessed is the daily rising of my chest but I curse
this wicked static language the letters the red lines the shame that grooms the
boys like me unknowing / suspicious / afraid / avoiding the gospels of medicine
like I did in my days before it suddenly mattered to me. I curse the timestopped
phonecalls & transfers the terms & conditions I curse the manilla envelopes the
RETURN TO SENDER WITHIN 30 DAYS I curse it O Lord this language
designed to hold us here in uncertainty. Can you carry the weight
of this language, O Lord, can you breathe
between these impossible syllables.