I love reading obits in papers, since I used to have to write them. Actually got to enjoy doing them! Maybe it�s cos you get to play god, having to briefly as possible sum up someone�s life, which seems absurd.
I�ve had a lot of friends die. In 1990 I went to my last funeral/memorial service. Death is so empty that they become pretty pointless to me. That ritual always seems so severe. When I die, I�d like for friends to eat stuff and have a good piss up. To be remembered in happiness, rather than in grieving.
I�ve always thought that if it takes a person a long time to die, that it must feel like shrinking.
Sometimes I think � used to think it more often 10 years ago � that I wasn�t meant for this time. If it was the 1920�s or the 1930�s I�d have a much easier time. If I could go back to any period � I think I�d start out in 1916 Zurich, Cabaret Voltaire, then Paris for the birth of Surrealism.
More and more I keep thinking that I need to find a way to blow this dump permanently.
When I drive long distances I take a couple of things: the famous Annie Leibowitz photo of Liberace and his �chauffeur� � always put it on the dashboard � like a mascot. And I just found a photo of Nico from 1966 � so she�ll go too.
Sleaze is good, and an important part of travelling.
In 1994 I still wasn�t medicated, and I went through this f***ed up, insane binge of mania. I wasn�t feeling religious but I got obsessed with holy water and kept bringing it home, and after a few days, I had to start going to other churches cos this one priest kept looking at me like I was crazy � which I was. I�d throw it on myself, brush my teeth with it � CRAZY! And I never remember being religious at all � much more related to my superstition. And shortly after that I was medicated! Thankfully!
Actually, the holy water episode might have been when I was taking Prozac for a month and got mania from it. Anyway, funny either way.
I was born with Synesthesia. It�s been there as long as I remember, but have only known about it for the last 8 years or so � that it had a name. People with it seem to have photographic memory in different areas � mine is visual memory. It�s pretty cool. Anything that makes me perceive more is fine with me. [For example, the colour] Black to me feels like standing still � Blue flows and moves.
So often I feel tormented by small things from my past � they nag at me. The most embarrassing moments of my life are etched on my brain. I can see them with such amazing clarity and detail � wonder why that is?
My heart goes out to Obsessives!
The couple of times I tried to kill myself (half-hearted attempts � not counting the time I drank a couple of bottles of bourbon and tried to drown myself in our pool � but that�s another embarrassing story altogether!), I remember I kept thinking about people�s reactions to my death and what they would do, if anything, to mark it.
I don�t want any funeral at all. Nothing. Even beyond the grave I�ll be a Minimalist! I used to want a funeral, when I was younger, with lots of music � and remembering what I wanted � it would have been Wagnerian in the avant-garde sense of the word! Awful! So, if I die before you, you should remember that the only thing I want is for my ashes to be scattered in two places: One third in the Tiber River in Rome, the rest from the tallest hill in Rome, at the Villa Boughese Park. I�ve always had this great mental image of a cloud of ash falling over the city. Always the weirdo. I know if I die before my parents, they�ll be cheap and just flush me, or something.
By the way � having a mother with email really sucks. I try to ignore her as best I can.
Keep forgetting to say that even when my life has been the most shitty, tragedy, f*** ups and all, I have this intense positive attitude which never seems to go away. I�m tremendously positive � in spite of what I may say! Maybe it�s like Bacon once said in an interview, �I�m profoundly optimistic about �nothing�.�
I think I get it from my mother. That and way too many RKO and MGM films as a child! Then being a fag on top of that! |
