For those of you who haven't seen the play, the movie, or heard the soundtrack, the easiest quick and dirty synopsis is thus: it is a modern day retelling of the opera La Boheme. La Boheme, I would have to say, is really one of the definitive, seminal and most famous of Puccini's operas. If it is not the most famous, it comes in very closely behind Madama Butterfly. The libretto for La B. is based on "Scènes de la vie de bohème" by Henri Murger. This makes RENT, I suppose, a derivative of a derivative of a rather good piece of writing, something you would expect to be just up my alley for that reason alone. There is a somewhat tragic real life story that is tied to RENT: the playwright, Jonathan Larson, died suddenly and unexpectedly on January 24, 1996, the day before the off-Broadway premiere of his life's work. He did have HIV disease, but had been doing well and his death was unexpected, tragic and a bit ironic.
The original story was based on Murger's own experiences as a desperately poor writer living in a Parisian attic during Paris' golden age of Salon. He was a member of a informal club of friends who called themselves "the water drinkers", because they were too poor to afford wine (by the way, the way that they play this out in RENT is pretty brilliant). In Murger's writing he combines both pathos and humor. It's more than a bit self-indulgent, and in the end it is little more than a tragic story, with a tragic (and a bit melodramatic) ending. This ending changes little, either in the play or the movie, except that RENT leaves one with a feeling of genuine hope and possibility, in spite of the minefield of bodies and souls that were left in the wake of the early days of HIV. In my opinion, this story was a way for Murger to glamorize his life: the life of the starving artist, and even perhaps more than glamorizing it, making that a somehow more noble life because of the suffering. This has always been a bone of contention for me. I think that there is a difference between appreciating and respecting somebody's ability to create in spite of great adversity and saying that because of that, they are better or their work is somehow better and/or more noble.
I consider myself to be artistic by nature, but I also consider my self to be equally a pragmatist. I really don't find any glory in suffering. Because I grew up poor and had to make my own way doesn't make me any better than somebody that was born with a silver spoon in their mouth. I've lived in the shadow of the reaper for over half my life now, but I see no glory or glamor in living with chronic and potentially lethal illness. It doesn't make me any better than any other person on this planet whether they have lived with illness or robust health. One really has nothing to do with the other in both of these examples. So because of this, though I've always had a conflicted fascination with the story of the artist who suffers for his art, I've never fully bought into that premise. When I'm in San Francisco, sitting in a coffee house in one of the hip "new" neighborhoods, and I listen to these younger kids sit around and bitch and moan about the difficult life of the young artist and the glory in hardship and suffering, I'm left to chuckle a little. My first thought always is: you're 22, you're living in a 4 room (not 4 bedroom, 4 room) flat with 3 roommates, struggling to make enough to pay for that $5.00 latte, and to you, that is suffering. Well, wake up and welcome to starting out your adult life in a big expensive city. I moved here with a college education in 1984 and a nursing job lined up before I got here, and I still spent the first couple of years here living with 3 other people in a 5 room flat (every room that wasn't the kitchen was a bedroom), and just scratched by for a good amount of time. It was no easier to move to a big city for the first time in 1984 than it is now, though I can't tell you how many times I hear "you had it so much easier, now it's impossible". How do you know it was easier? In 1984, if you were even born yet, you were still in diapers. Don't trust what you're told and just take things to be facts just because that is what you want them to be. Consider yourself to be lucky to be able to live in a big cosmopolitan, cultural and interesting city, instead of being stuck living out a less than fulfilling existence in Des Moines, Toledo, Oklahoma City, Boise, Milwaukee, or any number of other less interesting urban settings. You're living in one of the cultural epicenters of the universe, and you're young, healthy and hopefully aware enough to realize how fortunate you are, instead of seeing what you are lacking.
Again, I've digressed from a discourse on the life of the suffering artist, and gotten comfortably into my "old coot" mode: "you whipper-snappers have no idea how good you have it". That is no less a bullshit belief than the one I'm bemoaning. But this is not my point. I really wanted to talk about Rent, because if you've read me or otherwise know me well enough, you know how much disdain I have for using cultural references, especially popular music, as an easy, cop out writing device. I hate it so much, that I do it all the time. Both statements are true.
What I love about RENT, even though it really is still the story of the starving artist (not in 19th century Paris though; this time it's in New York City in mid to late 1980's), it still isn't a tragedy. AIDS is sweeping through New York, squatters are getting evicted from "lofts" and condemned apartments in SOHO, Chelsea, Tribeca and Lower East Side . To be more accurate, these homes were for the most part decrepit shit-houses, filled with vermin and often lacking basics like water and electrial service. Most of them were also serious fire traps waiting to happen, and this was only amplified by the squatters often burning wood in drums indoors to get heat. They were, however, the last bastions of affordable living in Manhattan, waiting to be gentrified. That movement was being led in no small measure by the likes of Donald Trump, who isn't mentioned in the play, but his style of gentrification and redrawing the urban landscape looms large in the story of the time, and I would have to think that he is at least represented suggestively in the storyline of the play. There are plenty of story lines going on that could take the play completely over the top of the pathos Richter scale: AIDS, eviction and displacement, drug addiction, loss of venues for more alternative art, etc.. This doesn't really happen though. For me, and most people that I have talked about the play with, it's really more a celebration of rising above all the hardship, and making the most out of your life. The first and most important step is to live life in the moment.
Nearly every musical number in RENT, except for a couple (like "The Tango Irene"), are about finding a way to make every day count, how to find hope and inner resolve in times that seem hopeless, finding kindred spirits in an uncaring world, and to always remember, as is the line of my favorite number in the play: "NO DAY BUT TODAY":
The heart may freeze or it can burn
The pain will ease if I can learn
There is no future
There is no past
Thank God this moment's not the last
There's only us
There's only this
Forget regret-- or life is yours to miss.
No other road
No other way
No day but today
There's only yes
Only tonight
We must let go
To know what is alright
No other course
No other way
No day but today
I can't control
My destiny
I trust my soul
My only hope
is just to be
There's only now
There's only here
Give in to love
Or live in fear
No other path
No other way
No day but today
I was only going to quote a couple of lines from that number, but as I read the lyrics, I had the same response that I have every time I hear them sung: with my eyes welled up with tears. Those lyrics (and really, the lyrics of most of the songs in the play) really won't hold their impact when condensed. The sentiments that this song expresses have always been my way that I've tried to look at life, and not just since the time that I started living with life-threatening illness. That certainly reaffirmed my belief in the power of now. This is definitely the life that I have always aspired to, with varying degrees of success in actualizing it.
I'm reminded of the cold winter day in early March of 1987 when I found out I had HIV. I got in my car, drove down to Sutro Gardens and Ocean Beach and started to walk around in a trance, feeling that life was over at that moment. The tears started out in self-pity, but within the span of a couple of hours, the tears started to represent a different attitude. I remember telling myself "this is a crossroads in my life, the biggest so far. I can either give up now and wait for death, or I can resolve to make every day count and remember to be grateful for whatever time I'm left with here. No more watching the clock; this is either the beginning of the end or a new beginning." There has been only one other moment of that kind of magnitude in my life since, and that was when Ken died. I think that the kind of resolve that I had spent the prior 20 years building is what has helped me the most to navigate that time after Ken's death, and it still continues.
Will I lose my dignity
Will someone care
Will I waste my lifetime
In this nightmare
Those are the only four lines of "Will I", which is sung as a round. Those words were written sometime between 1991 and 1994, and they struck so close to home when I first heard them. They speak so well to the feeling of being a leper of sorts. Even now it seems that feeling is still somewhat prevalent. I know that I and other HIV+ people that I've had this conversation with describe a feeling that surfaces periodically; one where you feel damaged, diseased, dirty, not worthy. If you think that has gone away then I have a rude awakening for you. It might be expressed with more subtlety than early on in the AIDS crisis, but I still perceive myself that way from time to time, and also feel that others perceive me in the same way.
Though those 2 songs are the ones whose lyrics pop into my head most often, "Seasons of Love" has been in my head in the last couple of weeks. I just spent my most recent doctor's appointment (last Wednesday) planning out the course of the Interferon therapy. Early signs look good, but for someone like me, with another chronic and dangerous virus, it's not so cut and dry. Standard of therapy is still 48 weeks of Interferon and Ribavirin, but we spent this last appointment deciding whether or not it might be more prudent to consider the 48 weeks to start at Week 8, which was when my viral load plummeted, so that would really be 56 weeks. To most, perhaps not a big deal, but it really kind of is. Consider that now, instead of the 11 months I was expecting and planning for (which was going to closely coincide with my 50th birthday). I'm now looking at 13 months, maybe more. Just because my viral load was most recently undetectable, there is less than remote chance that it may pop up again at some time, and often times, that is when therapy is stopped. It's all fine and dandy until you stop taking the drugs, and then pow, up it shoots.
It's not like this is a walk in the park either. Imagine what it is like going to bed every Sunday night after injecting yourself with Interferon, knowing that the next day you're going to feel like death warmed over, and you don't know how long it will last. Maybe a day, maybe until the next Sunday when you dose again and start over. And then there is laundry list of side effects, none of which are predictable, other than knowing that they are likely to pop up again. There is the usual migraine on Monday, that untreated will last for days. There are fevers and night sweats that hit for no apparent reason, but with an unpleasant regularity. There are the mood swings, which can be all over the board. I've been lucky to have thus far been spared of the overwhelming depression that most people eventually get, but I am having one very common psychiatric side effect, one that I hear is almost universal, and that is a bad temper.
It's no surprise to anybody that knows me that I can be moody, brooding and sometimes just downright unpleasant. Since starting Interferon, that has morphed into a downright nasty temper. I've bitten people's heads off more than once for no apparent reason. My fuse is short, and nobody around me is spared when I am in that mood. That is most certainly one of the main reasons I've sequestered myself at home for the most part lately. Honestly, it's embarrassing, and if I stay away from things that trigger it, like being in crowds, social situations, answering the phone, just having people around me period, it's less stressful. I'm sure I've pushed people away, but sometimes, it's for their own good. I don't like attacking a loved one for no good reason, so anything I can do to avoid it, I'm going to try. I don't mind being alone; for that matter, I prefer it at this point, so unless it becomes a social phobia, I'm going to just ride with it.
I also don't want to medicate it away. I talked to the shrink this last week about that. Since I lost Ken, I've been on antidepressants and mood stabilizers for the first time in my life. I know it's foolhardy to just stop everything, but at the same time, I don't want to whittle my emotional range down to almost non-existent. Life sucks sometimes, and depression is a normal response. I've been able to deal with mine for most of my life without medicating it away. Who is to know that in the end, I'm not doing myself a disservice. As a result this is my strategy: 1) get off the mood stabilizer, 2) smoke weed only for nausea, appetite stimulation and neuropathy pain, 3) no alcohol, 4) no narcotic pain meds, and finally 5) no caffeine. So far so good. I have a pretty good self-barometer. I will know if I hit a point where I'm over my head, and me and the shrink will cross that bridge if and when necessary.
But this is again a reminder, a nudge, a tap on the shoulder, a revelation: I'm living with HIV and Hepatitis C and all the other shit thrown in, I'm not dying from them. So it's a year and a month; in a way it sucks, but that is outweighed by it's benefit, at least so far. And back to Rent, and "Seasons of Love":
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Moments so dear.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?
In Daylights, in sunsets, in midnights
In cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
In five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure
A year in the life?
How about love?
Measure in love
Seasons of love.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes!
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Journeys to plan.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure the life
Of a woman or a man?
In truths that she learned,
Or in times that he cried,
In bridges he burned,
Or the way that she died.
It's time now to sing out,
Tho' the story never ends
Let's celebrate
Remember a year in the life of friends
Remember the love!
My spiritual path teaches that although this "life" is illusory, I am here for a reason, and that reason is to use every minute of every day here as a classroom, until I wake from the dream and return to Oneness with God. This is how we will eventually transcend this existence and return home. To do this successfully, one must live in the moment and observe one's self continually. Not with judgment, but as a dispassionate observer. One must let go of judgment (self or of others) and practice continual and radical forgiveness.
Each day, I find a new tool to allow me to live a little more in the moment each day. When my time here ends is of no consequence, and so dwelling or obsessing on it doesn't serve me well. A life spent constantly looking around the next corner, or even looking back at where I have been does nothing more than divert my attention away from looking at what matters. I have 44 weeks to go with this therapy, at least maybe. But what I have to ask myself now if living with this obsessive attention to some arbitrary countdown is nothing more than diversionary and mental masturbation, and possibly harmful.
There's only us
There's only this
Forget regret-- or life is yours to miss.
No other road
No other way
No day but today
I've spent many years now trying to live a life focused on not regretting the past or fearing the future, or a lack of one. Living in the moment, for today, looking at what is there and not what I want to be there, or regretting what I feel I'm lacking sounds so simple. Taken at face value it really is. The problem is, for something that is really so simple, we tend to spend a whole lot of time doing everything we can to sabotage ourselves when we try to live in the present. I no longer fear death, as the death of this body may mean returning home. That, or I'll reincarnate to continue learning. I used to say that I didn't fear death, and it was BS; I was terrified of death. I have lived most of my life trying to outrun it. Moving past fear and being at peace with my choices in this life has now made me not fear death at all, at least on a subconscious level. As I've said in the past, I'm not courting it, but that is altogether different from making peace with it. I feel so much more inner peace, and it just gets better every day.
I'm almost a little nervous to publish this, it seems so personal; more so than any other story I've published so far. There is a voice that tells me that there is at least one other person that needs to see it. In that case, I'll sacrifice a little more of my privacy.
How do you measure a year and a month in the life of a man? In number of injections and pills? In regrets and missed opportunities? In weeks, or days or hours or minutes? Maybe the answer is that there is no way to measure the intangible, and even more importantly, I'm not convinced that it really matters. If I have to do it, then I will measure it in love.
Doggydad's Life Now: The Viral Monologues by Parry Tallmadge is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at doggydad.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.runnymedesilkys.com.
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