Agitata or archetypo?: Missing Sydney

"how deeply unaware I am of the movement of time"

This was Sydney after going to the history of the East Village art show at, I believe, the New Museum of Contemporary Art:

someday i'm gonna curate my own EV show cuz they never explained for instance why all the bases of lampposts were covered in shards of ceramics--they didn't have pictures of all these great bottle trees and stufed animal sulptures that used to be on ave b and ca 6th and ave c....and they didn't have videos by tom rubinitz who made the first video of wigstock but died of aids and they had things about pyramid but not boy bar...or lots of other things like these great videos that exist of rupaul as starbooty--some of those were made when they were still in atlanta but i was happy to see ann magnusson and photos by a friend of mine ande whyland--she used to bartend at boy bar and she and her girlfriend dany were like original club 57 people and i used to write this horrible nightlife column but the best column i think that we ever did was when we interviewed them and got an oral history of nightlife on the lower east side....and the EV show had a "back to life" issue of my comrade which used to be a great zine and you'd flip it over and the other side was sister! edited by dany but the issue at the new museum didn't have that...which was too bad...but all in all i'm glad i got my butt down there finally cuz now i have richard kern to add to my messy influence list...and some of the arch connelly things covered in beads were great...i love the intro text the EV was at its heyday 1981-1987--i'm like typical i missed it by one year...oh yeah and no rocknroll fag bar which is where night of 1000 stevies started.. no act up....see that's the thing about the EV that the show missed sort of-- it isn't the art objects per se that are important but rather that people tried to live their lives as art...and so it was about people and not about paintings or graffiti or whatever...and so much of it you had to experience like you had to experience karen finley live...i will never forget seeing her on valentine's day at pyramid naked and covered in chocolate and throwing out those hearts with dumb phrases on them into the audience....yelling fuck you...it was a moment...and now it's a memory and how many moments have passed into memories and I guess that's how you know you are aging but it is odd how deeply unaware I am of the movement of time…probably explains why I'm always late…

Please  post your remembrances of Sydney in the comments section of this post, or the next one, or the next one, hopefully into infinity... As the comments come in, we'll post them into main posts as well. Please join us in remembering and celebrating Sydney.

Every time I try to take the MCAT...somebody dies.

I have attempted to take the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) three times in three years. In 2006, three days before my test appointment, my aunt died two weeks to the day after being diagnosed with end stage ovarian cancer.[1] In 2007, two weeks before I was to take it, my father died after a four and half year long struggle with vascular dementia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and depression.

This time, I thought I was out of the woods. I was taking the test Friday September 5. No one was ill, I had been studying for 3 months, and finally felt like I was ready to take it on and make it my slave.

Then Anthony Kibort emailed me that Monday that Sydney had died the night before.

I managed to take the test, and then promptly let all the emotions I had managed to dam up for 4 days flow freely over the wall.

What. The. F*ck. Sydney?

We had met in the summer of 1989 -- G-d, it's hard to think that was 19 years ago.

She had just graduated from Vassar and was living in a sublet on the Upper West Side. I was working at A Different Light Bookstore on Hudson Street as well as becoming active in ACT UP. That was where we met -- her in her lipstick, black glasses and a single streak of caramel in her otherwise chestnut hair, me in my AIDS Activist Ken(tm) uniform.

I was smitten. She was aloof.  If I had known then what I know now, I would have changed nothing except wishing I had known more, so that in the end, I could have been a better person to her. Otherwise, Non, je ne regrette rien.

I am a week behind in processing all this, so hopefully others will help fill this site while I get our old clips and photos together. At the moment, it still feels unreal, especially since I'm no longer in NYC, which is so inextricably linked with my memories of her. But I'll be back. Please join us.

archetypo

From Dead Jackie #1:

ARCHETYPO

As publishing has become slack-land as far as proofing is concerned, more and more errors show up in books. The ARCHETYPO is an error which is not only incorrect, but changes the meaning, not only for the matter in which it appears, but to the reader, who may think s/he has discovered an eternal truth in a Judith Krantz novel.

Drag queens and pie 12/23/2008

Gabriel Rotello has put up a PDF archive of the entire run of Outweek and on his site you can browse through and find all of the Out on the Town columns. I'm hoping to create a collection of PDFs on this site or a related site of just the material OOTT columns and other pieces Sydney wrote. But on Sydney's birthday, I just wanted to offer up an article she wrote about her obsession with drag queens. I remember walking down Hudson Street with Sydney and seeing a tall beautiful woman with raven-dark hair and piercing eyes, and she just sort of hazed over when the woman passed by and said "beautiful" and after the woman had passed she said "and so many people wouldn't realize they were looking at a man." I didn't. Sydney loved drag culture and I was excited to find this article because it really brings her back for me with its enthusiasm and its wit, just showing how great a cultural interpreter she was. Anyway, you can click either thumbnail below to take you to the PDF:

     

     

I also wanted to post this picture. In 2005, Anthology was showing three nights of free film... this was the same year of the east village show Sydney had posted about and she had been happy at that show to see a few minutes of Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures. Anthology was showing a definitive print (which didn't seem entirely definitive) for free, along with Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie's Pull My Daisy. I think we both ended up having a lot more fun seeing Pull My Daisy for the first time, but on the way there we stopped at Sugar Sweet Sunshine and has strawberry rhubarb pie to celebrate Sydney's birthday since I wouldn't be in town later in the month. I think we even exchanged gifts. I can't remember. But I do remember it as a rare ocassion that she let me take her picture, discombobulated, blowing out a candle while still thumbing through the magazine she picked up. I always hate that I don't have many pictures of Sydney, and in this one her eyes are hidden by her bucket hat. And I've had this picture hanging on my wall for years, but lately it's made me feel upset. Today, looking at and posting it on some other sites, I keep seeing the smile. It's a good picture, I think. It's her.

Happy birthday.