PHOTOS: WTC Sunrise New York. June 13, 2013

This morning, just before sunrise, I looked out and saw that the sky was overcast. Which means blue and blue and black. Then I noticed that the glass buildings were radiating a pink color, as if lit from below.

As the sun rose, it made the whole sky lighter. This is about 5:30:

Look how the curve of the WTC picks up the pink all the way to the top. It's kind of breathtaking in person because the pink is radiant, not flat as in the photo.

PHOTO: WTC Sunrise, New York. June 12, 2013.

Photo credit: Steve Schalchlin

The new WTC's first June 12th sunrise.

Photo: World Trade Center at Night from 10th Avenue.

When you look at the World Trade Center, up center on the horizon, it is very bright even though they haven't finished building it. Those are construction work lights that they put on every floor. So, it lights up the sky like a torch. This is looking down 10th avenue.

The Return of the Gay Lunts.

I'm here to confirm the rumor that Jim Brochu and Steve Schalchlin will play the leading roles in a short film called "The Pact" written by Megan Stein. It will be for the same short themed film festival competition that I was involved in last November.

More info as it becomes available.

PIC: The Honeymooners at Sardi's.

Each time I go into Sardi's and see this arrangement, I am transported back to another time.

Incorporating "disease" into your life.

I don't actually spend that much blogtime
Or real life time talking about my ailments
So all this attention to my virus lately
And the side effects
Feels a bit weird

But it wasn't a publicity stunt
I didn't seek them
They found me
And I'm glad they did

I'm glad you did

Anyway, just for the record:
A blog post about ailments

People read the article and ask
"How do you do it?"
Meaning the pills, the shots,
The diet, the pain, the side effects
And the pills for the side effects

The answer is you incorporate it
You live as if you were born this way
And that everyone is this way
You just incorporate it
And move on

I'm always thinking, through the day,
Two or three steps ahead
Will there be water?
Are we going to eat?
What do I need to bring?

But since music is the biggest part
Of my therapy
My mind is mostly on fixing that rhyme
Cutting that verse
Plus subtle key changes
I've been doing sneaky key changes lately

And when my mind is on my key changes
I forget to bring my insulin shot
And you see how it goes
There I am with a plate full of food
And I can't eat it

But I'm learning to make those moments rare

But that's it
It all started back when I made that initial decision
To live

Of course

But that's all I do
I just incorporate it, without embarrassment,
And keep moving

Tales From the Bonus Round: A Reader Responds.

By Bonus Round Reader, BRBN

In response to AIDS in NY: The First Five Years

I hope that this work of being an inside reporter
is as useful to the planet as it is altruistic.
the awareness factor is important;
but the dumbing down of the youth
is perhaps the more scary proposition.

in my 57 years I myself have contracted many of the
nuisance STD - the ones that don't outright kill you but shorten your happiness factor.
and I paid attention and knew how and where and why.
When in fact - what did I care at that time? I was getting some -
I was plain lucky.

One evening after a month long small time courtship with a gal from the Police Station Radio Room
where I had been dispatching my way thru College -
the two of us turned out to have the same 3 day weekend off.
I invited her to go with me to NYC for a long weekend getaway for some fun and shows and food
and a room and some casual hotness to see how well all things went together.

on the way into town while crossing over from Hackensack /
she yells "take a right!"
I did it - made a sneaky exit that stuck me on a dark street in Harlem.
At a particularly freaky corner I saw a building with a hole in the wall.
It looked to me like a scene from the nightly news
in Viet Nam except more citified like Beirut looks nowadays.

Before I could comment i noticed that my companion was
no longer in the car but running towards this hole in the wall.
The light changed and I was forced to circle -
I liked her but I was a bit scared to go in after her.

I didn't have to -
she was out in less than a minute
with a bloody sleeve and fresh vomit on her silk shirt.

She jumped back into my car slowly and said,
"I got three bags - 1 for you and 2 for me. This will make our weekend fun all the easier."
I turned the car around as she wrecked the front seat with more puking
and asked why she thought that this was a good idea.

There were no good answers -
and I brought her to her mom's house,
and then to a local clinic - her mom said it was
a five year old problem already and she was done;
but that this was where to take her.

Imagine how many people she was
with and had shared needles with?
Narrow escapes.

Seriously she never spoke to me again at work
and I never told her or anyone else of her problem
except that she had been hurt on the street in NYC.
The Captain said, "We know why you were both there -"
I passed a drug screen and kept my job - this was
her 15th offense but strings pulled by her uncle had kept her there.

She disappeared and I felt awful.
but the last I heard was that she had OD'd -
a better fate than the AIDS she was carrying -
for me as well. Sounds evil no?

at the time it was more of a gay issue than today
mainly because denial threatens all sentient beings.
I learned early that it's not a gay issue.

I hope you don't mind but I forward these blogs to almost all of my friends and family -
we all have or know people who need the info and/or inspiration.

Also some non-governmental truth.

New Recordings Update.

My dream of sailing into a studio, recording the album in one quick swoop, was a bit of a pipe dream, but also not unsuccessful. In fact, I got one recording that is a total keeper.

Not that there was anything really wrong with the performances, but I'm still feeling out the territory. Someone suggested I start a Kickstarter to get this thing done, but you need a real budget for that. Since I don't know what I'm creating, I can't deliver a budget.

The more I listen to the songs, the more see how I can do it better. So, my second session went better because I had rehearsed. I also, however, brought in some newer material. Stuff newly written, or almost finished, just to hear them out loud and see how they might feel. And though I mostly like what's there, I can do it better. Not by over-rehearsing, but by making sure they're solid in my mind, in terms of structure and flow.

Several friends have offered to sponsor an hour, so that will make it easier.

If the goal, here, is to present an honest, untweaked performance of about an hour's worth of song -- and it is -- then theoretically, I should be able to ace this thing next time around.

BTW, I realize it's old hat to make an "album" and I would prefer to release a song at a time, but I needed to  hear all the songs in context in order to understand how to approach each one.

It's a very exciting trip. I still feel I have a little more study to do before I go back in. Meanwhile, I suppose I could release one of the songs.

Let me ponder.

Manhattan Skyline: Two Red Doors beneath One WTC.

Sun breaks the red doors of Hook & Ladder 21, Engine 34 in the shadow of the World Trade Center.
8 June 2013. 6am
(Photo credit: Steve Schalchlin)

I think I'm going to have to start a calendar of some sort. Maybe I can sell it to pay for the recording sessions.

AIDS In New York: The First Five Years.

New York's first candlelight march.

The stunning New-York Historical Society Museum's AIDS new exhibit opening today called "AIDS In New York: The First Five Years" caught me completely off guard. I wasn't prepared for the flood of emotions that poured into me as I visited a history I both am, and am not, a part of. During those years, I didn't live in New York. In fact, I was mostly in a car, a van or on a plane playing backwater clubs in a cover/show band, renting studio time here and there for midnight recording session, learning my chops as a musician and getting laid and partying, as musicians do.

This world was mostly a straight world, so I get the news of AIDS second hand. A rumor of a "gay cancer." A rumor that it might be a virus. A rumor that no one knew how it was transmitted. A rumor that it was a punishment purposefully sent by God. 

I have this memory of actually being in New York for a few days during that time, and picking up some paper suggesting that this new disease was nothing more than a plot by Heterosexual America to exterminate us, either through disease or fear. Or just a plot to keep us from getting laid!

In the pre-Internet/cell phone days, one lived alone with one's thoughts. I'm not saying it was better or worse than what we have today, but the point is that I was sheltered off from most of the news as we drove from town to town. (I wrote before how I was in the airport Sheraton in Columbus, Ohio -- when John Lennon was murdered). 

So, this past week, as I found myself unexpectedly at the center of a lot of attention because of that amazing front page (Metro section) New York Times story, as well as the BBC story, one of the persons I came in contact with was Timothy Wroten, the Associate Manager, Communications for a place I'd never heard of: The New-York Historical Society.

The first thing I noticed was, of course, the "dash" between "New" and "York" in the title. New-York?

Either this was the most pretentious "society" trying to look "olde," or it was an institution that had been around for a very long time. How happy I was to find out that the latter is the case. 

When did we lose the dash? I guess I'll have to go back to find out. 

Anna Bressanin and Matthew Danizigo, the producers of the BBC segment from their "Altered States" series tied together my story with this exhibit, which I didn't know what happening, the purpose of which is to recall the "dark ages" of AIDS, back before anyone even knew if it was virus.

And in tying us together, focused on how fear and ignorance lead to death. 

Founded in 1804. We were barely a country back then.

Out front, giving Abe a bit of advice.

My L.A. friend, AIDS educator Michael Sugar, was in town.

Lately, I've been reading a lot of history about New York City, including the superb "Island at the Center of the World," which traces a lot of forgotten or unknown history pre-British. It was the Dutch that set the tone for New York (or New-York) to be the multi-cultural "center of the world" that it is.

Beautiful entrance-way.

The lobby area is both expansive and informative with early pictures of New York personalities and art
plus touch screens that describe each object found on the wall. It's really cool to play with.

Then, we went upstairs. The first thing we came to was this.

Claire Yaffa's iconic photographs take your breath away. The black room where these are set, with the photos all around reminded me a bit of the Holocaust Museum in DC where you enter a black room and the walls and ceiling are covered with every snapshots of all the people who lived in that town. But here, the collection is set off one jolting photo at a time.

This one killed me. This room alone with worth the effort.
Yes, your heart will break. But this time cannot be forgotten. 

 Then, we come to the main exhibit.

A perfect touch: vintage televisions with news casts from that time.

The first time it got described.
I had Pneumocystis carinii pneumonica. It almost killed me.
It formed the basis of the Last Session song, "Save Me A Seat."

Timothy Wroten takes us into the darkest days of AIDS.

On the ropes, with seemingly no one caring remotely about gay people -- the subject was never mentioned except in the most extreme "fags go to hell" language -- or other people with AIDS ("they did it to themselves"), the public's perception needed to be changed, the medical industry needed to be pushed, the politics needed to be changed. Funny thing happens when you're fighting for your life: Everything non-essential fades away.

But at the center of it all, as David France demonstrates in his extraordinary documentary "How To Survive A Plague," is education. The people met to get information. Where did it come from? Why is it attacking us? How is it transmitted? What does it do to you once you get it?

With few people looking, and a president looking the other way, you have to do it yourself.

Finally, funding began.

That vaccine does not exist yet.

I relate to this picture today, all the way down to the Metamucil.
The difference was that his meds didn't work.

But it was still a "somebody we don't know" disease until...

Rock Hudson died.
That's, really, when I was aware of Hollywood kicking in their support for us.

If you don't live in New-York, I hope these photos will give you a hint. I am hearing from young people today in 2013 that they aren't quite sure how you get infected, and even if you do, that's it's no big deal.

The unspoken subtext to all this is that health educators and activists are telling me that the big gay national organizations have abandoned us. When asked what their budget is for AIDS education, the answer is somewhat close to ZERO because -- and I quote, "It's not a gay issue."

Their focus on gay marriage, while tremendously successful and worthy of respect, will end in disaster if, in turning away from HIV, they lose another generation.

The tragedy of the AIDS holocaust is can happen again. All it takes is for the virus to mutate (something it does very well) a wee bit more that way rather than this way, and it can all start over again.

You can't get married if you're dead.

The New-York Historical Society's AIDS in NY: The First Five Years runs beginning today through September 15, 2013. And don't miss Larry Kramer on Wednesday, June 26 at 6:30pm discussing his play The Normal Heart, which documents this early history in blistering detail.

TALES FROM THE BONUS ROUND: The Sad Story of Cabaret Boy

TALES FROM THE BONUS ROUND: The Sad Story of Cabaret Boy
(The Story of the Birth of The Last Session & The Rebirth of Steve)
LOS ANGELES
JUNE 1996*

*(Edit: I accidentally wrote 2013 earlier. Fixed now to 1996)

13 pounds up
(Almost a stone)
He stood naked and dry
Looking down at the number

Sure, the 10 pound mark
Was when he made the big announcement
That he would live
But these next three pounds
They came so fast
Evidence was piling up

Dare he actually believe it?
Is Songwriter Guy actually going to live?
He'd been telling everyone he would
But he ALWAYS told everyone he would
Never, in his diary did he ever say
"Well, I'm dying now"
He never even thought that way

He had learned to be a patient

Learned to use every strong moment
To accomplish something
Learned to use every weak moment
By giving himself permission
To sleep
Perchance, even, to dream

Dream that the songs that saved his life
Might actually make it to Broadway!
A place he didn't know much about
Songwriter Boy was more rock and roll
Than theater, but
Jim had been teaching him

And back at the Songwriter Academy
A few years earlier
When he was in charge of programs
He had organized a seminar on writing musicals
With the Lehman Engel Workshop

And now he had The Last Session
But were they cheering for the musical?
Or were they cheering for the
AIDS Guy singing the
Last Songs Of His Life?

He thought back to an incident
Back at the Academy
Just a couple years earlier
When a TV producer named Sandy Sprung
Married With Children!
Hired him to musical direct
A "one and only" dream
That her friend
Cabaret Boy had:
Cabaret Boy was dying of AIDS

To, just one time,
Once before he dies
Sing and perform his own cabaret act
At the Manhattan club in Silver Lake

Cabaret Boy had never sung anywhere before
Except in his own living room
But he had every Liza album
Every Judy record

So, Sandy and Songwriter Guy
Helped Cabaret Boy
Choose the songs
Eating Pollo Loco in his living room

The day of the big show
Cabaret Boy got deathly ill
"Would you go on for me?"
Cabaret Boy begged

How could he say no?

The night of the big show
Our hero sang the songs
And
In the back of the room
Covered in a blanket
Looking like a monk
Shaking like a leaf
Sat Cabaret Boy watching

Watching someone else sing his show

And now, Songwriter Guy turned AIDS Boy turned
Lazarus Child had his own dream

The Songs The Saved His Life
The musical called The Last Session
On Broadway

The difference, though, is WANTS someone else singing his show
He wants the whole world
Singing His Show

But he had one little hurdle to overcome

How the hell do you get a show to Broadway?

And how the hell do you do it while being
Hooked up to a feeding bag?

Steve on BBC World News

AIDS is still with us. Here is a link to the video story that played on BBC World News today.

TALES FROM THE BONUS ROUND: THE SCALES Pt. 2

TALES FROM THE BONUS ROUND: THE SCALES Pt. 2
Recounting the birth of The Last Session and the Rebirth of Steve

Los Angeles

June 1996

Read previous entry here.

Four days to showtime

The Saturday morning reading

One shot

His ears were still plugged up
He needed sound equipment
He needed a keyboard

They had one shot

David Robyn, his rocker friend,
Pledged mics, amp and speakers
His friend, Alan O'Day,
Drove over the hill with things
Alan O'Day -- Undercover Angel
Angie Baby, Rock and Roll Heaven

Alan O'Day
Who died of cancer last week

While AIDS-boy lives on

Steve Wilde and Marjorie Graue
(Buddy and Vicki)
Rehearsed songs
Between feedings from Louie
He peed a lot

Yve Evans

(Trysha)

Will drive in from the desert

Suddenly, Saturday morning
The theater is packed
The audience waiting

No keyboard
They've got one shot

Who knows if he'll live long enough
To get a second?

Yve says she'll go buy one
And return it the next day
The show must go on
She's on the way out the door
With a credit card

What he didn't know was that
Today was Gay Pride Parade day
The keyboard was late
Because Terence couldn't get thru the parade

The irony was not lost
On the gay dying songwriter
He was losing his shot

10 AM

No music stores are even open

His stomach was hurting
The bandage on his arm throbbed
From the port leading to his heart

Defeated by his own people

Then, as if from out of the blue
The keyboard arrives

Everyone scrambles
It works

The show starts
One shot

In his diary, the Songwriter notes
That he had almost no memory
Of this crucial performance
Apart from being scared
And then releasing himself
Into the emotions of the material
Because he couldn't hear it
His ears were more plugged than ever

But he remembered the hugs
The tears
The pledges of support

The next day he was too weak
To function
He stayed in bed
He let Louie feed him
He peed a lot

And then, the next day,

JUNE 10, 1996

He announces on his blog

That he has gained 10 pounds
After three years of diarrhea

Three years of not processing food
And narcotics to stop the flow

Three years of life slipping away
He had gained 10 pounds
(3/4 of a stone)

He was afraid to announce
That he just might possibly live
But he couldn't be sure

Not yet
He still felt terrible
But now he had graduated
To Thai curry chicken

No more BRAT diet

Next, they met with Gary and Linda
"What do you want to do with this show?"

He answered naively,

"I want to go to New York and

Be on Broadway!"

Gary and Linda looked at him
Looked at the skeleton
Sitting in front of them 

And thought,

"Is he even gonna make it
To the end of the week?"

No one knew.

Just How Old Am I?

From a recent article by David France ("How To Survive A Plague"):

A study presented at a conference in February in Montreal showed that otherwise healthy people on HIV medications at about 56 years of age had immune systems comparable to HIV-negative subjects whose median age is 88. Perhaps as a result, many diseases that typically attack the very old are striking younger HIV-positive people disproportionately, like diseases of the liver, kidney, heart, and veins. One study found that 55-year-olds who are HIV-positive have all the telltale signs of late-life frailty—muscle loss, fatigue, and rheumatologic disorders.

I can relate to that. I'm a cranky old man before my time!

And studies show patients with minor deficits have trouble remembering to take their medications, which can lead to more serious problems like drug resistance and even early death. “We’re not talking about people who look like advanced Alzheimer’s disease,” he says. “But nevertheless they can have an effect on everyday functioning, which can be serious.” Plus, as Dr. Simpson puts it, “it’s scary as hell.” That describes a former Balanchine dancer named Kenn who, though battling HIV for 25 years, had been able to remake his career several times over until recently, when he lost his ability to process information reliably. “You realize you can’t read and you used to read,” he tells me. “That’s the hardest part, when you cognitively know you’re losing yourself.”

It's why I devote my life to music. As I said before, when I'm not doing my music, I can feel my body weaken. I also have been keeping my mind active through memorization. I tell you, my Richard II is like nobody else's.

It might seem churlish to complain about the consequences of aging with HIV, when, for the first six years of the plague, there were no anti-HIV drugs at all. Life expectancy after a first doctor’s visit back then was eighteen months.

When the HIV meds started working, we went from Holocaust levels of dead people to suddenly nobody dying. Dr. Ellie Goldstein, my first doc out in L.A. said, at the time, it was like seeing a dying garden suddenly rebloom.

You saw skulls become flesh. It happened with me.

So, yeah. I'm grateful for the fact that I'm alive. I'm grateful to still have a functioning mind. But that's why I can't let up. I can't slow down. If I slow down, like the bus in "Speed," it all blows up. And now, with this new information, I don't know if it will be death or dementia. I'm in the headlights. But aren't we all? Isn't that life itself, anyway?

I turn 60 this year. So, it's SteveFest 60 in the City and around the world. I'm declaring it now. Get me while I'm still here! Want to perform New World Waking? It's yours. Want your choir to test out my Mass? Just ask. I'm giving it all away. Let's celebrate life together. 

Media Alert: I'll be featured on BBC World News on June 5, Wednesday.

It will also be online. It's a story about living with AIDS. We just shot it today. So, as soon as I have a link, I'll post it here.

Tales From the Bonus Round: The Scales, pt. 1

Tales From the Bonus Round: The Scales, pt. 1

Los Angeles.

May and June of 1996.

(Read the previous TFtBR entry here.)

The change happened so quickly
In May, he was picturing his death
Fantasizing about his memorial service
Thinking about his friends
Pictured them having a laugh over him

And in June, he was staring at a miracle
In the dial of a bathroom scale

In May, he was calling his best girlfriends
And crying on their shoulders
Trying not to use his diary as a platform
For whining and complaining

He was constant pain
His sick body wasting away

In June, more than the scales had been tipped.

His "feed bag" became Louie
Louie, who tipped over when walking
Louie, who hummed so loud
That Jim had to sleep
In the loft
On the floor

And since this was in the days before
He had a proper camera
And bandwidth
The only picture of Louie that survives
Was drawn by a reader named Karl

He and Jim spend their days mailing out flyers

Sending faxes
Contacting anyone they knew
Does anyone want to produce a new musical
About AIDS?
Time was running out

They watched the Tony Awards together
They saw Jonathan Larson get his posthumously
Died before opening night
Jim, in tears, yelling,
THAT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU

Then, a friend refers them to Irene

Who produces theater for the disabled
She told them of a theater on Melrose
A theater behind a neon sign shop
The Zephyr

Gary and Linda

It just so happened that the Zephyr
Had a Saturday morning play reading series
And somebody dropped out

Could they be ready in four days?

His ears were now plugged up
Something new on the attack
But he would not be deterred
Four days?

No problem.

NEXT: The Day The Gay Pride Parade Almost Did Him In.