Save Me A Seat (YouTube)

Some readers don't like the Quicktime version of the videos I've been uploading so here is "Save Me A Seat" in flash/YouTube format.

National Anthem in Spanish, Part 2

There was a Spanish translation of the "Star Spangled Banner" done back in 1919 -- by the - aHEM! -- U.S. Bureau of Education:
I guess the question is why does the US Bureau of Education hate America?

(Thanks to Michael Scott for the tip).

Saturday Picture Gallery

I've been writing so much about the past that I haven't really spent much time on the present. It's not that exciting, really, given the fact that I spend most of my time at the computer either mixing music or making videos. Not a whole lot to tell, but...

This is Aaron. Aaron is a film student and Jim had agreed to appear in his new film short. Unfortunately, the day was cloudy and it started to rain, so the shoot was put off until June. Very sweet script about two guys looking at their gravestones and having a little tension over their neighboring plots. We all met for breakfast and I even had volunteered to be a production assistant. Who knew it would rain in Los Angeles? What kind of a world is this coming to? And also, how adorable is he? A really sweet guy who felt bad about postponing the shoot, but what can ya do.

This past week we also attended the opening night of Jay Johnson's "The Two & Only" in Burbank at the Colony Theatre. I waited around and snapped a shot of Jay with Robert Mandan since both of them were on the sitcom "Soap."


Meanwhile, back home, Steinbeck saw that I featured Thurber on a previous diary entry, so he jumped into a box and tried to mail himself to Europe.


I didn't work, though. He weighs so much, he couldn't afford the postage.

Meanwhile, Alexandra Billings is moving. So, I went over to help out a bit.

Thurber Helps Daddy

Yesterday, as I was recording different takes of "Save Me A Seat," Thurber decided he needed to be in the shot. I ended up not using anything from this particular take after deciding that the one, single shot of me just singing simply into the camera worked best, but I couldn't let this moment go by, now, could I?

Speaking of cats doing their own thing, my friend Michael's cats, Figaro and Jett, seem to be up to a lot of online mischief. He woke up the other morning and they had forgotten, during the night, to turn off the computer. And THIS is what he found. Apparently, they decided to start their own blog. One wonders if they've been checking out all the kitty porn sites.

Save Me A Seat

Here is another song from The Last Session. This is a song I wrote about my own memorial service.


Click here watch Save Me A Seat

The National Anthem

I was kind of appalled to hear that the national anthem is being turned into a political fight about the English language. When Bush today was asked what he thought about the national anthem being sung in Spanish, the immediate answer that could have come from him that would have been so graceful and put this issue to bed immediately would have been to say, "I'd love to hear the national anthem in EVERY language."

But he didn't.

sigh

"Imagine what would happen if American Christianity came from the Martin Luther King side of the family rather than the TV evangelist side."

Saint of 9/11

I have to hand it to Andrew Sullivan today for his passionate and beautiful tribute to Father Mykal Judge of the NY Fire Department who died on 9/11 -- and who is the subject of a new documentary film called "Saint of 9/11." From Andrew's blog:

I truly hope that it will get wide distribution and that many will see it. I say this not simply because this saintly man was gay, because he would be barred from the priesthood under the current Pope, or because, in the mysterious way God works, Judge's sexual orientation actually became a way for him to minister more effectively to the marginalized, sick, poor and forgotten.

And this really got to me:

For me, his ministry to people with AIDS in the very early days means the most. We forget how terrifying HIV was in the early and mid 1980s, how patients would be quarantined in dark rooms, abandoned by their families, with their meals rolled into their rooms on trolleys. From the beginning, Mychal did as Jesus did and walked right in and kissed these frightened souls on the lips. If they recoiled from the sight of a priest - gay men at that time saw the church as an alien, hostile entity - he would persist in silence. He would simply bring holy oils, take a chair to the bottom of their hospital beds, and massage their bony, cold, pain-racked feet.

A man of true courage and honor died on 9/11, and he had to live in the closet to fulfill his ministry. Isn't ironic that he had to live a lie in order to be one of the best kinds of ministers in a church supposedly devoted to truth?

Listen to Neil Young's Album Here.

You can listen to the entire Neil Young album here, presumably for a limited time only.

EDIT: THIS THING ROCKS! This is clearly the best work Young has done in years. I can't believe how good this is. Well, yes I can. It's Neil Young.

Saddle Up LA

I wanted to draw attention to a benefit for The Life Group LA happening in Los Angeles on June 3rd called Saddle Up LA. They have a particularly cute PSA: Saddle Up LA. If Jim and I can work out the details, we've been asked to sing a couple of songs for the participants as they gather out in Griffith Park. Should be great fun -- and I do love me some horses!

Surprise at the White House Easter Egg Hunt

10 Yrs. Ago: Paragoric

I didn't take too many pictures of myself during this period, but I found this one. I don't look too bad in it, but what you can't see very well is that my skin was mottled terribly from some fungus infection that no one could figure out. I'm not even sure when this was taken, but I think it's from a few months earlier.

The day after Dennis told me, "OH MY GOD YOU'RE GONNA DIE IF YOU DON'T DO SOMETHING NOW," we scheduled an appt. with a new doctor. Quoting:

"Dr. Steve had me take some blood tests and a chest x-ray and then prescribed paregoric to stop the you know what as a last ditch effort. Yes, the old famous paregoric. He said no one makes it anymore and it's hard to find. But, of course, Bob's Pharmacy had it. Bob has everything. I looked it up in the dictionary when I got home and saw that it's made from opium. How nice."

In case you aren't aware, narcotics help block up the old poop machine. This new doctor, who I have absolutely no memory of, checked me out and decided that since TPN costs about $600 a day, and is a very extreme measure, he thought we should take one last stab at stopping the diarrhea the old fashioned way: narcotics.

"A quiet day. The paregoric worked somewhat on the diarrhea so that was a relief. I went over to Jim Latham's and wrote two complete lyrics in a hour and half for a movie/tv project he's doing."

Jim Latham is one of my oldest friends here in L.A. He and I have worked on several projects together and when we first met, he was a "second" sound engineer at Theta Sound Studios in Burbank. We named the character of "Jim" after him in TLS. I haven't seen him in a long time so I just sent him a note and, hopefully, I can get over to his place soon so we can hang out. What I do remember is that would go over to someone's house and have to take a nap upon arriving. Then I'd wake up and we'd do something. Then I'd sleep again and drive home. From the entry on the 28th:

"Since I'm on the mend right now and don't have much energy, I purposely stayed in most of the day yesterday and rested -- and guzzled all the anti-you know what medications I had. Every few hours -- I felt I was in a battle zone and I was going to defeat the enemy. Drink the paregoric! Have a codeine! More immodium! All day long, and this morning? Victory again. But I must continue the battle. I win it and I lose it and I win it again. I'm determined to beat this and get my life back."

Thinking back, I remember now that the goal was to go a single day without diarrhea -- and then another. So, I'd literally guzzle the opium-based paragoric (which was this orange, totally vile, thick gunk), take codeine pills, take Immodium and eat nothing but BRAT: bananas, rice, applesauce & toast. And I'd sleep in a narcotized stupor.

Every morning when I woke up, as I did on this day 10 years ago, I would keep my fingers crossed that a hundred gallons of water wouldn't pour out of me, because that's what it usually felt like. And even through this, every single day, if I had a "victory," I'd feel like I was at a turning point headed back in the right way.

Unfortunately, the list of things going wrong with me just kept getting longer and longer. The worst days were to come.

"Say Hi to Jesus For Me."

Last night we saw some old friends, Marie Cain and Adrian Russ, both fellow writers for the theatre. They were remarking that it was very informative for them to see the posts looking back 10 years.

Marie said, "I didn't know that YOU didn't know how sick you were."

Adrian said, "What amazes me about that time is that you never stopped moving; never stopped going out. If it'd been me, I'd have stayed home and hid."

I laughed at that. It's always fun to hear what other people were thinking during that time period. Marie really put it into focus, though.

"Steve," she said. "Everytime I saw you, I'd think, Okay this is the last time I'm going to see Steve. And then you'd pop up again and I'd think, Okay this is REALLY the last time I'm going to see Steve."

It's true. I guess I knew and I didn't know. The thing is that when you're in your own skin and going through something like that, you don't really see how bad it is until something like I described earlier happens -- a friend looks at you and says, "OH MY GOD YOU'RE GONNA DIE NEXT WEEK IF YOU DON'T DO SOMETHING!!"

Because people are never that blunt in real life. No one walks up to a walking dead man and says, "Oh, hi, Steve. My, but you look terrible today."

Or, "Hello, Steve. Listen, be sure to say hi to Jesus for me next week cuz it's obvious you're gonna be dead by Thursday."

Adrian and I had a really good talk about it. I encouraged her to open up about her feelings during that time. She said, "Okay, well, I could see how sick you were. I was thinking to myself that I wouldn't have been able to stand the pitying looks."

I said to her, "I never saw that. I really didn't. All I could read was caring on their faces. I never saw pity. And besides, I'm such an attention whore I probably wouldn't have cared anyway." (That made her laugh).

She put her hand on my chest and said, "That's your pure soul."

And that made ME laugh. I said, "Honey, if there's one thing I don't have it's a pure soul."

But maybe I do. I don't know. I look back 10 years ago and I see myself going to industry functions, meeting up with friends, trying to make demos of the songs from TLS and trying to just act as if this is a little cold that I'll get through. I never gave up. I never saw how bad it was. I must have known but it wasn't something I gave much energy to. I just kept moving. And Jim never got in my way. He always treated me like I was the picture of health even though he was always very aware of when I was tiring myself out or feeling badly.

I think that's one of the reasons I love him so much and why I feel our relationship is about the most perfect thing one could imagine, despite our ups and downs in the past. He never faltered. Never wavered. Never stopped me from going and doing.

Maybe, in retrospect, I made a lot of people uncomfortable during that time. They had no choice but to look at the face of AIDS because I refused to hide it. I refused to go away.

And maybe, in retrospect, that's why I'm still alive today.

The Group

I promised my musician friend down in the Bahamas that I would begin uploading songs from "The Last Session" to this site. So, today I put together this video of "The Group." Just click on the upper image for the Quicktime version. Some have told me they can't play a Quicktime file, so just below that is the YouTube version in flash.


Click here to download

Happy Birthday Phill Wilson

Today I was looking through AIDS news sources and found this wonderful story about an AIDS activist in the Black community here in Los Angeles. His name is Phill Wilson and, like me, he almost died in 1996. That's what drew my eye to his story. Where I wrote a musical about AIDS, Phill went to work and established the Black AIDS Institute focused squarely on the issues specific to the African American community -- issues which were being largely ignored. Phill seems like the kind of person who moves mountains with his sheer passion and drive. From the article:

“I found out that I was HIV-positive at 27 and I didn’t think 30 was an option,” says Wilson, who has full-blown AIDS. “So, to be 50 is amazing.”

Phill Wilson is an amazing person. He’s throwing a big birthday bash this Saturday in Los Angeles. And it’s not your typical birthday party.

“I don’t know what the traditional gift is for someone on their 50th birthday – let alone surviving for a quarter century with a life-threatening disease – but I do know what I want,” he said in the letter of invitation. “As you know, I have dedicated my life to the eradication of HIV/AIDS, particularly in Black communities. So as a birthday present to myself, I’ve committed to raising $250,000 for the AIDS organization nearest and dearest to my heart, the Black AIDS Institute.”

The Black AIDS Institute, founded in 1999 by Wilson, is the only HIV/AIDS think tank that focuses exclusively on AIDS among African-Americans. And its birth came out of a near-death experience.

“In 1996, I got very, very sick,” Wilson says. “My doctor basically had given me a matter of days to live. I was unconscious and I was in intensive care at Kaiser Permante. Everyone thought that I was going to die. When I came out of that, I could not work like I had been working, which is basically how I work today,” the workaholic explains.

“By 1999, there had been a lot of progress made in the Latino community and among women, but there had been very little progress made in mobilizing traditional Black institutions. It was clear to me that the only way to stop this epidemic in Black America was for our institutions to take ownership of the disease.”

More than anyone else, Phill Wilson has energized and mobilized the Black community, calling out gays and straights, encouraging Black churches to become more active, getting the Black Press to devote more coverage to AIDS, and persuading national civil rights leaders to take a more active role in fighting the epidemic.

Happy birthday, Phill. I hope we meet some day. And I also hope you raise more money than you ever dreamed of.

HERE IS HOW TO DONATE TO THE BLACK AIDS INSTITUTE. If you make a donation, be sure to donate in Phill's name.

10 Yrs. Ago: The Scream.

April 25, 1996 is a vivid day for me. It was a landmark day. It was the day I lost it. As I had been hinting in the days leading up to April 25, 1996, the slow realization that I was totally and completely losing the battle -- like a frog in a pot of water about to hit boil -- all came to a loud, angry, out of control scream.

The person who got screamed at was Dr. Frank Jasper. Dr. Frank was this beautiful, gentle, kind man. He was an actor before he went into Chinese acupuncture, appearing as the muscle-bound bad guy in the movie "Vision Quest." To call him kind and gentle is to understate my absolute love for him. And the only reason I was able to undergo these treatments was because they were a life-saving gift from John Bettis. I have no doubt that these treatments played a part in keeping me alive up to this point.

So, I shocked myself when "the scream" came out. And it wasn't just an "all-purpose scream at the ceiling cry of desperation." No. This was pent-up frustration, shamefully aimed right at the most vulnerable and sweet person I could find: Dr. Frank.

The entry starts this way:

I was lying face up on Dr. Frank's table. I was thinking of what my friend (and Registered Nurse) Dennis had just told me not one hour earlier. Dennis hadn't seen me since the reading two months ago. He saw me as this walking skeleton and was horribly shocked when he saw me at the door. He said that if I did not do some kind of aggressive intervention to get some nutrition into my body, I would be dead soon.

Let's back up. "The Reading," mentioned in this entry was our first staged reading of "The Last Session" which was at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. On that night, I played the role of Gideon and it was a triumphant night, the full telling of which is for another entry. Suffice it to say that the diary began as a result of that night because I wanted to find a way to promote TLS and this new World Wide Web thingie seemed the perfect vehicle. Little did I realize, at the time, that I was making both medical history, technological and theatrical history. (It was the first website created for a show that made it to New York -- and that's including all the shows that were in New York at the time I started.)

Dennis was a great friend who, when I first went into the hospital in 1994, came into the room with all kinds of food and toys and a CD player. Dennis was the one who told me, on that first visit where I almost lost the battle, "If you die, a piece of me is going to die, too." Dennis and his partner, John, were the ones who loaned us the laser printer that we were using and which they now needed, which is why I was in Malibu at Dennis' house earlier that day. As I said, I hadn't seen Dennis in about two months.

When I walked in his door, the look on his Registered Nurse face was indescribable. It was as if I had just been in a car accident and was standing there covered in blood with an arm detached and an eye hanging out of its socket.

I looked at him, "What?"

"You have to do something now or you're going to be dead within weeks. Compared to how you looked two months ago, I can't believe you can even stand. Seriously. This is it. Steve, you're dying."

I remember being completely numbed by this news. I was a zombie driving in my car to Dr. Frank's office in Pacific Palisades. What could I do? Dennis is usually full of happytalk and Don't Worry About It and We'll Get Through This. I was speechless. I looked at my face in the rear view mirror. A skeleton with sunken eye sockets -- The Cryptkeeper -- was looking back.

I got to Dr. Frank's office. Dr. Frank's office is very calm and relaxed. I was in a state of panic. Dr. Frank's office has running water and soft music. My heart was playing Nine Inch Nails. I laid down on the bed. He pulled out his needles. He smiled calmly at me. A volcano was building up inside of me. He said casually, "So, what shall we do today." I hated him in that moment. I hated his beauty, his smile, his manner, his office, the sweet music, the gentle lights. His words were like hammers hitting nails into my head, "So what shall we do today?"

And that's when I screamed.

It wasn't just a scream, mind you. No, it was the man on death row cutting loose on the executioner one last time. Quoting from the diary:

"I'm sorry, Dr. Frank, but I'm lying here dying right in front of you and you're going to further my torture with your stupid painful needles that don't do me a bit good. You don't have the faintest idea of what's wrong with me and how to fix it, do you? You just go about your business doing the same damn thing you've done from the beginning.

I'm sure I also said, "So, do it! Torture me! Whatever the fuck you want. It's not going to help. You can't help me! All you can do is just torture me more and watch calmly as I die on this stupid table!"

I remember the hurt on his face. The tears that sprang into my eyes as I realized I was blaming him for everything and tearing him apart, word by word. I was enraged. I was mortified. I felt guilty as hell.

I had hit the wall.

From the diary:

Dr. Frank was very sympathetic and told me if I didn't want the acupuncture, I certainly didn't have to have it. I told him to please let's just do it. He inserted the needles, put on my favorite relaxing new age music and then put his hands on my head rubbing my temples and soothing me. I fell asleep and when I woke up, I felt a lot better, but even more determined to do something to get my life back.

I remember that moment. The lights were dim. I had done my scream. The earthquake was over. He stood behind my head, put his hands on my temples and softly, gently rubbed me until I fell unconscious. When I woke, the moment had passed. And as I noted there, the panic was over. It was time to do something. When I got home, I told Jim what had happened. Then I called Dennis:

Dennis went to work, made an appointment with a doctor, called home health care and tomorrow I am going to step up to the plate and aggressively do something. What I think we're going to do is to put me on TPN, intravenous nutrition. It will mean 4 weeks of being hooked up to a bottle with a PICC-line (a semi-permanent tube) inserted under my clavicle (more torture -- yeah!!), but at this point, it's a last resort I must accede to. Either I do this or I die.

TPN. "The last thing they give you before you die." That's how TPN had been described for me by another PWA. But it was time to examine all our options.

I knew I had one last shot at staying alive at least a little while longer and I was going to do it. Whatever it took. I was gonna try.

10 Yrs. Ago: Breaking the News to Friends

The April 24, 1996 entry is a day I remember vividly. It was a night at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for the ASCAP Film & TV Awards. This is a very glitzy annual event where ASCAP honors the composers of the biggest movies of the year and it's one I used to always enjoy. But the entry starts out:

I had to leave early last night before they even served the food. It was the ASCAP Film & TV Awards dinner honoring Randy Newman and all the movie composers of the biggest films of last year. I just wasn't feeling strong and I started getting a little sick, so I left.

I remember vividly feeling profoundly weak that night. I wanted so badly to be there, to pretend that I was getting better and to show my face, but I could barely hold myself up. I also had one of my first experiences with breaking the news to an old friend. Remember, in 1996, AIDS was an almost instant death sentence. The therapies we enjoy now were not on the market -- or, rather, they were mostly rumors and speculation. From the entry:

I saw Brock Walsh (Brock's claim to fame was that he co-wrote the song, "Automatic" for the Pointer Sisters and was the voice of Mac Tonight, the singing moon on the McDonalds' commercial, but his magical talent is lyric writing. He writes English words for many of the top Brazilian jazz artists and is a true poet, in my humble opinion).

Anyway, I mentioned my musical and when I said it was about my own experience with AIDS, he absolutely freaked. He hadn't heard, so there I am in a crowded room full of strangers in tuxes and gowns who are laughing and drinking -- and I'm yelling to be heard that I have AIDS, etc. etc. etc. Very surreal to say the least.

I was so unabashed about having AIDS. Unlike a lot of people who tested positive and got sick, and who hid it, I just was blaring it everywhere. Remember, this diary was one of the very first on the Internet written by someone with AIDS. To me, it felt like I was trumpeting it worldwide, but, in fact, with the Internet so new, not that many people were online.

I remember the look on Brock's face. It was like I had punched him in the stomach. Tears sprang into his eyes. This had happened once before, a couple of year earlier, and I recounted that event in this entry:

It was a couple of years ago at the NAS Salute to the American Songwriter. I was talking to my old friend, Tony Haynes (a lyricist and semi-mogul -- works for Warner Bros. now doing all the music for their animated series) in the lobby just before the big show. I off-handedly mentioned something about my health and he hadn't heard, either. So I told him and -- now get this, Tony Haynes is big brawny 6'5" tall black man with a patch over one eye -- a very imposing figure of a man. As soon as I told him I had AIDS a huge tear came to the one good eye and he had to go sit down on the steps.

That's when I knew that I should be very careful about how my friends find out. They love me and this is not the kind of news that anyone just says, "Oh well, good luck and did you see my last picture..."

Even to this day there are old friends who decide to suddenly do a search on my name and find out about my diagnosis for the first time. Just this past week it happened, an old friend who used to volunteer at NAS. Nowadays, though, they can read this blog and see that, while I have to fight the disease every day, at least I'm alive and kicking and thriving.

EDIT: Marie Cain says, "And Brock Walsh's brilliant lyrics for "Evolution" (music by Ivan Lins) ring all too true today. Here's just a sample:

We can travel to the planets
Drive a mile through solid granite
Thrive in all extremes of weather
Yet we cannot live together...
We have ventured
Where none have gone before us
But in matters fundamental
We are patterned on an old design
Welcome back, Tyrannosaurus
Evolution is a state of mind