Conversation Transcript
Chris & Animal
13th December 2023
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
years, surviving, write, day, questions, research, life, endeavour, people, tumblr, unearth, dispatches, art, survive, call, fuck, event, find, echoes
SPEAKERS
Animal (80%), Chris (20%)
Animal
Okay, Mr. So let’s have at it. What is on the agenda?
Chris
I think that’s pretty open. I think it would be interesting to try and make a bridge between 1997 and 2001. Maybe not comprehensively. I think we have quite a lot of written information and artefacts from Burn the Quilt and 1997. Obviously huge amounts missing. But I think from that kind of written correspondence, we have quite a lot of information. And I've read the Dispatches two or three times, and I have been thinking about those. I feel like I know that particular account quite well. There were a few early questions that I put down about moving to New York, and how the work shifted or changed in those first years in New York, because there's a slight gap in the narrative. That could help. Maybe it's interesting to try to locate where you were at just before you wrote the Dispatches, so that we kind of place you in time. I think that for me, that’s the kind of area of information that’s missing. And in this strange way, at the moment, I’m a bit more curious to know that, before knowing what happened after, from 2002 onwards, after the Dispatches had stopped, which is obviously very intriguing, but I think to know what was happening with your work there, what the art scene was like in New York at that time — these kinds of questions — who you are connecting with there ... There’s also the story of the night at The LURE. But, I’m most curious about the reasons for the move, and how you found shifting there from San Francisco. You’d been in San Francisco for quite a while at that point. What happened? Or what were your feelings about that move, relating to the Animal Ensemble and how you were performing? Maybe that’s the place to begin. We could focus on that today. And then we could have another call about the blast afterwards. Or write about that. You know, I think that 2001 is trickier content, or trickier memories, to deal with, so I think we could also talk about how you want to tackle them, or how you want to go into them rather than just diving straight into that kind of hard memory.
Animal
I hear you, and the process — you have instinctually sussed out a questioning cadence and style that is helping me unearth (things). It’s an extra tool on this archaeological expedition. That is, it’s coming in quite handy. The way I’m finding, within your feed, guidance toward being able to unearth things that I had forgotten about, or that had been out of sequence, or that had somehow shifted to the fringes, or that perhaps I had put on the fringes for various reasons. And so I think that we should continue to march along that path. I favour of more direct approach. If I can’t be bold for myself, to coin a phrase, how can I be bold for others? Or how can I be bold on stage? No. You got to keep it authentic. So to that end, let’s honour that in the process. And I like the approach you're taking. It is systematic, and you’re the conductor of this research. And I would like to find a way at some point between now and a year from now, to give life to that image of me as research subject under this gigantic microscope, that is looming at me. And perhaps there’s a telescope there too. And a sextant, with the sharp point pointed directly at my skull, you know that all these (imitates strange scientific noises)? As if I didn’t like attention or being centred on stage! So, lots of stuff to work through there. But yeah, I have to be fearless. And I will endeavour to be less than comprehensive.
Chris
I agree, totally. But, I’m putting on the table that I don’t know everything, right? I don’t know what particular memories or moments are more traumatic, or maybe have triggered certain things. And I’m aware that sometimes some of the material might take more fearlessness. And it’s totally okay to say: “Hey, I don’t really want to, I don’t have the energy to do that today, or now — or, let’s come back to this memory at a different time.” I don’t need to know everything or to unwittingly make you have an uncomfortable time. That’s really not my wish. Just to say that and put that there. I will try to be careful and respectful in asking the questions, but also I might not be aware of everything. It’s really helpful if you’re honest back to me and say: “This one, I just don’t really want to go into, and I don’t really want to talk about this relationship with somebody because it’s just not a good relationship ...” You can leave it and that’s it, that’s fine. Please don't feel like I need to dig at everything.
Animal
Right. You know, I think perhaps the objective here is not to have an authoritative compendium of every bit of every step of my life, during this time, but to get a sense of where my head and heart were as well as my physical presence. And it is — you are treating the subject matter and me with extreme gentleness, and I feel as if your instincts, I want to affirm them and validate them. You’re handling me in just the right ways. And I think that’s part of your nature both as an artist and as a human being based on what I have seen and heard. So that’s one of the reasons why I trust you guys. Why I trust you in particular, because after all, you’re the one who got in my head. But, you know, meeting Asan was just like — was an easy energy. Very nice. You have put in place, I think, effective guardrails over the first five, going on six, weeks of our walk down the road together. And I think I find them effective. But I, for my part, am doing likewise. I am setting filters, I think, at appropriate thresholds for what I pipe back to you. Because, you know, there are a lot of reasons for that. But there’s just my own …. Conceal more than you reveal, from time to time. A little mystery is nice. That comes from my Aunt Helen. And which I’ve used to great advantage in my walk up and down Folsom Street over the years. And everything comes back to this by the way, everything relates that — Animal was born from leather. And you know, it is still the the lifeblood of everything I do in art. So I am putting the guardrails up on my own because I don't want to blow out anybody's circuits. Plus, there are things when you belong to this particular fraternity or sorority club, to which no one ever wants to belong or apply, that club of people who have been part of the generational epochal worldwide disastrous events, calamities. There’s kind of an understanding that there are parts of our experience that we must permanently embargo. Because for whatever reason, we were fated to see and hear and smell and taste and experience, what it was we saw, which by definition, is outside the bounds of what the human eye and ear and heart and mind and brain and spirit and body were meant to be able to process. Yet, somehow we endure. That is for us to keep. That is our dark treasure. That is also something that no one else can ever touch. It can’t be taken and manipulated as propaganda. It can’t be violated and commercialised and mimeographed and sold on the fringes in the borders of what was Ground Zero. It cannot be unearthed while we’re still alive or extracted or extruded from us, by archaeologists or sensationalist nonfictional-ist writers, who want to exploit that sacred space, you know. That is ours. There are things that we do not ever say out loud to ourselves. There are doubtless, I can remember doing it, there are doubtless many parts of it, that I put in a lockbox deep, deep, deep in the base of my medulla oblongata. Where I absolutely can never access it. Because it was just too horrible. That is that, and that is all that I want to say to the world about that. That's ours. No one else will ever have that. No one else will ever use that. That is ours and we know it. We share it among ourselves and when we die the memories of that day will be gone from the Earth along with us. And good riddance to them. Until then, I'm Cerberus, I am the three headed slavering beast, stationed at the corner of Church and Liberty streets, eternally keeping watch and saying: “You do not fuck with my people. You do not fuck with my survivor family. You will never … I will tear your soul to shreds before you can lay a finger on this holy place.” So there you have it.
And that’s why this is hard sometimes, you know. There’s no 9/11 Survivor Alumni Association that I’m aware of. There’s The Families, and that’s with the initial caps, capital T capital F — The Families — that is to say those who lost direct family members in the event. In The Event. In the fucking horrific mass murder and slaughter, the equivalent of Srebrenica. Except in our face. Yeah, boy, sometimes it flares up. With that I lost my train of thought … But it was about The Fellowship. The Families. Every member of The Families is invited to the New York City memorial on the anniversary every year. One of those people is a friend of ours. I don’t know him well, we see each other once every couple years, you know, when they swing through the city they live in. They live out in the East Bay. He’s absolutely sanguine about it. And I don’t mean cold, I don’t mean detached. I mean, it just seems to flow from him along with the rest of his natural warm spirit. And I look at that, and I do not know ... He knows we share an overlap in The Fellowship. But I mean, he is in the orbit of concentric circles emanating from that event. He is right on top of that nucleus. I am several orbits out. Right. So there is a hierarchy. I’ve written about it, but there is that hierarchy. And, you know, we know our place. I defer to him. And it is for that reason, I don’t pry and ask him about his process, or how he has been able … because we've known him since 2009. And even that, you know, only eight years, and I say only eight because it’s one of those things that stays present with you for many years in a very vivid way. It folds time, it warps time upon itself. He was just the same way. There is something ineffable to me about that. And thatÄs what I strive for. As we go through this process together, and as my own healing has only been moderately complete since the 20th anniversary. And it wasn’t actually on the anniversary. The 20th anniversary day, I thought I was actually going to die. It was horrible. I mean, I thought I was going to have a heart attack or stroke or something like that. It was something else. And I remember in the throes of that, because you know this was in the heat of the PTSD episode that I’d been deliberately triggered into, I remember watching the green rendering video, the green tint of the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan of the First Cavalry, last ones out of there. And then next, I don’t know if it happened that same moment, but I remember watching President Biden address the nation saying: “The 9/11 era is over. The 9/11 wars are done.” And, I began to weep. Later on that sofa right there, you know, I’m just on my side, just paralysed with everything. And I believed him. That was the first time I had really believed anything any president had to say about 9/11. And at that moment, things began to change. I was no longer tormented and angry, and lashing out at those who defiled, you know, the Alex Joneses of the world, the Inside Job people, the never ending parade of 2 billion internet trolls, who are several generations into the art, and who exist in the ether solely to inflict emotional distress upon humankind. There’s an offer in there somewhere. And things began to turn. And then, of course, you know, my husband was diagnosed with throat cancer on the 29th of March, last year, 2022. So, that kind of took precedence in my mind for a while. But by the time the anniversary rolls around, I was actually making content. I was interacting on Twitter. I serialised The Dispatches, and posted them in a series on my on my main feed. And I think one of the tweets, one of them got 35 … No, it was a comment I made on a thread about the falling man. I think you know the image, and how that was systematically eliminated from the record, in a memory hole kind of way, and I made a comment, reply tweet, just saying the assistant coroner for the city of New York was quoted in The Daily News in the New York Times as saying most of those people will — no remains will ever be found. They were pulverised in the collapse of the floors in the towers. They are, there is, nothing left. And condemnation rained down upon that department and that individual so quickly and so heavily that it was immediately redacted. And I have not been able to find any written reference to it since, but damn it, I read it! There were people who legitimately thought I was psychotic when I was trapped here, stranded in the immediate aftermath, and the couple of years following, in San Francisco, and I would say: “You know, we were breathing their cremated remains.” And they would just look at me and go: “Are you off your meds? Are you on meds, because you should be?!” And then that was validated in about 2005, 2006 when I read a detective novel, I think I wrote you about this. It’s a mystery by a writer named Carol Lea Benjamin, who is one of … It’s a dog mystery. One of the ways I healed especially during the time of my first marriage after 2004 — 2007, was I dove into easy-to-digest cosies, cat cosies, The Cat Who … and every dog mystery I could find. And there was, there was ... keep hold on to the thread here ...
Chris
Ah, so she (Carol Lea Benjamin) was a detective?
Animal
She had a Jack Russell, a diabetes assistant dog. And this book was called The Fall Guy and the title ended up referring to not just the season, and not just the person who takes the blame in the colloquial sense, but also the people who fell from the World Trade Centre. It was set in lower Manhattan, in streets with which I was intimately familiar. And, she wrote: “We carry those people with us. We breathed them for months, weeks and months. After then we could taste them in our mouths.” I’ll have to dig out that quote for you, too. So, you know, those are the kinds of things that we all have to contend with. And getting back to the Twitter engagement thing. That’s what I wrote about, the repression of that piece of news, and that fact. And I think that tweet got something like 25,000 hits, which, you know, I have a 600 follower account, right. It’s a niche kind of thing. I do much better on Tumblr, and my jokes on Reddit, one of them got 350,000 hits. So, you know, what the hell. When my family groans at the the brilliant puns I roll out on a daily basis. I say: “They love it, look on Reddit, look, I'm a hit!”I hope this is useful. That’s when I began to heal. After we got, you know, that was the anniversary. And then this year, I think the milestone from this year was that Tumblr, ROFL, web thing I sent? Do you recall?
Chris
Yes, I do.
Animal
Yes. That has more than 110,000 re-blogs on Tumblr. 100,000 of them since I made that edition in, I think, August. And I had no idea I was going to write anything like that when I started typing. I’m thinking: “Is this wise, Animal? Are you sure? Are you sure?” And then I took that left turn in the middle. My contract services are available for acting, coaching, for roleplay. You know, if you really want to be in the moment, give me a call, I have reasonable and pleasant rates. And you know, special rates for sodomisers, or something like that, and — the world blew up! And, you know, especially in the past few months, when things have gotten really intense, I’ll go into Tumblr, I’ll bring that post up, I’ll look, because it’s still getting circulated. It’s still getting comments. And I just look, and I go, you know, there are times when I hit exactly the right note, not only in life, but about this event that irrevocably altered my life. I am not at peace. That’s not a concept I deal with, I don’t dig that at all. I don’t understand. What I am, increasingly, is in balance. I am full. I am alive. That particular phrase “I am alive” is very significant. And we’ll go into that at appropriate point.
So, let me pause here and let you react to all of that.
Chris
Well, I think it’s fascinating. I wasn’t really going to jump to those questions, but ... I think it would refer to The Dispatches, andfrom around the time that I had the call with Drew. Aslan and I were walking and talking about this research project, kind of more broadly. They were asking me questions about it and we were talking about this notion of surviving, or survival. Because, I was trying to think about the research, and ask: What is it trying to find out? I think on one level, we could say, there’s a simple inquiry — just getting to know you and your life. And that’s important in and of itself, artistically, and for me, but also as a kind of thematic reason — what’s inside that? What’s driving that as well? I think these questions about survival are often there, and what we’re looking into in different artworks and the things we choose to read and research. It’s interesting to hear you talk about it, and how long it takes, or has taken, to be back in balance. I guess my questions that I was putting together the other day from The Dispatches were thinking a little bit about how the experiences of surviving the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s, and surviving 9/11 relate to each other, or compound each other, or are very different experiences? Also, whether there’s something to do with — which is a speculation, I suppose — but one thing we were saying is that the reality of surviving is not actually a comfortable thing. Although films tell us that. Everything is focused on being a winner. This is a very popular kind of trope. But the reality of surviving is not like this Hollywood winning. I wondered a lot whether, in your life, you survived two very huge things quite close together in time. And whether this difficulty of surviving related to your time away from art, this 20 years? It’s very interesting that you said today that there was some peace after the last soldier left Afghanistan, because I also wondered if this continuation of 9/11 in a kind of retribution affected your recovery? I'm really not trying to simplify it or make a theory. I’m just curious about — in the end for audiences, or in communicating as an artwork — What does surviving really, really mean? Or, what do you do after you have survived? This is a very interesting question for me.
Animal
Right. You know, Chris, you just nailed it, in several spots with that. And, as you’re speaking, I’m looking at the questions document on the Google Drive, under the heading Questions About Surviving Again. I read those earlier today, and I'm thinking — Wow, okay, let's grapple with these. You know, it doesn't seem like 22 years have passed. And that’s an important thing about this intervening time — I love that phrase from Shakespeare in Hamlet. Hamlet says: “Time is out of joint.” My sense of time was concussed by the impact of that event for years afterward. I didn’t have a sense of social chronological distance. I would, from time to time, inappropriately reach out to people I had known in school, or life, as long as 17 to 18 years past, 5, 6, 7 years past, not realising that they had forgotten who I was. It hadn’t even occurred to me. My executive function was in tatters. When you get down to what are you going to put in your body every day to make sure you don't die of AIDS wasting, every damn hour, for years on end. It kind of puts a blunt — it takes a sledgehammer to your social skills, and your ability to just socialise, to relate in the ways of daily living. It’s the inverse of “a rising tide lifts all boats”. When the plug is pulled, and you’re circling the drain, I gotta tell you that ain’t no boats going to get a foothold, they’re all going down that drain together. And everybody who was on the lip of the basin and looking down at you and laughing, knows it. And then at the bottom, you’ll look and say this is going to be a hell of a long goddam climb back up. I wonder if I have enough years left on earth to make it worthwhile? Or even if you can count it. Now, I think of these things on my 40th birthday, right? Because this happened, this happened when I was 39 years, six months and 39 years, five months, 11 days old. And —
Chris
I'm sorry to interrupt — The Dispatches go to shortly before your birthday?
Animal
I think the last entry is Martin Luther King Day, 2002. And my birthday is March 30th. Van Gogh and I, we share a birthday. Van Gogh and I. Eric Clapton too, but he’s a priceless bastard. So I disregard that one. To answer your question — Yeah, surviving ain’t pretty. I very nearly didn’t. There was one point in particular, only one, when I voiced out loud the words: “I want to kill myself.” It was after I had been chased out of my San Francisco sanctuary, by a guy who is one of my dearest friends now, I might add. And back to New York City — destitute, broke, homeless, sick. And it was was early September. It was the first week of September 2003. I’d gone up to see my former HIV doctor. And we were in a high rise at Mount Sinai, 96 and 1st. It was in an examination reading window. And it was me and one of the young technicians that was there, just getting my vitals and stuff. And she had her back to me, looking at some paperwork from across the room. And I asked: “Okay, did you get my viral load?” And she said: “Yes.” She said: “It’s greater than 75,000.” “How much greater?” “Well, that’s as high as it goes on this test.” A week earlier, I had been undetectable. And I just looked down, and I said: “I want to kill myself.” Now, she could have turned around and called and had me committed to the psych ward that minute. She was in fact kind of obligated to. But without turning around, she said to me: “Oh, please don’t do that, Mr. Smith. We need your testimony.” And it was moments like that. And then the memory of moments like that, that were my anchor points and the launching pads from swinging from vine to vine in the years of survival. Yeah, one might say that I’m still doing it. And the journey perhaps ... Perhaps the journey should never be completed, because it keeps constantly going forward and up.
About surviving — I relate it (9/11) to my surviving of AIDS. Although I have not explicitly done so, there are doubtless parallels. Both were sudden, both were unexpected. Only one was perhaps inevitable.
I was able to survive AIDS and continue to do so. Through the tender ministrations of Glaxo Smith, pearls welcome. God bless Pfizer. The city where I grew up, Groton, Connecticut, is the home of the Charles H Pfizer pharmaceutical plant. When I was a small boy, at four o'clock every day, this horrible sulphurous smell would waft over the citizenry of Groton, and I remember my mother saying to me one afternoon: “You smell that Joey? That's bacitracin!” Antibiotic. Oh, and my Uncle Bob worked there and okay, he retired a rich man by the viagra millionaires back home. So, you know, we’ve got the submarine factory. It’s a very phallic part of New England. Florida’s got nothing on us! Do I relate it to surviving with AIDS? ... I think the long term survival skills I’d begun to hone — because keep in mind that this was exactly five years out of my nearly dying of AIDS wasting syndrome, in 1996. It was medical cannabis that saved my life. And which, you know, continues to do so. I mean, my wasting syndrome is crying. That’s why I’m just so gaunt. I’ve lost, I think I’ve sacrificed about 40 pounds, overall of what I should be packing to that thing. But right now I’m in a running of about 185, 187. It’s the best weight I’ve been in years, probably it’s equivalent to the high of my post 9/11 weight. And I haven’t even gotten back into the gym yet, that’s gonna happen in January. So you know, I mean, it’s constantly forwarding. The skills that I had begun to develop in those five years of living with AIDS, with these horrible first generation medications that left us disfigured and caused liver problems, and oh man, the daily nausea from this shit. It was like chugging turpentine, a lot of it. But we did it and it worked like gangbusters, and, you know, just scarred and gaunt. And everything else. We’re still here. I continue to survive. And I think at this point, I think that sense of resilience, that undertone of, you know, I beat one goddamn death sentence, I’m going to beat this motherfucking anvil that was dropped on me as well. And I don’t care how long it takes. I had intended to have it take maybe two or three years at most. And that’s not the way it worked out. I am angry about that. I strive not to cultivate bitterness about that. But I am wholeheartedly pissed to wake up and find myself an old man with old man problems and diseases. For a guy who is going to be 62 in March, I think I'm doing well. My labs are great. My numbers are great. If I could quit injuring myself for five minutes, it would be, I'd be, everything’s on track. However, I am very, very angry. I’m angry at myself about my lack of resilience. Now, that’s not the right word. Because resilience is something that’s evident, you know, it’s not something: “Today I will be resilient!” Well, I’m resilient when I get out of bed and manage not to scream at the pain in my back. That’s resilience. That’s smart. It’s perseverance, it’s stubbornness, it’s being gnarly. It’s refusal to give the fuck up. And I refused to give up on my career. I refuse to give up on the vision that I had when I started out on this path in 1990 by leaving the legit theatre, where I had been doing very well as an actor in film, going up for film and TV projects. I was fine. I was 24 years old, and I walked straight to the top, and working my damn fool ass off to get there. But other things took precedence. And I was determined to honour the vision that I had as far back as 1986, when I sat looking at that great suspension bridge, across Narragansett Bay, Newport, Rhode Island, looking up to that bridge, and say unto my baby self: “I have a vision, I don’t have no idea what the fuck it is, but it’s there. And I have to honour it. And I’m not honouring it by staying here and doing this.” And I got on the flight and came West and my life was transformed. I am still committed to that. I, you know, I periodically look back at parts of my life. I have a phrase: “I stand here and look there, I see I’m there and look here.” And if I can say I am well pleased with my life, then that’s an affirmation, but if I stand here and look there, and I go, you know, this should not have gone that way, this should have taken a different direction, then there are things that are left unresolved. And like an unresolved cadence or an unfinished song, I am on that quest to redeem that, to complete that, to check it off. Because a part that is rogue in the orchestration can ruin the whole piece. If I can do without it, great. Spare is sometimes better. But if it needs to be reckoned with, then I will reckon with it, And I am reckoning with these past 22 years of survival. Not by faith, but by sight, this is not of me. This is of the forces that bore me up. Though I am a dog I am less than that. I am weak, I am at my weakest. And it is only when I am at my weakest that I am humble enough to submit to the leanings of the universe and get with the goddam programme. That’s how I survive. I do not subscribe to the notion of having to drive oneself to rock bottom time after time in order to purify or cleanse or expiate. I cannot imagine deliberately making a wrong or bad decision in the course of these years. I think that’s human nature. I stand here and look there and I mourn the loss of opportunity. I mourn the loss of the body of work I might have to wield now. I mourn the life that I had constructed for myself in my mind’s eye and heart and as I mourn it I push the Shift Delete and send it, you know, blistering into the ether, atomized forever, unreconstitutable, because that's been done, that never was, that is as dead as yesterday’s limp iced tea. I mean, there is no punch in that, there is no sense in looking at that, because here we are in the reality, in the now. My time is synchronised. I am no longer out of joint. The temperature of your narrator is 98.6 degrees, let’s kick some ass! Let's fucking go! And so, I hope in that semi-lyrical way, there was enough actual research material in there to answer your question ...
I am so grateful to so many. Lincoln — my beloved, my master, my boy, my beautiful precious boy, the love of my life, my husband, the darling of my heart. For whom I would do anything. If he came to me one day and said to me: “Joe, I want you to stop doing what you’re doing with the boys in Berlin.” We would talk, but if that is what was best for his life and heart I would stop without hesitation. As precious as this is to me. That is, because for the past — he met me on my 40th birthday here on Folsom Street at 2am, the same day after, I picked him up outside of My Place Leather Bar on Folsom Street. And we went back to my little cubby where I was crashing at Mike Salinas’s house. And we had a very sweet time. And then, about six weeks later, I’m with a friend from New York, here in my apartment. Just shooting the shit. And I get a call and it’s Lincoln Anderson. Oh, yeah. Okay, well, hello. And we have a brief chat. “I just wanted to follow up with you and, and see how things are going in your life.” “How lovely, thank you so much. Let’s get together again soon.” And I click off, and I look up at my friend whose jaw is dropped. And I go: “You know, there are times in hook-up culture when you actually meet a really cool human being.” And one thing led to another. And he actually collared me. He flipped the script on me. Because I was giving him canine roleplay training back in 2003. I’ll never forget. And I was off guard for one minute. And he took advantage of that. And he does have — boom! (knocks over drink). This is why we have lids. I have 37 inch arms. I should have been an orangutan. And we do not have freestanding sculpture in this house. Because I will inevitably send it flying! ... He used exactly the right trigger in the play context to take advantage. And all of a sudden I was his dog. And that’s the way it's been for going on 21 years. And then I went off and married the wrong guy back East and when that collapsed and burned as it should, we came back here. And in 2009 we moved in together, resolving not to get married again. Divorce. Divorce lawyers cost money kids! And finally, after 14 years of shacking up and living in sin, he made an honest mutt out of me. And I got him to the altar of San Francisco City Hall, posing for the picture in front of the statue of Harvey Milk. And we tied the knot on March 29, which is the day before my 60th birthday. And the first anniversary of his cancer diagnosis, which he beat like a fucking tin drum. Well, I am so proud of my brave boy. And it is for him. He is delighted that we are doing this. So that’s why I endeavour to keep the customer satisfied. You know, as long as we get his blessing, we’re fine with everything. But the point of all this is that Lincoln, more than anyone else, has healed me. 13, 14, 15 years and longer of my endless bullshit — of the years when I would wake up every morning to visions of the rubble and the smoking remains, the towers in flames, that I could not dispel. I could not press escape and dismiss that screensaver, relentlessly. He put up with all the manifestations of the PTSD, every damn thing I put him through and he did not leave me, he did not abandon me. And the thought last year, the terror last year, that after all of that I finally had the way to, finally was healed enough to pay him back, and then having him taken from me — that wasn't going to happen! And, you know, I cherish him. He healed me. If I have to credit one individual more than anyone else on earth, for the fact that I'm still here. It's him.
Chris
It’s really interesting that you met him on your 40th birthday. I didn’t realise it was at that point. I thought it was later.
Animal
My 40th birthday. And just something to remember that. I tell people online from time to time. I tell people I see online, when friends and acquaintances say: “Oh my gosh, I'm 30, I’m 29, I’m 30, I’m 35 and I’ll never find anybody and I’ll never have no love or happiness to have the kind of life I look for …” And I pipe up, and I say: “Hey kid. I’ve been with my master for going on 15 years and 24/7 we do this, and we did not find each other until I was 47. He was 45. Don’t ever give up.” And the responses are positive. You know, the good things happen late in life. And tying this back into our research — Good things happen late in life. I have had the privilege of having viable careers and interests and callings and talents to various extents. In any number of areas. In radio, in voiceover, in music and in performance and singing and art and in technology. In tattooing, in the world of kink. I'm a co-founder of Pup Play, for Christ’s sake. I am the second person on record to have done it. I know, because I did the research myself under the aegis of the nation’s leading kink historian who specialises in this subject. And it concurs with the findings of the published research, peer reviewed research of the University of Bristol. I mean, you know, the Brits do this right there. I have more pot friends and kink friends in London and Manchester, and surroundings than I have here! It’s a better class of people!
So, I mean, I’ve been so privileged to have this wild, fucking rich, beautiful life. Incredible. So like, you know, what Zelig or whatever, whoever it was, he just found himself in the middle of all of these meaningful events and circles at the core. And then … What am I going to do with this treasure? I’m going to make art out of it. I’m going to tell people about it because it’s too freakin’ precious. It’s too hysterical. It’s too vibrant, it’s too full of life, to hold on to. That is why I’m attacking this with gusto. That is why I do not want to contain this boundless performative energy, this act of survival that you and I are engaged in right now. Because you have chosen to make this one of your works for 2024. This is a milestone for me, in my return to performing under the rubric of Animal J. Smith, performance artist and composer. And the extent that we are successful in this endeavour, will, I think, affect how bountifully we survive going forward after this. Right? So I couch it that way. Perhaps it’s a little melodramatic. But it’s because if the stakes are high for the participants, that imbues it with a low heat urgency, there’s an oxymoron for you, low key urgency. That even though we have months ahead of us ... there's still that impetus impelling us and certainly making sure that I don’t slack off, or forget, and keeping me on my toes. That is why there has to be, for me, whatever form this takes, some sort of live performative element in the execution of the maiden voyage of this work ... And, you know what, to iterate the first sounds and images and animation of this, to give life to this, I feel the need to be. And as I say that, I say okay, yeah, certainly there’s a lot of what the self wants in there, and what the performer wants in there. But also, as I alluded to, in my communication with you and Aslan, the notes I sent, is that the work wants it. In order to give it blood, hot blood, animation, breath and the spirit and the aqua vitae and everything we want to make. I am not a shrinking violet, and visual echoes of me can be wonderful. But if there’s no flesh and blood at the centre, it’s gonna collapse, it’s artificial, it shatters in the first stiff wind. I want to build to last. And the challenge here formally, is building something that will last in any number of iterations, sequences communications, for every module added or subtracted, that adds or subtracts the number of potential iterations and sends out another through line of performative descendants, if you will, or performative echoes and octaves out from us with a different configuration. The key I’m saying, I use the outer-space metaphor — I’m thinking these rays like that clipping of the cosmic rock that came down to us, and God knows we’re just ... you know, it was a big deal. It’s musical in its structure. It is poetic. It is lyrical. And that’s a challenge. How do we build something? How do we build a structure that is inherently modulor, that is inherently changeable? That is, by its nature, always changing? How do we build that to last? What makes it evergreen? Why are we still humming? (Sing lyrics from a folk song). So why are we still singing that after a century and a half? Or however long it’s been? And why do we still echo the ancient shapes and the ancient melodies of our liturgies and rituals and and the things we vocalise. It’s being able to isolate that and bottle it and sell it, that’s the key to making work that lasts. I want to make work that lasts. I want my work to last longer than World Trade Centre did. I mean, you want a benchmark, there it is, buddy.
Okay, Mr. So let’s have at it. What is on the agenda?
Chris
I think that’s pretty open. I think it would be interesting to try and make a bridge between 1997 and 2001. Maybe not comprehensively. I think we have quite a lot of written information and artefacts from Burn the Quilt and 1997. Obviously huge amounts missing. But I think from that kind of written correspondence, we have quite a lot of information. And I've read the Dispatches two or three times, and I have been thinking about those. I feel like I know that particular account quite well. There were a few early questions that I put down about moving to New York, and how the work shifted or changed in those first years in New York, because there's a slight gap in the narrative. That could help. Maybe it's interesting to try to locate where you were at just before you wrote the Dispatches, so that we kind of place you in time. I think that for me, that’s the kind of area of information that’s missing. And in this strange way, at the moment, I’m a bit more curious to know that, before knowing what happened after, from 2002 onwards, after the Dispatches had stopped, which is obviously very intriguing, but I think to know what was happening with your work there, what the art scene was like in New York at that time — these kinds of questions — who you are connecting with there ... There’s also the story of the night at The LURE. But, I’m most curious about the reasons for the move, and how you found shifting there from San Francisco. You’d been in San Francisco for quite a while at that point. What happened? Or what were your feelings about that move, relating to the Animal Ensemble and how you were performing? Maybe that’s the place to begin. We could focus on that today. And then we could have another call about the blast afterwards. Or write about that. You know, I think that 2001 is trickier content, or trickier memories, to deal with, so I think we could also talk about how you want to tackle them, or how you want to go into them rather than just diving straight into that kind of hard memory.
Animal
I hear you, and the process — you have instinctually sussed out a questioning cadence and style that is helping me unearth (things). It’s an extra tool on this archaeological expedition. That is, it’s coming in quite handy. The way I’m finding, within your feed, guidance toward being able to unearth things that I had forgotten about, or that had been out of sequence, or that had somehow shifted to the fringes, or that perhaps I had put on the fringes for various reasons. And so I think that we should continue to march along that path. I favour of more direct approach. If I can’t be bold for myself, to coin a phrase, how can I be bold for others? Or how can I be bold on stage? No. You got to keep it authentic. So to that end, let’s honour that in the process. And I like the approach you're taking. It is systematic, and you’re the conductor of this research. And I would like to find a way at some point between now and a year from now, to give life to that image of me as research subject under this gigantic microscope, that is looming at me. And perhaps there’s a telescope there too. And a sextant, with the sharp point pointed directly at my skull, you know that all these (imitates strange scientific noises)? As if I didn’t like attention or being centred on stage! So, lots of stuff to work through there. But yeah, I have to be fearless. And I will endeavour to be less than comprehensive.
Chris
I agree, totally. But, I’m putting on the table that I don’t know everything, right? I don’t know what particular memories or moments are more traumatic, or maybe have triggered certain things. And I’m aware that sometimes some of the material might take more fearlessness. And it’s totally okay to say: “Hey, I don’t really want to, I don’t have the energy to do that today, or now — or, let’s come back to this memory at a different time.” I don’t need to know everything or to unwittingly make you have an uncomfortable time. That’s really not my wish. Just to say that and put that there. I will try to be careful and respectful in asking the questions, but also I might not be aware of everything. It’s really helpful if you’re honest back to me and say: “This one, I just don’t really want to go into, and I don’t really want to talk about this relationship with somebody because it’s just not a good relationship ...” You can leave it and that’s it, that’s fine. Please don't feel like I need to dig at everything.
Animal
Right. You know, I think perhaps the objective here is not to have an authoritative compendium of every bit of every step of my life, during this time, but to get a sense of where my head and heart were as well as my physical presence. And it is — you are treating the subject matter and me with extreme gentleness, and I feel as if your instincts, I want to affirm them and validate them. You’re handling me in just the right ways. And I think that’s part of your nature both as an artist and as a human being based on what I have seen and heard. So that’s one of the reasons why I trust you guys. Why I trust you in particular, because after all, you’re the one who got in my head. But, you know, meeting Asan was just like — was an easy energy. Very nice. You have put in place, I think, effective guardrails over the first five, going on six, weeks of our walk down the road together. And I think I find them effective. But I, for my part, am doing likewise. I am setting filters, I think, at appropriate thresholds for what I pipe back to you. Because, you know, there are a lot of reasons for that. But there’s just my own …. Conceal more than you reveal, from time to time. A little mystery is nice. That comes from my Aunt Helen. And which I’ve used to great advantage in my walk up and down Folsom Street over the years. And everything comes back to this by the way, everything relates that — Animal was born from leather. And you know, it is still the the lifeblood of everything I do in art. So I am putting the guardrails up on my own because I don't want to blow out anybody's circuits. Plus, there are things when you belong to this particular fraternity or sorority club, to which no one ever wants to belong or apply, that club of people who have been part of the generational epochal worldwide disastrous events, calamities. There’s kind of an understanding that there are parts of our experience that we must permanently embargo. Because for whatever reason, we were fated to see and hear and smell and taste and experience, what it was we saw, which by definition, is outside the bounds of what the human eye and ear and heart and mind and brain and spirit and body were meant to be able to process. Yet, somehow we endure. That is for us to keep. That is our dark treasure. That is also something that no one else can ever touch. It can’t be taken and manipulated as propaganda. It can’t be violated and commercialised and mimeographed and sold on the fringes in the borders of what was Ground Zero. It cannot be unearthed while we’re still alive or extracted or extruded from us, by archaeologists or sensationalist nonfictional-ist writers, who want to exploit that sacred space, you know. That is ours. There are things that we do not ever say out loud to ourselves. There are doubtless, I can remember doing it, there are doubtless many parts of it, that I put in a lockbox deep, deep, deep in the base of my medulla oblongata. Where I absolutely can never access it. Because it was just too horrible. That is that, and that is all that I want to say to the world about that. That's ours. No one else will ever have that. No one else will ever use that. That is ours and we know it. We share it among ourselves and when we die the memories of that day will be gone from the Earth along with us. And good riddance to them. Until then, I'm Cerberus, I am the three headed slavering beast, stationed at the corner of Church and Liberty streets, eternally keeping watch and saying: “You do not fuck with my people. You do not fuck with my survivor family. You will never … I will tear your soul to shreds before you can lay a finger on this holy place.” So there you have it.
And that’s why this is hard sometimes, you know. There’s no 9/11 Survivor Alumni Association that I’m aware of. There’s The Families, and that’s with the initial caps, capital T capital F — The Families — that is to say those who lost direct family members in the event. In The Event. In the fucking horrific mass murder and slaughter, the equivalent of Srebrenica. Except in our face. Yeah, boy, sometimes it flares up. With that I lost my train of thought … But it was about The Fellowship. The Families. Every member of The Families is invited to the New York City memorial on the anniversary every year. One of those people is a friend of ours. I don’t know him well, we see each other once every couple years, you know, when they swing through the city they live in. They live out in the East Bay. He’s absolutely sanguine about it. And I don’t mean cold, I don’t mean detached. I mean, it just seems to flow from him along with the rest of his natural warm spirit. And I look at that, and I do not know ... He knows we share an overlap in The Fellowship. But I mean, he is in the orbit of concentric circles emanating from that event. He is right on top of that nucleus. I am several orbits out. Right. So there is a hierarchy. I’ve written about it, but there is that hierarchy. And, you know, we know our place. I defer to him. And it is for that reason, I don’t pry and ask him about his process, or how he has been able … because we've known him since 2009. And even that, you know, only eight years, and I say only eight because it’s one of those things that stays present with you for many years in a very vivid way. It folds time, it warps time upon itself. He was just the same way. There is something ineffable to me about that. And thatÄs what I strive for. As we go through this process together, and as my own healing has only been moderately complete since the 20th anniversary. And it wasn’t actually on the anniversary. The 20th anniversary day, I thought I was actually going to die. It was horrible. I mean, I thought I was going to have a heart attack or stroke or something like that. It was something else. And I remember in the throes of that, because you know this was in the heat of the PTSD episode that I’d been deliberately triggered into, I remember watching the green rendering video, the green tint of the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan of the First Cavalry, last ones out of there. And then next, I don’t know if it happened that same moment, but I remember watching President Biden address the nation saying: “The 9/11 era is over. The 9/11 wars are done.” And, I began to weep. Later on that sofa right there, you know, I’m just on my side, just paralysed with everything. And I believed him. That was the first time I had really believed anything any president had to say about 9/11. And at that moment, things began to change. I was no longer tormented and angry, and lashing out at those who defiled, you know, the Alex Joneses of the world, the Inside Job people, the never ending parade of 2 billion internet trolls, who are several generations into the art, and who exist in the ether solely to inflict emotional distress upon humankind. There’s an offer in there somewhere. And things began to turn. And then, of course, you know, my husband was diagnosed with throat cancer on the 29th of March, last year, 2022. So, that kind of took precedence in my mind for a while. But by the time the anniversary rolls around, I was actually making content. I was interacting on Twitter. I serialised The Dispatches, and posted them in a series on my on my main feed. And I think one of the tweets, one of them got 35 … No, it was a comment I made on a thread about the falling man. I think you know the image, and how that was systematically eliminated from the record, in a memory hole kind of way, and I made a comment, reply tweet, just saying the assistant coroner for the city of New York was quoted in The Daily News in the New York Times as saying most of those people will — no remains will ever be found. They were pulverised in the collapse of the floors in the towers. They are, there is, nothing left. And condemnation rained down upon that department and that individual so quickly and so heavily that it was immediately redacted. And I have not been able to find any written reference to it since, but damn it, I read it! There were people who legitimately thought I was psychotic when I was trapped here, stranded in the immediate aftermath, and the couple of years following, in San Francisco, and I would say: “You know, we were breathing their cremated remains.” And they would just look at me and go: “Are you off your meds? Are you on meds, because you should be?!” And then that was validated in about 2005, 2006 when I read a detective novel, I think I wrote you about this. It’s a mystery by a writer named Carol Lea Benjamin, who is one of … It’s a dog mystery. One of the ways I healed especially during the time of my first marriage after 2004 — 2007, was I dove into easy-to-digest cosies, cat cosies, The Cat Who … and every dog mystery I could find. And there was, there was ... keep hold on to the thread here ...
Chris
Ah, so she (Carol Lea Benjamin) was a detective?
Animal
She had a Jack Russell, a diabetes assistant dog. And this book was called The Fall Guy and the title ended up referring to not just the season, and not just the person who takes the blame in the colloquial sense, but also the people who fell from the World Trade Centre. It was set in lower Manhattan, in streets with which I was intimately familiar. And, she wrote: “We carry those people with us. We breathed them for months, weeks and months. After then we could taste them in our mouths.” I’ll have to dig out that quote for you, too. So, you know, those are the kinds of things that we all have to contend with. And getting back to the Twitter engagement thing. That’s what I wrote about, the repression of that piece of news, and that fact. And I think that tweet got something like 25,000 hits, which, you know, I have a 600 follower account, right. It’s a niche kind of thing. I do much better on Tumblr, and my jokes on Reddit, one of them got 350,000 hits. So, you know, what the hell. When my family groans at the the brilliant puns I roll out on a daily basis. I say: “They love it, look on Reddit, look, I'm a hit!”I hope this is useful. That’s when I began to heal. After we got, you know, that was the anniversary. And then this year, I think the milestone from this year was that Tumblr, ROFL, web thing I sent? Do you recall?
Chris
Yes, I do.
Animal
Yes. That has more than 110,000 re-blogs on Tumblr. 100,000 of them since I made that edition in, I think, August. And I had no idea I was going to write anything like that when I started typing. I’m thinking: “Is this wise, Animal? Are you sure? Are you sure?” And then I took that left turn in the middle. My contract services are available for acting, coaching, for roleplay. You know, if you really want to be in the moment, give me a call, I have reasonable and pleasant rates. And you know, special rates for sodomisers, or something like that, and — the world blew up! And, you know, especially in the past few months, when things have gotten really intense, I’ll go into Tumblr, I’ll bring that post up, I’ll look, because it’s still getting circulated. It’s still getting comments. And I just look, and I go, you know, there are times when I hit exactly the right note, not only in life, but about this event that irrevocably altered my life. I am not at peace. That’s not a concept I deal with, I don’t dig that at all. I don’t understand. What I am, increasingly, is in balance. I am full. I am alive. That particular phrase “I am alive” is very significant. And we’ll go into that at appropriate point.
So, let me pause here and let you react to all of that.
Chris
Well, I think it’s fascinating. I wasn’t really going to jump to those questions, but ... I think it would refer to The Dispatches, andfrom around the time that I had the call with Drew. Aslan and I were walking and talking about this research project, kind of more broadly. They were asking me questions about it and we were talking about this notion of surviving, or survival. Because, I was trying to think about the research, and ask: What is it trying to find out? I think on one level, we could say, there’s a simple inquiry — just getting to know you and your life. And that’s important in and of itself, artistically, and for me, but also as a kind of thematic reason — what’s inside that? What’s driving that as well? I think these questions about survival are often there, and what we’re looking into in different artworks and the things we choose to read and research. It’s interesting to hear you talk about it, and how long it takes, or has taken, to be back in balance. I guess my questions that I was putting together the other day from The Dispatches were thinking a little bit about how the experiences of surviving the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s, and surviving 9/11 relate to each other, or compound each other, or are very different experiences? Also, whether there’s something to do with — which is a speculation, I suppose — but one thing we were saying is that the reality of surviving is not actually a comfortable thing. Although films tell us that. Everything is focused on being a winner. This is a very popular kind of trope. But the reality of surviving is not like this Hollywood winning. I wondered a lot whether, in your life, you survived two very huge things quite close together in time. And whether this difficulty of surviving related to your time away from art, this 20 years? It’s very interesting that you said today that there was some peace after the last soldier left Afghanistan, because I also wondered if this continuation of 9/11 in a kind of retribution affected your recovery? I'm really not trying to simplify it or make a theory. I’m just curious about — in the end for audiences, or in communicating as an artwork — What does surviving really, really mean? Or, what do you do after you have survived? This is a very interesting question for me.
Animal
Right. You know, Chris, you just nailed it, in several spots with that. And, as you’re speaking, I’m looking at the questions document on the Google Drive, under the heading Questions About Surviving Again. I read those earlier today, and I'm thinking — Wow, okay, let's grapple with these. You know, it doesn't seem like 22 years have passed. And that’s an important thing about this intervening time — I love that phrase from Shakespeare in Hamlet. Hamlet says: “Time is out of joint.” My sense of time was concussed by the impact of that event for years afterward. I didn’t have a sense of social chronological distance. I would, from time to time, inappropriately reach out to people I had known in school, or life, as long as 17 to 18 years past, 5, 6, 7 years past, not realising that they had forgotten who I was. It hadn’t even occurred to me. My executive function was in tatters. When you get down to what are you going to put in your body every day to make sure you don't die of AIDS wasting, every damn hour, for years on end. It kind of puts a blunt — it takes a sledgehammer to your social skills, and your ability to just socialise, to relate in the ways of daily living. It’s the inverse of “a rising tide lifts all boats”. When the plug is pulled, and you’re circling the drain, I gotta tell you that ain’t no boats going to get a foothold, they’re all going down that drain together. And everybody who was on the lip of the basin and looking down at you and laughing, knows it. And then at the bottom, you’ll look and say this is going to be a hell of a long goddam climb back up. I wonder if I have enough years left on earth to make it worthwhile? Or even if you can count it. Now, I think of these things on my 40th birthday, right? Because this happened, this happened when I was 39 years, six months and 39 years, five months, 11 days old. And —
Chris
I'm sorry to interrupt — The Dispatches go to shortly before your birthday?
Animal
I think the last entry is Martin Luther King Day, 2002. And my birthday is March 30th. Van Gogh and I, we share a birthday. Van Gogh and I. Eric Clapton too, but he’s a priceless bastard. So I disregard that one. To answer your question — Yeah, surviving ain’t pretty. I very nearly didn’t. There was one point in particular, only one, when I voiced out loud the words: “I want to kill myself.” It was after I had been chased out of my San Francisco sanctuary, by a guy who is one of my dearest friends now, I might add. And back to New York City — destitute, broke, homeless, sick. And it was was early September. It was the first week of September 2003. I’d gone up to see my former HIV doctor. And we were in a high rise at Mount Sinai, 96 and 1st. It was in an examination reading window. And it was me and one of the young technicians that was there, just getting my vitals and stuff. And she had her back to me, looking at some paperwork from across the room. And I asked: “Okay, did you get my viral load?” And she said: “Yes.” She said: “It’s greater than 75,000.” “How much greater?” “Well, that’s as high as it goes on this test.” A week earlier, I had been undetectable. And I just looked down, and I said: “I want to kill myself.” Now, she could have turned around and called and had me committed to the psych ward that minute. She was in fact kind of obligated to. But without turning around, she said to me: “Oh, please don’t do that, Mr. Smith. We need your testimony.” And it was moments like that. And then the memory of moments like that, that were my anchor points and the launching pads from swinging from vine to vine in the years of survival. Yeah, one might say that I’m still doing it. And the journey perhaps ... Perhaps the journey should never be completed, because it keeps constantly going forward and up.
About surviving — I relate it (9/11) to my surviving of AIDS. Although I have not explicitly done so, there are doubtless parallels. Both were sudden, both were unexpected. Only one was perhaps inevitable.
I was able to survive AIDS and continue to do so. Through the tender ministrations of Glaxo Smith, pearls welcome. God bless Pfizer. The city where I grew up, Groton, Connecticut, is the home of the Charles H Pfizer pharmaceutical plant. When I was a small boy, at four o'clock every day, this horrible sulphurous smell would waft over the citizenry of Groton, and I remember my mother saying to me one afternoon: “You smell that Joey? That's bacitracin!” Antibiotic. Oh, and my Uncle Bob worked there and okay, he retired a rich man by the viagra millionaires back home. So, you know, we’ve got the submarine factory. It’s a very phallic part of New England. Florida’s got nothing on us! Do I relate it to surviving with AIDS? ... I think the long term survival skills I’d begun to hone — because keep in mind that this was exactly five years out of my nearly dying of AIDS wasting syndrome, in 1996. It was medical cannabis that saved my life. And which, you know, continues to do so. I mean, my wasting syndrome is crying. That’s why I’m just so gaunt. I’ve lost, I think I’ve sacrificed about 40 pounds, overall of what I should be packing to that thing. But right now I’m in a running of about 185, 187. It’s the best weight I’ve been in years, probably it’s equivalent to the high of my post 9/11 weight. And I haven’t even gotten back into the gym yet, that’s gonna happen in January. So you know, I mean, it’s constantly forwarding. The skills that I had begun to develop in those five years of living with AIDS, with these horrible first generation medications that left us disfigured and caused liver problems, and oh man, the daily nausea from this shit. It was like chugging turpentine, a lot of it. But we did it and it worked like gangbusters, and, you know, just scarred and gaunt. And everything else. We’re still here. I continue to survive. And I think at this point, I think that sense of resilience, that undertone of, you know, I beat one goddamn death sentence, I’m going to beat this motherfucking anvil that was dropped on me as well. And I don’t care how long it takes. I had intended to have it take maybe two or three years at most. And that’s not the way it worked out. I am angry about that. I strive not to cultivate bitterness about that. But I am wholeheartedly pissed to wake up and find myself an old man with old man problems and diseases. For a guy who is going to be 62 in March, I think I'm doing well. My labs are great. My numbers are great. If I could quit injuring myself for five minutes, it would be, I'd be, everything’s on track. However, I am very, very angry. I’m angry at myself about my lack of resilience. Now, that’s not the right word. Because resilience is something that’s evident, you know, it’s not something: “Today I will be resilient!” Well, I’m resilient when I get out of bed and manage not to scream at the pain in my back. That’s resilience. That’s smart. It’s perseverance, it’s stubbornness, it’s being gnarly. It’s refusal to give the fuck up. And I refused to give up on my career. I refuse to give up on the vision that I had when I started out on this path in 1990 by leaving the legit theatre, where I had been doing very well as an actor in film, going up for film and TV projects. I was fine. I was 24 years old, and I walked straight to the top, and working my damn fool ass off to get there. But other things took precedence. And I was determined to honour the vision that I had as far back as 1986, when I sat looking at that great suspension bridge, across Narragansett Bay, Newport, Rhode Island, looking up to that bridge, and say unto my baby self: “I have a vision, I don’t have no idea what the fuck it is, but it’s there. And I have to honour it. And I’m not honouring it by staying here and doing this.” And I got on the flight and came West and my life was transformed. I am still committed to that. I, you know, I periodically look back at parts of my life. I have a phrase: “I stand here and look there, I see I’m there and look here.” And if I can say I am well pleased with my life, then that’s an affirmation, but if I stand here and look there, and I go, you know, this should not have gone that way, this should have taken a different direction, then there are things that are left unresolved. And like an unresolved cadence or an unfinished song, I am on that quest to redeem that, to complete that, to check it off. Because a part that is rogue in the orchestration can ruin the whole piece. If I can do without it, great. Spare is sometimes better. But if it needs to be reckoned with, then I will reckon with it, And I am reckoning with these past 22 years of survival. Not by faith, but by sight, this is not of me. This is of the forces that bore me up. Though I am a dog I am less than that. I am weak, I am at my weakest. And it is only when I am at my weakest that I am humble enough to submit to the leanings of the universe and get with the goddam programme. That’s how I survive. I do not subscribe to the notion of having to drive oneself to rock bottom time after time in order to purify or cleanse or expiate. I cannot imagine deliberately making a wrong or bad decision in the course of these years. I think that’s human nature. I stand here and look there and I mourn the loss of opportunity. I mourn the loss of the body of work I might have to wield now. I mourn the life that I had constructed for myself in my mind’s eye and heart and as I mourn it I push the Shift Delete and send it, you know, blistering into the ether, atomized forever, unreconstitutable, because that's been done, that never was, that is as dead as yesterday’s limp iced tea. I mean, there is no punch in that, there is no sense in looking at that, because here we are in the reality, in the now. My time is synchronised. I am no longer out of joint. The temperature of your narrator is 98.6 degrees, let’s kick some ass! Let's fucking go! And so, I hope in that semi-lyrical way, there was enough actual research material in there to answer your question ...
I am so grateful to so many. Lincoln — my beloved, my master, my boy, my beautiful precious boy, the love of my life, my husband, the darling of my heart. For whom I would do anything. If he came to me one day and said to me: “Joe, I want you to stop doing what you’re doing with the boys in Berlin.” We would talk, but if that is what was best for his life and heart I would stop without hesitation. As precious as this is to me. That is, because for the past — he met me on my 40th birthday here on Folsom Street at 2am, the same day after, I picked him up outside of My Place Leather Bar on Folsom Street. And we went back to my little cubby where I was crashing at Mike Salinas’s house. And we had a very sweet time. And then, about six weeks later, I’m with a friend from New York, here in my apartment. Just shooting the shit. And I get a call and it’s Lincoln Anderson. Oh, yeah. Okay, well, hello. And we have a brief chat. “I just wanted to follow up with you and, and see how things are going in your life.” “How lovely, thank you so much. Let’s get together again soon.” And I click off, and I look up at my friend whose jaw is dropped. And I go: “You know, there are times in hook-up culture when you actually meet a really cool human being.” And one thing led to another. And he actually collared me. He flipped the script on me. Because I was giving him canine roleplay training back in 2003. I’ll never forget. And I was off guard for one minute. And he took advantage of that. And he does have — boom! (knocks over drink). This is why we have lids. I have 37 inch arms. I should have been an orangutan. And we do not have freestanding sculpture in this house. Because I will inevitably send it flying! ... He used exactly the right trigger in the play context to take advantage. And all of a sudden I was his dog. And that’s the way it's been for going on 21 years. And then I went off and married the wrong guy back East and when that collapsed and burned as it should, we came back here. And in 2009 we moved in together, resolving not to get married again. Divorce. Divorce lawyers cost money kids! And finally, after 14 years of shacking up and living in sin, he made an honest mutt out of me. And I got him to the altar of San Francisco City Hall, posing for the picture in front of the statue of Harvey Milk. And we tied the knot on March 29, which is the day before my 60th birthday. And the first anniversary of his cancer diagnosis, which he beat like a fucking tin drum. Well, I am so proud of my brave boy. And it is for him. He is delighted that we are doing this. So that’s why I endeavour to keep the customer satisfied. You know, as long as we get his blessing, we’re fine with everything. But the point of all this is that Lincoln, more than anyone else, has healed me. 13, 14, 15 years and longer of my endless bullshit — of the years when I would wake up every morning to visions of the rubble and the smoking remains, the towers in flames, that I could not dispel. I could not press escape and dismiss that screensaver, relentlessly. He put up with all the manifestations of the PTSD, every damn thing I put him through and he did not leave me, he did not abandon me. And the thought last year, the terror last year, that after all of that I finally had the way to, finally was healed enough to pay him back, and then having him taken from me — that wasn't going to happen! And, you know, I cherish him. He healed me. If I have to credit one individual more than anyone else on earth, for the fact that I'm still here. It's him.
Chris
It’s really interesting that you met him on your 40th birthday. I didn’t realise it was at that point. I thought it was later.
Animal
My 40th birthday. And just something to remember that. I tell people online from time to time. I tell people I see online, when friends and acquaintances say: “Oh my gosh, I'm 30, I’m 29, I’m 30, I’m 35 and I’ll never find anybody and I’ll never have no love or happiness to have the kind of life I look for …” And I pipe up, and I say: “Hey kid. I’ve been with my master for going on 15 years and 24/7 we do this, and we did not find each other until I was 47. He was 45. Don’t ever give up.” And the responses are positive. You know, the good things happen late in life. And tying this back into our research — Good things happen late in life. I have had the privilege of having viable careers and interests and callings and talents to various extents. In any number of areas. In radio, in voiceover, in music and in performance and singing and art and in technology. In tattooing, in the world of kink. I'm a co-founder of Pup Play, for Christ’s sake. I am the second person on record to have done it. I know, because I did the research myself under the aegis of the nation’s leading kink historian who specialises in this subject. And it concurs with the findings of the published research, peer reviewed research of the University of Bristol. I mean, you know, the Brits do this right there. I have more pot friends and kink friends in London and Manchester, and surroundings than I have here! It’s a better class of people!
So, I mean, I’ve been so privileged to have this wild, fucking rich, beautiful life. Incredible. So like, you know, what Zelig or whatever, whoever it was, he just found himself in the middle of all of these meaningful events and circles at the core. And then … What am I going to do with this treasure? I’m going to make art out of it. I’m going to tell people about it because it’s too freakin’ precious. It’s too hysterical. It’s too vibrant, it’s too full of life, to hold on to. That is why I’m attacking this with gusto. That is why I do not want to contain this boundless performative energy, this act of survival that you and I are engaged in right now. Because you have chosen to make this one of your works for 2024. This is a milestone for me, in my return to performing under the rubric of Animal J. Smith, performance artist and composer. And the extent that we are successful in this endeavour, will, I think, affect how bountifully we survive going forward after this. Right? So I couch it that way. Perhaps it’s a little melodramatic. But it’s because if the stakes are high for the participants, that imbues it with a low heat urgency, there’s an oxymoron for you, low key urgency. That even though we have months ahead of us ... there's still that impetus impelling us and certainly making sure that I don’t slack off, or forget, and keeping me on my toes. That is why there has to be, for me, whatever form this takes, some sort of live performative element in the execution of the maiden voyage of this work ... And, you know what, to iterate the first sounds and images and animation of this, to give life to this, I feel the need to be. And as I say that, I say okay, yeah, certainly there’s a lot of what the self wants in there, and what the performer wants in there. But also, as I alluded to, in my communication with you and Aslan, the notes I sent, is that the work wants it. In order to give it blood, hot blood, animation, breath and the spirit and the aqua vitae and everything we want to make. I am not a shrinking violet, and visual echoes of me can be wonderful. But if there’s no flesh and blood at the centre, it’s gonna collapse, it’s artificial, it shatters in the first stiff wind. I want to build to last. And the challenge here formally, is building something that will last in any number of iterations, sequences communications, for every module added or subtracted, that adds or subtracts the number of potential iterations and sends out another through line of performative descendants, if you will, or performative echoes and octaves out from us with a different configuration. The key I’m saying, I use the outer-space metaphor — I’m thinking these rays like that clipping of the cosmic rock that came down to us, and God knows we’re just ... you know, it was a big deal. It’s musical in its structure. It is poetic. It is lyrical. And that’s a challenge. How do we build something? How do we build a structure that is inherently modulor, that is inherently changeable? That is, by its nature, always changing? How do we build that to last? What makes it evergreen? Why are we still humming? (Sing lyrics from a folk song). So why are we still singing that after a century and a half? Or however long it’s been? And why do we still echo the ancient shapes and the ancient melodies of our liturgies and rituals and and the things we vocalise. It’s being able to isolate that and bottle it and sell it, that’s the key to making work that lasts. I want to make work that lasts. I want my work to last longer than World Trade Centre did. I mean, you want a benchmark, there it is, buddy.