In the Shadow of the American Dream
Page 27
Anyway, I’ll see this psychic next week. Who knows, maybe I can release some of my state of mind and get some relief. Death is nothing more than relief. That’s what informs my desire to die when I feel most strongly about suicide. I’ll give this guy a handful of sessions and see where it goes. I feel interested to try but also somewhere in my head I wonder at whether another human can actually touch me deeply as I seem to need at this point in my life.
Except for phone logs and lists of things to do, this seems to be the last diary entry. In December 1991, David got sick and was hospitalized for one month. He was bedridden until July 22, 1992, when he died in his loft on Second Avenue and Twelfth Street.
About the Author
David Wojnarowicz was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, in 1954, and first gained notice in New York’s East Village art scene in the 1970s. He rose to fame for his exceptional range, intelligence, and passion, and by the 1980s had become one of the most provocative artists of his generation. In the years before his death in 1992 from AIDS-related complications, he worked tirelessly as an AIDS activist and anticensorship advocate.
In 1985, Wojnarowicz brought his fight for freedom of expression to the case of David Wojnarowicz v. American Family Association, in which Donald E. Wildmon claimed that Wojnarowicz’s work was pornographic and undermined family values. Wojnarowicz won and was awarded a symbolic dollar. He was thrust back into the spotlight in 2010, at the center of a censorship battle over the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. In 2012, Cynthia Carr published the critically acclaimed biography Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 1999 by the estate of David Wojnarowicz
Cover design by Mauricio Diaz
Cover image © 2014 Andreas Sterzing (David Wojnarowicz, 1983)
ISBN: 978-1-4804-8960-8
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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