Yesterday I had a great day. After sharing at a 7:30 am meeting about my smoking woes and recommended some Nicotines’ Anonymous meetings, I took a long walk in Runyon Canyon Park and then did this and that until the early afternoon, when I met one of my oldest and dearest friends, Michael, visiting from New York. Michael is a very talented artist (do check out his political portraits at his website, michaelstewartfineart.com.), who has embarked on a new project of doing portraits of “real” people who have successfully weathered a great crisis of some sort. He takes pictures of them from which he will paint a portrait, which will be accompanied by audio from interviews he has conducted with them. He has chosen me as one of his subjects.
So we spent the afternoon taking pictures, and taping my story in bits of pieces, going up to Griffith Park to do so. Some of the photos looked pretty good, and we got a few usable sound bites as well. Afterwards I showed him around this part of town, then he took me to a Mexican restaurant for dinner, where we saw a girl throw up on the patio from too many margheritas (reminding me of why drinking is in my past.) Then I took him to a open AA meeting (he is a “normie” who gets sleepy after two glasses of wine) that he found very instructive and at times moving.
It was also helpful to be out of the house most of the day, for reasons that may seem a bit mysterious but can be inferred.
Today I will continue with this same strategy, as much as possible.
Michael is leaving this morning to drive across the country with a friend returning with him to New York. He and I have been buddies for 25 years, and it was simply wonderful to reconnect. He’d last visited during my active addiction, and had been quite concerned. It was great to feel us back in the same comfortable groove. We also share the dubious distinction of being the surviving duo of a large circle of friends who were killed by AIDS in the 80s and 90s (7 in one awful 14-month period, in fact, including Michael’s lover of 10 years). It’s sort of difficult to say we were the “lucky” ones under such circumstances. But as artists both who have something to say, perhaps our survival can at least mean something.
MCO 2005
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