Paul Attinello

Category: AIDS/HIV

  • W.A.D.

    —

    by

    paulattinello
    in

    Today is World AIDS Day, 2008. Our local march and event, at the grand local concert hall, the Sage Gateshead, won't however be until Saturday, December 6th. Therefore, even though I'm emcee again, I haven't written a speech yet… I looked at my last four years of speeches, though (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007) and thought:…

  • Ostern in Stuttgart (I)

    —

    by

    paulattinello
    in , ,

    [March 19-23, 2008] Winterschnee (Wednesday) Snow is forecast, although it is Easter weekend (admittedly a very early Easter, tribute to the peculiarly arcane calculations the Church goes through to establish the date – look it up some time, the formula is nothing short of bizarre); and here it is – rich, heavy snow, very wet,…

  • Making oneself crazy

    —

    by

    paulattinello
    in , ,

    … or should that be: making one’s self crazy?… In the interstices of watching these films, and scanning Joyce’s thesis so I can report on it (the airplane and hotel for her defense in Paris are already organized – which reminds me: I also need to buy a flight to Washington to attend my eldest…

  • Les nuits fauves

    —

    by

    paulattinello
    in ,

    I’ll admit it: Savage Nights (Les nuits fauves), Cyril Collard’s famous 1992 film about being bisexual, HIV+, and careless – by which I mean: really fucking careless: having sex with someone without telling them – is at least as exasperating as it is impressive. Does that make me a fuddy-duddy?… Lots of drama about rebellion…

  • The tough stuff

    —

    by

    paulattinello
    in ,

    I am watching AIDS films, while working on the book about music and AIDS: this may be the toughest material to pay attention to – most of the songs I will write about later are much shorter than the films, except of course the musicals, which are in their turn more artificial and therefore (mostly)…

  • Witness

    —

    by

    paulattinello
    in

    [Speech for World AIDS Day, 2007] Today is the twentieth World AIDS Day; the first was held in 1988, after the UN named December first as our day to remember, witness, and celebrate the lives of people with HIV and AIDS. Of course, every year World AIDS Day has a theme; this year it’s a…

  • W.A.D.

    —

    by

    paulattinello
    in

    Happy World AIDS Day. Merry World AIDS Day…? Have a very merry, holly jolly World AIDS Day? – hmm doesn’t quite work, does it. We definitely need a different way of talking about our holidays. I am, as anyone might have expected, still fussing over my unwritten speech for today. I was first asked to…

  • A puzzlement

    —

    by

    paulattinello
    in ,

    I’ve realized something a bit peculiar about the London responses to my presentation about music and AIDS. One of the questions – really a sweeping statement – was from someone who said they had a friend who hadn’t liked to tell people he was HIV+. (Amusingly, I could figure out from his elaborate circumlocutions that…

  • Signs

    —

    by

    paulattinello
    in , ,

    [Los Angeles, 1992] The session chair is standing, the first paper is over, and through a long wave of applause intended for someone else I move through a labyrinth of aisles towards the stage. I’m wearing khakis, emblematic of the Eastern aristocracy, the conservative controllers who went to school with me; shoes beige and just…

  • On the second day of Christmas…

    —

    by

    paulattinello
    in ,

    December 26, 1995 – San Francisco This evening something rather unexpected happened… I had been exchanging gifts at the largest department store in San Francisco (you’d think Lars would know that I wear a medium shirt by now), and dragged home, fairly tired, on the subway. My regular train didn’t come, so I took one…