“Don’t let yourself feel worthless: often through life you will really be at your worst when you seem to think best of yourself; and don’t worry about losing your “personality,†as you persist in calling it: at fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial warmth of 4 p.m.†– F. Scott Fitzgerald
For our last official interview session, he has invited me to witness the “sacred space†of getting ready for a big party. Only a few select people have been behind this curtain, and even Andy is not part of most of these intrigues. While he’s only recently been more vocal about his social anxiety when it comes to events large and small, it’s been with him all his life. He’s worked out various ways of dealing with it (a cocktail never hurts) and in the hours before heading out he has several methods of which we’ll try a smattering. First up, a showing of ‘Auntie Mame’ – no party he throws is complete without watching a few minutes of Rosalind Russell greeting her guests in the opening tableau. Her gift for gab and meaningless small talk, along with her carefree skills as hostess form the backbones of his cocktail persona. Second is Madonna. In the bathroom, she blares from the stereo speaker while Alan fixes his hair and makes his cologne selection.
In an impossibly-frilly satin robe, silver in color and accented by numerous sheer flowers in darker shades of silver and gray, he opens the glass door that leads to his pride and joy: an extensive collection of fragrances, anchored by the largest number of Tom Ford Private Blend bottles I’ve seen outside of Ford’s flagship Manhattan store. Even rarities like ‘Japon Noir’ and ‘Amber Absolute’ are here, along with recent offerings such as ‘Fougere D’Argent’ and ‘Fucking Fabulous’. It’s a cologne connoisseur’s dream featuring other houses as well: Byredo, By Kilian, Hermes, Diana Vreeland, Creed and Frederic Malle. For tonight’s event he chooses By Kilian, and the rum-accented ‘Straight to Heaven’, the name of which he quickly condemns. “How would I ever tell someone what I’m wearing?†he asks. “If it didn’t smell so heavenly I wouldn’t abide it, but it’s so good I couldn’t resist. And I suppose cheesy over-the-top nonsense is what I do best, so ‘Straight to Heaven’ it is!†With a dramatic flourish of the handsome black cologne bottle, he expertly lands a few spritzes at all the pulse points and caps it with a click. I giggle at the histrionics and he laughs at himself too.
Walking by me with a swish of his robe, he does smell damn good. “Pick out something to wear too!†he shouts over his shoulder before closing the door to his bedroom. The opening electronic strings to ‘Vogue’ sound as I peruse the olfactory riches on display, and for a moment I give in to the decadent indulgence on hand, losing myself in how pretty the world can be, and how gorgeously it can be scented. “When all else fails and you long to be something better than you are today… I know a place where you can get away…â€
I make my choice: ‘Vert D’Encens’ for its incense-like take on fall. A single spray on my wrist is all I need, or want, and I make my way out into the living room. Settling into the ornate conversation couch, I spy the ‘PVRTD’ project on the table before me. It looks smaller than expected. For something that contains such powerful images, it appears diminutive and harmless, with its elegantly-abstract cover and manageable size. Surrounded by beauty, and scented decadently by Tom Ford, I feel at odds with the pages I slowly thumb through, and the opening images of a snowy winter lend a sudden chill to the moment.
Though I’ve seen them already, the photographs draw me in again. ‘PVRTD’ is one of those rare works that gets better with repeated viewings. The subtlety lost on first glance returns with a resonant grace, while the overall arch of the piece comes into a more focused rendering. For all its referenced horrors, ‘PVRTD’ is very much a work of beauty – heartbreaking, harsh, atrocious beauty – and it encompasses the human spirit simultaneously at its best and worst.
Images that rekindle the holocaust, white supremacy, and prisoner abuse are etched into our minds, but they are fading. Someone growing up today doesn’t have the same visceral reaction to a hooded KKK figure or a burning cross. ‘PVRTD’ wants to jolt us into feeling that abhorrence, to shake us from the lethargy of apathy, stir up something inside each of us that we must never forget or allow to be dulled. Our complacency is our death. If it’s Ilagan’s most political project to date (there isn’t much competition) it also manages to steer clear of direct reference to current events, taking the past for its initial inspiration. That said and seen, it’s shocking how prescient it feels when one thinks about the state of the world right now. When framed with that, ‘PVRTD’ is almost perfectly, if diabolically, timed.
As Madonna fades into the background, and the distant rumble of drawers and closet doors being opened and closed sounds in muffled fashion, an eerie sense of being suddenly and unexpectedly alone begins to give unnerving apprehension to the images in my hands. On this cusp of day and night, when the inside and the outside light are a match and you’re not quite sure which will end up being brighter, I find myself in a disconcerting disposition. This, then, is the twilight.
Andy is out getting groceries, Alan is getting ready, and I sit upon the conversation couch sifting through the pages of PVRTD. An ancient folk song plays from a music box in some sorrowful minor key. At least I think it’s a music box. The raspy way it slows and repeats indicates some mechanized element; it sounds like the whole world is ticking slowly down to a standstill. A waltz picks up where it leaves off, some bit of Viennese elegance and enchantment, and I turn the pages of crumbled stone and snow, dust and ice and desiccated flowers gone to empty seed-heads. A world of ruin beautifully frozen in gradations of gray. Beauty’s where you find it…
The dichotomy of this – the conundrum of such hard reality and history in the face of such comfort and beauty – makes me wonder at the world. I know that these photographs are intended to inspire contemplation. Raised awareness. A reminder that these atrocities did occur, they did take place – this was all real. And it might be again.
The circle of gold-rimmed cocktail glasses sits atop a smoky mirror, surrounded by a border also gilded with gold. They are empty, and perhaps a little prettier because of it. They hold the emptiness of promise – the possibility of getting filled or getting left behind. We will not fill them tonight, but there will be other nights, at least I hope there will be, when company will regale itself with revelry and camaraderie. After all, what else is there besides company?
I think of the times we have spent together – all the moments, really. Once you make a friend of someone, they are with you forever, most of the time anyway. And if you’ve made a friend with yourself, well, that’s the best kind of friendship to have. If you can get on with yourself, you can get on with just about anybody.
I hear him in the distance.
A door opens and closes, and another one opens.
There are many doors in that little hallway of that little house.
Eventually I hear the rustle of his approach. I want to turn around and look, wondering what he or I may have chosen to wear on such a night. I wonder at what we wear on any given night. How silly and foolish and all-important it might be. Outside, the world has gone black. A lone light stands in the middle of the front yard. Is it safety? Is it warning? Does it welcome or does it repel? Oh what a world. What a wicked, wonderful, wayward world.
He rounds the corner of the couch, lifting the finery in which he is draped, and sits down gently beside me. Close and near, it feels as though our hearts beat as one. I place a hand on his leg out of reassurance, and friendship and, yes, love, and I feel it on my own leg. The finery surrounds me, and in such beauty and luxury there is comfort.
It is time to go. A party awaits. Andy is back and dressed, and I’m just about ready. As I search for the remote to turn the television off, I catch the last bit of a Lawrence Welk episode on PBS. The farewell song is playing – the song that once lulled me to sleep as my father would lift me up, carry me upstairs and tuck me in to bed: “Good night, sleep tight, and pleasant dreams to you, here’s a wish and a prayer that every dream comes true…”
Flinging a coat over my shoulder, I laugh. Half a guttural guffaw, and half a demonic squeal, all before Andy can hear and question my stability. The absurdity and sorrow is so much that all there is to do is laugh.
The song fades.
Silence, and then the static-like crackle of a distant fire, and a hissing that grows louder…
On the news, reports of a shooter in a synagogue are just trickling in. The gunman reportedly shouted out “All Jews must die†as he killed eleven people at a baby’s bris. Thirteen bombs have been sent to Democratic leaders and supporters who have opposed the current President. Two black people were killed at a Kentucky supermarket after the gunman tried getting into a predominantly black church.
The world burns, but oh how brilliantly it glows…
{See also Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 & Part 5.}
‘PVRTD’ will be released on The Projects page this month.
