I went for a long walk today, to take advantage of the rare sunny sky. And because I just wanted a think. So I popped on some Rufus Wainwright and walked out. Rufus really is quite good isn’t he (even if you hav to look up a lot of things to understand some of the lyrics).
So one of his songs, Barcelona, is about his fear of the AIDS epidemic which was occuring all around him at the time. He quotes an opera Macbeth, where he sees the ghost of Duncan and is terrified, saying ‘fuggi, regal fantasima’- begone regal ghost, the ghost in Rufus’ song being AIDS.
And I got to thinking about AIDS, it’s something which is unbelievable, it’s like something out of a science fiction book, something which is transmitted through contacts we generally view as sinful (shooting up/sex), and destroys the body’s ability to defend itself.
Im sure it’s the unbelievable nature of it, and the fact that we associate it as punishment almost, for having an addiction, or being lustfull, or (in some people’s mind), punishment for being gay, that has kept it from being something not a lot of us know much about. And if we did know, wouldn’t we be all the more afraid of it.
I know it’s idiotic to attempt to write a serious blog post as a 17 year old, but I need to purge some thoughts.
The summer sun set a vicious circus
When shadows held the world in place
But today i felt a chill in my apartment’s coolest place
Fuggi regal fantasima
