Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia — Page 2

I watched the 1.5 hour documentary the BBC produced about Hockney a couple of months ago. What struck me is how fresh his current work is but that, when he spoke, there was not the intellectual depth I might have expected. His gifts as an artist may be entirely instinctive rather than having been thought through at some level.

A relative of mine went to the same Methodist church in Bradford as Hockney when they were teenagers in the 1950s and she has a great story to tell about him. I've dined out on it a few times myself and I still intend to - invitations may be PM'd to me.

Not to be glibly reductive (and ageist), but: yes, it's tough to get older. That's the subtext, screaming. The culture and indeed the world change, as do priorities.

Updated On: 5/19/15 at 11:33 AM

Right up until he drank drain cleaner in a drug-induced fit, how he lived! But I'm sure he wasn't being bohemian correctly.

Updated On: 5/19/15 at 11:42 AM

Bohemia is a phallicy in your head.

^This. There's far too much emphasis/importance/value placed on "being different." How's about just being yourself?

I don't see that darguegk. The ins and outs of Bohemian vogue aren't taking their cues from hiv. And the orgy never stopped... it just went - to a large extent - digital.... or at least digitally mastered.

Updated On: 5/22/15 at 03:48 PM

I would argue Hockney's definition of "ordinary." I find having a spouse and kids and a backyard and a grill and a dog and a mortgage rather extraordinary. He's out of bounds judging others by his own experiences and interests. If by "Bohemian" he means sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, that's still going on, even in the suburbs. He must be looking in the wrong places or not looking at all.

Sometimes your opinions make me want to puke but my gerd does not need that right now.

From 1981 on I had it up to here with reformed whores who settled down after having their fill.

Thanks, Wilmington!

Thanks!

Guess you just had to be there when a lot of panicky first post-Stonewall generation gay men explained that "everybody" already had their fill and sewed their wild oats and now "everybody" was settling down as the AIDS epidemic hit. There was always, and there is in Galveston's post, an air of being "beyond all that" and it's completely invisibilizing to people who opt NOT to live according to mainstream stricture. Of course, you've never been anywhere, 'band, even though you claim to have been everywhere, including my classroom.

Thanks again, Wilmington.

It's remarkable that you as a writer seem surprised that readers form understandings of where you're coming from over time. For example, when you post a message directed at me that approximates a civil tone, it's as if you're not the person who called me "asswipe," "dumbass," and "old," as if that was some sort of insult. It's as if I am not supposed to factor in the context that you are the person who attempted to publicly identify me on the board and made threats about my employer.

This is all doubly ironic since you collect injustices more than a gluten-intolerant disabled lesbian music festival attendee. It's triply ironic that SouthFlorida, of all people, seems to have the memory of a gold fish and doesn't mind the fact that you went after him and after him and after him and after him for something only you seemed upset about.

Similarly, I've read enough of Galveston to know what bugs me about what he writes, and like you, what that is is utterly consistent.

None of this will change anything. You will continue to exult in your petty little victories of spite and the world will only spin forward.

Thanks again, Wilmington.

Updated On: 5/22/15 at 02:12 PM