Fucking Your Friends... or the gentle art of Sublimation

Been thinking a lot about your words about loving your friends. Just watched Milk and really wondering why, after all our progress and gains of freedom, equality, prosperity and better health, I have few if not none of those men in my life who can meld the emotional agape of friendship with the eros of passionate romantic and physical love!?

I wonder if that is gone or somehow trying to be reborn- or happening in some other places in the world. In American democracy, the more freedom usually equals a lowering of standards... sad but true. Honestly, when gay men had to hide in corners, closets, dark cafes- a la Oscar Wilde and the "deviants" in Wiemar Germany, they had to be so very smart to survive and I think that made them much more interesting and emotionally and intellectually diverse- more fun- and possessed of more substance. Perhaps this is a backward-looking fantasy. Oh for deviancy- with a tinge of conscience. And oh for what Richard Weaver calls "direct awareness" of others- being in relationship as you say- feeling that mysterious but powerful personal connection!

This why I think we need to keep the historical thread of transformation always in our minds as we do the more tangible and mundane work of film-making.

Happy day & much love- C