I come from a rich family of grief, criers & sexual & emotional failure.
There isn't a better lover on the block: sexually dynamite, his moustache.
One evening at home we three roomates watched midnight t.v.
This was San Francisco, 1976. Memory was very real and present.
Every year after 1977, in August, on the 19th we would celebrate Brad.
When the telephone rang you never knew what would be the next catastrophe.
Men, women, boys & girls; puppy dogs kittens and cats loved this catastrophe.
Of the three of us, Sally was perhaps the only one who was not a failure.
Geof would often remind himself that love had everything to do about Brad.
He was involved: involved with the sacred geometry of Brad's moustache.
Roxie Music on the turntable. Failure, happiness, harmony were not present
In our lives. We struggled to remember we had purpose: a role in a movie or on t.v.
"I don't care what you want, I want you out of the house" screams the t.v.
"We've a lesson to learn". We've a few good crys before real catastrophe
hits us with the truth: Brad wasn't who he said he was. He was never present
long enough to share even the simplest of moments. a real Failure
a jerk, a blockhead a fuckin angel dust direlect with a brunette smile & moustache.
we went on loving him, loving him for years loving him loving Brad.
bryan ferry has the voice of a magician of a saint of a god said Brad.
living on Clipper Street in 1976 and 1977 was like being in a show on t.v.
it isn't so much remembering the wetness of his tongue and nibbling his moustache
as it is trying to imagine all the others eating away at him: shadowy catastrophes
lurking in the near future: dead bodies, dust, muggings, & the great failure
of love and loving. gnawing away at my memories today in the present.
Sally escaped intact. When the stabilizing element was no longer present
the entire Jules & Jim lifestyle in reverse crumbled. prevented from loving Brad
by the memories of having known him: does the past always come off as a failure?
Single-minded. careless. giddy and hermetic: that's the kind of t.v.
I'd like to see. Brad in some starring role of Love in the Age of Catastrophe.
Sally collaging photographs and scanning images of brunette moustaches.
I pretend to my memories. Stay home. Grow my hair long. gray moustache.
Cocteau's beauty & the beast continues to speak in the present.
there is no better lover than justice. what better lover be catastrophe
just to see you still with long stories to tell all written with Brad.
t.v.
failure.
the impossibility of words. the pleasure to be rich with failure.
deadbeats poets artists and singers. moustache.
smiles and leaves me to me. his favorite catastrophe.
t.v.
-- Jeff Wietor
(thanks Michael Kretz for the restoration & Brad Bell for starring in the role of a lifetime)
