It's like I'm really comfortable and I could call myself an artist. I had this big problem
with creating more weight on the planet. You know, I would basically make everything out
of garbage that was left on the street. I really feel like an outsider, like even with
myself, I always felt like I was kind of floating somewhere around. I've always been
kind of claustrophobic and I was trying to escape from this box of minimalism. I mean,
if you can believe there was something that you actually had, like a prison that artists
had to escape from, coming to New York was liberating and it really actually felt that
something was new. This is where I could be myself and be free and just do whatever,
whatever. But the club scene was just like, oh my god, this is home. I was handing out
flyers for years when I was going through high school and then I was a promoter. Throughout
the early 70s, I mean, the nightlife that was interesting to me at the time was there
seemed to be this thing like the art world and that you felt you kind of were walking
into it when you were walking into one of these bars. Oh, you're not shade, there's
no way in hell you're going to get it.
I was definitely a club kid as a kid. Max's had to get into the door. By the way, I forgot
one club, the Hellfire Club. It didn't seem to matter if you were male or female, straight
or gay. What linked was this art and the bars were just like an extension. I feel like with
my generation, we kind of opened it up and I feel like the guys in the 70s also felt
that. So I think that's what we have been coming in. And then at some point it shifted
as most everything does. It was a feeling somewhere after 74, 75 or something like that,
that something had gone and gone away. But again, I don't like to be nostalgic about
a time because this is another time. The generation after me, the kids that were coming up right
now, it's even more open. And I really think it's possible that something is new is now
in the same way that we felt it then. There was a sense that if you're going to go on
like this for a long time, you are going to collapse and it's not going to be pretty.
In the same way, a new relationship can't exactly stay the same and that's what happened
with Art World and SOA at the time. I don't think I'm trying to change people's lives
or anything. If they just like the lights and the disco ball, that's good enough for me.
Thank you.
