Oh no, I want some money.
Somebody do buy things.
I want somebody,
somebody to buy things.
Oh lots and nice things.
Lots and nice things.
Lots and nice things.
Lots and nice things.
I don't wanna work.
I wanna stay home.
I don't wanna work.
I wanna stay home.
I don't want to buy things.
Home, I want buy things.
Home, I want buy things.
Home, I want buy things.
People drop around on lots of nice cars.
Rounding up and down fancy cars.
I don't go there.
I stay here.
Got no money, so I drink fear
I'm waiting for the bottom of my mind
To drop out, waiting for the bottom of my mind
To drop out, waiting for the bottom of my mind
To drop out, waiting for the bottom, waiting for the bottom
But what have you done, but what have you done
I don't know
When I met him, he was 27, very thin
And he looked a lot like Sid Vicious
He had that heroin cheek look to him
But of course it was
But that's the kind of look he had
When we met, I had an immediate attraction to him
As a person, sexual attraction and everything else
And then one of our very first dates
He told me he was a musician
And I had already read some of his poetry
And he was singing me these incredible songs
And he was at a play in college where he was going to
And he told me about his being a masochist
And all of a sudden I realized this guy is really interesting
I mean, more so than just your average person
Besides being sexually quite adventurous
He also had a, I thought he was extremely talented
So I always from the very beginning wanted to
Feature his talent and bring out his talent
So that was a very conscious decision on my part
I was always a visual artist
I was photographing my kids and travels and everything
Way before I met Bob
So I was very used to that
And Bob was, although he had started out as a visual artist
He had given that up when he didn't get into Cal Arts
And put all his work into poetry and writing songs
So I found our two talents were easily meshed
And he told me he wanted to be a slave
And that anything I would tell him to do, he would do
So it was sort of my job then to find interesting things
That he hadn't done before and things that would surprise him
And so we started doing things just to amuse ourselves
There's a book out, I want to read, it's called
The Lives of the Muses and it talks about all these women
Who influenced and inspired the male big artists
And of course in some ways you'd say that was Bob's and my relationship
But I could argue that it was just the opposite
That he was my muse
Then the museums came after us
Which is something we never expected to happen
They asked us to put on shows at museums
And so we put together
Was it the Santa Monica Museum?
It was supposed to be in their Emerging Artist series
But then when we gave them the proposal
They felt it was too far out
So they had to put it in a special series
So it wasn't really part of their Emerging Artist series
Because Bob was a performer and it was so spectacular to look at
The first time we did it in public was at Lace
When they moved downtown
And we hooked it up way to the ceiling like this
It was really high up there
And the people were dancing and we hooked him up
And he had a microphone and he was reading a poem
While I was moving him to the ceiling
That was done at Lace
So a lot of the elements of the art came out of our real life experience
I so much want to keep his spirit alive
And in a way that's not necessarily representational
But that will affect people
It's Bob's energy that, again, I'm always trying to
Even on an unconscious level
The penis, who he is
And now he's transmogrified into something else entirely
Not even human
But the energy is still there
And the Elephant Man, I don't know if you know that movie
There's a very interesting scene where the doctor is
Having the Elephant Man stand naked in front of all the other doctors
And he's pointing out all the abnormalities
And then he says, interestingly enough
The genitals are fully functional and are unaffected
So I think Bob identified with the idea that
He was sickly, he was skinny
But he had very nice genitals
I made this figure as a religious icon
Sort of in his spirit
It was his spirit of submission, number one
That he would actually do anything
You know, with humor
And his openness
That he wasn't ashamed of anything of who he was
And so I turned him into this sort of religious thing
I called him Baba
Which is an honorific
But Baba, I still like Baba
And Jyoti means light
Because after he died, you know, he became the light
It's all the internal things that people don't want to see or talk about
And I find that really interesting in art
To turn him into things
But I'm interested in decay
I think that's part of it
And not decay is the point where it's repulsive
It's the point where it becomes less physical matter
And then it becomes part of the universe
And all those little particles aren't just gone forever
They're still there
So that for me
And then I got very involved in
These whole series here
Came after my involvement in Buddhism
And Hinduism
And the whole idea of making images
One could worship not for the person
But for what that person represented
The energy or the quality that that person had
As he got sicker in all the different drugs
He had to take his body change
And he got heavier and then his face changed
Because he was taking all these steroids and stuff
And that really puffs out your face
And then he was in pain so much at the time
And he had very deep wrinkles and deep furrows in his forehead
And I mean he was aging
But what happened after he died
I mean it was like amazing
Within seconds after he died
It's like all that tension was out of his face
And he seemed to lose weight
So by the time we got him down to the room
To the bereavement room
And we washed him and shaved him
I mean he looked young again
I just couldn't believe it
How young he looked
He dropped ten years
And then after that
We photographed him
I photographed him
I mean even to his death
I mean we planned out everything that was going to happen to him together
Yeah it's been really different since he's died
It's been a very different experience for me
I didn't want to do art for a long time
It took me a long time to process
The healing took much longer than I thought it would take
I had no idea it would be so devastated by his loss
And because I think I lost my husband
A lover, a slave, a collaborator
My best friend, the person who made me laugh no matter what
I mean there was just so many things in my life that Bob took care of
And even though this death was probably the most expected death around
I mean everybody knew he was going to die
I don't think either Bob or I believed he was ever going to die
I think we both had this sort of secret unspoken thing
That as long as I was his mistress
As long as he was my slave it was never going to happen
I wouldn't let him die
He wouldn't dare die to displease me
I think that was sort of our conceit
You
