Episode 5: AIDS,the spectre of death, and frosting with no cake - Joe's Story.

Joe and I met at his nephew's birthday party, and we immediately dove in to warm, engaging conversation. I didn't tell him about my project, or that I was interested in the topic of death and dying, and yet he shared his poem and his story about Gene. So I tracked him down to share his perspective for the podcast, and he made a wonderful guest- lively and spirited.I appreciate his poetic nature in talking about his perspective- lots of vivid analogies and colorfully painted scenes. I know he's involved in the arts and performance world in San Francisco, and I can hear and feel that creative tendency in his wording. We also had emailed back and forth a bit about setting up a time to talk, and I love that when I first called to talk details, he said, "I don't need more time to prep, I'm ready now!"We chatted via skype, so the audio quality is a bit 'echo'ey, and I had to re-record a few bits because of feedback issues- but, again, I think the content comes through quite nicely.Below are some fabulous scanned polaroid pictures of Gene and Joe, and I'm sharing these details that Joe sent to me as well: "Gene Sturdevant was born in 1955 and died in 1988. AIDS diagnosis was in 1985. He's from Walnut Creek, California, a few miles from San Francisco. We met while we were exploring our youths in 1978-1979 in New Orleans. He returned to San Francisco in 1979. I headed to San Francisco later that year. Most of our pics were done with Polaroid cameras and old-style film, so getting them into digital format has been a desired, but unfinished project."

Music credit: Intro by Jeff Buckingham

Interludes clips from the Free Music Archive.