Those of us who are gay, who lived through the 1980s know what this song is about. We were dropping like flies, wasting away, getting all kinds of weird diseases like Kaposi's Sarcoma and PCP Pneumonia. We died, sometimes in horrible agonizing pain, sometimes slowly drowning from the fluid in our lungs. And nobody cared. Nobody gave a damn.
But even if you weren't there, you don't have to do a lot of deep thinking to understand the meaning of this song. The lyrics are perhaps too literal for comfort. We would start losing weight uncontrollably, losing maybe a few pounds, maybe more, every week. Literally "wasting away". It's not surprising that pretty soon we were "unrecognizable to [ourselves]" and our "clothes don't fit me no more". I was down to 112 pounds when the first treatment came out. I literally looked like I had been in a concentration camp.
Every week the paper would come out, and the weekly obituaries. Up to twelve pages in the Washington Blade in a single week. Every week, another friend got sick. Every week, another friend died. Every weekend was spent going to funerals and visiting hospitals. Our friends were literally "vanished and gone".
And indeed there was "no angel gonna greet me". Our churches threw us out. They were afraid to touch us, afraid to share a meal, for fear they would catch it. It was "just you and I my friend".
The movie Philadelphia was the first mainstream film to deal with the issue of AIDS. It even showed a bit of what Kaposi's Sarcoma looks like, although the filmmakers had to water it down a lot to get the film made. If they showed the true horror of AIDS, nobody would pay to see it. But this song captures the pain, the loss, and the loneliness that was AIDS for those of us who lived through it.
Follow this link to see an award winning photograph of Ken Meeks, a real victim of the plague, with Kaposi's Sarcoma. My partner had it in the 1980s. He had it on his skin, and also on his organs -- his kidneys, liver, and intestines. Kaposi's is a terribly painful way to die. He couldn't face his fate, and he killed himself.
Those of us who are not gay that were around in the 80's remember the pain of AIDS as well. The establishment scared to death and promoting fear. The YEARS lost when research could and should have been going full-tilt. Instead blaming the gay community. AIDS was first called GRIDS. An awful name that meant Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. Friends. Family members. It still pisses me off.
Those of us who are not gay that were around in the 80's remember the pain of AIDS as well. The establishment scared to death and promoting fear. The YEARS lost when research could and should have been going full-tilt. Instead blaming the gay community. AIDS was first called GRIDS. An awful name that meant Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. Friends. Family members. It still pisses me off.
Thank you for putting this song in it historical perspective. Some of the remarks below make me doubt the awareness today's youth when it comes to this crisis. I was too young to be personally effected, beyond of being scared off unprotected sex. I was born in 1975 and raised in the Netherlands, which remained relatively gay-friendly through all of this. Thanks again for sharing you side.
Thank you for putting this song in it historical perspective. Some of the remarks below make me doubt the awareness today's youth when it comes to this crisis. I was too young to be personally effected, beyond of being scared off unprotected sex. I was born in 1975 and raised in the Netherlands, which remained relatively gay-friendly through all of this. Thanks again for sharing you side.
@dmerrill I know you wrote this message 5 years ago--- but I happened to stumble on this site after hearing Streets of Philadelphia on my playlist this afternoon. (Forgot I even had it on there)....at any rate I wanted to thank you for this write up. It is a very poignant message and an outstanding tribute to the song.
@dmerrill I know you wrote this message 5 years ago--- but I happened to stumble on this site after hearing Streets of Philadelphia on my playlist this afternoon. (Forgot I even had it on there)....at any rate I wanted to thank you for this write up. It is a very poignant message and an outstanding tribute to the song.
@dmerrill
It's 6-and-a-half years since your post, so I doubt you even remember posting it, but I had to thank you for your input. I've never had any inkling what this song might have even remotely been about, but nevertheless, I've always found it poignant, moving and even bittersweet in a lonely kind of way. Now I know why and I need to thank you for helping me to understand the sub-text. While there remain swaths of lyrics -here and there- whose meaning still elude my comprehension, I now know what umbrella these metaphors are all covered by. Thank you....
@dmerrill
It's 6-and-a-half years since your post, so I doubt you even remember posting it, but I had to thank you for your input. I've never had any inkling what this song might have even remotely been about, but nevertheless, I've always found it poignant, moving and even bittersweet in a lonely kind of way. Now I know why and I need to thank you for helping me to understand the sub-text. While there remain swaths of lyrics -here and there- whose meaning still elude my comprehension, I now know what umbrella these metaphors are all covered by. Thank you.
Also, re: the other commenters, I was also a young'un in the 70s/ 80s, so I remember the fear and stigma around the dark, early days of AIDS. I remember each day/ week/ month would showcase a new segment on the news, or a special report by current affairs shows revealing even more horrors about this new plague... The 80s were scary enough with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over our heads every minute of every day. Then the news gave us another thing and told us to be mortally afraid of this new threat, too... Man, we were a poorly informed bunch of twonks back then! While I lived through these years, I can't even imagine what it must have been like to have lived through them while under the spectre's shadow of AIDS. So I salute our brave brothers and sisters who pioneered this trail, so that people today can live a 'normal' life with HIV/ AIDS.
Those of us who are gay, who lived through the 1980s know what this song is about. We were dropping like flies, wasting away, getting all kinds of weird diseases like Kaposi's Sarcoma and PCP Pneumonia. We died, sometimes in horrible agonizing pain, sometimes slowly drowning from the fluid in our lungs. And nobody cared. Nobody gave a damn.
But even if you weren't there, you don't have to do a lot of deep thinking to understand the meaning of this song. The lyrics are perhaps too literal for comfort. We would start losing weight uncontrollably, losing maybe a few pounds, maybe more, every week. Literally "wasting away". It's not surprising that pretty soon we were "unrecognizable to [ourselves]" and our "clothes don't fit me no more". I was down to 112 pounds when the first treatment came out. I literally looked like I had been in a concentration camp.
Every week the paper would come out, and the weekly obituaries. Up to twelve pages in the Washington Blade in a single week. Every week, another friend got sick. Every week, another friend died. Every weekend was spent going to funerals and visiting hospitals. Our friends were literally "vanished and gone".
And indeed there was "no angel gonna greet me". Our churches threw us out. They were afraid to touch us, afraid to share a meal, for fear they would catch it. It was "just you and I my friend".
The movie Philadelphia was the first mainstream film to deal with the issue of AIDS. It even showed a bit of what Kaposi's Sarcoma looks like, although the filmmakers had to water it down a lot to get the film made. If they showed the true horror of AIDS, nobody would pay to see it. But this song captures the pain, the loss, and the loneliness that was AIDS for those of us who lived through it.
Follow this link to see an award winning photograph of Ken Meeks, a real victim of the plague, with Kaposi's Sarcoma. My partner had it in the 1980s. He had it on his skin, and also on his organs -- his kidneys, liver, and intestines. Kaposi's is a terribly painful way to die. He couldn't face his fate, and he killed himself.
nytimes.com/2011/05/31/health/31aids.html
Thanks for sharing your story, very heartfelt indeed.
Thanks for sharing your story, very heartfelt indeed.
Those of us who are not gay that were around in the 80's remember the pain of AIDS as well. The establishment scared to death and promoting fear. The YEARS lost when research could and should have been going full-tilt. Instead blaming the gay community. AIDS was first called GRIDS. An awful name that meant Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. Friends. Family members. It still pisses me off.
Those of us who are not gay that were around in the 80's remember the pain of AIDS as well. The establishment scared to death and promoting fear. The YEARS lost when research could and should have been going full-tilt. Instead blaming the gay community. AIDS was first called GRIDS. An awful name that meant Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. Friends. Family members. It still pisses me off.
Thank you for putting this song in it historical perspective. Some of the remarks below make me doubt the awareness today's youth when it comes to this crisis. I was too young to be personally effected, beyond of being scared off unprotected sex. I was born in 1975 and raised in the Netherlands, which remained relatively gay-friendly through all of this. Thanks again for sharing you side.
Thank you for putting this song in it historical perspective. Some of the remarks below make me doubt the awareness today's youth when it comes to this crisis. I was too young to be personally effected, beyond of being scared off unprotected sex. I was born in 1975 and raised in the Netherlands, which remained relatively gay-friendly through all of this. Thanks again for sharing you side.
@dmerrill I know you wrote this message 5 years ago--- but I happened to stumble on this site after hearing Streets of Philadelphia on my playlist this afternoon. (Forgot I even had it on there)....at any rate I wanted to thank you for this write up. It is a very poignant message and an outstanding tribute to the song.
@dmerrill I know you wrote this message 5 years ago--- but I happened to stumble on this site after hearing Streets of Philadelphia on my playlist this afternoon. (Forgot I even had it on there)....at any rate I wanted to thank you for this write up. It is a very poignant message and an outstanding tribute to the song.
@dmerrill It's 6-and-a-half years since your post, so I doubt you even remember posting it, but I had to thank you for your input. I've never had any inkling what this song might have even remotely been about, but nevertheless, I've always found it poignant, moving and even bittersweet in a lonely kind of way. Now I know why and I need to thank you for helping me to understand the sub-text. While there remain swaths of lyrics -here and there- whose meaning still elude my comprehension, I now know what umbrella these metaphors are all covered by. Thank you....
@dmerrill It's 6-and-a-half years since your post, so I doubt you even remember posting it, but I had to thank you for your input. I've never had any inkling what this song might have even remotely been about, but nevertheless, I've always found it poignant, moving and even bittersweet in a lonely kind of way. Now I know why and I need to thank you for helping me to understand the sub-text. While there remain swaths of lyrics -here and there- whose meaning still elude my comprehension, I now know what umbrella these metaphors are all covered by. Thank you.
Also, re: the other commenters, I was also a young'un in the 70s/ 80s, so I remember the fear and stigma around the dark, early days of AIDS. I remember each day/ week/ month would showcase a new segment on the news, or a special report by current affairs shows revealing even more horrors about this new plague... The 80s were scary enough with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over our heads every minute of every day. Then the news gave us another thing and told us to be mortally afraid of this new threat, too... Man, we were a poorly informed bunch of twonks back then! While I lived through these years, I can't even imagine what it must have been like to have lived through them while under the spectre's shadow of AIDS. So I salute our brave brothers and sisters who pioneered this trail, so that people today can live a 'normal' life with HIV/ AIDS.
Peace
Raz