I learned something interesting about last year's Names Quilt display up at the University. Terry Cavanaugh, AIDS Prevention Coordinator at UCSC, deliberately decided to not offer prevention material to people who came to view the Quilt.
Terry told me that at a Quilting, "People can only take in so much" and he didn't want written materials to "distract them." Terry told me he wanted people to have an emotional response to the epidemic.
I asked Terry about this because I had been shocked to find out that prevention information is not routinely distributed at Quiltings, neither by the Names Project (the organization which "owns" the Quilt) nor the sponsoring organizations. Terry said that leafleting or otherwise making a point of distributing AIDS prevention information during a Quilting would interrupt the mood of a solemn memorial and that if SCAP had a table, then MeN would have to have a table, and then "you have a circus." I guess Terry wanted to prevent the Quilt from becoming some kind of AIDS trade show. (Of course, the Names Project requires sponsoring organizations to sell Names Project sundries.)
I don't want the Quilt to become an AIDS trade show either. But the Quilt can be many other things. In one sense, I see it as a powerful lens, focusing its visitors' hearts and souls--but on what? As a poet and a witch, I not only know the power of symbol and ritual, I create them. I have had some experience effecting emotional responses: small details convey subtle messages, layers of meaning emanate from simple arrangement. So I speak from this experience when I question a display of the Quilt which doesn't include obvious prevention information. Yes, perhaps a hallway full of peace and social justice non-profits would ruin the ritual of the Quilt. But is that the only option?
Without prevention information, just what is the effect of the Quilt? To mourn, to make vows, to remember, to rage, to sorrow, to feel the nearness of death. I suppose one could say that the Quilt speaks for itself, that it doesn't need any "literature" to accompany its display; its awesome power. Yes, but I want that power to end someday. A Quilt which urges us to remember the dead, to experience the sorrow of the epidemic, but not to look beyond to the day when the Quilt will grow no more is an insidiously dangerous ritual object.
My feelings at the Quilt were similar to my feelings at Arlington National Cemetery--deep sadness, and rage at governments. Nowhere at Arlington is there a monument to peace. Nowhere any hope for an end to war. You might say Arlington speaks for itself, and will even speak for itself as is grows larger, war after war. Yet acres of white crosses at Arlington never prevented war, and acres of Quilt will not prevent AIDS.
The deliberate invisibility of prevention information at the Quilt and the absence of peace signs at Arlington similarly influence the memorial's effect on mourners. When the Names Project and its community supporters prohibit prevention information at Quiltings, our experience of the "solemn memorial" is profoundly orchestrated.
Just what does it mean to say that "people can only take in so much?" What's the worse that could happen if they took in too much? I believe that a ritual which is a emotional event linking us to the finality of death and the preciousness of life should push us past a comfortable cocoon of self-control and denial. The panels accomplish this well enough, a little pamphlet about condoms isn't going to push most people over the edge.
We can't tell people enough times what they need to do to prevent the transmission of AIDS virus. Yet basic prevention information is already deliberately kept from hundreds of thousands of people--teenagers, non-English speakers, poor people--as well as treatment and care. How, in good conscience, can anyone decide to keep prevention information from the thousands of people who come to mourn, who maybe for the first time in their lives put a human face on the epidemic? They see for themselves the acres of needless death laid on the ground and hung from the rafters for all to see. I am enraged to know that governments inflict ignorance on us; when community leaders deliberately deny us information and then offer a limp excuse--or a room off to the side where you can find SCAP's phone number--I give up completely.
It's true, prevention information would "ruin" the mood of the Quilting. I think I know why and it's not fear of circuses.
Think about it: the Quilt reaches the kind of people who hate gay men and hate drug users and hate people who have sex with whomever they please. The Quilt touches those "mainstream" people. And that's a good thing. But if the Names Project pressed a small leaflet into their hands which read: "use a condom every time," "use a clean needle; here's how to bleach it" "here's the needle exchange in our town," "here's how to put a condom on," then those mainstream folks might not cry so hard, might not give so much.
Vito Russo said that AIDS throws a bright light on everything that is wrong with our society. Even some of the responses to the epidemic are going to inherently contain the same drops of death-loving, paralyzing, patriarchal poison that caused it. Until everyone's experience of the Quilt also includes obvious information about prevention, the Quilt is as hypocritical as Arlington. No matter how powerful the symbol or solemn the ritual, crying about it won't help.