On Friday morning at Exeter’s new Wellbeing Hub, our friends from the Eddystone Trust – our local HIV and sexual health service – moved into their new office space. We admired their new surroundings, and chatted over the opportunities that their presence in the heart of a multi-agency environment would bring to their staff, volunteers and their client group. The conversation developed into a casual discussion about funding nationally for HIV services (they’re being cut); about current rates of HIV infection in the UK (they’re going up) and about the rise and risks of chemsex.
Then yesterday evening, like many of my generation, my day took on a somewhat numb feel as the news that Prince had died started to break. Much is being made (quite rightly) of the towering musical ability he possessed. Few – even those routinely labelled a musical “genius” – can play the range of instruments that the Purple One mastered, could command such a vocal range, and be so prolific in not only recording the volume of work that he did, but also composing and producing so many hits for others (who can forget Sinead O’Connor’s recording of Nothing Compares 2 U?)
But for those like me, whose adolescent personalities were starting to take shape in the 80s, the phenomenon that was Prince was about more than just music. While he stood at just 5 foot 2 inches, his persona towered. His ability to command a stage, to charm, to amuse and to entertain, coupled with his androgynous and playful styling sent a clear message to my generation (as Bowie had done to the 70s generation) that actually we could define and project ourselves and shape our lives in any way we chose. To a slightly awkward, bookish boy like me, growing up in rural Sussex, this was an exhilarating revelation.
Reading the news yesterday, trying to comprehend how we had lost such a vital, energetic icon so young, a phrase appeared that my generation has read – in different forms – many times before – though maybe not for some time. “Prince died as a result of complications arising from ‘flu.”
In the 80s and 90s such phrases appeared regularly in news articles and obituaries as a coded shorthand for “died of an AIDS-related condition.” Already, a number of news outlets are reporting that Prince had been HIV+ for many years and has died as a result, after a decision – for religious reasons – to stop taking protease inhibitors. Of course, this is pure speculation at this stage – and we await the autopsy which will no doubt either quash or confirm these reports.
Prince’s HIV status, like Victoria Wood’s cancer battle or the identities of the “super-injunction celebrity threesome” is not “a secret,” it is “private” – there’s a difference.
However, Prince was an artist who was not afraid to speak about AIDS and HIV at a time when many in the entertainment business were in either panic or denial. Sign O’ The Times – one of Prince’s greatest compositions, and certainly one of his most poignant opens with the stark lyrics:
“In France a skinny man died of a big disease with a little name, by chance his girlfriend came across a needle and soon she’s just the same…”
“Sometimes it Snows in April” – a haunting, tender ballad – is more ambiguous, but clearly describes the affection, love and inspiration that one man feels at the death of a male friend:
“Tracy died soon after a long-fought civil war, just after I wiped away his last tear…”
The “civil war” mentioned here is widely believed to refer to AIDS, as the body’s immune system breaks down. It’s hard to describe now how courageous it was to write about HIV in a recording in those times – but Prince was brave enough to go wherever he chose in his music and his lyrics.
The “big disease with a little name” has not gone away. Just as welfare policies and poverty porn TV have given rise to the concepts of deserving and undeserving poor today, I am reminded that in the 80s there was a sinister implication within healthcare discussions that there were the deserving and undeserving; and for those facing an HIV diagnosis, the stigma, hostility and alienation that they faced was an international disgrace.
As I read commentators referring to Prince’s “ambiguous sexuality” or to his alleged promiscuity, I hear the same dog-whistle messages I read years ago in the accounts of the deaths of Freddie Mercury, or Kenny Everett, or Rock Hudson, or any number of other beautiful, gifted people who died in the midst of such public scrutiny. No one should have to die because of who – or how – they love; and no one should have to feel stripped of their privacy and dignity while the world passes judgement on how they lived their life.
Here, in 2016, we are at real risk of going backwards on HIV – not just in terms of how HIV services are funded and delivered (though the cuts we are seeing are a disgrace,) but in terms of how we all think of and respond to the disease, and those who have it.
I am grateful that two forthcoming films this year aim to remind people that HIV is still a long-term chronic condition, and to remind us all – including those of us in the LGBT community – the fight our community has carried with such pride, dignity and courage over the past three decades or so to challenge stigma, ignorance and hatred. Strike a Pose tells the stories of Madonna’s 7 man dance troupe from her 1990 Blonde Ambition tour, three of them HIV+, one now dead; and After ’82 (still in production) retells the history of the HIV crisis in the UK, together with a frank and informative view of where we are now.
Now is the time to rally ourselves again behind those who have seen their status slip down the health priorities list, for whom the stigma is still very much real, and who live -daily – with a life-threatening condition that will not go away. Now is the time to remember, not forget. Now is the time for vigilance, not to ignore, and it’s a time for solidarity, not stigma.
As Prince might have put it, “If you know what I’m singing ’bout up here, c’mon raise your hand.”
Simon Bowkett
