Audio Interview, Thomas Warfield, September 18, 2012

  • EVELYN BAILEY: So I am here with Thomas Warfield.
  • It is September 18th, and we're sitting in the RIT stage.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: In the theater.
  • Panara Theater.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Theater.
  • And where I want to begin is, you are in Rochester native,
  • correct?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Yes.
  • I was born, grew up here.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Thank you.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: I went to school.
  • Well, I started at Harley School,
  • actually, in grade school.
  • But then, eventually I was in public school at East High
  • through 7th grade to 12th grade.
  • So it was a great time, actually.
  • I remember in fifth grade, maybe, was
  • when I saw the Village Voice.
  • I think it was the Village Voice.
  • There was something in there about homosexuality.
  • It was one of the first times, I think, that I ever really
  • encountered the word written.
  • I think I'd kind of known because by ninth grade
  • I had a boyfriend already, so.
  • (laughter)
  • EVELYN BAILEY: I think you would have known.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Yeah, I did.
  • But it was kind of a, wow.
  • I remember getting a subscription kind of secretly.
  • This is the Village Voice.
  • It wasn't as though it was a gay publication, per se,
  • but it was the gayest thing that I knew.
  • So I got a publication and then I got a subscription.
  • And then somewhere in there, I saw something about The Native.
  • And I ended up getting a subscription to The Native.
  • I guess that must have been ninth grade or something
  • like that.
  • Anyway, Rochester was, in some ways,
  • I think there was a little bit more--
  • now I was a kid so that's my perspective.
  • But it did seem it was a little more tolerant and progressive
  • at that time.
  • This would have been the mid- 70's.
  • I started going out to the bars when I
  • was about sixteen or seventeen.
  • Back then they didn't really card.
  • So.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: No?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Well, no.
  • Drinking age was eighteen.
  • Well, I didn't have a card.
  • I didn't have a driver's license, anyway.
  • So there was never there was never a card anybody.
  • My first bar was Friar's and I remember I went with friends
  • and we sat out in front of it many times
  • before ever actually going in.
  • And of course, it was also a time when being gay
  • was a little more underground.
  • Well, I guess I can always say lifestyle.
  • I don't want to use the word lifestyle.
  • But the culture, the community was a little more, at least
  • from our perspective as teenagers,
  • it was a lot more underground.
  • You had to kind of search out where to go and who to know
  • and all that stuff.
  • And I think it taught us.
  • It built a kind of pride because you had to go out and find it.
  • Where I think now, not that it doesn't
  • have a pride for young people, but it's almost given to them
  • already, in a sense.
  • In a sense, the identity around being
  • gay, Where we had to kind of mold it as we went along.
  • There weren't internet.
  • So the only way you could meet somebody, actually,
  • was to go to a bar, basically.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: So where was your family at this point?
  • Were they supportive of you?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Actually, they were.
  • Even though they were very religious people.
  • My mother is a minister and we went to church every Sunday.
  • But they had a really open heart.
  • Maybe the mind was catching up but I
  • think they had a very open heart and so that
  • allowed them to allow me to find myself.
  • I think in some ways, it's the greatest gift
  • my parents ever gave me was the freedom to just be whatever.
  • I dressed in all kinds of crazy, wild, things
  • and they never once said anything about it.
  • And I had all kinds of friends and they never
  • really said anything about it, complained.
  • Or tried to teach me, this is not the right kind of person
  • to hang out with And I hung out with a lot people
  • that they probably they should have.
  • But no.
  • It was a great gift.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.
  • When you were coming out and finding Friar's, do you
  • recall if there were any organizations that
  • were in the community that you could reach out to?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: The only place, I
  • did go to GAGV quite often for the library.
  • At that time it was upstairs at the Genesee Co-op building.
  • Or I don't if it was called that then.
  • And we were kind of standing at the bottom.
  • It was upstairs and it took me forever to first time
  • to walk up the stairs.
  • And so I finally walked up the stairs and somebody was
  • in there and I said, well, do you have
  • any books that I could read?
  • So that's how it started.
  • I don't remember if they had other programs going on
  • because none of my friends that I can recall--
  • We all had each other.
  • And so in a way we were the support group for each other.
  • And we all went to the same high school.
  • We were all friends.
  • We're all theater rats, basically.
  • And everybody I knew was pretty much gay
  • so it was a very strong support group.
  • Yeah.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: What was it like walking down the alley?
  • Do you recall?
  • With the Gay Alliance?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: With the Gay Alliance?
  • Scary.
  • The scary part was, who on the outside
  • was going to see me going in there?
  • What was going to happen to me?
  • In some ways, it was a little scary
  • even just being on Monroe Avenue.
  • From my upbringing, I guess.
  • I remember a couple of times I was stopped.
  • I was with friends on Monroe.
  • One time in particular, I was with a friend on Monroe
  • and we were coming from getting ice cream.
  • And the police stopped us and were asking us
  • if we were prostituting.
  • I mean, my jaw just kind of went, what?
  • But it happened more than once, actually.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Do you identify that
  • as being caused by your being African-American?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: I don't think that.
  • I have been stopped on those occasions
  • and I think that's a separate thing.
  • I think on this occasion, it was sexual orientation though.
  • The other person wasn't black so I
  • felt like that was really a thing based
  • on sexual orientation.
  • I remember in Jim's Bar, there were times
  • that the police would come in.
  • I think it mostly had to do with drugs going on there
  • but I can't remember.
  • Sometimes people said, you have to go out the other way,
  • or go out there or whatever.
  • And when I was later in my teen years,
  • I played piano at Tara's.
  • I was one of the piano players there.
  • And Buddy Wegmen who was the owner--
  • great guy.
  • He was just so good to me.
  • But he used to sit down and talk to me
  • about the history of that area and bars that used
  • to be there in the forties.
  • So I feel like I really had a good support system.
  • Like a good community slash family
  • in the gay community at that time and I
  • feel like I was really nurtured.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: What catapulted you into gay activism?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: It was when I went to college.
  • I moved to New York.
  • And about 1983 it must been around '82 or '83.
  • I can't remember now.
  • It was kind of when they were naming AIDS.
  • They called it a cancer or something.
  • And I just remember reading.
  • I used to cut out the articles in New York Times.
  • And I was what they call at a club kid back then.
  • And I would stay at the club.
  • When I came, it was the end of Studio 54 and so I was out all
  • night.
  • But I never drank.
  • And actually to this day I've never drank.
  • And I also never did any drugs or anything, or smoked.
  • And I think following in that line,
  • I didn't really have a lot of sex.
  • I wasn't very sexually active, which looking back now
  • probably saved my life.
  • But I had a lot of friends who were just dying right and left.
  • And I thought, oh my god I got it.
  • I can't just sit here watching this going on.
  • I've got to be part of it in some way.
  • So there was there was a group called the AIDS Resource.
  • And this was in New York City And I volunteered for them,
  • reading to people who were afflicted
  • with HIV, in their apartments and stuff
  • and washing their dishes and whatever.
  • And I really got to see the human side of it.
  • It wasn't just this massive thing in the New York Times.
  • It was actually people's lives.
  • And I realized sitting there talking to this person,
  • reading to them or whatever really changed something even
  • in that day for them.
  • Not for their whole life, but maybe just in that day.
  • And I thought that's really meaningful.
  • So I think that's kind of how it started.
  • And then when ACT UP started I was at the first meeting.
  • At what's-his-name's apartment.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Martin Horaga?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: No.
  • The guy that wrote Normal Heart.
  • Anyway, I can't think of his name.
  • He started to ACT UP.
  • Oh, I can't think of his name right now.
  • But anyway, this was in Manhattan.
  • And then I was at Purchase at college
  • and we started our own sort of ACT UP affiliate or whatever.
  • We used to do all kinds of crazy--
  • stopping traffic, laying on the ground in Times Square
  • and just all kinds of crazy stuff.
  • But it really got attention.
  • And I realized that getting that attention that made people
  • listen to you.
  • When I was in college I was president of the gay lesbian
  • student union.
  • It was this largest group on campus.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: What college?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: It was SUNY Purchase.
  • And I took the students to that first March on Washington
  • as a group.
  • We all went.
  • And the impact that made on me was tremendous.
  • I guess that was 1987, maybe.
  • And I thought, OK now we can really do something.
  • Because it had the energy of all these people
  • who were all over the country doing stuff.
  • And so I think by the time I came back to Rochester
  • in the mid 90s I guess, I had already
  • been, for a decade or more, doing AIDS activism.
  • And those World AIDS Day concerts
  • I started in grad school in Salt Lake City.
  • And even in my piece artwork in other countries,
  • I always made sure that we involved
  • in the community building people living with HIV.
  • But you know, the World AIDS Day concerts really were about--
  • well they were about raising money, that's true.
  • But they were more about, I felt that on that day people
  • all over the world were united in some way.
  • And it was a time for us to recognize that we
  • are all united and connected.
  • I remember when I first started doing it in Rochester
  • I got a lot of flak, and I would say from who.
  • But I got a lot of flak from organizations
  • complaining that I was raising money
  • from some orphans in India.
  • And then we had people right here in our own city.
  • And my response was always, well,
  • those children in that country, wherever it was,
  • are no less our responsibility than the people here.
  • And actually, the people who do have a lot of people working
  • for them, but those children don't.
  • So that was always what kind of motivated
  • me to keep doing that for eleven years or whatever it was.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Eleven years.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Eleven years.
  • It was a long time.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: A decade.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Yeah.
  • It was a long time.
  • And finally I realized, the purpose of it
  • needed to be changed.
  • It needed to have a different perspective.
  • What originally it was doing, I think, things
  • had changed with HIV and AIDS.
  • And I think we needed to sort of have a different--
  • so I also felt that young people needed to have
  • their own voice in this.
  • I started to feel a couple of years towards the end
  • that I was dictating.
  • Kind of, OK this is what we're going to do
  • and how we're going to do it, and this is what it's about.
  • And then gather people to help me.
  • Rather than kind of opening it up to, what should we do?
  • And so I kind of gave it off to younger people.
  • And they've kind of molded it into what they
  • feel is necessary right now.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: I would think that that was a shift
  • in your own...
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: It was.
  • You're right.
  • With all the things I've been doing in this city,
  • I felt it was time to relinquish them.
  • To let them live on their own without my constant hand in it.
  • I think for me, it started to feel
  • like I wasn't really growing.
  • That I was doing all these things
  • that I'd been doing for years and years and years
  • and could do it in my sleep.
  • It was like rote, almost.
  • And that felt like the meaning was being lost.
  • For me, as well as for who I was involved or whatever.
  • So I just felt like it was really
  • necessary to let that go and move on to something else
  • or whatever.
  • I don't know what that is.
  • I'm just letting things go.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: For a while you were
  • involved with the HIV trials, or the community advisory board,
  • I think.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Yeah.
  • CAB, it was called at that time.
  • Oh!
  • You know, I forgot about that.
  • They were one of the first sponsors of the World AIDS Day
  • concerts here.
  • I felt it was the concerts were not just about entertaining,
  • but they were all about educating.
  • And so I always wanted to have an element in there that was
  • about educating the audience.
  • I came up one year with a quiz for the audience.
  • I'd printed out this quiz that would
  • have every other answer blank.
  • And so in the audience, during intermission, you'd
  • have to go around and find out who
  • had the answer to the question that you had blank.
  • So they really created also a social kind
  • of bonding going on.
  • But it also got people to really use
  • those questionnaire as a kind of game
  • that was a learning process.
  • So yeah.
  • We always tried to come up with ways that were educational.
  • But while I was on CAB, I don't know
  • how I was always the person chosen,
  • but I always went on there to their conferences for,
  • oh I don't know, four or five years, probably.
  • Mostly in Washington DC they were, at the National Institute
  • of Health.
  • And I didn't know half the gibberish that they were--
  • I don't know.
  • I don't know that medical stuff.
  • So I would sit there with doctors and whoever,
  • nurses, whatever, and I would just listen thinking,
  • oh I'm taking these notes and I don't
  • know what I'm talking about.
  • But for some reason I would always
  • grab onto something that was necessary for me to take back.
  • Some little bit of information.
  • And often, it influenced what would happen in the World AIDS
  • Day concerts.
  • I remember one time, I stood up in one
  • of the general assemblies and asked a question.
  • It was mostly medical people.
  • But I wanted to know what was happening with China and HIV.
  • This was probably '90, or mid 90s I guess, or something.
  • And one of the doctors on the stage
  • said, oh you know I just came back from, it wasn't Beijing,
  • but somewhere in China.
  • And he said, oh this is what's going on.
  • It's really closed over there, blah, blah blah.
  • And so I met up with him and that's really
  • how we found the orphanage in China that year
  • that we raised money for.
  • And it happened a couple of times like that.
  • Where I would find out, where around the world needs
  • more help or whatever?
  • It was pretty interesting.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: A mini Bill Clinton.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: (laughter) Without the other part.
  • Well, I've got the other part, just a different...
  • Yeah.
  • It was fascinating.
  • Those were really fascinating times.
  • And to be able to come back and, in my own little way,
  • explain what I experienced.
  • That was a great time.
  • They were a really marvelous group.
  • I had such wonderful working relationships
  • with them all those years.
  • And eventually they pretty much became the largest funders
  • of those concerts.
  • It was great.
  • It was just it was great.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: What, Thomas, instills in you
  • that sense of pride?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Excellent question.
  • I think part of it is knowing my history--
  • our history.
  • The LGBT community has served humanity
  • in so many vast, multiple ways.
  • I mean, I don't know how to say this, exactly.
  • You know, sometimes you'll think of your identity
  • as one kind of thing.
  • Like, in a prioritize them.
  • Sort of like, oh you know, I'm a male, I'm African-American.
  • I think in my experience, in my life,
  • I probably think of myself as a gay man more than anything.
  • And that is partly because of the way the community--
  • I felt like I was brought up sort of in that community.
  • Not that I wasn't brought up also
  • in the African-American community, or the arts
  • community.
  • In the gay community, anywhere I went, anywhere I lived,
  • there was a sense of belonging.
  • Even though you there are issues within that community.
  • There's racism, there's sexism, there's even homophobia.
  • But I always felt like I didn't have to hide anything.
  • You know, as a black male, gay male
  • especially, in the black community,
  • you're playing a little game, sort of.
  • Where you're adjusting to the circumstances.
  • Of course, we do that in every circumstance.
  • And so there are ways that you sort of mask things.
  • I don't ever feel that in the gay community.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: That was another issue
  • that I wanted to raise with you.
  • But I'm going to stop this for just a minute.
  • OK.
  • Picking up from where we left off,
  • the black experience is very different in terms of culture,
  • in terms of history, in terms of longevity.
  • The African-American has been oppressed for far longer
  • than the homosexual.
  • I mean, one, we weren't out.
  • Very few people knew we were gay or we were anything but people.
  • And we could pass.
  • But you can't pass.
  • And so I don't want to get philosophical.
  • But archetypically, there are so many ingrained attitudes,
  • laws not written, that you have to deal with and get
  • beyond before you can even begin to express yourself in ways
  • that are outside of that box.
  • What gave you the courage?
  • What gave you the strength to do that?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Well, I think what
  • one of the things you're getting at,
  • growing up black in this country mostly,
  • is sort of walking a labyrinth in many ways.
  • But I was fortunate to be raised in a family that
  • had certain privilege.
  • Now, my parents weren't wealthy but they were middle class.
  • So there wasn't the poverty issue.
  • I didn't have to grow up with that.
  • I came from a family that was pretty famous
  • so there was a kind of privilege that comes with that.
  • Even though my parents weren't as famous,
  • let's say, as celebrities in a sense, like my uncle was.
  • But my father was very well known in this community.
  • My grandfather was very well known.
  • My mother was very well known.
  • My mother was a social activist.
  • During the 60s when the riots happened,
  • she was part of the organization FIGHT.
  • She was actually the secretary of FIGHT.
  • So I grew up kind of seeing that activism.
  • A very strong spiritual background.
  • I think a combination of all those things, and the thing
  • I said earlier about my parents being--
  • you know, one of the things they used to say to me,
  • you know how you always hear your parents say
  • you can grow up to be whatever you want to be?
  • But my parents said you can grow up
  • to be everything you want to be.
  • It was quite a different seed planted
  • in your mind about everything compared to you
  • can do something.
  • You can do everything.
  • That broadens your sense of yourself.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: That was true here in Rochester, New York.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Not everywhere.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: But transplanted to New York City,
  • no one knew you.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: That's right.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: No one could care less whether Thomas Warfield
  • had a father who was--
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: But you know know what it was?
  • I knew myself, and that was from being brought up here.
  • And it wasn't just about, I don't think, the family.
  • It was just this community, like I said before.
  • At the time I grew up, there was an opera company here.
  • Opera Theater of Rochester.
  • I was in the opera since I was like eight or nine.
  • I grew up surrounded by all of these people.
  • Same thing in the ballet world.
  • There was a mercury ballet at the time I was at the school.
  • I grew up surrounded by these people
  • whose dreams were unfolding and whose imaginations were
  • displayed right in front of me.
  • We talk about the real impact that arts have on us
  • but we don't understand, I don't think,
  • that the broadening of our mind is
  • one of the most important aspects of who we are.
  • Because with a broadened, mind you
  • see beyond what you could have seen before.
  • And not only out here in the world,
  • but you see yourself broader than you did before.
  • And that kind of nurturing was, well, priceless.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: When you moved to New York--
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: --Petrified.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: But you said just a few minutes ago
  • you knew who you were.
  • What do you mean by that?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: By that time, I'd
  • had two boyfriends by the age of eighteen.
  • Three by the age of eighteen.
  • I had a kind of, celebrity isn't quite the right word,
  • but I had a popularity already.
  • When I was fifteen I had been to New York.
  • I'd been to New York quite often, actually,
  • in my teenage years because I studied
  • at School of American Ballet.
  • When I was fifteen I auditioned for a Broadway show called,
  • I think it was I Music, I something,
  • and got a role in it.
  • And when the producers found out that I had lied about my age,
  • they ripped up the contract right in front of me,
  • sent me home.
  • But when I came home, the newspaper the television,
  • everybody was thought, oh my god this is great.
  • And I had all these interviews and so
  • I had had a little sense of that celebrity already.
  • But I was still somewhat grounded, I think.
  • What I mean was I knew myself.
  • I knew what I was capable of.
  • I knew what talent I had.
  • I knew I was really smart.
  • So I had all those faculties really firm in my belief
  • system, which is somewhat, I think,
  • unusual at nineteen or eighteen years old.
  • But because I grew up the way I did, surrounded
  • by a lot of adults, really.
  • And a lot of adults and in the arts,
  • I didn't know at those times that they were gay, but so many
  • of them were.
  • But I didn't know that at the time.
  • But I think the nurturing that they
  • did toward me really prepared me to know myself.
  • Granted, there were lots of things
  • that I learned about myself and grew and all of that too.
  • But I think I had a very strong sense of me.
  • Yeah.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Why did you go to New York?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Oh, I had to get away from Rochester.
  • I couldn't stand Rochester.
  • I hate to say that.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Were you being chased?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: No, no, no, no.
  • I felt my expression as a person needed a bigger stage.
  • And I guess no matter, really, where I am, I always feel that.
  • I just felt that Rochester had prepared
  • me to go to something else.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: And so when you look back,
  • what did the New York experience add to your life or give you?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Well, living in New York.
  • You know, everyone should live in New York once.
  • There's nothing like it because there's
  • no other place that is that condensed of information
  • and energy.
  • So what it gave me was a understanding that what's
  • possible is always possible.
  • There's nothing really impossible.
  • Because in New York, you see everything happening.
  • And you think, oh my god, what?
  • What is that? oh, what?
  • You're bombarded with new ideas constantly
  • and it's ever changing.
  • And I think I just ate that up.
  • I almost felt like that was the sustenance for me, even today.
  • I mean, that's kind of how I live, really.
  • So I think New York prepared me then
  • as I moved to live in other countries,
  • really, for this experience that anything can happen
  • and anything will.
  • And also New York prepared me of letting go of this idea
  • that things are luck.
  • That what it is, is that you prepare yourself
  • for what the moment is going to be.
  • And when the moment arrives, you're ready for it.
  • I think being a musician and dancer also
  • probably prepared me for that.
  • But you've got to really think quick on your feet in New York
  • or you get trampled over.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: You also became more active
  • in the gay community or in gay rights in New York.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Well, also, there was a broader--
  • I used to volunteer at the Gay Men's Health Crisis.
  • It was before it was called the Gay Men's Health Crisis.
  • I can't remember the name of it now.
  • It was something like Community Center or something like that.
  • And RuPaul, actually, was the receptionist.
  • He used to volunteer there before he was,
  • or just starting, maybe, to do drag.
  • And so it was also a time of great creative--
  • a lot of stuff was happening.
  • Gay Men's Crisis was created during that time.
  • All the things related to the HIV and AIDS crisis.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: ACT UP?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: ACT UP was created.
  • So many things were just coming to.
  • When I was a student at the Martha Graham school,
  • Madonna was in my class.
  • This was before she became famous.
  • And she was very shy, actually.
  • And one day she said to us, oh I want you guys to come
  • hear my music at--
  • I forget which club it was.
  • Maybe it was Area.
  • I don't know.
  • One of the clubs.
  • And we all looked at her like, what are you talking about?
  • What music?
  • You do music?
  • We had no idea.
  • We There was a group of us that were all kind of club kids
  • and we would go out every night.
  • And she was not that kid.
  • She was not that.
  • She was somewhat reserved.
  • She was an excellent dancer, though.
  • One of the best in our class.
  • But anyway, we went out to see that.
  • That's the last we ever saw her because
  • after that she became whatever.
  • So anyway, a lot was bursting forth.
  • The time I came was the end of the disco era
  • kind of coming to an end, so something else is being born.
  • The punk scene and all that.
  • And dance, the same thing.
  • There was a whole new world opening up.
  • A new era of stuff.
  • So I think I just was on the cusp of that.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: In New York, what was the response
  • of the gay community to what was happening
  • to them in terms of AIDS?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: I tear up even thinking back about that.
  • People were terrified.
  • But the fear pushed them to be militant, really, in some ways.
  • It just pushed everyone to do something.
  • But I just remember everyone was so--
  • I wonder if I can tell that story.
  • OK.
  • There was a guy that I had sex with.
  • And I remember he put on latex gloves and like a mask.
  • You know, a little mask over your mouth and nose.
  • And he made me put on gloves.
  • I mean, we could hardly touch.
  • I just remember that experience thinking,
  • oh my god this is where we are, you know?
  • The intimacy had become sterile.
  • And that was a want that's a wonderful metaphor,
  • really, I think, for what was happening.
  • That the intimacy in people's lives
  • as he was being pulled out.
  • And the sex too.
  • But also the intimacy which is somewhat connected sometimes.
  • And so that's hard.
  • You need to fight for that.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Well, the fear would
  • have shut down most of the emotional response
  • and reaction.
  • And so, in a simple way of communicating,
  • if you're afraid of what this person is going to say,
  • you're not going to communicate from the heart.
  • You're not going to communicate with thought.
  • You're not going to communicate genuinely, authentically.
  • You cannot be yourself.
  • Likewise, you pick that up from someone else.
  • If they're afraid, your response to that is to hold back.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: And I think, actually, the AIDS activism
  • was a fight to get back the intimacy.
  • I really think that deep down, because the thing
  • is, as human beings, intimacy is almost the most important thing
  • in our lives.
  • And to watch that being lost.
  • I think that really, the motivation
  • of fighting to get that, to have that, to get it back
  • was one of the biggest motivating factors, I think.
  • Psychologically, in the AIDS activism.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Why did you return to Rochester?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: That's a good question.
  • Well, I never ever thought I would, believe it or not.
  • I never contemplated ever returning to Rochester.
  • But my father got sick when I was in grad school.
  • And as the couple of years after that went on,
  • I was traveling around the world a lot that time.
  • And I thought, well, I really think
  • I should go home and help my mother with him.
  • And I was doing my PeaceArt projects
  • in different countries.
  • And really, I could live anywhere.
  • I could really be anywhere and fly from wherever.
  • I didn't really need to be in New York.
  • So I packed up and moved back.
  • And even though I did move back, for quite a few years, probably
  • five years, I was on the road most of the time.
  • So I really wasn't here but I think
  • it did give them a sense of, when I did come back,
  • I was home, though.
  • At first it was very difficult. I was in my mid-thirties,
  • I guess.
  • And I thought, I've got all these things going on
  • and I'm kind of paring myself down,
  • something I never did up until that point.
  • If anything, I was building on.
  • But you know what?
  • Watching my father deteriorate into kind of--
  • he had strokes and heart aches and it went on and on for years
  • until he was kind of a vegetable almost, at the end.
  • As hard as it was to watch that, and I had kind of watched
  • that with friends dying, you know,
  • there is something beautiful in seeing the cycle of life
  • and being part of it.
  • I tried to explain that to my brother who
  • was living in LA at that time because he wasn't here,
  • and so he didn't get that.
  • Kind of what it was like day to day to change his diapers
  • and clean up after him and all that.
  • Feed him.
  • But it was hard and sad.
  • But there was a part of it that was just life affirming.
  • Because that's the cycle.
  • I mean, not everyone goes through that.
  • But I'm just saying that there is a beginning, middle,
  • and an end.
  • I understood that, watching this, or being part of that.
  • Everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
  • And when it's time, it's time.
  • And so, during the times is when you really
  • give it your all, because you don't know when the end is,
  • really.
  • So I really learned a lot from that.
  • And then, of course there were so
  • many things I got involved in.
  • I helped to start the Art Walk Festival and all of that.
  • That was the same time that I helped
  • to start the New York Association of Teaching
  • Artists.
  • And then I got this job here at RIT.
  • And so in some ways it's been a blessing.
  • I do think it's time for the change.
  • I'm a changing kind of person.
  • I can't really do the same thing too long.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: So what is the next step?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: I don't know.
  • I've never known the next step.
  • (laughter)
  • I only know when this step is finished.
  • I don't know the next step.
  • It's a little more complicated now
  • because I do feel somewhat tied to my mother,
  • and my mother is almost ninety-eight now.
  • And so I don't want to go away and kind of leave her
  • without me or my brother.
  • He wants to go back to LA too.
  • But life has a way of unveiling itself so I don't really
  • worry about that so much.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: So Thomas, when you look back
  • at your involvement with the gay community and AIDS
  • and PeaceArt and Art Walk, what are you most proud of?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: I don't know that I have one thing that I'm
  • most proud of.
  • I think I'm grateful that I could express something
  • in the world.
  • I'm just grateful that I get to express something in the world
  • and that it has some meaning beyond my own person.
  • So in a way, all the things I do are one thing.
  • They're clothed differently.
  • It's Art Walk, or PeaceArt, or LGBT issues or whatever.
  • Or poverty or whatever it is, but it's just
  • it's me expressing in the world.
  • And it's me trying to express the best of me that I can do.
  • And so each of those things teaches me that in some way.
  • I mean, it is that I am working in a way towards helping others
  • or serving others, but in a more underlying sense,
  • I'm really serving myself.
  • Because I'm really growing as a human being each time
  • I do one of these things or help somebody.
  • That I feel like is teaching me myself.
  • And so I maybe that's what I'm most proud of,
  • is that I continue to grow and that somehow my growing
  • often becomes an inspiration for somebody else's growth.
  • And
  • EVELYN BAILEY: You had mentioned more than a couple times,
  • things are meaningful to you.
  • There's meaning in your life.
  • There's, for lack of a better word, purpose to your life.
  • If you were talking to a young person,
  • why would you say those things are so important?
  • Why does it matter whether there's purpose?
  • Why does it matter to you that there
  • is meaning in what you do?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: I think that purpose
  • is an enormous motivator in our lives.
  • So if you have something you want to do or accomplish,
  • to have a purpose behind it is a great motivator.
  • To have meaning helps to explain,
  • not only the world around you, but I go back to the self,
  • but explains you to you.
  • So if I didn't know, for example, that this was a chair.
  • And the word chair has some meaning for me.
  • It's a place where I said it's whatever.
  • So that explains how I can sit down in it
  • and what it does for me.
  • That's a very philosophical point.
  • But that's really true about everything.
  • Meaning is the explanation of why we're here.
  • And so we give everything meaning.
  • And so for a young person to find purpose and meaning means
  • they're moving forward.
  • Means you're on your way somewhere.
  • You're either going down a path or you're
  • creating a path for yourself.
  • I mean, those are the tools that move us around,
  • move us forward, I think.
  • I would say to a young person, also,
  • it isn't so much what you do, exactly, specifically.
  • It's how you do it and what you put into doing it.
  • It's the meaning and the purpose that's the issue.
  • That's the real meat of everything.
  • The actual thing you do is the dessert.
  • That's not the meat.
  • So it doesn't matter if you put your time and energy into this,
  • or this, or this, or that.
  • What it is it's not that important.
  • Even though it may seem to you that this is really what
  • I want to do with my life.
  • But life has a way of moving you from place
  • to place and circumstance to circumstance.
  • So what you hold onto, though, is the meaning and purpose
  • of it.
  • Not exactly what you're doing.
  • You want to do that with meaning and purpose.
  • But not get caught up, I think, in the thing you're doing,
  • but how you're doing it.
  • And who you are bringing yourself to it.
  • What kind of person are you that you see yourself in this?
  • How do you bring yourself to this?
  • How do you bring the best of you to make this
  • the best it can be?
  • So you really become the meaning and the purpose.
  • And you express that in all these things that you do.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Tie that for me into art, music, dance.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: The arts teach you purpose.
  • Discipline within purpose.
  • Ballet.
  • There are a certain set of structured steps
  • that you have to master in order to successfully execute
  • these steps.
  • But it is within those steps that you express yourself.
  • And that's the art part of it.
  • The craft is learning the steps.
  • It's the same in life, really.
  • You learn what you need to do to do something.
  • You know, if you're going to be a carpenter.
  • But then it's within that parameter
  • that you yourself shine.
  • And that's the real mystery of life.
  • And that's what happens with the arts.
  • The arts are a perfect place to do it
  • because there is both the artistry, which
  • is kind of your expressive side, and there
  • is the practical, practicing craft of it.
  • Learning the tools and all that.
  • And you put those two things together.
  • And music's the same way.
  • Anyone can play Chopin Polonaise.
  • Learning the notes.
  • You just do it every day, you'll get it.
  • It may take you a year or whatever,
  • but you'll get it if you do it every day.
  • But how you make those notes saying is a whole other world.
  • Same with art, same with theater.
  • All of that is the same.
  • You learn the craft.
  • And it's a great metaphor for living.
  • You learn what it is in life that life requires.
  • And within that, you become this magnificent expression of it.
  • In a way, yes, it is living outside the box in a sense.
  • But that may be not exactly the right metaphor.
  • Because we're all in a sense, in some kind of box.
  • It's what you do in the box that is
  • where the meaning and the purpose are.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: When all is said and done,
  • how do you want to be remembered by this community?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Oh.
  • You know, I love this community.
  • I've been given so much by this community.
  • By given so much, I don't mean material things.
  • I just mean...
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Experiences.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Experiences and...
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Connections.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Yeah.
  • And just the love of this community.
  • You know, I feel it all the time.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: So here we are at the cemetery
  • because Thomas Warfield--
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: --Well, of course my body
  • is being given to science so you won't see a cemetery,
  • but I get your meaning.
  • Plaque.
  • Maybe there'll be a plaque somewhere.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Oh there will certainly be a plaque Thomas.
  • Many of them.
  • (laughter)
  • I can't imagine you will pass without.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: You know, I just
  • think I've tried to be a person who embraced other people.
  • Embraced other ideas.
  • I mean that's what I do in many ways
  • and I embrace with all most of the time with a loving kind
  • passionate heart I think that's what
  • I'd like to be remembered for.
  • All the things I did, or the accomplishments,
  • or the successes, I think, are their own thing.
  • They're their own life and I contributed to that
  • but really I was about my own life.
  • Which all of us are, really.
  • Ultimately it's our life that we live
  • and how we enjoy it is up to us.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: And how we live it.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Yeah.
  • I mean, how we enjoy it depends on how we live it.
  • So I just felt early on that by serving the greater good was
  • the best way for me to live it.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Two more questions.
  • Do you think your serving the greater
  • good has anything to do with the heritage of upstate New York?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: Yes.
  • Yes.
  • When I was growing up in Rochester I knew the Sibleys.
  • Well, I knew Mrs. Harper Sibley.
  • She was the last one, I think.
  • The Eisenhardts, Strasburgs, McCurdys.
  • And I saw what they did with their wealth
  • and their lives was to make things better.
  • I even saw that with George Eastman,
  • although I wasn't around then.
  • But I saw that what he did and how it affected all of us.
  • I remember when I was a kid, I was also
  • in the Opera Under the Stars at Highland Ball growing up.
  • And the guy that started that, it was free.
  • You could take your family there to Highland Park,
  • have a picnic, watch a musical.
  • I think it was three times the summer that it happened.
  • It was all free.
  • And this is the way life was.
  • And I just thought, wow, this is the way it should be.
  • I grew up in those Oscar Hammerstein musicals or Rodgers
  • and Hammerstein musicals, where there
  • was a kind of happy ending.
  • And I saw that around me in Rochester.
  • So it kind of reinforced that.
  • You go out, you do the work, you help the other person,
  • and look what you could create at the end.
  • Carousel.
  • But In a way that's quite true.
  • Or it's been true for me.
  • I knew a lot about the Underground Railroad.
  • My mother taught us all those things.
  • Frederick Douglass.
  • We used to have to memorize his speeches.
  • And Susan B Anthony as well.
  • Yeah.
  • Rochester had a kind of activist feeling
  • and I was surrounded by it.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: What, in your own mind,
  • do you think is the next hurdle this community has
  • to jump or overcome?
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: I think one of the problems
  • or challenges in Rochester is, it's actually very segregated.
  • Extremely segregated in terms of economics.
  • Economically.
  • In terms of race.
  • I think the one beautiful thing in the LGBT community
  • is, I've watched an entire underground movement become
  • almost mainstream.
  • It's remarkable from when I grew up
  • to what it looks like the picture of the community now.
  • When I grew up, gay people lived over here, and you know.
  • They're all over the place.
  • They're running this and that.
  • They're people in politics.
  • The integration.
  • You know even just the clubs.
  • I still go to the clubs.
  • The clubs are just so different now.
  • There's such a blend of straight and gay.
  • And nobody cares about that.
  • But in other aspects of our community,
  • I don't think this integration has really been successful.
  • And I don't think we've been successful at looking
  • at it lately, within the last thirty years.
  • I think that's kind of why it's hard to get things accomplished
  • here sometimes on a large scale because are so many fractions.
  • And there's not a sense, I don't think, of a wholeness.
  • Which requires someone with a vision.
  • And I think poverty is part of that equation.
  • The separation is getting broader.
  • The gulf between the haves and have nots is getting so big.
  • It's going to be really hard to pull that together.
  • EVELYN BAILEY: Well, thank you.
  • THOMAS WARFIELD: You're welcome.
  • Hope I answered stuff you needed.
  • I don't know.