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.