VINCENT, CATS, LOVE, HATE & THE WHOLE DAMN THING

Like other friends and colleagues of RM Vaughan’s that I have been in touch with in these past weeks, I am finding myself asking Richard questions in my mind. Until he was gone I hadn’t fully realized that he was the one, perhaps the only one, who would have the answer to very particular art-related questions, or at the very least, a wise and ‘bitchy’ response. For example, I struggled with my love of the film version of CATS for months, never daring to blog about it at the risk of being called a perv, or worse, a pervy perv perv – a double, even triple perv. But I was convinced that the world just wasn’t ready for sexualized cats who touched themselves and ate cockroaches. I didn’t love the film, but I was mesmerized by it’s idiosyncratic use of extremely contrasting styles and luscious form and colour. In many ways, despite a slow beginning bogged down by Lloyd-Weber’s unremarkable recitative and poorly executed, repetitive songs, it moved me to tears of joy and sublime ridicule. I loved it and hated it. I adore it. Adoration can be a complex and triumphant failing. 

Then I found a review last week that said everything I was feeling about the film. I thought of Richard, and wondered what he would think. I have a hunch he may have hated it, and then again, he loved wondrously peculiar photos of animals, so maybe he loved CATS, the film. I don’t even know if he saw it. 

The one connection to Richard I often think of, I dare not divulge. But we both had the same ‘confidante’ for a short time. It got messy. Richard wrote about it. And he visited me once in Calgary and we had tea, and we discussed it a little. It had been traumatizing for both of us, but moreso for him I believe. At one point, in classic RM style, he ejected himself from our serious talk, saying, “I’m a scorned woman…I just want revenge.” I intervened, telling him that may very well be the case, but from my perspective, it was not the whole story. His so-called revenge was also therapeutic for me and many of his readers. He helped me move through the difficult experience of being treated dubiously by someone in a position of authority. And he did it with style, grace, and measured vitriol. And I thank him for that. He was one of a kind, among many of this kind. Bitchy, generous, considerate, campy, and quick to critique, even quicker to support. 

In a blurb he wrote for one of my many under-produced publications (poor little me) he said I was able to make academia sexy. Richard, you made the world a sexier and campier place to read in, to imagine the nuance and the intellect of camp consciousness in a way that is so often overlooked in mainstream contemporary writing. Somehow you made your way in, with your brilliance and your generosity of thought. In your wild and wonderful lexicon of love and socio-cultural horror you gave me, and so many others, a place to go and find answers, or at the very least, the best reflection I could imagine, regarding queer thought as it tries to make its way in an often queer-unfriendly universe. 

But damn, what did you think of CATS!? And then there’s the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit. I went four times, against my will. For the love of God, Richard, why did I love and hate it so damn much?