You've got to climb Mount Everest
to reach the Valley of the D.
It's a brutal climb to reach that peak.
In 2017, I briefly wrote a tinyletter on feminine trash called the Valley of the D. My sudden move to the UK disrupted it, as I threw all of my energy into frantically preparing for the cross-Atlantic journey. When I arrived, I had to immerse myself in a new culture - though I had lived here briefly as a child, I hadn’t been back for eighteen years - and my gusto for writing about feminine trash evaporated.
But I am a lifelong wanderer in the Valley of the D. It was inevitable that I would return to base camp.
(Tariq Alvi, Two Hankies: Pony, The Bandaged Lady, 2005, detail.)
I’ve been thinking for days about how to connect with people during this global shut down. Should I organize the stream of a marathon reading of Sarah Schulman’s canonical AIDS activist novel People In Trouble? Should I do a live episode of One From the Vaults from my bedroom? Should I use all of this extra time to work on the major projects I am already under contract to deliver?
This pandemic-inspired revival of the Valley of the D is my first offering to the self-isolated, the quarantined, and the sick. The sick do indeed rule the world, it turns out. They have brought the world to its knees, and it’s from this familiar position that I will write to you now.
(Pandrogyne Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, photo by Marie Losier.)
In memory of the imperfect, recently departed second-half of the Pandrogyne, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.
xx M