I read this sitting alone on Riis Beach on a slightly cool, drizzly early August day when nobody else was there and it felt like the end of the world, or a world where everyone had vanished. I think that the particular setting I read these journals in complemented them perfectly. There's this tremendous sense of awe I have for good diarists, whose narratives of their own lives are cohesive, meaningful, contemplative--especially when the artists in question were really only taking notes for their own use, with no blogging culture to reference. David Wojnarowicz's journals were sporadic. He recorded on cassettes in the early 1980s, when he had just met Peter Hujar, and talked about boys he liked and relationships he had with people. He sounds like the voices of my friends, and the thread of ominous prescient statements about death and dread are things people I know would say, but when I imagine him talking to himself about buying dog food or having a dream or waiting around for a boy to phone him, it feels more melancholic. I can hear his voice as I read, and the crackle of tapes, and the traffic or birds. It's like a missive from past the edge of time.

The tape journals pick up again in the late 1980s, when David has had more success as an artist but has also seen many more people die. These later journals focus more and more on dreams and on narratives of David driving through the Southwestern United States. There are monologues about machines and God, and vivid recollections/recreations of sex dreams and death dreams and memories David had.