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Okay, today is December, December 1st, 2022. We are at Studio House at Walbridge and we are celebrating World AIDS Day, or remembering World AIDS Day. Would you mind telling us what brings-would you mind telling us first your name? Sure. My name is Reverend Dr. Julian Robertson Esquire. What brings you here tonight? I have the most wonderful, brilliant friend, his name was Kenneth Jackson and he passed away from AIDS in 1987. He was a lawyer, a operatic baritone, a well-read, wonderful human being. And when he became ill, he lost parts of himself, and I stayed with him through the process and it was excruciating. Watching him become ill and pass away was only part of the process. The process that continues to this very moment is the fact that there was a place for him in my life. There was a place for him in my children's lives, and in the lives of my family that never got filled because he was gone. I talked about him. I told my children about him, and I was able to to draw a picture of who he was and what he meant to me. But, that's only a shadow, and I really wanted him to still be there. So, I'm here tonight to do a performance of a child who has lost someone that they never met, and, so, the grief process has so many aspects to it. Some of which are directly related to the individual, but some are related to the space that we can never fill. And so, that's what brings me here tonight.

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So as an artist, how do you connect your art to your activism or see it related to activism? I'm an attorney, but I'm also an ordained minister, and, so, I find that art allows people to touch the emotions related to issues in ways that a rally or protest or civil disobedience, doesn't quite capture. Through our art were able to take the receiver, the listener, to an emotional place where they're able to stand in compassion, heart-to-heart, with the issue in a way that our anger, our rage, our indignation, can't take us. And so, for me art is an expression of my unconditional love to anyone that I'm in communion with at any given time. Could you tell us a bit about your art? And, how you got into that? I used to run the puppet ministry at my church. My old church, Metropolitan AME. And then when I became an associate pastor at Plymouth Congregational Church, I found a cast of seven, adorable puppets, and I have an old grandma puppet. I have a young man puppet, and I have a teenager and her name is Gina. Gina P. Puppet, and she'll be coming out tonight to talk to the audience. That's how I got started.

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And are these puppets you've designed yourself? I wish I just happened to find a vendor who had a diverse set of puppets and so I was moved to go ahead and invite them into this madness. I call-I call it puppet madness because sometimes we are slightly irreverent, but our job is to reach people wherever we are. Could you tell us a bit more about your friend who you're here to honor tonight? I want to get through our talk and performance without becoming emotional, but of course, emotion is the currency that we trade in, in describing the loss of someone who was just a tremendous human being. We were both lawyers in a firm in 1986 or so, and he became ill in late 1986 and told me about his, in his illness, we went to brunch and I think he selected the restaurant so that when he told me, I couldn't cry, I couldn't really react. And so, we had a couple of mimosas and he said, I need to tell you that I have AIDS, and something inside of me just kind of went flat cause it was devastating news, but he became ill and his sister and brother and parents were in different parts of the country. And so, it was easy to stick like glue to him because we had a wonderful friendship. And so, he was hospitalized. And the hospital staff didn't treat him very well at all. They wouldn't change his bed. They wouldn't clean the room. They wouldn't bring him water. And I noticed that whenever I would visit. he was alone. like really alone. And so, you know, I came more often and I get his water and I clipped his toenails and I rubbed his feet cause the stigma attached to the disease was just horrible at that time, and people were in a state of panic and a certain degree of ignorance about how the disorder was transmitted. And so, I'm the kind of person-I've had my own illnesses, and so, I understand that there's a higher power in operation when we allow ourselves to trust. And so, I never really had, even though I was pregnant at the time, I just didn't have have fear. I knew that everything would be okay, other than the fact that I was losing my best friend. So, eventually, he developed the parasitic sympathetic illnesses, he had thresh. And then his optic nerve was impaired, and he lost his vision, and eventually, he became unresponsive. And it was gradual, but it was also devastating to see. He went from being a hilarious, brilliant, wonderful human being who lit up a room anywhere he went to lying, you know, to the point of death. There was one time when he asked me if I would administer a lethal dose of painkillers to him. And in all honesty, I didn't want him to suffer, so I considered it. But then the hospice-the hospice staff let me know that if he died under those circumstances, they would make sure I got prosecuted, so I couldn't do it. But, his suffering went on and it was excruciating to see. So, honestly, it was an honor to have him as a friend. It was an honor to be there for him. If I had to do it all over again, I would most certainly do it. I'm thrilled that there are medicines that prevent the virus from taking hold, and that prolong a healthy life for people. I wish it had been available for Kenneth while he was alive.

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Anything else that you would like to share with us? If you have a person in your life that you love don't let anything separate you from them not disease, not illness, not argument, nothing because life is fleeting and you need every moment that you have. Thank you very much. You're very welcome.