Georgelle Hirliman died a few days ago, and I am remembering her from Thailand.
Here is my original post from facebook:
“Georgelle Hirliman was without a doubt one of the most gifted writers and witches I have ever had the pleasure to know. As “Writer-in-the-WIndow” in the mid-1980s, she provided a generation of Santa Feans (and visitors from other places without a doubt) with advice that has quite similar to the vein of pop occultism later popularized by writers like Rob Brezny. I used her astrological services on several occasions when it seemed certain that the constructs of modern Western psychology and psychiatry did not contain nearly enough poetry to explain the strange existence that I began to lead as a teenager and continue to wind my way through to this very day. In fact, she is *precisely* the sort of person I would like to be speaking with now. Her death is a loss both to the community and to me personally, but I shall always remember her wry humor and genteel grace in trying to articulate solutions to the twists and turns of minds and heart troubled by the ineffable of the Santa Fe cosmogony, rife with problems both real and imagined, sensed and intuited, visions, notions and strange and dangerous ideas. Were I to attend a memorial for her, I would certainly cry, for she spoke to my heart – and so few people have either the courage or the ability to do that, and if they do have it, they do it so rarely. om nava shivaya, Georgelle – I always recognized the light in you, but without a doubt you saw in it me also and were occasionally able to help me see it.”
– gregoryp(tm)…
The courage of that woman in her Writer-in-the-Window project had just an enormous impact on me as a teenager. She had balls and she had commitment to a community that now no longer exists, IMHO. In any case – her work there was art and politics and philosophy and answers and inspiration and courage and strength and hope, and in the past 24 hours I have come to love her in her death a great deal more than I did in life. She has become an icon in my mind, as great people do when they die, and I am indeed very happy that I actually knew such an incredibly courageous person at least once in my life – but fortunately for me, I have also known a great deal many more…
the very act of sitting down to a blank page or facing an empty studio and making the decision to create is not just a courageous act, but an act of treason in a culture where the dominant discourse rests on consumption and apathy and hiding in your house. To create IN PUBLIC and on display is to challenge authority on its deepest levels. Whatever else Georgelle Hirliman was in her life – and I have indeed, heard many many things that I will gloss over completely in remembering the strength of that project – as Writer-in-the-Window she created a moment of temporal anarchy that resulted in a rich rich discourse that was primarily local (as all good projects should be) but that created global resonance that is affecting me with great profoundity as I sit here typing on the banks of the Mekong in Thailand. Goddess knows how many other hearts and minds she touched with what was essentially a dada exercise in creation for the sake of it. Do not forget her, even if you never knew her. Goddess knows, though I may forget the woman I will never forget the work – on par with DuChamp’s urinal, to a degree, taking the piss at an art culture that was only just evolving in Santa Fe at the time, where creativity and process where trumped entirely by the need to create decorative work that enlivened the expensive homes of the dull-minded and well-monied.
I really could go on and on, but just remember this – it takes tremendous courage and whimsy to sit in a storefront window and present to people the idea that they have questions and you will make a stab at answers. All those AMAZING questions – and her answers – helped define the cosmogony of Santa Fe during the period in which she worked, and for a generation of Santa Fe youth, she was our oracle.. God bless her soul.
Is there an archive – someone should curate a show. Wish I could, honestly.
