Examining My Feelings After Watching The Andy Warhol Diaries

I just finished watching the Andy Warhol Diaries and now I’m dealing with my feelings, because this documentary touched me deeply. I have a longtime love affair with certain eras. The 1920s, for example, has always felt so familiar, almost as though I might have lived a previous life as a writer in Paris during this progressive time period. Yet, the 1960s WAS my era, so why did I feel as though it was another lifetime? What was it about this documentary that made me feel the presence of so many ghosts?

It wasn’t long before I realized that the strong feelings I was experiencing actually felt a lot like reading an obituary. Not Andy’s, but my own.

Stay with me for a minute longer while I try to explain …

I’m getting old. I’ve lived long enough on this planet to have a history and that history is becoming dated, nostalgic, almost unrecognizable to current times. The world has moved into another era with it’s own pop culture, AIDS epidemic, pointless wars, icons, and fashions. It’s not my world any longer. I always welcomed these nostalgic feelings when I read a biography or watched a documentaary set well before my time, but this WAS my time and it no longer felt real.

I think I would’ve enjoyed getting to know Andy.

In spite of his public persona, I’m pretty sure that he was a philosopher of a particular sort or at the very least an avid observer. Observers don’t always participate but even when they do, they can’t give whatever they’re doing full attention because they’re always watching with one eye.

They pour their observations into their art, however.

So, here I am watching Andy watching life and relating with many of his conclusions. Conclusions that always remained open ended because the next observation was just around the corner.

The AIDS tragedy in New York City was a huge part of Andy’s observations even if he didn’t talk about it all the time.

I couldn’t help but compare his experiences with an epidemic to my experiences with the COVID pandemic. There were too many similarities to count, but clearly it wrecked the world as they knew it. So many young people passing away. Such short lives seemed like a travesty. At least with our pandemic, death has favored older people.

Our natural instincts to survive at all costs and our cultural obligations to live long productive lives make the whole idea of dying young seem like a great waste, almost a sin.

Yet, although death was all around Andy so that he could observe it up close and personal, he never became comfortable with the idea. There was shame attached to dying of AIDS, unfortunately. That didn’t seem to be what bothered Andy the most, however. Dying was something that he feared — a lot.

That’s where he and I disagree, but then I’m old and Andy died at the young age of fifty-eight.

He might have felt differently had he lived to see his seventies. Incidentally, Andy didn’t die of AIDS. He died from other health problems which may have been avoidable. There was a wrongful death law suit filed after he died that the hospital settled out of court.

Of course, I loved watching the documentary for the way it captured the time period, the glitz and glam of Studio 54 and the scene in New York City before the AIDS epidemic spoiled the party was truly unique.

But the overall impression that lingered for some time after I watched the last episode was one of a deeply philosophical nature.

That’s life!

This thing called life that we cling to tenaciously often is terribly unsatisfying. Happiness eludes us and time slips though our fingers and we have no idea that it’s happening until we’re dying.

Our expectations are often too high.

Our brains are wired to sabotage us. Our lonliness even in a crowd is unexplainable but real. Disappointments dog our days and people let us down. A relationship is tough to keep alive and flourishing. Our bodies fall apart. Even when money and booze is flowing, even when we dance until dawn, even if we’ve become a household name, we have our demons that continue to plague us.

That’s not to say that there aren’t some feel good moments along the way if we’re lucky.

Most of us experience some of these moments, but they often come from unexpected, uncomplicated places and are fleeting. A good meal, a nice conversation, a walk with our dogs down a tree-lined street provide sweet little moments of pleasure. If we fail to notice, however, then we rob ourselves of the only bits of joy to be had in this life.

At the end of the documentary, I was left with the strangest feeling that I’d just watched a story about myself. Not me in particular, perhaps, but everyone. It was a filmed version of an obituary for all of humanity.

It left me feeling sad but seen. I knew that my story wasn’t a figment of my imagination. That everyone lives life to a greater or lesser degree filled with struggles and disappontment, often trying but failing to do the best we can. And, if we had a chance to do it all over again, we’d probably end up doing it roughly the same way so why bother with regrets.

I’m still not afraid to die, however. Unlike Andy, I see death as a much needed form of planned obsolescence, but then again, I’m not fifty-eight years old.

Teresa Roberts is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.