"Gertrude Stein, Antonioni, Bertolucci, Kurosawa, Carmina Burana..."

There you've gone and done it again! The words simply fly to the fast-paced revelry of the music: "German wine, turpentine, Gertrude Stein, Antonioni, Bertolucci, Kurosawa, Carmina Burana...". You picture yourself as your favourite character: perhaps you always had a little bit of Mimi in you...or a strong disposition to Mark. Instantly, your world is transformed as what was once an ordinary, banal, blasé day is now a significant work - a day in a life.

The musical RENT has been a positive force in the lives of not only thousands - even millions - of HIV/AIDS sufferers, but a magnificent tool in the life of the awareness movement itself. Jonathan Larson, fed up with the world, wrote a masterpiece so that the world could do something about it.

In the song "La Vie Bohème" from RENT, Gertrude Stein is celebrated by the bohèmie because she represented a stab against the system, a crack in the proverbial 'glass ceiling'. Gertrude Stein had her reasons. I fully support them whether or not I whole-heartedly agree. She did a service to literature - her and her 'school'. It's quite the romantic ideal - the expatriates en Paris. They chose not to believe the lie. That is my problem: I have no idea what the lie is. I don't believe the lie either, but I need to define it if I am to oppose it. Like Gertrude Stein, RENT has multiple hierarchies. Whether or not you like the musical or the movie is irrelevant because, you have to respect the idea and the movement that is RENT. Even if you don't cry at Angel's funeral, you can still take part in a movement to right a wrong.

Gertrude Stein says that literature is beyond identity. Beyond identity, everything has a double meaning. In the same way Animal Farm is more than a barnyard fable, RENT and the life of Gertrude Stein have significant double meanings. RENT is not just about the plight of one small family, but an entire culture. The sole reason this culture exists is that society has shunned it and put it under the rug. In the deep, dark places of the city that even I, a passionate NYC-philiac, admit frightening, whole communities were left to fester. In this sense, RENT is more than the liberation of society in homosexual, bi-sexual or openness terms. RENT is the total abolition of stereotype and label. The point is not that it's OK to be gay. The point is that 'gay' has no meaning. It is a word, nothing more. All the words used to 'identify', class, 'hate' people are simply words; they have no power. The important thing is - you guessed it - love. Love is the essence of humanity. Where humans congregate, love is bound to flourish. Gertrude Stein realised the same thing. She realised that you can't let people use words to make you less human; language has no real attack value against people. To quote the new-age cliché, there really is no day but today. It should be our motto. Take it or leave it, just care.