Missing Philip

Nayland posted this morning that his former lover had died. I called Michelle in New York and confirmed that Philip Horvitz had passed away suddenly while on a plane. Philip was going to perform at the John Sims Center on the 10th and since getting his e-mail, that’s all I’ve been thinking about lately, so excited to see him perform again. He was part of a group of artists that combined dance, performance, comedy, theater and poetry into a thrilling new form of performance art that was as entertaining as it was intellectually stimulating. He was a compact ball of fire, performing as and deconstructing Sammy Davis, Jr., every bit his equal, belting out mournful screeching tunes in the group Tiny, reading excerpts from Pete Townsend’s “diary” with Absolut Manpussy—or in his bizarre mini-revival of Company. He lived downstairs, or it could have been up it was so long ago, from Christian Huygen, and often Christian and I would listen at the lightwell as Philip’s voice drifted up (or down), serenading us with his softly rendered version of the “meow-meow, meow-meow” song from the Meow Mix commercial. His creative spirit is really going to be missed.