We’ve long known that it’s not the volume of your voice that matters; it’s the content.
For twenty-five years, the great AIDS spokesperson, founder, and spiritual leader of ACT UP, Larry Kramer, was one of my closest friends. I’d originally been terrified to meet him but, once introduced, we were bonded until the moment of his death at age 84. He loved the title of my convention speech, “A Whisper of AIDS.”
“I need to shout,” Larry would say, “so you can whisper.” He said the night I spoke in Houston was “one of the best nights of my life.” A playwright and dramatist, Larry understood the power of words and also the power of the pause, the silence. He was familiar with the volume of conversations in hospices and mortuaries. He knew how to use the intimacy of quiet words, the truth we tell one another in soft language that’ll not be overheard. It’s the level of sound we use to make people lean in and listen hard. It’s modest and humble. It fits me. I don’t have a shouter’s voice.
The first time I used the word “whisper” in my speech was to describe our response to the death of loved ones. The last time it appeared was at the end, my call “to learn with me the lessons of history and of grace, so my children will not be afraid to say the word ‘AIDS’ when I am gone. Then their children, and yours, may not need to whisper it at all.” Whispering seemed like the right tone for the “shroud of silence” I said the Republicans had placed over AIDS.
I’ve never regretted using “whisper” to shape and deliver the speech for which I’m most remembered today. Pat Robertson and Cal Thomas, then well-known and much-published ultra-conservatives, wrote stinging commentaries on me and what I’d said. The Rev. Jerry Falwell had a predictably vile set of comments about all people with AIDS. Some hate mail arrived. But most people were kind.
Brent Staples, then of The New York Times, wrote an editorial entitled “Teaching Mercy to Republicans.” He said that “Ms. Fisher took the crusade for decency and compassion into the lion’s den,” and he went on to lionize me.
In October, Norman Mailer practically nominated me for sainthood in a New Republic essay. The man once described as “the patron saint of the curmudgeonly essay” treated me gently. The speech, he said, was “effective beyond all measure.” After paragraphs of praise, he offered this finale: “When Mary Fisher spoke like an angel that night, the floor was awash in tears, and conceivably the nation as well.”
I’d earlier imagined that Frank Bruni’s feature and Diane Sawyer’s report would wrap up my public appearances as a woman with AIDS. I imagined the same thing about the ’92 Convention. I can do this and that’ll be it. I’d head for home and my studio.
But that wasn’t it. Rather, it was the platform from which I’ve launched most of my activism for more than thirty years. The speech, together with speeches that followed, opened the door for me to speak to American institutions including prisons, hospices, churches, schools, temples, and congressional committees. It propelled me to Africa as a Special Representative of UNAIDS, to Portugal and Mozambique for the US State Department, and to the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. as a guest preacher.
Because of the speech, I was introduced to women around the world who showed unquenchable courage and stunning wisdom. I was able to speak to congressional committees and encourage others with my virus to live with grace and hope.
My life was slowly sliding away under the lash of AIDS and, as I grew older and sicker, being invited to speak out gave my life purpose and meaning. I’ve never been thankful to have AIDS but, in ways both tender and profound, AIDS has given my life meaning in ways I could not have imagined. The speech I gave in Houston in 1992 continues to be read and still makes a difference, sometimes to my surprise. When Oxford Press selected “100 Best American Speeches of the 20th Century,” they included mine.
The quiet virus was itself a whisper that has echoed through my life for decades and continues to echo today.
