Brian Taylor

Memories and Observations by Brad Taylor, Brian's brother.

Brian Francis Taylor was born in Midland, Texas on October 17^th, 1957.  He was a happy baby, the youngest of four boys, and enjoyed a warm and loving family life with his parents and brothers.  A quiet confidence and independence combined with exceptional intuition and sensitivity - as well as a kind of special status as the youngest – set him apart, in some ways, from his siblings.  We didn’t always understand him well, and I, being next to him in age, failed particularly to support him, and descended into teasing and bullying him at times – a lack of empathy I grew out of as we got older.  The main aspect of Biff’s vision that we didn’t understand, perhaps too predictably, as a brood of all boys, was his steady respect for, and involvement with his feminine side.  When we were wandering in the prairie around our house on the edge of town, or playing sporty games in the yards of the residential subdivision that we lived in, Biff often preferred to play inside games with Teresa Ulrich who lived next door, games with dolls and clothes that we relegated to an undesirable class of girl stuff.  Brian was undaunted, although he paid a price for his difference, and his respect and love for things others stereotyped as female blossomed into a very early and precocious feminism that informed his entire life as a thinker, as a mystic, and as an artist and human being.  This was a profound and original commitment that I believe influenced many people in many milieus through his life.

From the earliest age, Brian was aware of, and attentive to, the practical impact of magic and ritual on everyday life.  This praxis informed his way of making decisions, of moving through the world, and was central to his work as an artist.  British poet and mythology analyst Robert Graves was a key influence – as was pop astrologer Linda Goodman – along with Elliot and Yeats.  He was also deeply moved by the work of William Erwin Thompson and Victor Turner.  One of Biff’s important works of the late 80’s borrowed inspiration and title from Thompson’s Darkness and Scattered Light.  And, like Turner, Thompson is directly engaged with the significance and interpretation of dreams – this region was of primary importance to Biff in life and work.

Brian was angry with the role of modern organized religion, particularly Christian churches in deadening and usurping people’s ritual impulses which he saw to be essential.  But he was also very interested in early Christian mysticism, and was thus enamored of Elaine Pagel’s discussion of the Gnostic Gospels, particularly the Gospel of Mary.  This attention to the traditions of the Egyptian, Greek and Levantine Gnostics and Coptics led him to an interest in and devotion to the eastern Mediterranean godhead of Abraxas, the ambi-gendered spirit of good and evil and the divine region of grey in between that I believe was of special significance to Brian.  I don’t know if he would validate it, but I think his favorite color was a faded grey-blue – this color occurred around him a lot, and was in his work. 

But one thing that I see to have resounded in Brian’s work, and actually, in his life generally, was the practice of making work that was uplifting (not necessarily by purpose, but by eventual effect) – work that was positive and life-affirming in the context of a somewhat concretely melancholic essential vision.  His was, somewhere fundamentally, a fairly dark and brooding, even apocalyptic, perspective – but his decision, consciously or not, was to make work in a way that contravened that desolation and reached for something divine in a way that was, somehow, optimistic and redeeming.  Biff’s program notes for Darkness and Scattered Light when it was performed at Caravan of Dreams in Forth Worth, Texas in 1989 read as follows:  “Darkness and Scattered Light is a dance about looking for diamonds among ashes.  It is a response to the increasing banality, depravity and violence of the images heaped upon us by our media and the circumstances of our daily lives.  Beauty and meaning are present always, but it often takes a great effort of looking to arrive at a perspective where they are discernible.  One must be willing to make the effort.”

Biff’s work in North Texas, both inside and out of his academic stint at Texas Women’s University at Denton, in the late 80’s and early 90’s, took place mostly in the context of the dance collective that he co-founded, Radke Dance Gallery. His crew of friends, which included intimate collaborator and supporter and patron, Gayle Ziaks, colleague and collaborator, Dickie Hargrave, close friends Paula Lane, Jimmy and Stacy Elder and many others were a seedbed for inspiration, a warm, nurturing social community and a canvas on which to create for Biff in the years he spent in Denton which were happy and creative years for him, even though he had gotten sick in ‘89.

One thing that I have to say here is that Brian was not one to depend very much on others to characterize his person or his thought, certainly not his work – so any comments I make here about how he struck me have to be emphasized as personal observations only - in deference to his rather fierce brand of autonomy. My brother Brian "Biff" Taylor died in Manhattan, August 18, 1992, surrounded by light and the love of his family and friends.