Another crucial story told by Lawrence's Hold On To Your Dreams is the erosion and eventual diaspora of the 70s downtown art scene as gentrification took hold in SOHO, TriBeCa, and eventually the Lower East Side. The destruction of the downtown arts community was also of course compounded and accelerated by the spread of AIDS, which Russell also fell prey to in 1992. Reading Lawrence's biography reminds me how necessary figures like Russell are, not only for their unflagging commitment to their art (and no one could be more committed to their art than Russell clearly was), but also for their successful boundary crossing, synthesis, and cross-pollination of cultural locations deemed separate and incommensurable with one another. I admire very much Lawrence's focus on this aspect of Russell's career, which I have no doubt contributed a lot to the playfulness, warmth, and subtlety of his music. I very much hope Russell’s life and work  continues to gain attention and shed light on the radically productive moment of downtown New York artists in the 70s and 80s. Lawrence’s Hold On To Your Dreams has done much to advance such a cause.

_{*Drawings on pgs 1 and 2 by Danny Jock, odes to the portraits on the albums Love is Overtaking Me and Calling out of Context respectively}