Snow All Over The World: Local boy brings global column to town

[Nicholas Snow]

Nicholas Snow, photographed in Bali, Indonesia in August, 2009, after he had attended the 9th Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP9).

(Reprinted from The Bottomline with permission)

By Mona de Crinis

If you’ve lived in the Palm Springs area for any length of time and have attended anything from cultural events to political rallies, chances are you’ve crossed paths with Nicholas Snow. He’s the tall guy with the broad smile and smooth voice who’s usually got a camera and a digital recorder on his person, ready to get the scoop and relay it through his online media network, which began modestly enough more than a decade ago with Notes from Hollywood. Over time, this popular website blossomed into Notes from Palm Springs, Notes from Thailand, Notes from the World, Travel and Adventures in Entertainment, and more.

Several years ago, before Nicholas relocated to Thailand, we featured his column on Hollywood happenings regularly in The BottomLine. Now he’s back with a fresh outlook on life and purpose. His new column, “Notes from the World,” launches in the issue that publishes on September 25. In the meantime, we asked Nicholas a few questions about what’s happened since we last ‘spoke’ and the direction his life is taking.

Nicholas, tell us about the focus of your new column appearing in the next issue?

NICHOLAS SNOW: It is my goal with “Notes from the World” to discover and report stories of courage, strength and hope of individuals worldwide who are passionately involved in the struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered civil rights as well as the battle against HIV/AIDS, and to demonstrate how these issues are inseparable from the overall fight for human rights for everyone. In addition, I will infuse travel and entertainment reporting into the mix to not only celebrate the freedoms that exist for many of us, but to contrast these freedoms against the dark realities of individuals living in more oppressed situations where sometimes their very lives are at risk.

What have you been doing since we featured your Notes from Hollywood column? And how will this column be different?

“Notes From Hollywood” existed as a column in one form or another for almost 15 years, and initially began as part of an outreach campaign for the Alliance for Gay and Lesbian Artists in the Entertainment Industry (AGLA), which many would say is the organization that was the pre-cursor to GLAAD. I was most prolific with the NFH column in the last ten years or so because of my relationships with The BottomLine, PULP and Buzz magazines in print, and with GayWired.com and ultimately at my own website, NotesFromHollywood.com, the permanent primary home of my entertainment reporting. Under the guise of “entertainment reporting” I often celebrated out and proud individuals who were quite political and transformational in their activities and pursuits.

They say you can take the guy out of Hollywood but you can’t take Hollywood out of the guy, so my new column will still focus at times on entertainment personalities using their artistry to transform our lives. I also want to celebrate those individuals who may never grace a red carpet, but who are in fact the most deserving of such an opportunity, “celebrating the star in all of us!”

What do you want readers to walk away with after reading your new column?

I would love to leave the readers in awe of the individuals on “the front lines” of worldwide transformation, perhaps inspiring readers to play a part and lend a hand, and instill in readers a greater appreciation for their own freedoms. On the lighter side, I would love to inspire the reader to travel to place they’ve never dreamed of, walk on beaches they’ve only seen on TV, and share spectacular sunsets with amazing new friends. In all of these things, we celebrate the sanctity of our lives and the importance of following our individual and collective dreams.

What’s your connection to Palm Springs?

I describe Palm Springs as “the hometown of my heart,” the place where some of my most important personal and professional friendships and relationships exist, offering a quality of life truly indicative of the kind of world we want to create. I’m not talking about the miles and miles of pristine roads wrapping around multi-million dollar estates. I’m talking about a community in which people from all walks of life and socioeconomic backgrounds live together in a way that demonstrates mutual respect and harmony. I love it because in the greater Palm Springs area, being gay is a non-issue for the most part (freedom to marry is another story), and some of the most powerful people in the Republican party are regularly being entertained by drag queens with huge hair. Perhaps we can all get along? I do want to be in Palm Springs for at least many months every year, perhaps timed with the fabulous Palm Springs International Film Festival.

How has living in Thailand changed you and your worldview?

Americans with very little life experience outside of the United States were aghast when President Obama apologized on his foreign trips for past imperfections of American foreign policy. However, my own experience outside of the USA has taught me how ethnocentric and myopic America’s view is of itself. I applaud President Obama’s efforts to heal our relationships with the world. Don’t get me wrong, I am deeply grateful to be an American. I am patriotic and I come from a military family (although I was denied entrance to the Air Force in the early ’80s because when they asked, I told), but believe we need to all have a broader world view. My travels are certainly expanding my own.

Have your priorities and relationships shifte since discovering you’re HIV positive?

Some would say yes, others would say no. From my own perspective, I’ve always looked to somehow create professional opportunities to support my personal causes, and I made being openly gay a priority, surrendered the privileges of the closet in the mid 1980s. Others will say I’m hell bent on becoming a star at anyone’s expense, masquerading as a humanitarian. I hate to say that with my alcoholic roots (I have over eight years of sobriety) that I still care about what other people think of me, but ultimately, I have to be true to myself.

Some of my friendships completely disintegrated at news of my plans to go public, but in the process, others have formed. I think many people question my ability to be an ambassador for HIV/AIDS awareness when I became HIV positive because of my own poor choices, but I personally think people need to know stories like mine. Most frightening for me in coming out was the uncertainty it created in every area of my life. How would I support myself? Would my mother still love me? Would I be thrown out of Thailand? I have continued to support myself and fund my activism. My relationship with my mother was beautifully healed before her untimely death earlier this year. My special media visa has been renewed for another year.

What’s the primary purpose of your website, ActionEqualsLife.com, and how do you plan to serve that purpose?

I wanted to come out HIV positive to then focus that spotlight on people working in the battle against HIV/AIDS. Since, at the time of my coming out, I had not successfully built relationships with individuals and organizations with whom to spotlight, I created ActionEqualsLife.com, which is “bringing people from all walks of life together who share the common goals of creating HIV/AIDS awareness; supporting the worldwide fight for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people; and supporting human rights in general.” It is a social network open to anyone, and has all the functionality of Facebook.

So, less than one year later, almost 120 individuals have chosen to spotlight themselves on the website, including people from Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, United States, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, Germany, China, Singapore, Myanmar, Jamaica, France, Pakistan, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Norway, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong and Nepal. The primary purpose is to provide a place for people to share their experience, strength and hope around these issues, “expressing the truth of our lives and transforming the planet.”

If you could invite any three people to your dinner party, living or dead, who would they be and why?

My mother and father because, although decades apart, they died too soon and too suddenly, and my best friend in junior high and high school, Cameron Ferguson, who killed himself at the age of 18 in part, I believe, because of conflicts between religion and sexuality. I would like to tell them all how much I love them, and ask them how I can further honor their memories.

If you could change one thing about your past, what would it be and why?

I would remove the words “I” and “me” from any statements I’ve ever communicated to perhaps achieve greater results.

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