(CNN) -- "The Normal Heart," written by my friend, the brilliant playwright Larry Kramer, and based on his story during the earliest days of the AIDS epidemic, tells a tale that many of us lived through, and many others did not survive. It's as relevant today as an HBO movie as when it premiered on the stage in New York City in 1985. Back then, The New York Times refused to print the word "gay," and New York Mayor Ed Koch was agonizingly slow to respond to the unfolding epidemic. Fear was everywhere. Around the country, family members shunned infected relatives, doctors were afraid to touch AIDS patients, let alone treat them, and hospital wards filled up with young men covered in lesions, dying excruciating deaths. I've almost lost track of the number of funerals I went to in those years. My friends were dying all around me -- I'm lucky that I somehow survived.
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Elton John: In the 1980s, newspapers wouldn't use term "gay," AIDS was ignored by many
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He says "The Normal Heart," an HBO film, portrays the days when many of his friends were dying
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Today's challenges regarding AIDS are different but equally urgent, he says
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Elton John: We can protect and treat everyone, yet the most vulnerable still struggle
While @placeholder is a product of a specific time, it is not an artifact.