The Egyptian Connection
I am reading a book that has been in my library since my days at Bookman’s. It was in the section on Egyptian Mythology. For some reason I never got to it, until now, which seems fortuitous, as it comes on the heels of my finishing my three books. I have known for a long time that I have a special connection with the ancient Egyptian culture, as it is no accident that I have tagged my series of post-Inferno drawings
THE HIEROGLYPHIC THEATER. The idea for that name was a spin-off from reading Frances Yates fine book BRUNO AND THE HERMETIC TRADITION. The book was my first real clue that my mind was working in a similar way to their ancient mythology as I had the same inclination to express myself in a symbolic language. After my intense and active 5 years of teaching and politicking at UNLV, a time in my life when most of my life energies were flowing in an outward direction, I had one of those turn-around experiences, like St. Paul experienced, where I ceased all that activity and cut myself off, withdrew from society and embraced two months of solitude. Actually, I plunged like a stone in to my internal world. I became an “Introspective Voyager,” leaving behind the persona of a radical figure on the barricades fighting against tyranny and injustice. Instead I became a “plunger,” which is what Charles Olson said of Herman Melville. It means I knew how to take a chance.
The first thing that happened was the vision of the black sphere and the wheel design; it was a spontaneous vision that provided me with a clue about a new direction I might take. Given the kind of drawing I was doing at the time, it was another turn-around experience. At one point fear and anxiety became strong and I experienced some personal demons. One night while I was reading a book about the demonic at three o’clock in the morning there was a loud inexplicable crack in the brick wall behind my chair. I had reached the point of no return. A few days later, after sinking about as far as I could go at the time, I experienced death, transfiguration, and rebirth; and it was generated by a spontaneous eruption of energy that had shot up my spine and danced on the crown of my head; and after I saw myself die, lose all flesh, and then resurrect, slowly becoming whole again. I’ll never forget than image of myself as a bony ghost on “the other side.” The spontaneous rush up the spine was the key to the vision. I felt like an Egyptian who had visited the Land of the Dead.
I have come to call that experience in, of all places, Las Vegas, THE INFERNO, as it was a Baptism by Fire, in a place hellish hot in the summer. And it was more than reversal of course: a seal was broken and I now existed on the psychic plane, the middle zone between Spirit and the material plane. I became open to a new understanding of all things. From the internal perspective I am a twice-born man. But not a Christian, which is important to remember.
In November 1969, while living in Eugene, Oregon, I experienced a second kundalini rush, this time more sought after. It was different too, for when it happened I was meditating while in considerable pain. I had an abscessed tooth that I was seeing a dentist the next day. My legs were killing me after 20 minutes in the half lotus position. My right shoulder hurt like hell. Then, like the first time, there was this explosive release in the lower torso, in the region of the first two chakras, and the same energy came charging up my spine. The feeling had been I was vessel filling up with liquid; as the waters rose all my pains were wiped out and all I felt was bliss, bliss and more bliss. I am not sure how long it lasted but when the energy returned to the lower chakras, the pains returned. The rush was curative but short-lived. I can’t imagine what life would be like if such bliss was constant.
In 1970 I had 25 dreams that I recorded. Many of them contributed ideas and images that I fed off of for years in my drawings. The second rush had opened a second seal and the waterfall of dreams was the result. It was also in the winter of 1970 that I turned out my first three-decker ‘hieroglyph,’ the forerunner of THE HIEROGLYPHIC THEATER.
These breakthroughs and turn-a-rounds led to the inevitable: quitting teaching and relying on the “sure thing.” I became more of a risk-taker, following my intuition no matter how crazy most people thought I was. My eye was on one thing: personal authenticity.
The book on Egypt that I was reading was THE TEMPLE OF THE COSMOS: THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN EXPEIENCE OF THE SACRED. The author’s name was Jeremy Naydler a Brit who does independent research. He has a profound grasp of Old Egypt and is amazingly articulate in laying out the Ontology, Metaphysics, and Mythology, the foundational elements of Egyptian spirituality. He has reinforced my intuitive sense of identification with their culture. It is definitely more important to me than the Greek and Roman World.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Shamanism
2011_10_16 Books and more books
Dear Hal,
Like you in California the heat has not let up here either. We have been in the high nineties for the last 3 days and there aren’t any let ups till next week. We are pretty tired of it, as you are. Strangely, even though I do not go out much any more, I am not subject to cabin fever. I love my studio even though it drives me mad because it has become too small, which promotes losing things in the welter of stuff jammed into the space, like an address on a piece of paper and bigger things, like a particular book or drawing. As a case in point a Mandala design that I used on the title page of BRIDGE IN THE FOG, has disappeared, which is a bummer because the printer wants to scan it again. I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find it. Frustrating. I may have to draw it again. But there have been dozens of little and big problems in getting my three books done. Yes, I said three. It’s three because I have rewritten and revised PRIMUS ROTA, something I have thought about for years so I did it last week. I cut away the verbiage, like excess fat on a steak, and made the narrative shorter and more concise, plus I added 7 more drawings. I have the 50 copies of EROS AND PSYCHE and I’ll send you a copy when I get some mailers. I have the other two books in hard copy and they look good but they need editing. I have hired an ex-English teacher to edit BRIDGE to edit the 375 page final book in the trilogy, but Suzie has volunteered, with a little urging from me, to edit the revised Primus Rota. Bridge will probably be the last book printed because the gal is out of town till November. Plus PR is now only 53 pages long, so we should get that in a relatively short time. 50 copies of EROS cost me $730 and PR, if there are few complications, should be around $275 for 25 copies. I will get 25 copies of BRIDGE too, for around $750. That’s not bad for 3 “Art” books with lots of images inside. (All black and white of course.) Wait till you see EROS; the drawings look great, I could not be happier how they came out—but of course it took 6 runs before they got to the quality I wanted and finally got. For the last three weeks I have been going to the printer’s place almost every day. And it will be several weeks before we are completely finished with this project. I don’t have a price for the EROS, so I’ll let you contributed to the cause as you see fit. Incidentally, I found a slide of that self-portrait I sold to you that you seemed to have trouble finding. I had it digitized and copied. It is not very good but the image is there and you can use it to refresh your memory. In the drawing I am standing along side a pool table and I am wearing a cowboy hat. As for your question about a masse shot, that’s when you stroke down on the cue ball, in a nearly perpendicular position, which will put spin on the cue ball to go around a ball that is an obstacle to the ball you want to hit. It’s a curve ball, so to speak.
As for our health issues, they haven’t gone away, but I am in no mood to talk about them.
I probably haven’t told you that Ryder finally had his heart operation two weeks ago and it came out well and he’s back to normal already. A specialist was flown in to do the operation, rather then a local doctor because it was a tricky procedure. His heart had a hole in it the size of a quarter. We had all imagined a hole like pin prick—not quite. They went in up his groin with a Dacron patch and the first one was too small, so it had to be withdrawn and a larger one tried
And that was attached. Another doctor, his cardiologist, went down his throat with a camera to make sure the surgeon did not invade the esophagus area. Kaia is now furious because her insurance is refusing to pay for the cardiologist’s role in the operation. And the cost is in the thousands of dollars. She’s trying to justify his participation but right now the case is not resolved.
I am glad to see the grassroots anti-Wall street demonstrations and I hope the spirit of the protest translates into beating back the Tea Party, other Republicans, and the Money Clique that calls all the shots. I also hope the gulf between Romney and Tea Party gets wider and wider. Romney is the R-Party’s establishment candidate who is trying to wrest control from the Tea Party-fanatical-uncooperative-right wing faction, which gained control last November in the House and by abusing the filibuster rule in the senate. If Romney wins the primaries it could split the party and the Tea Party might try to form a third party, which would really help the D-Party and Obama. If you remember when Perot ran in 1994 Clinton was elected with only 43% of the vote.
Later,
Jerry P
Dear Hal,
Like you in California the heat has not let up here either. We have been in the high nineties for the last 3 days and there aren’t any let ups till next week. We are pretty tired of it, as you are. Strangely, even though I do not go out much any more, I am not subject to cabin fever. I love my studio even though it drives me mad because it has become too small, which promotes losing things in the welter of stuff jammed into the space, like an address on a piece of paper and bigger things, like a particular book or drawing. As a case in point a Mandala design that I used on the title page of BRIDGE IN THE FOG, has disappeared, which is a bummer because the printer wants to scan it again. I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find it. Frustrating. I may have to draw it again. But there have been dozens of little and big problems in getting my three books done. Yes, I said three. It’s three because I have rewritten and revised PRIMUS ROTA, something I have thought about for years so I did it last week. I cut away the verbiage, like excess fat on a steak, and made the narrative shorter and more concise, plus I added 7 more drawings. I have the 50 copies of EROS AND PSYCHE and I’ll send you a copy when I get some mailers. I have the other two books in hard copy and they look good but they need editing. I have hired an ex-English teacher to edit BRIDGE to edit the 375 page final book in the trilogy, but Suzie has volunteered, with a little urging from me, to edit the revised Primus Rota. Bridge will probably be the last book printed because the gal is out of town till November. Plus PR is now only 53 pages long, so we should get that in a relatively short time. 50 copies of EROS cost me $730 and PR, if there are few complications, should be around $275 for 25 copies. I will get 25 copies of BRIDGE too, for around $750. That’s not bad for 3 “Art” books with lots of images inside. (All black and white of course.) Wait till you see EROS; the drawings look great, I could not be happier how they came out—but of course it took 6 runs before they got to the quality I wanted and finally got. For the last three weeks I have been going to the printer’s place almost every day. And it will be several weeks before we are completely finished with this project. I don’t have a price for the EROS, so I’ll let you contributed to the cause as you see fit. Incidentally, I found a slide of that self-portrait I sold to you that you seemed to have trouble finding. I had it digitized and copied. It is not very good but the image is there and you can use it to refresh your memory. In the drawing I am standing along side a pool table and I am wearing a cowboy hat. As for your question about a masse shot, that’s when you stroke down on the cue ball, in a nearly perpendicular position, which will put spin on the cue ball to go around a ball that is an obstacle to the ball you want to hit. It’s a curve ball, so to speak.
As for our health issues, they haven’t gone away, but I am in no mood to talk about them.
I probably haven’t told you that Ryder finally had his heart operation two weeks ago and it came out well and he’s back to normal already. A specialist was flown in to do the operation, rather then a local doctor because it was a tricky procedure. His heart had a hole in it the size of a quarter. We had all imagined a hole like pin prick—not quite. They went in up his groin with a Dacron patch and the first one was too small, so it had to be withdrawn and a larger one tried
And that was attached. Another doctor, his cardiologist, went down his throat with a camera to make sure the surgeon did not invade the esophagus area. Kaia is now furious because her insurance is refusing to pay for the cardiologist’s role in the operation. And the cost is in the thousands of dollars. She’s trying to justify his participation but right now the case is not resolved.
I am glad to see the grassroots anti-Wall street demonstrations and I hope the spirit of the protest translates into beating back the Tea Party, other Republicans, and the Money Clique that calls all the shots. I also hope the gulf between Romney and Tea Party gets wider and wider. Romney is the R-Party’s establishment candidate who is trying to wrest control from the Tea Party-fanatical-uncooperative-right wing faction, which gained control last November in the House and by abusing the filibuster rule in the senate. If Romney wins the primaries it could split the party and the Tea Party might try to form a third party, which would really help the D-Party and Obama. If you remember when Perot ran in 1994 Clinton was elected with only 43% of the vote.
Later,
Jerry P
Monday, October 17, 2011
Letter to a Friend
2011_10_16 Books and more books
Dear Hal,
Like you in California the heat has not let up here either. We have been in the high nineties for the last 3 days and there aren’t any let ups till next week. We are pretty tired of it, as you are. Strangely, even though I do not go out much any more, I am not subject to cabin fever. I love my studio even though it drives me mad because it has become too small, which promotes losing things in the welter of stuff jammed into the space, like an address on a piece of paper and bigger things, like a particular book or drawing. As a case in point a Mandala design that I used on the title page of BRIDGE IN THE FOG, has disappeared, which is a bummer because the printer wants to scan it again. I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find it. Frustrating. I may have to draw it again. But there have been dozens of little and big problems in getting my three books done. Yes, I said three. It’s three because I have rewritten and revised PRIMUS ROTA, something I have thought about for years so I did it last week. I cut away the verbiage, like excess fat on a steak, and made the narrative shorter and more concise, plus I added 7 more drawings. I have the 50 copies of EROS AND PSYCHE and I’ll send you a copy when I get some mailers. I have the other two books in hard copy and they look good but they need editing. I have hired an ex-English teacher to edit BRIDGE to edit the 375 page final book in the trilogy, but Suzie has volunteered, with a little urging from me, to edit the revised Primus Rota. Bridge will probably be the last book printed because the gal is out of town till November. Plus PR is now only 53 pages long, so we should get that in a relatively short time. 50 copies of EROS cost me $730 and PR, if there are few complications, should be around $275 for 25 copies. I will get 25 copies of BRIDGE too, for around $750. That’s not bad for 3 “Art” books with lots of images inside. (All black and white of course.) Wait till you see EROS; the drawings look great, I could not be happier how they came out—but of course it took 6 runs before they got to the quality I wanted and finally got. For the last three weeks I have been going to the printer’s place almost every day. And it will be several weeks before we are completely finished with this project. I don’t have a price for the EROS, so I’ll let you contributed to the cause as you see fit. Incidentally, I found a slide of that self-portrait I sold to you that you seemed to have trouble finding. I had it digitized and copied. It is not very good but the image is there and you can use it to refresh your memory. In the drawing I am standing along side a pool table and I am wearing a cowboy hat. As for your question about a masse shot, that’s when you stroke down on the cue ball, in a nearly perpendicular position, which will put spin on the cue ball to go around a ball that is an obstacle to the ball you want to hit. It’s a curve ball, so to speak.
As for our health issues, they haven’t gone away, but I am in no mood to talk about them.
I probably haven’t told you that Ryder finally had his heart operation two weeks ago and it came out well and he’s back to normal already. A specialist was flown in to do the operation, rather then a local doctor because it was a tricky procedure. His heart had a hole in it the size of a quarter. We had all imagined a hole like pin prick—not quite. They went in up his groin with a Dacron patch and the first one was too small, so it had to be withdrawn and a larger one tried
And that was attached. Another doctor, his cardiologist, went down his throat with a camera to make sure the surgeon did not invade the esophagus area. Kaia is now furious because her insurance is refusing to pay for the cardiologist’s role in the operation. And the cost is in the thousands of dollars. She’s trying to justify his participation but right now the case is not resolved.
I am glad to see the grassroots anti-Wall street demonstrations and I hope the spirit of the protest translates into beating back the Tea Party, other Republicans, and the Money Clique that calls all the shots. I also hope the gulf between Romney and Tea Party gets wider and wider. Romney is the R-Party’s establishment candidate who is trying to wrest control from the Tea Party-fanatical-uncooperative-right wing faction, which gained control last November in the House and by abusing the filibuster rule in the senate. If Romney wins the primaries it could split the party and the Tea Party might try to form a third party, which would really help the D-Party and Obama. If you remember when Perot ran in 1994 Clinton was elected with only 43% of the vote.
Later,
Jerry P
Dear Hal,
Like you in California the heat has not let up here either. We have been in the high nineties for the last 3 days and there aren’t any let ups till next week. We are pretty tired of it, as you are. Strangely, even though I do not go out much any more, I am not subject to cabin fever. I love my studio even though it drives me mad because it has become too small, which promotes losing things in the welter of stuff jammed into the space, like an address on a piece of paper and bigger things, like a particular book or drawing. As a case in point a Mandala design that I used on the title page of BRIDGE IN THE FOG, has disappeared, which is a bummer because the printer wants to scan it again. I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find it. Frustrating. I may have to draw it again. But there have been dozens of little and big problems in getting my three books done. Yes, I said three. It’s three because I have rewritten and revised PRIMUS ROTA, something I have thought about for years so I did it last week. I cut away the verbiage, like excess fat on a steak, and made the narrative shorter and more concise, plus I added 7 more drawings. I have the 50 copies of EROS AND PSYCHE and I’ll send you a copy when I get some mailers. I have the other two books in hard copy and they look good but they need editing. I have hired an ex-English teacher to edit BRIDGE to edit the 375 page final book in the trilogy, but Suzie has volunteered, with a little urging from me, to edit the revised Primus Rota. Bridge will probably be the last book printed because the gal is out of town till November. Plus PR is now only 53 pages long, so we should get that in a relatively short time. 50 copies of EROS cost me $730 and PR, if there are few complications, should be around $275 for 25 copies. I will get 25 copies of BRIDGE too, for around $750. That’s not bad for 3 “Art” books with lots of images inside. (All black and white of course.) Wait till you see EROS; the drawings look great, I could not be happier how they came out—but of course it took 6 runs before they got to the quality I wanted and finally got. For the last three weeks I have been going to the printer’s place almost every day. And it will be several weeks before we are completely finished with this project. I don’t have a price for the EROS, so I’ll let you contributed to the cause as you see fit. Incidentally, I found a slide of that self-portrait I sold to you that you seemed to have trouble finding. I had it digitized and copied. It is not very good but the image is there and you can use it to refresh your memory. In the drawing I am standing along side a pool table and I am wearing a cowboy hat. As for your question about a masse shot, that’s when you stroke down on the cue ball, in a nearly perpendicular position, which will put spin on the cue ball to go around a ball that is an obstacle to the ball you want to hit. It’s a curve ball, so to speak.
As for our health issues, they haven’t gone away, but I am in no mood to talk about them.
I probably haven’t told you that Ryder finally had his heart operation two weeks ago and it came out well and he’s back to normal already. A specialist was flown in to do the operation, rather then a local doctor because it was a tricky procedure. His heart had a hole in it the size of a quarter. We had all imagined a hole like pin prick—not quite. They went in up his groin with a Dacron patch and the first one was too small, so it had to be withdrawn and a larger one tried
And that was attached. Another doctor, his cardiologist, went down his throat with a camera to make sure the surgeon did not invade the esophagus area. Kaia is now furious because her insurance is refusing to pay for the cardiologist’s role in the operation. And the cost is in the thousands of dollars. She’s trying to justify his participation but right now the case is not resolved.
I am glad to see the grassroots anti-Wall street demonstrations and I hope the spirit of the protest translates into beating back the Tea Party, other Republicans, and the Money Clique that calls all the shots. I also hope the gulf between Romney and Tea Party gets wider and wider. Romney is the R-Party’s establishment candidate who is trying to wrest control from the Tea Party-fanatical-uncooperative-right wing faction, which gained control last November in the House and by abusing the filibuster rule in the senate. If Romney wins the primaries it could split the party and the Tea Party might try to form a third party, which would really help the D-Party and Obama. If you remember when Perot ran in 1994 Clinton was elected with only 43% of the vote.
Later,
Jerry P
Thursday, October 6, 2011
To a High School Friend
2011-10_05
Tucson, AZ
Dear Frances,
Thanks for the book. Looks like I owe you one.
After reading the chapter on you, the only woman out of nine personalities, I was struck by the similarities in our experiences during our early days as artists. The “competition” mentioned you encountered in high school was, at least according to my memory, was Shirley Soens and I. As for Sister Monica, she was a role model for me too, by example not word. If my memory is accurate she was the ‘Angel’ who told me that UW in Madison was a hotbed of godlessness and radical politics. This warning was, like for you, more a magnate then a deterrent. All things considered, Madison was art-wise not as fruitful for me as it obviously was for you. Grilley, Wilde, Zingale, others, did little for me. Dean Meeker was helpful. A few years later I got much more out of classes at San Jose State, when I, for some reason, was more receptive. At the California school things clicked for me. It was less formal a department and there was a lot of interaction between teachers and students outside the classroom. Dick Tansey, for example, the well-known Art Historian held forth every afternoon at a bar just off campus. (Given a chance he could have drunken Dylan Thomas under the table.) He was a kind of Samuel Johnson figure and the better students flocked to that bar in the afternoon. The interaction between students and staff was a real plus for me. In Madison I never attended a party where the two mixed. Maybe they did on a Graduate level; to that I can’t speak. I eventually shared a studio with my mentor, Fred Spratt, who was the major-domo at SJSC for decades. We later had a falling out over the war in Vietnam and he didn’t approve of my wife, but he was the guy who got me into teaching, as a sabbatical replacement at SJSC.
Where Madison did worked for me was in the non-art classes. I experienced an intellectual awakening, like Henry Pochman’s Am Lit. class and a philosophy class that dealt with Censorship of the Arts. In Pochman’s class I was introduced to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Transcendentalism, and to Herman Melville, who is still a cultural hero for me. The other class introduced me to Henry Miller and James Joyce. Meeting all kinds of people was also an invaluable experience in Madison.
Living in the Bay Area in the late Fifties and early Sixties was the place to be at the time. I saw “The Green Table” and Rudolph Nureyev dance. I heard Allan Watts in person a couple of times. I was a classmate of Robert Graham whose public sculptures are well known. My first date with Suzie was at a poetry reading in SF, Philip Whalen I think it was. I went to the Blackhawk to listen to Brubeck and Cal Jader, and to North Beach to hear Garry Mulligan and Sonny Stitts. I’ve been to City Lights many times and to SF MOMA lots of times with Fred Spratt. The shows I remember the best were two one-man shows, Max Beckmann and Kandinsky, the late works, which are my favorites. I saw my first Beckmann triptychs at the time. In sum, it was a stimulating place but I had to move on…
And let me tell you going to Las Vegas and UNLV was a shocking departure from the Bay Area, like going to the dark side of the moon. Madison had been staid, traditional, orthodox, not very experimental, and rather counter-intuitive. I departed in 1957. The Bay Area was the reverse, drugs, anything goes, radical politics, the beat revival, the sexual revolution—Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs—HOWL, ON THE ROAD, & NAKED LUNCH. Going to Las Vegas and UNLV was a dramatic departure from both Madison and the Bay Area. It was like entering a cartoon scenario of fantasy and Kitsch—like one of your husband’s comic prints. UNLV was only 5 years old when I got hired at age 29. The teachers were a mixture of older profs at their last posts and a bunch of raw recruits like myself, just starting out. The president of the University was from the world of advertising not Academe. The head of the Art Department was a life-long Mormon with 6 kids. Six weeks after I arrived on campus I was demonstrating against the war in Vietnam. He wasn’t happy about that. But the real death knell for me was starting the AFT Union on Campus, which I had joined the year I taught at SJSC. Both Tansey and Spratt were members. That was the unforgivable sin as far as the Administration was concerned, the backbreaker on tenure. By the end of 1969 I knew I had three options. One, a majority of the students wanted me to become Head of the Dept. Two, they wanted to hire me at Oregon State, where I had taught part time on leave from UNLV. The last option was I could quit and look for work outside academe. First of all, I could not see myself as an administrator. Secondly, I decided against OSU because the faculty was as dreary as the winter weather in Corvallis. The third option was it.
Several years later my daughter, who was sociology major at a university in Florida showed me a study of teachers who had come from a lower-income class. I had for years used the expression a “Stranger in Paradise” to describe my discomfort in academe—no matter how accomplished I might be I could never feel like I belong. The name of the study that Nasima gave me was called STRANGERS IN PARADISE. I discovered that 100s of other people felt like I had and used the same expression to express their feeling of estrangement. So leaving teaching and the university life, which no doubt can be seductive and cozy, was not in the cards for me.
The phrase in the beginning of the section on you used the description “class-structured” to describe Racine. I had a reaction to that and I’ll tell you why. I doubt I ever told you this before but Margot Andis, who I had been going with for a year or so, was instructed by her father to break up with me because I didn’t fit with the family image. I was “ too lower class and too crude.” That’s been a burr under my saddle for a long time. Because of it I carry a deep animus toward the rich.
I am sure all this is more than you expected or wanted to hear. But I am the type to let it all hang out.
Thanks again for the book.
Tucson, AZ
Dear Frances,
Thanks for the book. Looks like I owe you one.
After reading the chapter on you, the only woman out of nine personalities, I was struck by the similarities in our experiences during our early days as artists. The “competition” mentioned you encountered in high school was, at least according to my memory, was Shirley Soens and I. As for Sister Monica, she was a role model for me too, by example not word. If my memory is accurate she was the ‘Angel’ who told me that UW in Madison was a hotbed of godlessness and radical politics. This warning was, like for you, more a magnate then a deterrent. All things considered, Madison was art-wise not as fruitful for me as it obviously was for you. Grilley, Wilde, Zingale, others, did little for me. Dean Meeker was helpful. A few years later I got much more out of classes at San Jose State, when I, for some reason, was more receptive. At the California school things clicked for me. It was less formal a department and there was a lot of interaction between teachers and students outside the classroom. Dick Tansey, for example, the well-known Art Historian held forth every afternoon at a bar just off campus. (Given a chance he could have drunken Dylan Thomas under the table.) He was a kind of Samuel Johnson figure and the better students flocked to that bar in the afternoon. The interaction between students and staff was a real plus for me. In Madison I never attended a party where the two mixed. Maybe they did on a Graduate level; to that I can’t speak. I eventually shared a studio with my mentor, Fred Spratt, who was the major-domo at SJSC for decades. We later had a falling out over the war in Vietnam and he didn’t approve of my wife, but he was the guy who got me into teaching, as a sabbatical replacement at SJSC.
Where Madison did worked for me was in the non-art classes. I experienced an intellectual awakening, like Henry Pochman’s Am Lit. class and a philosophy class that dealt with Censorship of the Arts. In Pochman’s class I was introduced to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Transcendentalism, and to Herman Melville, who is still a cultural hero for me. The other class introduced me to Henry Miller and James Joyce. Meeting all kinds of people was also an invaluable experience in Madison.
Living in the Bay Area in the late Fifties and early Sixties was the place to be at the time. I saw “The Green Table” and Rudolph Nureyev dance. I heard Allan Watts in person a couple of times. I was a classmate of Robert Graham whose public sculptures are well known. My first date with Suzie was at a poetry reading in SF, Philip Whalen I think it was. I went to the Blackhawk to listen to Brubeck and Cal Jader, and to North Beach to hear Garry Mulligan and Sonny Stitts. I’ve been to City Lights many times and to SF MOMA lots of times with Fred Spratt. The shows I remember the best were two one-man shows, Max Beckmann and Kandinsky, the late works, which are my favorites. I saw my first Beckmann triptychs at the time. In sum, it was a stimulating place but I had to move on…
And let me tell you going to Las Vegas and UNLV was a shocking departure from the Bay Area, like going to the dark side of the moon. Madison had been staid, traditional, orthodox, not very experimental, and rather counter-intuitive. I departed in 1957. The Bay Area was the reverse, drugs, anything goes, radical politics, the beat revival, the sexual revolution—Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs—HOWL, ON THE ROAD, & NAKED LUNCH. Going to Las Vegas and UNLV was a dramatic departure from both Madison and the Bay Area. It was like entering a cartoon scenario of fantasy and Kitsch—like one of your husband’s comic prints. UNLV was only 5 years old when I got hired at age 29. The teachers were a mixture of older profs at their last posts and a bunch of raw recruits like myself, just starting out. The president of the University was from the world of advertising not Academe. The head of the Art Department was a life-long Mormon with 6 kids. Six weeks after I arrived on campus I was demonstrating against the war in Vietnam. He wasn’t happy about that. But the real death knell for me was starting the AFT Union on Campus, which I had joined the year I taught at SJSC. Both Tansey and Spratt were members. That was the unforgivable sin as far as the Administration was concerned, the backbreaker on tenure. By the end of 1969 I knew I had three options. One, a majority of the students wanted me to become Head of the Dept. Two, they wanted to hire me at Oregon State, where I had taught part time on leave from UNLV. The last option was I could quit and look for work outside academe. First of all, I could not see myself as an administrator. Secondly, I decided against OSU because the faculty was as dreary as the winter weather in Corvallis. The third option was it.
Several years later my daughter, who was sociology major at a university in Florida showed me a study of teachers who had come from a lower-income class. I had for years used the expression a “Stranger in Paradise” to describe my discomfort in academe—no matter how accomplished I might be I could never feel like I belong. The name of the study that Nasima gave me was called STRANGERS IN PARADISE. I discovered that 100s of other people felt like I had and used the same expression to express their feeling of estrangement. So leaving teaching and the university life, which no doubt can be seductive and cozy, was not in the cards for me.
The phrase in the beginning of the section on you used the description “class-structured” to describe Racine. I had a reaction to that and I’ll tell you why. I doubt I ever told you this before but Margot Andis, who I had been going with for a year or so, was instructed by her father to break up with me because I didn’t fit with the family image. I was “ too lower class and too crude.” That’s been a burr under my saddle for a long time. Because of it I carry a deep animus toward the rich.
I am sure all this is more than you expected or wanted to hear. But I am the type to let it all hang out.
Thanks again for the book.
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