2011_11_04 Letter to S.D.
Yes by all means send me digital pictures of “The Rock Climber” and “Magic Garden.” Having them would give some option for BRIDGE IN THE FOG. They are two of my best drawings from the late seventies. “The Rock Climber” embodies my spiritual ambitions and projects them upward.
Rather then climbing the Tree of Life I ascent up a mountain and shoot for the moon, my cosmic habitat. Vertical ascent dominates my imagination, as does the moon when it comes to soul making. I have never gotten over the spell it weaved in my inner life during the INFERNO.
Steve Jobs talked about how the prospect of death helped him define himself and honed his vision of things. Being in ill health and being on oxygen has made me acutely aware of my age and the road ahead is very short compared to the road in the opposite direction. These threats to my existence have honed my ambition to get my book project done before it’s too late. I am greatly motivated to accomplish that, as it will constitute my main legacy. What got seeded in me during the INFERNO has come to fruition. As see it, since that turn-around experience, which included a rebirth scenario, I have been engaged in, to quote William Blake and James Hillman, “soul making.” Even Gurdjieff’ had a notion about being seeded, saying we were all born with a “certain inner property” that we were charged with transforming into a living self. I have tried my best to do that and I can die knowing I gave it my best shot. And I recorded the process in three books, thousand of pages in my journal, and in numerous drawings. While others have created “necktie art” I worked on myself. As Heraclitus told his students the essence of philosophy was, “I searched myself.”
JP
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Friday, November 4, 2011
Dennis Potter and Psoriasis
The English television playwright, Dennis Potter, the author of such works as “The Singing Detective” and “Lipstick on my Collar,” like to have sex with hookers. These encounters, although a regular thing, never really threaten his marriage, which was rock solid. He not only liked to fuck prostitutes but he compulsively told his mates about these experiences. It wasn’t in the spirit of boasting though; it was more like something he had to confess. To spill the beans to his mates served to satisfy some kind of Psychological need. One psychiatrist he saw about his depression said he had a psycho-sexual problem. Duh! That much was pretty obvious.
Humphrey Carpenter, Potter’s biographer, thinks these confessions were evidence of a “profound self-loathing.” Just as his psoriasis was more proof of his personal “pollution.”
“Your skin is your outer self—your boundary
between you and the world—and inevitably
you part of the leper syndrome. You know,
‘Ring the bell and shout UNCLEAN! ‘”
‘‘Ring the bells, etc.” is a reference to some lines in “The Singing Detective,” by far his best-known and popular work. The Detective is named, amusingly, Phillip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s knight-errant detective of American fame. Marlowe is the Detective of the title and he is in the hospital for treatment of his severe Psoriatic Anthropathy (psoriasis combined with arthritis.) Potter was in the hospital with this condition a number of times, sometimes with a crust of scales over his eyes, it was that bad at times. The original BBC production is excellent, starring Michael Gambon as Marlowe and Joanne Whaley as his nurse in the hospital. The American version, with Robert Downey Jr., cannot hold a candle to the British production, which has the authenticity the teleplay needs. The psychologist that is working with Marlowe tells him that “the temptation to believe that the illness and poisons of the mind or personality have somehow erupted out on the skin. Unclean! Unclean! You shout, ringing the bell warning us to keep off, to keep clear.” Friends of Potter agree that he believed the disease was indeed a “poison of the mind, as punishment for sins or bad karma.”
Ah yes, the Heartbreak of Psoriasis! That’s the attitude the attitude Dermatologists like to push on the public so they will seek expensive treatments or topical creams. They make it basically a vanity issue with psychological implications. My psoriasis showed up when I was 42, with no history of it in my family. I have what they call a moderate case, where it is a bloody nuisance, but not much more than that, although it has grown worst as time has gone by. I have certainly noticed how people scowl when they notice the white scales on my hands and then back away, as if I was a leper, when in fact psoriasis is not an infectious disease. Out of desperation recently I tried taking a bath using sea salt from the Dead Sea. I wanted to see if the trace minerals in the sea salt would alter my unclean appearance. For the first time since psoriasis had showed up it was bothering my wife, especially when engaged in sex. In particular she disliked having my hands fondling her genital area or having a couple fingers in her. She knows better—that it is not contagious—but the irrational factors can take over sometimes. I couldn’t let that become my Heartbreak of Psoriasis, so I did not let her qualms prevent us from having sex. I was too horny and too needy to let that happen. The “filth” she was complaining about was in her head, not in my fingers. Eventually she came around and we rarely had a problem. Apparently, Dermatopathophobia, (fear of skin disease) is embedded in all our psyches. In our case, love conquers all.
In 1980 I sought the opinion of a Tucson Naturopath about the possible causes of my psoriasis. When he heard I had daily contact with cleaning chemicals, he thought that could be the cause, especially since the outbreak occurred two years after I was hired as custodian at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church. The first time I noticed it was under my fingernails—I thought it was a fungus. In a few year s I decided to write the A.R.E. organization in Virginia Beach, Edgar Cayce’s group HQ. All Cayce’s files are kept there, so I ordered his file on Psoriasis, which turned out to be pretty skinny. He said the affliction was caused by a toxic leak from the large intestine. His cure was daunting, a very complicated regime of several teas I had never heard of. If there was more to it than that I can’t recall. Another thing I tried was Castor oil in a glass of milk. I drank that every day for about 6 months.
Naturally, I eventually asked myself could there be an emotional or psychological cause to the outbreak. If so what could it be? The first thing I considered was the shock I experienced when I started working at the church, which was certainly a trauma, especially when it got linked with my mother’s attitude about me taking a class-less scum job like being a janitor, something she was on my ass about till the day she died. The transition to becoming a janitor among the class-conscious Presbyterians was tough enough, but my mother piling on made it only worse. When I took the job in May of 1977 I had myself convinced that a job was a job, at least if survival not prosperity was the man issue. Not quite. Very simply, I had a hard time making the transition from being a university professor and ‘‘big man on campus,” plus someone who had showed his work around the country, which meant absolutely nothing to Church members. Even though there 5 years in between leaving UNLV and taking the job at the church, what mattered is I was still very much identified with my campus Identity, which was hard won and had been a big boost to my lower class ID. Intellectually I had let go of the ID and image, but emotionally I still quite attached to it. I had bragged about going through a “deprofessional process, “ but part of my ego clung to the past image, which had more glamour and drama. I hadn’t eliminated it, I had just buried it out of sight, and when push came to shove, it resurfaced as a roadblock to my psychological ambition. Going back to being a working stiff turned out to be much less appealing than my “Pride of Ascendency.” Readjusting to being a NOBODY again, and believe me the church members who little or nothing about my past accomplishments, made sure I knew I was a nonentity. The elderly Asst. Pastor loved to call “boy” when I was in my forties. I called him on it but he kept it up. The pretty secretary who was fooling around with the senior pastor once said to me after he upbraided me for something or other, “You know, every once and while he wants to kick the dog.” No one gave a damn about my feelings.
Those bad days at St. Andrew’s coincided with the fact my mother was so embarrassed by my working as a janitor she told all her friends I was teaching at the University in Tucson and Sue was, of course, home with then new baby. It really galled me she had to falsify my existence to save face with her friends who had had sons they could be proud of. Is it possible that her belittling campaign toward me when combined with the corrosive negativity dumped on me the first few years at the church, could that cause me enough stress to be the “poison” that kicked off the psoriasis outbreak. Or do I blame the chemicals I had to work with for years? Who knows? I don’t.
Humphrey Carpenter, Potter’s biographer, thinks these confessions were evidence of a “profound self-loathing.” Just as his psoriasis was more proof of his personal “pollution.”
“Your skin is your outer self—your boundary
between you and the world—and inevitably
you part of the leper syndrome. You know,
‘Ring the bell and shout UNCLEAN! ‘”
‘‘Ring the bells, etc.” is a reference to some lines in “The Singing Detective,” by far his best-known and popular work. The Detective is named, amusingly, Phillip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s knight-errant detective of American fame. Marlowe is the Detective of the title and he is in the hospital for treatment of his severe Psoriatic Anthropathy (psoriasis combined with arthritis.) Potter was in the hospital with this condition a number of times, sometimes with a crust of scales over his eyes, it was that bad at times. The original BBC production is excellent, starring Michael Gambon as Marlowe and Joanne Whaley as his nurse in the hospital. The American version, with Robert Downey Jr., cannot hold a candle to the British production, which has the authenticity the teleplay needs. The psychologist that is working with Marlowe tells him that “the temptation to believe that the illness and poisons of the mind or personality have somehow erupted out on the skin. Unclean! Unclean! You shout, ringing the bell warning us to keep off, to keep clear.” Friends of Potter agree that he believed the disease was indeed a “poison of the mind, as punishment for sins or bad karma.”
Ah yes, the Heartbreak of Psoriasis! That’s the attitude the attitude Dermatologists like to push on the public so they will seek expensive treatments or topical creams. They make it basically a vanity issue with psychological implications. My psoriasis showed up when I was 42, with no history of it in my family. I have what they call a moderate case, where it is a bloody nuisance, but not much more than that, although it has grown worst as time has gone by. I have certainly noticed how people scowl when they notice the white scales on my hands and then back away, as if I was a leper, when in fact psoriasis is not an infectious disease. Out of desperation recently I tried taking a bath using sea salt from the Dead Sea. I wanted to see if the trace minerals in the sea salt would alter my unclean appearance. For the first time since psoriasis had showed up it was bothering my wife, especially when engaged in sex. In particular she disliked having my hands fondling her genital area or having a couple fingers in her. She knows better—that it is not contagious—but the irrational factors can take over sometimes. I couldn’t let that become my Heartbreak of Psoriasis, so I did not let her qualms prevent us from having sex. I was too horny and too needy to let that happen. The “filth” she was complaining about was in her head, not in my fingers. Eventually she came around and we rarely had a problem. Apparently, Dermatopathophobia, (fear of skin disease) is embedded in all our psyches. In our case, love conquers all.
In 1980 I sought the opinion of a Tucson Naturopath about the possible causes of my psoriasis. When he heard I had daily contact with cleaning chemicals, he thought that could be the cause, especially since the outbreak occurred two years after I was hired as custodian at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church. The first time I noticed it was under my fingernails—I thought it was a fungus. In a few year s I decided to write the A.R.E. organization in Virginia Beach, Edgar Cayce’s group HQ. All Cayce’s files are kept there, so I ordered his file on Psoriasis, which turned out to be pretty skinny. He said the affliction was caused by a toxic leak from the large intestine. His cure was daunting, a very complicated regime of several teas I had never heard of. If there was more to it than that I can’t recall. Another thing I tried was Castor oil in a glass of milk. I drank that every day for about 6 months.
Naturally, I eventually asked myself could there be an emotional or psychological cause to the outbreak. If so what could it be? The first thing I considered was the shock I experienced when I started working at the church, which was certainly a trauma, especially when it got linked with my mother’s attitude about me taking a class-less scum job like being a janitor, something she was on my ass about till the day she died. The transition to becoming a janitor among the class-conscious Presbyterians was tough enough, but my mother piling on made it only worse. When I took the job in May of 1977 I had myself convinced that a job was a job, at least if survival not prosperity was the man issue. Not quite. Very simply, I had a hard time making the transition from being a university professor and ‘‘big man on campus,” plus someone who had showed his work around the country, which meant absolutely nothing to Church members. Even though there 5 years in between leaving UNLV and taking the job at the church, what mattered is I was still very much identified with my campus Identity, which was hard won and had been a big boost to my lower class ID. Intellectually I had let go of the ID and image, but emotionally I still quite attached to it. I had bragged about going through a “deprofessional process, “ but part of my ego clung to the past image, which had more glamour and drama. I hadn’t eliminated it, I had just buried it out of sight, and when push came to shove, it resurfaced as a roadblock to my psychological ambition. Going back to being a working stiff turned out to be much less appealing than my “Pride of Ascendency.” Readjusting to being a NOBODY again, and believe me the church members who little or nothing about my past accomplishments, made sure I knew I was a nonentity. The elderly Asst. Pastor loved to call “boy” when I was in my forties. I called him on it but he kept it up. The pretty secretary who was fooling around with the senior pastor once said to me after he upbraided me for something or other, “You know, every once and while he wants to kick the dog.” No one gave a damn about my feelings.
Those bad days at St. Andrew’s coincided with the fact my mother was so embarrassed by my working as a janitor she told all her friends I was teaching at the University in Tucson and Sue was, of course, home with then new baby. It really galled me she had to falsify my existence to save face with her friends who had had sons they could be proud of. Is it possible that her belittling campaign toward me when combined with the corrosive negativity dumped on me the first few years at the church, could that cause me enough stress to be the “poison” that kicked off the psoriasis outbreak. Or do I blame the chemicals I had to work with for years? Who knows? I don’t.
What goes around comes around
2011_10_19 what goes around comes around
I caught three films by Nicolas Ray last night on TCM. . The first one was “The True Story of Jesse James,” which I had never seen before. It was released in 1958. Ray wanted Elvis Pressley to play Jesse, but that idea fell through and he got stuck with two ‘hot properties,’ Robert Wagner, a pretty boy actor of limited range, who played Jessie James, and Jeffrey Hunter--who a few years later would be Jesus (with shaved arm pits hanging on the cross) in “King of Kings,” another Ray film-- was selected to play Frank James. The pair did not look like a couple rough and tumble cowboys; more like matinee idols.
What surprised me in the film was how Sam Peckinpah had borrowed heavily from the film, which he seemed to regard as a kind of sketch of what he wanted to do with the ideas. For example, the botched robbery in Northfield Minnesota; it was the model, the staging, for the first shoot out in “Wild Bunch,” a scene now regarded as the epitome of an action scene, along with the 12 minute closing scene which was different in character but equally brilliantly staged. William Holden as the Pike Bishop, the leader of the Bunch makes Wagner’s Jesse look like a boy scout playing at being a bad guy. Peckinpah took the western to a new level of intensity and drama. But the robbery has bits in it that seem almost lifted directly out of Ray’s Western, for example, the random chaos on the city streets, the horseman crashing through a store front window, and the gang members being sitting ducks for the town’s folk shooting at them from atop buildings, events that in “Wild Bunch” are sharply edited with a pace equal to the crazy energy of the action, with some slow motion added to the mix to alter the pace here and there. Never has violence appeared so lyrical. At the end of the scene you had to catch your breath.
Another idea lifted from Ray’s “Jesse James” was by George Roy Hill, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” It was that scene
of Jessie and Frank leaping off a cliff to escape some lawman chasing them. In 1969 that scene showed up in Hill’s movie, only he made it last a bit longer, and he made it really memorable with a great tag line, “Who are those guys?”
The second Ray movie I watch was “Bitter Victory.” Also made in the late fifties. Richard Burton and Curt Jergens are two offices sent on a secret mission by British Command in North Africa to steal some important papers from Rommel. The two men hate each other, largely because they are in love with the same woman (Ruth Roman.) The mission was a success but several men are lost in the process, including Burton. When Jergens returned to base he is treated as a hero for leading the mission and receives a high-ranking medal, which he was hoping for at the start of the mission. But in retrospect he laments Burton’s death and the killing of other men. He ends up taking his medal and sticking it on the heart of a practice dummy hanging from the ceiling. I thought that was a nice touch at the conclusion of the story.
Last March, while I was on a kick to see a number of Michael Caine movies after reading his second book about his life in pictures, I saw “Play Dirty,” a 1969 movie about two British officers who dislike each other but are teamed by British Command to go 400 miles behind enemy lines to destroy a fuel depot. Nigel Green partners with Caine and two eventually have respect for each. However, keeping German uniforms on when they approach some fellow Brits turns out to be a fatal mistake.
The third and last movie by Nick Ray was one I saw when it came out in 1958. “Wind over the Everglades” was something of a hodge-podge movie with Christopher Plummer and Burl Ives playing the lead, with a lot of local people taking roles, and some other characters throw in, like Two-Ton Tony Galento, a heavyweight boxer, Sammy Renick, a jockey, Emmett Kelly the clown, and for glamour, Gypsy Rose Lee. I would call the film a good bad movie. (One critic who hated the movie titled it, “Break wind over the Everglades.”) It was Chris Plummer’s first starring role in a Hollywood movie. He plays Walt Murdock, a Game Warren trying to protect the rookies of several species of birds; he’s essentially an early environmentalist trying to stop the silly fashion of the day, fancy feathers on women’s hats, which was depleting the everglades of many birds. The leader of the poachers is a man named cottonmouth (Burl Ives) who has a bunch of rag-tag followers. He knows his way around the swamps and he has a pet cottonmouth. The ratty gang have tagged Murdock “bird boy” and they assume Cottonmouth will eventually kill him. Actually they get drunk together, become friends (of a sort) and Cottonmouth allows Murdock to take him in. But alas, there is some poetic justice for Cottonmouth at the end of the movie. As for Ray, he got sick and was fired before the film ended.
The film had its moments and there are plenty of scenes of the wild life. At times I thought I was watching a National Geographic wild life program. But the movie put Nick Ray ahead of the times. A movie about a game warden? You got to be kidding?
I caught three films by Nicolas Ray last night on TCM. . The first one was “The True Story of Jesse James,” which I had never seen before. It was released in 1958. Ray wanted Elvis Pressley to play Jesse, but that idea fell through and he got stuck with two ‘hot properties,’ Robert Wagner, a pretty boy actor of limited range, who played Jessie James, and Jeffrey Hunter--who a few years later would be Jesus (with shaved arm pits hanging on the cross) in “King of Kings,” another Ray film-- was selected to play Frank James. The pair did not look like a couple rough and tumble cowboys; more like matinee idols.
What surprised me in the film was how Sam Peckinpah had borrowed heavily from the film, which he seemed to regard as a kind of sketch of what he wanted to do with the ideas. For example, the botched robbery in Northfield Minnesota; it was the model, the staging, for the first shoot out in “Wild Bunch,” a scene now regarded as the epitome of an action scene, along with the 12 minute closing scene which was different in character but equally brilliantly staged. William Holden as the Pike Bishop, the leader of the Bunch makes Wagner’s Jesse look like a boy scout playing at being a bad guy. Peckinpah took the western to a new level of intensity and drama. But the robbery has bits in it that seem almost lifted directly out of Ray’s Western, for example, the random chaos on the city streets, the horseman crashing through a store front window, and the gang members being sitting ducks for the town’s folk shooting at them from atop buildings, events that in “Wild Bunch” are sharply edited with a pace equal to the crazy energy of the action, with some slow motion added to the mix to alter the pace here and there. Never has violence appeared so lyrical. At the end of the scene you had to catch your breath.
Another idea lifted from Ray’s “Jesse James” was by George Roy Hill, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” It was that scene
of Jessie and Frank leaping off a cliff to escape some lawman chasing them. In 1969 that scene showed up in Hill’s movie, only he made it last a bit longer, and he made it really memorable with a great tag line, “Who are those guys?”
The second Ray movie I watch was “Bitter Victory.” Also made in the late fifties. Richard Burton and Curt Jergens are two offices sent on a secret mission by British Command in North Africa to steal some important papers from Rommel. The two men hate each other, largely because they are in love with the same woman (Ruth Roman.) The mission was a success but several men are lost in the process, including Burton. When Jergens returned to base he is treated as a hero for leading the mission and receives a high-ranking medal, which he was hoping for at the start of the mission. But in retrospect he laments Burton’s death and the killing of other men. He ends up taking his medal and sticking it on the heart of a practice dummy hanging from the ceiling. I thought that was a nice touch at the conclusion of the story.
Last March, while I was on a kick to see a number of Michael Caine movies after reading his second book about his life in pictures, I saw “Play Dirty,” a 1969 movie about two British officers who dislike each other but are teamed by British Command to go 400 miles behind enemy lines to destroy a fuel depot. Nigel Green partners with Caine and two eventually have respect for each. However, keeping German uniforms on when they approach some fellow Brits turns out to be a fatal mistake.
The third and last movie by Nick Ray was one I saw when it came out in 1958. “Wind over the Everglades” was something of a hodge-podge movie with Christopher Plummer and Burl Ives playing the lead, with a lot of local people taking roles, and some other characters throw in, like Two-Ton Tony Galento, a heavyweight boxer, Sammy Renick, a jockey, Emmett Kelly the clown, and for glamour, Gypsy Rose Lee. I would call the film a good bad movie. (One critic who hated the movie titled it, “Break wind over the Everglades.”) It was Chris Plummer’s first starring role in a Hollywood movie. He plays Walt Murdock, a Game Warren trying to protect the rookies of several species of birds; he’s essentially an early environmentalist trying to stop the silly fashion of the day, fancy feathers on women’s hats, which was depleting the everglades of many birds. The leader of the poachers is a man named cottonmouth (Burl Ives) who has a bunch of rag-tag followers. He knows his way around the swamps and he has a pet cottonmouth. The ratty gang have tagged Murdock “bird boy” and they assume Cottonmouth will eventually kill him. Actually they get drunk together, become friends (of a sort) and Cottonmouth allows Murdock to take him in. But alas, there is some poetic justice for Cottonmouth at the end of the movie. As for Ray, he got sick and was fired before the film ended.
The film had its moments and there are plenty of scenes of the wild life. At times I thought I was watching a National Geographic wild life program. But the movie put Nick Ray ahead of the times. A movie about a game warden? You got to be kidding?
Thursday, October 20, 2011
They Eygptian Connection
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.
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.
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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