11,631. RUDIMENTS, pt. 633

RUDIMENTS, pt. 633
('fighting a heavy sea, in a rowboat')
There were lots of times I got

real serious about myself  - even

with good luck, just squeaking by.

The poet Frank  O'Hara, it was,
said: 'If life were merely a habit, I

should commit suicide; but even

now, more or less desperate, I

cannot but think, 'Something

wonderful may happen.' It is

not optimism, it is a rejection

of self-pity (I hope) which

leaves a loophole for life...I

merely choose to remain

living out of respect for

possibility.' My version of

that, I guess, had become  - 

when people asked about my

check-out date  -  which they

did  -  was 'I want to stick

around to see how this thing

turns out.' The weird thing is,

I'm still here, and about 5 or

6 of my Earthbound 'friends'

of those days are no longer :

dead by their own hands. Even

poor old Frank here  -  he was

run down, late one night and

quite by accident, on a Hamptons

beach or sand-dune, whatever,

while out walking. Nothing

you'd ever expect. Life has its

ways of animating, and just as

quickly, de-animating, everything.

-

I had to do a lot of learning, and

quickly, while standing on my

own feet and jut taking in all

that I could.  My firmament

was never steady. I often felt

the way I figured black people

must have felt back then in

South Africa with that system

of apartheid  - which was still

in place there, in 1968. It's like

super-segregation, with the blacks

living completely separated and

in enclaves, so that the Dutch,

who considered themselves more

right, and better, and correct, could

remain in charge of the land they'd

taken and corralled the people of.
'A lot of mood and often depression
goes along with being an artist, and,
given the rules of society, it's often
very difficult for the artist to then
meld in with the rest, and cope.'

In my case, of course, it little

mattered, since I was willing to

cede it all away. As I saw it, the rest 

of the world, nay, the universe?

They could HAVE it for all I

cared. I needed to burrow, stay

separate; I had a million things

to read and search. The artist

part of it (in using that term, I

refer to all aspects  -  writing,

painting, drawing, learning and

reading. That's what artists do).

Artists, I noticed, don't have

downtime; they were always

at it, even when things are

seemingly off in another direction

the brain and heart are still at

the 'Show' (see previous chapter).

I was unable to keep my mind

on all the dumb stuff around me,

and that was fine. Most things

people did and said were done

or said in blindness. You know

how the word (again, way too

glib for my mouth) 'talkies' got

to mean, for early films, 'films

that talked, with sound' and then

just fell away as ALL movies

then had sound, and the word just
sounded stupid. Well the word

'movies' (equally stupid) meant

images that moved. But, for

whatever reason, the dumbness

of people never changed that one.

They still consistently went to the

'movies'  -  it sounded like baby

talk to me, from someone not

bothering to think about what

they were saying. That was the

sort on intensive scrutiny of

everything which I was living.

-

I had some ineptly strange

moments too. You may recall

my previous episodes with Jim

Tomberg, the sculpture guy

with whom I took up. He had

the lower studio, at the

MacDougal Alley back

doorway. He was a metal '

sculptor, welding chunks of

steel and metal and all  - 

many of which we'd trek out

Brooklyn junkyards, by train,

to get  -  traipsing back in with

these often cumbersome and

awkwardly heavy, chunks of

metal for him to work with. Jim

was from San Francisco too,

and sort of just transplanted

himself east, for a year or two,

he thought, to see what it was

like here. He often said to me,

based on my asking how he

liked it, what he'd found, etc.,

that 'If the country had been

settled from west to east  - 

instead of east to west, as

it had been  -  this whole

area would be a neglected,

agricultural backwater.' Jim

drank a lot, was some 6 or 8

years older than me, much

bulkier and tougher too. He

slept with any female that

blinked. Often there be some

version of something waking

up with him, on the studio

'cot'. He also worked at one

or two of the Bleecker Street

and Macdougal Street corner

bars and clubs, Cafe Bizarro,

Wha, etc. There were a few,

and from that I often got food.

Thanks, Jim, wherever ye be.

Anyway, alien to my own

outlook, he too, as an artist,

was of the social crowd  - 

liked people, moved well

among others, enjoyed the

romp. I was the complete

opposite. That was a tough

problem to cover. The French

poet, Charles Baudelaire, had

it as, 'the frenzy of the artist is

in the fear of going fast enough,

of letting the phantom escape

before the synthesis has been

extracted and pinned down; it

is that terrible fear that takes

possession of all great artists

and gives them such a passionate

desire to become masters of

every means of expression so

that the orders of the brain may

never be perverted by the

hesitations of the hand and

that finally....ideal execution

may become as unconscious

and spontaneous as is digestion

for a healthy man after dinner.'

Well, you get the picture  -  I

didn't want distraction; nor to

be bothered by fluff. That

still goes.

-

Nonetheless, in the absolute 

midst of all the craziness, I 

was getting somewhere; I was 

making a satisfiable progress.

There was work to do, and

someone was always talking  -

a lecture or a talk somewhere,

open to attend. I did. The music

lectures of Morton Feldman 

were long, discursive, sometimes

weekly, sometimes more, and

they weren't so much about what

went around known as 'music'

but more about Morton Feldman's

music, crowd, metier and range.

it was fascinating. He mumbled

funny, talked forever, looked odd.

But I loved it, stepping in late

and staying. If this was 'Music,

I'll have a cup. At this time he

was just about 40; no longer

the 24-year old wunderkind

of 1951, which to me just made

it better. 'There is that doctor

who opens you up, does exactly

the right thing, closes you up  -  

and you die. He failed to take

the chance that might have saved 

you. Art is a crucial, dangerous

operation we perform on

ourselves. Unless we take a

chance, we die in art.'
-
I want you each, whoever it is
who reads this, to understand
 that this material is not just
being thrown out at you. This 
is and was my life and my
life's experiences, which I am
here bringing back. I feel myself
cut from a different cloth  -  and
I'll unabashedly admit now to
saying that  -  and no one else
would give you these portrayals 
or views or experiences. This is a
mere beginning, and I'll be here
until I'm dead. Lucky you. Let me
close this chapter, again at the
Studio School, with the words of
Morton Feldman : 'The Whitney
Museum in Greenwich Village
was the stronghold of the Wasp
Bohemia. The beautiful building,
taken over now by the New York
Studio School, still stands on
Eighth Street. I lectured there
recently, and while wandering
through the upper floors looked in
on what used to be Mrs. Whitney's
studio. The room was like a page
out of a Henry James novel...there
were two diametrically opposed
points of view I had to cope with 
in those days. One represented by 
John Cage (composer) and the other 
by Philip Guston (painter). Cage's
idea was summed up in 'Everything
is music.' A more and more social 
point of view, less and less toward an
artistic one. Like Mayakovsky, who  
gave up his art for society, Cage gave
up art to bring it together with
society. The there was Guston. He
was the arch crank. Very little
pleased him. Very little satisfied him. 
Very little was art. Always aware in 
his own work of the rhetorical nature 
of the complication, Guston reduces, 
reduces,  building his own Tower 
of Babel and then destroying it.' 
-
I was amidst them all, and heard
all those disparate voices.