MISCELLANEOUS
DIARY 2749
2/22/72
ROS REGELSON'S CLINGAN CLASS
Walk to the Main Building on University Place and Waverly Place with Henry, who says Intro 475 started in his apartment, and get up to room 514 to find Dick Smith and Don Goodwin there already, along with a number of representatives from GAA, and Bruce Voeller is blond and thin and hypertalkative in a very pleasant way. Clingan gets started with his talk, and I take notes throughout: New Yorkers may not be tolerant, they may be in a shell, or have a contract with others: "Don't bother me and I won't bother you." But if they're outraged, they're just as intolerant as others. Spring 1970: Henry Messer's place: DO something. Summer 1970: GAA: amend City's Human Rights Bill. 1970-1971: GAA demonstrations and councilman visits. "I don't know if the public hearing would have been scheduled without GAA's demonstrations." "It became important to have a GOOD public hearing," first WAS good, but councilmen showed contempt for gays. "Transvestites is a red herring councilmen SEIZED on. Second and THIRD hearings were rough. Behavior because a second red herring. "Bill has VERY little chance of passage in society as it is. If TV's included, it would have NO chance of passage." "Frankly, I've not THOUGHT about it, but I wouldn't put it IN the bill. It wouldn't be good legislative practice. The Mayor was NOT putting his resources behind this bill. Demonstration at Radio City Music Hall may have got THROUGH to them of how important it was, so he came out with mayoral memorandum AFTER the vote." The mayor HAS power, he DIDN'T use it. "I think there should be a FUND raiser, and go into South Bronx and dump money into HIS campaign AGAINST the gay nay-sayer." Get $1 from EVERY gay, and DISTRIBUTE money to NEUTRAL areas. Then from 9:30 to 10, Bruce has his chance, and said GAA is a ONE PURPOSE organization for legal reform. GAA ALSO has a constitutional statement that they're NON-VIOLENT, but it seemed that he was just quoting the letter of the law, yet holding reservations in his OWN mind that the members probably MIGHT launch an attack, yet he could piously quote the GAA constitution and yet in the back of his mind thoroughly support the violence, and maybe even put the ideas into the member's heads that "Since the constitution is AGAINST violence, we can't be ACCUSED of institutionalizing violence, but IF IT HAPPENS (with folded hands and heavenward-cast eyes) there's nothing we can do about it, because after all aren't people free?" But the emphasis on the number of good things that came out of GAA was impossible to ignore, and even though I was fanatically uninterested in politics, I found myself listening with interest to the history-making events, and he amazed me by saying that the Sharison zap was 1000 members, though it happened on a Saturday night only by clearing out the Firehouse and channeling everyone who WAS there into the zap. He talked knowledgably about state and national affairs, and pointed out many good things when people asked questions hoping to trip him up. I talked to him afterward, praising him for his talk, and he said I should come down to the meetings, but I explained that I was tied up on Thursdays, and that I was uninterested in GAA's sole point: legal reform. I guess the change of the LAWS won't change the PEOPLE, and I'd rather do more contacting of people by WRITING than zapping or rioting or sitting-in, though there's certainly a place for these activities: I admire the people who can keep their interest up in such activities year after year, even if it means jail and records and lost jobs, and who can still inspire others with the fervor of their devotion. Clingan seemed too much the consummate politician, though he admitted many things, such as the fact that he HAD no power or favors that he could give away (though I rather didn't believe it), and admitted quite honestly that the trade of politics was worked solely by means of money and power, thereby creating a not-pleasant reason for his OWN political activities. Also, the talk rather turned me away from Lindsay, and there was much talk of a GAA questionnaire which it seemed only McGovern returned "satisfactorily," and they said Shirley Chisholm and Hubert Humphrey made only the minimum possible reply, HHH lumping gays and women into the pot of people he's newly recognized. I thought it was a great meeting and told Henry so, then got to John's for surprise champagne because it was the (HE remembered, I didn't) second anniversary of the date we MET.
DIARY 5185
May, 1965
JOTTINGS - OLDEST BOOK NOTES
Series on oldest books in the world at YMHA: Oldest of literature not BOOKS, but orally. Produced for priests for recital to people who needed a "prompt book." Every narrator is part author. Each observer reads INTO as much as he reads OUT of; in our reading an ancient story, we cannot hope to supply all the implicit knowledge brought by the ancient listener. We can search for the same story in a civilization closed to us. Ancient story of the person "taken to fairyland" made to STAY by eating the food of the realm---like Persephone and pomegranate in Hell, and ADAM AND EVE on EARTH. Thus the bare bones are no good, but comparisons make it palatable. Bible also meant for recitation in temples. Modern literature is to display creativity of writer; but ancient literature a collection of explanatory stories for liturgy. "Mary, at Christmas, cannot have twins." Mary has annunciation---NOT the holy fuck. Literature, then, was PART of religion, not ART. All aspects of nature were not natural but ACTIVE elements which cannot be predicted. NOTHING IS FIXED, NOTHING IS EXTRAORDINARY: ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN; NOTHING IS MIRACULOUS. Egypt, at LEAST 3000 BC, preserved on papyrus, in sand, or in tombs, for example the Dorbinet Papyrus, found in 1850 in Italy, 20' long. A story of two brothers, A & B. B is seduced by Mrs. A, who screams to A, "He did it." A chases B, B prays and lake of crocodiles created. B says, "I'm going to Lebanon," emasculates himself, takes his heart out and hangs it on a pine. "If anyone CUTS this tree, I'll die. Put heart in water and it'll grow. When your beer bubbles, I'm in trouble." A feeds Mrs. A to the dogs. All gods sow seed into clay to make Mrs. B. Sea attacks Mrs. B, gives hair to sea, and to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh searches world for hair-owner. Pharaoh and soldiers cut down tree, kills B, A puts cone into water and B stands there. B becomes a bull, A sells B to Pharaoh, B sees Mrs. B, Pharaoh kills B, blood grows tree. Pharaoh chops down tree, CHIP into her mouth and she's pregnant. Son IS B, becomes Pharaoh, and puts wife-mother on trial. "And so they lived happily ever AFTER." Offshoots in Bible: Potiphor's wife; in Greek, Phaedra; in India, King Mahasina and Vizir Guneson. Golden Bough, soul in plants. Second story: 12th Dynasty scroll from Leningrad. Here, SEA travel begins, with Somaliland. Old Robinson Caruso tale, he meets sirens, Sinbad adventures. Zonarad (Emerald Isle, in Nile), and Sinking Island Third Story: Proverb literature, put into wise book for Troy. Maxims of Aminamophe---origins of Bible. Last section of Book of Proverbs "Didn't I write to you Thirty?" From 30 original chapters. "A GATE in your throat, an obstruction. Fourth story an Egyptian love song "Brother and sister" are terms of lovers. All kings married other gods, Sisters. Song of Songs from this source. The fifth, just mentioned, is the Egyptian book of the dead, which is merely a collection of spells written on tomb walls, then printed.
Second (and last) of oldest book series: Mesopotamia---cuneiform clay tablets, found in palace of Assurbinapal in Nineveh of 606 BC. Older copies found dating back to 1600 BC, thus traditional, rather than local. First is of Gilgamesh---best ancient literature aside from the Bible. Some stories found in Sumerian literature---3000 BC (that's certainly a popular date). Semitic writer welded these into Cycle. G lived in Erech, 2/3 god; 1/3 man; mother was a goddess, father was human. Superman became king of Erech. He wanted too much, and goddess retaliated by creating man-animal, En-Kiddu, who fell in love with a human woman and became a man. She took him to Erech. G and E fight for her, and become friends. They go to Cedars of Lebanon. They challenge "Woof Woof." They kill it, and Ishtar asks for G and G says no. I tells Anu, "He was AWFUL." Chief God says OK, I'll send a bull to ravage the earth, and E dies, and REAL G begins. G says "I must find the antidote to DEATH." Main theme. He refuses to stay in earthly paradise. Sedura ("Woman") tells him to go "over the waters of death" to find immortal man. Old man is Utnapishkin (Babylonian Noah). Took three of every animal. After seven days a raven sent, and sent a dove which didn't come back. Immortality a gift of god. Then he resigns himself to death. 28th book of Ezekiel tells of another Eden. Second story of Adappa Ea---mischievous little fun god. Lives in Eridu, He makes Royal Fisherman of Gods. Attacked by Bird of Thunder. No breeze for seven days. "Don't eat the food of heaven" to PREVENT Arappa from becoming a god. Third is (or is from) Ekbana. Canaanite translated by Abbe, proto-Hebrew alphabet. Baal and Astarte try to seduce Yom, who doesn't want her, and Baal must revenge his sister's sacred honor. Baal eats food of underworld and dies. Baal (rain) in hell with Mut (day) for half-year (May-Sept), to explain cycle of earth's YEAR. Babylonian Creation Epic NOT told tonight. HE wants to dedicate himself to drawing new ideas out of the oldest stories.
DIARY 5189
May, 1965
SIMON NOTES
December 7, 1964, Simon at the YMHA: Unless you come to grips with Evil, you cannot write tragedy. Faustus was homosexual. Marlowe's second play, the first (after Kidd's "Spanish Tragedy") play to deal with evil. The first time for thought processes being elaborated on stage. The first time a soul's struggle takes place on stage, the first time a villain (he goes to hell) as a hero. Characteristics of Faust (1) Proud and arrogant---though a bit justified. (2) Ambitious and with great appetites. Though humanistically based. (3) Impatient (quickly and completely). Marlowe a member of Sir Walter Raleigh's circle of "Black Knights." Play is a study and a complex of reversals and going backwards. The relationship of Faust and the Devil becomes more subtle. He connects word inversions with sexual inversion. Sacrilege: Consummatum est: last words of Christ are put onto a pact with the devil. "Most beautiful is Lucifer." Ballet and Seven Deadly Sins "dreamy pantomime of squalid degeneration." Contrition travestied: Faust confesses to devil. "Helen, make me immortal with a kiss." A grim IRONY, he NEEDS immortality, but taking her DAMNS him, and THEN he will be perpetually dammed---he HAS too much immortality, AND Helen is merely a disguised devil. "She sucks forth my soul" Hideously true, a SUCCUBUS. Evil is perversity, but GLORIOUS is the quest. Changeling: Change is the essence of the tragedy. All characters are changelings, to fake madness, Beatrice goes from innocence to evil; Diafanta changed from innocence to enjoyment; deFlores changes into a HERO. Alonzo is "changed" from life to death. Speeches in madhouse MIRRORED in other sections. The world IS mad. Simon calls a madhouse "unpleasant." All characters have touches of madness. Faustus: evil predominating in one MAN; Changeling: evil is perversion of the whole WORLD. Lear: individual, AND world, AND GODS are mad; that BLACKEST of all tragedies. Good NEVER has a chance. EVERY potentially happy statement is contradicted later. "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for play." "Kill" FIVE times. "NEVER" also five times. Last words: "WE will soon collapse under hideous gods." There cannot be anything new, only variations on a theme. OUR gross material product is EVIL. We SURMOUNT evil by recognizing it and absorbing it and still living. There is STILL courage and greatness. Greeks might have evil gods and good people and world.
DIARY 5191
May, 1965
FARRELL NOTES
J.T. Farrell (at YMHA): Poetry (1927-30) (1963- ). Started with a silence and a JFK tribute called "Angel of Death." 1929: Previewed "Atoms cracking." Hideous nasal tones; NO air through nose. Unpressed farmer look. "Loves that we loved into lovelessness / we need not be dead until we die." Many poems from memory---others read through LARGE magnifying glass. "Here lies she / She saved her virginity for the dust / It didn't care." "Here lies Donkey McDonkey / He is a footnote of history / Who tore away the bottom of the page?" "I ALWAYS write too much, I LOVE my work." He had a profile that was a combination of a Greek God's and a Mongolian Idiot's. And his glasses fit him illy. "I like to remember the names / of all the dames / that I have laid /// Away in my memory." "Buildings have lost the dignity of form and hulk like enemies." "A boy afraid, in a world I never made." "You don't have to forgive my sentimentality; the critics don't, so why should you?" Eternal shuffle and reshuffle of papers and paperboard (first poem, March, 1927). Questions handed in on cards, good. He's writing a new "series" "The Universe of Time," with more than 50 characters. 32,000 unpublished pages. 15,000 pages to the series so far. "Time does not exist---there's change, not time---man has created time." That's the end of the series. He was influenced by Ibsen, not by Dreiser. He writes prodigiously and reads omnivorously. Wrote 40 pages, top halves were burned, but BOTTOM halves have continuity. Amazing. Man's grandeur and tragedy: He never knows the victories HE wins, but we live off the victories of the dead.
DIARY 5192
May, 1965
ROBBE-GRILLET NOTES
Alain Robbe-Grillet at the YMHA (December 20, 1964): If you look at a work of art, and it doesn't disturb you, it cannot be great art; it does nothing FOR you because it demands nothing from you. Time must always be the judge of contemporary art. What pleasure is there in TOTAL security? He writes to make a dialogue with a critic. I have something to say on the question of modern literature. REFLECTIONS: The CHIEF of modern art doesn't exist. One doesn't look for a view for the world, but only a view for oneself. Novel has never succumbed to change. Each musician must invent music, etc. Flaubert's "Bovary" was called new and different. My books will be absorbed by history and next year they'll say, why don't you write NATURALLY, like Robbe-Grillet. Balzac IS difficult to read. But only the FALSE Balzac who writes in a style that is NOT today. Flaubert was the first of the naturalistic novelists, but two versions of "Histoire Sentimentale" are almost by two people. For a great artists, it's ALWAYS the form, NEVER the story itself. An artist is one whose contact with the world produces a form. "Stranger" of Camus: some verbs are in the "Passe composé" and some are in the Passe simple. Thus it's all form. There's a novel of Je, of Vous, of Le, etc. Stranger in Passe Simple would be a book of NO significance. "Vous qui commence ce livre." There are two objects: objects and time. Balzac describes things. Objects BELONG to people. There is an objective novel (about all things), there is the temporal (like R-G's novels describe NO places, though his English prefaces sometimes DO. To write of a THING is to write of the person who owns them. If you skip description in Balzac, you skip the book. But only a man can give a point of view, not an object. The "Jealous" transforms everything into an aspect of jealousy. Description in RG's books do NOT constitute an IMAGE as in a movie. All descriptions appear and disappear. Balzac's descriptions are like a photograph. Thus history is a thing of the past, and NEW novels AREN'T. Modern movies create their OWN world; it doesn't show THE world. The time of that world is only the time of the film. All modern books are in the present. Present is NOT a passage between past and future, but merely IS---temporal. Movies can never "show" the past---they are always "showing" the "present." ABSURD to question "Did he meet her last year at Marienbad?" There IS no past, there is NO Marienbad, there's no past, but only the duration of the film. When she says, "I'd never been at Marienbad," it doesn't make a BIT of difference. Neither had HE, neither had RG. There IS no "Last Year at Marienbad." What happens "after" the film is absurd. The film is OVER, there is no "after." One writes, and invents, one knows one invents, and one says one knows one invents. Not only artists must "invent" the world, but everyone, scientists, architects, AUDIENCE. One EXISTS in a "present continual." One who WRITES of love, invents the love, invents man, invents reality. Modern artists are guides for US in inventing the world. MARVELOUSLY rational speaker, using simple words and appearing extremely sincere and serious. A MARVELOUS impression. Maintenant is not only the second the word is said, but the place also. Structure of the words more important than their sense. He's not against psychology, but the analysis of psychology. Marienbad serves as a film of reactions and emotions of the sick. The HOTEL is an asylum, the husband is a doctor, the WATER during Tristan and Isolde is her 6 pm medicine. Faulkner very important---stories TOLD by people who don't understand it. He doesn't limit men or time, he CREATES men and time. Time of Marienbad is long, but only person of importance is YOU, the VIEWER, in whom it takes 90 minutes. "You are the voyeur, YOU are the narrator." What a FLATTERING author. "The film and the book rests in the head of each spectator." One can accept ONLY what is in the film, ONLY. I save the present by taking notes and souvenirs. Write a story using words chosen by chance from a dictionary. "Les Gummes" was scrupulously constructed before-hand. Pages, without numbers, shuffled into order. 26 letters in ORDER prove anything. In Jalousie, the objects show passion. Of COURSE he exists. Surrealistic act of courage affects modern novels. Proust invents around the cake. The FORM REMAINS, THE MESSAGE CHANGES. Women understand Marienbad best. Editor of Grove Press publishes books that have no public, this is great. The editor INVENTS a public. One of the best speakers I've ever heard (and in FRENCH!!)
DIARY 5197
November, 1964
SONTAG NOTES
Susan Sontag I: October 19: The Impersonal in Literature and Art, or Beyond Humanism. We all (assumed) are Humanistics. Humanism: the individual is the point of reference---Nature and Society as THREATS to self. Society vs individuality. Impersonal nature vs Personal Individual. Liberty is freedom FROM nonpersonal influences. Humanism says cultivation of individuality is good. Modern liberal politics much a part of Humanism, but excluded in lectures---ART is included. Dehumanization of Art by Ortega de Gasset. Loss of Self by Wylie Cypher, contemporary art critique. HUMANISM CANNOT DEAL WITH DEATH. NIETZSCHE IS GREAT. Life or energy is the only thing that exists. Humanism OVER-extends human morality. Some phases of human experience are non-moral. Life is too dialectical to allow (x is good and x is bad). Humanism as self-display is superficial. Nietzsche said "Early Greek philosophy psychologically superficial (it would HAVE to be)." Ecstasy vs affectlessness; all-feeling vs non-feeling: poles of human experience. These areas are IGNORED in humanism. Humanism has no room for self-transcendence. That's "not being human." (But isn't Christ the super individual?) Humanism proposes a horizontal view of human existence. "Persons not JUST persons, but part of "IT". Experience themselves as objects. "NOW, humanism is a cliché, right and wrong is spiritual pettiness." "The best part of life is the impersonal. Religious consciousness FOR US is DEAD!!"
Celebration of impersonal not only modern, but also part of ancient religions: all traditional religions have levels of being (animal-human-divine). Gods are the NAMES for the important facts or happenings in nature. God of Madness, goddess of love, god of ocean. God-animal of Egyptian, god-man of Christianity. Humanism denies flow from level to level (but what about God made Man?) Oriental religion---man, woman, snake, god, man. Homer: CONTINUAL comparison of man to animals or wind or sea. Homer does NOT have word for body---only mind (SOMA (body) means corpse). Nero washes his skin. Gods cause all extraordinary actions. Tragedies caused by gods. Break with Greek was 1) Greek Philosophy 2) Hebrew monotheism. Gnostics (Gospel of Thomas) believed in impersonal mysticism. (((((Taken at City Center Fledermaus, later: with everyone in jail, including politicians (Jenkins yesterday) and like all Russian princes, I go up and down (Khrushchev yesterday)---I NEVER get bored.))))). She recommends Gershon Sholem: Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (reconciliation of opposites) (union of opposites) This is the THEME of modern art. Bosch's Garden of Delights has the imagery of medieval Gnostic sect: Adamites. "It's as didactic as Dante." Novalis: The BEST Christian is the worst sinner. Break down opposites. Not ANTI-moral, but TRANS-moral. Next time she says she'll go into Traditions in Art that SHOW the impersonal, such as pop art and theater of the absurd. The core of her rather intellectually cruel ideas are summed up in just three godless, pessimistic words: PERSONS AS THINGS.
DIARY 5199
November, 1964
SONTAG NOTES
Susan Sontag II: October 26: Comedy (in Fiction, Drama, Movies). Looking at other persons (and ourselves) as "IT" is the core of (some) creativity. Work of art involves "representation of humans (distorted or stylized)." Tragedy: a stylization of the emotional life---situation demands an "overreaction." Chorus is an amplifier of the emotion. Our reactions to tragedy 1) into pity as we identify with them 2) as fear of the exalted emotions in that we see the protagonist as distant, thus other-then-human. Comedy: situation demands an UNDER-reaction. Sources of comedy (pointing up the impersonal. 1) Incongruity from rapid change of perspective (normal vs non-normal) (human vs non-human). "Golden Ass"---adventures of human as ANIMAL. 2) SIZE contrasts---small or large vs normal. Gragantua---how funny for a human so HUGE; they accept the monstrosity, but WE tend to think them inhuman. Gulliver's Travels---"Last part of the book, the Hounymyns. 3) Typing of characters. "Volpone and Alchemist and Miser, the Cheat and the wolf-like (Volpone). Dr. Strangelove. 4) Doubling of Character---Shakespeare. Here, drama (by stylization) aims at cutting the nerve of identification. Strangelove (Sellers originally intended for bombardier, too). This undermines reality of action. Great Dictator is poor example. Kind Hearts and Coronets, good example---Indian saw this and said, "Murder is WRONG and shouldn't be laughed at." 5) Emotional Anesthesia---indestructible heroes. Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon. Danny Kaye. Candide. They're there. They're NOT there. They become objects in the center of the world. 6) Caricature (really between 2 and 3) Political cartoons, Eisenstein example is NOT comedy. Goldwater for Halloween. Comic and tragic consciousness both aim for a detachment of emotion---catharsis. Aesthetics (art morality) and morality itself do NOT converge. HUMANISM tries to extend morality to ALL art, but that's impossible, the aesthetic, through dehumanization in music and painting, is also a healthy part of being. In fact, the MOST interesting art nowadays is the art OF the impersonal. They say "Here's experience of things as they COME, I don't moralize it. Comedy is a good EXAMPLE of dislocating a moral sense. Enriched by violence---Mad Mad World. If we have respect for the inhuman in ourselves, we MUTILATE the human. She stammered through the first session, apologizing for having to move in from the library-gallery into the auditorium, refusing to be on the stage, refusing to organize her notes, she staggers on, talking to the audience, frowning as she finishes crucial sentences, as if she were not at all happy about the way they were coming out. She said she'd allow questions the second time, but meeting her in the gallery afterward and asking for questions, a "friend" said, "We don't want to hear questions, we want to hear Susan Sontag." I still have questions: If Humanism is horizontal, how to explain GOD as MAN in Christ? The error of our age is too much "thingness," witness the unhelped slaying of Kitty Genovese. SHE was obviously an EVENT.
DIARY 5291
November, 1964
SONTAG NOTES
Susan Sontag III: November 2: Pornography (I missed her definition of it). Add to last week's list of comedic variants---slapstick---a variation of the deadpan expressionlessness. Parody of Richardson (Pamela, Clarissa) is common form. Pornography as works that do not express the facts of Eros, but that are NOT innocent (?). Connected with comedy. De Sade evokes a sense of the form parodied. "Flaming Creatures," movie, example of parody of established images of excitement. "Candy"---example of parody of Candida. "L'Age d'Or" connects erotic and comic. No real character development in pornography---types or humors. Justine NEVER learns, Candy is ALWAYS amazed. They NEVER have emotions, affectless. Pornography has no scenes, it's very abstract. Principle of repetition---no completion, just keeps going. Pornography is detached, no suffering, no death, as in comedy. Nerciat is 8000 pages of perpetual repetition. Tragedy, it DOES happen. Tragedy is a stylish representation of drastic change. Notion of perpetual motion is embodied in the ORGY. "Juliette:" Never did the multiplication of my excitement exhaust me. Core of pornography. Each repetition MUST be the same as the other. The POINT of pornography is that it isn't realistic. A reaction against the notions of sex as guilt and anxiety ridden. We FANTASIZE about erotic using people AS OBJECTS (?). Pornography is a transcendence of the self as in religious ecstasy or artistic creation. De Sade uses the body as a machine, the person as an object, the orgy as an inventory of machines in collaboration. Figure of the outraged person is always there. "Les Liaisons Dangeureuses"---treats people's wills as things to be manipulated. Sexual intercourse as a battle, planning strategy, etc. Democracy is a quality---total freedom for taste for everything. Chinese or Indian literature (no guilt in sex) cannot BE pornographic. Surrealism extends pornography. "A programmatic search for estrangement from everything" will result in a fascinated numbness. Again, humans become things or things become animated. Intellectual gaze replaced by unemotional gape. "L'Historie d'O," surrealist novel, history of a woman to destruction. Dreams are impersonal experiences---surrealism is the art of the dream. In dreams, emotions are strangely placed. In dreams we never really die, either, as in pornography and comedy. Robbe-Grillet---developed a behavioristic rhetoric for the novel---colors, dimensions, positions described. A continuation of the aesthetic that goes into pornography---varnishing the outside surrealistically and making people impersonal and dehumanized. A fetishistic stare. "Le Voyeur," good novel. Ultimate fascination in pornography is the voyeuristic. Pornography is reaction to the seriousness, the morality of sex in the world today. "Fanny Hill" largely innocent. Erotic, not pornographic. Continuous exposure to pornography produces numbness and then possibly even laughter. Pornography intends to be anesthetic, deadens guilt toward sex. She then changes topics and goes off into Art, which will by typed into the lecture following.
DIARY 5203
November, 1964
SONTAG NOTES
Susan Sontag IV: November 9: Art, like all huge great experiences, goes beyond the personal, into the range of the IT, but this may change the ordinary scale of values we bring to art. All great experiences involve a moment of shock, of a sense of unveiling---all that is valuable and creative and learning for us. She wants to defend the SHOCK-value of novelty. A great work of art invites intimacy, yet keeps us at a distance, lets itself remain impersonal. A great work of art throws up obstacles, so that we can get the shock of revelation and PAY for the experience of knowing it. Like two people can exhaust each other too quickly or too frantically, but things must be HELD BACK, leave some mystery. Realism runs the risk of telling all, without restraint, and killing further interest: HERE IS THE WHOLE PICTURE. She's NOT proposing that impersonality guide ALL our life, we just haven't made sufficient place for it in our lives. Impersonality is a reaction to the bourgeois humanist reaction to people, where supra-human is simply ruled out of existence. She ALSO does NOT suggest de Sade is a great writer---but Rimbaud and Genet are. MADNESS---an emotional ordeal---is praised as is itness, as inhumanity, as ecstasy (drunkenness). Suffering has had a prestige in our culture. Paul: suffering is EMBLEM of a Christian. Christianity puts a positive value on suffering that NO OTHER culture did; a negative value on love; a positive value on unrequited love. We VALUE an artist as someone who SUFFERS WELL, even goes insane (Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Mann's Faustus) (I DOUBT IT). German culture "values" the "breakthrough" from pain (through seriousness of suffering) into insanity. Hitler? SUMMARY: 1) Art is a product of a state of consciousness, NOT (?) a representation of reality); 2) ART is a collision of values (god vs man, I vs IT, Personal vs Impersonal, Human vs non-human; sacred vs profane:::: ESSENTIAL DIALECTICALITY. Leprosariums didn't go out of business in Middle Ages when leprosy ceased being widespread, they became insane asylums, which cared for the insane, which started growth in end of Middle Ages. Insanity has a voluntary element (?), is not merely something that happens to a person. 1) Through representation of insanity, the artist makes judgment on civilization: "Gulliver's Travels" (negative experience of flesh); "Notes from Underground;" Camus' "Stranger." 2) Through insanity, people become interesting (a great value in modern times. "Not denying the tremendous price for it.") 3) Madness (Quixote, Lear, Erasmus) as a source of knowledge---a STRATEGY for living. 4) Artist is to EXPLORE consciousness and show the possibilities of art and man and through---he WILLS the adventure, and thus the madness. Surrealist art denies the borderline between normalcy and insanity. Madness is a spiritual asceticism. DeQuincy, Coleridge, Baudelaire as DRUG takers for extremism. "Since the decay of religious consciousness, we can't BETTER express an ABSOLUTE than by INSANITY." Artaud, exemplary insanity, advocates adventures BEYOND humanity. ULTIMATE boredom. "Dance of Death" party to Ted's at which poet jumped. Artaud: "With me, it is either the absolute or nothing." SS: "We ought to take his point of view." Thus SARTRE had no choice but be forced to life, and Sontag has no choice but to go mad---she should be condemned for her cowardice in appearing sane. The ULTIMATE education is death (as in Ted's SONG), quick, TRY it. "The problem that affects all of us is that we've lost the FORMS of consciousness that allowed us to SITUATE the human experience in an interesting way to COMPARE (self and other) human vs non-human experience. Commonest way, today, of transcending the human way of living is to go insane. "People used to have notions of the afterlife, of extreme opportunities---heaven and hell." Today, nothing? She's disturbed because SHE thinks insanity as extreme of ITNESS, but she also thinks insanity is esteemed by modern world as an emblem of extreme suffering. Modern culture characterized by FEAR: 1) Fear of oppression---by authority (so CHALLENGE it) (by going completely mad). 2) Fear of banality---by boredom (so CHALLENGE it) (by going completely mad).
TALK ABOUT THE PROBLEM OF LEISURE!!
Susan Sontag V: November 16; Variety of contemporary interest in the impersonal. REITERATE that non-humanism is not political dehumanization. Driving a car FAST is exciting and exhilarating (PART of a machine). 1) Lawrence: tried to express encounters in new ways ("Women in Love"). He said he wasn't interested in characters, but forces. 2) Simone Weil---see people at a distance ("Gravity and Grace") "Detachment is the soul of the beautiful." 3) Artaud: "Theater and its Double") Clearest exposition of why NEW forms are necessary. Get away from text, away from dialog, away from psychology. Theater should be a place of non-normal experiences. "Theater of Cruelty." We are irrevocable, NOT contingent. No moralistic interpolation possible. 4) Rauschenberg: "Painting should be a FACT, an INEVITABILITY, NOT a souvenir. 5) Jasper Johns: numbers are THERE, CANNOT be humanized. 6) Andy Warhol: there are things which ARE: Eating, Haircut, Sleep. 7) George Segal: Invited to contemplate BARENESS of people (statues). CLEANSING of things is the attempt of modern art, poetry, literature. 8) Robbe-Grillet---spatial and visual definitions of object. He wrote "Naturalism, Humanism and Tragedy." Not to see "How much can be cut away" but "How much has been hidden." Like hearing SONGS all your life and then hearing only MUSIC (GOOD analogy). Persons, wants, assemblages of forms---all mean nothing. Reconciliation is no longer powerful. MEANING has no definition from a scientific point of view. Impersonal DOES eliminate tragedy, DOES mean life is meaningless. IF these statements are offensive and incomprehensible, TOUGH. It's NOT ironic, but joyous. Eliminate an "unrealizable" goal. Eliminate need for "hidden meanings." "We rid ourselves of comforting illusions which really AREN'T so comforting." (To her, obviously.) "To get RID of personality, we would live more fully, more sensuously, more deeply." Final book list: Artaud: "The Theater and Its Double;" Franger: "Millennium of Hieronymus Bosch;" Foucault: "Historie de la folie a l'age classique;" de Sade: "Selections" (Grove); Simone Weil: "Gravity and Grace" (Putnam); Nietzsche: "Joyful Wisdom" (Atlantic paperback). END.
DIARY 5207
November, 1964
ILIAD NOTES; ODYSSEY NOTES; ANEID NOTES
Bates I: October 22: Iliad: Epic Poetry---look at the basic meaning of modern poetry, what it does and what it is. TWO streams of Iliad; the Achillead and the war. AK-ill-ease and men-a-LOUSE. Reason for fighting was to achieve status. It was the standard of manhood. "Standing in danger, knowing that FATE is there all the while." No REWARD in afterlife for moral goodness, but for military greatness. Iliad contains early and late versions in the same text---it dates back to Mycenaean which ended in 1100. Announcement that he will behead the body and throw it to the dogs, by Achilles of Hector, is remnant of earlier lay which included barbarous treatment of the body. But the Ionian age, when Homer wrote, brought in the gods who refused to let him go SO far into indignity. Later said that it was a barbarous enormity not to bury a man, and Achilles shows himself LESS than a man when he refuses to bury Hector. Achilles thus goes from MAN, at first, to BELOW man, in degrading Hector, and back to a man when Priam comes to Achilles and begs him to bury his son---and Achilles bursts into tears for his own father (psychological transference) and restores Achilles to manhood. Homer softened the story from the indignant earlier version. Eternal plot structure of man tempted to be less than a man. Profoundest piece of humanism is when Achilles returns to manhood. Humanism makes it GREATER than Song of Roland, El Cid, or earlier poems of Beowulf. Humanistic (of similes and metaphors and shepherds) touches of form and beauty are Homeric additions to the barbaric war framework. Thus poem becomes OF the Ionic age, rather than a history of the Mycenaean. (only 1 simile in Roland, NONE in El Cid---NOT addressed to a civilization, but only to a warrior class. On the granite stock of the story, olive trees of simile have been planted to soften the warriors for the shepherds. Helen blames Aphrodite for the war. But it IS simple and frank when Hector frankly says goodbye to Andromache and they laugh at Astynax, their son. Poem radiates mental health, acceptance of life as it is---FATE. SADNESS of the poem rests on this: They all know they will die. As opposed to OUR avoidance of death, though we know it comes, they can be gay, though they die, producing strength and sadness. Earliest Greek religion HAS no gods, only ritual, which led to idea of demonic spirits, then comes a human aspect, to gods. Ways of gods are less mysterious if there are MANY warring gods, rather, certainly than a single god. Goodnesses: 1) Extraordinary virility and vitality of the language. 2) Repetitious epithet is excused when remembering it was RECITED in 24 nights. In Beowulf the END is to be close to the King. MOST GREAT EPICS (Iliad, Beowulf, Milton) written at FALL of civilization. Earliest poetry was for a chorus for rituals and chanting. Ionian LEFT the mainland to Colophon and Ion and Cos before Doric invasions of mainland. Ionia itself furnishes the softness in which Homer clothed the Mycenaean hardness. Mycenaeans borrowed from Minoans, a SOFTER civilization. Homer was probably from (KEY-os). Sadness is from a LOST civilization, from a DYING world. Poem endures because there was a poet READY to RECORD the times. VERBAL poetry must have preceded written poetry. First written poetry was in Greek alphabet, which came in shortly before Homer. Oral poetry ignores chronology. If your intent is VIVIDNESS you do NOT go chronologically. Camus "Plague" is as near as we get to an epic today. In time of troubles (1300 BC) the need of valor arose. "Could not write poetry in Linear B." Greek is the first alphabet, and is FROM Semitic.
Bates II: October 29: Odyssey (means son of disapproval). A hero must be courageous, intelligent, strong, and wily (like Tyl Eulenspiegel). Crafty in words, full of deceits. Wily is NOT a pejorative in Greek. He's willing to swear HE won't kill you, yet tell someone ELSE to kill you. Book 10: "I'm not an orator": ALL orators begin thus. Odysseus' grandfather is Autolycus---a thief (of what?). Odyssey is not an EPIC as is Iliad, but a FOLK TALE. Polyphemus appears 224 times in various folklore.
Odysseus is SAME in Odyssey as he is in Iliad, except in Odyssey: 1) he prefers the colorful lie to the truth: he even lies to his WIFE after he kills 108 suitors. He lies to Athena disguised as a shepherd on the hill. 2) he is gentle and tender. 3) he uses POISONED arrows and LOVES strategy. 4) he is DEVOTED to his followers (odd in Homer). 5) He is distrusted (sailors let loose bag of winds and delay trip). 6) Athena says he's "civilized and self-possessed." 7) He's not so much valorous as human. Has family virtues: though no sentimentality, though tears. He never loses his nerve. Iliad reduces men to things, Odyssey raises Odysseus to HERO. Odd, but world since DANTE thinks of Odysseus as "going OUT into the world," rather than "striving to get HOME." Circe was Medea's AUNT. Hermes is phallic god and Hermes warns Odysseus about Circe (she'll castrate him). Though some argue that the Iliad is better than the Odyssey; HE thinks that formally the NARRATIVE is nearly PERFECT. NO sentimentality---love is even SHUNNED. Though Nausicaa wants to marry him, she says "Remember me, you owe me your life." He says, "Yes, I KNOW it, and I'll remember you." Knossos, aglitter with bronze, MUST have been Alcinous (Odysseus SAYS he is a Cretan). Odyssey would take two books per night, for twelve nights. Strange couple: Athena the Virgin and Hermes the phallus. Kyprian epic cycle are excluded stories of Odysseus: 1) Odysseus, Palomides, and Menelaus are ALL suitors of Helen. 2) Odysseus, tricked by Palomides, KILLED him by drowning. 3) Seeress TOLD Odysseus before he LEFT that he'd be gone 20 years. Dante puts Odysseus through Pillars of Hercules to Purgatory. Purgatory BEFORE the salvation? "A.B. Cook's "Zeus" is a magnificent book." Epic qualities: brevity and simplicity---stark and bold. Circe's palace in oak wood is precisely Venusberg theme. Greeks were outward directed (Aeneas pulled away from Dido) thus there is little feeling of guilt and sentimentality (Odyssey coaxed from Circe by friends), but we (?) have inward-directed (?) culture. Sophocles USES the folklore to philosophize "Make clear the ways of gods to men." (Wherever Oedipus if buried, that city will not be conquered.) Euripides (Humanist) (Atomist a la Democritus) no LONGER accepts the Mycenaean or Homeric aspects of legends---but lets the MOTIVES come through people. Evil is in man. "Electra" is MOTIVATED. Murderers are not god-willing murderers in epics, but HUMAN murderers are coupled with evil, thus humanist. After Euripides, no MORE great tragedies. No more BASIS for large tragedy.
Bates III: November 5: Aeneid---created by a single artist in a civilization that had NO REAL PLACE for an epic (unlike Homer). One approaches Homer openly, and has to acquire a taste for Virgil. In an epic, there is little room for individuality, but ROME was set for individuality, and Virgil had it. Bates quoted Lucretius and students said "It's Karen Horney." De Rerum Natura---talks of tortures in the SOUL of persons after all the fuss of civil wars and civil reform! Everyone was desirous of order. A person who writes the "epic of the time" is not driven by literary want, but by the CRISIS of the TIME. He wishes to induce order, discipline, patriotism, subordination and authority. (Joke: Julius (Caesar) comes from Illus, son of Aphrodite---but it didn't teach him much.) Beauties of Aeneid (for Bates): 1) Extraordinary narrative force. 2) All incidents linked. 3) All UNnecessary events left out. Epic was a part of the world, everyone, everyone knew it, so you entered anywhere and reveled. NON-epic times needed an ordered reference to people, to time and events. (Milton TRAINED to be a National Poet.) During this session I decided NOT to see the rest of the Bates lectures. PIETY was the motivating force of the Aeneid, men's submission to the will of gods. Thus the hero tends to be colorless, less vivid, as opposed to other characters in book, or the heroes of other epics. Aeneas is all duty---and tends to be solemn. Latin is softer, mellower, than Greek. Though Aeneid HAS FORM to recommend it. Bag of winds HERE is kept orderly in a mountain. To have a tragic epic here, must have romance, so Dido's included. Minor characters are thus more interesting. James Joyce imitated everything of Odyssey. Virgil copied everything in Aeneid from Homer. Boat race in Book 5 is BEST sports story in world. But each item is joined into a masterpiece of FORM. Aeneas' descent to underworld, as Homer and Milton, not a series of episodes, but a consecutive narrative. Virgil calculated all this, Homer just SANG. Turnus is more colorful, more human, as opposed to piety of Aeneas---constructed. Homer has no self-evident craft, but here one sees polish, artistry and craft. All he seems to be saying that when the epic is part of LIFE, the epic writer is at his best. But "Orlando Furioso," "Paradise Lost," Kazanzakis, all have to struggle with artificiality, solemnity, absence of spontaneity and grace. Looking at Bates, old, yellow-gray hair falling over his ruddy wrinkled face, talking elaborate jokes which few of the audience understand, steeped in literature and history---is THIS where the reader and literary mind aims to GO?? Enormously erudite, witty, yet somehow pedantic and childish and droll and pathetic. But I'm treating Bates as an it. Or does he invite it?
DIARY 5222
GILBERT HIGHET AND PERU
Gilbert Highet: Our immediate acceptance of myths an example of our "inherited sense passed down from our ancestors"---he believes in Continuity of Intellect, too.
Tiresias, "hero" of Wasteland, symbolized Eliot and his discovery of HIS sexual leanings.
Kavafy (best is "Barbarians are Coming") wrote many homosexual love lyrics.
Eliot in "Family Reunion" portrays Greek Gods.
Gide, in "Autobiography of Theseus" has him exult in his cruelty because it is HIS.
Joyce, in "Ulysses" parallels EVERY PART of the Odyssey, and that awful part when he (?) before Gerty McToole (?) while she swings is like Stephen Daedalus's fantasy in "Portrait of the Artist" where girl appears as an angel (?).
Eliot, in "Sweeniad" parallels Theseus when he leaves Doris in whore house.
MAY, 1965 JOTTINGS ABOUT PERU:
North Coast South Coast
1500 Inca Inca
Ica
1000 AD Chimu
Pachaco
Wari (700-1100 AD)
WITH Tiahuanaca Nazca
Mochina (Jaguar head Proto-Nazca (100 BC - 1 AD)
Like on gate)
500 BC Cupisnique Paracas
Early Guanape Pre-Chavinoid
1500 BC Pre-Ceramic
Mochica, 1000 years before Incas in Peru. Mochica conquered by Tiahuanaca-Wari people in 700 AD. Mochica (300 BC - 700 BC). Beginnings inherited from Cupisnique Style. On Far North coast of Peru, Mochica blackware became the typical pottery of the Chimu (after Tiahuanaca interval) the building of the great metropolis of Chan Chan.
DIARY 5371
SYSTEMS RESEARCH INSTITUTE
1. Smoke billows up from the charred ends of cylinders of fiber. The air in the room is befouled with stringy gray smoke from the cigarettes, transparent billowy smoke from the pipes, and the heavy yellow-gray of the cigars. Aside from the amplified voice of the lecturer, the only sound in the room was the scratch of phosphorus against a sanded surface. Every smoker took care to blow his smoke far away when he exhaled, and held his instrument far from his head, preferably in the region of the nearest nonsmoker.
2. And the people sat through the class, molding paper cups into a form so tight that a slight pressure caused a constricted crack when the paper rubbed against itself; clinking pencils together to make a sharp snap; tapping back in their seats and getting them to the precise position where a slight motion back and forth produces an audible creak in the tortured joints of the chair (how sexual!), sifting change (seemingly mostly quarters) through fingers in coat pockets; playing with a key in such a balancing method that it periodically drops onto the floor; clicking pen points in and out, in and out, in and out, with a systematic click-click; mutilating paper clips into contorted configurations; puffing away on cigarette and pipe and cigar, which involves an endless fiddling with ash and matches and flame; a single person spun his ring, spun it to balance it on its heavy stone, and then as it lost speed it flopped down on its side, oftimes onto the hard topped desk with a clatter; others whispered back and forth, and others simply SPOKE back and forth, and all this with the normal complement of finger-biting, foot-tapping, coat-shifting, pencil-doodling, watch-winding, head-scratching, leg-adjusting, glass-cleaning, nose-picking, note-taking, chair-adjusting, ass-probing, and sometimes listening to the lecture.
DIARY 7203
September, 1965
LSD LECTURE
FROM LSD LECTURE: Gurdjieff's organ "Kundabuffa" is equivalent to "Imprinting" whereby the "gods" try to stop man from locating himself in space-time, is "hooked" onto attractions (to chase) and aversions (to avoid) and THAT'LL keep him busy. LSD makes static imprint and makes it move, as part of Maya. "Serotonin" is a chemical mainly responsible for conveying impulses across synapses, and thus ALL thought is conveyed selectively by Serotonin, and LSD is similar in structure, so LSD pushes ALL brain energy. 100 gamma (micrograms) of LSD is good for some firsts, but alcoholics need much more to get turned on. Psychedelic art: light through salts on slides. Soap films between slides. Four characteristics of experience: 1) Transcendence---ineffable. 2) Timelessness---eternity in an instant. 3) Feeling of UNITY. 4) Feeling of higher reality (more real than real). Odd 3 sections of computer 1) Input, 2) Output 3) Storage (NO CPU). Odd aural interruptions COULD have been to GOOD---plan is that the audience (if the SPEAKER hadn't reacted) could have LEARNED to ACCEPT (i.e. ignore) these "altered" imprints. Feeling of unity is MANY brain cells firing at once to produce equivalences. Feeling of higher reality comes when all brain cells fire at once and gives the Buddhist "white light" of the ULTIMATE EXPERIENCE, when all things GO. This must be the Ph.D. from YALE who's in Theater. If you're going to take LSD: 1) Must have a cosmology---a set of anything to which you can attach the incredibles you see (It can be great and it can be dangerous.) 2) Must have a moral code (person under LSD is wide open to anything) Familiar temptations of sex and money OFTEN come up. For the Jew, not Jewish enough; for the Christian, not Christian enough, for the Eastern religions, just what they had always thought. Ralph Metzner, the one in glasses. Five years research in Harvard. Energies of Eastern religion is: You can become God. Sinners of Christians say: You can get good in afterlife. Four "experiences" taught in 40 years is GREAT statistic for Indian guru. But psychedelic drugs put everyone "out of his mind," "turned on." Mahayana "put OTHERS there after YOU get there." Hinayana "get there yourself." Hindus have Chakras (areas of body) each of which has its own paranoias and ecstasies. Must realize each of these. When you get WAY out---all is flow, all is becoming, all is Maya, so why worry about money, why worry about ambition, what does all this matter? The people who should take it don't, the people who needn't, DO. Draw line at people over 45---they won't be interested. Each experience is UNIQUE, no way of foretelling what will happen. LSD has cleared up epilepsy. Any STOPPING of Maya is ILLUSION. Everything IS, and going WITH it is reality. LSD cycles in 7 days. 40,000 gammas a day is not lethal. Castalia Foundation, Millbrook. "Psychedelic Experiences" Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, $5.00, University Books, New Hyde Park, N.Y.
DIARY 7212
October 26-27, 1965
CREATIVITY ENCOUNTER GROUP (Aureon Institute)
Patty shook me awake at 7 am, and I woke to hear the alarm buzzing madly from the floor. I thanked her groggily, knowing that the only reason I slept through the first jolting burr of sound was HER presence. The night before I had been watching the Olympics on TV, fearing that the US might lose the gold medal in their final basketball game against Yugoslavia, and the phone rang at 12:10. It was Patty, with tears in her voice. "What's wrong?" "EVERYthing's wrong. I'm sitting looking at a full bottle of pills, and I'm afraid I'll take them." "What happened?" "I got so depressed---everything's against me. I got worried about being here alone, so I called Alexandra in Cincinnati, and Joan told me to call you." I mentioned that I had to get up at 7 am the next morning. "I won't keep you very long," she said. "I just want someone to talk to." Reluctantly, I agreed to see her, writing instructions to Paul's apartment, where she was staying, on a border of the Times Olympic summary sheet, which I'd be needing no longer. Glad that my hair was dry from the shower an hour ago, I dressed and caught a cab up to 87th and West End, where I mused about the PH floor above 12, where Patty was staying. I wondered if she felt safer staying on PH rather than on 13. She snuffled behind the door before she opened it, and welcomed me in. There was no tearful collapse in my arms, as I had feared, but her moist eyes showed a reasonably sincere evening of crying. We talked about her problem: the jilting lover canceling his flight down from Buffalo to see her this weekend, her unappreciated work on the mess left in the apartment by Alexandra, who had lived there with Paul before Paul went to Cincinnati to direct the plays that Joan was appearing in, and she also lamented the fact that there was no booze in the apartment. After a half-hour of this dawdling, I said I was worried that I wouldn't get any sleep Saturday night, so I really wanted to get to bed. She insisted for a few moments that I stay there. "I'd even put clean sheets on the bed for Steven," she said, beginning to tear again. But I refused, saying that I had to get my baggage at home anyway, and not saying that the sleeping arrangements would be much more comfortable. She dressed practically in front of me, showing off her bikini panties under the transparent night-dress, and I didn't bother waiting around to see if she was wearing a bra. In a few minutes we were in the cab, and the first thing she wanted in my apartment was a drink. She got her own, I pulled out the sofa-bed and blankets and sheets in a business-like way while she made sounds about how sorry she was to put me out. Yeah. I left her to do whatever she liked in the living room, changed back into the pajamas lying on the floor, still barely warm, and flopped into bed, shoving the earplugs in deeply. Not surprisingly, she trundled into the room in no time, enveloping me through the blanket and sheet, saying she was cold. I gave her the woolen blanket but she resisted, saying she'd rather have a warm body next to her than a warm blanket over her. I said I was tired. "You mean you REALLY don't want me to sleep with you?" she asked, incredulous that this could be happening to her. "No." Simplicity is purity. "Bob, I liked you from the first time I set eyes on you." That had been obvious from the way she wanted to move in as soon as she saw the bedroom, a half-hour after Alex brought her to introduce to me, and she nuzzled my shoulder when I refused to let her be in line for occupying the apartment after my departure. "Look, Patty, it's late, I have to get up early, I won't be getting any sleep tomorrow night, I want to sleep NOW." "Bob, how can you be so mean?" she said, burrowing deeper into my side, trying to twist my head around for a kiss. "Didn't Joan talk to you about me?" "Oh, yes, I'd heard about you for months. She had nothing but nice things to say about you." "Oh, then she didn't tell you?" "Tell me what?" "That I'm a faggot," I said, in a "of COURSE that's what I mean" tone of voice. "You are?" She didn't believe me. "You're lying to me---just like men---a lying bastard." "No, I'm not lying to you." There was still silence for so long that I scooched around in bed and kissed her back. "Now will you let me sleep?" "Don't kiss me if you don't want to. Why did you use such a terrible word?" "Faggot?" "Yeah." "Do you know the word gay?" "Yeah." "Well, if I'd known you'd known that, I would have used it." "Faggots are such terrible people." "I agree with you. OK, I'm gay." "Why?" "WHY? Who knows why? All I know is that guys turn me on and girls don't." This conversation continued for a number of minutes, until finally I managed to get rid of her, stuff back the earplugs, and turn over for sleep. Sleep didn't come. It must have been after three when I managed to drop off, and four hours sleep isn't exactly ideal. No wonder I slept through the alarm. "Wake me up when you leave" she said, going back to the living room as I sat dazedly on the edge of the bed. I went through the morning motions with eyeballs that felt too large for their sockets, woke her when I left, and grabbed a taxi to Grand Central at 7:55. We got there in no time, but the line at the single ticket booth was too long to wait on, and I went directly to the train at 8:05. I forgot to evaluate the passengers for possible co-creators, and began reading "Zen Buddhism" as the train pulled out. I watched the nearly-autumn scenery slide past on the other side of the Hudson, figuring that in two weeks the other half of the trees would also burst into flame, and that would be a good time to rent a car and drive upstate. Just before 9 the train pulled into the station, and many people debarked, I among the last. When I got to the curbside, I overheard conversation about Aureon, so I joined the group of six at the curb. The rotund, balding, kinky-haired man and the young blond woman turned out to be the leaders of the group: the Browns, and the tiny-eyed woman in wooly clothes was Mrs. Drucker, the secretary for Aureon who could attend as many sessions as she desired as a sort of payroll supplement. She bustled around calling taxis, and finally one came which took the Browns and Doris, an older, accented woman, to Tarrytown House. Susan and Arthur and I talked very little waiting for the taxi's return, and Arthur called the service again before the same taxi returned to take us there. The first person I saw inside the house was Mary, neurotic in her old-lady bun-in-the-back hair and Harlow pants, and there was a small spark passed between us as we talked. The rooms weren't ready, so we stood around drinking coffee until the clan gathered in the downstairs conference room, looking like a classroom with the upholstered chairs in neat rows facing a dais with podium. But when the Browns entered, they erased the classroom impression by directing that the chairs be placed in a circle, and at 10 am promptly, we started. George gave a few introductory statements then explained that the first go-around would have each of us giving their names, their reason for attending, what they hoped to get from the weekend, and anything else they'd like to say. I remembered a few of the names and descriptions, picking out Bruce as a tall, good-looking fellow with English school-girl skin, Paul, advertisement handsome in his well-groomed neatness, and Steve, cute and roly-poly in his dark Jewishness. "I'm Bob. The world has made me wear a mask for the past fifteen years because I'm a homosexual. I'd like to feel more free with people." The others told their stories, mostly unexciting, and George described the first exercise. "Take whoever you want and sit in your chairs back to back, facing outward." I went for Mary, but found Art had already gotten to her. I didn't want the plain Sue, so I took to Susan, who agreed readily. "Now talk to each other," which of course produced chaos since the outgoing voices mingled in the room to make understanding difficult. Then we were directed to move the chairs facing each other, look into each other's eyes, and communicate only with the hands. We gazed, I staring at the point between the eyes, she leaping from one of my eyes to the other, and we touched our hands. Nothing clicked, there were no sparks. After a few minutes of talking, George then told us to put one of the partners into the center of a circle of 12, and the other partner should stand on the outside of the circle, across from the partner. She got into the center first, and the group batted pleasantries around. I disliked the slowness of the whole thing, so when I got into the center, I held out my hands. Some quickly, some reluctantly, everyone accepted my ploy and reached into the center. Arthur attacked the idea and withdrew, the others withdrew, we discussed the reaction, I said it was what I had WANTED to do, and I was obliging no one to act with me. Estelle reached back in and gave a reassuring grip, Sue came in quickly, too, and Steve reached over Sue's and my hands with a strong grip and said HE was willing to contact others, too. Then the group was reversed, and everyone was to talk about where they felt alone. Again I thought the inner group did nothing much. When we changed, the expression was to be about when and where we felt FREE, and Nick pleased the group by recalling rolling in the snow with his eight-year-old daughter with perfect freedom and love. We all went out to him. We gathered again into a large circle and chatted about the schedule for the afternoon and the following day, then adjourned for lunch at 12. We all went for our rooms, then met again for lunch, and I plunked myself down with Sue and Susan and Steve, and Sue graciously allowed me, even though someone else had been supposed to sit with her. The talk was about school and writing, and while the Sues talked about nothing, Steve told me about his Comparative Literature thesis, and I told him about the LSD book, which brought forth HIS LSD experience. He seemed more and more attractive. We got back into session at 2 pm, and the partners were instructed in the "Blind Walk."
Sue and I dashed out the back door and I motioned with my hands for her to shut her eyes. The most important thing was that there would be no verbalizing whatsoever. She smiled and put herself into my hands. For the next 15 minutes she felt bushes and tree trunks, rocks and gravel and grass. We ran quickly, she pulling back in terror, down the grassy hill, so that she could investigate the iron urn with crumbling paint that held husks of old plantings. Even thorns came into the picture as I gently put her finger onto the stock of the furred, thorny plants that grew along the road. She smelled almost everything after I bent my head close to hers and made sniffing sounds, and even tasted the bitter berry from some bush she was touching. She laughed aloud as she rolled down the hill, long hair twisting about her head, dried leaves flying up and catching on her clothes and hair. We began making little crooning sounds to each other, but I couldn't think of any other way to make taste and sound come more into the business of feeling and smelling. Then we switched, and I gave her my wristwatch with motions that I, too, was to have fifteen minutes. Running was a paralyzing action. Though I trusted her, I didn't trust my own footing, or unevennesses in the ground she couldn't see, so I had trouble letting myself go. Rolling down the hill was even more difficult, because after a half-dozen turns my head was spinning dizzily and the smile began to fade from my lips. She brilliantly led me around to the shelter in back of the pool, which I hadn't seen, so I could be puzzled by the grating on the wall, a fireplace with dangling tools, a stairway, and miles of brick walls. The two-pronged lamp turned into a four-pronged lamp, and when I touched the fifth and sixth lights, I realized how little I'd noticed of what was around me. She led me to a different part of the lawn, to tree stumps filled with decayed wood, and she placed things into my hand: a piece of slate, a Coke bottle, a rock, and something which was either a rotting apple or the fetid top of a mushroom, and I made appropriate sounds when I raised it to my nose. More and more I began to laugh at what I felt, filled with childlike wonder. Then she put my hands out and shoved me ahead, and I was startled to feel two hands meet mine. Rather mechanically I reached up the arms to feel the bulky coat, then reached back along the neck to feel the hair. I'd expected Mary, somehow, but the long loose hair didn't correspond to Mary's bun, so I didn't know who she was. She seemed to be responding very little, but just pro forma I drew her close and rested our cheeks together. I somehow expected her to kiss me, and when she didn't, I buried my nose into her neck and kissed her lightly there, just to indicate that I appreciated the chance to touch her. We drew apart, and I was sorry I hadn't thought to let Sue encounter another person. But that rather typified the pedantic, rather mechanical way I drew her onward to new and different things, sometimes just when she was content feeling around about where she was. There was another human touch, and I followed the same path to find that this head had the short cropped hair of a man. I felt a twinge of pain that I couldn't perform the same caress and nuzzle I had done with the girl, and I went back to the arms and rather listlessly ran my hands along his coat. I wasn't enough interested in the face to even see who it was, and I was rather embarrassed to feel differently about feeling a man. In jest, I slapped Sue's wrist as we drew away from the fellow. Later there was another fellow, and there was a ludicrous final handshake as we parted. ((I'd forgotten to mention the conversation as we sat around the room after lunch. Howard began talking about how he feared in himself what I so readily admitted, and we talked about men loving men, others joining in the group, and I felt somewhat the expert on the topic. Everyone felt compelled to tell me how they didn't believe me when I had said it, and I thanked them for their compliments. ((And back farther, on the WAY to lunch, I'd forgotten that Mary joined me with a smile on her face, saying that her lover was homosexual, too, and she so much admired me because I reminded her of him. "And," she continued, "it was the first man I'd been to bed with, too, since I rather prefer girls." I'd put my arm on her shoulder, and remember evaluating that arm when I learned she was a lesbian. I guess these things DO make differences in reactions to people: I left my arm on her arm.)) )) She also led me to the brink of the pool and made me feel the water, which I hadn't let her do, but afterwards, in the same sort of pavement as that which surrounds the pool, I put feet carefully sideways, as if I feared falling into the pool when Sue looked elsewhere for a moment. Too quickly the time was up, and we gathered inside to evaluate the happenings. Art had a red mark above his left eyebrow where he'd hit something, and he also described falling when Mary started him running too fast.
The next phase was an unusually affecting one. Everyone wrote a secret, "something that not more than two or three people, if any, know about you," and put it into a container. Doris abstained, and I disliked her for it. I had difficulty thinking of one, feeling that most of my secrets were connected with my gay life, and thus were easy to trace to me. Finally it hit me, and I turned my back to the group, ostensibly to write on the chair behind, that "I masturbate too often." Then each selected one, not his own, and had to speak as if it was HIS problem. Paul, who was first, didn't understand what to do, so Judy took it and read "I take diet pills," and continued "I'm very much ashamed of this secret, because it shows that I have so little self-control. I'm more interested in feeding my face than in presenting a good slender figure to my husband and my friends. I've tried going on diets, but I don't have the discipline to stick to them, and I feel very ashamed of that, also." The soliloquy continued for about five minutes, then the next person took their turn. VERY quickly "I still masturbate" came up, and I figured someone had misread, or chose to misquote, mine. They rather pooh-poohed it as a problem, then went on to say they couldn't tell their friends about it, that it probably signaled a deeper loneliness beneath, and that the person might even want to get some sort of psychiatric help for the problem. It quickly became clear how elucidating someone else's problem revealed aspects of personal problems. Some chose to bring in their families, their mother or father, or expressed their fears in such a strange way that I felt sure I was seeing some of their inner selves. "My" secret was "I have no secrets." I wasn't sure what this meant, but characteristically showed some of myself when I said "I don't believe that there's anything important enough to keep from my friends, and this rather implies that there's nothing important about me at ALL: I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to give, I'm quite empty inside." Later I found that this was Steve's secret, and he merely said "You read it wrong." Many of the secrets were sex-oriented: I had an abortion, I don't love my husband, I was married before, I was impotent for a period of time, I love a woman who's not my wife, I've had an extramarital affair, etc. The diet pill secret was by far the most trivial of the lot, and it later turned out to be Sue's, and she said she wasn't worried about her friends knowing, but that she just didn't HAVE any other secrets.
This took us up to four o'clock, and we adjourned to private quarters for a close encounter group of six. In my bedroom Estelle shared my feelings of boredom as Nick more or less led the group, Art got some of his insides strewn around the floor for his continual sniping at people, Steve showed a silent practicality, and Sue didn't say much of anything. I looked rather envious, I think, when Steve crossed over Nick to sit against the bed with Sue and put a companionable arm around her. I detected some similarities in Art's refusal to let people close to him, and probed him on that basis. Once he acknowledged that I was getting to some sort of deeper understanding more quickly than Dr. Nick, the expert in the group. I took the chance to thank Estelle for her ready acceptance of me earlier, and we looked warmly at each other through the session. When she rose to leave she rather pointedly mentioned that "Art had a chance to get rid of HIS shit, or clear out some of HIS garbage," and I rightly mentioned that it sounded like she wanted to get rid of some of HER garbage too. She smiled down on me. Art had been hurt before by a girl whom he had loved leaving him. Then recently there was a girl who hounded him, tortured him with her sickness and impending colostomy, and as a final insult went off to see his garbage-filled apartment before he would have let her. He spoke of his greater ease with her when they agreed not to mention marriage, they would just be friends. The group seemed content to place the blame with her, rather than him. He thought of his work as very important, and wanted to succeed in IT before considering himself qualified to succeed in love. Once in awhile we would get close to something, but Nick or Steve would ramble on about some point, the feeling would evaporate, and Art could permit himself to lower the curtains around his problem again. We started talking about homosexuality, and Steve made me totally envious talking about his loving family, how he still kissed his father and brother, and how on the sports teams he would think nothing about patting people and touching his fellows. It was clear he wanted to help me, and that if there was anything I wanted from him short of going to bed with him, I would probably get it if I asked.
Joe came into the room then and raved about the closeness and the intimacy of HIS group, and I was more disappointed than ever in the lack of action in my group. I readily agreed that my impatience was working against me: if I constantly regretted the slowness and looked toward the future to be better, I would find the weekend gone without liking any bit of it. About 6:30 we went over for dinner, and found only single seats available, so we went to the only empty table. The dinner promised to be long and strained, and I counted 26 people already there, and suggested we'd be alone at this table unless we chose to separate and sit at the other tables. He agreed, and I joined Nick and Lois and Ben and Gene, who joked about "handling people." "Oh, what do you DO?" "Mortician." Nick came in for a laugh when the fritters with his ham turned out, three-quarters through the meal, to be fried grapes. The chopped steak was good, and the whipped pumpkin pie for dessert luscious. Back downstairs at 8:30 for the evening session, and I got into the room late enough to be last, and George motioned me into the seat to his left. Judy described what resentments and dreams were, and told us to select a resentment. I whispered to George "Can I resent society for making me wear a mask?" "Do you want to work?" "Sure." And I was first out, without having any idea what the therapy was about. He drew a chair up in front of me, asked me to repeat my resentment, and said "Imagine that society sits in that chair. What would you say to it?" I felt fearful now. I'd wanted to be first because I DIDN'T know what was coming, and I wanted to avoid getting any preconceptions or programming, as they called it, completed as someone "worked" before I did. I also assumed that everyone would get his chance. "Why don't you let me do what I want, so long as I don't hurt anyone?" I rather querulously asked the chair. "You sound like you're giving excuses" said George sarcastically. I looked at him. "What do you feel?" "I---I---" My throat was constricted and my stomach was knotted, and the fear turned into something akin to panic. "What are you waiting for?" "I'm---trying---to---think---" "Uhn---uhn---uhn," that's what you sound like," he said angrily. "I'm having trouble putting things into words, which is not a problem I usually have," I shot back, getting angry. I tried a few attempts to address "Society" in the chair, but got nowhere. Judy tried suggesting ways out, but they didn't help. George told me to become society, become the group, and talk to me. Then I knew what to say: "Get ON with it," I shouted. Then I went back to my seat, and sat, mouth open, gripping my arms, paralyzed. "What's wrong?" George asked, too quickly. "I feel like a rat in a TRAP," I stammered. "I don't know the framework for what I'm supposed to do. I don't know what to DO." He and Judy tried, but somehow I tried to put the burden on them, and I willfully seemed to misunderstand their directions. Finally, with a last sarcastic remark, George let me off the hook and went to someone else. I was totally crushed. How WAS I supposed to know what to do? Then Gene went into an involved, boring, time-consuming fantasy about drawing a hawser out of his stomach, Ed tried to get somewhere but George lost his patience and actually said he was being bored by the whole thing, and thought Ed should stop; Howard launched into a lengthy dialogue with his father, coming to some sort of insight; and Mary made everyone fidget with embarrassment as she put up a reasonably phony show about her mother and how much her father loved her. Ben, too, came out very phony, and I feared that was how I sounded, and I tried too hard to do I wasn't quite sure what. The evening was over at 11:30, being very helpful probably only for Howard, but at least I knew what the technique was.
I quickly went to my room and got into bed before Joe arrived. I was terribly tired from the previous sleepless night, and I didn't want to talk to anyone about my horrible fiasco. After about a half-hour Joe came in and asked if I was awake. I didn't answer. He got into bed and fell asleep, and I tossed around much, feeling that there was a hump in the middle of the bed, and that my thighs were sore for some reason---probably from the tensions of the evening. Finally got to sleep sometime like 1 am.
