ray johnson to robert warner, reprinted in esopus 16 

i’ve spent the past few nights reading the collected correspondence of ray johnson, an artist whose best work was done in the mail. johnson’s letters are always funny and sometimes sad. several of his them are stamped BRUE EYES CRUB. several are stamped with snakes. several of them mention a mythical place called NIPPLE BEACH.

in 1995, he swam out into sag harbor and drowned himself. before that, he lived as a semi-recluse, dealing with gallerists and other artists via letters, almost exclusively. before that, he was friends with warhol, studied with john cage & merce cunningham, was semi-responsible for developing the concept of the pop-art college, and had what otherwise might’ve been construed as a fairly productive artist’s life c. the late 1950s and early 1960s.

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i rarely send mail anymore. i rarely get it, either. i don’t like romanticizing outmoded technology, especially when the technology is essentially inconvenient, but reading johnson’s letters has made me think a lot about the power of getting a letter in the mail, holding it your hand, and registering the fact that someone has 1. taken time in their day to think about you, 2. taken out a piece of paper (not a household item anymore) 3. written something on the paper—for you!, 4. put the paper in an envelope (also not a household item anymore) and 5. put a stamp on the envelope. their spit is on that envelope. their spit might even be on that stamp. it all takes time, and time is always at a premium. in the face of overwhelming mortality, the amount of time we spend on each other is as good a measure of love as i can think of.

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i’ve been thinking lately about the idea of ambition and focus— specifically how distracting they are. i’m indulging in side projects. go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket, but then start laying something other than eggs. sometimes what appears to be off to the side is really the center— sometimes the things we feel less ambitious about or less focused on are where we end up really showing our talents or abilities. that’s what i can learn from johnson, at least: that assigning greater importance to a certain kind of work (your magnum opus, your soul) is to ignore the potential for beauty and insight in all the weird little places you spend your time. it’s life as cutting-room footage; life as marginalia.

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johnson was a buddhist, i guess, and i’ve never been more convinced that people can actually be buddhists than when i read his letters. if they were all there was, fine— they’re all there needs to be. they’re it. nipple beach. i peed your name on a blue buoy. what’s a grander, more profound, more permanent and more universal statement than to reject grandiosity, profundity, permanence, and universality? none i can think of. it’s bob’s name he pees. just bob’s. and then the pee washes away and the buoy remains, bobbing.

(by way of further reading, here’s a very thoughtful & extended piece in the nation about the ny correspondance school. spelling intentional.)

I rarely hold opinions more than a few hours. Finishing leaves me with despair. But I also make wild, rather intriguing collages that fascinate me by their separateness. Don’t remind me that I turned out wrong because I had a nanny who washed my wee-wee out with Q-tips and I wore hats and coats to match…. I feel best when alone with pocket money, quite thin, agile, and slightly viscious…. I’ve always believed in live high, die, and have a wonderful corpse.

In one of my sister’s tapes she claimed she’s talking to Henry Kissinger and he was coming on to her, trying to make a date. My sister Polaroided Tiger Morse’s funeral at Frank E. Campbell’s funeral home. I think that’s a bit much.

We never had separate identities, I was always Brigid Polk’s sister. But I gave Brigid her first poke… I have a dog, though. He is separate…. Toto… a Yorkshire Terrier who has been with me for eight years and wears eyeglasses. I dress him up. he makes you want to call me Dorothy. He has a tape recorder in his shoe and Mark Cross loafers. He wears coats and hats.

hearst baby richie berlin, as told to jean stein in edie: american girl

(As Oscar Wilde pointed out, people didn’t see fogs before certain 19th century poets and painters taught them how to; surely, no one saw as much of the variety and subtlety of the human face before the era of the movies.)

susan sontag, “the aesthetics of silence,” 1969.

“Babies in carriages take to me instantly,” Ms. Byrd said, leaving the salon as a blonde a shade beyond beach. “I think it’s because they were conceived while their parents were watching my show. Dogs love me, too. I’m like an old friend because when people fall asleep with me on TV, the dog is still watching.”

robin byrd in the nytimes, c. 1996. watching her show— a manhattan public access program where she interviewed adult entertainers and screened low-budget ads of them dancing wearing riot cop / babylonian / bdsm gear—  is one of the first times i can remember being secretive. i’d sit in the basement of my dad & his girlfriend’s apartment, sound turned down, looking at the door nervously every time i heard a bump behind the walls. i wasn’t sexually excited by the show at all, & i don’t think that was the point— i think the point was to present an on-screen utopia where sex existed separately from shame. still, i knew i wasn’t supposed to be watching it. still, i find it impossible to take sex unseriously, despite the obvious vaudevillian undercurrents.