PREAMBLE

New York City is dirty
Garbage pick-up is frequent
There are a lot of restaurants
How much do you want to pay
There are a lot of places to live
How much can you pay
You could become a drug addict
You could become a drunk

Did you forget? I forgot. I
forgot something. Something
forgot. I forgot the conflict.
Forgot the story. There -- There.
I forgot. I keep forgetting. I
keep forgetting. That forgotten
story. I forgot. My mother
I forgot. I forgot.

Water
Fulton
Whitehall
Ferry
Delancey
                  Streets

Forgot to surface

Forgot the East End of London
is part of a city. The narrow
streets. The rain. The complex
business dealings.

Forgot to surface

DeKooning and Guston used a lot of paint. DeKooning came from Amsterdam. I met his mother after "Woman I" was installed in the Museum of Modern Art. Bob Rauschenberg told her one of his grandmothers came from Holland. I was there. But it wasn't my time. Guston went to high school with Jackson Pollock in L.A. Guston was a modern man. He put his conflicts into the paint. Onto the canvas. From the ashcan to the burning bush and back again. Children need to play. Red is a hard color. Think of how many things it makes you think of. Titian's redheads were all prostitutes. Venice was full of prostitutes. They all dyed their hair red. DeKooning's "Door" doesn't have any red. There's a lot of yellow. Another hard color. DeKooning was able to put yellow and blue in the same painting and not make green. Mondrian didn't like green. He pulled down the blinds when he travelled on a train so he wouldn't have to see green.

PREAMBLE

Ferry Street doesn't exist any more. There's a middle-class housing project on the ground of that old downtown neighborhood. Forty-eight Ferry Street was an early nineteenth century brick building. We were on the third floor. The top floor. The building was on a corner and it had many windows. The roof slanted. It went from seven feet to thirteen feet. It was a great painting space. Martha and I bought the loft from Jay Milder. The overhead gas heater spurted flames and it was very dangerous. So we stopped using it. George Stanley was with us that winter, and we used to take a lot of hot showers to keep warm. Until. Allen Ginsberg was at the party and he said he'd gotten a thousand dollars that he didn't expect. I asked him if he could lend me a hundred and fifty to go to LeeSam's to get a better burner. He did and we had heat. Before Allen went to India, he phoned and said he needed the money. I got it to him. It was like that then. But it wasn't my time.

I visited deKooning the first time I came up from Black Mountain. I remember a small round table with a bottle of Four Roses. He showed me everything and Elaine made a drink. It was like that then. Painting was important. Guston talked about having no money to buy his daughter's shoes. He'd buy cheap paint, red paint, and have heaps of it on newspaper to get the excess oil out. DeKooning always painted socks. Guston always painted boots. Guston painted top coats. Jim Dine paints bathrobes.

One of my first painting teachers told us to cover the canvas with a thin coat of ochre before we began to paint. I suppose it was to cure us of any violent acts we might deliver to the canvas. I suppose it was to help us produce a likeness that would look benign. But it wasn't of a gentle disposition. It wasn't gracious, or kindly, or gentle. What appeared on the canvas appeared to be primitive. But it wasn't. It was more knowing than Modigliani. It was not real. It was imagined.

nothing surfaced

Water Street. The street was old. The bricks were weathered. The building had no heat or hot water. There were fireplaces on each floor. There was electricity. That winter it was cold. The oil paints froze in their tubes. We gave a party. A big party. When we woke up, Dan's beautiful suede jacket was missing. My record player and records were gone. Something or some things were missing of Lynn's--I can't remember.

When he was in his twenties, Guston was invited to live in a producer's house in L.A. The guy told him he could have a room and paint there for free. Philip said there was a swimming pool. When the producer's wife was killed, the finger was pointed at Philip. But the police figured it out and Philip did not stand trial.

DeKooning has told us he jumped ship. My mother's brother got on a ship in England with a young woman who was coming to America. He never left. He told her not to talk to him or act as if she knew him. My uncle was twenty-one at the time. He managed to keep his blazer and white pants clean and pressed. He even sat at the captain's table for supper. He slept in a different place every night. He got off the ship in New York City by taking an Italian passenger's passport and. . . he said it was after he got off the ship and began to walk that he lost his nerve and became frightened. He kept walking. He didn't really see where he was going until he looked up at a sign in Yiddish. He must have been on 10th Street, because it was a sign for the Russian and Turkish Baths. He went in and told them his story. Two men took him across the street and gave him something to eat. His sister, my aunt, was contacted in Detroit and he was smuggled into Canada to meet her. As an English citizen, he crossed the border into the United States. He told Martha and me this story when we lived on Whitehall Street.

Cement. Fulton Street is always busy. For $40 a month I had a place to live and paint. It was my first studio. There was a sandwich shop on the first floor. The owner of the building ran it. Someone would come up from the shop five mornings a week and wake me. I'd go down, have breakfast, and work for five hours nonstop, on the grill or making sandwiches. Sometimes the owner would let me take the end pieces of meat. I'd take them over to Bob Rauschenberg and Jasper. It was like that then. Painting was important. It seemed like everyone was painting. But there were at most 200 people crowding the Cedar Bar and the 10th Street galleries.

Did you forget? I forgot. I
forgot something. Something
forgot. I forgot the conflict. I
forgot the story. There -- There.
I forgot. I keep forgetting. I keep
forgetting that forgotten story.
I forgot. My father I forgot.
I forgot.

Not everyone paints. Not. No. Not.
Everyone paints. Not everyone.
No. Not. No paint. No dirty hands.
No brushes. No. No. Not everyone
wants sex all the time. No. Not.
Everyone.

Parallel to the Williamsburg Bridge, 168 1/2 Delancey Street had housed many a photographer and artist. Bob Beauchamp and Jackie Ferrer were going to France on Bob's Fulbright, and Martha and I leased their loft. On one condition--that Bob Thompson could use the shower that was outside the loft, next to the lavatory, in the hallway. It was like that then.

Not everyone paints. Not. No. Not
everyone paints. Not everyone.
No. Not. No paint. No dirty hands.
No brushes. No. No. Not everyone
wants sex all the time. No. Not
everyone.