Played Twice

Played Twice
to Chris

—Thelonious, why don’t you play anymore?
—I don’t feel like it.


Take One

Who will listen now?           
The wheel is broken.
You went to sleep
and will not awake,
fragments of the perfect plan
—shards, your
blanket.

Broken glass for a cup.
Tired arm filthy
attempting to lift
skyward.

I ask the void,
yearn empty,
cry nothing.

Take Two

Who will speak now?
—from a marble lip?
I hide behind a face
put on for a no show
amid new wreckage.

Same old lament
never to climb over.
A ladder of tears is not
kicked away.
I want a clear morning.
I’m not strong enough
for this night.


Chris Al-Aswad, my colleague, teacher and friend, has passed away, leaving a void that can never be filled. As the dynamo behind Escape into Life, he was the eyes and ears to scores of artists and writers. Praise from Chris was no ordinary occasion. Initially it was cause for celebration and later it was confidence-building nourishment. I loved him more than I acknowledged or even realized. Chris, I will never forget you.

But we do often speak about Klamm

Camus wrote that "the whole art of Kafka consists in forcing the reader to reread." I have reread Kafka more than any other fiction writer, except Beckett - The Castle four times, The Trial seven or eight times and the stories - I've lost track. It's not just that he encourages close reading, but something in the work demands repetition, is bound up with repetition. I want I want I want, I can't I can't I can't, I will I will I will. "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Beckett wrote that, but the spirit of it is consistent with Kafka as well. With the rise of the industrial age, the machine aesthetic, the assembly line, etc, repetition has become a standard motif in modern art.

Blumfeld is a new work, but I made another artwork based on Kafka's writing some years ago. To be exact, I was twenty-one, living in the YMCA in New York, and going to the School of Visual Arts ( I ran out of money three months later and had to drop out, but that's another story). I no longer have the work, but I still have the sketchbook in which I planned it out, so with the aid of the sketches, I'll describe it.

But we do often speak about Klamm, whom I've never seen - still, his appearance is well known in the village, some people have seen him, everybody has heard of him, and out of glimpses and rumors and through various distorting factors an image of Klamm has been constructed which is certainly true in fundamentals. But only in fundamentals. In detail it fluctuates....For he's reported as having one appearance when he comes into the village and another on leaving it, after having his beer he looks different from what he does before it, when he's awake he's different from when he's asleep, when he's alone he's different from when he's talking to people, and he's almost another person up in the Castle. And even within the village there are considerable differences in the accounts given of him, differences as to his height, his bearing, his size, and the cut of his beard. Fortunately there's one thing in which all the accounts agree: he always wears the same clothes, a black morning coat with long tails. Now of course all these differences aren't the result of magic, but can be easily explained; they depend on the mood of the observer...
              - Franz Kafka, The Castle

The idea was to make a portrait of a person impossible to see, a person who is seen in words, concepts and emotions only, a person seen only through hearsay, gossip and legend. Maybe he doesn't exist. But I assure you I really did it. I offer these sketches as evidence. They show my thought process. Repetition was essential. I seized onto the black coat tails - the only thing to hold onto - as the one constant in the ever fluctuating system. It was important to represent a series of viewers, since this was the only way to "see" Klamm:

I decided on six views, squares of equal dimensions. I drew it on raw canvas. Each square contained a bar of canvas colored paint on the bottom. Each one was so alike in appearance that only close examination revealed subtle differences in the way I had drawn them - as densely packed fields of horizontal lines.

The sketch above reveals the plan. (For those interested, one of my visual art references for work of this kind was Donald Judd.) At the time our drawing teacher instructed us to buy some inexpensive frames and hang several of our works in the halls. He meant our figure drawings, and, not to brag, but he loved my figure drawings.

I wasn't about to waste my precious money on cheap frames so I decided to show one work - my portrait of Klamm. I didn't have time to make the outer section, which was meant to represent the six viewers of Klamm. Each piece was to be sewn onto the large portrait proper, having the diagram representing that viewer's perception of Klamm drawn in simple contours, like a cartoon. I just made the primary section, and, not liking the rough edges of the canvas, folded them over and sewed a seam. I was sitting in my little cell of the YMCA, Klamm in my lap, sewing the seam, when John, the guy who lived across from me, looked in. John carried a sketch book with him everywhere, constantly scribbling. He scribbled me, then said, "Are you an artist or a fucking seamstress?"

When the day came to hang our work I entered the halls and there they were: 18X24 inch framed figure drawings lining the halls. I hung up my 40x60 inch Judd-like thing on canvas then went to class. Our teacher was only a few years older than me, a pumped up hot-shot from money who owned a gym on Madison Avenue. He called me out to the hall. Standing in front of Klamm, hands on his hips, a scowl on his face, he said, "What the fuck is this?" I innocently answered, "A drawing." "How's it supposed to hang?" he demanded. "Just like that," I answered. "Then why'd you sign it vertically?" he wanted to know. "I thought it was less intrusive that way," I answered. He said, "You hang a fuckin picture as a landscape you sign it as a fuckin landscape. Some day somebody's gonna nail you."

I still don't know what he meant.

Kafka in a Box

 Blumfeld, salvaged wood, wood balls, screws, 29x48 overall

Last night on twitter I learned—through RhysTranter—that ten safe deposit boxes that belonged to Max Brod have been sitting in banks in Tel Aviv and Zurich for decades. The boxes—some believe, or hope—may contain heretofore unknown manuscripts by Kafka. Just the idea that this might be true excites me to no end. It’s a dramatic story. Brod was instructed by his friend Kafka on his death bed to burn all of his manuscripts. Brod refused, and that is why we are able to read Kafka’s work today. Brod had left the material in the ten boxes to his trusted secretary, Esther Hoffe, who died three years ago, leaving the boxes in the care of her daughter, Eva Hoffe. The boxes are being opened as we speak, but against extreme resistance on the part of Eva Hoffe. Last Wednesday morning, as the first box was being opened inside the bank at Kikar Hamedina amidst a covey of lawyers, Ms. Hoffe burst in screaming, “They’re mine!” A judge is going to have to determine whether the boxes are the personal property of Eva Hoff, or if they contain world treasures that must not be kept secret. Read the full story here.

I’ve decided to use this occasion to share a little bit of my passion for Kafka.  

As one might guess from my previous post, the Modern Era, for me, stretches back to the ancient caves, to the very beginning of art. Because of this one has the peculiar feeling, while flipping the pages of art history, that some things which are actually quite old look and feel new, and other things which took place during the avant-garde paroxysms of “High Modernism” look old-fashioned. Kafka’s story Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor, is thought to have been written around 1915, the same time period during which my house (the one I have referred to as my restoration project) was built. Over the past several years I have combed through demolition sites, back alleys and dumpsters salvaging old wood—mostly heart-pine and cypress—to use on my house. I have a garage full of it. I’ve used it to make picture frames and over the past couple of years to make a series of works I call cutouts. The one above, the triptych entitled Blumfeld, was finished last year. I see Kafka’s Blumfeld as out of phase with his time, living in a very old building. I see the wood of this building (which Kafka does not describe): it is very old, stained brown-black, with crackling varnish. Perhaps it has just about outlived its usefulness, and will soon be demolished. Meanwhile the balls, as Kafka describes them, are so new, such a shocking intrusion of the contemporary, that the contrast between old and new creates a schism which it seems the old man cannot cope with. That tension—between the very old and the cleanly modern—is the feeling I went after in my cutout.

Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor is one of Kafka’s strangest stories. Blumfeld is harassed at home by two bizarre celluloid balls with thin blue bands through them. The balls bounce all on their own and follow him around the apartment. He finds a way to trap them inside when he goes to work, only to be harassed again by two maddeningly inept assistants. The bifurcation of the story is exceedingly perturbing, and, for me, the two’s all throughout the story are intolerable. I want there to be a third act. I want Blumfeld to come home again, very wearied from work, to find—what? Twin girls, rather than balls, installed in his apartment? (He had tried, unsuccessfully, to pawn the balls off to a dim-witted boy while two girls stood by anxiously jumping up and down pleading for them.) Something awful is bound to happen. But there isn’t a third act. Kafka left the thing hanging, unfinished.

The story as such defies rationality. But then it is unfinished. At first one is inclined to consider Blumfeld the only unattached thing, until one considers the charwoman’s dim-witted son; but he has his mother, even though he seems too stupid and brutish to contain sentimental feelings. Strange too, everyone next to Blumfeld is an idiot—except the girls. Yet the elderly bachelor is wary of them. Why? Against all reason he wants to entrust his keys—his balls!—to the idiot boy when the girls are much better prospects. The whole thing is a very sad, sick dream. Kafka confessed that the story made him sick.

But maybe this sickness serves a purpose. Dare I suggest that it occupies the point at which the thinker/writer is most untrue to his task—an apogee of desperation?
   
To clarify the question, which seems to shine an unfavorable light on Kafka, I must clarify this ‘point.’ It is a point at which it is clear language cannot fulfil the ideal tasks of which it is asked. True, Kafka does not ask the impossible of language; he was someone who was aware of what language can and can’t do. But he was also someone who dedicated book, A Country Doctor to a father who could not possibly appreciate it. He was someone who knew that point at which all of one’s frustrations come rushing up and encircle the activity that one has chosen precisely in order to achieve some clarity—the activity of writing which, sometimes, is far too feeble for what we want out of it. I think Kafka knew the anguish of Tennyson when he wrote: “I sometimes hold it half a sin to put into words...” This is the point at which the writer’s temperament is not in accord with the qualities and capacities of writing, and it’s a good time, for many of us (if not most of us) to do something other than write.
   
Thus I am fascinated by Blumfeld, yet find it approaching the tedious and unpleasant. Whenever I’ve read it, I’ve felt like doing so in two sittings, separated by at least twenty-four hours, just as it is divided into two distinct but related parts. Kafka said, “despite its truth, it is pedantic, a fish barely breathing on a sand bank.” Perhaps that is its truth. It seems to me that writing Blumfeld must have been something like trying to control a throbbing headache.
   
What are the celluloid balls? Are they a metaphor for a truism that is too banal to be stated outright—that the cause of Blumfeld’s anguish is to be found in the specific mundane conditions of his life, rather than in some mysterious or profound spiritual or psychological malaise? Thus part two is transposed over part one almost like a palimpsest, the two assistants becoming the counterparts to the balls? It’s an imperfect solution to the problem, however alluring the image of part one.
   
Barthes states that Kafka’s answer is form, and that the lesson is for other artists. But artists, being by definition manipulators of forms, are not the ones most in need of the teaching. On the contrary, those who need it are the ones who are insensitive to the uses of forms, and blindly misuse them, the kind of people that would never think of reading Kafka—such as the dedicatee of A Country Doctor.

Voice and the Fiction Writer

A strong writer is said to have a strong voice. Does it follow that the voice of the writer is equivalent to his voice in the ordinary sense? Would we be just as impressed by the writer’s speech? Is his writing a transcription of his speech—allowing for a certain amount of linguistic expertise and stylistic flair, assuming these are not so pronounced as to draw attention to the particulars of art and craft, that is, away from voice? One recalls Rousseau’s comment that he was a fumbler at speech, and expressed himself best at writing.

Let us ask first what we think of as voice. Voice is the vehicle for conveying human speech. It is indicative of an individual’s uniqueness qua an individual. How? In the psychological sense first of all. Our physiology is such that we recognize voices, distinguish one from another, just as we distinguish one face from another. Beyond the sound and speech patterns, we associate a person’s voice with that person’s uniqueness as an individual. We call this personality. We come to associate the way a person talks (beyond the sound of their voice, to all of the levels of their speech patterns, to the content of their brain, encompassing their vocabulary and choice of phrasing, etc—all of which we designate with the word “voice”) with who that person is qua an individual, sui generis. The arch metaphor of voice, then, is the uniqueness of the individual.
   
Getting back to the original question, if we say that a strong fiction writer has a strong voice, does it follow that: 1) he has a strong personality? 2) his voice, as expressed in his writing, also expresses his personality? It is easy to answer the first part of the question with an enthusiastic “yes.” But the second part is not so easy to answer, and this raises many questions.

Let us look at the essential fact of prose fiction: it is made up. The distinction between the “falsehood” of fiction and the “truth” of it is academic. Making up a story is fabrication, but the truths the writer has to communicate lie elsewhere. These are subjective truths, but if they did not have a wider value (the word “universal” often comes up), no one would be interested. Are these truths concerned with the personality of the writer? Not necessarily. If personality has to do with one’s demeanor and temperament in mundane affairs, it is easy to conceive of a novel which communicates truths while being quite different—in terms of narrative tone or in the flavor of the protagonist—than the personality of the author. She has made up a story and told it in a way, in a voice, quite unlike her own. If one is willing to grant that, one might well ask: what is to confine our author to just that voice? Might she just as well create another voice for another work? And if she is seen to have more than one voice, is her strength diminished or dispersed? Is she not a strong person? Yet, as we have just seen, her narrative voice is not necessarily dependant on her person. Shall we say there is no truth in her writing?

Nathanael West is an interesting study. The slim volume of essays by a variety of authors edited by Jay Martin (20th Century Views, Prentice Hall, 1972) runs the gamut of interpretations. Yet nearly all agree on these things: 1) his work suffers from unevenness of tone and style; no distinct “voice” unifies his work; two of his novels are failures or have serious problems, while the other two are nearly flawless masterpieces. 2) he is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. West only wrote four short novels. How to reconcile his universally recognized greatness with an equal consensus about his failure? Might the answer have something to do with an overemphasis on a certain concept of voice—a reluctance to accept, even in the face of obvious brilliance, a writer who refused to adhere to one voice? I may not be a murderer, nor have ever considered murder, yet what is to stop me—apart from a lack of imagination and skill—from writing a story about a murderer, even from the point of view of a murderer? Or let us ask: is it easier to write about—or with the voice of—someone who is less emotionally developed than one’s self, or with the voice of one more mature than one’s self? Some people, blessed with a healthy upbringing and attitude, lack both the experience and the empathy to write from the perspective of a sick person—they cannot convey this truth in their writing, and therefore cannot produce a strong voice of sickness. On the other side, Nietzsche suggested that no one understands health better than he who does not have it. If one wants to be healthy, is striving for it, and is making progress, one may be able to speak in the powerful voice of one who is healthier than one actually is. Shall we say he is dishonest if his character, his voice, is better than he is?

A writer may indeed be lying (that is, deliberately lying, as opposed to the “lie” of telling a story), he may be in denial or be trying to disguise himself—and these may all be aspects of his personality. Indeed, one might grant that one’s personality is revealed whenever one writes prose fiction. But this tells us little of importance. The metaphor of voice, with its roots in the uniqueness of the individual and the issues of truth and honesty, resonates, as it were, between two incompatible dimensions. For the truth of one’s personality—the model of our metaphor of voice—is in a dimension apart from that of fiction writing. The latter’s truths are other. They have to do with the writer’s personal experience, but also, more importantly, with the writer’s powers of empathy. It is not so much that the writer find his voice, as that he use himself as the instrument to play a powerful voice not his own. The process depends on feeling the experiences of others, letting them flow through one’s being, and using one’s self as an instrument of truth.

Let’s use a comparison to music. John Coltrane’s music can give the listener an out-of-body experience. Superficially, such aggressive “wall of sound” wailing would seem to be a pure outpouring of subjectivity. Take the example of the recording Meditations. One notices two things that seem to counter an impulse to pure subjectivity. The form and feel of the music is taken directly from another artist, Albert Ayler; and second, Coltrane chose to play with Pharoah Sanders, another sax player of equal intensity. Are they simply two egos doing battle, or is it as Nat Hentoff asserted in the original liner notes: “For there to be unity, there must first be a plunge into and through the agony of separateness”? Is this not related to “giving a voice to” certain individuals or groups who are said not to have a voice?—thus opening up a political dimension. Achieving this voice is therefore not a matter of simply opening one’s mouth and expressing who one is.

What of those writers with the strongest voices, such as Hemingway and Henry Miller? Can we not say, of them at least, that their prose styles are clear indications of their unique personalities, thus drawing a direct line between their “voice” as writers and their “voice” as personalities? I have read that Céline (whose name was really Destouches) labored to get his voice just right. For him it was hard work creating an appearance of easy spontaneity. Who is Destouches? We cannot say with simple certainty that he was Céline. Yet one recalls that Flaubert, as meticulous a craftsman who ever wrote, declared, when asked the identity of Madame Bovary, “C’est moi.” I suspect that Henry Miller did not quite live up to the debauched image he paints. For his first novel—an outrageous piece of pornography—he was paid by the word. He wrote a lot of words. Where, in his books, are all the hours spent moving a pen across a piece of paper, or pecking away at a typewriter? The same goes double for Burroughs. The only thing less dramatic than moving a pen across paper is the immobility of a narcotic high. Yet there is no voice more unmistakable, more immediately identifiable when heard reading their work, than that of the author of Naked Lunch.
   
Needing to take a break once from my fiction writing, I decided to revisit a strong example of style. I turned to The Sun Also Rises, always one of my favorites, and which I hadn’t read in a few years. A strange thing happened. Hemingway’s syntax struck me as highly arbitrary. What I had formerly taken for strength and security now appeared to me as off the cuff. I saw no good reason why he strung a series of run-ons together and then on the next page lined up a series of short sentences. The arbitrariness itself may be a strength, and undeniably a voice, a style, comes through. But, for me, for the first time, I was less than pleased. Did Hemingway himself come to be displeased? Think of his struggles with The Garden of Eden. Did he come to find himself trapped into a mode—let us call it a voice—that he could not get out of, a voice that no longer suited who he was, or wanted to be?

If personality were revealed as a matter of course while writing prose fiction, then writing would be as easy as talking out loud—for what is more natural than expressing your personality? The problems of coming up with a story and using proper—or readable—grammar are relatively minor—a certain amount of imagination, a certain amount of work. But the fact is, strength of character or prominence of personality do not automatically enable one to write prose fiction. (We all know someone with a firm command of language who has no feel for literature.) Therefore, telling a story through prose fiction is not a simple revelation or expression of the writer’s personality.

Weather Report

How close is the rain?

Closer than the whoosh of a pelican wing
Closer than a dolphin’s blow-hole
Closer than the seeping sludge of Lake Pontchartrain
Closer than the world’s most shocking moment
Closer than this message from our sponsor
Closer than a baby’s breath
Closer than what I meant to tell you
Closer than the end of this poem


While the Northeast baked in a week-long heat wave, here on the Tampa Bay Gulf Coast we have enjoyed rain rain rain and cool temps. The water in the Gulf was glassy and calm and so far we are free of oil. We can’t forget though, that just a few miles out the oil goes from horizon to horizon. Oil coats the backs of whales while pods of dolphins meander, trying to navigate a path. Creatures are hugging the shore. They have nowhere to go. A couple of weeks ago two manatees came up to us in four feet of water. Last night my wife, Victoria, went to the beach to visit with a friend and they spotted these five manatees in knee deep water.

 

They were on the shore side of the sandbar on the Don Cesar beach, in such shallow water that she was afraid they would beach themselves. Their presence there was both profound and disturbing. She tried to nudge one to see if it would go into deeper water. After about twenty minutes the group swam away. Her friend says that on Monday a pod of dolphins came to within ten feet of her. My wife and her friend grew up in Saint Petersburg, have been going to the beach all their lives, and these things don’t normally happen.

Victoria regularly receives emails from politically progressive groups. She also receives emails from the Obama administration. A few weeks ago our president sent out emails asking “Will you stand with me?” on clean energy. Well, Mr. President, we did stand with you. That’s one of the reasons we voted for you. Then you decided to support drilling off the Florida coast—and now? Your talk sounds like any old campaign rhetoric. This is how she responded. Fat chance anybody in Washington will read it:

Jimmy Carter had the right idea a long time ago regarding fuel efficiency, conservation, etc. but unfortunately the political establishment did not see fit to back him on that. Any policy or prospective law that threatens huge corporate profits will be talked to death or compromised to death till it is virtually meaningless. The very planet is at a tipping point when the decisions humanity makes right now will determine if there will even be a human race in the future. We can no longer afford to debate whether or not to go green in everything we do. It must become a way of life NOW.

No one is impressed with the way BP or the government is handling this huge environmental crisis. If ever there was a time for leadership, that time is now. Must the whole Gulf of Mexico be filled will toxic waste before some people will wake up and realize what's been lost? It's not just the livelihood of many Gulf Coast residents plus some marine life. Humanity itself is in danger. How many of these types of disasters will foul our oceans enough to bring that tipping point from which there is no return? When the oceans die, the food chain dies, and then humanity dies. But hey - at least a few corporate shareholders are living it up for now. Many of our so-called leaders can't see beyond making BP cough up some money to make everyone happy. There should be a moratorium on drilling for oil in the Gulf, and a release of all the patents bought up by Big Oil that could lead us to cleaner, safer, more efficient sources of energy. Yeah - I know, pigs will fly before any of this happens. Everyone in government has been bought and sold many times over by Big Oil and Corporate America and that's why we have the values and the problems that we do.

                                                      Victoria
                                                      American Citizen and Resident of Florida


sighs on the wind

The Man's too Big

 Robert Rauschenberg, 1953

Bob stopped in front of the steps to 88 East 10th Street and put a hand to his heart. He gazed at the 7Up sign next door with the word BAR in large letters, then went back to the corner store for a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He unscrewed the top and took a long drink, made his way back up the steps of 88, took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
          A handsome silver-haired man answered and smiled hello. Bob raised the bottle and grinned. I hope I’m not bothering you.
          Come in, Bill said. I could use a break.
          This was not the first time Bob had been in the master’s studio, but he couldn’t tell Bill that. A few weeks earlier he had taken advantage of a blind-spot in a studio-hopping drinking party and snuck in when noone was there. He had taken pictures, marveling at the Dutchman’s painting table, with its dozens of bowls of colors, noting the detailed color charts on how each one had been mixed, knowing that the greatest painter since Picasso needed to have his large canvases painted with a single “skin.” On the way out Bob had stolen several sketches from Bill’s trash can. It was pure hero worship.
          Bob offered the bottle and Bill took a drink. How’s life in the fish market my young friend? Catch anything? Bill was referring to Bob’s studio on the Fulton Street seaport.
          I’ve got all the space I need, Bob said. But it gets lonely sometimes. I do most of my work at night anyway.
          You’re like me, Bill said, handing back the bottle, but not before taking another drink.
          Sometimes it’s better being alone, Bob continued. The only trouble I catch is when I come uptown.
          Bill laughed. You don’t fool me, he said. You don’t catch the trouble. You make it.
          Reinhardt hates the black paintings and Newman hates the whites. I don’t understand the fuss. I rather think they’re subdued.
          That’s your story?
          And sticking with it. Actually, that’s kind of why I came. I have a big favor to ask. I was wondering. Well, how would you feel about. I mean, could I have a drawing? Or a sketch? Just anything. Maybe one of those. Bob pointed toward Bill’s painting wall, where sketches littered the floor.
          Bill was flattered. Sure, he said. But you can’t have one of those. That’s work in progress.
          So far so good. The man hadn’t said no. But then Bob let the bomb drop. I want to erase it.
          Bill froze. You what?
          Bob explained: a way of developing the no-image white series. He had tried erasing his own drawings but that only took him half-way. Noone considered him a serious artist. The drawing had to be bonafide art. It had to be a de Kooning.
          Bill grabbed ahold of one of his paintings—one of the Women—and moved it in front of the door. The thing was so thick with paint it must have weighed a hundred pounds. To Bob it looked like he had set a guard at the door—a monstrous bitch goddess. He may as well have set a lioness there. For privacy, Bill said, then slowly turned around and added, I know what you’re doing.
          There was a level steadiness, a firmness, to his gaze that Bob had never seen before. He had a strange thought: So this is how he looks at his paintings. I think erasing can be a form of drawing, Bob stammered.
          That’s your story?
          Bob didn’t answer. He wanted nothing more than to leave, but Bill seemed now to have trapped him in the room. He needed a drink but was afraid to move, despite the fact that he held the bottle in his hand.
          You’re serious about this? Bill said.
          Yes.
          Well you’d better be. This is serious business.
          Bill walked to the opposite end of the long room and began shuffling through some folders on a table beside his painting wall. How had it come to this? Jackson had broken the walls down and he, Bill de Kooning, had completely rebuilt them. Now this kid wanted to push him out of the room? Unbelievable. The son of a bitch. I knew this day would come, Bill thought, but so soon? Barely fifty, he had just begun to taste success. He didn’t even know if he liked the flavor yet, it was too strange. Not to mention money. His mother wanted to come visit from the old country, and he didn’t have cash for the ticket. The bitch of it was the boy was so goddam charming. And sincere. It was unavoidable. This had always been his fate, to be deprived, time and again, of firm ground under his feet. The endless rolling sea  was his home.
          While Bill looked for a drawing, Bob turned away from him as well as from the bitch goddess, and found himself staring at the wall. Aware that his collar had become soaked with sweat, he hooked a finger into his tie to shake it loose, then straightened it instead. Easy, Rauschenberg, he told himself, forcing himself to look at the master. He’s got everything. You’ve got nothing.
          Bill returned with a folder and very slowly leafed through the drawings. No, he kept muttering, No, these aren’t good enough. It has to be something I’ll miss. He crossed the long room to return the folder and get another one. This time the drawings weren’t heavy enough. I want to make it hard for you, Bill said. After repeating the process with a third folder he declared success. This one I’ll miss, he said. It’ll be a bitch to erase too.
         When Bill finally decided to let Bob go he held out the drawing but when Bob went to take it Bill’s strong fingers held firm. I don’t like it, what you’re doing, he told Bob, before letting go. But I understand. Now get the hell out of here.

  Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1951-2     

Read my article on Rauschenberg's Erased de Kooning at Escape into Life