THE MAIL-INTERVIEW
WITH NORMAN SOLOMON (Mr. Postcards). 76
(With the sending of the retyped answers I sometimes
made typing-errors to which Norman Solomon reacted. Some of the reactions are
worth mentioning, and I have done so with the footnotes)
Started on
21-3-1997
Ruud: Welcome to this mail-interview. First let
me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art
network?
Reply on
8-4-1997
(Together with the invitation I sent a copy of the
text of Ray Johnson's unfinished interview. Norman sent me a photo of Ray
Johnson at New York Harbor in 1958, and his answer is a reaction to Ray's
answers as well).
NS : Reply on : 21-11-94 RAY : THE MNO QP (mirror
view) kind. What about Mimsy Star. She got pinched in the astor bar. RUUD: Was
it a mistake that she got pinched...........
"Have
you heard that Mimmsie Starr
Just got pinched in the Astor Bar?"
is by Cole
Porter. The song "Well, Did You Evah?" was written, words and music,
by CP in 1940 for a musical comedy, "DuBarry Was a Lady." It was
featured in a movie, "High Society" in 1956. WDYE was sung in
"High Society" by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. The drinking in the
study scene. The Astor Bar referred to was the one at the old Hotel Astor,
owned by Vincent Astor, on Broadway near Times Square in new York City. this
was not the newer hotel, the Waldorf-Atoria on Park Avenue. Vincent Astor, the
well-known society playboy was a descendent of John Jacob Astor who founded the
family's fortunes hundreds of years ago trading trinkets to the Indians of
Western Canada for furs, mainly beavers, whose pelts the British had learned to
diminish for the making of felt for fine hats. The Astor family, later,
continued their fortune-making wit holdings in New York real estate and banks.
In the
1950's , Ray Johnson and Norman Solomon went to a lot of moviex together. They
went to the Roxie, the Paramount, the Beekman, the 8th Street Playhouse and
other famous theatres of that time. They probably saw "High
Society"at the Loew's State Theatre on Broadway.
Pinched
had a double meaning here. It meant having a bit of one's flesh held between a
thumb and a forefinger which then got squeezed together hard. This might elicit
a screech or a scream or an "ouch!" Or, maybe, not. Pinched also
meant getting nabbed by the police, run in, arrested. If Mimmsie Starr got
pinched in the Astor Bar by the police, for instance, she might have got her
ass, or a small part of it squeezed (as above), or, she might have been for
drunken, boisterous, outrageous behavior, or, more likely, for attempting to
solicit an act of prostitution. It was, in any event, all in fun.
I have
always depended on strange kindnesses for the nothings that I receive in the
mails and I hope I can depend upon you to continue the same.
Ruud: When was the last time you talked to Ray?
What did you discuss then?
next
answer on 25-4-1997
(With his answer he sent a copy of a photo of Ray
Johnson and Willem de Kooning, back in 1959, New York. Also the letter held
some small papers with comments like: "Don't make any corrections, Ruud.
The mistakes are all part of the story......" and a photo[1] from Ruth Kligman)
NS : Interview. II (pas de tout)
The last
time I talked with Ray was the last time I saw Paris.
The Last
Time I Saw Paris was the title of a book by Elliot Paul, an American newspaper
person. It was published here during the early stages of WW-II ; there was a
nostalgia kick. I read it then. EP wrote extensively about an upstairs Left
Bank restaurant on the Rue de la Chat Qui Peche, which I visited in 1944. I had
biftek[2] and salad
and wine and got so pissed that I threw it all up in the street. There still
were cobble-stoned pavings.
I sent all
of my Army money home to my poor mother. But, I could sell my PX ration of
cigarettes for enough francs to enable me to eat well and to drink terribly. I
was living, apperently, beyond my experience.
The Last
Time I Saw Paris was used, then, as a title and theme for a song sung mostly by
Hildegarde[3]. She and
it got famous and well-played together.
The Last
Time I Saw Paris[4] was made
a movie in 1954. It starred Van Heflin and Elizabeth Taylor. They and it were
dreadful. Walter Pidgeon, Eva Gabor (whose mother just died) and Donna Reed
were featured in it. MGM had apparently decided that since An American in Paris
had been such a great success and big hit in 1951, that they could redo the
experience. They were wrong and they could not have been wronger. TLTISP was
three minutes longer in running time than AAIP had been, but that didn't help.
Dreadful.
What Ray
and I had discussed mostly at that time was that people, especially MGM movie
stars, were looking puffy. Puffy, apparently, was coming in.
We also
discussed the carers of Franz Kline and Bill de Kooning and the interstitial
relationship of those artists with Ruth Kligman, and of hers with Jackson
Pollock. I had photographed Ruth after she emerged from the hospital, from the
crash results of 1956, and we recalled, looking at my pictures, how the
stitches in her face had improved upon nature. She had begun to look like Susan
Hayward. Beautiful.
We also
discussed Ralph Di Padova. Now Ralph wanted to be a gangster, you know. He had
also applied for employment to the CIA and to the FBI. They, neither of them,
took him on, but -- it was just as well. Gangsterdom was his first love, as a
vocation. Ralph had an old-time Packard sedan that he sometimes took us around
in. It was rather grand and very gangster. Ralph also had a sweet girl-friend
of whom he took great and good care. She'd needed surgical operations for her
bone problems and he took care of all that.
I notice,
I should mention, some misprints or typical graphic errors in the Interview, I.
"fortune-making
wit holdings" of course should have been "with" holdings though
it obviously took much wit to make fortunes. All great fortunes are founded on
great crimes, of course, but -- what aren't?
"went
to a lot of moview" got printed for "went to a lot of moviex."[5]
See how
simple it is?
Ray
Johnson and Norman Solomon read a lot. They talked often and together about
what they were reading and what it meant to them. Books of the 1950's that got
into their fields of vision were Zen intros by R.H. Blyth and Daisetz T.
Suzuki. They read all of the early issues of the Evergreen Review, and
discussed the cover designs of Grove Press books by Roy Kuhlman. They read
Alice B. Toklas and they read Gertude Stein and they read Isak Dinesen. They
read Edmund Wilson's Memoirs of Hecate County. They read everything and
anything by Yukio Mishima. They read the poetry of William Carlos Williams and
even more by Wallace Stevens. They read the Story of O.
Djuna
Barnes impressed them and something by somebody called Susie von
Freulinghausen.
They went
to a lot of movies.
In
addition to Hollywood fare, they'd watch anything by Fellini, Bergman,
Kurosawa. They went to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and saw a history
of World film. This was two shows a week for three years. They liked
particularly the early German Expressionism, especially the Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari, which got incorporated into their work and attitudes. They saw
everything French from 1925-1931. But, the very best of all, was everything
ever made by Carl Dreyer and by Robert Bresson. They both considered The Diary
of a Country Priest to have been one of the best movies ever made.
Their
favorite painter was Mondrian. De Kooning called Mondrian "merciless"
in his approach. Norman and Ray studied Mondrian's Piers and Water, noting the
movements of the little fishes.
They hung
out with composers, musicians and dancers. John Cage. Merce Cunningham. James Waring. Katie Litz.Lucia Dlugaszewski. Morty
Feldman. Earle Brown. Norman knew a lot of jazz musicians: Charlie Parker;
Sonny Rollins; Bud Powell. Ray did not know any. Norman had connections in the
world of Negro music. Ray had not, and did not care to. Often their worlds
overlapped, but not always.
There was
congruence and confluence and con alma. But not always. Although often enough.
Ray sought out Butterfly McQueen and seemed somtimes to be talking endlessly
about her. Norman could not have cared less.
Did Ray
play games or music? Well, maybe not conventionally so. Norman played chess,
drums and poker. For a while, there was a kitten at his studio. Once, after Ray
had visited, the kitten was nowhere to be found. Finally, by crying, it
revealed its whereabouts. It was inside a drum. Ray played jokes.
Ray
enjoyed talking about the power plays in prison movies. Such as who'd be
carrying the shit-bucket to be emptied in the morning, before, during, and
after a relationship. Ray was also fascinated and open to discussing at any
time, whipping, whipping and ritual torture.
Ray
Johnson's favorite dish (they had experimented at many of New Yorks's
international restaurants) was fetishini.
But,
besides food, movies, clothing, make-up, morés, books, painters, paintings and
the price of soap, they'd talk about other people.
They
visited a lot of studios together. They saw the work of established artists,
the know and the unknown, the promising students whom word had got around about
and the up and the coming. And Ray would talk long afterward about studio
details, not the art but the furniture, the light, the placements.
Ruud: In the current mail art network, the name
Ray Johnson is often mentioned. Since I started in the mail art network in
1980, the history of mail art sometimes is difficult to find. I used the modern
research tools from now (like the Internet) to find out who Norman Solomon is.
There seem to be a lot of Norman Solomons out there. So of course my next
question is, which one are you?
(together with the next question I sent some papers
which consist of things written by Norman Solomon. I find them on the internet,
but as it turns out this is another Norman Solomon......I also sent him a photo
of the opening-screen of my computer, which shows the image of the unfinished
last painting by Mondrian)
next
answer on 12-05-1997
NS : The one who is not out there.
"Sorry, I couldn't really understand your question.
I don't remember knowing anyone named Ray Johnson"[6]
Using the
modern research tools, like the Internet, is like asking if Mae Marsh liked
grapefruit.
I thought
that you'd be asking questions of greater interest, like what was the
price of soap?
Or did
that grapefruit, from Mae Marsh, elicit les frissons?
Do you
think that it was Djuna Barnes that went to a lot of movies?
What did
she see there?
She lived
near the Loew's Sheridan Theatre and the Eight Street Playhouse.
She lived
across the street from New York City's
Women's Prison, at the site of the old Jefferson Square Courthouse.
When, how
and where did you first meet Ray Johnson, and what was he wearing?
Media
Beat. Not courtesy of Turn Left. Check, but Turn Left Cheek.
The
Victory Boogie-Woogie[7] does not
appear on your screen. Nor does it appear on anyone's. What you think that you
may be seeing is actually a copy of a copy. The Broadway Boogie-Woogie doesn't
either. You are looking at pictures of pictures of pictures.
And no one
"out there" has ever seen PM's "Times Square".
05.02.97 , III.
Pas des trois. It's all in the spirit of inquiry.
(to) RJ-II[8] : I
noticed that you rearranged the numerals in my letter-headings to you. Is this
some personal affliction?
"It's
all in the spirit of inquiry." What does that exactly mean?
One reads
or hears, for instance, so many questions regarding the nature of identity.
"Who am I?" "Who is he?" and so forth. Are these in the
quest for satisfaction of a scientific curiousity? Or are they a part of the
ego-bound eternity of pre-recognition?
Mark
Rothko (1905-70) was named by his parents, Marcus Rothkovich.
In the
summer of 1954, one day, Mark Rothko and I were standing in the sunshine and on
the grass, waiting for lunch. We were discussing the higher things. A pretty
girl came up to us and spoke to him. "Mr. Rothko. I've heard so much about
you! What are your paintings like?"
"My
dear," he answered, "I have devoted my life to beautiful women and I
paint the same."
The
Groucho Marx of modern art.
Ray
Johnson was always asking me, "Who are you, Norman Solomon?"
"Will
the real mark Rothko please stand up?"
It is
certainly something, the quest for identities.
When I am
asked "Who are you?"
I can only
think "Yes. Who am I?"
Ray
Johnson and Norman Solomon were in complete and total agreement: that all
so-called "identities" were synthetic.
"It's
Only Make-Believe." "It's
Only a Paper Moon."
There was
a teacher in India, Ramana Maharshi, who postulated that, among other things,
he was not his hair, was not his fingernails, and so on down the list of
physical attributes. He then presented another self-portrait, the list of the
mental qualities, each time denying that the one in particular focus was him.
"So. What am I?", he questioned. "I am not this; I am not that.
What then?"
Ruud, I ask
you, are we our names?
Here I
should follow with the tale of the king and the corpse.
But, it's
getting late. There is a book, however. The King and the Corpse. It was written
by Heinrich Zimmer. You could look it up.
Ruud: Yes, I can look it up and so can the
readers of the published interview. I still wonder who you are, Norman, not
that I am expecting a simple answer, but I tried to look in the books I have
here where to place you. In the recently published Dossiers-issue from Black
Mountain College[9] I read a
small note you wrote on your memories on Ray Johnson, so now I know that you
went to the Black Mountain College as well. Looking back at that time now, what
did you learn there?
next
answer on 9-6-1997
NS : How to write, probably. We used to write notes
in lipstick on paper napkins to be passed to each other under the dining
tables. It was a great thrill to feel someone else's fingers putting their
notes between one's legs there. When we got up from dining, we'd watch each
other's legs there looking for lipstick's traces.
Ruud: Is writing still exciting for you?
next
answer received on 24-6-1997
NS : Yes, writing is exciting for me. To write is to
breathe. I don't know what you mean by "still." Writing is a
practice. Writing gets better for me every day, each day that I write. Writing
never stops. If writing stops, I stop.
The great
Truman Capote said that "There's writing and there's typewriting." Do
you know what he means?
A flip
slogan of recent years, often seen here as graffiti or on bumper stickers and
such, said "Question Authority!" This was a statement which I
questioned in itself, because: What was meant by "authority"?
Hierarchisch Übermenschen, in this case, as 'others'. I thought that it was a
slogan by, of and for, victims. Like: "Step on me, please."
I think
that the ultimate authority in anyone's life is one's self. Therefore, starting
at the top, in life and in art there is only one question and that is to
question one's self.
Now, this
is where the craft of writing transcends the mechanics of typing: It's all in
the wrist. It's all in the wrist of the mind. It's the ability to question
one's self while in the midst of the process of writing. It is, this writing
thing, the ability to edit. And, edit one must. One must edit one's own
production, in form and in content, and not be dependent on the doing of it for
one by other persons.
As the
delegation of authority increases, authority of self diminishes and
self-authority becomes increasingly diluted. At the finality of examination,
there is the question: "Who's writing this stuff, anyway?"
In my
case, my write is me. Any questions? Why do you ask?
Ruud: I ask questions because I want to learn. I
have been doing so ever since I learned to talk. I have learned already that
people can be divided into two groups (.....only two groups...? just one of the
ways one can make groups, if one wants to generalize....). Group one: the ones
that want to keep learning, and -- group two -- the ones that are just
repeating themselves AFTER a learning-process.
But you
tricked me, you started to ask me questions. Why do you ask
questions?
(On 3-7-1997 I received a postcard from Norman Solomon
with on it the rubberstamp "Who Killed Ray Johnson?". Norman wrote
that he had a small back injury and that his answer to my last question is
delayed. He also wrote; Don't give up! I'm not finished yet. Maybe next week.
Until then.)
next
answer on 9-7-1997
NS : You ask why I question and I ask what
I question and what is a question.
Is a
question an event?
Is a
question a tool? An instrument? A piano?
Is a
question a possibility? A chance? A change? A portent? A portion?
A start?
An ending? A way out? A way in? A persuasion? An evasion? A vision?
Is a
question any point on the brink of the abyss?
Is a
question a thought? An investment? An answer to itself?
A portal
to the universe? A stone in the road? A cry? A laugh?
A hole in
space? A seek before a find?
Is a
question an act of love? A green dance of fire?
A burn? A
yearn? A turn?
Is a question
one side of a triangle?
A ray of
darkness in the light?
When is a
question not a question?
What is a
question not? And when?
Ruud: A question is something that comes up in
me, a need to learn, a way to explore why I do what I do (or do not). I guess I
am curious by nature, and I like to know more of the world I live in.
You Live
in Berkeley now. You Lived a long time in New York. Why did you move?
reply on
28-7-1997
(With Normon Solomon's answer he sent a copy of a
photo of Ray Johnson in NY - NY - 1960)
NS : 1. New
York was a movie I had seen and now it was time to go to the lobby in order to
have some delicious treats.
2. New York was a school, The New York School,
from which I had graduated and now it was time to go out into the world in
order to seek my fortune.
3. In October 1966 I went to Sweden to paint
stage sets for Ingmar Bergman's opera company. That did not happen. I then went
to London and made some paintings which were used as a set decoration for John
Cage's talk at the St. James Theatre. I sat with Yoko Ono. Her young daughter,
Kyoko, was making a lot of noise. Yoko was on the macrobiotic diet and we
talked about the price of brown rice. Later, she invited me to the opening of
her small show at the Indica gallery[10] where I read
the November ARTFORUM magazine. ARTFORUM had started in San Francisco and then
relocated to Los Angeles. The ARTFORUM San Francisco premises were advertised
for rent. I bought airplane tickets for California and flew there to have some
delicious treats and to seek my fortune.
Ruud: So, when you got to San Francisco, did you
find your fortune there?
(After my vacation in Germany I found several pieces
of mail from Norman Solomon. One of them was a box, a metal tea-box with on it
the word FORTUNE. The tea-box contained also a large collection of
'fortune-cookies')
(In another envelope he writes: "Ruud, let's make the game more interesting. Let's raise
it to a higher level. And he sends me "a long list of the kind of
questions I should be asking him". This was his reaction to my remark that
I might ask in the future some more questions about Ray. John Cage, and other
things.......... The list is interesting, 4 pages long, and I am tempted to ask
him all of these questions.......)
(On September 19th I received another sending of
Norman , a copy of 700 small texts which look like fortune-tellings which are
printed in some kind of book).
next
answer on 19-9-1997
NS : Yes, I found my fortunes, many. Here are 700 of
them. Please enjoy the pleasure of the printing. The 700 aphorisms: they are
all answers. One thing that you could do with them would be to publish them as
a project.
(1)
Provide the most appropriate questions to these answers.
(2)
Provide the least appropriate question to these answers.
They are
sure to make someone happy.
They might
even contribute towards enlightment.
Ruud: What makes you happy?
next
answer on 14-10-1997
(Before Norman sent me his written answer, he sent me
a postcard with a collage on it about cartoon-figures asking questions, and his
text-collage: "is it possible that 3-4 pages of questions is for laughs
and is not questions but a statement?)
NS : The sunrises in the mornings and sunny days and
cloudy days and rainy days. The moon at night and starry skies and stormy nights
at sea.
A good
movie, if there is such a thing.
Reading
anything about Ray Johnson.
Walking
through the downtown area without getting hit by traffic.
My prick.
Shiny, gleaming, glistening and inside her hot and juicy cunt, the pulsations
of which enable me to experience a sense of participation with the undulation
of the Universe and a sharing of the great Cosmic Joke.
Knowing
that the means is an end in itself.
Knowing
that the world is perfect and that there's a place for everything in it and
that everything's in its right place.
Cosmic
jokes.
Ruud: Do you laugh a lot lately?
Next
answer on 27-10-1997
NS : Yes. yes, I do. In fact, I am laughing now.
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Ruud: Do you also laugh when you get your mail in
the morning? Is this a special moment of the day for you?
next
answer on 14-11-1997
NS : 1. Why,
should I?
2. Why should I?
3. Why, should it be?
4. Why should it be?
(Below the answer there were three columns of texts
in Japanese language, three identical
texts. Also Norman Solomon sent with this answer the footnote on the Indica
gallery, which I typed into the interview. It also included a newspaper article
about "Yoko Ono's Art defaced
after -touch- quote" which hit the news last week. He also sent me Yoko
Ono's address. It triggered me to invite her for an interview as well).
[illustration with the three identical texts]
Ruud: Well, I just wondered if you think of
yourself as a mail artist? You played along in Ray Johnson's games through the
mail...... So, I just wondered. Do you?
next
answer on 26-11-1997
NS : Well, you know. Life is but a dream, yes?
Ruud: What did you dream today?
next
answer on 8-1-1998 (and a copy on 31-1-1998)
(A prompt reply is its own reward. Normal mailed the
copy because I was so late to answer the original. He thought it might have got
lost in the mails - NS)
NS : It was a dream within a dream.
I met Ray
Johnson in the F.W. Woolworth's variety store at 37th Street and 5th Avenue in
New York City where I had gone to purchase some factory-made ephemera. This was
during the noon hour of March 17th , 1951. Ray had been on his way to the
matinee premiere of Puccini's Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera House and had
stopped at the Woolworth's for lunch.
The
following year, 1952, Ray and I were both living on Monroe Street in New York's
lower East Side, although in separate buildings.
Each of us
soon moved to other places, Ray to Dover Street and myself to Greene Street,
but by the late 1950's we were both at 176 Suffolk Street, occupying different
apartments.
Our
similarity of interests had brought us close together quite quickly and we
studied and practiced what we loved. What we particularly loved, what we
particularly threw ourselves into in the attempt to be proximate to and
confluent with, were Chinese poetry, such as Li Po's , the Japanese poetry,
Haiku, and the Chinese and Japanese philosophies and religions: Confucianism ,
Taoism, Zen Buddhism.
We read
everything that we could find of these, attended classes of D.T. Suzuki's at
Columbia University, and learned, also, what to eat and how to order in New
York's Chinese and Japanese restaurants.
We were
eating Asia up!
We read
that Chuang Tzu dreamed that he was a butterfly and that when he woke up he was
Chuang Tzu.
"Last
night I dreamed that I was a butterfly," he said. "Was I then Chuang
Tzu dreaming that he was a butterfly or am I today a butterfly dreaming that he
is Chuang Tzu?"
Ruud: When you would go to a restaurant , Chinese
or Japanese , what would you order now?
next
answer on 2-3-1998.
NS : In Chinese restaurants: dim sum with Jasmine
tea.
In
Japanese restaurants: sushi, any style; miso soup; hot or cold sake, for a
light and simple meal; green tea.
A complex
Japanese meal would be known as ksi-seki ryőri. Not every place can make this
special presentation and they differ from this place to that. I won't attempt
to descibe kai-seki, but it is something which would be a shame to have missed
experimenting in one's lifetime, given the opportunity.
(the next question was sent 7 weeks later, on April
22nd 1998, because I took a small break in all the interviews I am doing).
Ruud: My best experience with Japanese food was
in Kopenhagen (Danmark) , where I and a friend (Made Balbat , a mail artist
from Estonia) ate a 7 course meal in a Japanese restaurant where we were the
only not-Japanese visitors and we could sit on the only table they had,
provided we took of our shoes and followed the rules in this restaurant. I
always enjoy to experience other cultures and ways of living, but only by
taking part of it , not feeling too much as a tourist. What the name was of the
dish we ate in that restaurant I don't know. We ordered a traditional dish that
the Japanese waitress recommended. This was about 4 years ago.
Next
question for you, Norman , What did you do on the day you received this mail
from me?
On Fridag
15th September I received an e-mail in which I was informed that on
August 1st, --exacltly five years after his doctors had given him
six months to live – 2000 he died quietly at peace. Mrs. Postcards informed me
that Mr. Postcard (Norman Solomon) informed her that he would like the
interview –unfinished—to be published posthumously – as it stood.
Address:
NORMAN
SOLOMON (died August 1st 2000)
1805
Delaware Street
BERKELEY ,
CA 94703 ,
USA
[1] The
photo looked a lot like a film-still, but actually it was a Xerox blow-up of a
contact print. The kind of New York photography 1952-64 done by Norman Solomon.
[2] Biftek,
also known as Biftek-frites.
[3] Hildegarde,
a popular American singer born at Detroit Michigan in 1906, was originally known
as Loretta Sell. There are those who have thought that she was Doris Neff. They
were wrong. (NS)
[4] The
Last Time I Saw Paris, was a song by Jerome Kern (1885-1945) and Oscar
Hammerstein-II (1895-1960). That H. was a trush, a songbird, a canary...
you know: all the boys in the band ....
did not at all in any way inhibit the exhibition of het natural and God-given
talents before the heads and nethers of all the arned and armored forces, nor
those of states or kingdoms, the crowned and the uncrowned. She sang her song
and led The Hit parade and even Your Show of Shows in rousing choruses. She was
a spirit of her times (NS).
[5] This
error got corrected again by me.
[6] This
was the answer I got from another Norman Solomon. I e-mailed him a question and
got this reply. Obviously another person.......
[7] This
part of the answer refers to the photo I sent of my computer-screen with the
unfinished work by Mondrian.
[8] Originally
I marked the things I wrote with 'RJ:'. But Norman Solomon suggested that I
should change it in 'RJ2:' or 'RJ-II:'. I don't see myself as the successor of
RJ, so I changed the 'RJ:' parts into 'Ruud:'
[9] Black
Mountain College Museum and Arts Center. Dossier 1997 #4 is a special about Ray Johnson. The publication
contains a long article by William S. Wilson and lots of illustrations of Ray's
work. Also there were small articles from artists that knew Ray quite
well. ISBN 0.9649020-4-4
[10] The
Indica gallery was where she met John Lennon, same time as above. When she was
in New York, previous to that, she lived on Christopher Street, a few doors
away from Dick Higgins. Ray Johnson and I would visit her there, sometimes. It
was on the rooftop of that building where she held her first
"happenings.". Yoko Ono was undoubtedly on Ray Johnson's mailing list.
There is some dispute among the living FLUXUS types as to how much Yoko was
actually involved with it at that time. She certainly is included in the
nowadays history. But, you know what history is, don't you? ( by N.S.)