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Creative Writing Eleven (short) Stories from KIPWORLD 2009-2013

By Kip Jones Thursday, 18 June 2009 1. The Alistair Stories...

Alistair. There’s a book in my Alistair stories to be told someday. He wasn’t famous, but yes, we admired the same famous people. Laurie Anderson was one of them. I met Alistair in a Philadelphia gay disco standing next to a popcorn machine at a Sunday afternoon ‘tea dance’ sometime back in the early 80s. He was from New Zealand, travelling around the US on one of those one-price open tickets, had just been in NYC staying at the Chelsea Hotel (to soak up the atmosphere) and had come to my hometown of Philadelphia to visit its wonderful Museum of Art. I didn’t know where NZ was exactly, but I thought it was near Japan. I gave him my Japan (David Sylvian)

badge (a band I loved at the time). After a lot of push/pull, a lot of doubt and angst and, only on his second night in Philadelphia, we slept together. I say angst, because he was the kind of “with it”, young beauty with just enough NZ exoticism to make him totally out of my league. So of course, I was immediately smitten and fell in love and went into my sick puppy act. He was leaving on the morning of the third day. How could he? I had just found him. My club friends were jealous so I knew that he must be a catch. I wanted him back and had no money to follow him to Washington DC. Walking through a square in Philadelphia, tears streaming down my face, I reached into my pocket and found about $15. A florist's shop was just ahead of me and I walked in. I asked the person at the counter, "can you send flowers to DC?" "Yes. Of course. What would you like?" "Flowers like the one's in the film, 'Diva'." "What?" "Just call DC, they will know what I want." The person on the other end did know the film and even squealed, I think, when it was mentioned. The gay mafia. So the flowers were ordered and I was broke. That Parisian bouquet did finally convince him to return a few days later. We spent almost a week together. A lot of art talk, a lot of fucking. Then he left for the west coast, never to return. I was devastated. I couldn’t think of anything else but getting him back to the east coast (and he had that open ticket too). I called him several times a day on the west coast until he stopped answering the phone.

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I thought about the famous people he had mentioned to me. I got Divine’s autograph for him. I found some of the hair from disco diva Sylvester’s weave on the floor of my friend’s club and saved it for him. Then I met Laurie Anderson. She had a one woman show at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art and so I took my broken heart along to see if viewing someone's work admired by Alistair would remind me of him. ( I told you that I was in bad shape) It was the opening night, so Laurie Anderson was there. The only art I remember was a little muslin doll in a rocking chair on the floor of a gallery with an image projected on it. I thought it was quite funny. (Was I going off the deep end?) I found Laurie. She was very friendly and we began to chat. Of course, all of my conversations at the time were about Alistair and how in love I was and how I would never see him again and how he was going to leave LA and fly to New Zealand (wherever that was) and how I would never see him again! I guess I was quite convincing. Laurie responded (I did let her get a word or two into the conversation), “Get a poster or something and I will write him a message”. I grabbed one of her exhibition posters and a marker. She wrote in grand lettering: "Alistair, Come back! He loves you. Laurie Anderson”. A day or two later I was phone-stalking Alistair in California again. Finally, he picked up. “I think that you want me to come there, don’t you?"I asked. “I thought you’d figure it out eventually” he chided. "Meet me in Los Angeles next Monday. I will be at LAX around noon waiting for you with a gelato. Don’t call again.” I hung up the phone excited beyond belief. I had never even been on a plane before. I had no money. Fortunately, my brother, convinced by my sob story, bought the ticket. I was going to LA to be with Alistair for two weeks! I took Laurie’s message with me and handed it to him shortly after I arrived. He acted quite laid-back (it was California after all and he had had a bit part in Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence). Underneath his slight smile or smirk, I guessed that Laurie had pleased him, even I had pleased him somewhat by coming to California. The airport departure two weeks later is a story for another time. Suffice it to say that we believed that we would never see each other again. A few years later, I went to Paris for the first time only because it was a place that Alistair had said that he wanted to visit (although I never admitted to this at the time). I sent him a sarcastic postcard soon after arrival. This postcard journey opened a whole phase in my life (again, a story for another time). We did meet up again, years later in Philadelphia, when he was on a shoot for the

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BBC and then several more times when we were both living in London. I was involved with someone else at the time. He seemed more serious and not so light and carefree then. I missed that. We tried to be friends, tried to rekindle something, but it never was quite the same. Laurie was right. He should have come back when she told him to. [You can read a short piece of mine in the Journal of Nursing Research on emotion and art. The painting that I talk about in the article is of the beach where Alistair and I spent many days whilst in California. This was my second venture into autobiography 'by stealth' in academic journals. Now you have the back story to that paper too.]

Sunday, 15 August 2010 2. My mother’s death/falling in love again "The sweat on their bodies” I was introduced to live musical theatre at the Valley Forge Music Fair. It was summer stock for New York actors, singers and dancers performed in a tent on the East coast of Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia. I lived my simple, country boy life about 30 miles to the west. It was at Valley Forge that I saw shows like Pajama Game and Damn Yankees and, for the first time, fell in love with live musical theatre. Theatre in the round and being so close to the sweat on the dancers’ bodies made me believe that there was a possibility of connecting somehow. As a teenager, these theatrical encounters were a part of my growing-up world of serious sexual awakening. I had put aside my childish desire to be Robin to Batman or follow Flash Gordon around in his lamé hot pants. These new experiences were comprised of all the senses; but mostly, it was the smell of the greasepaint mixed with the dancers’ sweat. I was breathless from the experience. Every summer I would look forward to these performances under that tent, the actors in such intimate proximity, darting up and down the aisles, making their exits and entrances. The tension of wanting to reach out and touch them was palatable. I would hang around the parking lot after the shows, hoping that one of the cast would come along and say hello. I lie. Come along and take me away with them. I wanted to join this musical circus; I wanted to fall in love and get laid. I still get these three things mixed up. Spiegeltent has arrived at the Edinburgh International Festival with great success. This year it will host a new range of sideshow acts, cabaret and spectacles. Spiegeltents are hand-hewn pavilions used as travelling dance halls, bars and entertainment salons since they were created in the early 20th century . There are only

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a hand-full of these unique and legendary ‘tents of mirrors’ left in the world today. The performances at Edinburgh’s Spiegeltent are live, in the round and under canvass. Marlene Dietrich sang ‘Falling In Love Again’ on its famous stage in the 1930’s and, since then, its magic mirrors have reflected thousands of images of artists, audiences and exotic gatherings. It’s old Cabaret magic that has somehow become new again. It reminds me of my youthful awakening. Speaking of Falling In Love Again, I did. Not that I expected to. He is a Russian dancer on a ship. We first met three years ago. I have been extremely guarded with my emotions since our first encounter. We see each other infrequently—two or three times a year. The story, retold as it heated up recently, unfolds below:

A conceptual narrative diary compiled from daily Facebook entries:

News Feed . Time for the sea again.... · I should stop pretending it's luggage and just call them costumes. · Sea day today. He is dancing his 'starring' role tonight. Me, organising my own costumes for the voyage. Stockholm tomorrow. · Have to go now. Lunch date with the dancers tomorrow and not a thing to wear. · 'The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.' –Marcel Proust · He wants me to meet him at midnight. I am getting too old for this. · Actually it was magical and moving. Overcoming my tendency towards inaction has been a theme in my life. In reality, it has brought me every reward. · Having lunch with him today at the ship’s Ben Brittan restaurant; it's become a bit of a tradition. ·Things are getting very close to the edge. · Someone said: 'Explain this to me'. I said, 'When I was sixteen I swam across a three-mile lake and back. These days I am happy when I can do a couple of laps in the pool. The same for emotional life, really'. · In spite of all my best effort, planning and resistance, I am a bit lovesick. · Remembering Carol K and her admonishment, after listening to my tales of love sickness: ‘Yeah, but did you get a painting out of it?’ · Time to forget, put aside and plough on with all of the projects and problems that I left behind. In a way, they will be a welcomed distraction.

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· Do I dare? Have I lost my marbles? · I constantly watch the ship’s webcam now. I watch the ensign change position on the bow. I make mental notes of the breezes. (Get a life, Kip.) · Sunny, very little wind or activity. Ship in front is refuelling. Fedor Tyutchev, Russian poet: Я встретил вас - и все былое В отжившем сердце ожило; Я вспомнил время, время золотое - И сердцу стало так тепло... I met you and the past came back to life in my dead heart. Remembering a golden time, my heart became so warm. · The Baltic Sea is peaceful and blue, the sun refusing to set so far North. It’s almost 10:30 pm. He is about to start the second show, most likely.

· Should I be like a Brit and take a mini-holiday on the Bank Holiday weekend? Should I? Should I just turn up on the ship? Should I? · Decision made. Нравится ли вам сюрпризы? (Do you like surprises?) · Good-bye, Bette. You're with Dad now.

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· ’Everything that passes away is only a reflection...' –Mahler’s 8th ______________________________________ ‘Part of my intention in constructing a book out of a seemingly haphazard collection of notes was that these notes, by virtue of their accumulation and juxtaposition and patternation, would end up working overtime (not unlike what we might expect of the bits and pieces of a conceptual art’). –The Conceptual Novel: Michael Kimball Interviews Evan Lavender-Smith

Wednesday, 1 September 2010 3. He didn't leave a note

Sometimes, when children are ‘rough-housing’, mothers will warn them, 'It will all end in tears'. What sound advice for life's emotional journey. Exit: stage right. A haughty exit. The kind only dancers can make. There was not even a furtive glance in my direction in the audience. This is how the beginning of the end began. I didn’t want to live in a dacha outside of Odessa anyway. I am not fond of borscht or pickled

anything. I don't want to spend my last years hearing about your glory days on the stage and then watch you go off to work in an office in your brother’s start-up Russian construction company. I hate the cold. I have always seen myself retiring to a Bedouin tent in Morocco—an air conditioned one. I would watch the goats all day. A young man, my ‘companion’, will bring me tea. ‘Non, merci. Je préfère un jus d'orange, s'il vous plait’. A boy like the ones in the beach scene in Death in Venice. Young men who naturally put their arms around one another and give each other a kiss on the cheek. Not a French baiser, stylised and studied, but a natural, heart-felt kiss.

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In my letter to you I said that I wished you had learned bravery from Masha. When I was still at Art College, I was offered a job designing sets for a start-up dance company, The Pennsylvania Ballet, in its infancy. How different my life might have been if I had been brave enough then to take that gamble. It would have meant having to drop out of art school (which I did eventually, anyway). I wasn’t fearless enough, however. Or like the time Florence Dorn (of husband, Joel, who helped make Bette Midler famous) asked me to accompany her to London to buy a hat. She said we could stay with ‘the Harrisons’ (George and Pattie). I thought these were things other people did, not me. I wasn’t brave enough. I was striking as a young man. I wish I had capitalised on my looks. Not in a calculating way, but in an intelligent one. I was too busy wallowing in my own emotional turmoil to see the potential of making the right choices and the right connections, and using my natural assets to help manage that. So I wanted you to be brave. I wanted you to bridge the age difference, overcome the cultural and language barriers, and manage the impossible ever-changing geography of it all. I wanted you to believe in the potential of our connection. In the end, your fears took over and made your decision for you. Perhaps you and all of this so late in life were just cruel reminders of my own past mistakes. Part of travelling again and seeing you for what I now know was the last time was to have some time away to contemplate my mother’s death. I wanted to be near you when I did that and to buffer any pain with your warmth. That never happened. Instead, I wrote you a letter (in English and Google Russian) and left it with a book of photographs of you dancing that I had made. I came to your last performance (for me), sitting in the second row. I waited until you were a few feet in front of me, then stood up and exited ... stage right. In terms of my mother’s death, I came to the realisation that no one would help me with that. My work colleagues mostly ignored it. The ones who did say something saw it as some kind of opportunity to talk about deaths in their own lives. Why do people think that this is comforting? Not one person mentioned ‘compassionate leave’. One insensitively suggested that I watch a documentary on Brian Epstein, ignoring the fact that the question pervading the film is, ‘Did Epstein take his own life six weeks after the death of his father?’ We will never know. He didn’t leave a note.

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Sunday, 9 January 2011 4. Don Draper and some random thoughts for 2011

Thoughts at sea. These become parenthetical within the rhythm of the waves, the schedule of ports, the resting and relaxation--and the dreams. I report them here in a similar way. Don Draper is, himself, his own invention. He is, therefore, Everyman or more pointedly, Nowhereman.

He is an idea man and his advertising firm is convinced of his brain-storms which flow like milk and honey from his ever-inebriated lips. He produces a lot of ideas, but never has to execute them. Luckily, he has a staff of creatives who do this for him. Which then/who's then, is the creative act? Art is/creativity is/production is:

• o concerned with the impulse of creativity and the proclivities of

production. o o creative problem-solving is central to creative decision-making. o o a reflection/a record of the time/space/culture which we currently

inhabit. How I problem solve creatively by listening to dreams: A Dream at Sea: The House and the Swimming Pool Trevor was building a swimming pool next to the post-modern, but definitely retro-modern holiday house that he had designed, much akin to Alain de Botton's contemporary holiday homes. We said that the pool should be at opposite angles to the house, but Trevor insisted on a parallel configuration. We said, "No, no, no! that cannot be right!" He began to cry and shed his clothes. He looked like a happy Buddha, except that he was crying so he resembled a sad one. We tried to comfort him. Two rectangles -- how to place them:

1. side by side, length paralleling length 2. T-square formation

Change of Scene: Old Japanese woman with greying hair in a bun. I was lying in the grass and finding minuscule flowers, purple and orange--the most outrageous of the opposites on the colour wheel.

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I placed the flowers in the old woman's hair. She then spoke, herself in a dream state: "The pool should be placed next to the rectangular house like a woman lying next to a man, her curves forming the negative space between the two of them". So the pool should be curvilinear, not a rectangle. It's length should mirror the length of the house, but it's emphasis remain the shapes created between the two. My father was right.

Friday, 21 January 2011 5. Beauty and the Bus

The usual crowd jostled on to the bus home yesterday. No seats downstairs, so the throng scrambled upwards. Nearly full up there as well, but found a seat. A cacophony of foreign tongue contributing to the high level of noise. A guitar playing behind me somewhere, strains of bosa nova and spoken Brazilian Portuguese. An auditory dreamscape. A teenager in futbal kit, a young Ronaldo, moved forward, speaking to the girls. The girls averted their eyes, lashes fluttering at the sight of him. Oh, England, you are a wondrous land. English to Spanish translation El público habitual empujado a la casa en el autobús ayer. N la planta baja asientos, por lo que la multitud revueltos hacia arriba. Casi

lleno hasta allí también, pero se encontró un asiento. Una cacofonía de la lengua extranjera contribuye al alto nivel de ruido. Una guitarra detrás de mí en alguna parte, las cepas de bosa nova y portugués brasileño. Un paisaje de ensueño auditivo. Un adolescente en el kit de futbal, un joven Ronaldo, se movió hacia adelante, hablando con las chicas. Las chicas evitó sus ojos, pestañas revoloteando a la vista de él. ¡Oh, Inglaterra, que son una tierra maravillosa.

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Friday, 1 July 2011 6. ‘What goes around, comes around’ or Making a movie again

Assembly Room, Independence Hall, Philadelphia PA I have dined out for years on my story of being on the set when John Huston directed the short film, Independence, shot in 1976 by 20th Century Fox for the US National Park Service in Philadelphia. The film starred Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson, Patrick O’Neil as George Washington, Anne Jackson as Abigail Adams and Eli Wallach as Benjamin Franklin. At the time, I was doing a course in Museum Studies at Independence National Park and the course leader asked if I would like to represent the Museum on the shoot. I guess I was supposed to make sure that none of the priceless historical antiques were damaged. Of course, I agreed, simply to be present during the filming. We are currently moving through pre-production and into the shoot of our short film, Rufus Stone and this reminds me of that other film in my distant past. In some ways, Huston’s production staff had it easier, because their locations were all within a few city blocks of each other and the furnishings already correct and in place. We are finding that shooting in rural Dorset and being true to our research on ageing, sexuality and rurality is not as easy. The myth of rural Britain is that it is comprised of restored thatched cottages, stately homes, and an Aga in every kitchen. Missing in the myth is much of the poverty that exists, the isolation, the downturns in and disappearance of ‘village life’, including scarce resources like post offices and even pubs. No one seems to walk in villages anymore; the car is King. Many of the locations we are finding are former workers’ cottages joined together into one dwelling, their brickwork or whitewashed plaster scrubbed to within an inch of its life, thatch roofs plopped on top, and then the rear roof incline given that 21st Century country house necessity, several skylights. Because part of our film represents the countryside in the 1950s, these dwellings become particularly problematic for us to film. Still, we are getting there, after several weeks of location

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scouting. The team has come up with some great places that really have the feel of the story. We strongly believe that the locations will tell the tale as much as any dialogue. First sighting: John Huston The scene: Independence Hall, Philadelphia Characters: Members of the Continental Congress; men in white hose and wigs abound Everything was in place to film the scene, the actors near the front of the Hall near the famous desk. Cast and crew were ready, equipment in place, waiting for John Huston to arrive.

The doors opened and in he came, escorted to a period chair set up just behind the camera with one of the Hall’s antique side tables next to it. On it was a Martini shaker, a glass and an ashtray. Huston took a moment to look through the lens of the camera without saying anything. He then sat, took a cigar out of his jacket pocket and lit it, sipped at his Martini and shouted, ‘Action!” Needless to say, smoking, let alone drinking, was forbidden in Independence Hall. Somehow, Huston must have received a governmental dispensation. Since he had said ‘Action!’ I figured I couldn’t interfere; too late to

exercise my lightweight, supposed powers as representative of the Museum, even if I had been brave enough to object. After a few days, the interior scenes finished and filming moved to exterior shots outside of Carpenter’s Hall, with horses and carriages to manage through the narrow cobble street. There was much use of fog to give the scene a kind of period authenticity. I love a bit of theatrical haze so was quite excited by this effect. On the next to the last day of the shoot, there was an unscheduled meeting of all cast and crew called for early morning in Independence Hall. We all gathered as requested. Huston made his entrance. This time he went to the front of the Hall and leaned against the table where the Declaration of Independence was signed. A hush fell over the room as the bright lights placed in the south-facing windows replicating natural daylight were turned on. Huston began by telling the cast and crew that the production had run out of money to finish the film. He then continued his speech, peppering it by mentioning the founding fathers by name, the historical importance of the film and a bit on his love of show business thrown in for good measure. He appealed to cast and crew ‘as Americans’ to work for another day and a half, no more, for no pay. The assemblage applauded his speech at the finish and agreed to work on and film for free until the project was completed. I am learning my role as Executive Producer of Rufus Stone on the job. I knew from the beginning that a big part of my role would be making sure that the Research Councils’ money is wisely spent. The second part is insuring that our film represents our three years of research on ageing, sexuality and rurality as truthfully as possible.

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Turning research into a professional film is a big gamble on my part. I have been convinced of the possibilities of it for some time; now is the time to face the reality of it. One thing I am learning in the process is that small details matter: they can best represent the research ‘findings’, but also can be the first things that are overlooked or ignored in the creative rush of making a film. For this reason, I need to pay attention to decisions around locations, casting, costumes, interiors and so forth to insure that the details ring true to what we have uncovered in our investigation. It would be easy to ignore them in the heat of filmmaking. My job is to convince the filmmakers that they are not. Art and Science are strange bedfellows. Or so it would seem. I have always believed, however, that the impulse to investigate and produce scientific discovery is the same compulsion that moves artists to create. For this reason, I am willing to gamble with our research, the Research Councils’ money and our film. Who best to translate the excitement of discovery to an audience but an artist? How better to take sometimes dry and tedious data and transform it into story and action? Who better to help us to achieve impact on a wider public with our research findings than those who are capable of entertaining (‘instilling interest or consideration in an audience’) through art? This is the premise behind our current filmmaking efforts. A side benefit is that through the process we are picking up some additional skills as academics as well.

When Huston’s filming was done, the crew and cast packed up and gone, the Museum Director and I made an inspection around the Hall. The historical antiques were all in good nick, the room clean and tidy. We then took a stroll outside of the Hall. On the south side of the building where the banks of lights had been stacked on scaffolding two stories high to create a daylight effect streaming through the Georgian windows, we noticed something. The heat of the lights over several days of shooting had burnt off several layers of the official, historically correct, Independence Hall Colonial White No. 3 paint from all of

the window frames. I guess I was too busy getting caught up in the Hollywood of it all to notice this disaster. Details, Kip. Details.

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Saturday, 20 August 2011 7. A summer holiday, three books and a story I left New York for Philadelphia on an early morning train and never heard from Jason again.

Group portrait taken at Andy Warhol's Factory (Warhol is fourth left, in the bottom row) New York, New York, March 6, 1968. Pictured are, left to right, bottom row: Johnathan Lieberson, Andreas Brown, Penelope Tree, Andy Warhol, Catherine Milinaire, and Jason Fishbein; second row: Lil Picard, Frances Steloff, Lita Hornick, Al Hansen, Viva, Charles Henri Ford, Kenneth King, and Ruth Ford; third row: Bruce Miller, Buddy Wurthshafter, Ultra Violet, Taylor Mead, Jack Smith, Sally Chamberlain, Wynn Chamberlain, Ron Zimardi, Ken Jacobs, Florence Jacobs, and Maurice Hogenbaum; back row: Bob Cowan, Fred Hughes, Paul Morrissey, Donna Kerness, John Wilcock, and Willoughby Sharp. (Photo by Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images) I treasure my solitude but choose a table for ten on my holidays. It encourages me to interact. Even on vacations, I am quite content with my own company. My dining arrangement is always, therefore, full of surprises—for me and certainly for my tablemates. Getting away from Rufus Stone the movie for a few weeks provided a good percolator for what is next for the film. I also wanted to think about my future, where I would like to be a year from now and what I might be doing then. Three books helped with this process. I began with Patti Smith’s Just Kids, a book recommended to me by Mary Gergen. I was soon turned off, however, by Smith’s approach to her own story and her conviction that she was the only child to ever grow up feeling slightly different or alienated. I thought that was what childhood was about. When she referenced Proust in the midst of her tales of preteen angst in New Jersey, I put the book aside and turned to Michael Kimball’s slim volume, Us.

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I am a great fan of Kimball’s writing (I refer to his and the work of some of the other writers whom he has interviewed as ‘the new writing’). I often recommend his books to fellow academics as a kind of intellectual colonic irrigation for the scholar’s literary outpourings. This will not be a review of Kimball’s book, but just to say that it is the first book I have read in a long, long time that, when it ended, I wished it hadn’t. His ability to describe minutia precisely in a conversational tone is astonishing. Kimball is someone at whom Proust would have smiled. He constructs, through simple sentences, complex situations and ideas. He is particularly skilful at describing innermost thoughts and feelings and the meniscus that both separates and joins those two intertwining elements in our lives. I love his writing. I then turned to a quite silly book about Truman Capote entitled, Party of the Century (that would be the last Century) by Deborah Davis. Perhaps I should explain why I was reading this book before I loose all credibility here. There are definite reasons for my reading it, which can only be explained in my usual tangential style and detail. Please indulge me. Firstly, I am giving a party next month for the cast and crew of Rufus Stone the movie. I was so impressed by how hard they all worked for little or no money the week of the film shoot that I wanted to thank them personally. As Mildred Pierce said, ‘Let’s get stinko’ and I thought that we should gather again to celebrate. In 1966 Capote, when not comparing his own talents to Proust’s, was spending months and months planning and plotting his black and white masquerade ball at the Plaza Hotel in New York. The event was to be a celebration for nearly 400 of his ‘closest’ friends to mark the huge success of his book, In Cold Blood, supposedly. It turns out that creating the guest list was just as much of a production of preparation as the party itself. One detail that particularly fascinated me is that he would not permit anyone invited to bring a husband, wife or partner if both parties were not on his guest list. Instead, Capote invited a ‘hundred extra men’ to ‘partner’ lone women guests. This is where Jason Fishbein comes in. My story here relates to our story of Rufus Stone in that this simple country boy (me) went to the big city (Philadelphia) way back when (then) and enrolled in art studies (Philadelphia College of Art). Philadelphia has more art students per capita than any other place on the planet. I met Jason who had graduated from another of the city’s art schools that year, having just completed a year’s sojourn in Europe on a fellowship. He was a star of the student art world and the son of the owners of Philadelphia’s very exclusive (and oldest) jewellery store. He was living at the time in a townhouse with the owner of the city’s trendiest and most popular gay bar where he conveniently had a studio in the atelier. In fact, the first time I ever nervously entered a gay establishment was in the daytime when the bars were closed to help Jason remove some paintings from his studio above the building’s three uninterrupted étages of gaiety.

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He was handsome, talented, so sophisticated, slightly older than me and about to embark on a career move to a New York City West Side loft. Oh, and he listened to show music. I was overcome with glee! At that time I was not so sure of my own sexuality, but certain that Jason was attractive. He made overtures to me, but I shyly fended them off, nonetheless continuing to fawn over him at every chance I got. I was dazed and confused, but certainly smitten. I offered to help him make the move to his New York loft. We packed up a rental van and left for NYC and a real West Side loft situated in an old industrial building with worn wooden floors, lots of windows and little else. The grimness and decay of this particular West Side neighbourhood was never reflected in West Side Story that was for sure. Jason had crammed the van with paintings, a chandelier, bags of clothes, a small refrigerator full of booze (from the bar I assumed) and some mattresses. After the unpacking, drinking and merriment, we (Jason, a young woman who always seemed to be hanging around him, and a male friend of Jason’s from New York who met us at the loft to help) settled down to sleep on mattresses on the loft floor that night. Jason bedded me with this other guy and put himself on the mattress next to the girl because she was feigning fright at her first night in the “big city”. I knew little of the subtleties of social manipulation back then but quickly learned that night. Without going into detail, I spent the long night on the floor of that loft pushing this stranger off of me. I was very upset that Jason had put me to bed with this unfamiliar person as some sort of loft house-warming gift for his friend instead choosing me for himself. As a reluctant, shy country boy, I reminisce that I would have finally been ready to ‘give in’ to Jason that night, if he had shared his bed with me instead. With little sleep and cast off in such a cavalier way, I left New York for Philadelphia on an early morning train and never heard from Jason again. I returned to my girlfriend in Philadelphia, turning my back on the complexities of a world that I was yet to understand. My relationship with a woman seemed a simpler solution, except for the ever-increasing awareness of the painful dishonesty of our situation, of which I was becoming more and more conscious. (Who’s invoking Proust now?) A few months later I opened the newspaper to see a photo of Jason on the front page with the inscription, “Jason Fishbein, artist, whose mask was a sensation at the Capote ball at the Plaza last night”. Jason had “arrived” in New York.

Recently by chance, I came across a photo from 1968 of Andy Warhol and his entourage, taken by top photographer of the 60’s counter-culture, Fred McDarrah. Sitting at the far right on Warhol’s left in the front row was Jason Fishbein. I guess he did okay after his success at the ball as well.

I was really curious about what had happened to him since then and that is why I wanted to read Party of the Century. Jason isn’t mentioned in the book by name, unfortunately, but his having been one of Capote’s “single escorts” now seems

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conceivable. I assume that in Capote’s Upper East Side world of New York high society, inviting gay males to such an upscale party needed some sort of plausible ‘social justification’ and Capote had come up with this rather bizarre solution. What is the purpose of this story? Well, I suppose it is to say once more that being gay and stories about being gay are never straight forward (no pun intended) or simple. Our life stories are played out in an entrenched heterosexual culture and society, which often produces not only our angst, insecurities and complexes, but also the variety and richness of alternative lives and lifestyles as solutions for many of us. No Patti, being a Tomboy is not life’s only young struggle.

Friday, 9 March 2012 8. Stuff about ‘Stuff’ “These two seemingly disparate fields become something new, more than the sum of their parts, a delicious undertaking. Alison is adept at working with both sides of her brain and I compliment her on that achievement”. Ah, youth. When I went to Art College in the 1960s, I left behind a proper four-year college education halfway through and my father’s expectation that I would ever amount to anything. A ‘simple country boy’, as I am fond of describing myself in retrospect, I went to the big city and encountered what was initially quite an overwhelming experience. Fellow art students seemed more talented and sophisticated than me. The other boys had locks that certainly were longer than mine. That became my first trial then: to grow my hair. The second challenge was to choose a ‘major’ for my studies. I had arrived with a passion for theatre set design, but there was no major in that. I chose ‘three-dimensional design’ because I thought that was a close second. It turns out it wasn’t. Three-D was in fact about Industrial Design: engineering and building models and stuff. I spent the majority of my time making spidery mock-ups of bridges and such out of balsa wood strips, which would somehow always get crushed in the journey from my apartment to class. Sniffing the air-plane glue used to assemble them turned out to be the only unexpected pleasure of this new experience. At other times, perspective drawings were required that needed to be India inked with Rapidograph pens. Always a few steps from completion, the pen would tit squirt a huge blob of black ink all over the drawing and ruin it. There were other possibilities in choosing a major at Art College, of course. Painting was one, but those students all seemed a bit too talented and determined. Illustration was another, but those with an interest in that seemed already to have all the skills necessary (and I certainly didn’t). There was Ceramics, but I generally made a

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muddy mess at the potter’s wheel at the required introductory lessons. In fear of no future job prospects otherwise, I stuck to Industrial Design. No, I was not brave enough to take a more adventurous gamble on ‘art for art’s sake’.

There were courses in Typography, but I had little idea what Typography was. The teacher who ran the Typography course was called “Jim”, even by his students. This was rare at that time, because most instructors were called ‘Mr. This’ or ‘Mr. That’. His students, who worshipfully followed him around between classes, all

seemed a bit uh, …well, what we might call ‘alternative’ these days. Word of mouth was that he was really into innovation, new music, even revolution. His students were going to turn the world of Art on its head. They were going to change everything. He (and they) were quite scary to me. Now I say scary, but we must remember that we are talking about a country boy in the big city who was just learning about the possibilities of other ways of doing, living, being. An example: an ‘older’ student in our class (who had served in the Navy) invited us to his place one night to listen to some music. It turns out that he smoked ‘weed’ and had us listening to some strange folk singer, Bob Dylan. It was too weird for me and I left quickly. This is ironic because only two years later I would be listening to Buffy Saint Marie records whilst doing lines of speed purchased from a go-go dancer. In the final analysis, Madame Bovary had nothing on me in terms of ruination in the big city! So this brings us to talk about Typography more soberly and page design more generally. Eventually, I did learn something about two-dimensional design from Lenore Chorney, a wonderful teacher of Fashion Illustration who became my mentor for several years. I embraced the excitement that she brought to the page in her talks about Dada artists, Suprematism and Constructivism from Moscow, Bauhaus design from Germany, Futurism from Italy, and De Stijl from Holland. I was a slow starter, but I got there in the end. Because of or in spite of those early experiences, the visual is of central importance to everything I have done and still do. I often comment that I learn more by watching what people do than listening to what they say. In spite of (or because of) my visual orientation, I have returned to the concept of text and the page frequently in my work in Performative Social Science (See Popularizing Research), particularly in my considerations of ‘audience’ and specifically, the primary importance of the reader when our outputs are textural. How do we engage the reader in a dialogue? How do we encourage our readers to invest their own experiences in their interface with our text? An early (Jones, 2004) attempt was made at both audience engagement and alternative use of textural production in the published results of my interview with

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social psychologist, Mary Gergen (”Thoroughly Post-Modern Mary”), where I used a variety of typography and illustrations within a unique page design to represent that biography in an academic journal. Four years later, Sally Berridge (2008) produced a stunning effort in a graphic design of her entire thesis, represented in the FQS article,“What Does It Take? Auto/biography as Performative PhD Thesis”.

Now we have ‘Stuff’ by Alison Barnes (2010) or ‘Typography as a language of performance’. ‘Stuff’ is a slim, beautifully crafted volume that provides unique and personal answers to the query, ‘What makes your house a home?’ Items such as photographs, travel souvenirs and childhood toys become autobiographical objects and form a spatial representation of identity in the book. The reader truly

becomes engaged in a process of interaction. The readers’ experiences are embellished by their own personal reflections and memories, redefining yet again, the on-going social construction of the meaning of home. ‘Stuff’ is important to me and to Performative Social Science because it is a successful example of the fusion of art and social science in a single project. The levels of both design and social science compete with each other for praise. These two seemingly disparate fields become something new, more than the sum of their parts, a delicious undertaking. Alison is adept at working with both sides of her brain and I compliment her on that achievement. I never did complete Art College. Life happened as we like to say and I moved on with it. Several years later I did cobble together my credits from the initial college along with those from the Art College and fashion them into an undergrad degree of sorts by taking a few more academic credits at a local University. I fondly recall an Anthropology course at that University for which I produced a final project—a game in the shape of a three-dimensional model of a haunted house. It came with little plastic babies that were the game pieces. You dropped them down the house’s chimney to play. The professor was taken aback, but he did give me an ‘A’ for my efforts. I had been to Art College, after all.

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Monday, 27 May 2013 9. A Fog/Dog/Shag Story I was a stranger in the city Out of town were the people I knew …

PHOTO: eelco de wal

The grounds in front of the nation’s oldest hospital were covered in fog. Near the perimeter and behind some bushes, face-to-face, Jake lowered himself onto Steven as he unbuckled Jake’s belt and grasped his cock. This was how it began.

A new world for both, their relationship lasted nearly three years. In terms of gay relationships at the time, this should be measured the way a dog’s age is calculated in human terms: multiply by seven. Both computations are myths, however. Later, Steven coupled with Aaron. They bought property, furnishings, organised dinner parties and attended many concerts and functions over the years. They are still together at that late stage in life when couples dress, even seem to look, alike. Jake moved from relationship to relationship, job to job, and was in and out of rehab several times. He is also a success—as an artist and as a scholar. He has lived in three countries and visited many more. He can get by in French, stumbles in Spanish and speaks Italian by quoting lyrics from operas that he knows. His life is one of many romantic encounters. The story of Jake, a simple country boy who went to the big city to enrol in art studies, begins somewhat earlier, however.

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In Jake’s first year at Art College, he met Bradley. Bradley had graduated from another of the city’s art schools that year, having just completed a year’s sojourn in Europe on a fellowship. He was a star of the student art world and the son of the owners of a very exclusive jewellery store. He was living at the time in a townhouse with the owner of the city’s trendiest and most popular gay bar. Bradley had a studio in the bar’s atelier. In fact, the first time Jake ever nervously entered a gay establishment was in the daytime when the bar was closed to help Bradley remove some paintings from his studio above the building’s three uninterrupted étages of gaiety. Bradley was handsome, talented, sophisticated, and somewhat older than Jake and about to embark on a career move to a New York City West Side loft. He listened to show music openly and without embarrassment, which impressed Jake profoundly. Jake was not so sure of his own sexuality, but certain that Bradley was attractive. Bradley made overtures, but Jake shyly fended them off, nonetheless continuing to fawn over him at every chance he got. He was dazed and confused, but certainly smitten. Jake offered to help Bradley make the move to his New York loft. They packed up a rental van and left for NYC and a real West Side loft situated in an old industrial building with worn wooden floors, lots of windows and little else. The grimness and decay of this particular West Side neighbourhood was never reflected in West Side Story that was certain. Bradley had crammed the van with paintings, a chandelier, bags of clothes, a small refrigerator full of booze (from the bar it was assumed) and some mattresses. After the unpacking, drinking and merriment, they (Bradley, Jake, a young woman who always seemed to be hanging around him, and a male friend of Bradley’s from New York who came by the loft to help) settled down to sleep on mattresses on the loft floor. Bradley put himself on the mattress next to the girl because she was feigning fright at her first night in the “big city”. He put Jake on the mattress with the stranger. Jake knew little of the subtleties of social manipulation back then but was learning quickly that night. Jake spent that long night on the floor attempting to impede this stranger's unwanted sexual advances. He was very upset with Bradley's exploitation by using him as some sort of thank-you gift for his friend's help. Better if Bradley had chosen Jake for himself . In fact, he probably was ready to ‘give in’ to Bradley that night, he admitted to himself in retrospect. With little sleep and cast off in such a cavalier way, he left New York for home on an early morning train. He never heard from Bradley again. Returning to his girlfriend, Jake turned his back on the complexities of this world that he simply did not understand or find very attractive. A relationship with a woman seemed a simpler solution, except for the ever-increasing awareness of the painful dishonesty of the situation, of which he was becoming more and more conscious.

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A few months later Jake picked up a newspaper only to see a photo of Bradley on the front page with the description, “Bradley, an artist whose mask was a sensation at the Truman Capote ball at the Plaza last night”. Bradley had “arrived” in New York. Several years later, Jake found himself easily falling into Steven’s arms on that dark, foggy night. Much had transpired in the time in between—a time consisting of confusion, pretense and grasping at some sense of self in a hetero-normative world whilst coming to terms with a gay one. What is the purpose of this story? Well, I suppose it is to say that being gay and stories about being gay are never straight forward (no pun intended) or simple. Our life stories are played out in an entrenched heterosexual culture and society, which often produces not only angst, insecurities and complexes, but also the variety and richness of alternative lives and lifestyles as solutions for many. Before meeting Steven, very much confused and in a fog of his own making, Jake, his girlfriend and his mates made another trip to New York City. This will be our story for next time.

Thursday, 25 July 2013 10. Blackout! Suddenly, about 11 pm last night, the electricity went out in my flat. Boom! Everything shut down. This has never happened before. I remembered that I have a flash light (torch) somewhere, but also that I meant to get batteries for it. I have one candle. It's sort of a votive candle and scented. I fired it up and sat at my computer which, in good times and bad, makes me feel secure. (I could have used the Macbook, but I forgot that it works on batteries--I always plug it in. I wondered if Wifi works during an electrical outage? I guessed not.)

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I looked out on the street and it was quiet. There seemed to be some lights, but most of the properties were dark. Suddenly, a car pulled up and a young man got out and went to the side door at the MOT shop across the road. The top floor is supposedly a men's club of some sort, but he seemed to have a key. He entered quickly and went up the stairs where the lights then went on. Before last night, I hadn't known that someone lived there. I wasn't sure if the blackout was just in my flat or not. I spooked around the stairwell where the hall lights were still working. One flat had light under the door. I went down to the garage and looked at the row of electric meters. Two were dark, the others not moving. I came back upstairs and sat at the computer with my candle. The smell was beginning to sicken me. Finally, I called the electric company and was relieved to hear that there were several reports of outages in this area. She said it would be fixed in a few hours. I said, 'Good, because the meters aren't turning and you're not making any money'. She laughed. I went to bed then, feeling better that it wasn't just me and that someone got my little joke. I woke about an hour later when everything in the flat lit up again. Boom! Blackout over.

Saturday, 23 November 2013 11. A September Song Someone had ghoulishly named the canal ‘Styx’ some time ago now and it had stuck. The bridges were so low that you were finding it difficult to navigate the canal in the small craft. The boat was too high to get under the overpasses. You hadn’t thought of these details or really planned very much for the journey. Getting together again after so many years was its purpose. At each bridge you emptied the boat, carried it up the embankment across the road and back down the other side to the canal. Fitzcarraldo. Fred came from America for the celebration. Forty years after your relationship had ended, he still held a deep affection for you. You had loved each of them in a particular way and time. Each represented an episode in your love life, as it is called. Instead, the day became about the bridges and all the hard work to navigate them. The whole event turned into that. You won’t bore us with the rest.

≈ She was shortish, with the curliest natural blonde hair. Her round face and complexion reminded you of an apple. She rushed towards you after the lecture, a white piece of A-4 flapping in her hand. “That last clip was about you, wasn’t it?” she asked.

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“More or less, yes”. “It’s in the lyrics; I could hear it” she added. “Actually, more the visuals. What’s that piece of paper?” you hastened to ask, always preferring to divert attention away from yourself. “Oh, just some sketches. Ideas really”. “Let me see… are you left-handed? You draw a lot like I do”. “I know. I’ve seen your drawings. Most people haven’t. They don’t understand how your work now follows on naturally from that time in your career”. “You’re right about that. Too little time to explain. Better to get on with the work at hand than …” PULL OUT FADE TO BLACK

≈

Craig was so wrong for you. The wrong age, the wrong time in life, the wrong place. And yet it was beginning to work. He had asked you to move in with him, which was very sweet and kind of foolish. It never would have worked. The meeting was in a medieval hall, usually reserved for important political and social functions. The old oak paneling and fixtures had a particular smell that most ordinary folks would only recall from churches in their childhoods. The tables and high-backed chairs were set out in a rectangle in the centre of the room; the meeting was about to begin. This was a British gathering of (mostly) men who thought they had their ‘fingers on the pulse of contemporary male culture’. Such hubris. You were there. Craig, being in his twenties and from a poor background, was invited to represent ‘youth culture’. Your colleague, Margaret, the only female participant, sat dead centre on one of the long sides of the rectangle. The truth is that the British only implement change, which they frequently find distasteful, in small increments. A bit like their taking their good old time in getting the fuck out of India. It’s just the way they are. How this particular group ever thought they could recognize cultural change was beyond your comprehension. Nonetheless, the Brits love to bang on about things instead of participating in them. After a round of introductions (listing credentials like so many cock measurements), a second go-round was conducted—what the Brits like to call a warm-up exercise. Each member in turn was to name a men’s cologne recently introduced to the marketplace. Craig’s longish hair, cord jacket and screen-printed denim shirt stood out from the rest, of course. They had been expecting Craig to be a ‘hoody’ so were a bit

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disappointed. When his turn came, he mentioned the little-known maker, Parfumerie Generale from Paris, and it’s new scent, ‘Monsieur’. Just as he finished, Margaret fainted. Perhaps it was all the talk about colognes or just the over-powering scent of testosterone in the room. Craig rushed to her side, as the others remained immobile and dumb-founded. Craig helped her to her feet and out of the hall. You followed close behind. “I’m okay now, really. Thanks ever so much, Craig”. “No problem! Do you want to go to the ladies’ and splash some cold water on your face?” “Good idea, Craig. See you back in the hall”. Craig then asked you to join him for a fag in the fresh air. As the pair walked towards the exit, Craig said, “Y’know, I’ve invited Margaret to join us for our party on the canal in September but she says she can’t make it”.

“I don’t think she really approves of our relationship, Craig”. “No! I’m sure she’s not like that. Why do you think that?” “Because of our age difference”. Now outside, the temperature was rising and the air balmy. Craig removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He jumped from the hall’s steep climb of steps on to the pavement and began dancing and punching the air, imitating Rocky or Muhammad Ali. “We’re the best! We’re the greatest!” he shouted, continuing to dance in the street. Your love for him and attraction to his youth, enthusiasm and energy were immense at that moment. Joining you on the steps and lighting his cigarette from yours, he said, “There’s plenty of time. She’ll change her mind by September”. Neither of you knew, of course, that by September you would be dead. FADE TO BLACK

All stories Copyright Kip Jones 2009-2013