Ray Johnson and Vietnam
David Cammack
Ray Johnson and Vietnam September 16, 2001 02:47AM |
Bill Wilson
Re: Ray Johnson and Vietnam September 16, 2001 07:34AM |
<HTML>David?s inquiry is serious and deserves a fuller response than I can offer this soon. We are at a crucial moment for art, with many themes that I hope will arise on this messageboard. An example is that we have all celebrated the networks, first the mailart network, then the Internet network, and now we must see that a network is not a value in itself, that the value of the network follows from the moral and political values on behalf of which the network is constructed and fostered. Because of a terrorist network, my daughter-in-law, flying with my grandson from Dublin at the moment of the suicide bombers, has had to put her mother on a plane alone back to Dublin, while she, sick, has ridden in a bus for about six hours with the baby, to get to Porte-aux-Basques. As I type, my son is leaving for a five or six hour ferry ride to Newfoundland, because Mary does not dare risk traveling farther along with the baby. I mention these details because these events mark a point of no return, as any future art is going to have to respond to an awareness of what I don?t hesitate to call evil, though I may not mean what some others mean by that word. To reply carefully, quickly but tentatively, I write with some evidence that is relevant. Later I will check the archives which I am working on, that is, 39 years of mailart from Ray Johnson, organized in transparent sleeves in binders, and only roughly and partially catalogued so far. I cannot without further evidence comment in my own person on the war in Viet Nam, but do feel conscience-bound to note a conflict between Ray Johnson and Nam June Paik. I can specify that about 1965 Nam June Paik conducted three interviews with Ray Johnson, using me as intermediary because he lived on the top floor of my house. (One of those interviews has disappeared, either misfiled or stolen from my archives, but I might be able to retrieve a copy from a person who used these records). In two cases, Paik dictated to me, perhaps reading from his notes as I typed. In a third case, he wrote by hand (one page survives), then he typed from his manuscript, guiding me as I retyped his combination of questions and topics he wanted Ray to address. Paik clearly is accusing Ray Johnson of indifference to international political events. Even a reference to Josef Beuys is a reference to an artist who engaged with themes of war and horror. Unfortunately I misread Paik?s writing and miswrote ?Beuys? as ?Benjs.? Paik?s simple question, ?What do you do generally, if it rains?,? is not simple when Nam June asks it of Ray Johnson. The indifference to evil, which is Paik?s accusation, or the apparent indifference, requires precise description in relation to the beliefs and practices of Ray Johnson in his relations with a German-American Buddhism, taught by D. T. Suzuki, and the other Buddhisms he was in touch with through his friends, some of whom worked in the Orientalia Bookshop (as Ray did, usually part-time in wrapping and shipping, not in scholarship). Also his beliefs and practices changed across decades, so that only a detailed biography could do justice to serious, perhaps tragic, issues. In the interview of March, 1965, Paik asks, ?When do you bought N. Y. times last time.? Ray replies by retyping Paik?s questions and typing his responses on March 24th: ?We was seated on a couch in the Wilson?s front-room when you last asked me this question.? Then he writes ?ouch? almost below ?couch,? and ?assed? precisely below ?asked.? Surely making fun of Paik?s grammar is unpleasant, yet I know Ray?s responses when I criticized him for tastelessness in other areas: he would say that he was merely responding to something that is, the way it is, and that he was not being cruel or ugly in spirit. An obvious theme of Paik?s questions is his accusation that Ray is indifferent to political and governmental events: ?Now, let?s ask to Franco how many political prisoners they still have in Spain?? ?Do you know, what late Dag Hammarskold did for them?? ?How many names of french premier in 6th Republic and Vietnamese generals do you know?? Ray?s responses are flippant, as with this last, he writes ?hundreds.? I think it unlikely that Ray was aware of the relations between France and the Vietnamese Catholic ruling family of Vietnam the United States was supporting. In a different interview, Paik asks, ?can you teach me, how to pronounce John F. Kennedy and John Canaday.? Thus he makes the kind of association Ray made, between the sounds of the names ?Kennedy? and ?Canaday,? but clearly Paik is pointing toward the difference between political actions and aesthetic activities. As a president, Kennedy was engaged with the structures, functions and meanings of government. Contrarily, John Canaday was the aesthetically obsolete critic of visual art for The New York Times (such are the weird networkings that earlier, as a professor, in 1952-53 Canaday was a faculty-member on a committee I served on as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia). Paik asks, ?What was your first impression, when Kennedy was shot?? I think that these samples are enough to make the point: Nam June Paik, precisely my age, emerged from the Korea of the Korean War, which was the war for our generation (see episodes of Mash for tragedy reduced to absurdity, a significant achievement for the Military-Entertainment Complex within which we dwell). Ray had been called up in the draft much earlier, but he had been rejected for a ?heart murmur,? which was the medical code used by the military doctors when a man was rejected for homosexuality. Some men in their 70s still think that they have a murmur of the heart, after fifty years of robust activity. Clearly Paik disapproved of Ray Johnson?s aloofness, or apparent aloofness, to social, political and military events. In the replies I have, Ray persists in his principles, held like a religious faith, in spontaneity, immediacy and improvisation. In the interview I can?t find, Ray wrote as his response numbered 13: ?I wait, not for time to finish my work, but for time to indicate something one would not have expected to occur? (quoted in the Wexner Center/Flammarion book, p.167). [Note that Ray?s aesthetic games with numerals may have a tragic counterpart in the phone number for emergencies, 911, since the terrorist network struck 09/11/01. I do not judge a cruel joke to be beyond the reach of these bitter people, whose methods of thinking may include the possibility that powerful spiritual forces can act at a distance through ikonic numerals as a kind of conduit--anyone with a lucky number should understand]. I am writing quickly, I hope non-judgmentally, but frankly, to use Nam June Paik and Ray Johnson as examples of different positions which have become current events. Paik aims and lodges one sharp arrow in Ray?s heart: ?Do you know the sterile zero point of the ZEN? ? that the most honest revolutionist die in the cell, and no one knows his name?? Elsewhere in notes unconnected with Ray, Paik writes imperatively: ?When you get on the subway, THINK of the Warsara resistance in the suffocating drainage-tunnel in 1943!!! Every time,,, REALLY EVERYTIME, when you get on the subway,,,,,,,,,? Yet in the same manuscript, Paik, keeping up with current events, writes: ?reading newspaper/ hearing radio/ thinking masturbation?. Artists of the level of Nam June Paik and Ray Johnson sacrifice themselves as they give their lives to the elaboration of meanings and values to extremes, even self-endangering extremes, which enable the rest of us to experience the implications and to judge for ourselves. Ray?s work offers models of meanings, values and experiences to look for in our experiences, perhaps to try to construct for ourselves, while of course Nam June Paik offers other models from his other reality, and provides aesthetic experiences many people can participate in to share Paik's world-poem. Perhaps a person can use Nam June sometimes, and Johnson other times, each being an intense example, but neither sufficient for everything. Certainly in 1965 I had very different conversations with each, and, indeed, would not have mentioned current political events to Ray. Years later I was shocked when we discussed words to apply to his art. He sought alternatives to Pop Art, so I suggested Populist Art. Ray, who had enormous general information, did not know about the Populist Party, an ignorance which required a remarkable inattention to politics, especially in the Mid-West of the United States. I don?t know his later judgments of Paik or of his art. However once, maybe 1966, as Ray and I were leaving Paik?s loft on Canal Street, Paik asked Ray what he thought of his art. To my horror, Ray replied, ?I find it entirely uninteresting.? Paik smiled in that way I could never comprehend, for his smile was not the beginning of a giggle or a laugh, it was like a prelude to an expression of horror, or to come up to current events, to terror. Paik can speak for himself on these questions, and perhaps I will ask him later. I had my cerebral infarction a few years before he suffered his. He said that he had seen me limping with a cane in Soho, and had hidden in a doorway so that he would not have to face me, and, as he put it, God had punished him for hiding from me. I expressed my doubts about his theology, since Scripture usually asserts that suffering bears no relation to punishment for sins. Sadly, Paik has not worked at recuperation, and when I last saw him, he was being pushed in a wheelchair years after he should have been walking. When he rose in his wheelchair to shake hands with President Clinton, his pants fell down, he was wearing no underwear, and he swears that the event was an accident, not a performance as some of his friends have alleged. The press, by the way, charitably decided not to print the photographs of Paik in one of the farther, if accidental, elaborations of Dada in the last century. David?s question makes me realize that these political and military issues must be confronted, and that Paik?s point of view on Ray Johnson must be included in a full account. If I find documentary evidence, I will submit it here, hoping for strong responses of great delicacy, for now is not a moment for coarseness. I am writing about our lives: when three men mugged me, jumping on me and kicking, Ray came to my rescue and got his nose broken (I have photographs). He never complained, and of course he later used the dreadful event like an art supply. I am certain, without evidence, that Ray felt that his art was resistance to war continued by other means. He was never obvious, not like when I used my five-year-old daughters, with my son in his stroller, to block buses so that an illegitimate march against the war in Viet Nam could flood up the avenue uninterrupted by crosstown traffic. I can say, with whatever truth and conviction I can summon, that Ray, in his own style, was eloquently against anything and everything that reeks of war. I don?t see that he was efficacious, but perhaps no more and no less than most of us at that ravaging time. I can swear that he fought war with gestures of peace, which is still worth our attention.</HTML>
Merlin
Re: Ray Johnson and Vietnam September 16, 2001 04:50PM |
David Cammack
Re: Ray Johnson and Vietnam September 16, 2001 05:53PM |
Dragonfly Dream
what do you do when it rains..... September 16, 2001 09:12PM |
David Cammack
Re: Ray Johnson and Vietnam September 17, 2001 01:29AM |
<HTML>Bill, for some technical reason your message is not displaying correctly. But I managed to copy the full text into another program so I could read it.
You say that you had very different conversations with Nam June Paik and Ray and that you would not have mentioned current political events to Ray. I'm currious as to know why not. Which also leads to the question of what you would talk to him about....if I may be so rude to ask....
How did Ray Johnson become interested in Buddhism? Was his family Buddhist?
Sincere thanks for any reply. David.</HTML>
You say that you had very different conversations with Nam June Paik and Ray and that you would not have mentioned current political events to Ray. I'm currious as to know why not. Which also leads to the question of what you would talk to him about....if I may be so rude to ask....
How did Ray Johnson become interested in Buddhism? Was his family Buddhist?
Sincere thanks for any reply. David.</HTML>
Beaureguards
Re: Ray Johnson and Vietnam April 01, 2003 02:45AM |
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