BY ELOISE
I picture us sitting in your living room, a pot of water screeching to a boil. There’s a lofty breeze blowing its way between us as if to take a stake in the lack of conversation, placing bets on your poignant stare darting into mine from across a wooden floor. On the close inspection of your face, I’d find a familiarity that you would not return, as many hours of my sight have been dedicated to staring at you in books and museums, in photographs and collages. I don’t think I would waste any time trying to hide how much I knew, how much I cared, because regardless of my attempts, you would know. And after spending your entire life dissecting what makes us all so utterly connected to one another, I believe it would be an insult to deny that what we have is real. I found you around this time last year; I'll remind you. I was visiting my sister in Chicago for the weekend. Her and I had been out late the night before which tends to result in a 1pm wakeup. I, however, have never been able to sleep in past 7 AM and therefore found myself with about 6 hours to spare. It was an icy and bitter morning, one that begs of a person to stay inside, and yet I was cracking with an energy that did not care much for this plea. I put on the biggest coat I had packed and set forth for The Art Institute of Chicago, three blocks down the street. I was greeted by two stone statues of Lions at the front gate and a friendly security guard who peeled through my little backpack, unsuspecting of a young lady’s sinister intentions.
Up on the wall was a sign pointing to the museum’s featured exhibition “Ray Johnson Are The Funniest Artist” written in red crayon on a browned piece of paper and nothing else. Upon arriving at the exhibit, I felt chills draw circles up and down my spine, tightening the hinges of my knees, making it hard to walk on. Black and white photographs of a man I somehow immediately knew to be you, Ray. Some with red exes over the eyes and some with words, a criminal stare, much like the gaze of a mass shooter you would see on the news. The walls were covered, filled to the brim with letters, essays, poems, names, curse words, scribbled out stick figures, photographs, films reeling from a projector; the first thing you made me feel was dizzy. I began to read the biographical paragraph mounted onto the wall when I came across the words, “founding father of mail art.”
Mail art, an art you are credited with inventing, depends on the correspondences between social groups near and far to one another. Thousands of letters which included stories, poems, and pictures sent first to close colleagues and then spreading across the globe. Many of these letters would contain a note that said “send to” making for an impossibly large and interconnected school of thought, or the term you coined, “The New York School of Correspondence.” After years of people receiving and sending letters, the school did in fact come together in person for one highly anticipated meeting. They say, upon arrival, you just stared back at them in silence for hours. They say you gave them nothing, Ray. A common review of your life is that it was lived in a manner that yielded no clear direction or explanation, with the art and literary world itself struggling to accept someone so painfully distracted. And for that, the second thing you made me feel was understood.
You valued not writing but words themselves, exhibited in one particular letter you wrote to a close friend Bill Wilson that just read “Simultaneous” followed by “the letter S is a snake.” You were drawn to the similarity between things, weren't you? Such as that you believed a thing is most attractive when it resembles something else. The word “Simultaneous” contains an S in the beginning and the end, which you drew together in an infinity symbol. The lifecycle of one single word said everything you wanted to say in a space that could have been filled with so much more. The third thing you made me feel was full.
You talk a lot about snakes. You called upon “snake charming” to entrance the senders and receivers of your letters without their permission. With reckless display of garbage and faces out of magazines, you wrote what was to be said and let the letter’s journey say the rest. In one particular mini-play, you wrote a conversation between a mouse and elephant. The mouse’s name is Carole and she closes her speech with “I’m small but I’ve got freedom; that’s such a precious prize and what is more important a way of life or size?” As someone who knows you well, I knew my first time reading that, that you’d never let a moment settle in so nicely. The spotlight turns towards the elephant who replies cheekily “you can always make the most of it but even though it be tied down there’s still something very attractive about size. suggest you continue your reflections.” This commentary on size and on why our lives matter begs to tie itself to the fact that you took your own life on Friday the 13th. Only in death you allowed yourself to be so cringed in cliché. So unbearably predictable.
I find myself to be someone who gets fixated and obsessed, which they say was true of you as well, oftentimes to the point of mental breakdown, even more commonly to the point of disillusion. I pick myself apart for not existing in a time when I could receive one of your letters, and on the same coin have myself completely convinced that I did. I don’t stumble into connection often, not with people, art, literature, music, etc. I hate how hard it is for me to feel the shred, to feel the scratch of finger tips in my chest that says, “this is it. this is you.” So how was I supposed to refrain from falling to your feet, from giving you all of my time and attention? How was I supposed to walk away at the point of obsession, knowing every time I tried to hold you, you would slip away like water in my hands? In you, I have never felt more calm and frustrated, alive and dead, important and insignificant. I have never loved something less or more.
And so I thank you, Ray, for the simultaneous torture.
Sincerely,
Your biggest fan