Empty Words: Writings ’73–’78

Series re Morris Graves

The following text, finished in 1973, was first published in 1974 as an introduction to The Drawings of Morris Graves, a book edited by Ida E. Rubin for The Drawing Society, Inc. Its material derives from personal experience and recollections, conversation with the artist, one of his published remarks, and conversation with some of his friends, Dan Johnson and Marian Willard , Nancy Wilson Ross, Dorothy Norman, Xenia Cage, Merce Cunningham, and Alvin Friedman-Kein. Here and there I have introduced brief, unidentified quotations from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Transformation Symbolism in the Mass (C. G. Jung), the / Ching (Richard Wilhelm-Cary F. Baynes translation), Epiphanius, and Athenagoras as quoted by Hans Leisegang in The Mystery of the Serpent. Series re Morris Graves When I tried to imagine what it would be like to be Graves in the act of painting, it seemed to me it would be natural to vocalize and at times to dance. I then asked whether that happened. He said it did. For the nonsyntactical dance-chants, I used the syllables of names and words from / C/wng-determined pages of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. The arrangement of these syllables follows metrical patterns of the fourth movement of my Quartet for percussion (1935). It was following the third movement that Morris Graves said, "Jesus in the Everywhere." And it was the day after that event that we first met one another. After seeing Graves' series The Purification of Cardinal Pacelli, Xenia Cage and I arranged an exhibition of it at the Cornish School in Seattle (1937). Series re Morris Graves : 99 TA TA TA giTATAgiTATAgiTAgi The brushes. Before I went to India, he told me: Imagine that you're dreaming. Land around the lake rests upon it obscuring its shape, shape that needs to remain unrevealed. Path returns upon itself. Leaving by the front door, we go around the lake and come in through the back. Leaving from the Kitchen, after walking past the reeds at the far end, we return as guests invited to dinner. In a shop he noticed the sato yellow plates (a yellow oetween custard and yolk of boiled egg). And he bought the plates not for himself but for an eggplant he did not yet have so that, placed on one of the plates, the eggplant might be an eggplant. Fire over China. But when fire died down, behold, only the Buddhist shrines had been destroyed. All else O.K. Then southeast Asia and Tibet. Nothing about India. Egypt a little. Unexpectedly, Graves was prostrated, forehead on floor, in the room in which Ramakrishna had talked to the devotees. Presence. maYAYAmaYAYAmaYAmaYAYAmaYAmamaYAYAmaYAmaYAYAmaYAYAYA maYAmaYAYAmaYAma In the liturgy of Hippolytus the water chalice is associated with the baptismal font, where the inner man is renewed as well as the body. Rolls Royce. Not just old: it was vintage. It was elegant. It was the way for those making revelations to be properly transported. It was necessary to leave the Rock. Navy air training station had been established on Whidbey Island. Flight pattern was out over Puget Sound and then back over the Rock. Six, eight, or ten in formation. The windows of the house would quiver and rattle. garVIDyasaVIDyasaVIDyaVIDVIDyaVIDyagar VIDVIDyaVIDyaVIDyasaVIDVIDyagarVIDyaVIDVID ya No morning passes without his opening the book. Day begins. There are few markings. The paper pages have begun to feel like cloth. The state of a servant's house will tell you clearly whether his master has decided to visit. Purification. The chalice is a fruit one half of which has been removed. Old brushes aren't thrown away. They become recognized in detail. "O there you are." Escalator. Removed his shoes and sent them up. He followed stockingfoot. Choose any one that you want. Greedy friend took twelve. 1 0 0 : E M P T Y W O R D S Instruments for New Navigation, Constructions using precious materials, marble, mica, bronze, Venetian glass. To assemble them, he employed Irish craftsmen. He was not satisfied with their craftsmanship. Few have been shown. JAI JAI maJAIJAImaJAIJAImaJAImaJAIJAImaJAI mavaSISIvaSIvaSISIvaSISISIvaSI vaSISIvaSIvaSISIvaSISIvaSISIvaSIvaSIJAImaJAImamaJAIma JAIJAImaJAImaJAIJAI A discovery on a lost lake shore which held, juxtaposed superbly, a need and its fulfillment which had the intensity of a revelation. While it occurred something was known anew about where and how the best in life transpires. Anacortes. We stood back from the precipice. Beyond it he danced on a ledge. Frightened he'd fall into the valley...