X: Writings ’79–’82

Toyama 1982

"THERE IS NOT MUCH DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO." (SUZUKI DAISETZ) IT is A long time i don't Know how long since we were in a room toGether now i hear that yoU are dead but when i think of you as now i have the Clear impression tHat tenderly smiling you're alive as ever TOYAMA 1982 deaTh is At all times liKe life now that you are a Ghost yoU are as you were a Center among centers world-Honored world-honoring late yeSterday evening tHe moon in los angeles low in the east not full do you see suZuki daisetz give him my lOve 5i This page intentionally left blank The title of this lecture is a reference to the poetry of Jackson Mac Low, which I have enjoyed for at least twenty-fiveyears. He has made many "Vocabularies /' restricting each to the letters to be found in the name of aparticular friend. It is possible to imagine that the artists whose work we live with constitute not a vocabulary but an alphabet by means of which we spell our lives. This idea as a subject interests me but it is not what I have done in the following text, though the works of Joyce, Duchamp, and Satie in different ways have resisted the march of understanding and so are as fresh now as when they first were made. I don't know how many books on Hamlet there are that set out to elucidate its mysteries, but there begin to be a very large number in relation to the work of Joyce and the work of Duchamp . I prefer the ones that pay attention but stop short of explanation. I enjoy the writing of Anne d'Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine about Duchamp and that of Adaline Glasheen and Louis Mink about Joyce. When it conies to Satie, I prefer Satie himself to all those who've written about him. The Japanese composer and pianist Yuji Takahashi told me he liked two kinds of music, that that had too many notes and that that had toofew. His remark may be extended to liking art that is incomprehensible (Joyce and Duchamp) and at the same time art that is too nose on your face (Satie). Such artists remain forever useful, useful I mean outside the museums, libraries , and conservatories in each moment of our daily lives. I happened one year to see a large exhibition of Dada in Diisseldorf. All of it had turned into art with the exception of Duchamp. The effect for me of Duchamp's work was to so change my way of seeing that I became in my way a duchamp unto my self. I could find as he did for himself the space and timeof my own experience. The works signed by Duchamp are centrifugal. The world around becomes indistinguishable. In Diisseldorf it began with the light switches and electric outlets. One day after he had died Teeny Duchamp was taking me to see the Etant Donnees when it was still in New York before it went to Philadelphia. Wewere walking east along loth Street. I said, needing some courage to do so: You know, Teeny, I don't understand Marcel's work. She replied: Neither do I. While he was alive I could have asked him questions, but I didn't. I preferred simply to be near him. I love him and for me more than any other artist of this century he is the one who changed my life, he and the younger ones who loved him too, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. One day in the late '50$ I saw him in Venice. I laughed and said: The year I was born you were doing what I'm doingnow, chance operations. Duchamp smiled and said: I must have been fifty years ahead of my time. 53 For me Joyce is another story. When I was young I read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and was not enthusiastic. At that time I loved the parts of Finnegans Wake that were published in transition and I often read them to entertain my friends. When the finished Wake was published I bought it but didn't think I had the time to read it. I was too busy writing music. Recently I have been punished. I have gone to Joyce as to a jail. I have made...