Letter to an English Landscape Architect, November 12, 1991. Part II

I truly enjoyed listening to your ideas this summer, [English Landscape Architect]. I think a number of them are very good ones that may work. You should consider writing them down, if you haven't already. The key thing in making change work, is translating ideas into practical steps that can be achieved, or at least tried, in little, manageable steps. 

Revolutionary ideas, like ones dealing with new ways of living with the world, & with nature, & with each other, always meet with stiff resistance. Some resistance is valid. People's counterarguments should be well-considered, & not brushed aside as rubbish without a fair hearing. People don't like to be preached at, nor told what they're doing is all wrong.

I believe that change can only be effected on a small scale, working from the community level, but also simultaneously working to change the attitude and practices of government, and people within national boundaries, and beyond them. 

There is only so much one person can do alone, but in conjunction with others, grander goals can be reached for. There is so much that needs to be changed, that there is plenty for anyone who wants to, to work for those changes, or for even some of them. 

Some people may prefer to live in model communities, to serve as examples of how things could work throughout the world. Others may work better within the existing structure & system, in professional or political spheres. 

But I'm convinced of one thing: it's far easier to talk about change than to actually work for it & sustain a momentum for it.

I've tried to live half in and half out of the existing framework of American society. But it is frustrating to do so, & I've decided to work within the educational system, to work toward long-term attitudinal changes, beyond nationalism and beyond the present tendency to live wastefully and even wantonly. 

I think it's important for people to try to work in harmony with others of a similar outlook; or at least to stay in touch, to keep up and learn from others where possible. . .

I also hope that this letter finds you well, and that your family is fine. Please send my best wishes to them. I will get around to sending your grandparents the info. they wanted about ICOMOS, as soon as ICOMOS gets around to sending it to me.

Take care, [English Landscape Architect].

                                                       Yours truly [&c.] 

Letter to an English Landscape Architect, November 12, 1991. Part I

Tuesday, Nov. 12th 1991
Durham, NC

Dear [English Landscape Architect],

The time between my leaving England and writing this now is about ten weeks, which seems at the same time both actual and surreal. 

Working for the AIDSTECH Division of Family Health International as a temporary secretary for three people, one of them the deputy director, another a "Condom Logistics Specialist," and all of whom are women adds to the mixture of actuality & surreality. 

I can appreciate the trials and tribulations of permanent secretaries, without having to become fully embroiled in long-term bureaucratic politics and power relationships. I can leave whenever I like, being a temporary; on the other hand, I've made several friends and I can probably stay through December, and since AIDSTECH is a better place to work than a bank or a for-profit corporation, I'll probably stay. 

Fighting the spread of AIDS, particularly in Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and Southeast Asia is a good cause, though the attitude occasionally seems at times to dip into patronizing.

Out of eleven secretaries, two of us are men. Stephen F. is an ex-minister who worked in West Virginia until, after a month, he decided he'd had enough. His father is a Swedish Lutheran minister living in New Jersey. Patricia M. is a Classics student, she has a Ph.D in ancient languages, & here she is working as a secretary! Several people are working between "here & there," deciding what to do next, or like me, about to move on.

I'll be moving in early January to Philadelphia, and will set off in a couple of weeks for an exploratory visit. My history program begins on January 20, 1992. Living in London has prepared me well.

I really enjoyed spending the summer in greater London, both in Clapham and downtown. 

London is perhaps fifty times larger than Durham, North Carolina. The entire metro area here, the Research Triangle -- including Chapel Hill & the University of N.C.; Durham & Duke Univ. & N.C. Central University; and the state capital of Raleigh & N.C. State University -- may have 600,000 or 700,000, which is still only about one-tenth of London's population.

At the same time, this area has seen an increase in crime. In the last year, there's been a 45% rise (according to statistics-driven social scientists) in violent crime, with more murders than in all of London during the same time span. 

This is a more openly violent, and certainly more gun-toting country than England; we're a nation under arms. Some guy in Texas, just a few weeks ago, drove his truck into a cafeteria and gunned down 27 people; and not long after that, a Chinese Ph.D student in physics shot seven people at the University of Iowa.

I'm looking forward to Oliver Stone's new movie about the Kennedy assassination, because of its commentary and apparent indictment of violence in the U.S.  

I'm not sure how we'll get out of this mentality, but we should start with sensible gun control and improved humanist education. Whatever, it will take a long time.        

[End Part I.]

Letter from Clapham: Erik Donald France to Wallace Fowlie, July 10, 1991 (Part V - Finale)

[Though earlier I'd donated to Duke letters from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) to me, more recently, in sorting through my files, I came across photocopies of at least some of the letters I wrote to him. Here's Part V of a long one I wrote in longhand from Clapham, London, dated July 10, 1991. Ellipses indicate slight editing (deletion of a few personal details). Extra paragraph breaks added for easier reading. For his other letters, please see Wallace Fowlie Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Here's a link to the collection guide.]

But of other bands, I can think of Roxy Music in their first ten years -- citing Nietzsche, there is a lyric easy to remember ("even Zarathustra") because of the emphasis Bryan Ferry gives it in his decadent, campy vocal delivery, carefully pronouncing each syllable. It may be [is] the song "Mother of Pearl." 

There is Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. I recall a proclamation at Morrison's memorial in Père Lachaise: "Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds are following you, Jim."

There is the Clash, who we've spoken about before, & Joy Division, a serious & committed cult status band, whose singer Ian Curtis committed suicide (you can hear the desperation in his voice); also, if you're interested in bands clearly influenced by earlier artistes, I can think of the Pretenders, who adopt Oscar Wilde: "We're all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars;" The Jam, who quote Shelley on one album cover, That's Entertainment! There are the Talking Heads, who began as an art band and became very good, until success spoiled their attitude; and the highly original Elvis Costello, who seems well-versed in language. 

I meant to mention earlier that some early David Bowie has clear references to Nietzsche on The Man Who Sold the World, and that Lou Reed studied under Delmore Schwartz, who, I recall your saying, didn't know French and yet translated Rimbaud (badly); there is the Jim Carroll Band, Jim Carroll himself a poet; & William S. Burroughs has at least two albums out, mostly of his own work.

Iggy Pop's Lust for Life refers, on the title track, to Burroughs' writing, and his reflective song "The Passenger" takes one of Morrison's images, of "the city's ripped back sides;" & to complete the connections, Siouxsie & the Banshees do a cover version of this. Iggy, who has been characterized by Ray Manzarek as a latter-day Rimbaud is only like Rimbaud the poet in that he is a man in rebellion; Iggy is a poet and rock musician, a different kind of guy, but not Rimbaud. . . (Manzarek was critical to the Doors' sound, without which Morrison sounds like a madman, as on "Horse Latitudes.")

I've tried to make up for not having written sooner. . . I hope my writing is legible; I have no access to a typewriter at the house I'm lodging at.

[Y] told me that you had lunch together but didn't provide any details. . .

I find that diaries, journals, letters, thoughts all blend together in a staged imaginary dialogue which is really a monologue of endless chatter that continues in dreams and occasional nightmares. It is difficult to converse with anyone here on anything but the most basic level; the English are reticent, and it takes a while for them to loosen up . . . 

If you have time to write, please direct your letter to:

18 1/2 Macaulay Rd
Clapham
London SW4 0QX

I hope all is well with you. Warmly & Respectfully 
                                                    your friend,
                                                           Erik

[FINIS.]

Letter from Clapham: Erik Donald France to Wallace Fowlie, July 10, 1991 (Part IV)

[Though earlier I'd donated to Duke letters from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) to me, more recently, in sorting through my files, I came across photocopies of at least some of the letters I wrote to him. Here's Part IV of a long one I wrote in longhand from Clapham, London, dated July 10, 1991. Ellipses indicate slight editing (deletion of a few personal details). Extra paragraph breaks added for easier reading. For his other letters, please see Wallace Fowlie Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Here's a link to the collection guide.]

Other bands Rimbaud has influenced --we've talked about Patti Smith, and of course the Doors and Bob Dylan; probably the Velvet Underground, certainly [John Cale and] Lou Reed; indirectly, David Bowie and Iggy Pop. A Dead Kennedys book has a direct quotation from Nietzsche, but not Rimbaud.

There is a current band, which I expect has been influenced so, and that's Siouxsie and the Banshees. I was able to see them here, and was most impressed. This is an understatement. I was "blown away" by their performance. I saw them at the Town & Country, a rock club in an old theatre about the size of Memorial Hall at UNC [Chapel Hill], but with much better fittings and services -- in Kentish Town.

What blew me away was the continuous, relentless precision, the brilliant, glittering originality and dedicated studiousness of their performance, without the usual rock star egos and accompanying sexual flaunting: here is a band that is serious, philosophical, visionary, hardworking, and continuing. They have an almost decadent lustre, a smoky, intelligent lyrical style, and the right attitude toward themselves & toward their audience.

As the show progressed, I drew down from my balcony perch into the swirling mass beneath the stage, drawn by the energy of the band's delivery, the strange textures which included a cowbell and cello, strong guitars, drums and percussion, played upon with collaborative light swaths, an enormous Tantric Hindu icon, a god and goddess in conjugal embrace. I can recall it clearly, feeling like a hoplite in the sixth rank of a phalanx, until pressing & pressed forward as the first rank seemed to fall away crushed between the crowd and the stage, scattering to the sides, filtering back through the crowd, as I sweated and danced like a Bachannal. I could almost feel the crowd's expatiated nihilism forced upwards into a smoking overhead dome as Siouxsie sang Cassandra-like the words to "Cities in Dust," the imagery shimmering like an opium vision --

"Your city lies in dust, my friend
. . . All our cities will rise in dust . . ."

It was indeed a dithyrambic performance, Siouxsie & the Banshees playing the role of urban shaman, forcing the hollowness out of the spectators until they, we, became the performance & the dance. Long afterwards, I felt the afterglow of the experience. I still do. It was rock at its richest, and I feel in a position to judge, after experiencing a strange variety of different performances in a short time.

I feel certain that Siouxsie & the Banshees, besides maintaining a vital thread in rock music, have been and are guided by nineteenth century impulses like French symbolism and twentieth century movements such as the Surrealists, but I have no lyric sheets in hand and no cultural reviews to back me. I think that what has kept them on track is their only modest success; they are too strange, apparently, for mass popularity, unlike the Doors, who despite their strangeness, managed to be too successful in too short a time, which drew Jim Morrison onto the rocks. (I wonder what he would have been doing if he had gotten through that time. Poetry & pictures, or exile to remote places. . .)     

[The experience strongly persists in memory, somehow floating outside of linear time. "Esta es musica / Del otro mundo" = This is music from the other world," -- "El Día de Los Muertos," part of the first encore, after "Trust in Me." 

The night's performance ended with "Cities in Dust." 

Siouxise earlier joked before starting "Dear Prudence," after "Fear of the Unknown:" "Doesn't it make you sick?" 

"Kiss Them for Me" and "Peek-a-Boo" were real cool times, too.

The Town & Country had a capacity of about 2,100. It's now the O₂ Forum Kentish Town, with added capacity.] 

Letter from Clapham: Erik Donald France to Wallace Fowlie, July 10, 1991 (Part III)

[Though earlier I'd donated to Duke letters from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) to me, more recently, in sorting through my files, I came across photocopies of at least some of the letters I wrote to him. Here's Part III of a long one I wrote in longhand from Clapham, London, dated July 10, 1991. Ellipses indicate slight editing (deletion of a few personal details). Extra paragraph breaks added for easier reading. For his other letters, please see Wallace Fowlie Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Here's a link to the collection guide.]

While I'm thinking about it, I'll be fascinated to read your essay in The Doors Complete. Morrison must have gotten his "aim your arrows at the sun" from the myth of Herakles, perhaps refracted through Nietzsche. I always assumed it had something to do with [his] being a Sagittarian as well.

I'm still struck by "the streets are fields that never die" and "The Crystal Ship" in general.

I heard the original "Alabama Song" in Brecht's Mahagonny Songspiel, with its additional reference to "little dollars" as well as "little girls." I'm hoping to see Baal next week. I recall it as totally twisted early Brecht when I read it some years ago. But I'm spinning off again! You must tell me how your writing is going, if you have time to take a break for a short letter.

I have been sketching out a play that I began five years ago, in disgust over our bombing of Libya -- it began as a political satire set in the Dark Ages, but I'm broadening it out to more universal issues of philosophy -- if I ever actually write it. It's far easier to keep moving, than to take the time to write at length, and with disciplined concentration. I have tried your stated method of early morning writing, but can't drag myself up until having to go to work, which is hardly satisfactory. Nonetheless, like Sisyphus, I continue to attempt it.

I enclose a picture of Great College Street, mentioned by Rimbaud* in his letter of 5 July 1873. (I brought Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters, and have been reading in it, enjoying it, trying to figure it out).

I looked up "Great Coll." and found it on a map, near Westminster [Abbey], behind the abbey grounds [close to the River Thames]. The walls of the abbey seen in the photo were there in 1873. Part of the street was demolished in the early 1900s. #8 no longer exists as such, only 5 & 10; there is a #8 Little College Street, just off Great College. 

I did some research at the Westminster Archives in the Victoria Library near Victoria Station -- which I, seriously, stumbled upon. They have old town books, maps & census records.

On 1 April 1871, 8 College Street had 12 inhabitants, including William Palmer, Chief Inspector of Police. At 11 Great College St. lived Louis Marie Bellor, a 40 year old Barrister from Paris, with his family, and visiting artistes, Ellen Carlilo, an unmarried artist, & Julia C. D. Byrne, an "authoress."** 

From the census, one can paint a picture of the street life. There was an offshoot, very small, to Great College St., called "Black Dog Alley," for two houses. At 1 Gt. Coll. was a pub, the "King's Arms," and at 14, was the Westminster Female Refuge," with 14 unmarried "inmates," two boarders, two servants, and a headmistress. ["To afford a temporary home to fallen women wishing to reform." Charities Register and Digest (3rd edition). London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1890, page 553.] Up the street, on Smith St., was a free public library, and further up, there were public baths and a wash house. Behind the abbey wall was the Close of the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, with a College Garden and Infirmary Garden.

But besides the possibility that Rimbaud taught French here to pupils as a tutor, there is the fact that Shelley lived at 17 Gt. Coll., and Keats at No. 25 -- but there are no plaques to any of them.*** I found this information in books only, besides the census info.

I stood by the street and read Rimbaud's letters, in broken French & in translation, evoking a century plus gone by, in a harmless exercise!

If you know of other sites to see, including also the Doors, please let me know. 

I also brought Alcools (great translation), and working from "L'émigrant de Landor Road," found 75 Landor Rd., where Apollinaire stayed with his girlfriend Annie**** -- it's only a twenty minute walk from where I'm staying on Macaulay [Road], but Landor is a seedier street. 

                                              [To be continued.]

 [*All interesting social details, but Rimbaud's former pad on Great College Street is in Camden Town, about 3.3 miles away by foot, and since renamed Royal College Street. There is now, there, a plaque for Rimbaud and Verlaine. Here's a link to an article about it from 2017. 

**Julia C. D Byrne was probably Julia Clara Byrne (1819-1894), author of several books.

***John Keats (1795-1821) did live at this Great College Street. 

****Annie Playden (1880-1967) lived here with her parents. Apollinaire tried to woo her away, a last attempt before she emigrated to the United States. There's a photo of her here.]   

Letter from Clapham: Erik Donald France to Wallace Fowlie, July 10, 1991 (Part II)

[Though earlier I'd donated to Duke letters from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) to me, more recently, in sorting through my files, I came across photocopies of at least some of the letters I wrote to him. Here's Part II of a long one I wrote in longhand from Clapham, London, dated July 10, 1991. Ellipses indicate slight editing (deletion of a few personal details). Extra paragraph breaks added for easier reading. For his other letters, please see Wallace Fowlie Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Here's a link to the collection guide.]

Unfortunately my notes and my memories are jumbled out of sequence from here on, but there were fragments of a demented rendering of the "Celebration of the Lizard," and a prolonged "Light My Fire," Morrison prancing in front of the audience during the guitar solo, holding out his microphone and letting people scream or shirk back whichever they prefer (he prefers screaming); he dances and stalks the stage during the organ solo, then, resuming his vocals, at one point he chants along with the crashing music, "F*ck-f*ck-f*ck-f*ck!" 

During "Unknown Soldier", scenes of the cross rows at Arlington, Gen'l Westmoreland's blubbering, Jim "Indian dancing" and acting out an execution scene, as if calling out to bite the ends of their guns -- Rimbaud is clearly here there, & everywhere!

Also, this film had a clear effect on Oliver Stone, who mirrors certain scenes and glimpses, such as when members of the Doors emerge from a building one at a time, are asked a question and give an answer. Manzarek comes off a little more pretentious & on a different planet than Morrison. I think The Doors captures them well, though musically they were all tight and complimentary.

During the performance of "Spanish Caravan" in The Doors Are Open, Morrison is absorbed, drenched in sweat, and captured by a low dolly shot which is quite effective, though possibly accidental. 

Morrison's recorded statements are interesting. When asked if the Doors are politicians, he says, "first, we're musicians and writers." He later says, "I think these days in the States you have to be a politician or an assassin to be a superstar;" also, "I'd like to make a celebration of pure unbounded joy . . . I don't think we've really done that yet." He describes the Doors as "gloomy" so far, "like someone not quite at home, not quite relaxed . . . I'd like to do one with a feeling of being totally at home . . ." 

And, with an obvious symbol, there is a shot of a lizard or iguana, which Oliver Stone transferred into The Doors almost identically. 

Despite its numerous faults, mostly its amateur quality, The Doors Are Open was an impressive shorter film, because of its documentary footage of the band, of Jim Morrison's sturm und drang, & of the time.

The Doors is playing Europe & seems to be getting the same kind of mixed reception it got in the U.S., but I haven't seen any full length reviews yet. I think the film is extremely well done, & have no qualms about it at all. I'm looking forward to Stone's film on "the crime of the century."

There is a bust of John F. Kennedy next to the International Students House off Great Portland Street, erected by contributions of £1 each from thousands of Britons, & dedicated to Bobby Kennedy about the time the Doors began playing.

Helen Mirren and Malcolm McDowell, O Lucky Man! (1973)

I won't get into my thoughts about O Lucky Man!, except to say I've seen it twice now & liked it even more the second time. Malcolm McDowell is spectacular. Also, that it was strange and wonderful to see it in London, where nearly the last half of the the film takes place. In fact, the Post Tower is in the background of one scene; now the British Telecom tower, it rises besides Howland Street, from which I called [Y] during my brief stay at the Int'l Students House, and where, I have since discovered, Rimbaud and Verlaine staid [stayed] around 1872 to 1873 (35 Howland Street).* But everything seems to interconnect after you've looked at things a while, in a magical fabric through time, space, and memory.

[*sometimes this is rendered 34 or 34-35 Howland Street.]

                              [To be continued.]    

Letter from Clapham: Erik Donald France to Wallace Fowlie, July 10, 1991 (Part I)

[Though earlier I'd donated to Duke letters from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) to me, more recently, in sorting through my files, I came across photocopies of at least some of the letters I wrote to him. Here's Part I of a long one I wrote in longhand from Clapham, London, dated July 10, 1991. Ellipses indicate slight editing (deletion of a few personal details). Extra paragraph breaks added for easier reading. For his other letters, please see Wallace Fowlie Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Here's a link to the collection guide.]

                                          Clapham, London
                                          July 10, 1991 Wed.

Dear Wallace,

I've been here six weeks and after a sharp program of work and culture, it's time for reflection. Please don't think my slowness in writing you is a sign of laziness! I've been keeping myself very busy and intensely concentrated.

Besides work, which has offered its own set of challenges, I've committed myself to a regimen of culture & exploration -- to the point where I might fancifully justify it as a derangement of the senses! fueled by simple enthusiasm, often with Italian or English beer in hand, by listening, watching, reading, speculating, imagining, soaking, smelling &, most import of all, sleeping -- until at times I have gained moments of lucidity which are like moments of blissful comprehension & glimpses into a sparkling metaphysics. 

I'm afraid this sounds like blubbering nonsense, because I cannot describe it adequately.   

Heretofore mostly provincial, I've seen operas, and I've seen more plays of all types and sizes in weeks than I've seen in the same number of years. The ones that stirred me deeply were Euripides' The Trojan Women and Underground Man, adapted from Notes from Underground. The first theatre (Finborough) had thirty people, the second (Ecology Café), only nine. Both were intimate and fantastic; the Finborough smelled strongly of incense and encouraged dramatic acting. I sat in the front row and was spat on by the actors in moments of impassioned soliloquy.

But before I go spinning off, though, let me tell you about things perhaps more pertinent to your present work. I watched two specials on TV, besides the initial reports from Yugoslavia, and they are both worth mentioning -- The Doors Are Open and O Lucky Man!

The first, running between [an] hour and ninety minutes, and with abysmally low quality sound recording, centered around the Doors live in North London at the Round House [Roundhouse] (now derelict, but still standing).  The show was in 1968 -- during the time of the assassins -- a year that I'm sure will stand in history as much as 1870; narration, short interviews and brief statements are jumbled up with Round House footage and documentary footage of violent incidents of the year, crowd confrontation scenes in city streets, etc.

The narrator's introduction characterizes Morrison, who is seen clearly as the group's guiding principal [or principle], as "poet, prophet, and politician." We're shown the Doors performing "Five to One: and "The Music's Over," mixed with the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. 

I scribbled down some of Morrison's ad lib doggerel, mostly during "When the Music's Over --"

                        Something's wrong / something's not quite right
                        Touch me baby / up tonight
                        All my life's a bright delusion
                        All my life's a torn circus
                        All my mind tumbling down

and, while proclaiming "We're gettin' tired of hanging around..." he pantomimes being himself hanged, while John Densmore is seen drumming intensely (cut to violent street action).

"Save us! Jesus!" (cut to riot in Britain) (to National Guard in gas masks with rifles, M16s and smoke grenade launchers, panicked and undisciplined, harassing protesters in a car) (to LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Wallace) (back to Morrison): "When the Music's over, turn out the light, etc.!"

It is clumsy but effective editing, given the drama of confrontation and violence -- until soon the flow of the film begins to speed out of control, hastening, looping crazily back to "Five to One," a matador gored by a bull (as in a Goya painting), cuts of children with painted faces in a park, the Kennedy funeral procession, quick cuts to cars crashing, etc. 

                                             [To be continued.]   

[The Finborough Theatre is still going strong. Link here. Rachel Weisz acted here in the early 1990s. Cast of The Women of Troy: David Hobbs, Kristen Milward, Margaret Robertson, Alison Skilbeck, Kate Thorne. Also Christopher and David Harrison, Lee Hucker, Mark Kelly. "A new translation by Don Taylor. Directed by Richard Osborne." Jacqui Trousdale, design. Kim Nichols, lighting. Trevor Allen, music. Address: 118 Finborough Road SW 10. 

Not sure about the ensuing history of the Ecology Café.

Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Road, London NW1. Built in 1847. Renovated by 2005. Capacity, 1,700-3,300 (seated/standing). Patti Smith and Bob Dylan have performed there since the renovation.]  

Letter from Wallace Fowlie, July 23,1991

Letter from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) at Chapel Hill, to me at London, July 23,1991.

Dear Erik, if I have counted the days correctly, Liz is with you now in London -- and you are in good spirits. I enjoyed seeing her -- all too briefly -- and I have been reading 3 precious documents she loaned me: Rolling Stone, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed. Your letter from London (July 10) tops all my documents. I am clipping it to your first letter to me, Oct. 24, 1987, but they give me information and insights on my present subject (as you know). I often feel you should be writing the little book I am trying to write. . . You are working hard, drinking Italian coffee, attending operas. Great College Street -- a beautiful card now on my desk. It is thrilling for me to read you on TV on the Doors (1969). Lizard: we must talk about this word. Then your passage on Siouxsie and the Banshees. And also, on Malcolm McDonald. . . Whenever you say, "I'm spinning off," I know there will be a rich passage.

I rather think you are coming home next month. Am I wrong about that? These next days you will be reliving many London experiences with Liz. There have been a few events here -- a reunion with 5-6 old students chez Dave Williamson who writes the press notices for UNC. Dr. H. G. Jones drove me there -- he is the historian of N.C. who told us stories about the Arctic region and explained a few artifacts. A brunch chez Steve Salemson, manager of Duke U. Press. Thursday I will see my old doctor friends who are back from Nice. I believe Liz sent you a copy of a letter from Bob Cohn, the Mallarmé expert. I thought it would amuse you. It helped to keep me plugging away on the little book which, if I do it, and a publisher takes it,I would call The fifth and last memoir. It is really that: the joining of the poles of my existence. Remember, Erik, you promised not to disown me, if this comes about. love to you and Liz --
Wallace   

Letter from Wallace Fowlie, February 24, 1991

Letter from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) at Chapel Hill, February 24, 1991. 

Dear Erik,

Thanks for the good words about Poem and Symbol. A long time has gone by since I saw you last.

On Jan. 11, a Duke policeman drove me to the campus for me to meet my first Dante class. I reached the classroom an hour before the students were to arrive. After putting the lesson's outline on the board, I sat down at the big table and . . . quietly . . . had a stroke. A mild one. Une petite attaque, as Proust says of the grandmother in the Champs-Élysées. The doctor urged me to withdraw from the course. How I miss those classes: 132 students, all good ones.

I am feeling myself now -- and am back to exercising. I still plan to give a re-vamped talk on Jim Morrison and Rimbaud: the rebel as artist on March 20, in the Duke Museum. That may help move me back into the center of things. In November, I gave the talk in Monterey, Ca., and in  Washington D.C. (George Washington, Georgetown, and Catholic Univ.[)]. 

Please come and visit me when  you have time. The film The Doors is due March 1.  The big book The Doors Complete is due in Nov.-Dec. 1991.

Give my best to Liz. Hope to see you both soon. That would help raise my spirits.

affectionately,
Wallace 

Letter from Wallace Fowlie, June 30, 1990

Letter from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, June 30, 1990:

Dear Erik,

I have just been rereading your first letter of October 24, 1987. What you say in it about Ginsberg and The Clash and many other things is helping me at this moment.

You are probably far away on vacation, but if by chance you are home, I would greatly enjoy a visit from you and a chance to ask your advice.

Danny Sugarman and the three Doors are preparing a big book to be published December 1991 (20th anniversary of Jim's death): all the music and lyrics. To be called The Doors Complete. It will include all the pictures of Jim. They have asked me to write the  preface. They  have seen my memoir books and know about my Rimbaud translations. When the contract came, the terms seemed unfair to me. I hesitated to sign. Telephone messages from Danny reassured me. I signed and have begun writing the piece. It will take me most of July. Then from another address (Santa Barbara[)], Frank Lisciandro writes. He has published one volume of Jim's poems, and is preparing another. He urges me not to write for The Doors Complete.

You came to the reading and to the last Proust class. how about Carol Woods -- sometimes  when you are in town and free?

Yours sincerely,
Wallace

Night-Blooming Cereus: Another Version

I was introduced to the night-blooming cereus by English architects John Adams and Marina Dunbar in the summer of 1991, in Clapham, London SW4, while boarding at their customized avant-garde house on Macaulay Road, and interning at English Heritage, where John also worked.

The situation during the summer months began straightforwardly but became increasingly complex.  At the outset, John Adams had put up a flyer at English Heritage seeking a boarder (a fairly typical way to supplement household income in London at the time, and to keep creative energies flowing, I suppose), and, via my sponsor (US-ICOMOS*), I was simultaneously seeking a place to board, so the twain met neatly, working out for both parties. If memory serves, I paid sixty pounds per week for room and board at John and Marina's in Clapham, and the same (which became a discount, at first a slight source of tension) when relocated to Bob and Tatiana Blagoveshenskaya Dunbar's (Marina's parents')  labyrinthine flat off Bentinck Street (London W1U) due to unforeseen  circumstances. 

My stay in London started like a verse of Bob Dylan's "Simple Twist of Fate" and took off from there.  I'd end up with an English architect girlfriend, have dinners and wine with John and Nick (Nicholas) Dunbar, hear about Marianne Faithfull (John's ex-wife and Nick's mother) and Mick Jagger, discover how John Dunbar had introduced Yoko Ono to John Lennon, learn about Bob and Tatiana's life and film work in Mexico, Russia and the UK, hear about Marina and John Dunbar's twin sisters Jennifer (married to American poet Ed Dorn) and Margaret, speak at length with their son Lev (whose break in mental health was the catalyst for my relocation), hang out with Italian poet-sculptor and fellow Bentinck Street lodger Livia Livi, and yes, yes, see the great night-blooming cereus growing from what appeared to be latticework in a sort of solarium-and-socializing space at the Macaulay Road residence.

Marina Dunbar and John Adams told of the Mexican varieties of night-blooming cereus, the Queen of the Night. This strange and resilient cactus plant represented something about Mexico to them. In 1968, while Jennifer Dunbar and Ed Dorn headed to Paris to see the "disturbances" there, John worked as an architect at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, the one caught up in the Tlatelolco student massacre and featuring the Black Power salute. Bob and Tatiana had married in Mexico City at the beginning of the Second World War, and had started their family there before being redeployed to the British embassy in Moscow. In a sense, the night-blooming cereus was Mexico.

The mystique of the night-blooming cereus came in its name and origin. It bloomed rarely, and at night. Maybe once a year, maybe more, maybe never. 

When I was preparing to return to the USA (or "States" as they would say), Marina gave me a couple of moistened leaves in a plastic bag, and back went strands of their night-blooming cereus to the Americas.  Twenty-four years on, several plants have sprung from these "mustard seeds." It's a hearty and weird cactus, this night-blooming cereus, though I have yet to see one bloom at night or at anytime at all, with my own eyes. In due time, I suspect. Somewhere, somehow. Meanwhile, the story of its origin remains for me as transcendent as the night-bloom of a summer's dream. 


*The US National Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, a fully paid internship, enough to survive on overseas.  Pictured at top: cover of Night-Blooming Cereus: Stories by K.A. Longstreet (University of Missouri Press, 2002).
      

Buzzcocks: Chapel Hill, North Carolina, October 27, 1991

"Whatever happened to the cow?" The Cat's Cradle has been moved around from place to place over the decades. In its 206 West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill location, The Buzzcocks played on October 27, 1991, which was nifty-fifty for me because I'd just seen them play in Kentish Town, London, that summer. That Cradle was a much smaller venue than the Town & Country Club, with a capacity in the low- to mid-hundreds, 18 years and over only. The latest Cat's Cradle is down the street and over the tracks in Carrboro at 300 East Main Street. Capacity now is about 750 people, with bar area, outside smoking deck (last I was there), and main band-audience space. 206 West Franklin is now the home of a Kildare's Irish Pub.   

The Cat's Cradle's nose knows: how round and round it goes. . .