Liberation: Diaries:1970-1983

by Christopher Isherwood

  Amidst all the strains and stresses connected with the show, Don has been at his terrific best. He works tirelessly, takes all responsibility upon himself, never despairs when things go wrong. After driving down to San Diego to see Rex Heftmann,81 who was to design the show catalogue, he made up his mind that Rex wasn’t up to it and phoned Rex and called the whole thing off—a horribly embarrassing scene to have to play. And how marvellous he looks! At thirty-nine he has the figure he had in his early twenties, after he’d started going to the gym. And how adorable and sweet he is to his old Plug (whose weight is again this morning up to 154 and ¼)!

  This is Memorial Day and I’m working away, sitting out the holiday. Don has gone to draw Norton Simon. I fixed this up, after a scene of (if I do say it) Kissingerlike diplomacy. I asked Jennifer if she thought Norton would agree to it. Jennifer said she would make him agree, because she wanted the portrait for herself. While they were arguing, I said, “Norton, I can promise you one thing—if you say no, Don will never ask you again—he never nags at people—I’ll give you an example: years and years ago, he asked Jennifer to sit for him, and she said no, and he’s never once suggested it since then, has he, Jennifer?” To be frank, this was a lucky shot, not a carefully aimed one. But it hit. Norton grinned and said, “I’ll make a bargain—I’ll sit for Don now if Jennifer will promise to sit for her portrait in time for me to have it as a Christmas present.” And Jennifer agreed! The interesting thing I noticed was that Norton was genuinely eager to have his portrait hanging there amidst all the other celebs in Don’s show. If Don can do a portrait that pleases him—a huge if—I really believe Norton and Jennifer will come to the opening party, which would delight Irving and all the gallery snobs.

  May 31. Don did an excellent drawing of Norton—so good that he’ll probably include it among the eighteen which will be reproduced in his catalogue. After talking to Billy Al, he feels that Billy is going to be reasonable, after all, and that both parties can be held at different times, without creating friction.

  Triumph over Yorty, yesterday. Bradley is mayor82 and Burt Pines City Attorney. I have considerable doubts about both of them, but hope for the best. At least we’re rid of Yorty, who’s as slimy as oil and as crooked as his friends the oilmen. Bradley is pledged to protect the coastline and Pines to protect the gays.

  Was at Vedanta Place yesterday evening. Swami seems very frail, but he gets out for his two daily walks and continues to initiate people. He told us how Brahmananda reproved him once for not being sufficiently interested in the work of the Math. Brahmananda told him that he must love everything about the Math, including the trees and the flowers, because everything there was dedicated to God.

  This reminds me that I talked to Jim Gates on my previous visit, May 23. I asked him how he now felt about being a monk and he assured me that he was very happy. He said that, when he left the monastery and went into other people’s houses, the atmosphere seemed “burnt up.” (I wondered if he was consciously referring to Buddha’s Fire Sermon.) He’s a bit too pure, and quite a bit too malicious. We were standing outside the office in the temple building and Jim suggested that I should ask Krishna for copies of his photographs of the garage sale placards. “He’s in there now,” Jim said, and before I could object he unlocked the office door with a bunch of keys and there was Krishna working on the tape recorder and really cross for a moment at the intrusion—cross chiefly with Jim, but with me too. I felt terrible. And then I knew instinctively that Jim had done it to tease Krishna.

  June 4. The writers’ strike has again been prolonged and Lenny Spigelgass (whom we met at a party given for Gottfried and Silvia Reinhardt, the day before yesterday) seems to think there is now no hope of ending it for a long time. Gottfried looked just the same but fatter; Silvia a bit shrivelled. All the guests were old, nearly all were film Jews. I spend very little time with old people and almost none with big groups of old people, so this party depressed me—not because the old were old but because they were so desperately competing with each other as show-off survivors.

  Last night, Joe Goode, Mary Agnes Donoghue and Peter and Clytie Alexander came to supper. Joe is teaching at Irvine and he was very interesting, telling us his ideas on how to teach art students. One of the most important things was, he thought, to have carpenters, plumbers and builders explain to them how to build their own studios or convert existing buildings into studios. He got Nick Wilder to come and tell them all about the relations between the artist and the art dealer.

  Joe loves talking about nature. He and Mary Agnes had gone up Canyon Drive in Hollywood, right to the top, in the hills of Griffith Park, where you can picnic. There had been lots of rattlers; this is the season when they breed. Joe told us how he had sat on a rock, with the snakes rattling all around him. “I enjoyed the feeling of danger.”

  After talking to Ted on the phone yesterday, Don is afraid that he may be starting another of his attacks.

  Today, Don has gone to the printers in Pasadena to see about the printing of his mailer for the show and of his catalogue. When he drew Muff Brackett the other day, she told him that she had always thought his portrait of Charlie was too grim, but that, after Charlie had had his stroke, she had recognized the grimness in his face. Another instance of Don’s uncanny gift of seeing potentialities in people—like the madness he saw in Sarada.83

  June 7. On the 4th we had supper with Chris Wood, just returned from England and wildly enthusiastic about it—except that, being Chris, his enthusiasm is expressed in terms of anti-American aversion; he kept saying how ghastly the food is here—you can’t get eels, or proper cold meat, or Melton Mowbray pies. He had spent most of his time in London walking around, especially in the parks. He had seen John Gielgud and Raymond Mortimer, both of whom had been very kind to him. He hadn’t seen Dodie and Alec, or Joe Ackerley’s sister Nancy, or Patrick Woodcock. He still can’t make up his mind if he really wants to go back and live in England. Maybe the charms of living here and bitterly yearning for England are greater.

  Gavin writes from Tangier that Georges has vanished into the depths of Yugoslavia. He couldn’t get another passport and he was so eager to rejoin Gavin that he altered the date on his old one, and was detected by the Italian authorities, with the result that they handed him over to the Yugoslavs. The Yugoslavs didn’t arrest him but took away his old passport and gave him “a rather sinister document good for one journey to Yugoslavia only, to be used within two weeks.” Gavin also says that Tom Wright has returned to Tangier and is busy on his Amazon book. Gavin seems fairly happy otherwise; says, “Tangier is growing on me.”

  Last night, Swami told us that one of the devotees had an initiation from him in a dream. She came and told him about it and he agreed that the mantra she had dreamed that he had given her was an authentic one, and that the instructions that went with it were the right ones, also. I couldn’t quite figure out what Swami’s attitude was to all of this, but I got the impression that he was pleased, satisfied, maybe a bit honored. He said, “Well, it’s happened at last!” And then he told a story of how a devotee received a mantra from Maharaj in a dream, but a word was missing, Maharaj was already dead, so the devotee went to one of the other direct disciples (Shivananda?84) and he went into Maharaj’s old room and meditated and presently returned to the devotee and gave him the complete mantra.

  My left foot is getting, if anything, more swollen, despite the “Earth Shoes” which Don and I bought, a couple of weeks ago. They have very low heels and raised soles, so that you walk on your heels which is supposed to be better for your posture. They are comforting to wear.

  Poor wretched old Larry Holt called this morning and moaned because, after having at last arranged an interview with Swami through Anamananda (behind Anandaprana’s back) he got colitis and wasn’t able to see Swami after all.

  June 8. Well, we’re off tomorrow to Yosemite, with John Schlesinger and his friend Michael Childers. We are both of us dreading it just a tiny bit, but that’
s chiefly, I think, because it’s an interruption of our beloved routine and because we don’t usually care to spend much time continuously with other people. We are to fly to Merced, then take a rented car.

  Don has decided to include a batch of photographs of drawings in his show. These will be of drawings which are of celebrities but not really up to standard. Don says they will look better reduced. And they will be of interest, anyhow, as celebrity portraits. Irving Blum approves of this idea.

  Gottfried and Silvia Reinhardt came to supper last night. They arrived drunk and got drunker. They squabbled together like children, and they both talked to us at once, so we couldn’t attend to either. Then Silvia fell asleep on the couch. But we enjoyed their visit. They are both of them warm and affectionate, in their different ways. Gottfried asked me to speak at a Max Reinhardt memorial concert which is to be held in the Hollywood Bowl on August 30. I said yes because I want to see what it’s like, speaking at the Bowl. It appeals to my show-off side. What struck me again was Gottfried’s extraordinary vitality. Despite his physical grossness and his Austrian air of indolence, he seems so vital, so relatively young. And under his easy good humor there is real strength, and behind his jokes real compassion and serious concern. I think he is a very good man.

  June 13. I’ve kept meaning to write in this diary because such a lot has been happening. Now all I can do is to put it all down briefly in a single lump.

  On the 9th, we left for Yosemite as planned. We’d promised to meet John Schlesinger and Michael Childers at the airport at 7:10 and didn’t arrive till after 7:30 because that angel Kitty had been fluffing his dear fur. But John and Michael were late too. They had just started to get into a flap and, as we came in, they had me paged—the only time I’ve ever heard myself paged at an airport. Otherwise all went smoothly. The rented car was actually there when we got to Merced, and we duly navigated the twisty back roads and got ourselves onto the highway that comes up from Fresno and turned off at the Chinquapin turnoff which leads to Glacier Point. I was terribly edgy, hoping that Glacier Point would come up to my memories of it and that it wouldn’t disappoint John and Michael. We made the mistake of stopping at another viewpoint first which was disappointing because the view was only partial. And, when we did get to Glacier Point, it was swarming with schoolchildren. I don’t think John and Michael really thought it worth the effort, but Don was caught at once. I knew it, when he squatted down and gazed, motionless. There was Half Dome. There was the Yosemite Fall. There were the two great falls away on your right. There were the ridges behind, with snow still on them. A chipmunk ran across the face of the precipice and a little bird launched straight out over the abyss. You saw the hotel and the meadows and the river and the tiny cars, far far below. Whenever the children stopped screaming for a moment, there was the silence and the far faint purring of the falls. Don said to me in a low voice, “It’s unanswerable,” and I knew that we shared yet another secret experience.

  Then we drove down to the valley and had a late lunch at the Ahwahnee Hotel. People everywhere, but that didn’t matter so much. The Bridal Veil Fall was splendid. We walked right up to it and there was a rainbow in the spray. All the falls were still full from the melting of the snow water.

  There was nowhere to stay. Everything booked up. So we drove on to San Francisco. It was beautiful, coming out of the mountains onto the plain, and then the sunset lighting the clouds. I hated the Fairmont; the guests seemed to be all Watergate folk but in fact they are probably little provincials out to splurge on some special occasion and therefore eager to be overcharged. They will brag about their bills later as people do about their illnesses when they are let out of hospital. Don and I snapped at each other and had a brief quarrel, which merely made me realize how beautifully we have been getting along for the past month. Next day we saw a painting by F.E. Church, Rainy Season in the Tropics—a marvellous romantic landscape, rather like the Andean plateau. (Later we found that Paul Wonner, whom we saw last night, is a big admirer of Church.) And then we got a plane back to Los Angeles, in the afternoon. That night on T.V. we heard that Bill Inge had killed himself. After two unsuccessful tries with pills, he gassed himself in his garage. The obscene ruthless obstinacy of despair. Now, of course, we all feel we should somehow have prevented it. But we couldn’t have.

  The day before yesterday, I spent the whole day downtown at the American Booksellers’ Association convention, being interviewed and autographing copies of Kathleen and Frank in paperback. While there I had to endure lunch with several of the Curtis representatives. They were all married men, talking about the girls they were seeing here in Los Angeles in a way which took you back to Dorothy Parker. It was depressing. I kept very quiet and I think they were aware of this, but at least they kept off fag stories—to my relief, because I didn’t want to have to speak up and make everybody uncomfortable and yet I knew I would have to. The real literary star of the day was the actress who had played in Deep Throat!85 There was a line right down one side of the gigantic convention hall to get her autograph.

  June 14. Swami has had another setback; he very nearly developed pneumonia while up at Santa Barbara, but managed to give his lecture and then insisted on being brought back to Hollywood, so he could see his doctor. He’s better now but weak. The Father’s Day lunch has been postponed until June 23. I saw Swami briefly last night. When I left, he said, “God bless you, Chris.” I said, “I’d much rather have your blessing, Swami.” I don’t know what made me say that; it wasn’t just a corny compliment. And I don’t know exactly how Swami interpreted my meaning; anyway, he laughed.

  I forgot to record that Swami told us, last time we were with him, that he hadn’t slept more than two hours, the night before. I asked, “So you made japam all night?” And he answered, almost comically, “What else should I do?”

  I ate with the boys at the monastery yesterday, before the reading. The two who most impress me at the moment are Bob Adjemian and Abedha (Tony Eckstein). I feel a very strong current of love from Bob, which is all the more impressive because he doesn’t demonstrate it by looks, words or general behavior. And Abedha, that sour, moody little Jew, is now, it seems, almost uncannily happy. Either he’s gone a bit nuts, or something essential has happened to him. But I don’t think he’s nuts. Last night he told me that two of the other monks—Jim Gates is one of them—are doing the worship every day. “And that makes it wonderful here,” he added, or words to that effect. It was as if he’d said that the monastery had been moved to the ocean and that therefore they were now getting wonderful sea air.

  When I meditate nowadays, I try to conjure up the shrine with all of them sitting in it, and I say the meditations Swami told me to say as if they were being said by different monks and nuns in turn, or else speaking in chorus. In this way I can join in with them and lose myself for a few moments. It is much easier to say “we” than “I” when trying to avoid distractions. (In doing this, maybe I’m reverting to Kathleen’s preference for group worship, after all!) Bob is one of the people I chiefly think of. Also Beth [High], Abedha, Gauriprana.86 And then I remind myself that, at this very moment (7 a.m. to about 7:45) Swami, Krishna and Abhaya are meditating in Swami’s room. So I mentally join them.

  I talked to Lenny Spigelgass this morning, asking him if I should risk going to see Mike Laughlin’s film at a projection room at United Artists studio.87 He warned me earnestly not to. “They’re longing to get us, Chris. You and I are too well known. Don’t do it!” Lenny thinks the strike may be over quite soon, however.

  Lenny said of Bill Inge, “In the last few months, there was nothing there.”

  One thing I forgot about my visit to Swami last night. When I came in, I prostrated as usual and touched his feet with my head. As far as I was concerned, that was it. But, as I started to get up, I saw his hand extended over me. In my dumb vague way, I thought he was holding out his hand for a handshake, so I tried to take it. Immediately, he raised it a little, out of my reach. So I rea
ched up for it. He raised it higher. And then I realized that he was blessing me! I was quite embarrassed, but he didn’t laugh.

  June 17. On the 14th, I had lunch with Dr. William Melnitz88 at the UCLA faculty center, to talk to him about Max Reinhardt, in preparation for my speech at the Bowl. He says that Max was just like Gottfried to look at (before Gottfried got so fat) and that he resembled Gottfried in many ways, but that Gottfried didn’t love his father as much as Wolfgang did—at least, not in the early days. I got the impression that Melnitz doesn’t like Gottfried very much. And disapproves of his book about Max.89

  Melnitz thinks that Max’s greatest theatrical talent was for working with actors. It didn’t matter who they were. He treated the students at the Reinhardt School in Los Angeles just as he had treated his biggest stars in Berlin. I said I’d heard that the Los Angeles students performed so impressively because Max had trained them like animals, teaching them every move and every intonation. Melnitz denied this absolutely, saying that Max very often left an actor free to develop his performance in any way he chose. He was a wonderful audience and enjoyed the rehearsals more than anybody else.

  After seeing Melnitz, I went with Don to visit Guy Dill and Charles Hill in their studios. Guy lives in Venice, on the corner of San Juan and Main Street, in a building from which boats used to be launched into the canal which once ran along Main. Now, all the interior walls have been knocked down, and the boarded floor of a former room is now just a low platform in the midst of the one great bare barnlike enclosure. Here Guy sleeps and eats in the presence of his concrete pillars, tension pieces and other artworks. Some of the tension pieces (he showed us photographs of them) are huge contraptions in which heavy blocks of concrete are involved and strips of metal are kept bent by wire cables bolted down to the floor. Guy says that he is considering switching from concrete to pumice because it will be so much easier to handle in bulk. The whole place is kept as tidy and clean as a showroom.