scott warren wilson

11.24.65

A cold night but not bitterly cold. I sit in a Harvey House whose bright lit Pennsylvania Dutch (or whatever) interior is perhaps the antithesis of my shadow-strewn interior. Leaving my apartment, walking down Spruce Street to this place, I felt the victim of an indefinable and indecipherable traumatic occasion. The specifics are a beer - several beers with Denny at the London Ale House this afternoon after class. I felt mightily sad before his arrival, while waiting for D. to perform a kind act for Gilbert ( to deliver some paintings in the Triumph). So a aware and immensely moved by the boy’s generosity and goodwill which I so much wanted to return today and indefinitely out of general gratitude. I wanted to return hiss favor openhandedness and liberation from a constant egotistical sense of need of him. He deserves better than a selfish relationship, he deserves more, all - every sympathy and cooperation in hiss quest for his own truth and effort toward happiness (which for him isn’t to be found in my bed, where in his words he feels a “fake”, at this time. Rationally I recognize that and accept it after our long conversation at lunch yesterday when his plain fondness for me (clear as those azure eyes) was so directly expressed and his confusion regarding the other aspect was so simply stated and explained. That much for the rational, the emotional acceptance of they facts is something else.)

We drank beer for an hour or so while the conclusion of yesterday’s conversation hovered like a ghost (more to annotate the boy’s generosity and his caring for me: his wish to conger from his mind the perfect woman for me, the ideal woman who would make me happy [an important word in Denny’s vocabulary- a word of very real meaning and essence] as only a woman can complete a man… He hesitated to ask me, he was afraid to ask me for fear of my answer, am I “happy” as things stand [quotations to stress the very special import of the word to Denny]). We talked of painting, the myth of the South, Mad comics [ and his first delighted discovery of it in a barber shop when he was twelve] and we were both a little high when he dropped me at Spruce Street. Huge motored off, relieved and happy, to his Thanksgiving holiday with his family, to his date for tonight on the thus far smooth highway off aspirations and high expectations.

I mounted the stairs to the dusk-filled flat, in the dark turned on the radio prior to a half hour of oblivious sleep. I was exhausted and oppressed by my feelings of isolation, resolve and total empathy for Denny.

This partially describes the rapport (Picasso speaking to Françoise Gilot)

When I was young, even before I was your age, I never found anybody that seemed like me. I felt I was living in complete solitude and I never talked to anybody about what I really thought. I took refuge entirely in my painting. As I went along through life, gradually I met people with whom I could exchange a little bit and then a little bit more. And I had the same feeling with you - of speaking the same language. From the very first moment I knew we could communicate.

11.22.65

After not sleeping very well last night and reading the NY times book review section under a yellow light burning in darkness, this morning I felt strange and very perceptive of the inner mechanism of myself. I walked through the gloomy Monday morning to The Academy  prey of all sort of successive thoughts on my potential and possibilities. The conclusion was to devote my primary effort and passion to painting, sparing not my sentiments toward myself nor toward others but sublimating them to the ever more mysterious and hazardous adventure vis-a-vis a canvas. But every atom of the residue of that involvement, every remaining nuance of neurosis, passion and despair will be dedicated to this humanity and thoughts to that affect.

I painted approximately, accordingly in the studio. With intensity.

A beer with D- beguiled, beguiled - before rushing off for lunch with Jean-Pierre Gredy and Pierre Barillet (co-authors of the Lauren Bacall play trying out in Philadelphia these two weeks. Jean-Pierre is a friend of Jean’s of years studying in in Paris) A drink at The Barclay and lunch at Day’s; a french lunch with that predominate language. Mutual friends in Paris were dissected, particularly Jean as a phenomenon. Some gossip, with and intelligence on the part of my two hosts. Jean-Pierre, who is a near-miss on handsomeness (voluptuous features coarsen to thick features but are saved by a set of very fine eyes - oftentimes screened by brown-lensed , tortoiseshell sunglasses), is perhaps quicker but more caustic of the two. Pierre, who when smoking, frowning in profile recalls the not handsome but somehow equal to that, of an 18th century bust, is easier, more winning companion.

Lunch was over at nearly three.       

11.21.65

I am somewhat amused by my image of myself sitting at the black and white rug-hung writing table of this at best “modest”, now very disordered flat of mine, or “studio”; writing, smoking, quaffing a can of beer or chilled beer, wearing nothing but a black slip returned by mistake in the laundry and a pair of sandals bought six?- seven? years ago at Cassis. One strap is broken and is askew like a broken tentacle. On the radio is a Hindemith compositions - a chelo or violin predominates as a kind of pop note. The cigarette is Chesterfield, the beer Schlitz. The writer is slender - too slender - and his skin is pale extending in the lamplight above the black slip, in shadow into the shadowy stripe of the table cover below the slip.

A white telephone sits like a round-mouthed mask waiting to be properly hung on the wall; the bed is unmade for days, books, magazines, clothes (a tweed jacket on the back of one chair on the seat of which is a yellow cashmere scarf- Denny’s deep-khaki scarf thrown across another), canvases fronts to the wal further indicate the mood of the room.

Obviously I tonight take a cinematic view of it and its occupant - perhaps because the image evoked momentarily coincides with a role I hoped for myself some ten years ago. In all this description, and most of all in my feeling about it, is an a la recherche du temps passé quality  even then my daydream wasn’t Fitzgeraldian luxury but rather nouvelle vague smart-squander.

New York on Friday was a long day at museums: The Modern, the Edwin Dickenson show at The Whitney (ostensibly my reason for going - 3/4 was a disappointment but the last quarter, the beautifully simple abstract quarter, was well worth the indifference of most of it) The Frick, where D. had never been and where I indignant about his attitude on Goya (he called him “sloppy”) and made him work double-time to try convincing me of Rembrandt’s position as “the greatest painter who ever lived”. It was a crisp, clear day and New York sparkled with that special dazzle of late fall when we left The Met at disk to walk down Park Ave to Fifty-seventh Street and to Andrew’s.

A was in good spirits in his very individual way in spite of hangover and tiredness. The booze flowed dark and fast and eventually we taxied to a Chinese restaurant in Murray Hill for more drinks and other delicacies… I’m rather vague about this part of the evening. I do recall putting A in a cab and D and my climbing into another to proceed to Eighth Ave and Fortieth and do recall our napping for an hour in an empty Greyhound D. happened onto and missing a bus to Philadelphia . But after being rudely awakened by some official or other we did eventually board the right Greyhound just in time to collapse with fatigue.

Practically the next thing I remember was being very cozy in my own bed for about three hours when I was awakened for duty at The W. From there I rushed home to change to be at Steumpfig’s apartment at 3:15 when Robin called for the two of us to go to Ernie Biddle’s  wedding in Chestnut Hill. The reception lasted for hours and passed in a kind of champagne haze but at least we were back to town by eleven and having nightcaps at The Barclay.

In bed by midnight, I slept like a corpse last night. A late breakfast this morning with Bob Barnes.

11.17.65

Save for Monday, when the barometer wavered toward depressive, my mood of late has been super-manic! I’ve never felt, I don’t believe, more confident and capable.

In the studio I work with a kind of energy and concentration such as I have never before demonstrated - I paint or draw as from beyond myself. It is glorious!

Yesterday after making a study for a life painting I quit the academy to go to a Jeanne Moreau film an Market Street (a rather trite rehash of the La Dolce Vita school filmed in Rome and Venice during winter) - I left the theatre hyper sensual and responsive to the tepid rain falling in the early afternoon like a liquid caress. For all that the movie was unoriginal, Moreau was sublime as a woman without feelings.

Today I began a painting based on yesterday’s life drawing - orange ground, ultramarine platting, some cobalt, violet underpainting.

Lunch a deux with D. We go to New York on Friday.

Flora just called from Forth Worth - I suddenly want to change all Christmas plans of being in Texas. Flora and Dick will be in New York and the thought of a week or two in Fort Worth without their being there is far from thrilling.

11.13.65

I just awoke feeling “through the forest” after having fallen into a depressed sleep lost in a lonely wood. A radio broadcast of Handel’s “Water Music” from Philharmonic Hall in New York, a smoldering cigarette greet me like familiar friends.

Not recently jave I felt so alone as I did this afternoon nor meditated with such chilling candor on the notes of loneliness as a theme in my life. It echoes from my childhood (the tune of an only child of parents in conflict (years ago I would have employed the adjective “unloving” of each other had not subsequent years indicated to the contrary)) and from later periods of confusion and withdrawal in spite of some notable exceptional friendships - the major affirmation of my ability to relate to people and my measure against which I scale the scope of loneliness.

Why did the sense weigh on me so intensely this afternoon? Probably it originated in the gloom of the weather, a gray, dark but mild day, coupled with unusual hours of the day to kill, and most particularly I know the sense of isolation has its roots in a preoccupation with D. for daily his importance to me grows. Except when we paint, during actual hours spent in the studio, we are virtually inseparable at The Academy. Each lunch hour is spent together, usually with another or others. Thursday afternoon D. and I had a long talk among the antique casts of the rotunda, one continuing on pure reluctance to part. Finally the boy set out for his class at Penn. while I drew at night class at The Academy. Later we met again for dinner. It was a ritual meal and D talked on: about his, in the main, wonderfully normal boyhood (although a thread of extraordinary sensitivity ran through his stories, as in his description of the many nights he sought solitude by sleeping in a wood near his house) his near scrapes with the police (the mischievous deeds of an active spirit) and other miscellany. From Chine Town we proceeded to Spruce Street for beer and a long night together. 

Friday at The Academy I finished a painting (the famous still life, mentioned previously) and drew in the afternoon with Mr. Glazer. That night I attended a revival of the musical “Kismet” at The Forrest Theatre. Verdict: Predominant vulgarity of a flashy sort. Its best features are a quite pretty song or two and last night’s line-up of chorus. Indeed, there was a “bauble, bangle and bead” to suit every taste!

Afterward I wandered about the Washington Square neighborhood - down to about Eighth and across to Lombard, attempting to sort out my mind with a premonition of today’s intense melancholy.

Now I leave these mournful thoughts to wander to 18th Street and a party at Noel Nahaffey’s. A most welcome relief!

The party was a fairly typical but good Academy party with the usual students in attendance. Jim Steagle and I made a sort of entrance via the window to Noel’s quite spacious studio (it is in a nineteenth century house and consequently has the advantage of high ceilings, tall windows, a plain but handsome burgundy mantel piece . Its walls are white with gray moulding - sometimes gracefully arched - it’s floor painted black. The fine proportions are undisturbed by much furniture or pictures: there are three large canvases in the general area but otherwise the expanse of wall is pristine save for three or four windows. Properly furnished, the apartment could be French in spirit).

At my arrival Karen, Penny, Howard, other clustered about the bar, talking soberly for the most part. A phonograph in the “bedroom” (sliding doors were open to make the room virtually one with the sitting area) blasted forth the usual rock-and-roll while tow or three couples gyrated to its tempo. For about an hour I sipped from my quart of beer holding a very serious discussion of the nature of emotional disturbance (the conversation sparked by Judy’s indictment of Al’s behavior) with an intelligent, neurotic girl who resembles nothing more than Charles V as pictured by Valesquez. Her chin is a mile long and watery pale eyes waver behind small tortoise-shell glasses. The conversation was never dull and I found Judy quite perceptive.

Then I moved on, from a long chat with Karen about Jewish divorce procedure to a small group debating, with feeling, the merits of The Academy faculty, specifically Steumpfig. Bill was pro (and far from convincing) while Howard was adamantly against. By now the machinery of the party was well oiled with booze.

Soon Indian wrestling matches started at the bar, on a small oriental rug on the floor. After enough of this I left, bought a New York Times on Market Street and claimed my bed to read it.   

11.10.65

I awoke this morning like revived from death feeling inspired by the chill, brite alte fall day. Breakfast with Barnes at our usual luncheonette corner of Spruce and 17th. Onward to the Academy.

Between arrival and lunch I painted with intensity working on the same Morandi -based (but not to obviously so) still life, pushing the paint around like so much colored slush, now adding a fauve color, now muting. And on and on.

Lunch with D. and Roland V. at the London Grill, conversation never flagged, from the emergency of my last night to LSD. From movies (Darling) to the blight of TV in America. Another drink or two and I felt wonderfully manic, and indeed remained so all day.

R. and I stopped by Karen Eglin’s studio in a condemned building opposite City Hall to see recent paintings, then we walked up Walnut Street to the Square, where I left him with friends on the corner as I crossed through traffic and across the sun filled oasis amid cement and asphalt.

I have created an art of my own. I created it with my eyes open on the wonders of the visible world, and, whatever people may have said, constantly endeavoring to obey the laws of nature and life.
- Odilon Redon

11.9.65

Sauntering across the Square tonight, I didn’t take time to fully savor the crisp night air, the dark cerulean blue of the sky pierced by a perfect circle of moon-silver. The delicate rustle of ochre leaves underfoot or blown against a park bench or paving. But I did absorb enough to know how gloriously beautiful it was. The week didn’t begin well, and thus far spirits haven’t much risen. Yesterday was a depressing, rainy day and lunch with D was of that morose climate. Also Painting problems. So I was only too glad to meet for a night cap or three with Roland at midnight last night in search of diversion.

Today was better - good weather, a very good critique from Franklin Watkins, not to mention painting strides in the right direction. A good looking Italianate type by the name of Goldman reappeared on the Academy scene today (we shared classes and rapportlast summer)- his is another story and concerns his asking me to let him be my agent. More to follow! 

11.7.65

I walk out the front door of The Warwick into the mild night air - mild as April, really, and all black above from starlessness - and automatically, as though I were Pavlov trained, the thought starts up. It drones on monotonously - not monotonously, but repetitively, over and over again: D-, D-, D-. Since three, four weeks? BUt in varying degrees of intensity. Sometimes it wavers and the volume is low but much of the time it ranges from medium to shrill. I ask myself to what extent, with what clearness these waves are being received on the other end: to what extent is Puritanism or plain indifference interfering? I ask myself, but I don’t wonder.

Friday the volume was shrill. I felt prismatic as the the sunshine after a virtually sleepless night (someplace in the suburbs - near Germantown?) and the illusionary stimulus of a pill. I painted in the morning, with more intensity than any day that week, underpainting a still life in fauve colors - red, yellow, violet, green. At noon arranging to lunch with D.

In the brilliant street we met Janie, lovely Janie in a woman’s variation of the British warmer and sunglasses, whom I insisted lunch with us. Arch Street was dazzling in its traffic, bright cars mirroring chrome and reflecting sunspots like glittering cancers. By contrast, Reading Market was cool and dark, fish-smelling, the chill atmosphere of an aquarium. Lunch was somehow a ritual, not the oysters or clams I had anticipated, but instead a corn beef sandwich or some such and milk and grape pop, Denny was Jane’s and my jester, stimulus, mascot. His wide-open charm is indescribable.

I drew in Mr Glazer’s class that afternoon until time to go for Steumpfig’s critique of Denny’s painting.

He, the boy, produced a coup that afternoon for Steumpfig was in as destructive a mood as I’ve ever seen him. It was distressing mainly for its toll on Walter (the victims of it are another story!) for he sincerely suffered over the inept painting, the misguided taste - or lack of it - of students he so violently wished were better, but Denny survived. Not that he received accolades, but Walter appreciated his effort and recognized his intention and gave him credit. After the criticism, the boy realized his victory and felt glad and came in a not yet fully recognized but instinctively understood triumph to where I sat. I was actually aware that it was a moment of sharing . And it remained so for us, that day.

We went to the Pascin show at the Makler Gallery. Denny talking art as he loved to do, still glowing and wonderfully himself. We drove along Riverside Drive at dusk, when the woods were a warm blur and the sky arched in rainbow hues from raw pink to pure blue. The river, the bridges, the scullers were like perennial Eakin’s frozen in time.

I took the wheel of the descented Triumph at one point and followed D. in another car. He drove me back to town from his house, said good night as well as that he would stop by at my place next afternoon.

I waited until five onward - no D.

The orchestra last night performed an early Hayden symphony and Mahler’s tenth symphony. A night cap at the Drury Lane followed by my own bed with the New York Times. I was exhausted and slept extremely  soundly.

11.1.65

The thing to wonder at is the difference an hour - even five minutes - can make. This morning I ran the emotional gamut from cold fury to indecision to devil-may-care decision. And won. Regarding D. I put myself in a mood of helpless anger by uncontrollably cutting him dead - it was an endurance test to sit over my sketch book working on the study for a still life, an array of containers inspired by morandi. In that mood I stalked out to lunch, quaffed a beer, and headed for a showdown. Fortune was with me, and I found the boy sitting far back at a table in a bistro type bar. Each was tense, and we both smoked continuously, while eating. But the atmosphere gradually cleared, and strain disintegrated into our original camaraderie I felt so certain wasn’t mistaken about really being there (the seeming denial of it was what put me in such a ferocious humor). Soon we were chatting as usual, in general about art (for D. with a capital “A”) and just chatting. Until at the end of lunch I asked if I had served my term… “what term?”… “my term in exile”… “Scott you weren’t in exile”… “good boy, go paint well with Mr. Pitman this afternoon”. Quickly, as in a handshake, the purpose of a handshake was accomplished. Good boy…

Walking form the Academy to Spruce Street my mood was like a reflection of the shining day- a racing wind guiding great silver and plum colored clouds, like the storm clouds of a summer day, out of the path of the triumphant sun. And so the mood remains.

10.31.65

Halloween night. Anticlimactic since major festivity was celebrated last night. But the wind tonight howls appropriately for the season and a few masked and costumed figures move through the leaf strewn streets.

Andrew arrived from New York for the weekend on Friday. After a few drinks at my place we were half an hour late to the Academy of Music for a production of Mephistofele - a dismally mistaken way to spend an evening. The title role singer, a bass voiced Bulgarian or some such called  Ghiaurov (or some such) was the saving factor of the opera (it was a pathetic production of maybe the opera least likely to succeed), while chatting with Jimmy Lueders was the highlight of intermission. A. and I escaped to the Adelphia Hotel bar for some supper and more drinks, followed by a couple of beers at a local boîte. It was a late and costly night for me considering Saturday’s hangover.

But fine weather and a good lunch with Andrew pulled me the first half of the day. While it ended on the crescendo of a party at Bob Barnes last night. Masks were the main feature of the gathering, while for me its real triumph was the special group, ranging from three or four locally celebrated social types to those decorative additions one so likes to see. Plus a filling of not unattractive persons who “do things”, like run a very good restaurant, curate at the museum, paint, and generally contribute as well as adorn. It was a remarkably pleasant assemblage!

I lasted until the very last to take Bob for breakfast this morning at the Harvey House on Broad Street, which resembled no place more than Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras- a splendid array of elaborately dressed transvestites (baroque wigs, glittering jewels, historic gowns) mingling with other more pedestrian types! Home by 4:30.

Late breakfast with A. at the Bellevue-Stratford - my companion sporting a near black eye from making a falling exit from Bob’s last night. He was gloomy but valiantly funny. Andrew is so significant to my existence - so like a talisman that one becomes almost superstitiously attached to while still resembling a sort of intellectual comic strip one needs and reads to be both stimulated and vastly amused.