"Dear Jonas, Jan 6, 1972"
a commentary on the economics
of experimental filmmaking
compiled by Shira Segal
Excerpts from the Stan Brakhage Papers, acquired by the Brakhage Center at the Film Studies Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and housed presently at the Archives, University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries. Arrangement by Shira Segal, with deepest gratitude to those who made it possible for Brakhage’s papers to be preserved.
“Dear Jonas, Jan 6, 1972”
I cannot bring myself to rest on this matter of rightful payment to The Artist
because my 20-some years of experience as, yes, desperately struggling artist of this country has acquainted me with the IDEA that there cannot be anything approaching some FULL aesthetic expression of U.S.ence until there is some clear and normal economic place made for the aspiring artists of this nation. It is NOT that I am at all concerned for “a national Art” or somesuch. I do not personally believe there IS such-a-thing as Nat’l Art – do, rather, take that to be a contradiction-term. But artists do depend absolutely upon the particularities of their environment – make their ‘universalities’ of the MOST personal material their culture provides. When an artist is denied ‘place’
(which really might mean ‘moveability’ within this culture) he or she is denied
any but a narrow use of that material.
– letter to Donald Richie at the Film Dept. of the Museum of Modern Art
(Stan Brakhage, January 14, 1973)
“I want every artist to have the normal possibilities” of being an artist, of being able to be an artist, to have the means
Well, you know, yesterday we made a sound film and I was the sound engineer.
Now, if there’s anyone unsuited to such a post, it’s me. I don’t understand
machines.
I don’t like machines. I don’t wish them well. But yesterday, I managed
to most of the time push the right button and all, I guess.
“tangent to or within” the IRS audited him for being pornographic Jane thought the envelope was in the mail
But today Stan wanted me to get the wind in the trees.
“middle-class American living;” now there is a highway to Rollinsville, Colorado but then, what was there – the stove she sat on,
Of course, there’s a difficulty there because you’re more than likely to get the
wind in the mike way above the wind in the trees.
“and I want him or her to HAVE those possibilities” his pre-adolescent postcard to Clara was very clear, “GET THAT WORM”
Then we arrive in New York night of police shut-down of and padlock of The Theatre, after already arresting Jonas twice, etc., as I’m sure you’ve heard,
But I gamely put the batteries in – backwards. Time I got them in right then I
found they were low so I tried the electric.
uproar of paranoia all-over-the-place taking various forms
“as an artist – yes, with a small ‘a’…(if we can but ONCE knock that statuesque CAP off the term, that “A” reserved only for the lamented dead, THEN we’ll have something);”
from complete giving-up (and/or I’m not interested in fighting censorship”, etc.)
Well, it worked okay on play and record but it wouldn’t go forward or back fast.
So Stan had a fit and yelled around and called Herman
thru [sic] to those actually seeming to WANT Jonas to go to jail
“and I want this MOST specifically and simply”to provide The Martyr for everyone to remember [letter to P. Adams Sitney, March 25, 1963; FilmMaker’s Co-Op and Clara correspondence files]
and found out Herman had had the rest of the sound equipment for months and
yelled some more
“to give us all a chance” to not be punched in the face
1964 I was born August fifteen, 3:15 a.m. in Boulder Colorado in a hospital. Stan, my father, as usual, made a movie of the whole thing while I was being born. He also played Bach and Bach has always been my second favorite composer.
and I had to tell him what seemed obvious to me – that I’m not a sound engineer
type. I don’t like machines and I’m not interested in sounds as such.
“at a flowering of the arts” “these films resist language-thinking,” he said. Film is “faster than thoughts” [Hampshire College lecture, Nov 14, 1981]
“such as ONLY this country can evolve – want something, in other words, TOTALLY free of all that damned courtliness and patronage systemization out of Europe.”
1965 We were poor for a week so poor that we kids could only eat one half of a grapefruit per person per day. Our parents had only a flaver [sic] for water. Then we finally borrowed some eggs from the neighbors and we slowly got richer by the day.
Now I’m very fond of lots of music – I like music if it sings.
“I want artists to have the peculiar possibilities of being variously sunk-INto"
…in the privacy of each of your homes and in the moments
you have of real living, you do the weirdest things
for no reason whatsoever; staring in the mirror,
the faces you make; the grimaces of fingers –
what you do with your fingers all over your bodies;
what you do comparable to me smelling my socks –
first the left one, then the right one, always,
every night before bed.
1966. In the summer my brother Bear and I used to swallow buttons. One day I swallowed [one] that was too big to fit down my throat. It got caught in my throat and Jane had to reach down my throat and get it out.
And these are all absolutely unique gestures,
and they have no social foundation whatsoever.
This is the mainspring of the arts. It is the song,
the elitism of each and every one of us.
[Hampshire College lecture, Nov 14, 1981]
in a letter to Sylvester Stalone, he writes “keep it up” [Nov. 29. 1986]
1967. My mother ‘Jane’s parents brought us a swing set. I didn’t know what to think of it. I wondered what it was used for. I got an idea I thought I will sit where it looks like someone should sit. (On a swing) The wind blew me and I hung on for life. I finally found out what it was for.
Here then, tenderly, were the ideals I hope to have passed on to my children; and within this above stated idealism, “the game” must be played for survival only –
“That’s my dream; and it is the only practical solution I can imagine to avert the catastrophy [sic] inherant [sic] in this cultureless/headless monster The United States has specifically become.”
I simply can’t TOLERATE this society anymore –
don’t want ANYthing to do with it anymore…find myself
(peaceful man I am) dreaming of taking up a machine gun
(rather than camera ever again)…
one must never become one’s masks or otherwise lose inner sense of absolute uniqueness-of-person (nor lose one’s consciousness/ ((thankfulness, even)) or the cultural heritage which also make that person) and, above all, the masks must be fashioned in such a way as to ALSO express that inner life of person ((be a true personeae)) [sic] without which each is nothing…THIS the normal activity of dreams! [letter to Robert Haller, Jan 30, 1981]
1968 Going to New Mexico was beautiful. My first bus ride and I was scared. Most of the way I slept leaning against the window. The rest of the way I looked at the beautiful hills.
And, of course, I love to play the recorder – when it sings. It’s very disconcerting
if it doesn’t sing. But the act of “getting” sound is not where I’m at.
Stan gave us a camera to take pictures of anything we felt like. Then Stan put it together as a short film, telling who took what pictures. Starting with Myrrena, the oldest, then Crystal, Neowyn, Bear, and myself.
“And I want this because, of course, I want it for myself –” In the sixties, people would get headaches when watching his films. He’d say, “Relax. Sort of force your eyes to relax and let the film happen, and just let it happen, you know.” [Hampshire College lecture, Nov 14, 1981]
Of course, he knew this all along.
1972 …Day after day Jane was making plans to add on to our house. And we would talk about it and improve it little by little. Finally we got them all done, a wonderful idea but we knew it would cost too much the way we planned it. All this time and thought and drawing all of it down the drain because it would cost too much. I would pay a lot for what we had planned but we did not have the money at all.
…And, truth is, I continue too ill to hold EITHER machine gun or camera –
am now going-on-5-mo. unable to work at all. The last two hours of work
I sent to both coasts haven’t been shown at all. The west-coast Cinematheque
has been taken over by punk rockers, so no hope there.
[letter to Guy Davenport, Feb 8, 1982]
So we started over a lot of time and drawing. Weeks went by and after a lot of work we were all done. This plan was good enough. But all of it didn’t come true but I love the house anyway.
“do you hear me?: I want the same possibilities of any plumber, candle-stick maker, whatever…and do NOT want the dangling carrot of Art Riches, dead or alive…do NOT hanker after the powers of the court painter, etc.”
1975 I can remember we were on our way to Denver and Stan said that I have a one man show in New York City. I was shocked and even couldn’t believe him. He said that most people would give their right leg to have a one man show in New York City. [Autobiography by Rarc Brakhage, Family Papers and Correspondence]
But last night, he was so happy when he was imagining that I was a sound engineer
and we could – oh!!! – we could god knows what!
“The truth still is that I make most of my living from lecturing, teaching, etc., and most of even my rentals from the fact that I play the Artist”
So now I have this gnawing guilt and shame and whatnot and call myself fuckup –
which isn’t all bad – I mean it’s kind of sexy, you know.
(Jane Brakhage, Sept 23, 1974, Manuscripts)
As to myself, 3 doctors have now solemnly told me I’m having a nervous breakdown; but the last one added: “You’re handling it very well”. Then I thought that, probably, I’ve been having this same nervous breakdown my whole life … only now I’m exhausted so completely that it is beginning to be obvious.
“I play the Artist for all these culture-conscious creeps who wouldn’t know a vision” A student lost his mind, the noose was on the door
Accordingly, I’ve cancelled ALL lec-tours and have announced to Sch. Art. Inst. that I’ll only teach one semester next year.
(I who sit huffing and puffing ever since the Met. sent that cruel, and absolutely FINAL-seeming, letter to Jane refusing any permission whatsodamnever, myself feeling a HUGE chauvinistic rage against them, the whole damn pack of museum curators who CAN’T/wont [sic] see the pictures in those buttons for the same reason they don’t see MY films or, for that matter, ANYthing of the evolution-of-sight which hasn’t had the good luck to be backed by Peggy-Guggenheim-somesuch across this miserable intentionally-blinded century…
…The ‘old style’ lecture causes me to shake for hours afterward, sometimes vomit, a[nd] suffer insomnia clear thru one, two, or even three nights going;
“culture-conscious creeps who wouldn’t know a vision OR a hole in the ground.” he didn’t want to betray The Future
and my eyes have become so strange that optomitrists [sic] have even been moved to accuse me of lying. Critics and such normally accuse me of such, privately; tho’ they just ignor [sic] my insistance [sic] I’m a documentary film-maker in their public writs.
…Anyway, I don’t want to piss away all the good feeling
Some of this new eye-sight has equivalency in Super 8mm films I’m now working on. [letter to Guy Davenport, July 12, 1976]
all the good feeling your kindness engendered by trying to photo those buttons: it really touched me and Jane very deeply, giving us also the hope that someday some way that envisionment of hers, or ours, would be realized. [letter to Robert Haller, March 31, 1986]
“And we manage,” although Donald wrote back, “as you know, if the Museum ever started paying rentals then we would shortly not be able to show anything at all” [Jan. 17, 1972]
How can I thank you FULY [sic] for the roll of film [70mm-maxi-stock],
but to let you know that my whole life now is centered upon hand-painting “existence
is song” (title quoted from Rilke); and you have just sent me MANY years of work
(for at my TOP speed, which I haven’t yet achieved on this film, I can’t expect to make
more than a minute a year)/(thus, for instance, I wouldn’t know WHAT to write to
Graeme Ferguson of Imax, unless it be simply to thank him for the invention)
[letter to Alexander “Sasha” Hammid, August 17, 1984]
“And we manage, out of all this” “Dear Sir, Recommending Stan Brakhage to a department of film studies is rather like recommending Einstein to a department of physics” [Guy Davenport, April 9, 1970]
European distribution is just an endless agony, with almost no recompence, [sic] for me here. I’ve decided to have no more of it until some ‘breakthru’ [sic] occurs apropos -- ? well, I dunno… appropo my work, at least.
Dear Kenneth, I am terribly frightened of being destroyed by all this lecturing; but so long as I can continue the film- making it is all possible – no limit to time or strength to continue.
Dear Stan, Forgive me
for being so slow in answering your letters.
… I was moved by your appreciation of my Cat film.
Too bad I haven’t made anything like that since.
[letter from Alexander Hammid, Oct. 5, 1984)
…I’m tired of illegal prints of mine floating all over Europe in various mutilated forms. People even sign my name to manifestos I’ve never seen and advertise my films in ways utterly despicable to me. Anyway, I would at least like to think all this fuss with “Lovemaking” has managed to get a print finally into your hands [letter to Kenneth Anger, March 9, 1972]
“And we manage, out of all this ‘extra-curricular’ effort,” Total rentals $975.50 WWBM: 5 prints at 225 each, total 1125 [Jane’s notes, 1973, Grove Press file]
I’m also wanting to let you know (as specified in grant form, A.F.I./N.E.A.) that I’m applying for funds to preserve the 8mm “Song” series – to enlarge these films into 16mm so that they’ll be available in the future…about $10,000.00 is what we need to complete this project. [letter to Gail Goldman, Jan 15, 1986, Joel Haertling file]
And this is the first time in my life that I’ve been able to work every single instant [that] I’m physically able to sit down at the editing table. I am very grateful.
“And we manage, out of all this ‘extra-curricular effort, a lower middle class income.”
…but I remembered the very beginning of film-making, how little time there then was, how very little money or means of ANY kind; and I took heart, began working, and am blessed. [letter to Kenneth Anger, Feb 3, 1973]
“It CAN, yes, be done; but now how to give this to ALL the artists AS ARTISTS! ...that’s the question.” [letter to Jonas Mekas, Jan 6, 1972]
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