James Semark departed this earthly plane sometime during the first week of December, 2010, his death due to a possible heart attack or possible complications from an allergic reaction to antibiotics, something we will never know as an autopsy was never done. The coroner’s office explained it as “death by natural causes.”  He was found alone at home with the front door left unlocked, perhaps to not trouble anyone by having to break  it down.  His body was discovered by the Ferndale police several days after he died.

James Semark was a poet, musician/composer,  cosmic communicator, organizer and creative spirit born in Toledo, Ohio who moved to Detroit as a student at Wayne State University in 1959. His interests were diverse; from meditation and macrobiotics to technology, green-economics, jazz, urban renewal and theosophy.

James pioneered a type of early proto-rap form that he called the rhythm ballads. These late 50s and early 60s compositions were “investigative verse” works; long tripped-out epic poems set to music that undertook the study and description of  jazz legends John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and even a judgment day “jazz-poem in heaven” of Edmund Zwingy, an imaginary be-bop star. He began to put the ballads to syncopated sound beats around 1964,  inspired by a jazz drummer that practiced in a basement room next to his own, in the John Lodge Artist Workshop “Castle”.

James studied music at Wayne State University under Harold McKinney. McKinney’s idea of community and the “World Stage” would remain a major influence for Semark. He was also mentored by jazz greats Yusef Lateef, Elvin Jones and Eric Dolphy. In the mid-1960s he collaborated with Lyman Woodard, The DC5, MC5, Charles Moore and John Sinclair.

James was a tall, quiet, even-tempered and soft spoken person, but could suddenly and spontaneously ignite an audience with his blazing rhythmic oration and fiery live performances. James was equally influenced by occult writings and world religions as he was by beat poets and jazz artists. He often took on cosmic topics, questions about space, time and the universe, the origins of mankind, drugs and illusion. He was a founding member of the Detroit Artists Workshop and his poetry found an audience through publications by the DAW press.

In his book Night-Vision Express, Semark wrote a series of surreal Kafkaesque essays. Many of these reflected on the afterlife. “The Antivalue” is one continuous rant that ends; Guardians of the river Lethe, with their tortured honor and malafied smiles, transport Antivalue to the Tower of Xmea and throw him into the ocean…  but it is transformed into the gnarled bones of circumvented lovers. From “Blood Echoes for Allen Ginsberg” – you and i we’re lucky / to know about expanded consciousness/ to get this far and not sentenced to “involuntary lobotomy”/ we’re lucky in this free / democratic republic/  rally-round-the-flag-boys/ society of ours/ to get by without any kind of “brain job”…

Semark’s poetry was infused with a kind of dystopian rock ‘n roll fever, a Burroughsian “Naked Lunch” stew, finding its home beside quotations from The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Kafka, Zen Buddhism, Sun Ra, Concrete Poetry, Stanley Mouse, Gary Grimshaw and Madame Blavatsky. Semark was a kind of goofy holy saint, an architect for the coming psychedelic revolution. He mixed metaphors with dreams, plays, essays and made direct statements, rants and pleas to change mankind. His creativity and process was centered on consciousness. Forms were broken and arranged to fit his vision of expanded awareness, he was  Detroit’s version of Wavy-gravy.

He could be over-the-top, extreme and repetitive, reciting, “OH! EYE! OH EYE! YOU!” for pages and it wasn’t always easy to digest, but his enthusiasm, humor and eternal conversation with Gods and prehistoric monsters were fascinating to watch, and something to be discussed over the next millennium.

After the breakup and political fermentation of the Detroit Artists Workshop in 1966, James struck out on his own, opening his own Nova Express “Terminal City” commune in Highland Park. He was “new age” before the term existed, the first to bring to Detroit the distinguished founder of macrobiotics and the organic/natural foods movement Michio Kushi. Semark did his best to spread the word on organic living, publishing one of the first books by Kushi in English translation. Semark remained a strict vegan through his entire life, convinced of the power of healing through pure foods and meditation.

James maintained a strong interest in metaphysics throughout his life. From his lifelong friendships with Robert Thibodeau and Howard Weingarden to his weekly meetings (for over twenty years) with his metaphysical/theosophy study group, he had an always inquisitive and questioning mind. Ever hopeful and on the side of intelligent transformation, James was an inspiration and light to many of us seeking positive change. He was an early adapt of the Baha’i faith, embracing the idea of oneness in all religions and continued to explore ideas found within the writings of Theosophy and Madame Blavatsky.

In the early 1970s James was initiated into the Mahariji Ji Charon Singh’s order, and continued daily meditation and ’sound mediation’ practices throughout his life.  Some of these rituals and practices are known as Radha Soami Satsang Beas or the Science of the Soul.

Semark’s 1966 third book The Sun, is an exceptional and beautiful object/poem broken into two parts. In the first half are quotations from the Bahai faith, Sufi and Chinese poets, Sun Ra, Michio Kushi, Alice Bailey and Madame Blavatsky, all together forming a thick world-stew of spiritual truth. This radiant (and surreal) broth becomes the foundation for the Sun poem which stretches across the second half of the book. It is one of the most beautiful statements in poetry and art made by Semark. Punctuated by drawings, collages, letterpress embossing, colored and metallic inks and photos, the Sun poem is another cosmic rhythm ballad, a lovely handmade artbook that evolves through many forms and shapes; “When You and I are real, the words have Light.” At the end of the book, Semark states that he mixed the book’s special colored inks by his own hand. It remains one of the most powerful, well designed  and spiritual books in the Workshop canon.

One aspect of Semark’s character was his disciplined ongoing devotion to the Detroit Artists Workshop. Its community goals and ideals were his own and he maintained these throughout his life, even as he resided outside the state. His return to Detroit coincided with the planning stages for the 40th anniversary reunion in November of 2004. At that time, James took on an enormous responsibility in the preparation and development of the reunion project which led to a continuation of the DAW co-op in the form of meetings, concerts, fund-raising and its online presence as the website for The Detroit Artists Workshop, The DAW website was Semark’s baby and he designed and watched over it as a dotting parent.

One of his last projects was Work #6: A 2009 Detroit Artists Workshop Anthology of Generations -an extension of the sixties era workshop, returning to familiar names and writers (Robin Eichle, Bill Harris, Ed Sanders, John Sinclair) and including many new and unheard of writers, “building the reincarnated DAW collective as a vital platform, confident in its future as a world cultural hub.” It seems logical that the legacy James Semark has lived for and dreamed about can continue on. Hopefully his private Workshop archive be made available to the public and preserved for future study. His epic environmental poem-ballad The Saga of Steely R. Stone included in Work #6, was an autobiographical self-portrait,  a sketch of a man who after loosing his beautiful wife Jenny due to a toxic poisoning, envisions a horrid apocalyptic landscape on the planet, finally causing a nationwide uprising that resounds in the collective chant, “WE’RE GONNA DO SOMETHING FOR OUR WORLD!” It would be great if we could do something for Semark, and now that he’s gone, the continuance of the Detroit Artists Workshop website he created, its very existence and his archive of  DAW publications remain in grave danger. [sadly the sites that James worked so hard to preserve did come down soon after his death and little of his writings and recordings have been preserved. -addition 12/07/11]

Semark had a visionary approach to language and an unbreakable belief in the Detroit Artists Workshop – he saw it as a model and beacon of truth through which future generations could learn and establish their own network of artistic sharing and growth. In 1964, the Workshop was a spiritual foundation for freedom in the arts. It was infused with a similar bohemian ideology as Dadaism, Surrealism,  Fluxus, and the Black Arts Movement and become the early roots of psychedelia and Punk. This blending of  ideas exploded into the 1960s and as one of the elder statesmen of that movement and energy, James Semark was a mighty force, and a cyclone we barely knew.

In a quotation from his own website chronology, James states, “However long I may live, the endgame will still hold true. You’ll notice that, in my 20s, I was a hot shot in the Artists Workshop and I thought I had it together. In my 30s and 40s, I thought I understood the cosmos. In my 50s I had a vision of world transformation. Now, in my later years, I realize I understand only a milli-fraction of what’s going on in the universe — it’s as though I don’t understand anything at all! On the other hand, I see no end to the discovery process — the opportunity to explore greater and greater realms of galactic mind goes on forever. This is the endgame.”

Located on west 47th street in the heart of the diamond district, Gotham attracted many celebrated writers and artists (i.e., Arthur Miller, J.D. Salinger, W.H. Auden, John Updike, Man Ray). Artist Edward Gorey who had many titles published by Gotham, often slept in a small upstairs room when he came into the city making it his second home. One could always find a shelf or two of signed Gorey items on almost any visit. A hidden backroom walk-in closet was home to hundreds of rarities and signed limited editions. Owner Andreas Brown, a cranky bibliophile stood guard buried in books and cats at his chaotic  wooden desk tucked  in the back of the store. If Andreas was in an especially good mood, he’d proudly show off Gorey first edition treasures and original ink and watercolor drawings locked away in that secret “no one allowed” backroom chamber.

“Founded in 1920, it was one of the finest repositories of original and rare literature in the city, and, during the long tenure of former proprietor Frances Steloff, a major haunt for many notable American and foreign writers of the 20th century, and also a cultural pacesetter; the store sold censored and controversial works, even fielding a lawsuit by a ninny who was offended by its sale of Nobel Laureate André Gide’s If It Die. (Those were the days–now the ninnies don’t even deign to pick up works of imaginative literature any more and get worked up.) Allen Ginsberg and Amiri Baraka in their youth worked there as clerks, but poor Tennessee Williams didn’t “last a day. (for one thing, he didn’t know how to wrap packages.”

“The bookstore attracted celebrities from the entertainment world as well. From Charlie Chaplin, George Gershwin, and Gloria Swanson to Woody Allen, Patti Smith, and David Bowie, familiar figures would often be seen browsing seemingly chaotic and disorderly shelves or loose stacks of books lining the few aisles.” — Source: One Poet’s Notes

The continual closings of cultural institutions like Gotham Book Mart (read: The Internet is Killing Independent Bookstores), or Cody’s Books in San Francisco, and many others, is making it clear that a world of mindful diversity, literary culture and independent thinking is fast decaying under the continuing dire spell of commercial branding and mass merchandising. Read a recent article about the closing of Dutton’s books in Los Angeles, from The Nation: Eulogy for an Independent Bookstore.

Area independent bookshops like Shaman’s Drum, Nicola’s and Crazy Wisdom in Ann Arbor or Book Beat and John Kings in Detroit are not immune to this crisis. These are each unique and meaningful, near spiritual places that have helped to define our community through good and bad times. Please Remember: Think Independent, Read Independent, and Buy Independent. We thank you.

“Where is the wisdom
We have lost in Knowledge?
Where is the knowledge
We have lost in information?” — T.S. Eliot

*Independent bookstore is a term used in to identify bookstores that are primarily owned and operated by local people. They tend to have strong ties to the community and are frequently involved in non-profit community events as well as in cultivating the work of young writers. Independent bookstore selection tends to be more esoteric and less mainstream than chain bookstores. – Wikipedia online

She started the horror show host phenomenon in the year 1954-1955 and based her dress and cool morbid attitude on Charles Addams’ Morticia character as seen in New Yorker cartoons mixed in with her own twisted beat sensibility. Vampira was the original horror host, an icon of gothic style and beatnik beauty. She earned $75.00 a week for her role, and was cancelled due to public outrage. None of the shows exist, except for the on-set stills, they  remain the stuff of legends and rumor.
In 1959, she was “discovered” by Ed Wood Jr., the transvestite genius director of bad movies, and stole the show in Plan Nine From Outerspace, playing a grave robbing ghoul alongside wrestler Tor Johnson and Bela Lugosi. She can now afford a much needed rest and toast together with fellow ghouls Ed, Bela, Tor and her late paramour and best friend James Dean.
In her later years, Nurmi opened an antique store called Vampira’s Attic and worked on the Kevin Sean Michaels documentary, Vampira: The Movie, released in 2006.

Hear one of the last live interviews with Nurmi where she talks about the creation of Vampira on You Tube. Learn more about this independent, unique and doomed actress at SCREEN SIRENS. Rest in peace, my lovely ghoul and as Vampira would say at the end of each show, “Bad dreams, darling.”

Young women in tears over the finality of Deathly Hallows.

Another grief-stricken Harry Potter fan.

A Dementor consoles author Ragnar Ock.

The Ghost of Dumbledore announcing raffle winners.

Food, Glorious Food! Lots of homemade goodies helped to ease the pain; Witch hat cookies, Countess cupcakes, Peace potion punch, Doug’s Crunchy cookies, Mystery watermelon, Witchy fingers, and Mary’s fabulous 100 chocolate wizard wands!

Long live Harry!

Although he has worked extensively in drawing and printmaking, he is usually considered to be primarily a sculptor. LeWitt’s most characteristic sculpture works are based on connected open cubes and have titles like “Modular Wall Structure” and “Double Modular Cube.” Because he works with modules and systems, and his early wall drawings are based on grids, he is sometimes described as a Minimal artist, but his work, especially his recent work, is usually colorful and often quite complex. It is also optimistic and beautiful.

In 1980 he published his “Autobiography” which contained hundreds of photographs of every object and nook-and-cranny in his New York apartment.

“Sol LeWitt, whose deceptively simple geometric sculptures and drawings and ecstatically colored and jazzy wall paintings established him as a lodestar of modern American art, died yesterday in New York. He was 78 and lived mostly in Chester, Conn…”

On the 16th of September, 1977, Bolan’s Mini-Coop, driven by his girlfriend Gloria Jones, smashed into a tree on Richmond road outside of London. As the tree met metal on the passenger side, Bolan was plowed into the back seat and died instantly. Many of his songs celebrated cars, and although Bolan loved the automobile, and owned many, he never learned to drive them.

Within hours of his death, rabid fans broke into his home and stripped it bare. Clothing, papers, photographs, music tapes, memoribilia and all his personal items were stolen and never recovered. The next day tax collectors entered his office and demanded over 5 million dollars due in back taxes. Bolan never finalized a will and his estate was left in a mess.

The site of the crash has since become a ‘Marc Bolan rock shrine,’ with street decorations, grafitti, ribbons and memorial plaques that get continually ripped off and replaced. In 2002, at the 25th anniversary of his death, a large memorial statue of his bust was installed beside the tree crash site. The statue was erected and paid for by TAG (The T-Rex Action Group) the self-proclaimed legal leaseholders of the ‘Bolan Tree’, a dying note-riddled Sycamore. In 2005, the TAG group installed five plaques for deceased T-Rex associates; Steve Currie, Steve Peregrin Took, Mickey Finn, Dino Dines and June Bolan (nee Child).

At Bolan’s funeral, his coffin was covered in a huge swan-shaped floral tribute, in recognition of his first breakthrough hit single “Ride a White Swan.” Bolan’s first four albums recorded under Tyrannosaurus Rex are now bonafied classics of some of the weirdest out folk-rock ever put to wax. Its powerful trance-like Eastern and Celtic rhythms are beautiful, intricate and intense, but not for everybody. “Drugged out, spacey, acoustic hippie crap,” one critic noted… This period was an odd mix of Bolan’s heroes; Syd Barett, Tolkien and Bob Dylan. (One theory is that his name change from Feld to Bolan was a nod to Bob Dylan.) But his vocal delivery (and subject matter) was off-the-chart, other-worldly, angelic, magical and ‘elvish’, somewhere between Oz and Mars. Nothing close to his feverish, impish imagination has been done before or since. Bolan’s syntax and poetry is unique in music. New words (neologisms) are invented. Strange metaphors abound. In a rare Japanese interview Bolan comments, “Metal Guru is very much like one of your local deities… I mean it’s a personal god, in as far as… a superhero if you want, you know, it’s someone who would help you, and I was just trying to get down some… a religious sentiment without it being religious, you know, sort of rock n’ roll god, that sort of thing. Each verse just indicates really how I saw that person, you know. In fact there’s one line, at the time when I wrote it I was being fucked up with telephones. I don’t like telephones, and it was ringing all the time, so my idea of where god would be at would be all alone without a telephone, you know, which you can interpret as sitting in a cave in Tibet if you want, or being down the Biblos, or something. Whatever you want, I mean you know, your choice. For me it was being on my own you know.” Bolan’s last single in 1977 was ‘Celebrate Summer’ which had the ironic refrain: “Summer is Heaven in ‘77″…

More Bolan interviews, reviews and stories can be found at: TILL DAWN.NET Listen to an mp3 of: BALLROOMS OF MARS. Those true hard core fans of the early Tyrannosaurus Rex underground should visit, “THE most misunderstood & under valued singer/songwriter/musician of the 20th century”: STEVE PEREGRIN TOOK (Bolan’s early partner, so called ‘acid casualty’ and inspirational bandmate).

In 1995, Gloria Jones remarried and moved to South Africa where she has opened schools for HIV children. Their son Rolan, now lives in Los Angeles where he is trying to kick-start a career as rapper/rock star. You can watch Rolan doing a cover of his dad’s ‘Cosmic Dancer’ at ROLAN ON YOUTUBE.This year marks the 30th anniversary of Bolan’s death. As Marc himself once said, at the end of a concert, “Always keep a little Marc in your heart.“ Watch Marc perform ‘Sara Crazy Child’ from 1967:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYOz-fss2XQ

First based in Chicago, Arthur managed to put out a psychedelic designed zine that reviewed many underground and neglected music styles. It was defintely not mainstream media , but managed to deliver 50,000 copies to over 120 cities nationwide. They sponsored music festivals and other cash raising events, but their funds and support eventually dried up.

“Besides the exploration of psych-folk and the surrounding sub-genres, the magazine regularly featured guest contributors including, but not limited to, Thurston Moore, Will Oldham, and Spike Jonze, and, while concentrating on music and culture, thoughtfuly covered a wide variety of subjects of social importance. An explanation of the publication’s closure can be found on it’s website. All the best to those who contributed to a great magazine.” Source :Aquarium Drunkard.com

Arthur Magazine
Bi-monthly
First published October 2002
Published as a free paper, Arthur has the vibe of the old underground counter-cultural magazines, complete with lefty politics and a thirst for all kinds of psychedelic music. While it covers a lot of ground, including food, sex, culture and politics, the staff has excellent taste in music, and always introduces something new and interesting that I had never heard.” from the site FAST N’ BULBOUS Last of the Independents: Five Music Magazines That Mattered

This human herd all started out as potential geniuses, before the tacit conspiracy of social conformity blighted their brains. All of them can redeem that lost freedom, if they work at it hard enough. –Robert Anton Wilson
The recent death of Robert Anton Wilson (Jan.18, 1932- Jan 11, 2007) will no doubt cause a minor reconsideration of his magnum opus, The Illuminati Trilogy. The trilogy was a grandiose conspiracy tome that hit almost all the flashing lights on the great pinball machine of eternity. Wilson was a writer-philospher in the mold of Groucho Marx , Timothy Leary and Confucius. He saw himself as a futurist, author and stand up comedian.

“As 1960s counterculture morphed into the me-decade of the 1970s, part of any hip library was the Illuminatus trilogy, whose co-author, Robert Anton Wilson, has died aged 74. Post-polio syndrome had weakened his legs and a fall confined him to bed. The trilogy – Eye Of The Pyramid, Golden Apple, and Leviathan, all published in 1975 and co-written with Robert Shea, who died in 1994 – grew out of their experience as editors at Playboy, particularly from the Playboy Forum, readers’ letters which they answered and occasionally wrote. The steady stream of conspiracy theories they received inspired them to detail the battle of the Bavarian Illuminati, secret controllers of the world, against the Discordians, whose embrace of chaos may have owed more than a little to the paranoid uses of entropy in the fiction of Thomas Pynchon.” Continue reading ROBERT ANTON WILSON CULT FICTION from The Guardian.

The ROBERT ANTON WILSON website is a kooky mix of jokes, rants, recordings, goodies and RAW wit. You can also find excerpts from his novels, seminars, and reviews.
You can access online some of the underground classic The Illuminatus! Trilogy , which won the 1986 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. His other writings include Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy, called “the most scientific of all science fiction novels,” by New Scientist, and several nonfiction works of Futurist psychology and guerilla ontology, such as Prometheus Rising and The New Inquisition. His work is scattered far and wide… It’s only logical that RAW will continue to flourish far into the future…. Here are some tidbit snippets from the marvelous RAW buffet:
Robert Anton Wilson on deoxy.video

T.A.Z. : The Temporary Autonomous Zone—Feb. 6, 1993 [site]
Hakim Bey, Robert Anton Wilson, Nick Herbert, Rob Brezsny and Joseph Matheny
Video—MP3 : one—two—three—four

• Articles by Robert Anton Wilson
  • Creative Agnosticism
  • Language and Lunacy
  • The RICH Economy
  • Becoming What We Are
  • A lesson in Karma
  • Excerpts from Cosmic Trigger I
  • The Campus Crusade for Cthulhu
  • Toward Understanding E-Prime
  • Journey to Erewhon
    Human Transformation and Alien Encounters
    
  • THE PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA (intro)
    or, How I Found the Goddess and What I Did To Her When I Found Her
    
  • How George Carlin Made Legal History
  • Whoever Controls Princess Diana, Controls the World
  • Robert Anton Wilson On: 9 topics
• Encounters with Robert Anton Wilson
• RAW attends a SubGenius Devival in Austin includes images and video!
• An evening with Robert Anton Wilson and Richard Bandler
• AdZe’s Natal Horoscope for Robert Anton Wilson
• Articles related to Robert Anton Wilson
• The (ultra-condensed) Illuminatus! Trilogy
• The fictionalization of Freemasonry
• Model Agnosticism vs. A New Idolatry
  A Critique of Robert Anton Wilson’s The New Inquisition
  
• Finnegans Wake Concordex

The objective profile of the United States, then, may be traced throughout Disneyland, even down to the morphology of individuals and the crowd. All its values are exalted here, in miniature and comic-strip form. Embalmed and pactfied. Whence the possibility of an ideological analysis of Disneyland (L. Marin does it well in Utopies, jeux d’espaces): digest of the American way of life, panegyric to American values, idealized transposition of a contradictory reality. To be sure. But this conceals something else, and that “ideological” blanket exactly serves to cover over a third-order simulation: Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the “real” country, all of “real” America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, which is carceral). Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle.

Jean Baudrillard, who argued that all reality is for us but artifice and simulation, is dead… NYT … IHT … NYSun … Figaro … Reuters … London Times … Guardian … Le Monde … Telegraph

“As his intellectual career developed he disassociated himself from the academic world, particularly the social sciences. He also became a critic of the main forms of western politics and culture, stigmatising the doctrines of democracy and human rights as alibis for increased western penetration, globalisation, and elimination of other cultures (paradoxically after having virtualised its own).

Such radicalism was not accepted by the conventional left because it rejected all forms of political correctness, socialism, feminism, and democratisation.

In person Baudrillard was modest and relaxed, and he preserved an unfailing curiosity about the human dimension and the environment of the modern world.

He was twice married and had two children by his first marriage.

Jean Baudrillard, social theorist and writer, was born on June 20, 1929. He died after a long illness on March 6, 2007, aged 77″ –London Times

	Jean Baudrillard was a Professor of Philosophy of Culture and Media Criticism at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he taught an Intensive Summer Seminar.

Jean Baudrillard, notorious French sociologist, cultural critic, and theorist of postmodernity, was born in 1929 in the northern town of Reims. Son of civil servants and grandson of peasant farmers, Baudrillard was the first in his family to attend university, is an ex- university sociology teacher, and a leading intellectual figure of his time. His early life is influenced by the Algerian war in the 1950s and 60s. Source: EGS website. Put a little Baudrillard in your life:

Baudrillard on the web

S(t)imulacrum(b).

Bibliography.Reality of Simulation: Articles by Baudrillard plus photographs of and by him.

Philosophy and Theory list of links.

“Simulacra and Simulations” by Jean Baudrillard.

The mind of terrorism by Jean Baudrillard

The violence of the Image. by Jean Baudrillard
A narration of Baudrillards “Simulation and Simulacra” spoken over footage from Grand Theft Auto:(more)

The most well-known unknown American artist” died in a suicide drowning 13 January 1995, after a lifetime as unique and perplexing as his art. His suicide, the film proposes, was perhaps his greatest and most mysterious artwork. Can suicide become an artwork? A performance? The idea was troubling. When I’d first heard about it (a call from a friend on the 14 January), I was stunned and saddened. I didn’t understand how someone I knew and adored, who had intrigued me with his words and keen intelligence, and seduced me with his friendship, would or could take his life….

How to Draw a Bunny, like most of Johnson’s collages, is a cryptogram wrapped inside a conundrum. The title is taken from one of Ray’s diagrammatic drawings of his iconic rabbit/duck, a stand-in alter ego. In the film, we learn the “how,” of Johnson’s suicide but not exactly “why,” although we are offered dozens of clues. Source: Matthew Rose, letter from Paris in ART THE MAGAZINE”

The origins of this mysterious Ray Johnson film began many years ago when John Walters a young 16-year-old, soon-to-be PBS fimmaker  began combing the stacks at Book Beat collecting surrealist tomes and rarities, especially on the artist Marcel Duchamp who occupied the central position of  Walter’s interest in artists (and anti-artists).  At some point I mentioned that Ray was giving a midnight performance in the bookstore (one of several, over the 1980s). I don’t know if  Walter’s was able to see Ray’s performance, but his interest  soon morphed into the idea of making a movie several years after the artist swam into oblivion in 1995.

Ray’s performances at the Book Beat were very simple and poetic “non-performances”. For one event Ray simply altered a sign in the front window announcing the performance with large capital  that spelled my name in capital letters bought at a hardware store.  We were having a midnight madness sale at the bookstore and at midnight he placed the adhesive letters on the back of the announcement in the front window:  “Come see Artist Ray johnson tonight at midnight! one performance onlY!” Another time Ray sat in the children’s book section with a bag over his head and recited “I’m not Iggy Pop!” over and over. Once for several days he’d come by with his arm always wrapped up completely with rope, he said something about how his arm was a Christo wrapping. At an informal book signing we had, Ray often signed his name with his right or left hand upside down and backwards. He also had a small clipboard attached to his steering wheel so he could make drawings while he drove. He amassed hundreds of these he kept in the glove box and a small shoebox on the floor of the car.

How to Draw a Bunny is one of the best artist biographies ever put to film. It is one of the few approaches to a difficult subject put into an honest and objective framework. It was awarded a special jury prize at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and the Grand Prix du Public 2002 at the Rencontres Internationales de Cinema in Paris. The film was also nominated for a 2003 Independent Spirit Award. The film soundtrack also reflects the offbeat world of Ray with tracks by Max Roach, Thurston Moore and Destoy All Monsters.

“As both investigated and represented by filmmakers John Walter and Andrew Moore, How to Draw a Bunny is itself a collage of photographs, art works, interviews and letters, home movies and video, that flow at the viewer like a jazz ensemble. With exceptionally toned care and constructions, the filmmakers penetrate into a “rabbit hole of an art world wonderland” and reveals not only an artist’s fragmented life, but also the universe of his peers, friends, critics, and colleagues. With interviews from Roy Lichtenstein and Christo, Chuck Close and James Rosenquist, and the artist himself, the film offers a real understanding of the origins of present-day art and the confusions of the postmodern world, as well as the experience of an artist who wore many different faces and treated the art scene as a game without a prize.” — from the Estate of Ray Johnson website

“Ray Johnson is a natural collagist, one of whose principal activities is bringing disparate entities into conjunction. His collages, especially those made after his period as an American Abstract Artist, have been intermittently exhibited and reproduced in books, catalogs, and magazines. The mid-fifties collages, which incorporate printed images of Elvis Presley and James Dean, are slowly entering the history books, usually as components of the early history of pop art. But Ray Johnson is not to be confined so easily within a single ism. Other of his collages are closer to the raw art of Jean Dubuffet, while displaying a funky inevitability all their own. Others, still, are very lyrical.” — from Clive Philpot’s, THE MAILED ART OF RAY JOHNSON

In 1981, Detroit artist Jim Pallas began his “hitchiker series.” They involved wooden stand-ups of artists and were supposed to be abandoned anywhere (on the road) one year after of they were given to the artist. One of artists in the project was Ray Johnson, who refused to give up the image after the year was up. “I just became attached to it,” Ray said. The story of this strange collaboration can be read at: HITCHICKER RAY JOHNSON

He colored images of Elvis before Warhol did, and his Correspondence School predates the Internet with its concept of open and free distribution of artwork. His dropping of 60 foot-long wieners at an avant-garde art happenings predates the Turkey Drop episode of WKRP In Cincinnat by a good 25 years. — Metro Times

Ray used to phone the bookstore at all hours of the day and night. “Check out The Warhol Diaries, now, page 425, I’ll hold on..” ( his name appeared on that page) or “Nico is dead!” and then he’d hang up…  “did I tell you about that guy I mailed a ham sandwich to… he still has it in his fridge!” …”call Joy Colby and ask her to review my nothing…” Ray worked the phone lines in similar style to the mail art network.

One of Ray’s best friends was the archivist William S. Wilson, who lives now in a small apartment in Chelsea, New York,  totally crammed in with works by his artist mother and a huge Ray Johnson archive dating back to the mid-fifties. Bill has some of the best insights to Ray. Some of Bill’s old home movies of Ray row-boating down a river were included in How to Draw a Bunny. Bill took 13 wonderful black and white photos of Ray Johnson sometime in the late 1960s and wrote an article on Ray’s obsession with the number 13. You can read his article online at Blastitude 13: Ray Johnson and the Number 13.