The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  Larry told me how, in 1948, he had been with Swami and I had called on the phone and Swami had turned to Larry with his eyes full of tears and said, “Chris’s friend is dead.” When Larry told me this I was completely at a loss; I just could not think of any friend who had died around that time. But when I mentioned this to Don he said at once “Denny,”745 and of course that’s who it was. It’s really rather shocking that I shouldn’t have remembered—but I mustn’t think of this, because such thoughts are merely vanity. I am not my tired old clogged-up memory. I must not be vainly ashamed of its lapses.

  Yesterday Jo went to see Swami and he gave her some instructions about meditation. She is still terribly weepy. One sees the appalling power of self-pity, the disgusting obsessive shamelessness of it. Jo hopes subconsciously that we shall report on her condition to Ben and tell him, “You can’t go on doing this to her.” Which is actually why I have such a terrific disinclination to call Ben. One time I did and he started going on about his guilt. “You have to live with the guilt.” At first I thought he was saying “the Guild” and supposed he was mad at the screenwriters’ guild! (God, what an object lesson poor old Jo is! How she keeps reminding me of my great self-pitying period in 1939-1940, when Vernon [Old] said to me, “I can’t be sorry for you because you’re so sorry for yourself.”)

  October 21. I called Ben Masselink yesterday—this was for the third time. He didn’t answer, thank goodness. But I suppose I shall have to go on trying.

  Last week I suddenly had the impulse to begin planned meditation again—that’s to say, meditation according to the instructions Swami gave me all those years ago. I don’t know how long it is since I dropped it, but ages certainly. Now I find it incredibly difficult; there is a terrific resistance. Making japam seems delightful by comparison; such a relief.

  Blue movies last night at Jerry Lawrence’s. Don, Jack [Larson], Jim [Bridges], Gavin and I were all rather disgusted by them, and I think a lot of the others were too. Sometimes they seemed positively absurd. You thought, why in the world would anyone want to do that? Improperly color-photographed, the cock can look really revolting, so raw-red, even a bit reptilian. But of course the truth is that these movies were inept beyond belief. The actors hardly responded to each other at all, and there was no buildup to the beginning of the act, and never any indication of an orgasm. The masturbation movie was the only one which hinted that the act might be even the least little bit pleasant; but it seemed such endless toil.

  The evening before last was much more agreeable. I went to see Byron Trott and his friends at the house they have just moved into on Culver Boulevard. They all seem to have so much fun, with their psychedelic pictures which change colors under the black-light lamps, and their costumes, and their motorcycles. A photo of Bob Dylan with a real hypodermic needle stuck in its arm. The color-changing sign which says LOVE. The Buddha in which, after they had bought it, they found a coin slot. Bill Loskota, the medical student, and Bill Kincheloe, the art student,746 have ridden down Sunset in costumes as Batman and Robin. Byron goes out in the jacket of a suit of evening tails.

  This afternoon, Jack and Jim have just called in great excitement because they have bought a house; 449 Skyway, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I am almost sure this is the house which Jim Charlton took me to see in 1948 when I first met him. In those days the roof kept leaking, despite everything the owner did to stop it—and Wright is supposed to have answered his complaints by saying “Why don’t you just relax and enjoy the house?” The place is said to be in bad repair, and Jack and Jim have got it for only $60,000 with all the furniture, including the furniture which Wright had made for it. (I seem to remember that this furniture was top-heavy and unpractical, and that the owner had had to fix extra supports on to the chairs to prevent them from tipping over. I didn’t tell Jack and Jim this.)

  October 30. This morning Jo says she is going to Hawaii at the end of the week, “to look around.” She will see if she can find work for herself there. Alice Gowland is going with her for a short while, just to keep her company. Meanwhile Ben has written Jo a letter saying how beautiful their life together used to be. At the same time he assures me (over the phone) that he couldn’t possibly go back to live with her, is in fact going to try living with Dee. His letter was apparently just written to relieve his guilt. But at the same time he is obviously enjoying his guilt quite a bit.

  The day before yesterday I spent the whole day in bed, apparently as the result of eating some bad fish at Jack Allen’s restaurant. Being sick has become quite a strange experience for me in these last years and I find I don’t enjoy it any more. I am too old for it. Don was adorably sweet and kind and seemed to get real pleasure out of waiting on me, but I felt uneasy. This is no longer my scene. The days of Sudhira are over definitely. How one changes! Perhaps it’s just because sickness could now so easily be something terminal, and I don’t feel ready for that. I feel, in a way, less ready than ever before, despite all my prayers for help at the hour of death. A terminal sickness means the breaking of your will and the thawing of your heart, and my will has never been tighter nor my heart harder. It is only in my relationship to Don that I can still feel vulnerable, anxious, pliable. Well, that’s a mercy at least. All the more so because, most of the time, he is so sweet and loving. His sweetness only makes me love him all the more—another mercy, certainly, that I’m not in the least afraid of being loved.

  On the other hand, my meditation is dry as the desert. There is a kind of paralysis inside me. I just cannot keep my mind on formal meditation—the omnipresence of Brahman, goodwill toward all men etc. etc.—for even a couple of seconds at a time. Only making japam gives me a sort of cowlike contented ease. Provided I don’t keep at it too long.

  One is one’s reverie, at any given time in one’s life. Mine seems to get more and more possessive; money, comfort, reputation, possessions—and anxiety when these seem threatened, anxiety and rage. It is true that I am pretty contented with what I’ve got, but that’s no great trick. I am awfully lucky, and correspondingly anxious because I know my luck can’t hold.

  A big brush fire, somewhere out beyond Malibu, is blowing smoke over the sea.

  October 31 [Tuesday]. When it got dark you could see the flames clearly. They looked so near that I called Paul [Wonner] and Bill [Brown] to know if they were all right.747 Today the fire is said to be almost out but the air is full of smoke-haze.

  We had supper with Gavin. He praised Rechy’s Numbers very highly, but he hadn’t yet read as far as the part about himself. We didn’t mention this, but are both wondering how he’ll take it.

  On Sunday, after being sick the day before, I happened upon this, from Shaw’s preface to The Doctor’s Dilemma: “Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; and do not outlive yourself.”

  A man named Ronald Platt called this morning from New York, he wants to be the producer of “One Arm” but doesn’t want Jim Bridges as director. He had broken his leg out fox hunting because he or his horse was kicked by the horses of Mrs. William Randolph Hearst Jr. He was indignant because she hadn’t written him to apologize. I told him that was because she was afraid he’d sue her if she admitted it was her fault. I also told him I won’t work on the film without Jim. In the morning mail came a letter from Mike Steen, evidently afraid I may make a deal with Platt before he gets back to New York.

  Meanwhile Jim seems to be getting on with A Meeting, and Ray is nearing the end of composing for Dogskin, and nothing has been heard from the network about “A Christmas Carol.”748 In London tomorrow there will be a meeting of the representatives of the Shaw estate and we hope they will soon come to some decision about Black Girl.

  I forgot to say that James Fox (in town for the weekend) came to supper on Sunday night with Andee [Cohen]. They are said by the press to be about to marry but they didn’t tell us so. James was going back next day to play Gordon Craig opposite Vanessa Redg
rave in a film about Isadora Duncan. He looks older, somewhat lined and ravaged, but still romantic. He was wearing an extremely mod shirt with ruffles from Mr. Fish (I think that’s the name of the shop in London).

  November 2. I had tea with Larry Holt again yesterday. He was concerned because Swami, when he appeared on Les Crane’s show749 on October 24, had publicly admitted that he has had the lower form of samadhi. True, this admission can have meant practically nothing to the vast majority of the viewers. Most of the few people who do vaguely know what samadhi is toss the word around as though the experience were quite usual. But Larry was worried because, as he rightly said, Swami used to be cagey about mentioning spiritual experiences. He cited the example of Ramakrishna, who only revealed himself fully at the end of his life. Is Swami planning to leave the body, Larry wanted to know.

  So I asked Swami this right out, when I went up there for supper later. And of course Swami simply laughed and then apolo getic-ally explained that he had felt obliged to speak of his experience in order to make a distinction between that and the experiences of a taker of lysergic acid or hemp. “But I didn’t describe the experience,” he added. People who keep imputing deep spiritual intentions to Swami understand him very little, I feel. As Don says, “He works on automatic, most of the time.” Of course one may believe—in fact I think one has got to believe—that his actions are often inspired. But I don’t think he is aware of this—I mean, I don’t think he chooses to be aware.

  Last night was Kali puja. It started at 10 p.m. We didn’t stay, even for the beginning of it; we went to a movie instead. I felt guilty about this, but not very. Much later, when we were home again and I was making japam, I felt, “How blessed I am, to be praying,” and I gave thanks, just simply because I was doing that, rather than anything else. This was a moment of insight for me; as a rule I take the act of prayer for granted and complain because I’m not able to pray “properly.” But one should rejoice to be praying at all. Just as someone who has been deprived of food or sex can rejoice that he is eating or fucking—never mind the quality of the food or the sex partner. It is only by Grace that one is even able to perform the act.

  Swami Turiyananda,750 on pleasure: “You want always sunshine and a good time; but remember, all sunshine makes a desert.”

  November 5. Don and I have now stopped drinking for more than a month. We stopped immediately after celebrating Vera’s name day on October 1, though we made an exception and drank a little on the 21st, when Bob Craft celebrated his birthday. We also drank one glass of wine apiece last night, because Tony Richardson was here.

  Tony left this morning for Hawaii, on his way to Japan. He is travelling with a young engineer named Jeremy Fry751 who is attractive and seems nice. Tony looked tired but was in very good spirits and we felt that he is really pleased with the film of The Charge of the Light Brigade, although he wouldn’t quite admit it. His preoccupation seemed to be with the fun he was hoping to have in Waikiki and Tokyo. Nothing was said about the Verlaine-Rimbaud project (which Ken Geist apparently put forward to Woodfall a few days ago, in London) and nothing about the quarrel which James Fox told us Tony has had with John Osborne and nothing about the play Osborne is supposed to have written with Tony as the heavy.752 The only person Tony did attack was Bob Regester; he obviously resents the fact that Neil Hartley is still living with him—all the more so because Neil is in Tony’s good books. He is said to have done marvellous work during the shooting of Charge.

  Igor has been in hospital for the past few days. They have discovered that his supposed gout is really the effect of a thrombosis. His condition is serious.

  Jo left for Hawaii yesterday, as planned, with Alice Gowland.

  On the 3rd I spent the day at Long Beach State College and gave three talks, or rather, question-answering sessions. I came away feeling more than usually a fake. This kind of encounter with the students seems so futile. And they obviously thought so too, although many of them quite enjoyed it, I think. One big red-headed boy, a bit like Kin Hoitsma, actually asked me how it felt to be in my position, if I believed I was really answering their questions, if I was interested in the questions at all, and so forth.

  The wife of one of the professors told me that I looked exactly like her father, who was of German descent and who had died at the age of sixty-five in an automobile accident. He was a libra, however, not a virgo.

  They told me that many of the students are older people and married; they commute from their homes. Long Beach State is noted for drug-taking; lysergic acid and pot. They have little interest in baseball or football, surf a lot, attend fewer dances than formerly. Chief interest is in politics, conservatives and liberals pretty evenly balanced. Plenty of protest against the draft.

  As far as I was concerned, most of the questions asked me were about drugs, Hindu philosophy and the psychology (not the technique) of writing.

  I came home depressed—by the ugliness of the place, the multiplication of people and cars, the seeming hopelessness of their lives. But Don said I was really depressed because my audiences weren’t larger! Anyhow, I haven’t been feeling at all depressed in general, lately. And, much as I hate to admit it, laying off drink makes you far more energetic. People keep saying how well I look—by which they mean that my face is no longer puffy. As for Don, he is almost ready to decide to give up drinking altogether.

  November 11. The following things have happened; I’ll just mention them first because I’m not sure how much I shall have time to write this evening—I want to watch Night People753 on television in fifteen minutes:

  Ted has flipped again and is in prison. Jennifer made a suicide attempt, the night before last. Don has had a serious row with John Rechy because of the portraits of us in Numbers.

  Ted started to go crazy on the 8th, right after he and Ted Cordes had moved into a new apartment together. The excitement seems to have done it. Then a cop stopped him and asked for his driver’s license and he didn’t have it and tried to walk away. (Not in order to escape, Ted says, but to go and see his mother—a short walk because this happened on Harold Way.) So then the cop came after him, and Ted said, “Don’t you touch me,” and threatened him with a ballpoint pen, and the cop did touch him, threw him down on the ground. So now he’s in jail and no one will bail him out. Don is very anxious that he shall stay there until he is sane again, because if he’s bailed out he’ll most probably get into even worse trouble. Today there seems some possibility that his psychiatrist can at least get him moved into a mental home—but will he stay there?

  Jennifer is in the Mt. Sinai Hospital and said to be quite out of danger and very much ashamed of herself. She was found in the water below Point Dume, after telephoning her doctor to tell him that she had taken a lot of sleeping pills and was going to throw herself off the cliff. We sent her a note, “Next time you go swimming please give us a call first.” Hope she takes this in the spirit in which it was meant.

  As for John Rechy, Don has told him that he wants John to take Don’s drawing of John off the jacket of the next edition, if there is one, because the presence of the drawing and of Don’s name on the book make it just that much more obvious that “Tony Lewis” is supposed to be Don and “Sebastian Michaels” me.

  (I can’t concentrate sufficiently to go on writing this during the commercials, so will continue later, or tomorrow.)

  November 12. Don as he got out of bed this morning, “The Old Cat—unclaimed baggage.”

  Bill Inge came in to see me this morning, to bring me a play and a story he has written. He seems depressed and a bit paranoid. He harps on betrayals of friendship, by Chancellor Murphy,754 for example, and George Cukor. Talks of going to live in Australia— as most of us do nowadays from time to time.

  A short while ago, Majl Ewing died. Yesterday the head of the English Department at UCLA, Bradford Booth, called to offer me the job of taking over Ewing’s class on modern English literature. This may have been a routine matter of finding a replacement. Or i
t may have been a deliberate gesture—for Ewing, according to Evelyn Hooker, never forgave me for my remarks about him at the time of Dylan Thomas’s visit in April 1950 and always blocked any invitation to me to lecture by the English department.755

  I don’t know if I have mentioned Marshall Bean, a man who has frequently written to me from 12 Emerson Avenue, Saco, Maine. He described himself as a schoolmaster who was dying of cancer. He said he loved my books and wanted to hear from me. He always wanted letters in handwriting not typescript, although I’d explained to him that my arthritis makes prolonged handwriting painful, and he always sent stamped and addressed envelopes. Don was the first to become suspicious. Now I hear that some letters which sound like the ones I wrote Bean are offered for sale by a dealer named Paul Richards, in Brookline, Massachusetts. Maybe this is because Bean has really died. Or maybe this is a racket for getting autographs and the cancer is only pretence. If so, as I remarked to the man who told me (his name is Bill Amboden(?)756 and I met him in Needham’s Bookshop) Bean must be dead to all superstition. The letters are being offered for around forty-five dollars each.757

  (What follows, about my trip up to San Francisco and Santa Cruz, is based on notes I made from day to day in a pocket book.)

  November 24 [Friday]. Am airborne, having taken off at 3:10 p.m. for San Francisco in a PSA758 plane. The squeezed shore area of houses seems insignificant as soon as you turn in over the barren soot-brown mountains. To the east the valley beyond is pale blue, streaked with white skeins of cloud and absolutely featureless like sea or sky. All along the horizon the pinkish white snow of the Sierras. Every color in this view is pale and dirty and seemingly smog stained.