Jay to Bee

by Janet Frame

  I’m looking forward to Yaddo where I shall be able to walk outside in the woods in the snow and I expect that my new novel will be filled with snow. I am comforted and enclosed by my preliminary vision and I shall try desperately to keep it whole while I reach out to find the words but I know from experience its depressing fragility. Did you ever read a story by William Saroyan, ‘The Sunday Zeppelin’, in which some children see an advertisement trying to sell a zeppelin with an illustration of two children away up in the sky inside their zeppelin, calling out, Goodbye World. And when they send for the actual thing it turns out to be made of tissue-paper and it tears the first time they try to use it.

  Lolo (the Sumatran visitor) said that for many many years his tribe was forbidden to make any music. Music and dancing were exclusively religious and when the Dutch missionaries came to the country, as they forbade the practice of animism they also forbade the practice of music, and dancing. One can’t believe that the missionaries were entirely obeyed, but the story is still of desolation and murder.

  No limericks today.

  I look often at your and Paul’s catalogue—I wish I had seen all the photographs in the gallery. More of this in another letter: I mean that I am trying to describe their effect in words, just because I like to do this. I hope an angel continues to guard your work.

  I’m enclosing a Dunedin picture, not very good. It’s near where I live.

  J

  11. until 30th December, c/o Money, (Baltimore) from January 3rd until February 18th, c/o Yaddo after that whoopee.

  Dear Bill,

  Hello again. It was wonderful to hear your voice in the wilderness. It’s very early morning, outside is cold with a sprinkling of snow with more promised, inside is too warm.

  John Money is getting ready to fly away for Christmas. His Sumatran friend flew away yesterday—he was a nice gentle quiet man, a nuclear physicist who will return in a couple of years to his village and tribe and primitive living. I wonder what will become of him. Indirectly, you have made his life more fruitful, Bill. I’ve been spending much time listening to music and tinkering (ghastly word but accurate description) at the piano—I do miss your music (and you) terribly—and Lolo joined in the interest, and now he is returning to his midWestern University and its pretty lonely life, he is going to study the piano in his spare time.

  I have received what is usually called the ‘Yaddo information’. It is so full of dire warnings and promises of peril that I wonder if this is not a psychological device to prepare the artists to do their best work?

  Quote:

  in this bad weather it is important for guests to get there no later than three. Taxis, in bad driving weather, often refuse to come inside the grounds and this makes for real difficulties . . . we ask guests who are in the early stages of a cold to please delay their arrival until there is no danger to other guests . . .

  And so on. A dangerous place, Yaddo. I shall have a little more privacy than when I was there before as they are giving me an artist’s (painter’s) studio outside.

  I’ve had an eloquent fan letter from a French student who is writing a thesis on my work. It is hard to know what to say in reply, particularly as one always has in mind the perfection of Rilke’s replies to the young poet. This young man is now inspired to become a writer. He asks me—‘If you could send me an advice which could be put across the untrue and traffic-jammed roads of literature, pointing to the darkest lanes leading to the essential and deepest part of man it would be a landmark, a milestone, a witness tree in my future . . .’ What can one say to that?

  I’ve also had a letter from the representative of the ‘anonymous business group’ in New Zealand, reminding me that my budget seems very strictly minimal . . .

  I’m still on Pacific Time. Ewig.a

  German word for eternity—common in Rilke and Goethe

  I played a Hindemith Horn Concerto; and of course every day I play [in margin: Lili Kraus plays it!] a little Schubert. The only Sonata here, the A Major is beautiful. I play the Impromptus over and over and each time I discover so much in them and I change my allegiance from one to the other. They are true poems. Instead of having total allegiance to the feelings aroused by the music I now feel moved by special groups of notes and by the silence between changes from one note-mass to another. Well, they’re all heartbreakers. I remember that when my sister’s small son began to learn to play the piano he said, Mummy why do my eyes get all prickly when I play the piano and hear the music?

  Down with sentiment. Up with so much.

  More later. I must wash.

  I’ll even look around for The Heart of Darkness . . .

  I have just received a cable from N.Z. telling me that Pocket Mirror has won the yearly award for literary achievement—200 dollars.

  Blah blah

  What are you doing what are you

  painting how is the piano are there

  still butterflies is the new fir

  tree growing does the Pacific

  still flow Ned likewise

  are you alive and real is my

  constant communication too

  constant say hello to Paul

  who is very wise have you

  had your laughter ration

  every day

  That was a lovely walk

  we 3 had in the hills among

  the mountain lions and the

  live oaks and I think often

  of it and I like your paintings on the wall. The nude group in

  a circle on a hill top—is it twilight

  12. as from Yaddo, but really now from Baltimore where the wind is raging outside

  Hello Bill,

  I was very happy to get the letters and to know that your work is—well I don’t know how to finish that sentence . . . I like to hear about it and I really do study the catalogues I have here. I agree with most of what Jo says in her write-up, except the idea that it is ‘devoid of the tragic view of life’: for instance the painting, Muscatine Diver, is full of agony and helplessness. There is the trust that Jo writes of but it is the trust of man in his own helplessness, and surely this is a view into or out of a place of tragedy . . . don’t mind my inflated meanderings. I feel this, though. I suppose you have to bear with what people say of your work. Remember we were talking of Francis Bacon and his distorted mirror-faces? It occurs to me that they’re also people caught in a world without gravity (g), in wind-tunnels of outer space—are there winds in outer space?

  In your paintings people grow like plants out of their surroundings, they are their surroundings, and as with the woman and the dog (this is how I see that) they divide into different species and still be part one of the other. In the scene of the woman and the deer the woman is the deer and the deer is the tree.

  In Paul’s paintings the objects seem to be gifts or visitors out of the sky, perfectly formed as the egg is perfectly formed, a life-gift or visitor. Gifts stay or are retrieved by the giver; visitors leave. Paul traps them in bottles and glasses and in a human skull; in postcards and books and sometimes just in an area of colour—or on a crucifix: I think this is very exciting.

  Now read on:

  Christmas came and went. I was alone in the house with a cheesecake and every few hours I hacked at it until it gradually diminished. I enjoyed the quietness. Jo called from South Hadley and as usual had a delightful tale—how Rural Violence trapped her in the basement when she was hanging out her undies, offered her a huge glass of whisky which she drank and then she was drunk for three days . . . Elnora called from Philadelphia where she was surrounded by people, I think, a nephew of eight and a niece of four. She seemed to be engaged in playing chasing games and my imagination quailed at the thought of her rushing up and down the stairs chasing and being chased, as she said was happening. I’m going to New York on Tuesday and I’ll be with Elnora until I’m due at Yaddo on January 5th.

  I look forward to getting a New Year portrait! Mine may be delayed—well I don’t know how long they
take to print & I haven’t put in my choice yet.

  You’re right about F. in the W. (my way of saying lewdly Faces in the Water). I mean it’s written & that’s that. Were I writing it today I should make many changes. You may not believe this but I purposely omitted much & ‘toned’ it down so as not to make it too grim. I haven’t read it for years but I remember the people I wrote of and thinking of them from time to time I am still moved by their plight. I think that was hardest—to see so much suffering.

  Enough.

  I’m sending you a copy of the story that will be in the New Yorker some time, I don’t know when. The funny marks, including the E at the top are merit marks, I suppose, & E is lowest. They’re holding it because it is not a fashionable story—I think.

  O to be in Santa Barbara, not in Baltimore,

  for whoever wakes in Santa Barbara sees through the patio door,

  dear cunning Ned about to shower

  his urine on the paradise flower.

  And after morning when mid-morning follows

  & the vitamins have been taken in swift swallows,

  see where the apricot-cat becomes a menace

  to Ned as he contemplates the stones of Venice.

  Love

  J

  JANUARY/YADDO

  The arrival of Janet’s muse, part man, part woman, part bird, part cat, made in a collage drawing game.

  “Thank you for the inspired drawing of my muse . . .” [Letter 19]a

  Illustration based on a parlour game that involved several participants drawing on a folded sheet of paper.

  13. Elnora’s Place January 1970 (handwritten)

  Dear Bill,

  Your curious (black & white) drawing arrived today and shall be appropriately framed whereupon you & Paul & collaborators go down in history. Your letter was a delight, also the communication from the Alters Art Gallery, also the extraordinary evidence that Ned is beginning to express himself in English & that his number work (as his calendar sensitivity) is commendable. The rewards of your training him must be uplifting to your body and soul.

  Meanwhile I write from New York in a bit of a daze and haze from Elnora’s womb-like apartment where she lies most hours enveloped in sleep, in human hibernation—I guess the only way to resist the world & its pressures. We’ve had fun, in her waking hours; her New Year meal was delicious & it was when I was sodden with black-eyed peas, corn bread & salt pork hocks, collard greens, that I whispered my timid hello into the N.Y.—L.A. telephone line. O to be in . . . . etc.

  My publisher has given me a copy of one of his magnificent books, for Christmas: Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry & as Braziller was the only one in his office I was able to help myself to some of my books which he fetched from the store room: 2 Pocket Mirrors. I gave one to Elnora. Would you like one? And another I’ll give to Jo. Next week I get the galleys of my ‘shocking, wildly comic, lyrical, tragic,’ etc. etc. etc. book & if I can I will treat the editor who wrote the blurb with my new kind of Death Ray—I’m awfully sorry but the bottom has fallen out of the Peedauntal Business and I can’t for the life of me understand why, or what happened, or whether it was my business acumen that failed or simply the cheap material used in the manufacture of the peedauntals.

  I’ve gone into the Death & Thought-Ray business, quite modestly, and I still offer the deluxe limited line of Peedauntals. My Death Ray will be useful for editors who write blurbs and, later, for critics. It may help at Yaddo also. I know it’s not a very original product but my advisers recommend (through a spokesman of course) that I be conservative in my business interests. Thought-Rays, Feeling Rays, Death-Rays have (apparently) a steady market. So far, I’m the only one I know who uses them—at least my model which has many extras & a hi-fi tuning device & people-selector. It can fit, of course, like any small object or animal—say, raccoons & suchlike—into any pocket or recess & that’s the beauty of it, the users say.

  Enough of news of the dull work-a-day world. Here is a curious (handwritten) verse.

  He wore gold braid. His blood shone

  like urine in the sun. He was afraid

  of water, fire and heart transplant,

  of mountains higher than seven thousand feet.

  Yet unbuttoning his handmade overcoat,

  he rode furiously down Thrillstreet.

  New York has a special chill in its air, & skies today were high, clear and blue & I rode the bus downtown and back & that’s the local colour and now I’ll sleep for it is past midnight.

  Elnora gave me her autobiographical manuscript to read. It’s very moving in its detailed record of the indifference & insensitivity shown by otherwise ‘nice’ people, & its account of her father’s struggle to die.

  These stars represent my broken thought-processes. Elnora’s family is arriving from Philadelphia today & her daughter will be home too & peaceful (?) Yaddo beckons.

  I’m posting Jo’s rock (glittering) to her today. As Elnora may have told you she loved the ring.

  a typographical fixation

  Love to Paul

  Love to Ned the sly one

  These are also suns and pine-needles and mutilated spokesmen, cords of wood & thistledown-heads & tumbleweed going nowhere. I had in mind to write you a slick New York verse (‘I sit in one of the dives of 52nd St.’ W.H.A.) and may, from Yaddo where I will read the Mallarmé poem also.

  14. New York January 4 (postcard)

  This is a reminder from Elnora and me.

  Written in haste. More from Saratoga Springs, in detail.

  Nice phone call but phones scare me.

  15. Yaddo January 6

  Hello Bill,

  First, the monotonous theme without variations—I miss you, miss you.

  Next, I’ve just disposed of my lunch, at eight forty-five a.m., and look forward to a long day’s work with perceptions sharpened by increasing hunger, or that is how it should happen, except that some time during the day I’ll probably fall asleep on the cane chaise longue, blanketed and sheeted and pillowed, in the corner of this vast light studio. Oh, I am so privileged—I have a wall thermostat to adjust room heat; I have five tables and one small long low table, chairs, book cases, an adjustable easel of the kind that Hyde Solomon told me he introduced to Yaddo (he has been a kind of adviser for many years on art, artists and equipment) and another easel like the one you had in your studio at MacDowell where you could pin sheets of paper to work on; numerous lights from all angles; a washbasin and john/can or whatever you call it, with, so far, no mice working lace patterns on the toilet paper.

  You could be here painting.

  Over in West House I have a nice bedroom and bathroom with my window looking out on the woods a few feet away and the deep deep snow—I walk through snowbanks five feet high to get to my studio fifteen yards from the house. The snow squeaks like icing sugar when you walk on it, and it is full of sparkles.

  There are six guests here, none of whom I’ve met before: a raving old man who arrived yesterday and spoke in a loud voice throughout dinner (served at one table where the Secretary and the Director and his wife also dine); a smooth dark plump man who described his son’s third birthday and decided the human race will not become extinct (a Basil the Gloom topic hung around the dinner-table), a woman, maybe in her forties, personable, intelligent, dull; another woman, a Sylvia, rather like an alternative version of Sylvie—as if there’d been many cast and put out at stations and colonies through the world—she seems more thoughtful and less jovial than the other guest; and a young painter (black) whose first one-man show has just opened in New York. And J.F. Oh for the babies of MacDowell!

  Meanwhile, back in New York . . . I enjoyed being at Elnora’s place though her constant hibernation is rather alarming and she seems to have got herself a massive escape through sleep and tranquillisers and sleeping pills. I’m quite a keen sleeper myself so I enjoyed the rest, especially after my rather nasty Baltimore life, but I couldn’t help worrying about Elnora’s condition. I�
��m hoping she’ll be able to get the last fifty pages of her very moving book finished. I think it’s good, and real, and it’s clearly been harrowing to write. Her daughter, by the way, in answer to my question about what replaces ‘groovy’ has said, ‘out-a-site’ is the word. So now you and Paul can be with it, groovy, turned on and in by labelling everything ‘out-a-site’ . . .

  Jo called on my last night at New York and Elnora and I were delighted. Jo said she had been trying to get to Yaddo for March but there’s no probable vacancy until May. She would make the place live a lot. I felt pretty depressed to think, suddenly, that as soon ahead as then, and before, I’ll be ‘out of this world’; it’s a grim thought.

  Meanwhile, back in Yaddo, I’ve robbed the poetry shelves and set myself up very comfortably here and I’ll be able to enjoy the music on the pornograph and read through Art News that goes back to the early nineteen fifties, and other journals. I’ve put Ned’s photo near, and the little cream-man from South America also stands near—maybe I’m out-a-site but who cares—if you send me your photo I won’t display it of course but it would be nice to have . . . rush across and drop it in the Santa Barbara P.O. . . . I have washed, and walked in the sparsely-falling snowflakes. Don’t mind my writing letters to you! My thoughts are more often than not in Hermosillo Drive.

  The kind of snow falling today is that where the snowflakes are so isolated they don’t know what to do except twirl round and round and melt before they land on the pavement, the wind blowing them in a distracted way. I love the grey in the sky.