And yet his mother was also the one on whom Gray later hung his romantic troubles, concluding that her devouring need, particularly during her breakdowns, obliterated his sense of self and his ability to make a lasting connection with a woman. He also blamed his distant father for instilling in him a sense of longing. In a 1991 recording of one of his therapy sessions, Gray complained too that his father had “indoctrinated” him into drinking, by the example he set with his “controlled alcoholism.” Like his father, Gray turned to alcohol to enliven daily life, but his relationship with it was more combative. “Drink was a land to my father,” Gray once wrote on a scrap of paper, “but produced the emotions in me I saw in Mom.” In holding on to these claims, even cherishing them, Gray remained, in large part, his parents’ child—their sad, yearning boy—throughout his life.
At fifteen, Gray was sent to Fryeburg Academy, a boarding school in Maine, in an attempt to bring his grades up and straighten him out. Gray was dyslexic—though, in 1956, he was simply considered slow. He had never been a good student, failing most of his classes at the public school in Barrington while wandering about with a group of wayward local boys who drank too much. But things changed for him at Fryeburg. His grades improved, he became captain of the soccer team, and in his final year there he discovered acting. As a senior, he was cast in The Curious Savage, a play written by John Patrick that takes place in a mental hospital.
“The character I was trying out for had delusions of grandeur. Not only did he believe he was Hannibal; he thought he could play the violin, but he couldn’t,” Gray recalled in his 1980 monologue A Personal History of the American Theater. “When I read [for the audition], I read relentlessly, the way I perceived the text, one word at a time. And I got the role because they thought that I was doing this really effective reading.” Gray even credited this play with giving him his first hint of needing an audience. In his Personal History monologue, he also told the story of opening night: there was a rug onstage that had not been there during rehearsals; when Gray saw the squares in the pattern of it, he was inspired to hopscotch through them. The audience fell into uproarious laughter. Gray was delirious.
After Fryeburg, Gray briefly attended Boston University. Upon learning in the first semester that he would not be allowed in the theater department because of his lack of experience, he transferred to Emerson College. There, Gray played his first leading roles, in Molière’s Misanthrope and William Congreve’s Way of the World. He also discovered that due to his dyslexia, he could learn more from listening—as opposed to reading—and began to borrow Shakespeare’s plays on records from the library. He continued this habit throughout life, checking out recordings of his favorite writers from the library and listening to them at night.
Over time, Gray outgrew the notion that he was “slow” and not a good student, labels that had been assigned to him as a child; he became passionate about theater and books, especially those that broadened his understanding of himself. “The intellectual turn-on for him happened when he entered Emerson,” his brother Rockwell explained. “A lot of it was fueled by the excitement he felt in getting a hang of the theater … He was reading really major, rich stuff in literature and psychology and philosophy. Norman O. Brown, Sartre. Ambitious reading. It was a changing image of him, so it took me time to realize it … It’s touching to think back on it, his openness and curiosity and his desire to be helped or given leads to get into something.”
After he graduated from Emerson, Gray got a series of different acting jobs. He was the resident actor at Smith College in Massachusetts. He performed at the Theater by the Sea in New Hampshire and the Orleans Theater on Cape Cod, among other places, and in 1965 he landed a role in John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore at the Caffè Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Elizabeth LeCompte, known to friends as Liz, was a twenty-one-year-old waitress at the Caffè Lena—a coffeehouse with an adjoining loft that served as a theater—and a student at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. In addition to waiting tables, LeCompte helped out with the theatrical events. She worked on lighting and appeared occasionally in a performance that required an ingenue. LeCompte met the twenty-four-year-old Gray at the Caffè Lena, and they soon began a romantic relationship.
LeCompte would become the first great love of Gray’s life. He once described a fictional character he’d based on her as “the kind of woman who, in the old days when everyone got married, would have made a very beautiful bride.” When Gray was fifty-four, nearly twenty years after he and LeCompte had parted ways, he recorded a series of dreams he’d had about her in his journal. “The image that stuck with me was of how strong, young and beautiful Liz’s face was,” he wrote upon waking from one of these dreams. “It was tight and angular and had all that courage in it that I was once so attracted to.”
As Gray was becoming involved with LeCompte, his mother was experiencing her second major mental collapse in Rhode Island. In 1964, in order to be closer to his work, Rockwell senior had sold the family house in Barrington and moved, with his wife, to a house in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. In doing so, they moved to the other side of Narragansett Bay, a setting that Gray’s mother, who had lived by the water her entire life, was deeply attached to. She was an excellent swimmer and relied, in many ways, on the views from their old house that looked out on the ocean.
While in East Greenwich, Gray’s mother lost her footing and was never able to recover it. She was on the phone often to her Christian Science practitioner, repeating the mantras of the religion to herself in an effort to keep hold of her mind. Gray stayed with his mother for a time during this period, throughout his early twenties, when he was home in between various theatrical forays. She threatened suicide, even asking Gray if she should take her life by locking herself in the car and leaving it running.
“Somehow in the middle of all this, I managed to get myself to New York to audition for the Alley Theatre [in Houston, Texas] and some voice, perhaps a voice of self-preservation, told me to go and I went,” Gray once told an audience at his alma mater, Emerson College. “My first flight on a plane. A Delta night flight. Before I went, Mom had some coherent farewell. She wished I were acting in Providence—so she could get to see me—and not so far away in Texas.”
At twenty-five years old, Gray went to work at the Alley Theatre with the hope of getting his Equity card. Meanwhile, LeCompte was in her last year at Skidmore. The couple, Gray and LeCompte, made plans to meet in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, once they’d finished their respective obligations.
MARCH 1, 1967
[At the Alley Theatre, where Gray appeared in small roles in Arnold Perl’s World of Sholom Aleichem and Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Physicists, among other plays]
Many thoughts about growing old, older women and Liz…. the back of my arms are smooth and white like a young boy’s … the sky is a spring sky and we are moving … moving the raw air dances. The time goes by without me realizing it. It may be that I’ve gone so far into dwelling on myself that I’m not hip to anything that goes on around me. I remember how that happened to mom. I know that I’m still alright because I still love, and have, the sky, the seasons, the ocean. If things get any worse, I can go to them and they will take me in. As long as someone can do this, he’s free from suicide.
Although I’m still very much involved with problems of EXTREMISM and one track mind…. fears about not being able to act again once I see mexico…. fears that any contact with the “real” world will turn me away from theatre, I’m not sure. There is a chance that it could bring me closer in the sense that theatre is only a portrayal of all life. If it’s the hide away acting bag you want, then that’s one thing but if it’s the stage of life … people-theatre, that’s another thing … you can go anywhere. I’m still trying to filter too much out of life…. be selective, but be openly, and thoughtfully, selective … what do you like…. what do you want and take it.
I’m coming more to the conclusion that I must pursu
e my acting because I really don’t know where I stand talent wise, and it is not now a problem of getting acting “out of my system” as much as it’s a question of finding out how capable I am.
Also, be careful when considering N.Y.C. What is it I want there, and what do I believe in. (Perhaps the essential item that brings us through this life is: a sense of humor) Thoreau says that what all men really want is what is real—but I’m not sure that this is true. I’m also not sure that I know what is REAL. I think it has a lot to do with the ocean, the stars, swimming and dying. It’s not reflected upon—it is just done.
One of the things I’ve discovered about my acting (which I like) is my not jumping right into a role and infecting it with all sorts of preconceptions but rather letting the role teach me a bit first. Come on to it slowly and not make a big display of preconceived ideas. You grow to it and let it grow to you.
What really upsets me in these past days is the problem of extreme elation—it’s the extreme part of it which is hard to endure, it is exhausting and I hope that it will soon pass and not leave me at the bottom of a well. I see so much in everything I see or touch. I just can’t get enough of life. The sky tonight was life like the end of the world—the dinner tasted so good—I will explode…. I want to embrace the whole world. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this way before. It makes me somewhat afraid because I know its not lasting. I long to get on some level ground. I can hardly carry a conversation with anyone because I am so distracted by all that’s going on about me … the smallest things GAS me. They overcome me (the cat being caught in the curtain, this yellow flower in a glass on my table, the air mail envelopes, the Morton Salt shaker, the blues and yellows) I don’t want to call it a trip but…. I feel like I’m on a roller coaster and there are all these levels of reality, all these realities that I’m riding through and what a fantastic ride. There must be a time for it to stop … I must pull myself out—I must be the driver.
I see so clearly the potential of joy and horror in the same object, or being. As I sit here looking at my kitten’s face, I see and realize what fantastic cubistic distortions it can take or horror blocks of some wild and fevered cat woman. All things contain this potential. I may select them.
I have an idea for a play
“THE DRESSING ROOM”
tape a series of dressing room conversations and then try to stage it—after they go through all their chit chat and make up, have them step out to no audience. The end of their world is the beginning of another. As I take off my make up, life begins.
I didn’t sleep much had many pleasant visions of dogs and cats (my kitten slept with me). Strange dreams like “Juliet of the Spirits” [a 1965 Federico Fellini film]. I was wandering through a large home smoking grass, and avoiding people. Suddenly I realized who the people were that I wanted for friends. Things seemed warm and good. The other dream was about bill and I in bed. Marie walked in on us just as he was screwing me (good pleasure) I said to him—oh no, Marie has walked in. Soon the cries rang through the halls and people ran to stand around our bed, to taunt scorn us. A lot of dumb young tough kids were there along with Mrs. Watts who kept howling with laughter. As bill and I lay in bed (side by side) I realized that I was right and the others wrong. I gave Mrs. Watts a great speech about being a Humanitarian and not laughing. Then I turned to the boys and said that I was not interested in them and if I happened to have a liking for bill, that was my business. I did not feel ashamed.
MARCH 7, 1967
I’m coming more and more to the conclusion that I could never go on the stage every night and fake emotions—if I had another life it would be another thing.
But I regret to say that I have only one life to give and will not be given exclusively to the stage. I want to teach and have my summers off. I want to give and take. I cannot see how actors can be normal … goddamn that’s madness …
It could be that theatre is just a vehicle I’ve used for coming into consciousness.
It strikes me that the big “made it people” in theatre and business, make it because they have learned how (NOT ENDURE) to turn themselves off to compassion. If one has second thoughts about compassion he may “lose out” … Mr. Gray—watch yourself because you, yourself do not yet know how to live with people.
While in college, I led a very narrow life and now that I’m out, I’ve discovered I’d like to find out more about other people in other worlds and I just have not had the time to do it. That’s one of the reasons I’m so frustrated and plan on staying in New York next year.
suddenly had a most important flash—that I have nothing to do with my parents—they will pass just as I will—we will all pass into nothing.
If I could do a perfect thing…. to take time for perfection—in photography, one can perhaps perfect an imperfect world … make form out of chaos … a good feeling to make and create the perfection of an image YES…. I shall go after this with all my being. It will be my single stand.
Good God!! now that I’m leaving and look back at that experience with the Alley, I know I can never ever…. NEVER spend a season in regional theatre again. I’ve been in prison for a year and because I’ve had no time to do (have had time to think, more than enough) yes TO DO there has been no action in my life. I feel now like a vegetable and can only hope that my Mexican experience will bring me out of it. I do not know how these womb seekers do it here. They have to be very sick. I’m not so fed up with theatre as an art form as I am with the way it is carried out.
Gray left for Mexico in the spring of 1967. Having grown restless and frustrated with traditional theater but still grasping for self-expression, he decided to study photography—he was interested in taking portraits of children—and write poetry. “It was really a dreadful summer,” Gray said, remembering this period of his life during his talk at Emerson years later. “I was really running away from my mother. I should’ve been back dealing with her nervous breakdown … my father was kind of left to handle the whole thing.”
[Gray’s journals are not dated from this time]
My dear Familia,
This country is beautiful! There’s no way that I can put it into words: only to say that the faces of the people have a sense of peace, that they sing and smile. Yesterday a friend and I, while driving back from Patzcuaro, drove through these wonderful mountains, a great grey rain storm on either side of us and the sun setting in front of us. The landscape! I hope to have some good pictures for you because I’m now working with two cameras, one black and white, the other, color. Also, I’ve decided to stay in San Miguel for at least a month and have registered at the Instituto Allende where, beginning tomorrow, I’ll be taking a course in Spanish and Photography. Please send all mail care of Instituto Allende DR. HERNANDEZ MACIAS SAN MIGUEL de ALLENDE The night is brushing in from the hills and the town is ringing goodnight.
[This letter is written into Gray’s journals, suggesting it was not sent.]
that the first time you know about love and how it feels to love is in the HOME I how now KNOW
Oh yes, I write a letter or two to my parents but what I say to them is not me but a reflection of all they’ve underneath persisted and desired for.
Spalding Gray, a bunch of experience with no roots no “who you ares” Spalding Gray in Mexico—but what is he, who is he and why has he come so far from Boston and Saratoga?
I know now, more than ever, that I must get back to the east and root myself in something that has meaning to me, or I’m lost.
*What a pleasure it is to stop time with a camera.
Around a corner, a gust of wind and whoosh there before you is a fantastic brown girl against a yellow wall!
Yes, I think I may want to become a photographer.
TO MAKE A FILM is important to me.
That was it…. the disappointment about my mother’s nervous breakdown—I guess I really wanted to believe she had something “going” for her…. something that would stun others—you know…. just make it
Last night I had the mild realization that I’m beginning to live more and more on the “middle road”—i.e. less tortured fears of the turbulent poet, one who was great but alas went mad—perhaps Hemingway and H. Crane saw their death in their life…. I’m coming to believe that I am like many people—an ego not quite so big….. I think now that I want very much to live.
In an essay Gray wrote about this time, he described an experience he had in Mexico, before LeCompte arrived, when he smoked marijuana with his neighbor Olaf, “a drifting Norwegian who was always playing ‘Ruby Tuesday’ top volume on his stereo.” Afterward, Gray looked at the fire that was roaring in Olaf’s fireplace and had a vision. “Right in the center of the highest flames and being wrapped and devoured by them,” Gray wrote, “was a terrified woman sitting straight up in bed.”
AUGUST 8, 1967
August 8 after arriving home from Mexico—
have been told that my mother has killed herself my father asked me to pick up her ashes at the post office tomorrow—“a box,” he said, “Would you pick it up, because it’s probably your mother.”……
I could go mad too…. in the ice box I found green jello made by a woman who was my mother and is now dead…. but she would come to the car in the morning and keep him, make him twenty minutes late for work…. he could not get rid of her….
The Journals of Spalding Gray Page 3