Letter From Richard

Here is a good piece from Richard. This was a letter to Sharon…

I get so excited I just type stuff… and now I see the mistakes… and I’m sure that when I re-read this, I’ll find just as many mistakes… I want to, but it if very difficult, to express yourself completely.

I really just have to do this… I have to paint…

I don’t want to be “clever” about this, I don’t want to be “decorative” or become “political”… I simply need to be able to afford the materials required… I just need a fuckin’ canvas and I NEED to paint… I really do not want to think about it too much but I do want the feeling of “documenting” all of that stored up anger, angst, and delight and appreciation of even being here. I want to “smear” it all over the place… my own sense of discovery.

Maybe you noticed that I left out poetry…

First of all, I have a very strange relationship with the “verbal”, “linguistic”, “symbolic” arts… I guess that it works kind of like a jealous companion… When I finally get to a point where I can become directly “influenced”, that “art” not only becomes, and involves, me – I get to a point where I don’t want to let it go. I get extremely selfish. I even get to the point where I don’t want to share it with anyone else… I take a possession of “it” -- and I don’t want to discuss it further – it becomes mine and mine alone.

I’ve never been that much a fan of the “Oxford” group; W.H. Auden, etc., -- academics that based their structure on T.S. Eliot, etc. Oh, but I do love Stephen Spender, every once and awhile… and Christopher Isherwood is a good story... I always hated the “Beats”. So contrived in an attempt to be “natural” = “artificial”… I DO love Frank O’Hara though…. I’m actually IN love with him… and have been for a number of years… I know he’s dead, but I’ve found myself exhuming a lot of literary lost loves lately….

When it comes right down to it, I know that I’d better keep my fuckin’ ears open, but as I’m getting older, I want “depictions”, rather than that “clever structure”, I want “honesty”, rather than a “magic” show, I want a gentle “reminder” that we are all here to help each other to find a purpose…rather than a new way, a new “lingo from the street… that = absolutely nothing -- other than a momentary thrill.

Two of my greatest fears:

1. Standing in front of an empty canvass – without tricks – a “planed” canvass – What would I do?
2. Positioning a piece of paper in front of me. This would put me in the “position” of not only adding “depiction” but also “emotion” and “description”…