Drawing (486) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP
"Brooklyn, 1975, 240 President Street. A sofa bed complete with cushions floating upwards into weightlessness, a fan set to zero and a woman in a black dress whose braceleted arm is stuck to the plastic covering of the armchair. Zero gravity. On the tour of Morocco that Paul Bowles undertook with Aaron Copland at the start of the 30s, the former admitted in Fez that he wasn’t able to share the latter’s enthusiasm for the country. He said there was nothing new for him there, he’d already seen and heard equivalent things back on President Street in Brooklyn when he was a child. Places can speak to one person, but remain silent for others. I had no idea where I’d ended up, although I knew I was at considerable risk of going mad in this place, just like Nelson Dyar did in Tangiers in 1951. Later, Jacques Levy and Bob Dylan told the story of Joseph Gallo, known as Crazy Joey, on Desire, who was born there and carried to his grave there too. Even more than an experiment, life seemed to me like a forced research exercise." (From: arsenal, july 2021)
(1975)