(above, with David Hockney on the grounds of Glyndebourne. 1978.)
My first trip to London was during another April in 1978 when I was 22 years old. I flew over on the budget airline that Freddie Laker had founded in the 1960s and was accompanying my then boyfriend Tor Seidler, who was beginning his career as a now renowned and awarded children’s book author, and David Hockney, who had agreed to illustrate Tor’s first book, The Dulcimer Boy. I remember being touched by David’s also agreeing to fly with us on that airline because he could have afforded a first-class ticket on British Airways and been pampered, in the airy ways of the Brits, for being who he is but there he was in a three-seat row with Tor and me. I also remember how hot it was and rather stifling in that plane during the flight and how I felt I could read David’s always busy mind which had come to rest on the number of words that matched the cramped seats we had in our row: fuck Freddie Laker.
Henry Geldzahler, who had been the Curator of American Art at the Met and then its first Curator of 20th Century Art and was then in 1978 Mayor Koch’s Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for the City of New York because he had joked he “wanted to get out of politics,” sat in a seat in the row in front of us. Later at a London dinner at Langan’s, David doodled a drawing of a paintbrush on the back of one of Henry’s gigantic business cards the city had paid to print for him and handed it to me - yes, airily yet unsigned - as a gift, one Henry later in a hackney carriage, as he told me taxis were called while we sat in the back of one deconstructing the dinner conversation as was our wont, documented the drawing as an original Hockney by writing on the card that he had witnessed the making of the drawing which he titled “Paintbrush in Ink.” I think Henry had convinced David that it would be a lark to fly with Tor and me over to London. I can hear David’s West Yorkshire accent countering Henry’s use of “lark” as the term to describe flying in such an aircraft, “Henry, aren’t larks ground-dwelling birds,” but Henry could convince David of almost anything - just as he had helped convince the art world of David’s genius and rightful place within it.
Henry was not only David’s dear friend, but also his herald, and for a time and to a lesser extent mine as well. He cut me out of the herd - acknowledged me, this poor orphaned sissy from Mississippi, and saw me in the way I longed to be seen because he also perceived my need, my deepest longing, which was finally just to be acknowledged without the pettiness of ridicule or, worse, genuine pity. Having cut me out of the herd, he then welcomed me into his fold. I felt curated in a way, framed by his attention, and set out to be my most artful self which coincided with my idea for being my best one. That first trip to London was indeed a part of being initiated into such a rarified fold. I think my love of London still at the age of 66 in 2022 stems from that feeling that I finally belonged somewhere, which my being in such a fold in 1978 instilled in me. It is London itself now which recognizes that initial feeling of belonging I felt here and which lies pentimento within me just as the truest of other artful selves lie within the works that restorers perceive in bequeathed paintings awaiting their keenness at the National Portrait Gallery. Henry and David helped hone my own keenness that first trip to London with them. London now hones it. After Henry’s memorial service at the Met in 1994 at which David spoke, we tearfully hugged afterward and I told David that Henry’s gift to me was cutting me out of the herd. More tears came to his eyes. “That is what he did for me, too,” he softly said. “He cut me out of the herd, Kevin. Weren’t we lucky?”
It was a heady time, that London trip in 1978. I was feeling, yes, lucky to be living a life already at the age of 22 that could include it. Tor and I stayed with Joe McCrindle, a wealthy, erudite art collector who also founded and funded The Transatlantic Review. A lawyer, Joe was also a literary agent for a time and represented John McPhee and Philip Roth. I think he had a crush on Tor and was bemused by me. He was a lovely polymath of a man who possessed a sad sort of joviality.
A different sort of rarified fold was waiting for me at Glyndebourne during that trip when we all travelled there to see a production of The Magic Flute which Mozart infused with a jovial sort of sadness and for which David had designed the sets. One was expected to wear a tuxedo to Glyndebourne. I didn't have a tux to wear but David just shrugged and said when I found out the dress code, “They expect me to bring a boy who's not wearing a tuxedo,” and arrived that day at Joe’s place to pick us up to drive us to Glyndebourne wearing a trench coat and a colorful bowtie and sneakers. He noticed me noticing his attire. “You and I, Kevin, are expected to be outré . We're the artists,” he said as I climbed into the car. It was not only an act of kindness on his part - matching my tuxedo-less-ness - but also the first time anyone had called me an artist. Keenness and kindness were the first lessons I was learning as part of my initiation into that fold my first trip to London, an initiation had led to that moment I felt anointed by David. I have spent my whole life trying - and failing over and over - to live up to David’s telling me I was an artist, even if doing so was just another instance of his being kind to me and held no meaning other than that: kindness.
But maybe failing at living up to being artists is what artists consider themselves doing as they create their art. Each painting or play or poem or dance or opera or song or symphony or monologue or aria or film or sculpture or photograph or performance or “Letter from London” on Substack to them - to us, which is still difficult for me to say or to type - is, we convince ourselves, a failed attempt to create what we set out to create so the act of creation can therefore start anew in that search for something artful again to emerge from within us that might someday meet our standards. “Ever tried. Ever failed. Try again. Fail again. Fail better,” is the Beckett quote from his story “Worstward Ho” that not only has always spoken to me, but also beckoned. Each act of creation is an other acknowledgment of failure because failing better is how we move forward in a life dedicated to creating something other than life, an enhancement that gives it meaning in a way that religion, art’s fenced-in neighbor, fiercely insists it is meant to do instead. Religion alas keeps trying to align itself with life. Art is life’s other.