Cosmic Ray: an open letter to the founder of the New York Correspondence School - letter to the late artist Ray Johnson

Art in America, Oct, 1995 by David Bourdon

Your telephoned reports of your visits with Cornell were chock-full of fascinating details, but all I can remember now is the food that was served. Once he invited you to Sunday lunch and served canned spaghetti and peas and carrots. Yum. Then there was the time you brought him a cake and the two of you sat down to drink tea and listen to Dionne Warwick recordings. Suddenly, Cornell burst into tears. You could not take your eyes off the tear-sodden slice of cake that was slowly disintegrating on his plate. Was he crying because he was so saddened by her poignant rendition of "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" or "You'll Never get to Heaven (If You Break My Heart)"? Or was he distressed by an intuition that she would later lose her girlish figure and become a spokespersons for the Psychic Friends Network?

Cornell died four days after Christmas 1972. (He had been born on Christmas Eve, his favorite holiday.) What psychic affinity prompted you, 11 years later, to pay a post-Christmas, post-midnight visit to his house? In mid-January 1984, you were driving home from Manhattan under a bright moonlit sky, when a mysterious impulse goaded you to turn off the expressway and proceed to Utopia Parkway. The streets, being covered with snow and ice, seemed more luminous than usual. As you parked near the house, you had a premonition you would "find something." You got out of the car, walked by the house a couple of times, and, right in front, made out the contours of a discarded Christmas tree, mostly covered by a mantle of snow. Remnants of silver tinsel, clinging to the branches, sparkled in the moonlight. You snatched a handful of the tinsel and hastily returned to your car, where you transfered your booty to an awaiting envelope on the front seat. At a later date, you mailed the envelope to a Cornell devotee who would relish the referential overtones.

Almost always when you were out in public, you appeard to be "on stage," performing. Some of your most notable performance events were the NYCS daytime meetings that you organized in specially chosen places. You held an impressive total of six NYCS meetings in 1968. The first took place at the Religious Society of Friends Meeting House in Manhattan in April (before your move to Long Island). If I recall correctly, nothing--in proper Cageian style--happened at that meeting. The one that offered the most fun was the "stilt" meeting in Central Park in October. Dozens of your friends and fans turned up to try their skill at walking about on children's stilts that had been provided by the city's parks department.

Movie stars and art legends inspired many of your subsequent gatherings. "A Meeting for Dame May Whitty" occurred at the David Whitney Gallery in November 1970. The "First Marcel Duchamp Fan Club Meeting" was held at the Church of The Holy Trinity, on the Upper East Side, in April 1971; the announcement promised that "the role of Teeny Duchamp will be played by Ultra Violet." (Those belles were linked in your mind because, two years earlier, I had invited the three of you to dinner.) In June 1972, you held a " Meeting for Anna May Wong" at the New York Cultural Center; the model Naomi Sims impersonated the sultry actress. The "Paloma Picasso Fan Club Meeting" took place at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts 1974. Shelley Duvall rated two fan club meetings, and 1977. You organized a "David Letterman Fan Club Meeting and Performance" at the C.W. Post college campus in Nassau County in April 1983. The talk-show host initially seemed an unlikely choice for your pantheon, until we realized that, like Norman the mailer, David is a letterman.