Henry Darger
Random web searches can lead you to strange places sometimes. Several weeks ago I stumbled onto the Henry Darger story while doing some aimless web surfing, and I have just not been able to shake this guy. His story is amazing. And inspiring. And sad.
In 1973 Henry Darger, an impoverished 81 year old retired janitor, died in a Chicago Catholic poorhouse, alone, with no family or friends. Just prior to his death, his landlords went into the 2nd floor walk-up apartment he’d lived in for 40 years, and discovered an incredible artistic and literary treasure. Crammed into the tiny one-room apartment were hundreds of watercolor paintings, dozens of notebooks filled with meticulous observations of the weather, piles of newspaper and magazine clippings, and a 15000 page novel that detailed a monumental battle between the forces of good and evil on a distant planet. This discovery has had scholars scratching their heads for the last 30 years.
Darger was an uneducated man with little formal schooling and no artistic training. In spite of his artistic and literary shortcomings, he created a bizarre and strangely beautiful tale of 7 sisters who led a rebellion against an evil empire bent on enslaving and killing children. He illustrated the story with hundreds of watercolor paintings that depicted a fantastic landscape in which incredibly savage, years-long battles took place. Darger accomplished this by tracing cartoons, comic books, newspaper ads and anything else that was available. His unusual use of color, along with the fantastic imagery he employed, has made his work one the most important artistic finds of the last half century.
Darger spent 61 years creating this fantasy world. No one in the tenement he lived in for most of his adult life had any idea of what he was doing in his room. The few people in the neighborhood who noticed him at all thought he was a strange old hermit who walked around rummaging in the trash and talking to himself.
Henry Darger had no family, no friends, no confidants. His life consisted only of his work as a janitor and the imaginary world he created. After his workday was done, he would retreat to his cluttered little apartment where he spent every night alone, painting and writing and talking to himself. Perhaps the most fantastic part of Darger’s story is that he created this tremendous work only for himself, with no thought of publication. It is ironic that now, 30 years after his death, Henry Darger’s written works are being studied by a team of doctoral candidates, and his paintings are valued in the millions of dollars.
I think a lot about Darger. What fueled his creativity? Was it his loneliness, his isolation from other people? What kept him going year after year, when he knew he would never receive a dime from what he was doing? What would he think if he knew his life’s work was critically acclaimed as the most important example of “outsider art” ever found?
Henry Darger
Random web searches can lead you to strange places sometimes. Several weeks ago I stumbled onto the Henry Darger story while doing some aimless web surfing, and I have just not been able to shake this guy. His story is amazing. And inspiring. And sad.
In 1973 Henry Darger, an impoverished 81 year old retired janitor, died in a Chicago Catholic poorhouse, alone, with no family or friends. Just prior to his death, his landlords went into the 2nd floor walk-up apartment he’d lived in for 40 years, and discovered an incredible artistic and literary treasure. Crammed into the tiny one-room apartment were hundreds of watercolor paintings, dozens of notebooks filled with meticulous observations of the weather, piles of newspaper and magazine clippings, and a 15000 page novel that detailed a monumental battle between the forces of good and evil on a distant planet. This discovery has had scholars scratching their heads for the last 30 years.
Darger was an uneducated man with little formal schooling and no artistic training. In spite of his artistic and literary shortcomings, he created a bizarre and strangely beautiful tale of 7 sisters who led a rebellion against an evil empire bent on enslaving and killing children. He illustrated the story with hundreds of watercolor paintings that depicted a fantastic landscape in which incredibly savage, years-long battles took place. Darger accomplished this by tracing cartoons, comic books, newspaper ads and anything else that was available. His unusual use of color, along with the fantastic imagery he employed, has made his work one the most important artistic finds of the last half century.
Darger spent 61 years creating this fantasy world. No one in the tenement he lived in for most of his adult life had any idea of what he was doing in his room. The few people in the neighborhood who noticed him at all thought he was a strange old hermit who walked around rummaging in the trash and talking to himself.
Henry Darger had no family, no friends, no confidants. His life consisted only of his work as a janitor and the imaginary world he created. After his workday was done, he would retreat to his cluttered little apartment where he spent every night alone, painting and writing and talking to himself. Perhaps the most fantastic part of Darger’s story is that he created this tremendous work only for himself, with no thought of publication. It is ironic that now, 30 years after his death, Henry Darger’s written works are being studied by a team of doctoral candidates, and his paintings are valued in the millions of dollars.
I think a lot about Darger. What fueled his creativity? Was it his loneliness, his isolation from other people? What kept him going year after year, when he knew he would never receive a dime from what he was doing? What would he think if he knew his life’s work was critically acclaimed as the most important example of “outsider art” ever found?
In Which I pay for my indiscrete behavior re: smoking in high-school
Once upon a time, when the world was young and Ozzy Osbourne still had a few intact brain cells, I was a high school athlete. Specifically, I was a football player, a first teamer, on my high school varsity team. In those days there were a lot of advantages to being an athlete. Deferential treatment by the student body. Idol worship from the younger kids. Most important for a rather shallow-minded 15 year old like me, you had a chance at dating cheerleaders. The problem with being an athlete in my school is that we were strictly forbidden to smoke.
I had a problem with this because I smoked--about a pack of Kool super-longs per day. Now, it's difficult to believe in this day and age, but back then any kid in our school in the 11th or 12th grade could smoke if they had a permit from home. The lucky few were allowed to gather in splendid gangsterish isolation at the end of the high-school building every day during recess and smoke em up. I envied this group of cool outlaws and wanted to be a member but I wasn't allowed, and even if football players could smoke, my mom would never have signed for me..
I had a novel approach to circumventing this ban--I simply sneaked out with all the other guys during break and puffed away. I'd lean against the building and peer around the corner, wary of the approach of any teacher who might come around to check up on us. The few times a teacher came back to inspect the group, I had plenty of advanced warning. I'd take off like a bandit, sprinting faster than at any time during practice, run to the other side of the building, and crouch behind a utility shed until the teacher left.
One morning as I was slouched against the building dragging hard on a smoke, someone said "Coach coming!" Of all the words that could have ruined a fine spring morning, these were the words to most inspire fear in me, and they did.
"Oh Jeez, I'm dead," I thought. I had just taken a huge drag on my cigarette, and I hurriedly thumped it away from me. It arced away from me and landed in the grass 10 feet away just as Coach David came stepping around the corner. Coach David was a tall, muscular man of about 30 and with his sandy hair, blue eyes and harsh powerful build, he looked every inch the all-conference offensive end he had been in college. His pale blue eyes clicked on me immediately. He walked over, gripped my arm, bent down and peered into my face.
"Basil, are you smoking back here?"
I had a lung full of smoke and I was trying hard to hold it in. I looked in Coach's face and tried to make my eyes wide and innocent as I shook my head.
His eyes narrowed. Uh oh. I couldn't hold the smoke in my lungs much longer and I could feel my face reddening as I struggled to hold my breath.
"Answer me. Are you smoking?"
My lungs felt like they were going to burst and the tickle in the back of my throat clued me in that a cough was imminent. What the heck, I was dead anyway.
"No sir." Smoke puffed out of my mouth in thick whorls. He watched it drift up and hang around my head like a melancholy blue cloud. He stood there for a moment, eyes fixed on a spot just above my head where the smoke cloud had settled comfortably, my little thundercloud of doom. I turned halfway away from him and exhaled a thick plume of smoke down at the ground. I turned back toward the Coach. His eyes were cold, and a wry little smile curled the corners of his mouth, as if he was holding a nasty little secret, one he wasn't quite prepared to share yet
Coach David stepped back, crooked his finger at me in a "come on" gesture, turned, and began walking rapidly away. I looked around at the circle of faces that looked sympatheticaly at me. There was no question of trying to get away, and no chance of talking the coach out of what was coming. He had a reputation as a man who swung a mean paddle on the few occasions he was required to, and had several times reduced the schools most hardened miscreants to tears with a few tremendous, well-timed blows.
My best friend Curtis shook his head at me. "Damn, dude. You're gonna get it now."
Gee, thanks bud, I thought to myself. Any other words of encouragement before I go get my butt ripped off?
I had to put up a brave front. "Oh, well. Guess it's time to pay my dues." I strode off, head high, after coach, who was now 20 or 30 yards ahead of me. As I swaggered after him, I looked at his musclar back, the triangle of heavy muscle he carried on his shoulders, the thick forearms that swung purpposefully as he strode through the recess crowd. My behind tingled in dreaded anticipation of what was coming. Damn, why did I have to get caught by the coach? Why not Ms. McPhearson, who was 70, deaf and couldn't have put a crack in a boiled egg with a paddle even if she swung it with both hands? I trailed him into the principals office. where he waited beside an ancient wood-backed chair, a thick, well-seasoned paddle gripped in one hand. He guestured toward the chair with his paddle..
"Kneel down in that chair."
"Yessir." Arguing or pleading wouldn't' help. All I could do was take it like a man. I knelt down in the chair and gripped the rungs on the back and bent my head, waiting.
WHAM. The first blow came so quickly that I didn't really feel anything other than a sense of surprise. WHAM. The second, coming so closely after the first, sent pain shooting throughout my butt. WHAM. Now the real pain had set in, and I gripped the back of the chair and bent my head down until my chin touched my chest. WHAM. Now I was really hurting, my teeth were clenched and I was trying desperately not to cry out. WHAM. I had my eyes closed tightly and knew that one more blow and I would be crying. I waited, breath held, eyes screwed shut, for the next blow but nothing happened.
"OK Basil, you can go."
I exhaled, opened my eyes and shakily stood. My butt felt like someone had poured meat tenderizer on it and then turned a blowtorch on it.
"You stay out of the smoking corner, you hear?" I looked up at him, blinking back tears. He face was set, stern, and his pale blue eyes drilled into me .
"Yessir." I walked out of his office shakily. Ms. Johnson, the school secretary, looked at me sympathetically from behind her cluttered desk.
"Goodbye, Basil", she said.
"Bye Ms. Johnson", I mumbled.
Football practice was held after school, and for my sins I was allowed to run extra wind sprints to "help my body recover from smoking" as coach told me. Long after everyone else had left, I was alone on the field, dressed in full gear, huffing up and down the field. By the time I was finally allowed to quit, I was so tired I felt like crawling from the field to the dressing room. I peeled off my sodden, dirty uniform and as I showered in the silent, sour-sweat atmosphere of the dressing room, I reflected on my indiscretions. Oddly enough, I had no desire to quit smoking. Like a typical 15 year old, my desire was to avoid getting caught again. As I lay face down in bed that night, I didn't regret my actions. I wondered how I'd make it through the next school day without a trip to the smoking corner. I was no wiser, simply more cautious. Afterall, I was a 15 year old with an indestructible butt and an optimistic attitude.
John Vanishes and Returns
If you read the previous post, you've probably come to the realization that John is a pretty peculiar individual. In spite of his strangeness, and his ability to set my teeth on edge with his non-stop prattle, I actually do like him. About three months ago, John suddenly dropped out of sight. No visits to the library. I didn't see him at Walmart. No-one saw him buffing the floors at the local Kroger whre her worked. It seemed John had vanished.
I mentioned John to a couple of staff members at our local library, and they confessed that they too were a bit worried about him. However, the library director said, "Be careful when you talk about him, or you'll conjure him up."
Well, it appears that my blogging about John has indeed conjured him up, because not 24 hours after I posted about him, I spotted him in our public library. I was initially alarmed when I saw him: he'd lost a great deal of weight, and his face had that caved-in, hollow, dark-eyed look people with physical problems get sometimes. He had the same wire-rimmed aviator style glasses with a chip in the corner of one lens, and wore a sweat-stained, soft brimmed derby style hat. His beard was thick, ragged and unkempt, and he was missing several teeth.
Apparently, John's car--a rusting 76 Poitiac with a hood as long as a bass boat--had blown the engine, and John didn't have a way get around. He explained all this in rapid-fire, stammering detail as I stood and listened to him, nodding occasionally and going "uh-huh." John contacted his employer (one time only) to tell him he'd lost his transportation, and he assumed he was fired. John's eyes glittered as he verbally laid into his employer, his mechanic, and the many people who were dunning him about his bills. As he talked, Johns hands danced around in the air like soft white birds, describing arcs, bobbing, weaving, and I watched them in fascination as he talked non-stop for 30 minutes. I finally made a lame excuse about 'needing to get somewhere' and hustled out the door, head down, eyes on the ground, burning in shame, yet desperate to get away.
Dammit. John's plight bothers me. I want to help him, but I don't want to be driven crazy in the bargain. I want to give him some rides, but I don't want to be subjected to his staccatto, rapid-fire dissertations on Doris Day, Desperate Housewives, Broadway musicals, and the heard-heartedness of his sister. Dammit. I'm going to have to do something.
Dammit.
Out of the Vault
Back in the day, when I actually had readers, this posting about John must have resonated with a lot of folks, because I remember having over 50 comments about it. Anyway, here it it is, in it's original form. I'll post up the latest on John later.
I frequent the local library a lot. Now, if you spend any time in libraries, you’ve probably noticed that your local public library can attract some pretty strange characters. Over the course of the years, I’ve seen a parade of mad poets, disenfranchised drifters, self-proclaimed geniuses, and the just plain insane drift through ours. Enter John.
Now, John is one of those truly unusual folks that you meet from time to time who makes a lasting impression. He’s in his middle thirties, tall--well over six feet, and badly overweight, topping out at maybe 350 pounds or so. He’s usually unshaven with three or four days of stubble on his face, and he has a long droopy mustache and aviator style glasses that give him a perpetually mournful look. Remember the acquaintance I mentioned in an earlier post who always wears a bandana around his head? Yup, John. I think he wears it because he’s balding, even though hair straggles out from the sides and back and hangs down his neck and past his ears. With his do-rag on, his mincing, shuffling walk and peculiar, high-pitched voice, he really attracts attention wherever he goes. However, it isn’t his looks that cause such a negative impression, it’s his manner.
John speaks in a stammer, and when he’s excited (or angry) you’ll sometimes think he’s never going to get anything out. He punctuates almost every sentence with “you know”, but it comes out y-y-y-you k-k-k-k-now. Even though the stammer can be a little disconcerting at times, it isn’t at the heart of his problem when dealing with others. It’s his obsessions.
Yep, obsessions, and I don’t mean little flights of fancy or things he just likes to talk about from time to time. I mean things he talks about every time I see him, and I’ve seen him fairly regularly for the last 10 years or so. I mean things he dwells on, lives for, things he clutches to his heart and refuses to let go. The kind of things they give you medication for. What kind of obsessions? Well, one of the most pronounced is his obsession with movie stars. Not just any movie stars, but female stars from the 1940’s through the 60’s. He’s totaled absorbed with ancient musical stars, washed-up has-beens, reputed lesbians, over the hill musicians—you name it. He has thousands of photos and clippings of these folks, and whenever I see him in the library, he’s usually hauling a sackful of them around.
He always buttonholes me—and therein lies my problem with him. I think I’m one of the few people around here who is nice to him, and my repayment is that every time he sees me, he talks non-stop about whatever he’s latched on to for that day. John is one of those folks who simply won’t let you go once he gets you, and I can’t just walk away from him, so I’m a virtual prisoner whenever he catches me. My capture lasts anywhere from 20 minutes to (sometimes) over an hour. With his excited stammer and non-stop frenetic speech, you can’t get a word in edgewise. Johns family life isn’t very good, and I hear about this all the time. Although John is in his mid-thirties, he had a very strong attachment to, and lived with, his mother, who died a couple of years ago, and my impression is that no one else in the family really cares much about him.
John has a brother with a pronounced drug problem and a sister who won’t give him the time of day. His father died recently, and left his sister control over the small inheritance that they’ve received. I hear about the battles between John and his siblings over this tiny estate until I feel like I’m involved in some sort of daytime drama. You see, John has a major obsession with art, specifically with German art and Renaissance art. There is an exhibit of fine art nearby, and John has been chomping at the bit for months to go. He’s tried to get money out of the estate from his sister to go, to no avail, so lately every time I’ve seen him, I’ve heard about her hard-heartedness and his determination to go. I get the entire word-for-word verbal battles they’ve gone through, complete with his petty plans to take revenge on her. During these periods when he’s really angry, Johns’ sad-looking brown eyes glitter behind his chipped, wire-rimmed glasses, and his stammer becomes more pronounced, which makes me even more anxious to make an escape.
Sometimes, in a effort to escape, I’ll quickly slip in another topic. Perhaps if I can change the subject of the conversation, I can wrap it up quickly and make a polite exit. Nothing doing. I’ll introduce a new subject quickly, he’ll go “yeah, yeah” and immediately swerve right back into his discussion on whoever (or whatever) has captured his fancy for that day. I don’t have to answer, or even acknowledge that I’ve heard what he says. A simple nod of the head occasionally, or a “Yeah, uh-huh” will suffice.
Some of the library personnel have noticed this, and they occasionally will help me out. They’ll send an employee over to say that “somebody in the office wants to ask you something, Basil.” That always gets me off the hook, and I usually wind up shamefacedly sneaking out the back way in order to avoid meeting up with John again. I feel really bad about this. I think John’s a very lonely person with no one to talk to, so I’m probably one of the few people who will even give him the time of day. I’ve seen other people brush him off, and he always looks hurt when this happens. Sometimes I’ll make an arraignment with some of the library staff to “come get me in 10 minutes.” I’ll go over, say hi, and listen for 10 minutes, then make an escape when someone comes to tell me there’s a message for me somewhere. That way, he gets to talk to someone for a bit, and I don’t end up trapped for an hour listening to rumors and scandalmongering about Doris Day, or whoever.
I recently bought him a ticket to a museum exhibit with one of my credit cards, because that’s the only way he could pre-order one--apparently he couldn’t get a credit card himself. He was very gracious about it, paid me promptly, and told me about everything he saw when he got back. Told me over and over and over. John is a fairly intelligent guy, and he has some interesting things to say sometimes. Although I may see him as “a cross to bear”, I don’t want to be rude or hurtful to him. They say that what goes round comes round, so maybe when I’m in the old folks home someday, soaking my teeth in a glass and drooling on my bib, somebody will come by and listen to me rattle on about the Stones, Nirvana, Nicole Kidman, American Idol and Stephen King.
It’s Been a While