NY Story #11: Famous Artistes I Have Known (1) 1 WILLIAM BURROUGHS 2 KENNETH ANGER 3 VIRGIL THOMSON 4 HARRY SMITH (ok maybe he was asexual!) These lucky guys are members of the "We were visited & paid homage to by GE & all we got was this lousy mention (as well as a few hours' mystifying conversation) Club" 1. I met Burroughs soon after moving to NYC from Denver, using the friendly pretext of actually having for him a poem from a mutual poet friend, Campbell Dalglish, a Colorado chum/ fish-ing buddy of his! I arrived at his Soho loft after a phonecall one Sunday afternoon, for a magical 2-3 hours of cordial mentoring & unconscious grokking/sharing of poems, passions, ?s & thoughts... I actually unembarrassedly recited for him one of my poems called HEADLINES (somehwat inspired by/ded. to: Talking Heads) "Are you my baby?" Wanna feed you Guess you're my baby Time to Feed you The present moment BOP BOP Fascinates me BOP BOP Hey where did you BOP BOP Learn to do that? BOP BOP My TV set BOP BOP Could teach you manners BOP BOP Etiquette, etiquette, etc. smoking (I adopted his choice of Players for some weeks, before finally abandoning cigs forever, praise god!), referring to his shelves of books, focussing much of our chat on Crowley, deerugs, the new music scene, etc., but NOT a mention of the at-that-time-yet-to-be-discovered Saint Jack Kerouac, of course a major friend/collaborator of WB! It's just as well, if I'd met him after realizing this connection, I'd have been prostrate at his feet in dumbstruck awe!…For anyone reading this as naïve as me then, Kerouac titled Burroughs' 1st book: NAKED LUNCH, helped type early drafts, & benefitted immensely from The Authority WB's reading of his own early attempts at experimental prose!!! I recall Burroughs' immense goodwill & kindness , humility & camaraderie! I really didn't know how gay he was, still naively assuming more american artists & composers I admired might be straight or 'spiritually' androgynous (like me) though dealing with shocking/perverse/anything-goes themes! Perhaps it fell to me to become this nongay artist/mystic I rather hoped to meet in those 'pup-apprentice' years... 2. The next artist I could mention in this regard is a fellow Aquarian like WB, Kenneth Anger…whose company I've enjoyed on maybe a half dozen occasions, and whose films I put at the top of my Desert Island choices... We actually met in Telluride Colorado at the 2nd film festival held there; I worked for a few years for the couple who used to own JANUS then KINO FILMS, & WHO RUN TELLURIDE FESTIVAL STILL…Early the 2nd afternoon of the festival I had climbed up a pretty steep hill outside the gloriously scenic town, & had slipped & fallen several feet, catching myself on the branch of a scrub pine, which causd a curiously symmetrical star-shaped scar on my palm! Later that afternoon, I ran into & helped Ken Anger carry a load of HOLLYWOOD BABYLON (JUST PUBLISHED) INTO THE BOOKSTORE & with that slightly wounded right hand, I shook the hand of the famous, legendary-if-not-notorious, baddest boy of hollywood/occultism with superstar friends in high places! I even ended up ordering my only-ever tattoo (of this star scar) when I returned to denver & it's still barely visible! --marking me as a servant of venus, lucifer, the right hand path, rush limbo, who nose? Monsieur Anger gave me a signed copy of H.Babylon & I ended up exhibiting the Denver Premiere of LUCIFER RISING + INAUGURATION OF the PLEASURE DOME circa 1975... Angry Ken & I have a mutual friend in former airbrush/ now computer grafix artist page wood, who was hired by CRAWDADDY MAGAZINE in the 70's for an illustration of Anger, who ended up meeting page & acquiring the portrait original + some other works... Page also contributed the ANGER logo for his video collection & cover art! So I (page's friend with the interest in & burgeoning collection of A. Crowley) glommed on as unobtrusively as possible to my friend's connection to this living breathing storehouse of Crowleyania &-anity! (His movies are awash in crowleyan imagery & inspiration) for as many occasions as possible! Anger is an Aquarian with Scorpio Rising; my favorite sage/guru (Aivanhov) has the same astrology!…but is as solidly WHITE & PURE as Crowley & his many apes may be characterized as grey if not darker shades of light... The most scenic & memorable few hours Page & I spent with Kenneth were probably the time we drove in my Toyota (the filmmaker never had a license!) up the Hudson to this secret location of a man possessing the 2nd largest collection of Mickey Mouse memorabilia in the world! Every inch of his huge converted one-time public building was dripping with item after item devoted to this confounded mouse!--in every conceivable material, from every country you could name, from each decade since the Mouse was created! Anger was considering emerging from his decades of moviemaking retirement to do a surreal documentary on this collection! All during our stay & thru lunch, this guy would receive calls from various dealers in various parts of the world, & after a clipped code word or 2, would seal a new acquisition or nix same…of the 10,000th + 1 replica of Mickey Mouse filling his house! I now recall an evening we arranged the summit between KLAUS NOMI & KEN ANGER! Page & I had long hoped for this chemistry to gel or whatever, & the place it was destined to occur was Hisae's Place, a great healthy-oriental restaurant on Bowery till 198?, where NOMI supplied desserts in his cheffing days! Along for the ride came a pair of South African 'witches' whom we'd met at the Mudd Club, Lynne & Amanda, who phoned /dropped by Page's at the exact moment we were leaving, so I for one gladly welcomed some seductive ladies! (Nomi & Anger were destined to repulse one another more than hit it off -2 Aquarian/rebels aren't necessarily meant to be best pals!) & the girls were obsessed with their own agenda involving Jimmy Page & THAT Crowley connection... but the memorable thing for me was the late night visit to the Anger sanctum itself on the upper east side! - Two main rooms, one: floor to ceiling RED/ the next: floor to ceiling BLUE (I mean every little detail!) & the lighting too.…A simultaneous triumph of the Will, the color sense, & tribute to that Great Decorator in the Sky!