Read Online Falling Through Space by Ellen Gilchrist - Free Book Online Page A

child of the bayou country. He drank its sugary wines and honored its legends until his death this January at eighty. He gave up its sugary tongue, however, and taught himself to speak in such a way that almost no trace of his Cajun accent remained. More about this later. First I want to talk about his magic.
    Everything about Clarence was magical. In his presence you could believe in magic or destiny or kismet. He thought it was kismet that we came to know each other. He felt this way about many of his friends.
    I had heard of Clarence. One day another photographer came tearing into the offices of The Courier , where we both worked, showing us photographs and copy for a story about Clarence. “You won’t believe this man,” he was saying, or words to that effect. “He’s incredible. He knows everything.” I looked at the photographs. There was this smooth-cheeked white-haired man with piercing eyes already demanding something from me. Some answer. Some return. There were also pages of quotations. I read them with great interest and attention.
    About a month later a friend took me, on a cold rainy Sunday afternoon, down to the Faubourg-Marigny to see an exhibition of Clarence’s work and hear him speak. It was a new gallery with tall freshly painted walls and high ceilings. People were milling around drinking wine and talking in quiet voices. There was violin music on the stereo. And on the walls were the most incredible photographs I had ever seen. Absolutely original, as was their maker. He came into the gallery, wearing a coat thrown over his shoulder like a cape, and took the podium and began to talk about art in a way I had never heard. About the relationship between art and the subconscious mind, about the forms art takes in its insistence on telling us what we’re thinking. About how art takes us past the veils of illusion and returns us to ourselves. About what a photograph means and why light and shadow fascinate us, about how unique we are and how alike, how mysterious we are and how predictable. I was dazzled.
    I ordered two photographs and went home and wrote him a long letter in answer to the questions he had raised in my mind. Later, when I knew Clarence well and became his friend, I would drive him to the Lafayette Station post office to pick up his mail, boxes of fan mail from all over the world. I suppose when I wrote him I thought I was the only one who did.
    Anyway, I mailed off the letter, not expecting or even particularly wanting a reply, and in a few days he called me. There was his rough, exciting, enormously civilized voice on the phone, inviting me down to the Pontalba to see his books.
    At that time he had a huge apartment in the Pontalba overlooking Jackson Square. It contained a library of almost two hundred thousand volumes. They were the most incredible books I had ever seen. Clarence slept on a small bed in the midst of those bookshelves. He could put his finger on any book without consulting a catalog. But then, he only got out the ones he was interested in. You could ask all night but he would not produce a book he didn’t want to talk about.
    As soon as I arrived that first night we went right to work. Clarence got out some books and began my education. “Look,” he would say, “look at this. You must understand this. Listen to what I’m telling you.” Leonor Fini, the French surrealist poets, Balthus, Klimt, Lafcadio Hearn, British illustrators, Italian cartoonists, the lists of things I must learn and “be exposed to” went on and on.
    Oil interests in the gulf, people destroying the wetlands, plastic cups, undisciplined children, women smokers, unlettered so-called writers, Mayor Moon’s attempts to bring a sound and light show into Jackson Square, the list of things he hated and warred against was also long.
    â€œBut, Clarence,” I would say finally, “I want to see your photographs. I came to see your