HAROLD BRODKEY
"Naw. I'm starving."
She made a face.
519
The painter whose loft it was- Bruno Ultto-
(J
ohnno had
helped name him; Bruno's real name was Shultz)- the year was in
him: he wore an undershirt and paint-stained white workman's
pants and he was playing bongo drums- that was very stylish then,
advanced- primitive and advanced .
One of the things I'd told Johnno as we'd walked here was
about the depth, the validity of a present moment, even if it's only
named as a date, as 1956: "It is when whatever was real
was-the
date, the moment
then-"
J ohnno then patiently tried to tell me his theory, that a poem or
a painting must have a real present tense in it- doing it has to be
real and present- the artist's life has to be present in the moment of
action, in the act, in the blind, sensory,
prior
rush of action- prior to
meaning- and then the judgment: yes, no, let it stand, do it over .. .
This is the quality that is perceived as
art,
he said; whereas
when there is no such drama, when the thing is rehearsed and
known from the start, it is merely memoir, it is merely anecdotal
then, it is without any real value as life and art at all.
The woman I live with is not allowed here . Johnno can't stand
her. And Ultto gets upset at the way she acts . She had dinner with
Johnno and me, part of a dinner, and then she went home: but she is
not considered an artist, and I am.
WHY I AM AN ARTIST: my circumstances were these .
I was adopted when I was two, shortly after my real mother
died. First, she was ill- she vanished when I was eighteen months
old or so. I was taken from the care, or custody, of a drunken wom–
an, who was my father's lover. He was a minor gangster off and on,
a gambler, a brawler-it depends on the date what it is he was: a
semi-pro boxer for a while known for the brutality of his attack . He
was an immigrant-
But why go on.
I admire people who are not artists .
JOHNNO SAID, THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN BE
BUT AN ARTIST, SO RELAX AND BE IT.
I SAID, I DON'T TRUST MYSELF OR WHAT I KNOW.
AS A MATTER OF LICENSES: PERMISSIONS: HERE IS
A PARTIAL PORTRAIT OF JOHNNO:
He was a very good, very interesting poet of the second rank if
you consider only his own work, but if you add in his life and his
