they walk around and, as soon as they move out of the sunlight, their white capes take on the color of the shade. I was breathing more easily, which made it easier for me to walk; and yet, at the first bench I came to I sat down, but more tipsy, more befuddled, than weary. I looked around. The shade was in motion and weightless; it wasn’t falling onto the ground, and seemed barely to rest there. O light! I listened. What did I hear? Nothing; everything; I was enchanted by every sound. I remember a bush whose bark, from a distance, seemed to have such a peculiar texture that I had to get up and go feel it. I touched it as if caressing it; I experienced a thrill of delight. I remember . . . Was it on that morning that I was finally to be reborn? I had forgotten that I was alone, I was awaiting nothing, I forgot the time. It seemed to me that until that day I had felt so little, and instead thought so much, that I was finally surprised by this: my power to feel was becoming as strong as my power of thought. I say “it seemed to me” — because, from the remotest nooks of the past, from my earliest childhood, a thousand glimmerings were at last awakening, aroused by a thousand forgotten sensations. The new realization of my senses that I was gaining allowed me to review these memories uneasily. Yes, my senses, from now on completely awake, were discovering that they had an entire history, they were recreating their own past. They were alive! They were alive! They had never ceased to live, they were finding that, even through my years of studies, they had led a latent, clandestine life. I came to despise in myself that knowledge of which at first I was so proud; those studies, which at first meant my whole life, no longer seemed to have anything more than a quite accidental and conventional relationship to me. I was finding myself a different person and, to my joy, I had an existence outside them. As an expert, I felt stupid. As a man, did I know myself? I was only at the point of being born and I could not yet know who this new-born self was. That is what I had to learn. From then on, that was whom I strove to discover: my authentic self, the “old Adam,” the one rejected by the Gospels; the man whom everything around me, books, teachers, relatives and I myself, had tried at first to suppress. And, because of those additional burdens, he already seemed to me more blurred and harder to find, but all the more useful to find and valorous. From then on, I despised that secondary, acquired self superimposed by my education. I had to shake off those burdens. And I compared myself to palimpsests: I shared the joy of the scholar who discovers, beneath more writing, a very old, infinitely more valuable, text on the same sheet of paper. What was this obscured text? To read it, wasn’t it first necessary to erase the recent texts? At first I had taken very bad care of myself, unaware of my body’s needs. I studied these patiently and, as far as caution and care go, I developed such a constant ingeniousness that it entertained me like a game. What I still suffered from most was my sickly sensitivity to the slightest change in temperature. Now that my lungs were cured, I attributed this supersensitivity to my frayed nerves, an aftereffect of the illness. I determined to overcome that. The sight of the beautiful tanned and, one could say, sun-drenched skins displayed by some disarrayed rustics, as they worked in the fields with open jacket, encouraged me to get a tan as well. One morning, I stripped and observed myself; the sight of my overly thin arms, of my shoulders which, with the greatest efforts, I failed to throw back sufficiently, but especially the whiteness or, rather, the bleaching-out of my skin, filled me with both shame and tears. I dressed again quickly and, instead of walking down towards Amalfi, as I had grown used to doing, I directed my steps toward rocks covered with low grass and moss, far from dwellings, far from roads, where I knew I couldn’t be seen. Once there, I slowly undressed. The air was nearly brisk, but the sun was blazing. I offered my whole body to its flame. I sat, I stretched out, I turned. I felt the hard earth beneath me; the waving wild grasses brushed me. Although sheltered from the wind, I shivered and throbbed at each gust. Soon I was enveloped by a delightful warmth; my whole being was concentrated in my skin. We stayed in Ravello two weeks; every morning I went back to those rocks and took a treatment. Soon the excess of clothing I was still wearing became annoying and unnecessary; my invigorated skin stopped sweating endlessly and became able to protect itself with its own warmth. On the morning of one of the final days (it was mid-April) I became more adventurous. In a cleft among the rocks I have been speaking of there flowed a clear spring. At this spot it even formed a waterfall, not of great volume, it’s true, but below the fall it had dug out a rather deep pool where the very pure water lingered. Three times I had come, had bent over it, had stretched out on the edge, full of thirst and full of desires; I had observed for long periods the bottom of the pool, formed of polished stone, where not a stain, not a blade of grass was to be seen, where the sun penetrated, vibrating and breaking into patterns. On that fourth day, having made my resolve to in advance, I went right up to that water, which was clearer than ever, and, without reflecting further, I dived in all at once. Feeling chilled quickly, I left the water and stretched out on the grass, in the sunshine. There, aromatic mints were growing; I picked some, I crushed their leaves and with them I rubbed my whole moist but burning body. I observed myself or some time, without any more shame, with joy. I found myself, not yet robust, but with the possibility of becoming robust, I found myself harmonious, sensual, almost beautiful. Our happiness during this final stage of our journey was so unruffled, so calm, that I can no longer recount any of it. The most beautiful works of men are implacably sorrowful. What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it. And now I have told you everything that had prepared it. From the very first chats we had, I saw that, in a way, I was compelled by them to play a false part, to resemble the man they believed I still was, or else appear to be pretending; and, to make life easier, therefore, I did pretend to share the thoughts and tastes that people ascribed to me. You can’t be sincere and seem to be sincere at one and the same time. At first I hoped to find a somewhat more direct understanding of life in some novelists and some poets; but, if they possessed that understanding, I must confess they hardly showed it; it seemed to me as if most of them weren’t living at all, but were contented with seeming to live, and almost considered life as an annoying obstacle to writing. And I couldn’t blame them for it; and I won’t affirm that the mistake wasn’t on my side. . . . Anyway, what did I mean by “living”? That is exactly what I would have liked someone to tell me. “The more they resemble one another, the more they differ from me.” And then I would resume more sadly: “None of them has had the capacity to be sick. They live, they give the appearance of living and of not knowing they’re alive. Historians found fault with what they called a tendency toward overhasty generalizations. Others found fault with my method; and those who complimented me were those who had understood me least. “One must let the others be right, since that consoles them for not being anything else.” I consider sobriety to be a more powerful state of intoxication; I retain my lucidity that way.” “And you pour out drinks for others . . . “ He smiled. People are afraid of finding themselves alone, and they don’t find themselves at all. This moral agoraphobia is hateful to me; it’s the worst kind of cowardice. And yet it is only when alone that people are inventive. But who here is trying to be inventive? Whatever a man feels to be different in himself is precisely the rare thing he possesses, the thing that constitutes each man’s worth — and it’s that very thing they try to eradicate. They imitate. And they claim to love life!” Of the thousands forms of life each man can know only one. To envy the happiness of others is folly; you wouldn’t know how to make use of it. Happiness shouldn’t come ready made, but should be custom made. a complete change in one’s fortunes should be just as educational as a complete change in one’s health. To me that descent into Italy was as dizzying as a fall. I also think that there are strong joys for the strong, and weak joys for the weak, whom the strong joys would harm. Translation of the four Italian sentences: “How beautiful the lady is!” . . . “You’re beautiful too, my boy” . . . “All Frenchmen are lovers” . . . “But not all Italians are beloved.” “A man contains the potential for everything.” “You, you’re only happy when you’ve made them display some vice. Don’t you understand that our personal view of every man intensifies and exaggerates the traits in him that attract our attention? We make him become what we insist he is.” Tunis. A light more copious than strong. Even the shade was filled with it. The air itself seemed like a luminous fluid in which everything was bathed, into which you dived, in which you swam. I have contempt for those who can’t recognize beauty until it is transcribed and completely interpreted.   The major early cultures that were sources for Western music each had distinguishing musical characteristics that related, in some degree, to their respective languages. Experts recognize that a culture's spoken language and its musical expression influence each other, but the relationship is very complex and not well understood. That modern French woodwind players produce a distinctive timbre, that 6/8 metrics are nonexistent in Hungarian folksong, and that Western classical vocal technique developed in an Italian-speaking region are examples of the relationship.  His soul swayed in a vertigo of moral indecision. It expands; it only destroys because it broadens; even so, thought only destroys because it broadens. A man’s brain is a bomb like the head of a lecturer upon the body of a harlequin. Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength in levity. ‘Pan,’ said the Professor dreamily, ‘was a god and an animal.’ ‘Then, and again and always,’ went on Syme like a man talking to himself, ‘that has been for me the mystery of Sunday, and it is also the mystery of the world. When I see the horrible back, I am sure the noble face is but a mask. When I see the face but for an instant, I know the back is only a jest. Bad is so bad that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so good that we feel certain that evil could be explained. But the whole came to a kind of crest yesterday when I raced Sunday for the cab, and was just behind him all the way.’ ‘Had you time for thinking then?’ asked Ratcliffe. ‘Time,’ replied Syme, ‘for one outrageous thought. I was suddenly possessed with the idea that the blind, blank back of his head was really his face — an awful, eyeless face staring at me: And I fancied that the figure running in front of me was really a figure running backwards, and dancing as he ran.’ ‘Horrible!’ said Dr Bull, and shuddered. ‘Horrible is not the word,’ said Syme. ‘It was exactly the worst instant of my life. And yet ten minutes afterwards, when he put his head out of the cab and made a grimace like a gargoyle, I knew that he was only like a father playing hide-and-seek with his children.’ ‘It is a long game,’ said the Secretary, and frowned at his broken boots. ‘Listen to me,’ cried Syme with extraordinary emphasis. ‘Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front —‘ ‘Pan again!’ said Dr Bull irritably. ‘You seem to think Pan is everything.’ ‘So he is,’ said the Professor, ‘in Greek. He means everything.’ ‘Don’t forget,’ said the Secretary, looking down, ‘that he also means Panic.’ But though he affected to despise the mummery, he felt a curious freedom and naturalness in his movements as the blue and gold garment fell about him; and when he found that he had to wear a sword, it stirred a boyish dream. As he passed out of the room he flung the folds across his shoulder with a gesture, his sword stood out at an angle, and he had all the swagger of a troubadour. For these disguises did not disguise, bur reveal. ‘You!’ he cried. ‘You never hated because you never lived. I know what you are, all of you, from first to last — you are the people in power! You are the police —the great fat, smiling men in blue and buttons! You are the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive that does not long to break you, only because you have never been broken? We in revolt talk all kind of nonsense doubtless about this crime or that crime of the Government. It is all folly! the only crime of the Government is that it governs. The unpardonable sin of the supreme power is that it is supreme. I do not curse you for being cruel. I do not curse you (though I might) for being kind. I curse you for being safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and have never come down from them. You are the seven angels of heaven, and you have had no troubles. Oh, I could forgive you everything, you that rule mankind, if I could feel for once that you had suffered for one hour a real agony such as I —‘ He had turned his eyes so as to see suddenly the great face of Sunday, which wore a strange smile. ‘Have you,’ he cried in a dreadful voice, ‘have you ever suffered?’ As he gazed, the great face grew to an awful size, grew larger than the colossal mask of Memnon, which had made him scream as a child. It grew larger and larger, filling the whole sky; then everything went black. Only in the blackness before it entirely destroyed his brain he seemed to hear a distant voice saying a commonplace text that he had heard somewhere, ‘Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?’                   Seth had an idea for a company that would place artists in factories that produced materials that they could use to fabricate their work. The idea of combining artists, materials, and means of fabrication wasn’t unique; Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), founded by engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, put artists in touch with engineers, etc., but “Image. Art Programs for Industry, Inc.” was to give them access to materials to get the work done and would get publicity for the company who made the materials and helped the artist. We would become sort of glorified PR agents, though we would never use such terminology. Early on we realized we had to approach family-owned companies within which such decisions could be made by the CEO. No PR agents on their payroll as inbetweeners. That October 1967 we stumbled upon a company that made all sorts of material, was family-owned and were even planning an endowed culture center for their town in Michigan. We had in mind a group of artists—Douglas Huebler, Bob Barry, and Lawrence Weiner—who were all using materials which they produced. We made our pitch; they seemed to go for it. Almost too good to be true. Symbiosis at its best. We met and agreed to formalize the idea. Less than a week later the national news announced that the Dow Chemical Company produced all the napalm used in Vietnam. End of proposal, image, and story. P.S. Within a year those artists were making non-object art, but that’s another story. Some of the pieces I made that summer were so unlike anything I’d ever seen that I worried that Seth might regard them as so absurd that he’d call off the whole project. I knew of no criteria by which to judge what I was doing, no way to know if the work was good, bad, indifferent, or even if it could be regarded as “art.” I was just swept along by one idea after another that I wanted to try out, and hoped that Seth would go along. As it turned he did, and I think that summer proved to be a real education for both of us. It certainly was for me!