Outta room: shift to new blog here:
Winter Solstice, 2023
Dec. 21, 2023
The slanting time of year, encroaching on Earth’s solstice, shortest day of the year in this half, and time for my usual summary and projection. Life’s been such a whirl of late I’ll have to peddle back on some calendar source to recall. Facebook can be useful for this !!
September 21, was in Macedonia, getting settled into new B&B “home” and little studio space there where I was able to go each day and make watercolors. It was rather nice to have a place to go an concentrate, make my little paintings. Borrowed a guitar from Ivica, and back in the B&B’s played a bit. Skopje is a strange city, which I first saw in 1963, several months after a major quake had largely leveled it. Rebuild was in dubious quick 60’s – 70’s mode, with some famed architects of the time – Kenzo Tange one of them – making some ugly brutalist buildings as a favor, and laying out a city plan of a kind best forgotten. In 2012 the city high-ups decided to lather on some preposterous mal-proportioned classical Greek-style plaster columns and friezes and lintels to hide the ugly 20th century stuff, and made a giant cartoon of the city in the hopes of getting tourists to come. They also littered the center with “public art” in the form of highly dubious sculptures, mostly kitsch. If tourists come, it can only be to laugh at the inanities of misguided good intentions paving the way to hell. While there I had a partial retrospective of 6 films at the Macedonian Cineteca, organized by my friend Ivica – a handful of films shown mostly to a handful of people. Subtitled in Macedonian. However, cinema is dead it seems. Or it pretends to be alive, but is a zombie. No surprise to me.
Towards the end of my month there a little showing of the watercolors I’d done was mounted at the cultural place I was in, and along with Ivica I did a little concert in a hip cafe downtown. Outside, a bit cold for it, but I didn’t do badly. I just did three or so songs.
Leaving Macedonia, I went for a short stay in London, thanks to Hilary and Stuart. Managed to see a handful of friends who I wanted to see, had a good restful time, and then headed on to Chicago where I had a screening, staying with Jonathan Rosenbaum instead of my usual stay-place at Marilyn’s – she was recovering from Covid and intermittent bouts of pneumonia. I’d missed seeing her in spring when I was there, same reason. I called when I got there and she said I could drop by anytime. Two days later, driving with Peter Kuttner, a friend of mine from 1967, and of Marilyn’s from grade-school, I suggested we go see her. He said, “Is she out of the hospital?” and I said I didn’t know she was there. A call to a friend of hers confirmed she was still there, in ICU. I talked with Scott, her husband, who said doctors didn’t think she’d survive, and I asked him, if possible, to tell her I loved her. The next morning, again running around with Peter, a call came in to tell us she’d died. She was 78, and an important figure in my life as I think I was in hers. Ask not for whom the bell tolls… It is the time of life when one’s peers drop off the planet with regularity. And one day, soon in my case, I/you will too.
Peter Kuttner and Jonathan Rosenbaum
A day later I went up to Weyauwega, Wisconsin, two weeks earlier than the festival I’d been invited to, and holing up in the basement of Kathy and Ian’s cinema there, I found the few days of final editing of Casa do Silencio, as usual, dragged out to much more. In fact it is still going on!! I had thought to possibly shoot a film in the period, but Kathy and Ian were quite busy with preparing for the festival, and I got sucked into finishing the film. So that went by the wayside, for then. Decided to return in late winter/early spring, and have 2 months to make one. Little idea just what at the moment but I seem never to lack for those things when the situation presents itself.
The festival – Thursday to Sunday – saw a gaggle of filmmakers, mostly young, materialize, show their films to a local audience of mostly older people. It was fun though I saw only a film or two, utterly forgettable since I don’t recall them at all. A week later, a friend from Minnesota came by, to grab some watercolors for a showing in his home town of Mankato, way off in June. He then gave me a lift down to Chicago, going on lesser roads most the way. Peter met us near the airport and we had a long lunch and Peter took me to O’Hare to fly back to Europe, with a day in Heathrow before getting plane on to Santiago.
In Santiago stayed with an artist woman, Maria, in a big flat in the middle of town. She is a painter and the place was full of her work, and while there other artists passed through; she seemed well-connected/known in town. The day after arrival I had to re-shoot a technically botched sequence for Casa do Silencio, with the actress, Paul Ballesteros. It got done quickly and well, better than it had been before. That evening I did a quick edit and dropped it into time-line and fixed a few minor things, and made a finished file under the gun of a deadline.
Three days after I arrived in Santiago the film was first shown at the Galician Cinemateca in A Coruña to a modest audience. I had never seen the film except on my computer monitor and of course I saw and heard a handful of things needing change, though nothing an audience would have noticed. It is a very unusual non-conventional film and the response was unreadable to me. Was it just too weird? Too off a view of things Galician? After a bit I did get one woman to say something, which seemed to confirm that I’d managed to express something about Galicia and its culture and people, but she wasn’t able to articulate her thoughts and no one else said anything and I thought, well, maybe I’d missed what I was hoping to do. Back in Santiago I hastily fixed the problems I’d seen and heard. Meantime had a screening of All the Vermeers in New York, to a nice response. Next night to a full house at the Numax, Santiago’s “art house” cinema and bookstore/cultural hub, I sat with Paula. No one left during screening, and afterwards a handful left immediately, the rest – 50 or so – stayed for an hour of post-screening discussion. From what I wrote on Facebook afterwards:
Nearing midnight. Went for 7:40 screening, set up guitar and mike to sing, which I did as audience entered. Sold out in 70 seat little cinema. My Piloño family showed up, hugs all around. Played a few songs and got introduced, did so myself. Usual casual – I am not a precious fkn artist, just some guy who happens to make films. I advised they not look for a story, or for meaning, and just relax and maybe take it in as a kind of cinematic music – with movements of different kinds, paces, slow/fast, etc. Film started and I sat with Paula, to take some notes about possible changes. There were some minor, one for me major but still I doubt anyone saw it.
Film over, gentle applause. Some people left but most stayed. Up to talk. Usual pulling teeth to get someone to talk. Yack a little, and cajole for some words. Woman raises hand finally and a bit flustered and emotional begins to try to describe what she got. Basically she really liked it, and as a Galician she said it spoke to her intimately, and she was surprised/amazed that an outsider, like me, could come and somehow grasp some essential Galego things, and express them as if I were from Galicia. My eyes wet and I had a hard time speaking without crying. Went on a bit like that, and a chorus of others nodded and chipped in that it had been the same for them. Xabier Vázquez raised hand and spoke a bit, about how I’d visited and was curious and spent time, shooting in their family’s place, and that I was now family. More wet eyes.
For me the most valuable words I can hear about one of my films is not if it was wonderful camera, or this or that cinematic, but that I somehow caught something essential about the place I worked in, about its people, culture, landscape. A handful of people and more confirmed that as others nodded consent, young and old.
No one left during the film, and no one left during Q&A.
I could not have imagined a better response, and after the meh of A Coruña I guess was a bit surprised and taken aback. My eyes are still wet. Or is it the beers we had on going out with a handful of people after?
I left Santiago, with a few days in Madrid, and flew on to Tirana, Albania. Been here a week and a few days now. A curious little city (a million), from once super-isolated strange island in Europe, it is now brimming with new architecture, and seeming wealth – it is Europe’s one narco-state, running drug and other dubious businesses from S. America to Europe. Presumably I’ll do a handful of screenings here, a workshop, and maybe make a film. In any event I’ll be here two months, and then to Venezia before… before either going to Cuba for some weeks, or perhaps a few weeks in Italy to see friends for perhaps last time, and see if I can gather together some art – pastels and things – stashed here and there. And then back to US, Weyauwega, Wisc, to make film and then slowly westward on yet another swan-song journey.
If inclined send a note, a letter. Hope all is well where ever you are.
Autumn Equinox, 2023
Autumn equinox – this one falling a day later than usual, September 23, 2023. That time of year, equal light for everyone, if not at the same angle. Autumn, here at north side, Equinox.
The last 3 months are enough of a scramble for me, it is hard to disentangle it in my mind; where was I three months ago? A check with WhatApp says I’d just arrived in Derry, coming from Santiago de Compostela a week earlier. Was in Derry with Marcella and her best friend, Uma, the border collie, until late July. Marcella lives right by a large rambling park, where Uma begs to go, to chase balls and run. I took her out often, running her to exhaustion – which she liked. She is a lovely friendly creature who knew a sucker when she saw one, in the house coming to drop a ball or frisbie in my lap, repeatedly. Her way to say “let’s go.” I usually complied. Managed to nose around in Derry, see a good bit of the town, go out with Marcella to nearby beaches in Ireland. Was a good time.
Then we went together by car/ferry to Edinburgh. That was to act in a film entitled, Mercy, Kill Jon Jost. In its shooting owing to a handful of re-takes I died perhaps 6 or 7 times. Something I had learned in my winter in Kolkata, a Hindu thing – dying is easy and you can just roll back on the wheel of life, in some form or another. I kept coming back as myself. The film was an impromptu thing thought up by a young, 24 yrs old, guy who I am sure inquired if I would do it 110% certain I would say no, and instead… I think he then had to buy his costly camera/sound kit to actually do it. Marcella thought he was perhaps somewhere “on the spectrum.” He certainly had little social sense of the kind one should have to make a film, and I had the sense he had little idea what he was doing. He did clap his hands in front of the camera and bark “action.” I doubt this little folly will see the light of a projector anytime, so I can be secure in keeping my (ha ha) “reputation” intact. We had three weeks there, with Uma along, and I did get a chance to see far more of Edinburgh than previous visits had afforded, as well as play ball tosser. And had fun.
Parting with Marcella who drove back to Derry with her sister, I then went to Santiago, again, to attempt to wrap up shooting for film here, Casa do Silencio. I did manage to get some new needed material, edit some, and think I probably have the makings of an interesting film, perhaps even a good one. Stayed at first, 2 weeks in a B&B right on one of the major camino trek ways, right near center of town, with nice guy, Roberto, in quite close quarters. He was helpful, took me out to the sea to see an 2000 years+ old Celtic ruin reconstructed partly on surviving foundations. And then Roberto went out to Piloño with me to act as prompt/audience for Pepe telling life stories, whom I’d shot before with Diego, but he spoke in Spanish. His family wanted me to reshoot in Galego. Roberto is Galician, speaks Galego, and did the job. It seems to have come out well.
See this for a blog on the making of the film in Piloño: https://casadosilenciodiaryofafilm.wordpress.com/
Then moved to second B&B which proved quite another story. While advertised one way it seemed a hastily converted storefront with cubicle rooms, some hardly big enough for a bed. My room was bigger, with a tiny window, up high. I am flexible and have slept in ditches in the snow, so little phases me. The second night there was a storm – a deluge – which is not so unusual for Santiago which is known for its rain. My room leaked. Badly. The floor was a puddle in the morning, the toe of the bed soaked. I was moved into an adjacent room. A day later it rained again, leak was worse. Got on my computer, which then did not work. It went to IT shop, and sat for 3 days – I had intended in this period to edit. It turned out to still work, but needed new RAM. Not available there, and some ordered was wrong Mhz, and didn’t work. I limped along on a temporary 4GB card, enough to write with, but scarcely edit. More rain made for more leaks, the floor covered up with towels to sop up the wet. I attempted to move but AirB&B’s “help” consisted of giving me a list of perhaps alternative places, most of them not in Santiago but 20-30 kms away, and the one in Santiago costing far more than the one I was in. Were I a different person I would have blown a few gaskets. Instead I turned it into humor, however inconvenienced, and took advantage to make some long walks in the city, paint a bit in the parks, and ponder life and its vicissitudes. Still waiting for AirB&B to cough up the promised 72 Euro for RAM replacement and some refund on the rental fee.
At the same time, reading between the unwritten lines, a few things hinted at other “problems” – the people who’d helped before and who were in effect “producing” Casa, became scarce. In part understandable – the cultures around here kind of close down in August, everyone on vacation. But then… But then other things hinted that perhaps either they had not gotten the grant they were so sure of, or perhaps it was, like many things, hanging in the wind and they had doubts. The couple who’d put me up for 10 days last time around, did not answer any emails, before I came or after I arrived. They’d been convincingly friendly when I stayed with them. She was supposedly making a “backstage” film about Casa, but that seems to have stopped. My hunch is, yep, fell through, and I was no longer a conduit for some dinaro. I have experienced this before. It doesn’t enhance my view of human behavior. Not sure yet if this is the right take on this, and I am open for a change. But if it is a correct look, I think I will not – as planned – be returning for a premiere there and in A Coruña, at the end of November. Though I would like to see the family from Piloño as they were most kind and generous. Unfortunately I already booked flights, cheapo no-refund ones, and will have to write them off if I cancel.
Nevertheless, being in Santiago was enjoyable and I had time to see much of it, some interesting museum things, and take many photos along with, last day I was there, getting a necessary sequence for film shot – seems good enough. Day of departure was a mess: taxi called did not show up at B&B, couldn’t find one on street in 45 minutes, and missed booked train and had to buy new ticket to Madrid for next one, dragging my backpack, suitcase etc 6km through city on a hot day. However, trouper that I am, I laughed through it, though, yes, a few curse words passed my lips.
Stayed two nights with Diego in Madrid, time to go to art store to get some costly watercolor papers to use here in Skopje where I am now. I’d bought on-line a new 48 pan watercolor set, high end, to do some “serious” ones while here. In a few days get a little studio space to work in. While here there will be a 7 film retrospective, subtitled in Macedonian, and a workshop. If inclined/inspired also shoot some kind of film. Next stop London for 5 days with friends, and then USA – Chicago for some days with friends, then little Weyauwega, Wisconsin, to attend small long-weekend festival, do workshop and, uh, shoot another film, idea unknown, but it’s ‘merka, and I never had a problem finding something to think/feel make a film about.
In Skopje now a handful of days, and a few others in countryside house of family of Ivica’s wife Kristina. Settling in, to be here another 3 weeks+some days. Then to London a near-week before flying to USA, small town in Wisconsin, Weyeuwega, for a long weekend festival and perhaps shoot a film. Also a stop in Chicago to see friends. Then back to Europe, Santiago if things work out; then Tirana, Albania, for Dec and February, then Venice into March.
Does anyone know where the brakes are?
Hope all’s OK where ever you are. If inclined, write me a note, or even a letter. .
jon
Summer Solstice, 2023
Days lengthened now to maximum, here in the relative north – now in Derry, N. Ireland – light comes in the window at 5 or so, drifts away at 22:15 or so. I’ve been here a handful of days, coming from Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia, tucked up in the NW corner of Spain. Since the spring equinox, I did screening in Chicago of Tourists to an appreciative (and mostly older) audience at Filmmakers. Nice long discussion afterwards. There was a nice gaggle of younger people who went to a bar with me after. I had never seen it on a big screen, with good sound, and was duly impressed. It is surely one of my best films – meaning it will likely be seen by a few thousand people over time if I am lucky.
In Chicago I stayed with Jonathan Rosenbaum. We got along fine and had some nice discussions. I’ve known him since the early 80’s, but this was the first time I had some real time with him. He has a new book – compilation of older writings with some never published before included – coming out next year. Peter Kuttner grabbed me at the airport and spent some days with me, driving around the city, he reminiscing old days, ’60s on. He seemed to have a thousand stories. Other friends I would have liked to see, of my age, eluded me, for medical or other reasons. Did some classroom talks at Columbia, at the invitation of Peter Hartel, and Tim Hardin. It appears though that the modest pay I was to get is not going to happen as they have shown no interest in getting it to me. Burn artists? Thanks guys. And I did a run up to Wisconsin to lay groundwork to return in November for the Weyauwega Film Festival, to show a few films, do a workshop and perhaps make a film. If all works out it’ll happen in early November.
Then went to Boston for a week, staying with my cousin Holly, catching up. Managed to have a dinner with a handful of friends in town, grab my (relatively) new Panasonic camera, 4K one (I’d given my old 2007 Sony HD to someone in Kolkata – it was beat up but still running OK) and then drove down to NYC with Patrick Miller, who came up to Boston to interview and record some friends for film he is making on yours trly. We took my earthly possessions, not quite all, but most, and crammed it in a closet in his apartment in Queens.
In NYC stayed at Jane Schreibman’s place in Chelsea, though she was out of town – partly in Derry with Marcella. NYC managed to see some friends, go art slumming, get a few things at B&H, have a comic adventure or two meeting net-met folks and had, as usual, a good time.
Then it was a flight to Madrid where stayed a day and then went on to Santiago de Compostela, to attempt to shoot a film, Casa do Silencio, there. Had booked a B&B for a month, which was OK enough, on edge of town, about 25 minutes walk into center where peregrinos homed into their destination, the cathedral at the city center. Arranged to meet some people I’d corresponded with before, landing there by a zig-zag path where a friend in Lisbon, Angela Solla, put m e in touch with a musicologist in the north of Portugal, next to the Galician border, who then put me in touch with some people, Almuinha and Mauro, who run an organization aCentral Folque, which programs music concerts and publishes books of poetry and other things, all in Galego. We met, got along, and they quickly decided to help out. I was immediately plunged into the local community of musicians, poets and others. They are applying for a grant – a modest sum of money – which the regional Galician government offers for cultural things. In support of this they said they’d make not just the film, but that I would do 6 little vignette films of Galego poets and singers. And someone would make a film about me making the film. I spent a month in Santiago meeting people, video-recording, and keeping mostly pretty busy, happily so. I hadn’t anticipated such a quick start.
Here’s links to a few of the music/poetry things: Xiana, Ugia
At the end of May, Diego, who’d prompted the whole thing a year and some ago, came up from Madrid, and we stayed in his grandfather’s house – a matter which had seemed perhaps problematic earlier, but turned out no problem. Rented a car and went to Piloño, where we visited Maruja, the country-farm woman next door, and Pepe, who I’d met and filmed the year before. Shot with both of them, the places they live. Drove around the area a bit and shot landscapes. Slowly a kind of film formed in my mind from the disparate things. After 10 days in Piloño returned to Santiago and stayed with Sonia, the woman shooting film about the film, and Alvaro, her partner, a musician. We got along very well, and I went with them to a Galicia music-world gala where Alvaro got an award for his band.
Almuinha seems sure they will get the grant, and if so I will return to Santiago to shoot some other things, not sure just what yet – I have some time to mull it, and perhaps write a scene to be done in Pepe’s house with the actors I have and perhaps a few others. If all goes well, I’d be due to screen the film in A Coruña and Santiago at end of November or early December, along with some others of my films, a very mini-retrospective, and do some workshops, and perhaps a concert singing. Of all this I should find out in July, yes or no.
Meantime come middle of July, Marcella and I will be going to Edinburgh for 3 weeks, for me to act in a film entitled KILL JON JOST. Yep, that’s the title. I know little about it. Will it be a doc? A real snuff film?? Tune in in middle of August and find out…. If aCentral Folque gets the grant it’ll be Edinburgh to Santiago, if not, probably a week or two in UK, then early to….
Come the autumn equinox, I’ll be in Skopje, N. Macedonia, for another retrospective and workshop, and a kind of artist’s residence with time and a place to make some things – probably painting and/or maybe photo collages. And, if things play out, make another film….
So it has been a busy past three months and promises to be a very busy next 3 months. (And the months after look busy too – if invited to some festivals possibly to Locarno, Venice, Yamagata in Japan, and including trip to USA, and off in 2024, a stay in Venice – Italy). Oh, and I had my 80th birthday back last month.
Hope you’re well. If inclined drop a note or a letter.
jon
Spring Equinox, 2023, belated
Being busy traveling, the equinox nearly slid right by me – I realized while flying from Cuba to Miami (enroute via long lay-over to Chicago) that it was here. Post a brief Equinox note here. The last months, were spent in Kolkata, mostly, with some side-trips to the villages where friends now in the city originally came from. And one jaunt to Dhaka where I was head of jury and quit as the thing was so incompetently run that there was no way to make a judgment about the qualities of the films themselves. Like one needs to actually be able to see them and little things like that. Dhaka, however, was very interesting.
I was in Cuba to teach again at the Escuela International Cine & Television, as I did last year. Cuba, then the land of nada and nada is now the land of nada, nada and more nada. A sad desperate place which some of my friends should stop romanticizing, never mind how brutal the US has been; it is also as it is from its own terminal corruption. And sad sad sad.
The whole period since the winter solstice was in Kolkata where met a lot of nice people, maybe shot a film, took a ton of photos and wrote many poems. Getting the Corona Verses book yet again eluded me though it is virtually done. Must try, perhaps in the coming 2 weeks here in Chicago get it finalized – all the poems are picked out, in order, graphically done, and needs only a handful more of images to find and place. Meanwhile I wrote so many poems in the interim there’s another book or two begging for my time !
Here in Chicago I have a screening of TOURISTS at Chicago Filmmakers on April 7, and until then hope to see my diminishing friends of long ago, nose about the city a touch, and perhaps say a not nostalgic so long to place and friends. It is that time of life, friends sliding off the planet, with my number encroaching. From here going to Boston a week, in part to see friends including one old in all senses prison-time pal, and clean some things out of cousin Holly’s closet as she is out to “down-size”, aka sell house etc. And then a week in NYC, for more of see friends and city and then it is off to Spain and hopefully to shoot a film in Galicia. Raised the minimum funds I wanted to do it, now just hope to get OK to stay in house, perhaps round up a singer or two, and make a lyrical oblique film. We see. After that, like to spend summer solstice there, to Derry to stay with Marcella a bit. And then it appears to Edinburgh to act in a film I know little about, except it is titled KILL JON JOST. I inquired if it will be a real snuff film….one way to skip off the orb! And come September to N Macedonia for 6 weeks of a kind of artist residency and partial retrospective in Skopje. And my crystal ball grows vague from there.
News of the bigger world is glum – the new world wacky global warming weather is proving a doozie, what with California praying for rain for some time getting it in quantities one doesn’t want: beware what you wish for.. Elsewhere in the world it is similar as we begin to really pay the bill for our refusal to change our ways. In my view it is all done, we are over the cliff, in free fall. But the river Denial carries us along to the cataracts that fog our eyes.
And repeat pitch, here is beginning blog for hopefully new film, which I think I sent before but send again. Seems I have my minimal amount ($5000) pretty much raised. Of course more will help as I’d like to find/pay some Galego singers/actors to be in film.
https://casadosilenciodiaryofafilm.wordpress.com/
If inclined, kindly send a note. Hope all is well, never mind the global news.
jon
Winter Solstice, 2022
Dec 22 2022, Kolkata
Lying nearly on the Tropic of Cancer, Kolkata’s oscillations make for a hint of winter light, the sun slanted a bit and a diminishing of the heat. For someone accustomed to Northern US and European climes it is balmy. The locals put on a sweater.
Certainly in Riga, back 3 months ago, where I spent a 5 day stay before heading on to India (via a stop in London), they have a lot more than sweaters on now. I had a hard time recalling my previous visit way back in 1999 or so, doing a workshop with Michael Pilz, when the city seemed in memory far smaller. It was a nice 5 day stay this time around, walking the city and meeting a some new people.
London was a pit stop and then the long flight to Kolkata. Here I am staying thanks to my net-met friend Riddhi, who a few years back had sent me his film PARIAH, which I found quite good and powerful, and tried to help him get into a major festival. I failed, and found out whatever cultural clout I once had is diminished to more or less nothing. I can’t even get my films in a festival anymore: my most recently finished film, WALKERVILLE: A State of Mind, turned down by the Berlin festival’s “Forum Expanded” section, and in last years work has been rejected by others, though in my view it is among my best work.
Here I have a nice little apartment for myself in South Kolkata, on a little pond, one of very many scattered about the city. On arrival I had time to take a deep breath and then we went off for 5 days to Riddhi’s home town, Supur, a rural village about 3 hours drive away. It was Durga Puja, the major Hindu festival of the year, and I got a front row seat as it were to the festivities. Owing to Riddhi’s family status there, he had to officiate in some rituals. I found the village life fascinating – unless you’ve been to such places it is difficult to convey the basic nature of it – dirt streets, on/off electricity, questionable water, and a deep poverty which, being the norm there, takes on a “just-life” quality. Not having been in India for 12+ years, my first ride seemed a harrowing trip in hell, zig-zagging, dodging in the mixed traffic of cars trucks buses rickshaws bicycles goats cows pedestrians, horns honking and a general mayhem which here, in the countryside or the cities, is the same, and taken as normal. By my second trip I’d acclimated myself to it, and, as I told Riddhi, it appeared that either your driver was very good, or dead. No in-betweens on that.
Here in the city I walk around the neighborhood and ponder some kind of film. Have a few people – two young women, Aopala (dancer) and Tanika (actress) game to do something; now I must dream it up out of the city, life and find a film. Or not. Ok either way.
Also while here took a trip nearby (20 miles but took a few hours driving) to a place where a traditional form of Bengali boat was being built – to go into a museum. More of the endless village which seems to be a major part of India. Boat and all was of interest, perhaps because I lived a while, in Port Hadlock WA, for nearly a year, immediately across from a hand-made boat making school and saw what they did.
And another trip with friend Nilanjan whom I met back in 2002 or 3, when here for workshops in Raipur (one month) and 4 shorter ones here in Kolkata. He became my guide and friend back then and later wangled me into the film festival here 12 years ago. We went to his hometown, Bishnupur, 3 hours train ride away, and then drove to a resort place in forest, and visited a tribal village – a place I’d love to go stay a month or two and make a documentary of life there.
Otherwise slowly nosing around Kolkata – markets, different neighborhoods, though owing to the dicey modes of mass transit (buses, metro, “autos” – 3 wheeler motorized rickshaws; pedaled rickshaws or human kind, all requiring some inside know-how to use), the going on whatever is slow and going to place X is more or less enough for a day. Last weekend Nilanjan took me to all the Christian churches here (half were closed), and out for a good Bengali dinner. So it has been an interesting and active last 3 months, seeing new things, meeting new people and having a good time. Learning new things which is always good.
In early January I will go for a few days to the Sunderban, a mangrove forest area in the delta of the Ganges; maybe see a tiger. Or maybe not. A bit later I will be off to Dhaka, in Bangladesh, to spend nine days being a juror for Asian films section at the film festival there, which is a major one in the region. And then back to Kolkata until end of February, with a long trip to Cuba – with brief stop with friends in London, and then Habana via a layover in Madrid. Cuba to teach at EITVC again, as I did last year. And then, on Spring equinox, fly to Chicago, where have one screening lined up, and look to stay 3 weeks or so. After that my crystal ball offers no insights. Though perhaps to Galicia to shoot a film in May. Perhaps not.
Of life in the last 3 months, what is getting to be a “normal” once one reaches this age: the litany of friends slipping off the planet. One friend, a writer, Jim Nisbet, 75 at death, who had forewarned me after getting my summer letter that it wasn’t clear he’d be around for the autumn one, did manage to get to Sept 21, but the quick cancer he had took him on 28th. And as I write a few other friends are wrestling with cancer as well. I must have written now 100 poems which dance around the reality of death (not morbid poems I note – rather ones which simply acknowledge it is a natural part of life, and to embrace life fully, one must embrace all of it.)
Of other matters – politics and all – they seem to demonstrate our near infinite capacity for stupidity and self-destructiveness. Thanks to the war in Ukraine the arms business is kicking into high gear just when we should be taking steps to rapidly de-industrialize. We’ll go over our cliff in super high-tech style. We are so brilliant.
A poem from sometime in the last few years:
stepping out of the shower I caught a glance of myself
and thought of caravaggio’s saint jerome
not the one at the villa borghese in rome
which i saw some decades back
but the one i’ve never seen, in malta
the withered arms and pull of gravity
were there
the furrowed brow
but the skull was not on a table
for my contemplation
instead i wore it on my shoulders
slack as they were
and like jerome i’d lost most my hair
in the same moment i recalled another painting
better
on piazza del popolo
of st peter being hoisted to his baselitz-like end
and thought
at least i am not there
(just yet)
Actually St Peter there is looking to have more muscle in his bicep than I seem to have these days. Though I can do more than 100 pushups still.
With that I’ll wrap this up as we wrap up another year. Hope all is going well with you, and if you’re into seasonal follies (I am not), enjoy and have a wonderful whatever you celebrate. It will be getting lighter now for us up here in the northern half of our shared home.
Kindly write a note, however brief, is so inclined.
A hug from Kolkata
jon
India, India
A little goof up and wrote for other blog. Go here:
https://wordpress.com/post/paginasparaclaravol4.wordpress.com/1014
AUTUMN EQUINOX, 2022
Ventspils, Latvia
Again, the day and night balance. Here in the northern latitudes, and southern, and everything in-between. 12 hours of day, 12 of night.
3 months ago, for summer solstice, I wrote from Madrid, where I stayed with a young friend, Diego – the one who invited me to Galicia to, as it were, look for a film. I found a could-be one, and presently am in touch with a young producer/filmmaker from there. He seems to share similar thoughts about making cinema outside the usual business and aesthetic range, so perhaps something will work out. If so would return to Galicia in April – May 2023.
I stayed on in Madrid two more weeks, giving ample time to nose around neighborhoods I hadn’t visited before, and go to museums, including a few I hadn’t previously gone to. A nice time, and I seemed to have dodged the really hot temps that came not long after I left.
Looking for a cheap B&B, and with a modest connection locally, I went to a town I knew nothing of, except that it was on a lake, and the price was good: 240 Euro for a month. I flew on Wizz Air, a cheapo line, and went from Skopje directly to Ohrid, given a ride by a friend of a friend (net-met) of mine, Ivica Dimitrijevic. Lake Ohrid was lovely, the town a bit touristic for my tastes, but not unpleasantly so – and I was there at height of season. The visitors were dominantly slavic, with a sprinkling of English and French, and strangely almost no Germans. I got the relative isolation I was looking for, and until the latter week, was pretty much alone. There was a little film festival there, in which Ivica had a hand, and he, and my friend Caveh Zahedi showed up for 4 days, latter being on jury.
I managed to get some editing on WALKERVILLE done, and write some poems as well as begin the job of sifting them to make a book (or more) of them. Went swimming, enjoyed the place, taking lots of photos.
August 4 I left, catching a flight after Wizz canceled my original one and forced me to scamper to find a new one which would get me to Luton airport outside London in time for already booked flight. Managed it though ended up 2 nights and a day in airport, sleeping on floor. It was busy at the height of tourist travels. Got my flight and went directly from Dublin on bus up to Belfast to see Marcella. Shortly after getting to Belfast I tested positive for Covid-19, surely caught on planes &/or airport. Having been vaxxed & boosted, it was akin to a not too horrible cold – a few days of modest temp. Not enough to put me in bed.
Of course Marcella got it too, though her sister and her husband did not – they’d already had it. I think Marcella’s was less bothersome than mine. August 15 flew back via Dublin to London for a few days, and then, cleverly losing my wallet the day before I was traveling on, gave myself a little momentary nightmare: lost cash (not modest enough), Oyster card and 2 debit cards. Rush to cancel, and then to figure out how in this day and age to live on road without a card. Borrowed 1000 Euro from friends, and started scramble to get renewed cards, which being on road tripled the complexity. Still don’t have them, but all going OK, should be able to pickup passing back through London.
Sans plastic I flew on to Latvia, landing in Riga and promptly moving on to a town I knew nothing about except that it was on the Baltic sea, and the B&B price was, if not as cheap as Macedonia, cheap enough for me. I wanted a place where I knew no one, spoke not a word, and otherwise could be unsocial so as to finish up the film, sift and organize the poems, and otherwise tidy up my computer and things left in the wake of a year plus of travel. Got a lot of it done over the last month, with long walks, taking photos, making little paintings. Today I go to Riga for 5 days there before a brief stop in London, and then going on to Kolkata for 4 months. Of which there will surely be many adventures and things to experience and learn from.
Of the big world, the realities grind on – the blitzkrieg war in Ukraine turned into slog, Vladimir’s assumptions of a quick decapitation failing and now another military quagmire for Russia – remember Afghanistan? Humans are so stupid and love looping themselves to prove it. Otherwise global climate change romps along, though not quite as linearly as one might think, with the Caribbean hurricane season, and Western US fire season seemingly off, or, my guess, just delayed. Europe had its fair share, and rivers around the world – most fed by snow packs and glaciers, are withering into trickles. As there is such a thing as cause and effect, the waterless farmlands will soon dessicate and…. and no food. Dang. Or there will be deluges on the dried up land and floods (already are – Pakistan, Nigeria, just look and you will see.) The endless laws of unintended effects.
My next missive here will be from India, where I am sure I will find many things to tell.
Hope you are well, and if inclined send a note – to the comments at bottom here.
Be well
Jon
SOLSTICE, Summer 2022
Madrid.
[A note: I have in the past decade and more written a “seasonal” shared letter on the solstice/equinox, 4 a year – telling friends, acquaintances and others interested about my last 3 and projected coming months. As I like to include photos and that often gums up email systems I’ve decided to post the link to the blog here for I send my seasonal notes.]
My last seasonal note was written from Essaouira, Morocco, from which I left for another week near Marrakech, a drab just barely suburban place, but interesting and nice, a vaguely hippy B&B redoubt tucked into a kind of getting-to-be urban squalor. I had a good time, explored a bit, liked my host Aziz.
From there flew back to London, and then directly on, after a long same-airport layover, to Milano, where my “family” there, Luciano and Tilde, met me, and took me “home” to Casina Amata. Stayed 3 days and then, taking some things I’d left there some years ago, including SONY HD cam, went to Lisboa. Lisboa is heavy with life history for me, so I went under the weighty penumbra of the past.
The basic impetus was to go for screenings of 5 films at the Cinemateca Portuguese, including Pequenos Milagres, the film I made about daughter Clara’s first 3 and a half years, during which time I was her primary – as in 90% – caretaker. The Cinemateca had seen and was going to screen it, a bit to my surprise, and then shit hit the fan. Teresa Villaverde, Clara’s mother, and Clara herself, it seemed, had asked Vimeo to take it down from my VOD pages there, and that the Cinemateca not screen it. Vimeo took it down and the Cinemateca, after a delay, informed me they would not screen it, though they had written this about it:
PEQUENOS MILAGRES
de Jon Jost
Dedicado à filha de Jost, Clara, PEQUENOS MILAGRES é um pessoalíssimo home movie que olha três anos da vida de Jon Jost, na década de 90, que coincidiram com o início das suas experimentações com a imagem digital e com os últimos três anos que passou com a filha. Um dos seus filmes mais emocionais, um retrato de sentimentos perda e de luto, com uma forte narração sobre as imagens do passado.
Dedicated to Jost’s daughter Clara, LITTLE MIRACLES is a very personal home movie that looks at three years of Jon Jost’s life, in the 1990s, which coincided with the beginning of his experimentation with digital imaging and the last three years that he spent with the daughter. One of his most emotional films, a portrait of feelings of loss and grief, with a strong narration of images from the past.
In the process of all this, on Facebook, I got the first communication from Clara since she had been kidnapped, in November 2000. She asserted that she had indeed asked the Cinemateca to not show the film, and in process there was an exchange between us, a sad one for me (and I imagine for her) in which she said I had not been there in her life, and in effect confirmed she’d been subjected to the full “parental alienation” regime, taught that I did not love/want to be with her, etc., she’d not been kidnapped, and she remembered nothing of her first 3 and a half years. She ended the Facebook exchange by saying, “I have had a father all my life… I’m sorry, I will leave this conversation.” The “father” of whom she speaks is a man I met years before I met Teresa or Clara was born: Vasco Pimentel, who was Teresa’s partner before she jettisoned him having pursued me for several years. Vasco was involved in Clara’s abduction.
These are the things I wrote to her, following our Facebook exchange, on the blogs I have maintained for her for 13 years; you can read here:
Another reason for going to Lisboa was to do a workshop, but that fell through as the person organizing it essentially did no promotion and seems to have assumed my “name” would magically bring enough people. It was cancelled, and I bowed out of a return version later in May, having “no confidence” in the whole matter.
I left Lisboa for Madrid, to fly to Cuba, where I was scheduled for a workshop at the Escuela Internationale de Cinema & Television (EICTV), one delayed 2 year thanks to Covid-19. I spent two + weeks there, on the campus near San Antonio de Los Banos, about an hour away from Habana. It was an interesting experience – students all from Latin or Central America, no Cubans. The place has been famous for a good long time, with many famed directors and others going there to teach (short term). The setting is isolated, and it it hard to go anywhere from there, and in the present time things in Cuba are very hard – as the director of the school told me before I went, “we have nothing and nothing.” Which was pretty much the case. Food was pretty bad; students as usual with students, mixed – some interested/engaged, some not. But despite the limitations, had a good time.
After my time at EICTV I arranged to stay in Habana for 10 days, booking for myself a B&B in Veja Habana – the old center. It was a very interesting time, took a lot of photos (having been warned I might be a robbery target with camera, but wandered all over and never had a problem). Again owing to current economic and other realities, food was marginal, but experience was wonderful. Met some nice people. If things work out I will go back next year for more.
From Cuba was back to Madrid and immediately by train up to Galicia, being met by Diego, young Venezuelan now living (along with many compatriots) in Spain. He’d invited me to go stay at his grandfather’s big nice house in the countryside about an hour outside Santiago de Compostela, there to perhaps think about a film. The area was beautiful, and the people I met – some farmers across the street, some in Diego’s family, were all wonderful. And it did indeed trigger thoughts for a film, though whether that will happen or not is in the air – not really in my hands, it will depend on whether can/can’t go back in autumn.
I did shoot a little 11 minute prelude, which you can see here; it is not quite finished, wanting a little discreet voice-over and some minimal sound/mix work: https://vimeo.com/717507283 Pswd: CASA
Leaving Galicia a week ago, now in Madrid for the moment, staying in Diego’s small apartment in the Concepcion neighborhood, on the other side of the highway from the big bull fighting ring. Nice, laid-back area. Here now for another week and a few days and then fly to London for a brief stay, enroute to a flight to Skopje where later I will have a screening (The Bed You Sleep In, 1993, nice digital restoration by EYE film in Amsterdam), and go stay at a cheap B&B for a month on Lake Ohrid, bordering Albania. After that back to UK, and my crystal ball occludes. Likely stay in UK, somehow, for August, hopefully to N Ireland a bit to see Marcella. And then… See if return to Galicia is possible to shoot film there.
And also in hanging in limbo, though I think unlikely, is a film in Palermo. Awaiting (unlikely) word as to whether Roma-based producer comes up with the money, with the major problem being that I have no script and in the film world that is a requisite security blanket. The same guy did Peter Greenaway’s last film, for sure with a script in hand, and apparently it was so bad it got made and instantly disappeared. So much for the insurance policy of a script.
Meantime more or less have finished Butte-shot film of 2 summers ago, Walkerville: A State of Mind. It came out, a bit to my surprise, quite well. I need only to finalize mix on it and re-record a song written for it. Maybe send it to some festivals, but I wonder what the point of that would be, whether rejected or shown, means almost nothing.
Usually I’d have some solstice thoughts on the larger world – but it seems to be taking care of itself, with wars, famine, the ever-accelerating effects of climate change/global warming all hammering away while we dicker with inane politics as we collectively zip past any “tipping point” cliff. But, for a little levity, try
this:
Happy Summer Solstice and stay out of the heat!
Crossing Paths: Swain Wolfe (1939-2021)
March 21, 2022
A year and a week ago a dear friend of mine, Swain Wolfe, decided he’d had enough of being on this earth and removed himself. From what I understand he kind of botched the job. He’d drunk a bottle of hard booze, taken sufficient painkiller pills, for which he’d had ready access, and “gone to sleep.” Apparently though it wasn’t the Long Sleep he’d been looking for, and he woke up, surely in a stupor of drugs and alcohol, and realized this wasn’t death. He went and got the pistol he had in the house and put his brain on the kitchen ceiling.
I can’t say I hadn’t in some ways seen it coming, as he’d pretty directly told me that when time came, he was ready to take himself out of our little game here. I believed him, though as he’d promised his mother on her deathbed that he’d care for his much younger sister, Carolyn, who had Down’s Syndrome, rather than allow her to be institutionalized, I was sure he wouldn’t do so while she was alive. She died in autumn, 2017, three and a half years before he chose to leave.
I’d known Swain a long time, since 1971, when on an impulsive instinct I moved with my partner of the time, Elayne Ketchum, and her daughter, Erinn, then just 3 and some, from rural Oregon, in the forests near Cottage Grove at the south end of the Willamette Valley, to Montana. Elayne and I said we were tired of “sunshine hippies” and wanted something a lot harder. So we moved way north. Enroute we passed through Missoula, with a tip from someone on the filmmaker’s grapevine, that we should drop in on a filmmaker there, who also had a 16mm lab. That was Swain, and his company Bitterroot Films. We took the advice, and were warmly greeted, and doubtless shared some beers and talk. While there another man visited, from up near Kalispell, and told us of an abandoned cabin he knew of, which we might be able to move into. He passed along the name of a woman we should ask, one Mrs. Gillespie. Heading north, we checked it out, got an OK, and indeed did move in: no electricity, no running water, and when we moved in, no floor. Elayne and I were rank amateurs at rural life, but after living there 5 years, we had a big garden, chickens, rabbits and goats, and a lot of real wonderful hard life lessons under our belts.
While there we’d visit Missoula, 130 miles to the south, once in a long while – 2 or 3 times a year, dropping in on Swain each time. We slowly became friends, and he loaned me his old PC 16mm camera to shoot parts of my first feature film, Speaking Directly. I don’t quite recall but probably he also processed some of the film for me, too.
Swain’s bread and butter back then was shooting the local High School and the University of Montana’s football games, for training purposes. He also made documentaries about ecological things, long before it became fashionable. His films were not very good (which he admitted later), being rather heavy-handed and didactic, and visually mundane, but several sold well in the educational market back then, and he zipped around in the film world looking dapper (and screwing his way around – he told me lots of stories of that).
In the 5 years we lived in the Mission Valley, Swain never came up to visit us. We moved from Kalispell in 1975, or maybe it was 76, going to Southern California, where Elayne came from. And I thought to take a stab at Hwd.
In 1977 I decided to make a film rooted in a mix of my prison experiences, and the time I’d lived in Montana – tapping on the many things I’d learned. Working with Tom Blair, whom I’d met in Kalispell, and came from South Dakota. Tom was the theater department of the local community college there, and we’d get together to have beers, tell stories, and smoke really bad Montana home-grown. Luckily I never saw one of his productions, or saw him act up there (or anywhere), which I suspect might have turned me off working with him.
Going to Missoula to scout things out, Swain said he’d loan me his camera again, and that his little lab crew could help out if I wanted. When time came Michael helped record sound and do some gofer work. I rounded up some actors for the film at the drama department at U of Montana, and went back to LA, where I got one more person lined up, Jessica St. John, whom I met while making a little drug deal; it just happened she came from Missoula and was headed there to see family. In June I went back to Missoula to rendezvous with Tom, and the others. Last Chants for a Slow Dance was shot in a week, in part in Swain’s house.
Not for the only time, his memory and mine don’t coincide on things around Last Chants or other matters. In offering his camera, I think Swain also intended to do camera for me – for which I was not really open, but I did let him do the first shot, where both of us rode on the hood of an old pickup, no straps or safety measures at all, going 30 mph or so, on a real highway. I’d told Tom, who was driving, that whatever he did, he needed to do it slowly – accelerating or stopping – as Swain and I were subject to the laws of physics and we’d go wherever momentum dictated. For the shot I told Swain I wanted only a few short pans, and no zooms. While shooting I saw him do a zoom and decided for sure I didn’t want him shooting anymore. We survived the shot. Came the next take, in his bathroom with an argument between fictional husband-wife, I told him I’d shoot it. He got quietly pissed, and left town. I have never seen a camera operator with a zoom able to keep their hands off of it. I shot the rest of the film.
Swain’s version, told to me a few times in the decades since, was that Tom arrived, he’d sussed him out as a quasi-psycho, and promptly left because of that. I know that wasn’t true, as he did do that first shot, and my version is that he was angry that he wasn’t going to shoot film, and left town to go simmer or whatever he did. We wrapped the film in a week, and I returned to LA where I had it processed and jumped into editing, having promised a non-existent film in May to the Edinburgh Film Festival which was at the end of August. They’d invited it sight unseen, before a frame had been shot.
After, when the film had gone to the festival, gotten a handful of nice reviews, including an article in Sight & Sound, and all that – all for $3000, Swain decided a few years later, to make a feature himself. My guess is that he did that prompted by having seen me make a feature under his nose, with his equipment on almost nothing. He told me about his film a bit before, and one thing he planned was to shoot the bad guy (who he told me a few years back was some more or less famous right-wing government guy who’d done some dirty work for Reagan) always with this very long telephoto lens, actually more a telescope. I thought this was not wise on a few accounts – like how do you direct a guy a football field away? Or how do you cut to the totally flattened hyper-telephoto stuff to the other 16mm stuff? Terrible cinematic idea. But Swain went ahead, shot his film, and it was awful. Truly awful – stiff bad acting, klutzy story, really really bad. And the terrible hyper-tele shots flat as a pancake. I know I looked at it, but don’t remember if I gave him any ideas of how to salvage it (I doubt I did as I saw no way for that), or just told him to let it go as a loss. But he couldn’t let go and spent a decade trying to edit his way to something passable, which he never did. $100,000 worth of messing with it. Down the drain.
Deep inside I think he sort of blamed me, and for a few decades he was always kind of prickly with me, like I’d booted him from shooting Last Chants, and that somehow I had made him do his terrible film, and it was all my fault. He never said that, but I think he felt it. I also felt he was a bit jealous as my career, what there was of it, blossomed. For a good while he had a hard time saying my films were any good.
All water long under the bridge now. In his later years he admitted he’d made terrible films, and he liked mine a lot. And the prickliness he showed – he called himself an irascible old bastard and mean guy and seems to have had precious few friends – was just him, not aimed at me at all. I guess we could say I had been my usual Taurus-self in this regard and stuck through it, whatever. To my observation it seemed I was the last friend he had, who put up with him. The others all seemed to drift away.
Sometime in the last decade he gave me that awful telephoto lens. I messed with it – soft, drop-off on edges, a POS.
Little vignettes:
Swain, living right on the North Fork of the Clark River, had a canoe, though it seemed he seldom used it. I recall, I think at my request, going out on the river with him, nearby. At some point, don’t recall why, we went to shore and I got out to do something. He had been in the front, and I watched as he paddled not reversing himself, the back of the canoe wig-wagging back and forth and he seeming puzzled. I had always thought Swain – a big guy – was physically clumsy, but this suggested he really just didn’t understand some things. I kept my mouth shut in the instance.
Another time Swain decided to make a film about hang-gliding as the mountain behind UM back then was a regular launching place for them, and often in good weather one would see them circling over the campus. I saw some of his footage – really pedestrian (especially if one had seen, as I had, footage from existing films on hang-gliders). As it happened, in order to pursue this, he decided to take lessons and take wing himself. Apparently, early on, he took a little nasty take-off crash, and came to think better of it. I recalled his lack of intuition in the canoe and thought to myself, yep, not a clue about these things. I am thankful he stopped before he really hurt himself. He did finish his film, a really bad piece.
After making Last Chants I ended spending some time in Europe and far away from Montana, but in 1982 I returned to the USA, and in 1983 or so I returned to Montana to shoot a film with Tom Blair and Roxanne Rogers, in Ronan, up in the Mission Valley, on the Blackfoot reservation. And again spent time with Swain, who processed the film stock for me, though the film blew up into a failure. Our connection deepened. On one visit to Missoula around that time, Swain went to Butte, a city I’d driven by at least 20 times but never gone into, to get some free 16mm processing machines from the local TV outfit, which was switching to video. I went with him to help, and got a non-Interstate glimpse of Butte – and was hooked.
Returning from another stay in Europe I’d decided to make a film about unemployed people, and chose to do so in Butte, which certainly had that in spades as the mines had closed. And I liked its run-down miner town looks – the looming head-frames, turn-of-the-century downtown, derelict abandoned mines. In this case I’d bought my own camera, a CP Gismo, and didn’t need his, but again we spent time together, our binds deepening. The film was Bell Diamond, named after one of the old mines and its head-frame.
Around this time, in the late 80’s, Swain asked me to take a look at a manuscript for a book he’d written. I don’t know why, as I had no cred in terms of writing, though I did myself write a fair bit, for myself. While I probably would normally have turned it down, and though at the time I’d long since not been much of a reader, especially of fiction, I said yes. And I read it and liked it. He asked if I had any suggestions for him. He’d written it in first person/present tense. As it was a once-upon-a-time kind of fable, I recall telling him to put it in past tense. He recalled me saying put it in third person. In any event he did both. I probably did suggest both. Sometime later, after he self-published, it had subsequently been picked up by a real publisher and officially printed in 1993, and had apparently done OK. I figured if he’d lucked out maybe he’d made 50K or so. Sometime in the last decade he told me it’d been translated in 17 languages or so, and he’d made half a million bucks from it !!! I jokingly asked him for my cut. None of his other books, of which he wrote four, did anywhere near so well.
Apparently somewhat flush, he told me a handful or more of years before he committed suicide, that he had gotten hooked on playing the market, thinking he had figured it out, and he played – his lady friend Laurie described it as “obsessively” – until they finally cleaned his clock and he admitted they played him, not the other way, and he’d stopped. I was surprised he’d do something like that, but… well people are full of secrets you’d never suspect they had.
After having made Bell Diamond, Butte became one of my homes – a place where I had friends, a place I could stay, and a place I liked. I returned recurrently, and being near to Missoula, I’d see Swain more often. I stayed either in my van in his parking place, or in Laurie’s live-in painting studio he’d built for her across the yard. Usually if I stayed overnight I’d whip up a dinner for them.
I recall one of the last times going with Swain out to the Costco store to pick up some things for myself, and to cook. He was clearly labored in crossing the parking lot, his artificial hip having changed his gait. Twice his hip had popped out, leaving him squirming on the floor in excruciating pain. Once he’d fallen down the stairway to his basement writing lair. As we were checking out I recall us bantering with the clerk that we were going back home and change each other’s Depends. All in good humor, but it was closer to the truth than perhaps we imagined.
In 2017 I went to spend the summer in Butte, staying at my friend Marshall Gaddis’ place up in Walkerville. As later I would be headed to the West Coast, I sent Swain a note that I’d be dropping by to see him on the way. He wrote me this:
July 7, 2017
Hi Jon,
I appreciate your offer to visit on your cross country tour. However, I am in pain and it affects the way I think and behave. It would be better for both of us if you did not visit. Visitors frustrate me and I end up making things uncomfortable for everyone. I waited to write until I was thinking clearly, otherwise it would have been a nasty bit of nonsense and you don’t need that.
I’ve been writing, as you know, and that’s been going reasonably well, so I’ll keep at it for a while. Writing tends to get me out of my body and lets me ignore the facts of my life.
I wish you luck and money on your travels through Great Again America. Never has it shone so brightly. But wait a while and they’ll touch off the nukes. Then: an even Greater and Brightly Land this will be.
Love,
Swain
A week before I was going to go I wrote and asked again and in an email he wrote simply:
I contacted Laurie, who sort of lives with him, and asked to know more, and said that at least I would like to see her as she was my friend as well. She said to meet her at the Butterfly Herbs Cafe on Higgins Street in downtown Missoula. And I did. I waited a bit, and finally she arrived, and behind her, walking slowly 10 steps behind, was Swain, who for some time seemed grudgingly there. I imagine Laurie had pressed him on the matter. And then, after ten or so minutes, he then loosened up over his tea and for two hours regaled me with stories. He is a writer and a story-teller and I am happy to listen. Afterward, as we went back to his place I offered to go get some stout, which I knew he liked, and he said yes. By the time I arrived to his house he’d already gone to bed, knocking himself out with pain-killers. But I’m glad he found in himself the willingness to see me. I tried to tell him how much it, and he, meant to me. I left in the morning not seeing him again as I needed to get off to the coast, and I knew he was a very late riser. As I drove off I understood I’d probably never see him again. Nor, as it happened did I ever hear from him again, as he closed himself fully off to the outside world.
Preparing to write this, I went back over past years of correspondence which Swain and I had over the years, as far back as 2006, though I know we had had much before then. Maybe his email changed. Reading underlined the depth of our friendship, and brought tears to my eyes.
When Swain died, I was informed a bit belatedly, by an odd route. Checking with friends in Missoula some weeks later, no one knew. The Missoulian, the local paper, published a terse obituary notice on March 26, and then published a full one on April 17, 2021. I read it and found it a bit odd, sending it to a friend there who had not seen it. He wrote me back saying it was quite a wonderful obit. As my curiosity was aroused and the obituary listed no author, I poked around – and it was something Swain had written as a promo piece for something. No wonder it was so glowing !!
I loved him and I miss him.
Jon Jost's Weblog 