It is certainly not without due caution, and a modicum of reverential frenzy, that I undertake this task, which
many of my colleagues have so blisteringly disparaged, some with plain indifference, some with secret
encouragement. In the following pages, I shall simply present an amalgamation of first-hand anecdotes, twice-removed rumours, and verifiable facts regarding Fara Du Same. This I will approach neither with the virulent
scrutiny of the biographer, nor with the feckless gaspings of the poet. After all, fancy and fact tend to
coagulate around those papercuts in the History book’s skin that are sometimes called footnotes, sometimes
legends. Thus, I present the reader with a sketch of this remarkable woman, or rather a study of other
sketches, and itself, no doubt, a soon-to-be footnote.
To begin at the beginning, there is a most revoltingly, sordidly, anemically, nauseously, distastefully, farcically,
flippantly, slapdashedly, inanely, wistfully and vulgarly widespread readiness to belittle Fara Du Same with the
title of “Muse”1. One could instead hazard, given the nature of her unusual skills, that she essentially authored
most works of art she interacted with. Du Same was certainly the first and ultimate agent in her own life. The
artists themselves whose lives she touched, on the other hand, could almost be understood as pieces of her
own portfolio. But without yet entering the realm of speculation, let us consider the one indisputable quality
that historically defined her character.
Most scholars agree that Du Same’s identity is beyond evanescent, she was practically a human phasmid. She
was wittily described by Frank Alistair as an “apolid and haploid apparition, who is somehow familiar to all dinner
guests, all too ashamed to admit they do not know her name, all spellbound to believe that they have seen her half a dozen times.
She is the perfect stranger.”2. This naturally refers to her two most documented traits: Her unnatural ability to
infiltrate virtually any social gathering without knowing a single soul, and the complete lack of legal, medical
or registry records to her name. The latter has resulted in a series of false identifications as well as being the
culprit of some headaches. In some poorly lit rooms, she was misidentified as an alter ego of Amanda Lear,
Christa Päffgen (i.e. Nico), Madonna, and somewhat inexplicably Princess Diana3. These quite unjustified
confusions, however, can give us some indication as to when she first entered the fray of so called intellectual
European society. The first recorded instance of her public appearance was at a scantily attended edition of
the famously countercultural Salon d’ Automne in 1968 Paris. The exhibition did not feature many grand names
that year, but amongst the largely forgettable and derivative works presented, there was a painting by Samuel
Clothy that attracted a significant amount of international attention.
The picture was quite an original, albeit immature work, with recognisably surrealist undertones. A highly
rarefied and convoluted landscape which, according to Clothy himself, depicted a small fleet of triremes
overlooking the burning library of Alexandria. In Clothy’s diary, corroborated by a number of secondary
sources4, the painting had gone completely unnoticed for well over three days at the Salon, when suddenly:
enter Fara Du Same. The artist noticed her inspecting the picture whilst sketching in a corner, and timidly
approached the woman, whom he described as a Madame X-like femme. In a lustfully verbose plea for attention,
Clothy said something along the lines of: “ Madame, I must tell you: if you tore that canvas apart with those
spectacularly shiny nails of yours, it would immediately ascend to the value of a lost Picasso”. Du Same
apparently didn’t reply, and smiling vacantly at Clothy’s flirtatious attempt, she returned her gaze to the
painting. Hesitantly but with determination, Clothy asked: “ Not enough aerial perspective on the ships,
perhaps. What does madame think?”, probably referring to the wiry blots of terracotta-brown on the canvas.
After not a moment’s pause, Du Same turned to him with some bewilderment and said: “I see no ships”.
The previously untitled painting thus became : “ I SEE NO SHIPS”. The next day, Clothy placed a titular
plaque next to the canvas: the painting was suddenly a burning success. Clothy became the most talked
about, scorned and revered painter in Paris for the duration of the Salon. The painting sold to an american
ambassador a month later for over two million euros in today’s rate. 5 In the following months, and with his
newly acquired funds, Clothy employed the equivalent of a large coal mine in manpower in order to track
down the mysteriously distinguished lady who had been responsible for his success.
He managed to learn her name and trace her location to a relatively secluded hippie commune (mostly
comprised of Berklee dropouts) in San Francisco. He promptly boarded a transatlantic flight armed with a
small cellar’s worth of red Beaujolais and a set of blank canvases. What Clothy ardently hoped would have
been the start of a profound artistic partnership quickly turned to sawdust in his mouth upon his second
encounter with Du Same. This meeting virtually marked the end of his painting career and the start of an
uninspiring spiral of alcoholism and depression. There are, however, some inklings of literary value to
Clothy’s journals after this event, in that they uniquely detail a limited man’s reckoning with a very
unforgiving set of Furies. It is very clear from Clothy’s accounts that he was pathologically unable to reconcile
his wishful vision of Du Same’s character with the fact of her infinite multiplicity. When he reached her
abode with the bulk of his possessions, the finery clad woman who he had assumed to be French by birth was
wearing an oversized bright red poncho and spoke in an unmistakable east-coast accent. Within a space of
probably ten minutes, after kindly dismissing Clothy’s absurd fantasies, she carelessly sped off in a chopped-
hog motorcycle with a former Hell’s Angel by the name of Miles Owlight. Clothy followed Du Same around
for several months through a number of unlikely parties during the raging summer of Love, stubbornly
trying to force her into a phantasmatic chastity belt, before being unapologetically stomped to near death by
Owlight after an attempted rape.
The one with Owlight is without a doubt the most reliably documented of Du Same’s partnerships 6. It is also
(partly) via this partnership that Du Same eventually synthesised her unmistakable style. A much overdue
clarification as to the nature of Du Same’s work should now be given to those who are unfamiliar with her. In
this sense, I must plead guilty to the charge of narrativisation, but also confess my uneasiness as to this
explanation. It is in fact precisely on questions like: “What did Du Same do?” that some art historians and
enthusiasts devolve into thoughtless dismissals, or worse: mystifications.
It would be far too reductive to say that Du Same had a talent for titling artworks. Instead, she effectively
developed the Title into an art form in its own right. On this basis, I must argue that Du Same was
unequivocally an artist. This reading of her work is, albeit limited, a reasonable foundation to start on. Its
chief issue in the context of a thorough inquiry is that it suffers from a serious case of academic bromhidrosis
and a lesser revisionist infection. We shall return to this issue further ahead, but for now, let us discuss the
collaboration between Du Same and Owlight.
It is difficult not to idealise the relationship between this maverickly sensitive painter and the unhingedly
sophisticated nameress. It was certainly a romance as well as a collaboration. They lived and worked together
from 1968 till 1972, at the height and then on the ashes of the cultural revolution. Parties, dawnward
psychedelic gatherings and the ceaselessly undulating melody of 60’s and 70’s California proved to be Du
Same’s natural element. By this token, her genesis is that of an incurably hip personality. It was only when she
left behind the coffee stained plateaus of continental Europe that she began to flourish.
Over the course of those four years, Owlight and Du Same understood the polyrhythm of work and leisure
in a way that most aspiring creatives would envy. They drank, they worked, they explored the dime store
epiphanies of acid culture and decidedly rejected the instant-revelation nature of that already decomposing
scene. Their first claim to notoriety was in fact a flyer describing and warning against the self-appointed acid
mystics of the late hippie scene. It was wittily called The Psychedentikit, and was sold and distributed across the
autonomic nervous system of bars, clubs and house parties of the groove intelligentia. It consisted of the
summarily coloured sketch of a half dapper- half dowdy werewolf accompanied by a set of recognisable
traits to look out for. Namely :
Male;
Only talks about acid;
Has a friend “who cooks, I swear he’s a genius,
he just needs a house
‘cause his parents are fascists”;
Between 25 and 31;
Will try to convince you they’ve experienced the female orgasm somewhere north of 400μg;
Will try to approach you with: “May I bore you with some conceptualisation?”.
The bottom-right corner of the flyer reads: “DON’T TAKE HIM HOME, GIRLS, OR YOU’LL DISCOVER TEETH IN
YOUR VAGINA”. The flyer allegedly served as an inspiration for a minor character in The Holy Mountain by
Jodorowsky7.
From Frisco, to Berklee, from L.A. to Berdoo, they traversed the thickets of debauchery of the late sixties and
emerged in the conceptual oases of the early seventies’ desert. The first notable exhibition featuring paintings
by Owlight titled by Du Same took place right in L.A. in 1970. It was advertised under four names, all
naturally designed by Du Same: We have a big homeless problem in Los Angeles.; Memory’s waiting room; Anthroposay;
The rose seller’s handbook. Small billboards and posters for the show were spread across the city under the guise
of four separate events leading to the same address, a coincidence which seemingly went unnoticed. This
publicity attracted every intentional and accidental niche in the city of stars.
Some five thousand people came together on the 20th of August 1970 in an abandoned fishmonger’s yard in
San Fernando Valley, all quickly realising they were at the wrong exhibition, all eventually reassured that they
were in the right place. The event was memorable by all accounts. Oscar Finley (A destitute blacksmith,
specialising in eye-shaped doorknobs for the Hollywood elite)8 later called it the only Natural predator of
Coachella. Each abandoned shop in the yard housed a series of paintings surrounding scenes of idyllic squalor
from all over California. The whole exhibition was accompanied by rigorously improvisation-based jam
sessions. Jerry Garcia and Eddie Hazel notably attended and played on separate nights (although this is
mostly hearsay). One painting (the only thoroughly documented one from the exhibition) historically stood
out from the annals of neglected genius of that year.
The painting (which has now dutifully been returned to Owlight’s family) is a spectacularly moving example
of visual idiosyncrasy. It is what some tired and retired writer turned critic, living off the bursary of his second
honorary doctorate in a humanities subject of his own invention, would call a “Generation defining
masterpiece”. Its subject is a lump of mosquito spawn floating down a white river where a multitude of
faceless microexpressions emerge from the opaquely candid water. Du Same aptly titled the painting after the
koan proverb: Without thinking of good or evil, tell me what your face looked like before your mother was born.
The exhibition was incredibly well received and extensively talked about before fading into the comely shade
of pop-culture’s cloud. One thing the event did not provide, however, was any kind of stable financial gain
for Owlight. Scarcely any of the paintings were bought, and even with the exception of Without thinking of good
or evil, which sold for 200 000 dollars to MoMa, Owlight’s funds were already drying up by the end of 1971.
In fact, Miles eventually revealed himself to be quite prone to lavishness and extravagant expenses. He had
proverbially sat on his laurels as the Italians say, throwing a non negligible amounts of money into unnecessary
finery, surrounding himself with recycled intellectuals from the mummified innards of the Ivy League.
It is impossible to determine the exact dynamics that led to Fara and Miles’s parting, but one can surmise that
when Frisco began to smell like Montmartre and Owlight began to talk like Clothy, Du Same must have
found her way out of a penthouse and hit the road. This she did quite literally: she went back to their
terraced house, climbed in through the attic window and made her way to the garage. She jumpstarted
Miles’s bike and drove. By morning she had reached Nevada, having left a note on the Fridge: I helped myself
to your bike. Didn’t think you’d need it to go from the liquor store to the strip club. P.S. I took the liberty to title your last canvas;
since you’ve not touched it for six months I figured it was finished. -F .9
At this juncture, Fara effectively disappeared from recorded history as shimmeringly as she had entered it
until 1974, before reappearing in Louisville, Kentucky. There are very fain t rumours as to her treadings
during these years, chiefly concerning a long Las Vegas visitation and clandestine motorcycle races.
According to her own report of the few months leading up to ‘74, she travelled around the States with a
group formerly known as A.A.A.O.W.D. , The “Accidentally American association of whirling dervishes”, a sect
renowned for its culturally appropriating tendencies, who claimed to have some profound connection with the
great poet Rumi. Du Same referred to them colloquially as the spinny guys in later years, in accordance with
their exhilaratingly awkward replication of the whirling ceremony practiced by Rumi’s followers. When asked
to recall what their acronym stood for, she in fact consistently recalled it as the “Awkwardly American
Association of White Dudes”. The only two reasons she cited in a later interview10 for spending any time
with the association are that They actually played some pretty good music and They were a happy bunch overall, they had
good pot and knew how to party, also one of them practically financed my entire life for about three months, which I did not object
to. I mean: his father worked in oil. I remember this insufferablly silly story he used to tell about a man asking his dad “What’s
your job?”, to which the dad replied “I’m in oil”, to which the man replied“ Are you a sardine?”. This guy seriously thought it
was funny, poor thing.
Between ‘74 and ‘78 Fara lived in Louisville without engaging in any major works, but certainly keeping her
mind sharp. She was hired as an advertising consultant by several firms, for which she produced slogans and
product nomenclatures, without leaving her name on any of these, which makes it hard to exhume any data
about them. Thus, for a time, she lived- somewhat surprisingly- ordinarily.
Now, for a little digression, there is a question that may spontaneously arise from the implications of the
present text: How can we possibly ascertain that it wasn’t Fara’s titles themselves that prompted the artwork,
rather than the other way around? The short answer is that there are verifiable instances of Du Same doing
this impromptu. I recently came into possession of a tape recording of Du Same and a group of people on a
camping trip to Utica Quarry (Indiana), summer 1975. The recording, which was sent to me by a Bob
Carson, friend of a friend’s dad who happened to find himself on that trip, no doubt because he himself knew
someone who knew someone. The man was seemingly oblivious to Du Same’s career, and had just kept the
recording as a souvenir of what was presumably a beautiful summer night. I transcribed some 10 minutes of
the 2 hour long tape as a demonstration of Fara’s viscerally sterling creativity and skill. The playful nature of
the conversation honestly feels suspended above any chronicle, hovering from a strand of pure fleetingness.
Fara can be heard chuckling, talking, playing with human language whilst dangling her feet off of oblivion’s
mossy wharf. Here is the transcript:
UNKNOWN- It’s like- whoop, almost dropped that ahahhaha- I mean, so: You know when you’re drinking- a fluid, a liquid
yeah, any liquid. You can like- you somehow perceive the texture of the container in the liquid. And that’s not tactile I don’t think-
like it’s not because you’re holding it, it’s almost like you can taste whether it’s in a glass or- a cup, like a paper cup.
DU SAME- What? Ahhahahahhahahha man- it’s been like three hours since you last had a joint- what are you saying?
Hahahajhahaha.
UNKNOWN- But You know what I mean right? Look, perfect example: coca cola. In a glass bottle VS a can or -ermm- a
carton? There’s no coca cola cartons but you get it right?
DU SAME- Yeah, god ahhahahha. I got it before it’s just- why did you have that thought? I know what you mean, it’s such a-
like profoundly weird way to put it. What’s your point exactly?
UNKNOWN- Well, well. Erm. Yeah that’s it: There’s no name for that. Like there’s no name for that- sensation. Why? It
seems like a big deal, I don’t know
DU SAME- Oh yeah, YEAH! You’re right. I guess it’s like a- supersensory event- I don’t know- It’s a- preatertactile sensation.
CARSON- No seriously now, what’s going on here? What the hell are you talking about?
DU SAME- Coca cola.
-General laughter-
UNKNOWN- Can we do another round of the band name game?
DU SAME- again? Alright three rounds then we go swimming.
UNKNOWN- Ok well let’s go. So, this is a- let me think- Ok. Scandinavian piano duo- brothers. Jazz but- mmh- classical,
as in like- classically trained. The older brother kinda- lives in the shadow of the younger one who is this-like- prodigy. It’s
always been a contest but they have forced themselves to play together since they were children. The younger brother has a- a streak
of failed marriages and flings, and is like very prone to substance abuse. The older brother is wholesomely married with his high
school sweetheart-chuckles- but kinda disenchanted creatively. They made like 26 albums
-General laughter-
UNKNOWN- And in one of them, there’s this- this track where you can really hear the competition between the two but also
like- how it all resolves when they reach the climax of the song. Oh, and they always play back to back, as in- backs facing each
other, when they’re on stage.
DU SAME- Ahh, that makes it easier!
-General chuckling-
UNKNOWN- Oh and also, Bob’s favourite album by them would be called “ Rat in a cage”.
CARSON- That makes sense, I guess.
DU SAME- (Brief chuckle, draws an interrupted sigh) Ok. “Flight of the Crow”.
-Pause. Copious general laughter-
-Another pause-
CARSON- Ok, what the hell? How’d you come up with that? That’s insane
DU SAME- -laughs- I didn’t, he did. That’s it.
CARSON- Naah. No. That was something-
UNKNOWN- Wait, wait ok. That was honestly a- really good one. But- what the hell, pass me that Bob- inhales- Now-
cough- throaty voice- You’re not ready for this one Fara.
DU SAME- Come on!! I wanna go swimming!
UNKNOWN- Give me a second. This one is- coughs- this one will be quicker. Ok. Ok. So: they’re all chronically sober. 5
member band, The lead singer was like this- Incredible promise of a vocalist, he was this titan in his twenties, but- drowned in
the Hudson one night by- by accident, he wasn’t even high or drunk they said. So then- so after he died, the band all got sober for
some reason, they straightened up. They got their act together, and anyway- now they play this really inspired, like really skillful
yet digestible- fusion stuff. And they only made two albums with the guy, before he died. And their sound is totally different now,
and obviously- wait- It’s like this really virtuistic- vertuistic?
DU SAME- Virtuosic
UNKNOWN- Right. Virtuosic. And yeah now they’re in their 40’s. They’re all hip dudes, they switch instruments every song
cause- obviously- all of them can play anything- anyways, I want the name of the band and the deceased singer.
DU SAME- Easy. Swan song, Archie Palls.
– Laughter, again-
CARSON- Next step is either convincing someone that these guys exist, or just becoming them
UNKNOWN- Oh yeah. Do you play anything Bob?
-Du Same presumably undresses and goes swimming
UNKNOWN- Watch out for the souls of the dead! They come out ‘round this time!
-Faint chuckling-
Now. The few who will have read this far into this slightly coloured summary may be wondering why it is
worth anyone’s time to reflect on Fara’s life and work. As I advanced in a previous paragraph, I confess that I
am unsure when it comes to defining Du Same’s essence. I have recently begun to wonder whether her work
even warrants consideration of this kind. In her case, the title of artist is perhaps as insulting as that of muse.
Is she not, after all, more of a creative force? Did she not, as this force, anchor portions of void into
unchangeable, all-enveloping atmospheres? It was during such musings, in my overheated bedsitter’s brain,
that William Blake popped his head in from his printing house in Hell, and sanctimoniously pronounced the
following words into the hallway of my hippocampus: Mighty was the draught of Voidness to draw existence in.
What are names for? Do they define or create? Or are they simply cavities, waiting to be filled with purpose?
Ever since I was a child, I’ve been desperately attempting to transcribe, paint, play or simply voice a
particular phenomenon. Any conversation on the matter has proved either futile or invited more confusion
into the idea. Never has the transparent membrane of identity revealed itself thicker than when trying to
explain this. The idea that a song- no- even a note, a detail, a word misheard, or accidental eavesdropping,
the empty thud of an object in the feathered night- all these and more- are doors into a world of their own.
Horizonless cities emerge, for an instant, from the unyielding blackness, to then condense into the inevitable
dew of thought. Perhaps that is what Names are: nails, pinning the canvases of ever shifting nothingness in
place, here in the all-too-dead museum that is this world. Are we to embrace this magick of our own device,
or cleanse with fire its libraries of permanence till not one Name remains to stand in Change’s path? Alas, I
have finally surrendered to the poet’s gasps
Nevertheless, I have been quite inept in answering these questions, but for whomever hopes to pose some
better ones, it may be helpful consider the most important shift in Fara’s creative process. After years of
creative hiatus, Fara released what is not so arguably her most influential and yet obscure piece of work. The
volume, which is very regrettably found in the aphorisms section of most shops, was originally meant to be
published as “The Copybook”. Publishing rights were however sold to Farlight ltd in 2002, which is ironically
a now decrepit stationery manufacturer.
The reader can imagine my surprise when, after months of scouting, the only copy I could find was sitting in
an airport boutique at London Gatwick. The cover read:“Mystical proverbs” by Farah Duseme. I have tried to
reconstruct the publication history up until this appalling edition, but I was unsuccessful. For all I know it
could have been Du Same herself who sold away the rights. Now, this comedically titled edition of The
Copybook naturally lacks the majority of the original content, but using the advanced search engine of
several library archives (sorting, once again, for “aphorisms” “proverbs” and other ridiculous categories) I was
able to source a 1st edition volume from 1981 at a library in Aspen, Colorado. Considering the amount of
time I spent reading, re-reading and researching The Copybook, I imagined I would owe a pretty penny for
my extended borrowing. When I drove back to Aspen, however, the library clerk informed me that the book I
was trying to return had been removed from the archive, along with all records of handling. In other words, I
was allowed to keep The Copybook, seeing as the world does not seem to want it, and it is likely not a good
candidate for a donation to illiterate orphans. Despite the unnecessary journey and the salty fuel expenses, I
can now say I am probably one of the very few owners of an original copy on the planet, which comes with
its bizarre form of pride.
What is The Copybook? Well, despite this misleading title, most will already have deduced that The
Copybook is itself a book of titles. This impressive compendium is 421 pages in its original form, and
includes 676 phrases and 521 other various prompts. The layout of the contents is confusing at best: the book
lacks an index, a table of contents or any kind of appendix. The “prompts”, as I’ve deduced them to be, are
scattered without any criterion across a multitude of empty pages, clearly meant to be filled with initial drafts
for each title. Oddly but no doubt intentionally, some blank spaces could fit a short story, where others merely
a shopping list’s worth of content. No information on the original publisher is present. The only extra-textual
element is a brief preface, standing lonely on the third page. It reads:
To the stray battalions of letters
Ronin of the pentagram
Nestlings of the Fugue
Hobbyists of deranged proportion
For the verbless, startless wanderers of commencement’s mist
Become! Become!
And please begin!
and dance Tomorrow’s ring o’roses
Here’s your start
now all fall down!
Naturally, the task of locating all instances of these titles being used across media was a fool’s errand. My
search only revealed how many of these sentences, proper nouns, prompts and epitaphs were lost in the
general static of artistic production across a few decades. Some appear as lines of dialogue in film, literature
and videogames; advanced word searches on musical streaming services and specialised archive engines
yielded the odd lyric, song title and strange short story in forgotten magazines. There are very few notable
examples of artworks that have employed said prompts as a title. Of the ones I have experienced first hand,
three are worth mentioning in my opinion.
Empty cave, by Lou Farham is a sci-fi novel that follows Omar Madis, an unjustly diagnosed paranoid
schizophrenic who works as a temp for the NHS. As he listens to music on the London tube while going to
and coming back from work, his Bluetooth headphones start malfunctioning, producing strangely patterned
interferences. As Omar gets obsessed with these bouts of static, he becomes convinced that he is being sent
an encrypted message. After several months of research into cryptography, he manages to isolate the
interferences to a set of separate song lyrics which encode the phrase: A friend is an empty cave, filled with glowing
crystal (This is the original prompt from the Copybook). He succeeds in tracing the signal back to a cave in
Castellana Grotte (Puglia, Italy), where a much foreshadowed alien ship has found refuge awaiting assistance.
The novel is thoroughly enjoyable, despite some of its more recognisable tropes, and makes for a reasonably
memorable winter read.
Secondly, Nothing along those lines is a studio album and a poetry anthology by Görd Layson, an Icelandic writer
of relative renown. It is apparently Layson’s only work written in English. The solemn readings are
punctuated by genuinely transcendent electronic orchestration by composer Ethan Obers. I particularly
recommend the track Bjork’s television dissection. It contains one of the most shining uses of a Mellotron
synthesizer in modern music.
Finally, the things that life does to itself by Dora Mei is the story of an unnamed biologist in the midst of a P.h.d.
concerning cannibalism amongst marine species. The biologist spends 8 months, and the majority of the
book, washing the same mug. It is possibly the best piece of literature I have ever read.
So what became of the elusive nameress in the wake of the most archivally forgetful century in Our Lord’s
calendar?
Fara is seemingly spending the last few years of her life inputting absurd prompts into a Porn AI generator,
and streaming the whole process on Twitch, to a relatively large audience of people who probably have no
idea who she is or has been. I recently joined one of these streams, and in the very few minutes I afforded
myself, watched her distractedly type the words “Butterflies on trampolines” into the search bar. I
instinctively exited the stream before any output was loaded. After much reflection, I must conclude that I do
not know what to make of this. Sometimes I imagine a world in which this one event had been my only
interaction with Fara Du Same, a world in which no doubt many live, a world where Fara herself, behind
the dim and estranging letters of a username, is and will be an off-hand footnote.
- The only similar affront that comes to mind is a mention of Sartre in Lectures on russian literature (Mariner 1 Books, 2002), where Nabokov deviously refers to him as “A french journalist”.
↩︎ - Alistair was incidentally one of the very few writers to encounter Du Same without ever seeking her out of
his own volition. The extract above is from his epistulary novel “Διδωμι”. In an intense recollection of the
evening he met her, Alistair prophetically strikes at the core of Du Same’s entire being. Later in the same
letter, he perhaps hints at the most likely origin of Du Same’s clear pseudonym in the following lines: “For it is
only in the onlooker’s unmet gaze that this Medusa’s eyes reflect most clear, oh I wish I was one of the fools who let themselves be
petrified. Alas I seem to only endure Satyrs and their pipes.”
↩︎ - “The Bimbo effect: a public park monument to white supremacy’s stupidity. Greta Palls, The Keller Journal of
Anthropology (2014)
↩︎ - Samuel Clothy et le cauchemar du sub-surrealism. Bernard Brenthal, Maison de la Presse (1999) ↩︎
- While looking into the whereabouts of the painting, I encountered a rather curious entry in a fine art
museum archive (which will remain unnamed). I see no ships was retired from permanent exhibition in ‘02, due
to damages to the canvas. There is a logbook in the administrative section of the archive that details such
incidents, which I was able to access with a temporary permission. While looking for information as to the
nature of the damages, and sorting through the “RETIRED” section, my eye was caught by a painting titled:
“And never fall apart” by a Sylvia Denton. I clicked on the associated link, and was met with this text:“ Let’s go
tonight. Let’s run. My car is hot and Nevada is calling, let’s just skip all these intermissions. If we don’t go now we’ll die here,
we’ll die slowly and silently like all those paintings on the walls. You know already what I think of museums: all art is put here
to be forgotten. To die. Worse: it is put here to be photographed carelessly by empty people, who in turn forget the pictures of these
pictures. I hate it, their forgetfulness. I cannot stand this place for a second longer. I have love in my heart and an overdue parking
ticket. Let’s run away tonight, I’ll be waiting by the aisle next to our coffee shop.”. This is part of a much larger and
seemingly secret correspondence between two museum employees, about which I intentionally refrained from
enquiring, as I have reason to believe that the person I emailed for administrative access is one of them.
↩︎ - The backhand road. An official biography of Miles Owlight. Ryan Ballymoore, The L.A. Times (2002)
↩︎ - Oscar Finley made a ludicrous fortune selling doorknobs to the ultra rich. These ornately dull artefacts
(which he installed in the houses of Ron Hubbard and Terrence Mckenna, amongst others) all follow the
exact same design and colour scheme. I frankly consider them the product of a seriously rotten breed of
extravagance, typical only of charlatans and true visionaries, as exemplified by the names above.
Nevertheless, Finley seems to have been a remarkable man. While working as a part-time columnist for The
Spectre, writing miscellaneous articles about the local L.A. scene, he manufactured more than nine thousand
of these doorknobs, which eventually became his main source of income. He was also a professional art
forger with an impressive track record. He specialised in Pollock fakes, and anonymously sold a spurious
sketch to Sotheby for four and a half million dollars. Amongst his largely forgotten deeds, there was a blow
glass diorama of his interpretation of the planet Arrakis from Frank Herbert’s Dune. The sphere was roughly
the size of a bowling ball, but seemingly quite detailed. This last sculpture, however, may have been
commissioned to a young glassblower in Murano, with its authorship being claimed by Finley posthumously.
As to this information, I have no source other than the glassblower himself, to whom I’ve spoken in his
impressive mansion amongst the hills of Valdobbiadene. He prefers to remain unnamed.
↩︎ - This account is once again largely anecdotal, as it was relayed to me by Owlight’s daughter over a zoom call
while I was researching the duo. Owlight and Du Same reportedly chanced upon Yoko Ono in Frisco
sometime in 1970. Ono approached Du Same about the poster and asked if she could have a copy for
herself. This resulted in the three of them ending up on some kind of two-day bender in Owlight’s cabin,
filled with some unlikely details according to Owlight’s daughter. For instance, Ono apprently recorded a
good hour’s worth of wind whistling through a gap in Owlight’s motorcycle frame. Nevertheless, Ono
brought the poster back to Lennon, who had it shipped to Jodorowski during preproduction for the film, in
an envelope with the heading: “ This would be you if you’d been born in the USA, lovingly- John”. The
character supposedly inspired by the poster appears towards the end of the film in the Pantheon bar, giving
out free psychedelics to newcomers. Although I can see the connection, this whole story is likely to be an
improvised fabrication by Owlight’s daughter, who I will unceremoniously admit, consumed about seven
glasses of echofalls Rosè over the zoom call, and offered to sell me a copy of the poster for no less than 20
000 dollars. I will also admit that I haggled for a while.
↩︎ - Owlight was hired as a contemporary painting resident professor at the Maryland institute college of Art in 1989. Despite often recounting this event during lectures, he has always refused to reveal the title of this
presumably lost canvas. Here is the link to a recording of one of his lectures, where he jovially tells the story: https://youtu.be/zWuRlwRe8lA?si=ujckJQryXxiF75P_
↩︎
