Letter from Stan Brakhage to Sally Dixon
(8/12/1971)
Dear Sally,
Your BEAUTIFUL letter made us all very happy here. It "brought us up" on a rather sad and muggy day. We've had some "downer" days since last seeing you — nothing too bad . . . just mumoh-grumph stuff — you know! . . . missing you and Mike after ... etc.
My mind keeps leaping in those ways (thus to those punctuations) of The Brakhage Lectures; I've been working, almost continuously, on Buster Keaton since you left. He's always as difficult as Chaplin, tho' a lot more fun to write. But God help me, if it takes as long to write him as it did the Chap. I'm liable to be scribbling away as I walk on stage in Chicago.
The MOST wonderful thing about your and Mike's visit was that, although I spent as much time with you as possible (nearly wore us all out with talk),
I still managed to work on both film and essays, completing the Laurel & Hardy. This is the sure demonstration that we all really HAVE something solid together. I just wish to high-heaven you and Mike lived close around here. Maybe some day we will all live SOMEwhere in proximity.
Did Mike pass on my news to him t'other night? -- that one of the slick paper mags., an 'art' mag. of some kind or other, carries a prominent article about my Chicago lectures, complete with picture of me sounding-forth. I thought you could use it for ammunition. I just wish I could tell you which mag. . . (as it was all reported rather obscurely). I haven't seen the article myself yet ... (all I can tell you is that it was on sale in a Boulder tobacco & magazine shot as of last Saturday and hasn't been seen since!)
Okay, I've got to get to work.
It was a WONDERFUL time together, wasn't it. We love you both very much, everybody talking all the time about you — even Rare, who's usually very 'cool' about almost everything. Oh, Sally, let us always work to keep this friendship as clear as it has fallen-out for us — such a rare gift]
