Thursday, June 4, 2009
Dear Spiral & BB Ha!
I am so excited to hear that you are working on a biography project for James.
I never had the privilege to meet James (or even know about his poetry) prior to his death. His life, and the fruits of it, have touched me on so many levels.
The first Breitenbush faerie I had a deep recognition with was a good friend and maybe even a devotee of James. The first Radical Faerie I fell in love with designed a "unicorn corral" for James' garden. In both of these faeries I see a playful audacity that I have since come to learn is related and influenced in some ways by James.
James writing and poetry then became an inspiration and companion as I wrote the thesis for my master's degree. His words reminded me that I could not risk my soul by killing spirituality in dry academic words, but instead needed to push the boundaries, take risks and keep it alive. His words (poetry and prose) help demonstrate some of the paradoxes of spirituality and the inherent simplicity that escapes explanation.
Best of luck on your project and please let me know if there is anything I can to to help you birth this project.
Hugs and kisses
Morgain Lessloss (aka Michael Anhorn)
The very week I met James Broughton, I had complained bitterly to members of my writing group that I had no mentors, that the older writers who had encouraged me when I was in my 20s had died. Then a close friend, with no idea of my sense of loss, invited me to join him for a weekend at the woodsy Port Townsend spirit house inhabited by James Broughton and his partner Joel Singer.
That weekend changed my life. James and I shared instant rapport; I found in him a friend, a mentor, a playmate, a muse, a shamanic clown. I also saw how Joel’s loving devotions enabled James to blossom into the sage he’d become.
Actually, I’d met James’ work before. At the Museum of Modern Art in New York one day, I stumbled upon his films. In an almost-empty theater, I sat enraptured for hours. I watched a California cowboy in “The Pleasure Garden” befuddle the fuddy-duddies who tried to rout out joy, sex, and spontaneity from people in a park. I watched a little boy born from a tree chase a red ball around his neighborhood while a gentle voice resounded:
and I am It
and You are It
and so is That
and He is It
and She is It
and It is It
and That is That...
(1968)
And years later I heard him read his poetry—or was it sing, or playfully preach to the choir?—at a Sunday morning service at a Radical Faerie gathering, where men meditate on connections between spirituality and sexuality:
And boy He has a Body
like you’ve never seen
(1982)
I had learned a lot from his work—lured in by its deceptive simplicity only to be surprised by its resonant and sometimes disturbing complexity. But it was different going to his house, and having him ask me, a recovering journalist, if I would help him [ital] write prose. He was writing his autobiography, Coming Unbuttoned. “Only if you help me with poetry,” I said.
We began a series of conversations, visits, revisits. I watched him get up at 5 a.m., when he was in his late 70s, to write poetry, work on his journals, and struggle with prose. He critiqued my work, sometimes very subtly, sometimes not so. Sometimes not at all. He read me his drafts, and we talked about what worked and what didn’t.
It became the mentorship I’d prayed for. James wrote prose like this: “My mother once confessed that giving birth to me was the orgasmic highlight of her life. In fact, she and I got along better in her womb than we ever did after I came out of it.”