The Brooklyn Rail

On a Monday night, a month
ago, I printed a 400-page
manuscript of Richard’s
speculations, a long poem he’d
been writing the past few
years, which I’d pulled
together from assorted files.
Richard kept his computer files
on the desktop, creating revised
files of the same work with
So, there was much to
sort out. We planned to work
on the manuscript the next day.
Around 11 on Tuesday, David
called. Richard was in an
ambulance headed for Beth
Israel’s ER. I jumped onto
the F, switching over to the Lex
at Broadway-Lafayette—Richard’s
stop—then walked from Union
Square to First & 16th & went
into a lobby I knew well from
visiting Ted when he lay dying.
They told me I was in the wrong
place—go ’round the corner
to the emergency entrance, which
when I found it, was weirdly quiet.
I asked for Richard & the lady told
me, kindly—no one by that name
at this hospital or in the Mount Sinai
system—try calling the ambulance
company, which I did—hold on—
what time was he picked up? from
where?—hold on—oh yeah:
we found a note—Mount Sinai
Main. I headed out with Ted’s
voice in my ear, reminding
me that Beth Israel had been
founded by Lower East Side
Jews in the late nineteenth
century, poor folks like Ted’s
& my father & maybe Richard’s
too, migrants shunned by all the
other hospitals. Dazed, I walked
into the street past where Henry
shot the opening of Emma’s 
Dilemma in 1997, just across
from her high school, part
of a film that included Emma’s
long interview with Richard & also
one with his old friend Ken. I
headed uptown, back on the Lex—
to 96, walked to Fifth & north to
The Mount Sinai Hospital, founded
in mid-nineteenth century as
The Jews' Hospital, the same
place my father & Susan’s had
died. I walked into the grand
new lobby, which felt like an
airport—pavilion they call it
—aren’t pavilions something
from an 1890s world’s fair
introducing wireless talking
boxes & flying machines to
gawkers dressed in fancy suits
& bodiced lace?—but this kind
of pavilion is named after some
schmancy benefactor, I only
hope not one of those skimming
profits off the Oxy dead, but
anyway, I was alone in the lobby
except for the guards & the kind
attendant. I asked for Richard
& she said—not here, but let
me look—yes—he’s in
the system—at Mount Sinai
West—but let me call them
first to be sure &—confirmed—
hailed a cab (did you know you
can still hail a cab?) & texted
David so he’d end up at the right
place. Mount Sinai West used
to be Roosevelt—both Felix &
Emma were born there & I
grew up few blocks uptown.
I saw Richard almost
immediately when I got into the
ER: he was flat out & hooked up
& we couldn’t get much
of a status report: his pacemaker
made an MRI impossible &
he reacted badly to the contrast
media for an accurate cat
scan. Soon enough, Richard
was transferred to the ICU
& he stayed in the same room
on the eighth floor for the rest
of his time at Mount Sinai West—
unconscious or nearly so—
connected to a respirator &
surrounded by digital displays
of his vital signs. Richard
couldn’t speak but maybe
could hear. The handful of
us at his side over the nearly
four weeks he was in that room
sometimes thought he knew
us or that his eyes tracked ours
or that he squeezed a hand, but
it’s hard to know or know
whether he knew where he was
or what was happening to
him, so we talked & played
music & tried to be good
company, as much as you
can be good company when
mostly you just feel the dread
of a man lying unconscious or
something that feels like
unconscious, first medically
induced by tranquilizing
drugs but then, even after
the narcotics stopped. & all
those tubes sticking into
flesh, patient etherized on
table, body anyway—
because who knows where
mind is. In the last few years
I’d come by Richard’s loft
to take him out for lunch—
wheeling him somewhere not
too far. The first time we went
to a close place, but Richard said
the food was awful—& it was.
—But isn’t it fun just to be out—
you don’t go out much?—Not
if the food’s this bad. Finally,
we settled on Ballato’s.—After
three weeks in the ICU Richard’s
instructions were followed:
Saturday at 9 was set for
the unplugging. I got to
Columbus Circle way too early
so got a lox & bagel at a crowded
greasy spoon across from
the Mandarin Oriental.
I liked listening to the chatter.
It was bitter cold walking to 10th.
I got to Richard’s room about 8:30
& soon enough the doctors were
telling David & me what to
expect. I sat with Richard till
a bit before 2. His head was
thrown back and his mouth
wide open—gasping
or grasping for air. He
seemed totally out of it—
or totally somewhere else.
A few weeks before, Richard
& I were going to go to
the production of Suppose
Beautiful Madeline Harvey—
his new play at La Mama—
but he landed in the ICU. Now
splayed out on the bed, eyes
closed, I thought he might be
conjuring the play in his mind—
that what we were seeing
on the La Mana stage was
the projection of what was going
on below the surface of his eyes:
unconscious or totally conscious?
Suppose Richard Foreman is—
let me quote the script—

surrounded by …dearest friends . . . in a world . . . This world! within which the depth and intricacy and apparent solidness of this same world were REPLACED by a very DIFFERENT world in which ALL human beings were, well, so to say, paper-thin somehow, minus any enfolded depth. … But suppose this only meant the scene of the action was now ELSEWHERE! … As if within some fluid atmospheric field between people—which was now the place where the action was now taking place. … AND
SUPPOSE it was really like this with people, HERE AND NOW?

One of Richard’s last enthusiasms was
bullfighting—he told me that, with its
ritual staging, bull fighting is theater’s
heart—a person coming within a
hair’s breadth of death &—¡Ole!—
not dead / dead. Maybe that’s what his
bouts with breath were all about. I left
Richard before 2, just as Andy was
arriving. He died at 3. But this only
meant the scene of action was
elsewhere. He lives in us.

January 7, 2025

for Richard Foreman
(June 10, 1937–January 4, 2025)