The Brooklyn Rail

Richard and I were pretty good friends for a while, then later we didn’t see each other so often, but when we did see each other, the conversation was always like we were just talking yesterday. So it was amazing. He owned a drawing of mine, I think it was called Splayed Hand. I was living on the West Coast, probably in Pasadena, and he called me, I don’t know, two in the morning or something. It was probably four or five in the morning in New York. And he said “Hey, guess what, we’re cutting coke on your hand.” I said “I hope it’s on glass.”

I remember going to his studio, but we never went in the studio. We would sit and have a beer or lunch or something, with Clara. Clara was very good. The last time I talked to him a lot, we were both coming back from Europe, and he managed to trade seats out and we could sit together, and we just got yelled at because we were talking too much, and everybody was trying to sleep. “Hey you guys shut up!” But I could talk to him, and he could talk to me, and it was nice.

He was funny in an obscure way. He’d sit down at the table, and he would immediately start picking up knives and forks and balancing them and making things. And he did carry a sketchbook all the time, which I never could do. I tried for a while, but that didn’t work. There’s that story about Einstein. He was at a concert, and he came out of the concert with another mathematician or physicist who had a notebook, and he asked Einstein if he kept a notebook to write things down, and Einstein said, “Oh, well, I hardly have any ideas. There’s no point.” I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it’s a nice story. But Richard did always have a sketchbook with him. Sometimes he’d be on the street and you’d pass him and he’d never even recognize you or say anything.

[As told to Chelsea Weathers, July 12, 2024]