It was February when I last had lunch with my friend Lloyd. We met again yesterday at Greengrass, the same Vietnamese restaurant where we met before. I remembered—he too—that we had ordered too much food the last time we were here, spring rolls for starters and a main course each. Followed by one of Greengrass’s special treats, a banana cream pie that we shared between us.
Too much!
Have I mentioned this? A couple of weeks ago I made the conscious choice to eat more appropriately to my age. For several years now I have been ten to fifteen pounds heavier than is good for me. My middle-age spread had grown into a full-blown protrusion beneath the ribs, leaving me not only unsightly but uncomfortable. I have been eating—and drinking!—as I was able to do with impunity before the approach of, first, middle and now old age. My body simply does not need and cannot handle that kind of intake any more. I ate when I was hungry, and continued to eat when I was no longer hungry.
So what I decided was simply to be more attentively guided by my hunger. No diet. Just eating more appropriately to where I am in my life right now. It seems that Lloyd had come to a similar decision, because he announced even before myself that he’d be well satisfied with nothing more than an appetizer—something I myself had decided before setting out to meet him. I ordered the restaurant’s special soft summer rolls with shrimp; he ordered the crispy rolls with beef. And the waitress brought us a bowl of those crisp white wafers that look like packing crate chips, but taste pretty good with the brown sauce that comes with them.
All of which was a great deal less important than the conversation, which went deep from the start. Of course, when people as old as we get together there is the “organ recital”—the exchange that covers unavoidable deterioration of the body as age continues to take its toll; and from there moved rapidly to the imminence of death and thoughts of dying. We had both, in different ways, known and worked with the great Pop artist Claes Oldenburg—that word, Pop, diminishes his peculiar genius and his accomplishment—news of whose death had reached us only a couple of days before.
So it was with warm feelings that we shared our memories of him. Which brought us to thoughts about art, and about the fickle art world. Lloyd, too, made a significant contribution with his sculptural environments, starting back in the 1960s. I wrote about his work, admiring their inclusivity, the invitation they extended for participation not just to those who might be aware of their aesthetic value and intentions, but to anybody, young or old, who came across them. Typically, they took the form of circular structures, inheriting, so I thought, from the kiva, Stonehenge, or the simple campfire, and offering a tacit ritual space for silent communion or debate. I liked—and I mentioned this in our conversation—what I saw to be their modesty, not of intention or worth; but in their means. It’s a quality I respond to in an art work, where the artist’s ego remains invisible—unlike the work of so many artists whose ego is out front, imperious, hungry, demanding of attention. (Think, um… Picasso!)
We talked, too, about Lloyd’s current work. Like myself, he needs to do it. Like myself, his means to bring it to the attention of an audience is circumscribed—for Lloyd, by a gallery system that has become increasingly commercialized, increasingly more to do with what it currently fashionable and saleable than with vision thoughtfully pursued over many years and skills honed to mastery; for myself, with a comparable situation in the world of publishing. We do not feel sorry for ourselves. We just get on with what we need to do. In Lloyd’s case, this is (again modest!) work with photographs, a fascination with the always surprising quality of the ordinary, the intimate interplay of light and shadow. His mind is infinitely curious, as is his eye.
Lloyd drove me back home after lunch—Ellie had dropped me off at the restaurant—and I invited him in for a while. Our arrival coincided with Ellie’s return, to the three of us sat around the dining room table, and talked, and talked. About old friends, old loves, old art world associates. And could have gone on talking until the proverbial cows came home, but that time had passed, suspended in our conversation, and reality returned. Time to get on with other things…
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