1968

As the summer of love
Turned to fall, a new mood
Began to spread across
The country.
the summer of love is over
the honey moon is a memory
the arms that held us, bear fists
now instead of oustreched hands
into the air that we are all breathing.

The infatuation with my fellow man
has stoked the fire of my anger
as well as my hope.
Love is fruit, that blossoms in the spring
falls in the summer, is eaten, savored and
forgotten, or left to rot.
But not to be clutched too long or too soft.
Only to be consumed, or allowed to rot
after it has grown too
heavy for it’s branches.

Black plight, white flight,
the sounds of angry voices
a sense of peril in the factory.
All these crazy people,
Shooting up, having tantrums
Henry stopped coming over after
A while and Jane did too,
It was all a little disturbing to her
Lou said, “there comes a point in
That world, where you have to be
Hip enough to be square, and there
Were a lot of dead people in that
World who were not hip enough
To be square.”
The year before, another factory
Regular had left his clothes on the
Beach, and disappeared into the sea.






The feeling of disintegration
around the silver factory
Was obvious now.
Billy had let the tinfoil
Peel off the walls.
I can’t tell you when the change occurred,
But He had courted this problem for years,
In everything he did.
First dragged across the papers,
then dragged to the freight elevator
to meet his new face with an old smile.
I don’t think he could say, I didn’t do
This, and I don’t think he would
Deny that.
But at the same time,
I don’t think he expected to find
Himself there at the end of the
Road either, and for that long,
After he had given up so long ago
To lick his wounds and draw his pictures.
And the question always begs, “Who are you
Waiting for? Truman? Bob? Jasper?”

Who would have showed up in
That elevator, and let him fall
Into their waiting arms, the way
He took in so many. If the world
Were to be that cruel, he would
Be it’s silver backing and stop the
Illusion and he would let you fall
There into those
Warm loving arms, instead of plate glass
as he so desperately needed
To do so long ago. But the arms in a mirror
Are illusory, no matter how inviting they appear.
And there you lie upon it, picking yourself up
Day after day after day. Cut a drift
In Never-Never-land in the atomic heart
Of the great exploding
Inevitable, disintegrating before
The camera, bathed in jelly lights,
Being carried higher and higher
Until all was blue everywhere you
Looked.

When you first got the feeling,
You started out feeling inspired,
And ended up feeling used.
There’s a moment of revulsion,
There really is, and I can
Understand that.
He watched people who are there
Around Him, who He’d made promises to
Who are thrilled to be around Him,
And they are killing themselves, and
He doesn’t do a damn thing. You say to
Yourself, You can’t do anything, you may try,
Or you think about trying, but that is
The price of His innocent passivity
He didn’t even try.

The picture was shot in august
1967 for Valerire. To help
her pay her rent. And everyone agreed that it
Was an impressive performance, Her
Leading role in His film “I shot a man”.
But it didn’t get her manuscript back.
And it wasn’t her picture either.

When some one around Him,
Said to someone like Valerie,
Who had felt miserable being Valerie her
Whole life long, “we’re gonna make your
Play and it’s gonna be a movie”
She thought the light had been shown
On her. She thought that she was going to heaven too.
And when she figured out, that it was
A lie, that it was a sin, that brought her to those doors,
it was un-bearable for her.

He put her play in a drawer and they
Were never going to do a movie of it.
At a certain point, Valerie figured it out
It wasn’t ever going to happen.
And she was someone who could not
Handle that challenge to that fantasy.
She simply couldn’t live with it.
And for her to wake up, one year later
In a strange bed, in the arms of strange man
Whom she hated by her nature, for his nature,
She felt the caged bird she saw as a girl
who once sang was now silent and still
in her hands, but not yet cold.
It was hot, stiff, and
throbbing, plunging into folds of flesh
over and over again with a thunder clap
and silenced beak.

The world is a stage, and all the men and
Women, are simply actors.
In ancient Greece, the vomitorium was the
entrance to the stage, but it was the Romans
who made it a purgatory, and that is how
we remember it.

It was then, in 1968
That she decided to put an end
To the feelings that had been
Plaguing her all those months.
Armed with two automatic pistols
In a brown paper bag, she went
First to the Chelsea hotel looking
For her publisher. After waiting in vain
For 3 hours, she headed east to Union Square
And the factory. She wanted to shoot him,
Because someone else she wanted to shoot
Wasn’t home, but she was going to shoot
Someone that day. Paul greeted her in the hallway
Told, her he wasn’t coming in (another lie)
and curtly asked her to leave.
She came up three times, finally found him
Coming out of a cab with Fred, greeted him affably,
And followed them into the elevator.
They were greeted sheepishly again by Paul,
All of the them spilling onto the factory floor.
Paul did not understand what it was she was
Holding when the phone rang and he
Handed it to Him, walking toward the
Backroom after He took the receiver.
Before the shots rang out, he held it to his cheek
And there was a crack of thunder, and time
Again stood still.
----------------------------------------------
I remember this part, he said in shock.
I thought it was over when you followed us
To outer space and the ice planet.
No, Valerie said. I am not your devil.
I am your wife Adam. You have forsaken
Me for a man in hope that the cycle would
End, and you could find peace.
There is no devil any longer, the play is over.
There is only me, always in the background,
Always waiting for you, hoping that
Someday, in one of these lives,
you would see me first. But you
Refused again and again, waiting first for
Him. Waiting to know that hope is lost,
So that my efforts to live may
be as flaccid as that which is
between your legs, and forever upon
my chest. You told me you were going
to make me a star. That was a lie, I
should have known it. We’re all stars,
everyone’s a star, a bright falling star.
But it is God that lets them fall Adam.
NOT you.
----------------------------------------------------
No one in the factory was paying much
Attention when Valerie casually slipped
A .32 automatic from beneath her coat.
Aimed it at her tormenter and fired.

The first shot went wide, but it was clear
Only to Him what was happening.
She approached him again
Shakily, fired another shot, and missed
At point blank range. He was very sensible,
And fell to the floor as if he had been shot.
But she, being a little bit more clever,
Went ahead, and put the gun up to his
Body and called his bluff.
As he lay on the floor beneath the desk,
She took aim a second time and let
The bullet fly through his torso
Just under his fourth rib before exiting
Through his back.
Valerie then turned her attention
To the stunned Englishman
And fired off two more shots,
striking him in the hip. Scrambling to his feet,
he managed to leap screaming into an office
in the back
before she could fire again.
Paul closed the door between the
Front and back where Mario was
Squirming on the floor.
Paul could see through the
Window what was happening,
And she was going to shoot Fred.

Fred said don’t shoot me Valerie!
She said “I have to!”
As she moved towards him with the
Gun, he fell to his knees, and pleaded with
Her to leave. He closed his eyes and began
Reciting the lords prayer through broken
Desperate sobs. She paused, for a moment,
Turned away to call the elevator, then turned back.
She put the gun directly to his forehead
And prepared to pull the trigger.
Before she could do so, the elevator doors
Opened behind her, and Fred, thinking
Swiftly, sternly commanded her to get in.
“There’s the elevator he said, just take it.”
Valerie paused uncertainly for a minute,
Then Eve came to her senses. She looked disarmingly
Compassionate to Fred and said in a voice
That she knew he would not be able to hear,
“It is our duty, only, to have faith.”, then fled.

It took 20 minutes after the time of
The shooting for the ambulance to arrive.
Everyone heard Him shout
“No, No, Valery don’t do it!”
but no one heard him whisper,
after Valerie had left
as he was spilling onto the factory floor,
the promise he always gave every visitor
to the factory even unto himself,
his promise that became our mantra.

“Everyone’s a star,
a bright, falling, star.”

Andy Warhol was pronounced clinically dead.
The Italian doctor, who realized who his patient
Was, splayed his torso to save him. The doctors
Operated on every vital organ. Five doctors,
For five hours in the most complex operation
Of their careers. The only organ that was not
Punctured was his heart. It was massaged by
Hand by one of the doctors, until it responded.

During the operation, one of Warhol’s associates
Made a statement to the press
during an interview at the hospital. In which he referred to him in the past tense.

We’d like very much to know if his chances are improved. It’s a terribly shocking blow for us. He is a man we can only consider to be in the midst of life. He’s there around us all the time. We see Him and we know Him and we talk to Him, we feel His presence. He has a kind of magic presence. And that’s partly why this type of circumstance could have occurred. People are attracted to Him, the kind of magical presence about Him. A kind of sweetness and light that emerged from his character in all it’s shyness. He had this kind of glow about him. Which made him tremendously appealing as a person.

Julia Warhola spent long hours in downtown hotel room alone praying for her youngest son. Imploring God to spare his life.

For days Warhol lingered on the bordline of lie nad death uncertain of what was oin on around him. He was in a deep delirium, when a television in his room brought the bewildering news that Robert Kennedy had been assassinated in the kitchen of a luxurious Los Angeles hotel. “It was all so strange to me” he later recalled. “This background of another shooting and a funeral. I couldn’t distinguish between life and death yet anyway. And here was a person being buried on the television, right in front of me. I wasn’t sure if I was back. I kept thinking I was dead. I was really dead. This is what it’s like to be dead. You think you’re alive, but you’re dead. I just think I’m lying here in a hospital.

The narrative was, “the rise to success, at the peak of that success, the breaking into it of horror, the breaking in of someone who was crazy enough to wish him dead. For the rest of his life, in some ways facing down what he met that day. He had been told while on the surgical table, his life functions had stopped, and then had been revived. He had a fantasy, a theory, the belief about himself. Which was that as it were, at that moment, God decided to give him a second chance. He had died, but he had took it back, and there was a deal. That he could keep going for a while longer, but the deal could be rescinded at any time. And I think he spent the rest of his life dealing with that fact.”

Before I was shot, I always believed I was watching T.V. instead of living life. Right when I was being shot, I knew I was watching television, Since I was shot, everything is such a dream to me, I don’t know whether or not I’m really alive. Whether I died. It’s sad. Life is a dream, I wasn’t afraid before, and having died once, I shouldn’t feel fear, but I’m afraid. And I don’t understand why. I’m afraid of God alone, and I wasn’t before.

-Andy Warhol, 1968