1991 - Summer
Independance Day celebrates the onset of a war that, being still a part-time englishman, I cannot claim to have won. Therefore, on previous Fourths of July I have cowered in my room, but last Thursday, at Ten o'clock in the morning I was summoned to some recording studio on Fifth Avenue occupied by the British Broadcasting Corporation. There I took part in a programme the purpose of which was to explain to the English what makes America the way it is.
I doubt that the British public was much impressed with anything I said, but our interviewer was kind enough to telephone me the next day to tell me that the response from Broadcasting House in London to our efforts had been favourable and that all the participants will be paid. I can't ask for more than that.
I was in Boston last Sunday to lend my gracious presence to another showing of Resident Alien. I was met in Boston by a Mr Mansour and his assitant. Mr Mansour rules the Boston Festival with one hand, and with the other, several new York cinemas such as Cinema twelve and The Village Cinema. . . While it was being screened, he, his assistant, a heap - or should I say pride? - of journalists, and I crept away to eat at a very pleasant restaurant called Ciao Bella. We returned to our duties just in time to answer questions from the audience concerning what they had seen and to introduce the second house.
The next morning I arose and reconstructed myself just in time for one final interview, this time with the Boston Globe. The city is certainly going to know I was there.
The only actual event in my life at the moment is that I am to be made immortal in broanze, or, to be more realistic, ephemeral in clay. This is the second time I have been so honoured in this manner since I came to the united States. . . The more recent sculptor who has decided to make of me a graven image is a young woman who lives on the Upper East Side, where she hires space in a large communal studio divided into small work areas - an arrangement of which I have never before heard. She very kindly spare me the arduous chore of sitting still for hours. Like most modern portraitists, she works mainly from photographs and adds a few hills and valleys to my face from life when the bulk of the work is done.
I doubt that the British public was much impressed with anything I said, but our interviewer was kind enough to telephone me the next day to tell me that the response from Broadcasting House in London to our efforts had been favourable and that all the participants will be paid. I can't ask for more than that.
I was in Boston last Sunday to lend my gracious presence to another showing of Resident Alien. I was met in Boston by a Mr Mansour and his assitant. Mr Mansour rules the Boston Festival with one hand, and with the other, several new York cinemas such as Cinema twelve and The Village Cinema. . . While it was being screened, he, his assistant, a heap - or should I say pride? - of journalists, and I crept away to eat at a very pleasant restaurant called Ciao Bella. We returned to our duties just in time to answer questions from the audience concerning what they had seen and to introduce the second house.
The next morning I arose and reconstructed myself just in time for one final interview, this time with the Boston Globe. The city is certainly going to know I was there.
The only actual event in my life at the moment is that I am to be made immortal in broanze, or, to be more realistic, ephemeral in clay. This is the second time I have been so honoured in this manner since I came to the united States. . . The more recent sculptor who has decided to make of me a graven image is a young woman who lives on the Upper East Side, where she hires space in a large communal studio divided into small work areas - an arrangement of which I have never before heard. She very kindly spare me the arduous chore of sitting still for hours. Like most modern portraitists, she works mainly from photographs and adds a few hills and valleys to my face from life when the bulk of the work is done.