Franklin MacFie 1959-1970s – various trips

Franklin MacFie-in his cave in Morocco

I n 1970 Franklin met Jean Michel Belluc (a Frenchman working for IBM, living in his brownstone in NYC who should have been a Bishop at Chartes, France , according to his family, an aristocrat who ran off with Alain Robbe-Grillet, the avant guard writer who wrote ” Last Year at Marienbad”.)

From the tapes made with Barbara Stevens talking with MacFie in spring 2008:

Frank says, “I just finished making a film in Vermont ( B Stevens remembers that it was on this film project that Franklin met his long time friend Eileen) and had a lot of money and was getting drunker than usual and went to a bar in the village and got drunk and fell on my nose and he picked me up -I don’t remember that of course .The next morning I woke up in bed in a strange house filled with French antiques and nobody in the house at all . And I looked out in the window in the back and it was Turtle Bay(?) which is a very smart New York location – 29 th East side. I looked out the window and I saw Katherine Hepburn planting flowers ! I had considered just going and I said whoever lives here, I want to find out who that is. I was starved, simply starved and went downstairs and there was coffee on the stove. Eventually he came in and said Ho, Ho, Ho, you were very drunk last night. That was it. I stayed there. I stayed there for a short while because I hate French antiques.They were all much too delicate for my clumsiness . He was working at IBM- we rented a house in Connecticut for nice weather and I stayed there and I said -not sure of the sequence – I am leaving you . I’m going to Morocco. He said Fine thats wonderful if you like it thats great!”

“So I went to Morocco and I guess we’d been writing to each other and one day I look down the beach and here comes this man with a beard , he had not been bearded before.He said Ho, Ho, Ho, I like you’re life style. Jean Michel arrived and told me he’d lost his job at IBM . We stayed in the cave for a while, not my cave I wouldn’t have anyone in my cave -I got him a cave a couple of doors down. They were caves that were originally carved out of the sandstone cliffs so the fisherman could store their boats in bad weather and then they would go in there to have tea. And then they started to make one for the boat and one to stay in for when the family came from the village. I wanted to live some where on the beach so I found one ( a cave )and sat in front of one of the caves for a few days non-stop and finally I met Ali who turned out to be a very good friend . He offered me a cave and I took it of course. It was the beginning of a wonderful relationship. They were a family of Berbers. They re Indigenous Moroccans not Arabs. They are actually a Caucasian race but they are quite swarthy. In my mind they are much less volatile than the Arabs. Though I am a “semiticophile” -I love Arabs and Jews ,I think the Berbers or more beautiful even than the Arabs.”

I ask about Jean Michel … Franklin says … “He would go back and forth to Paris because it was pretty easy to do. Always some one in his family was ailing. His mother , brother and his father was still alive. Sometimes I would go with him, at that time I still liked Paris.”

Franklin says-”I think I went in to Morocco 1959 for the first time. I saved my money because a woman came down -who obviously couldn’t speak English only Italian…. and was pretty disturbed and I went up stairs – it was a leaky faucet or something-and I just thought Ive got to go to Italy -its such a beautiful language she’s speaking.”

“I saved my money and took a Yugoslavian Freighter. It left from Brooklyn and the first stop was Casablanca- Northern Morocco. Tangier is directly below Spain (Gibraltar ) Casablanca is not at all a romantic city or like the movie, it offers very little. But I immediately fell in love with the whole country- I just realized in fact what I wanted, but had not been to Europe so was anxious to get to Europe. So I could stay only a short time or I would loose my ticket, so that s what I did -So I didn’t go very far south -stayed in Tangier most of the time..in 1959 it wasn’t a totally open city but still you sat around on the streets at the cafes smoking (kief ) and drinking liquor -which was not banned like it is now— then I went all through Europe and stayed quite awhile..don’t know how I managed. well I sold rocks first of all from the coliseum ..then the same thing at the Parthenon and also did things like go into a restaurant – and said Hello, I’m an American and am willing to wash dishes if fed and most places would feed you and not ask you to wash dishes, occasionally they did after they’d given you a large plate of oily beans. I of course loved Europe , went through it all. But one time in Athens I had only 100 dollars and the fare was 300 dollars and I got the air line to call John ,my brother would he back up my ticket and I went there the next day and the reply was you got there you get back for which I have never forgive and remind him. So, I couldn’t, so I hitchhiked to France -in France I got on the channel boat and when I arrived Dover and they asked how much money do you have, (… it was like $15,,,) so how are you going to live and I said I’m gonna get a job and they said no your not,essentially we are not letting you off the boat your going back to France. That wasn’t bad – Paris , panhandling, a cheap Muslim hotel -”–Then he says “so ends paragraph six -Ive gotta go–got a doctors apt….”.

-B Sevens says -I remember you telling me about a terrifying Bella Donna trip somewhere…. Franklin says” That was in Morocco – that was Belladonna. well there used to be a man who sold cookies. and you could go to him and tell him I want the good ones and he would reach in, there was this stand he can walk with, and there was a second shelf that was covered and there was these cookies that were supposed to made of hash only hash was more expensive than Belladonna but he would use Belladonna- they were bad men. And I being greedy took about 10 or 15 at once and suddenly everything was going wrong,everything I was wearing was coming off- people were grabbing things and taking them off me. and I was fleeing – the Place de Glass du Forma – a very large Place in the middle of Marikesh – El Forma – I bought the cookies and then I was hopeless -it came over me, I was running up to the trees and telling them to get out of there- I meant that there were people hiding in the trees, they had up swept arms – like Walt Disney horror scenes -does Snow White go in to the forest?- whoever was frightened by the trees – it was just what it looked like. Finally I went to a policeman but he wasn’t too helpful. Then I went to a hotel and I demanded — they were very rude. I said I just want my room back, I left my stuff in my room. and they said no, no! the room is rented.It went on and on and finally I burst into the room that was mine and found out it wasn’t my room and it wasn’t my hotel and they threw me out of course and I don’t know what happened after that – I must have just wandered about for hours and hours and until it wore off. It was a horror it was ghastly…”

my bread came wrapped in this

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Franklin MacFie at the Farm 1967-1968

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Franklin lived at the Farm -part time 1967-68

Portrait of Franklin MacFie by Barbara Stevens (with zig-zag man, and a rendition of a Giorgione painting-the source for Manet’s painting of a lunch outside with clothed men and naked women and a tiny bit of Millet’s The Gleaners- a peasant farm scene.)

Franklin MacFie lived at the farm for seasons at a time, he was at the surrounding of the Pentagon October 21, 1968 . He was in the group that held on over night, spotted a agent provocateur the next day in at Fort Myer- who the night before had been urging the demonstrator to cause havoc and mayhem. We went to all the Demonstrations /Peace marches in New York City and Washington. Meanwhile we had wonderful “trips” at the farm and in NYC.

Sometimes Franklin would go up to NYC and come back to the Farm on the train or the bus. One time we met him and he had this story to tell: A woman sitting next to him , they hadn’t had a conversation, said as he was getting up to leave ” I have been to your Country and love your people” . We couldn’t figure out what she was referring too. But Franklin did dress wonderfully well as a Hippie but what country is that? Maybe it was a Arab type garb? certainly not Scottish or Portuguese, anyway I always loved that.

One of MacFie’s marvelous art /events there was an old Volkswagen bug body, covered with a army surplus Parachute. Making an incredible Night Light down at the Creek.

Ten years later he created a wonderful climbing place for the children, Susan and Clea ,at the place in New Mexico out of a army surplus cargo net.

This was the years of movies by Jean-Luc Goddard, which maybe inspired Franklin when he randomly painted many ordinary bits of the landscape, like posts and rocks, etc. a magnificent red, white and blue. (He did always tell us after his travels – that in spite of everything-America is great!)

Franklin lived in the old Spring house for a while, heating with coal,in the winter, then he took over one of the cabins. He kept changing things, making new kinds of Lights. He would do Yoga there – we all did Yoga.. one day when a lot of people were in various places doing Yoga, an Indian Man, a Swami, wearing white clothes and white rubber galoshes came down the hill in the deep snow to find out if we wanted to sell him the farm for an Ashram!

There were 16 buildings on this old Pennsylvania Dutch Farm, including a blacksmith shop, and a wonderful rock root cellar where the previous generations had kept their precious Applejack! They told us about that with misty eyes. They made apple cider which got hard and when the water froze in the winter, it was perfect, America’s easy way to distill.

There were three cabins, one was definitely meant for chickens. But two others were finished out inside, so we liked to think of them as having been used for the Underground Railroad before the Civil War. We put them to use that way in the 1960′s for a place for young men to stay for a while on their way to Canada during the Viet Nam war, thanks to my family connections with Lamar Hoover and the Dorothy Day Peace movement . Franklin helped us with this project.

Franklin decided to make the stream that ran from the Spring House into a pond across from his cabin and planted a cutting from a willow tree. Today the Weeping Willow is enormous, a glorious thing. The children played naked in the pond and the Muscovy ducks, living there, seemed like hundreds of them , used to take turns using the pond to make earth landings, though the pond was not quite big enough so they seem to dive bomb on the water run fast and fall on their noses…to land.

Franklin's Volkswagen Night Light with Amon Connoly

raucous lunch with Farrar and other New Yorkers

With Susan in her year long Tutu, even in the snow

Farm photos by Terry Stephenson

dinner at the farm, left to rt- top Ray, Barbara and Franklin standing in the middle.

Christmas of 1968: Linda Epton Winrick remembers ……This was y-e-a-r-s ago, when I moved to Alton, Illinois — across the Mississippi — with my family & B and C followed

Frank  Macfie & Bill Farrar came from NYC for Xmas (Stevens were there too but did not take part in this escapade!). They  ended up pamphleteering the neighborhood -Catholic cathedral  — about birth control, yes. All my neighbors, of course, lived as close to the church as possible with LARGE families.

I remember Frank & Bill’s cold faces, all bundled up. (Don’t think my brother was directly involved, but he and Carolyn probably provided the hot chocolate — and a game or two of pool afterwards)

When I recently queried Bill Farrar about it, he was vague:” we protested everything in those days…

But I remember it as a worthy cause “– if misdirected in our ‘hood.

(a wonder they survived!)

ALMOST FORTY YEARS LATER in the summer of 2007 – less than a year before Franklin succumbed to all that ailed him, an image of Franklin in the trees appeared – a chance moment, a configuration of the trees and the breeze and the Light remaining in the sky at the end of a long, long sunset, outside our boat where we were living on a canal in the North of Amsterdam. I took the photo below. Seems to me to be almost a photographic reference to good old (sometimes very Christian) Frank MacFie and his beloved Arabs/Muslims/ Jews- represented in the profile that I manage to see in the still light sky to the left of the bearded Franklin image between the large tree trunk and the branches and the follage where also there is near the top . a strange “Guardian” or modern gargoyle figure which needed -as we all do- the light within to shine- which I hope I added and a Buddha for Good Measure. Barbara Stevens Oct. 15, 2009

P.S. If you are having trouble seeing this, a trip to Amsterdam is recommended.

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MacFie and Maslansky

Dorthy Dean and Frank MacFie and friends

PHOTO Frank MacFie top right with hat, Michael Maslansky to the rt of Dorthy Dean

Downtown Chronicles New Yorker April 24, 1995 FRIENDS OF DORTHY by Hilton Als

1969 I was in Turkey when the men landed on the moon. Michael Maslansky was doing a movie -he did public relations for movie and he asked me to come keep him company.
So, We were in Istanbul while the movie was being made which was about three months and he left I stayed for another 4 or 5 months. Traveled around Turkey which is quite gorgeous which competes with Italy and Greece.. the beauty of the country , the ruins. The thing that impressed me the most was the use of color, the people -the way they use the color. On their houses , on themselves , the way they painted their houses- one house painted- a marvelous violet and the house next to it a pale apple green – like they were great artists. They were also the most volatile -more volatile , I thought than the Arabs. There were people when guns all the time and they were always shooting them off -they were like Mexicans in that way . You go to a bar and out comes the guns and someone’s shooting up in the air.
I ask about homosexual “thing” in Turkey…. he says, You know its like the Arab thing. Certainly almost no one, I would say a tiny percent will admit to or think that they are homosexual. But men would definitely go to bed with men and not think of themselves as homosexuals.” Franklin says “we are basically bisexual- you know, so when social conditions, mores accept it , even if its under the table, people are more likely to do it. Also because – most of the women a man would be able to have sex with would be prostitutes.. unless their married of course. So it leaves them very horny, so they take comes along the pike.”

(so I interrupt and ask what Maslanksky was doing all this time..) Franklin says :”He was doing public relations for films. We both used do public relations in New York. He stuck with it. I being not a stick with type person. He eventually went to Hollywood and opened his own company. He worked on lots of films , worked hard and was very imaginative and did a good job on all these things. He moved ahead quite quickly.”

(I interrupt .. Ray remembers the story of M Maslansky being the seal in a scene in White Dawn where he is off camera with a rope in his hand pulling against an Inuit with the rope in his hand down a hole seal fishing.. a wonderful movie…..must have been doing it in late 50s or early early 60′s.)

I hope ultimately to find and post the photo of Franklin in top hat toasting Bridget Bardot also in top hat. Must be one of Michael’s movies – Franklin could not bring the memory up. Barbara Stevens

transcribed from MacFie tapes -talking about a “trip” in Turkey (from this time frame)

Now we start with “trips” in Turkey… he starts off with “Gopkapi, the major museum in Istanbul. The place where most of the Pashas and the Beys and the Agas maintained their various summer houses and so on, right in the middle of Istanbul and its got magnificent Art, also gorgeous gems, emeralds the size of a baby’s head. I decided to go to Gopkapi and go on acid of course. So I took some acid and went in and had a marvelous trip -its just heaven being in the museum. and went out and realized the stuff was really hitting hard. And the first thing I saw a man who was knocked down by a car and he fell right on his ass. People of course gathered around and he got up and bowed to everybody, which was quite wonderful. I was feeling so stoned I decided to get off the streets after that and I went into a church . It had been a Christian church and had been sacked by the Muslems. All that was left was the absolute brick walls and an altar stone down where altar stones are. So I went to the altar stone and threw my head down and was sobbing. I was feeling very Christian -my entire life I’ve felt Christian. Then I looked behind the altar stone and there was a man behind there taking a crap. At this point this guard came down and asked me what I was doing. I said I’m having a religious moment – I said theres a man back there taking a crap.. this still a church you know… He said, No,No, No he’s Turkish -your American, you cant do this , you can’t come into our church just crying all over the place .He threw me out!.”

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MacFie NYC 1960s

Carolyn Brady and Bill Epton’s wedding 1967

Carolyn and Bill's wedding

By 1967 Ray Stevens and I and baby Susan were at “the Farm” in Baltimore County Maryland -just over the Mason Dixon Line – we would go to NYC and New Yorkers would come to the Farm…. we went to Carolyn Brady and Bill Epton’s wedding -they were living at Max and Janet’s Dutch barn behind modern apartment houses near the Bowery … it was filled with tulips, the famous “Judson Church theatre “- Al Carmines was officiating, I always felt he had accidentally married all of us.B Stevens

Franklin MacFie was working at the Jack Prince Design Studio in the early 60’s as was Carolyn Brady. Carolyn and I and Bill Epton came from Oklahoma to New York City -so we met Franklin that way. I remember the many apartments that Frank Macfie had during that time that he tore apart and remade- made an art form of it. When I was taping some memoirs of Franklin a month before his death we hit upon this story:

So I ask him to talk about all his art stuff which includes every house he ever lived in… I start remembering the house with a hole in the wall and the floor paved in broken mirrors …. we were staying there, Susan was about 2 . He says “I didn’t think a baby could have fit into that hole in the outside wall!”-six floors up.! He said “I lived on Spring Street for a few years in a sixth floor walk up which major feature was that it was very bright . So I tore all the walls down which was the fashion at the time to get down to the brick. The landlord knocked on the door-it was one of those where the bath is in the kitchen, which was in fact right next to the door. He said Mr. MacFie I hope your not putting any nails in the walls. No, I am definitely not Mr. Fernbaum putting any nails in the walls. He says Let me come in and look….. Franklin says — I am in the bathtub right now -He says I can wait….. I am a very long bather…this went on for a while -he finally waited me out and he came in -there was a pile of bricks in the middle of the floor and old joists and he nearly had a heart attack. He went to the exterior walls, the windows and he said why didn’t you tear that down too! I kept telling him how wonderful it was gonna look and its the latest style and then I realized of course what I had done was turn a 3 room apartment into one room which would give him much less rent. His major concern.”

Ray and Barbara and Franklin -top right corner of the Bowery Dutch barn hayloft at the wedding

The following are excerpts from descriptions of a VISIT TO FRANKLIN’S PLACE SOMETIME IN 1968

Delmas and Lou drove out from Willis, Oklahoma in brown “67 mercury station wagon …and the four of us drove on up to New York City to..I think … Franklin’s 20th street loft. Ray remembers the part when Delmas goes out to get cigarettes and doesn’t come back for hours. Lou says that’s just the way Delmas is . When he does come back we learn that he saw this old boy laying on the road ( doesn’t this sound the Bowery !) so, this old boy used to be a pig farmer and we got to talk about raising hogs.(Delmas, naturally had started out by asking him if he was ok) Delmas must have been talking to the Bowery bum for more than an hour about raising hogs. The way I remember it – he talked to everyone he encountered just like he would have back in his southern Oklahoma voting district, during an election year, you know, to see what was going on with each and every one of them!

Delmas and Lou remember that it was 1968, and Nixon was running for president.We went to the the amazing Living Theater at the Brooklyn Museum and Delmas made friends with the ushers. (he didn’t think they were “doing it” on stage like I did).

They describe the 20th street loft as an empty warehouse building, with a door on the street and a long flight up with sex photos all along the walls ( all genders, etc.) up the stairway (now that Delmas mentions this I can remember that as well). He remembers it as being close to the Village.- Ray as it being close to the Bowery. Delmas remembers that Franklin’s ice Box was completely full of Amal nitrate ( one snuff will extend and enhance your climax! ) They remember sleeping on the floor, going out for Chinese food, near the Brooklyn Bridge and that Franklin’s friend Michael Maslansky had sent an envelope really reeking, full of Marijuana from India  or somewhere, dutifully  delivered by the postman!

And then Delmas describes the working TV in the loft. no case, no back – all the tubes and electronic stuff exposed and the TV’s picture tube on!. (then I remembered it -a scary Art piece!)

Also Abigail Grafton was around (this was the period Franklin and me and Ray were involved with Abby and the “peace movement”-) Delmas remembers Abby telling about throwing ball bearings at the police horses feet while rioting in Berkeley.

One more of Frank MacFies NYC environments that I can remember was a large place -all black lights ….one room was painted all black -floors, ceiling , walls, empty except for a huge , painted white with black ribs flexible tube – as used in “manholes” ,etc.- that you could crawl through – sewer fresh air tubes. (later he turned a ‘shed’ room we were renting in New Mexico into an art Installation using cast off highway signs and one of those orange and black ribbed flexible sewer things as”Found Art” and turned it into a light.)
The way I remember it we were staying with Franklin in his “black light “apt in 1968 the night we heard they shot Robert Kennedy. Barbara Stevens

Franklin MacFie words for Bill Eptons memorial….. 2007 (a year after Carolyn’s memorial at Nancy Hoffman Gallery and a year before his own.
Bill Epton
Hokey Michaelangelo
Sovereign beauty of a man
American Gothic
Perfectionist
Perfect mate to a perfect wife.
Aways ready for a game/leaving you as big-hearted as he.
One of the very few truly clean souls.

American gothic 1967 Portait of Bill and Carolyn by Barbara Stevens see:barbarastevensart.wordpress.com

Frank MacFies photo of Barbara Stevens

Frank MacFie’s strange photo of Barbara Stevens after the Epton- Brady wedding, wearing an optical paper dress,soon to be torn off! in a homage to Marcel Du Champ by Bill Epton ( as an artistic inheritor). Reversing “the Bride laid bare by her Groomsmen “- with the Bridesmaid laid bare by the groom.

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Franklin MacFie Beginings and Endings

Franklin Granden MacFie Notes from tapes of Frank MacFie with Barbara Stevens spring 2008

I was in touch with Franklin since 1961 in New York City and then the Farm in Maryland before 1969 later in New Mexico 1970-1980 and on the East Coast from 1991-2008. I got an inspiration to do taped interviews with Franklin in spring of 2008 after he had gotten me and Ray to go to New York City to see a Serra Sculpture show, but would not let us visit-just talked on the phone. He died while we were in the process of doing the tapes, after an elective operation (hoping for better quality of life.) We had to miss the memorial at a Bar in New York. But THIS IS FRANK MACFIE’S MEMORIAL AS WELL. Barbara Stevens 2009

“born November 13 a Friday! 1937 Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey
6 older sisters -oldest 20 years older than Franklin
3 older brothers
the tenth child .a boy- the Baby and favorite, his moms favorite.. the sisters favorite”-Franklin thinks, freudianly, that -the reason that he is gay is that “his father didn’t like him because he was so much his mothers favorite.”

His father – “John MacFie “a boring Scottish sea captain”..Franklin says.” Captain of a passenger boat – (South shore, red lands) Traveled from Sandy Hook and the Battery.” John MacFie is in fact “Smiling Jack” – the cartoon illustrator actually drank with MacFie and used him as the basis for Smiling Jack. (boring Scottish sea captain turned into an exciting airplane pilot).

His mother Isabella was Portuguese living in Trinidad in the Caribbean when the Scotsman found her. Franklin used to get along in Chicano New Mexican bars saying his mother was a Romero from Trinidad– which really worked out there.. Trinidad Colorado full of Hispanics – acceptable connections.

When Franklin was three years old they moved to West 93nd, NYC. The siblings were two years apart; Rita, Nora, Vera, Winnie, Lily and Jean, then David -:(died 1950), John – the most successful, handsome-ladies man, baseball player, Mr Success-4 kids, next: Conrad – then Franklin.the baby of the family.

Excerpt from Memoir tapes with Franklin before his death: “Nora who has just died grandsons wedding was in Dallas- they all decided to not put it off- my nephew Nora’s son the priest no doubt preached.He will say mass as he always does, though I told him if he comes near my body when I’m dead I will get up and personally kill him to death, if he mentions the word Jesus with a thousand feet of my corpse.”- I say does he laugh when you say that stuff, Franklin says “well, he giggles.but I don’t trust him he may just come around and jump in front of the body and say Jesus…what ever they say. I seriously don’t want anything to be Christian about my demise. Of which I think a great deal since it apparently is not too far off. I am trying to get my doctor to give my body to medical science so I don’t cost my family any more money than I usually do.”( I remember Franklin talking ” good” and caring about this nephew,too!)

“First memory was when I was in the crib. In certain cribs there’s a gate that goes up and down, and theres a little spring and I remember touching it with my toes, and I remember looking across and seeing my brother , my brother and I shared the room, and I remember seeing him in bed.”

“I have very early memories, because I was in analysis, I started when I was in high school. I was fourteen or fifteen- because I was crying a lot- when anyone speak to me I’d burst into tears. It was very difficult for me, as most peoples are, adolescence. Add to that the whole thing of being gay adds to the confusion of being an adolescent. (Re: being gay-)” it was obviously a subject to spend time on but it wasn’t the reason I went to analysis… anyone say anything I burst into tears… a word I love I am very lachrymose ( means tears up a lot.)” I ask about the cost “analysis was free, I went without my parents knowing about it, they wouldn’t understand. I got it through Catholic Charities”. B asks if it was because you thought this crying has to stop… He says “This unhappiness has got to stop.the confusion. I got a doctor named Dr. Bakyanni (through Catholic Charities…) he was good looking. He said I needed analysis not therapy and moved (the sessions) to his office where I would lie on the cot. One day he said I think your withholding somewhat, you should undress – next thing I knew he was sitting next to me groping me. It was quite traumatic, I left of course and didn’t go back and some months later I decided I did need analysis, so I called him up and asked if he could recommend somebody and he said I can’t do that because you would have to tell them why you stopped coming.He was slime , in others words. Being an in analysis –with a father figure -I being fourteen , I was madly in love with him. Transference they call it. But I never went back to him, so I poked around and found some others and did it for years. Some of it didn’t do me any good, some of it kept me alive. When I was in deep depression and that was before they were giving people a lot of antidepressants.”

“I went to Performing Arts. Music , dance and Drama. They had wonderful teachers. Sidney Lumet. Very wonderful crazy people. Kids who wanted to be in the theater. The musicians were a little more square…And the dance department were athletes and I always admired them because they were in such wonderful shape and they had to work hard every day as oppose to the drama dept where you could fake your way through sometimes . Met Michael Maslansky there. I was in the school yard and this person came floating across to me – He was like a young colt. He introduced himself to me and we became good friends- and stayed that way until he died.”

( B ask were you all into sex then.) “Yes by that time of course -very active.There were a lot a gay kids, dancers and actors, the musicians were pretty straight . It was good because it made you feel not so alone.” B tries to ask if he was in a monogamous relationship with Michael.. finally he says Michael and him… were friends -”we were soul mates . I learned a lot from him. He was very smart and very funny and quite mad in his way. I absolutely loved him, he was probably the closest friend in my life and we traveled a lot to gather a lot. He came when I was in Morocco and I lived with him in London for a while and we met in Paris. It was a wonderful relationship – really good friends. “

“He went to Bard, thats how I got to know all the “Bardians.” Like Abigail, Bill Farrar, and Buzzy .I got a terrible job in an office through my father. The office of the Anaconda Copper and Steel Company down on Broadway near Wall Street. It was ghastly, I was an office boy , I hated it.”

New Tape Start –He says “its very difficult – I spend a great deal of my time as I get old now with memory -grief- it becomes very important to me . I use (memories) a lot. to block out the unhappiness of old age and they work. You cant overuse them- there are certain memories that you can use just so much or they loose their power. But the thing is relaying to you incidents is very difficult because somehow so far seemed to have missed the importance -things such as the change of moods, I mean things that are subtle are very hard to get. So, I don’t know how to approach this whole thing, I seem to approach this with a series of episodes or happenings – fine its in the middle of something – all around that has to be built who I am. That I guess is your hard job to do… I hope that you.. are you satisfied with your ability to do this!”

Finally we are laughing .. I keep saying that I want to get others into this (do want other people s stories – ways of knowing Franklin…. ) finally I just say please keep talking… and bring up Michael Maslansky and that I still don’t know much about that.

Final taped conversation with Franklin MacFie:

“It was a friendship that started at an early age. first year of high school. We both had idiosyncrasies maybe he more than I. We both had eccentricities at that age, and that attracted to us to each other , a kinship. (It was) An attitude toward daily living, we were freaky , in different ways. I was apparently much more normal, Michael looked more eccentric and crazy and sort of queenie, and I looked like the normal kid next door. We.. shared .Lots of young gay people share the discovery that thank god your not alone. Also of course he had incredible humor, a marvelous humor. He had a very unique and sweet generous approach toward living. He knew his eccentricity attracted me to him. I said here is somebody who is pretty crazy too.So that was one of the strong bonds of our relationship- our mutual eccentricity.”

(Franklin. remembers)….” Maslansky was smoking a joint in the back of a Puerto Rican cab .He asked the cab driver if he wants a hit.. The driver got furious, and said just because I am Puerto Rican I am a pot head and he had him arrested. It didn’t take long, he got out in a day. ( I ask if they got stoned a lot then)- We took lots of a acid and hash and what ever was available. I was living with Terry Riley-the musician – and his family. On Grand street. One day I woke up and thought oh my God what was I smoking last night. There was this overwhelming odor…(I was on First floor) .. you walk up a flight of stairs and there was this envelope that said do not fold -from Thailand (from Michael) with all these stains on the outside, came in the mail, incredible smell.It was opium, I romantize it of course, but as I remember it was the best high ever. I had wonderful times on acid of course, but that can be a sword of Damocles sort of thing, go either way..”

( suddenly he talks about not eating , related to how he was supposed to fast.,.. for the operation (tomorrow)….. I say ok, be safe, I call you, when do you think? He says” tomorrow I ‘ll be out of it,” I say I ll call up there and see how you are, He says “see if I am dead or something,” I say Please don’t be… “its a possibility “-I say lets avert that and he says-”I mean consider it.” I say no no were not done here… He says “I go, I go. If I go by the way I have all these journals you can have, “( I say where are they -he says “there in here in the living room on a table- mostly about being on the subway..”. we talk about how good that is that he does that,,,,, He says he does that (-write in the journals..) because he “only has one intimate friend here-Magda….. only one he can call upon.. she s a lovely dutch woman,, found her through a friend at the corner Bistro… shes at the moment in Jamaica…..” Then we talk about when I can call him – I ask him to enjoy the pain killer aspect .)

I called the hospital… I found him…the nurse told me he was being difficult… in a little voice he said “ah, you found me.” after that it seemed crazy talk – I don’t know what my or his last words were. But then I couldn’t find him the next time I called and called Farrar and he said that Franklin was about to die.. it had to do with his heart being ready to stop….and that was all.. he did die. And the Wake was held in a favorite bar ( arranged by his brother, John, ( but nothing was mentioned about the nephew priest with Jesus talk). It was scheduled after Ray Stevens and I left for Amsterdam … so it was soon after May 15 2008. Barbara Stevens
Franklin MacFie Wire sculpture Chapman/Farrar collection

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