Justin Stories (February 2024, Part 1)

From KG, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Like many, I could tell 500 stories about experiences with Justin. And those stories would tell as much about the storyteller as they do about Justin because Justin was always teaching to the student. If there were five people in the room, and he told one story, there was something in the story for every person in the room. I recall leaving Saturday night teisho and Carmen saying, “Did you hear the story about XYZ. He hasn’t told that story since last time you were in Albuquerque. That was for you.” Yes, I could see that. But I could also see, by the looks on people’s faces, that some aspect of the story was also for each of them.

Reviewing correspondence that Justin wrote to me between 1998 and 2002, one theme that emerged was his support of me: creativity.

I was trying to earn a living as professional photographer and get representation at galleries. I recall that he bought a photograph of mine. Years later I saw it hanging in someone else’s house. He didn’t want it — he just wanted to support me.

I recall meeting up with Justin in New York City once when I lived in Boston. It was around the year 2000 and he would have been 84ish. At one point we were walking up the spiral of the Guggenheim Museum looking at 20th century masters like Picasso, Dali, Mondrian, and Matisse. He said he envisioned a gallery show one day. I had no idea how to build interest in him as a painter, how to get collectors interested. But the next day, when I was walking in Central Park with a New Yorker friend, we bumped into a neighbor of his who turned out to be a Rockefeller. He asked who my favorite modern painters were. I named Rothko, Pollack, Mondrian. He took us up to his apartment, which had no furniture in it — only gigantic canvasses of the painters I’d just mentioned and seen at the Guggenheim with Justin. I asked him how painters get known and valuations grow. I reported back to Justin the next day and he smiled.

An aside, because Justin was always teaching: A little later that same day, we walked by a very aromatic coffee shop, and he mused, “I wonder why people don’t walk in for a coffee when they really want one.” He knew I was addicted to coffee.

Justin wanted a fine-art book of his paintings — presumably so they could be shown to art galleries and collectors. I don’t know if he really cared about the outcome. I think he just wanted me to have the experience of finding and hiring a fine-art book publisher (in Belgium no less) and the experience of working with galleries.

I remember going with him to an appointment at a gallery on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. The owner basically said, the light wasn’t good to look at paintings that day. So, Justin turned on his heels and was almost skipping down Canyon Road, to kinda shake it off. Later that year, I had the courage to find a gallery on Canyon Road to represent me. But I had to shake off a few so-called rejections before that.

Back to the art book: From Boston I hauled all my studio equipment to Carmen Brocklehurst’s house, where Lisa Otero and I were staying. I photographed a selection of paintings of Justin’s choice in Carmen’s dining room, which I had turned into a studio. We “made” Justin give the paintings names and a couple sentences for each. Of course, no one “makes” Justin do anything, but he acquiesced. The art book was funded by a small group of people. So maybe Justin just wanted me to simply work with those people. To learn something. Which I did.

On another of my trips to Albuquerque, with all my bulky, heavy lighting, I rented a studio and photographed Justin performing all the T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) movements for what would become the Photo Text. I didn’t have experience renting studios but somehow it worked. My most vivid memory was him sorta yelling, “Tell me when to start moving.” And I kinda yelled back, “I’ll start taking photos the second you start moving.” It was a standoff, I guess, but it worked. After that I was very comfortable photographing Boston leaders and celebrities.

I printed thousands of B&W note cards from abstract photographs I had taken on Cape Cod. I found a printer in Hong Kong. Justin used to buy so many of them, simply to give them away. I was meditating a lot with him at the time, so they had names like “Space between Thoughts” and “Infinite Possibilities.”

When we were meditating with Justin at 29 Palms, a favorite place he liked to go near Joshua Tree, California, he gave a talk one night. At that time I was thinking about a name for a company I planned to form. He used the Sanskrit word Bindu, very intentionally. I’d never heard it before. My whole being was electrified, both because that was to be the name of the company, and because of what he told me Bindu meant (point containing infinite possibility).

Justin used to quote artists to me. He mentioned the sculptor Constantin Brancusi talking to Henri Matisse’s grandson Paul and saying: ‘There’s a mountain, and many people are climbing to the top. But it’s difficult and people are dropping off. The closer you get to the top, the more you have to fight for your place up there. It’s much easier to just go around.”

And “one more thing” (as Steve Jobs used to say at Apple presentations): Justin repeatedly told me that if I could only read one book it should be “Creativity and Taoism.” During a camping trip to the redwoods in Northern California about seven years ago, I finally got around to reading it. And I felt a direct communication from him when I read this poem aloud:

I gather chrysanthemums at the eastern hedgerow

And silently gaze at the southern mountains.

The mountain air is beautiful in the sunset,

And the birds flocking together return home.

Among all these things is a real meaning,

Yet when I try to express it, I become lost in “no-words.”

I keep Justin’s copy of that book on my desk — corners of pages turned down, sentences underlined, margin notes…. And I see his handwritten note on the front page: “MOST important is to realize that the forces are cyclical (expansion and contraction) and that cause and effect is nearly a secondary explanation. All things are in movement, and inflation is itself the seed of deflation, contraction is just one side of destruction.” JFS (with his Japanese signature).