Keith Haring Journals (20 page)

I have letters from children all over the world that testify to this connection. I don’t know if it is my funny face or my simple nature that provokes laughter and sympathy between me and them. But we share something that to me is very important to understand the reason for living and meaning of “life,” if there is any “meaning” to life at all.

Children know something that most people have forgotten. Children possess a fascination with their everyday existence that is very special and would be very helpful to adults if they could learn to understand and respect it.

I am now 28 years old on the outside and nearly 12 years old on the inside. I always want to stay 12 years old on the inside.

I think it is very important to be in love with life. I have met people who are in their 70s and 80s who love life so much that, behind their aged bodies, the numbers disappear. Life is very fragile and always elusive. As soon as we think we “understand,” there is another mystery. I don’t understand anything. That is, I think, the key to understand everything.

People keep asking me how “success” has changed me. I always say that success has changed people’s responses and behavior toward me and that change has affected me, but it has not really changed me. I feel the same on the inside now as I did ten years ago. I was as happy then as I am now.

Happiness cannot be measured in accomplishments or material gain. Happiness is on the inside. Success has done much more to affect me in a negative way than a positive way, however, I will not submit to this. I am as satisfied as I was before. I still have many shortcomings and many victories. I think nobody can be happy all the time. It is very strange to me that people expect “success” to equal happiness, even after they have seen all their media stars suffer and die and hurt themselves.

Money doesn’t mean anything. I think money is the hardest thing for me to deal with. It is much easier to live with no money than to live with money. Money breeds guilt (if you have any conscience at all). And if you don’t have any conscience, then money breeds evil. Money itself is not evil, in fact it can actually be very effective for “good” if it is used properly and not taken seriously.

You have to be objective about money to use it fairly. It doesn’t make you any better or any more useful than any other person. Even if you use your money to help people . . . that doesn’t make you better than somebody who has no money but is sympathetic and genuinely loving to fellow humans.

Usually the people who are the most generous are people who have the least to give. I learned this first-hand as a newspaper carrier when I was 12 years old. The biggest tips came from the poorest people. I was surprised by this, but I learned it as a lesson. People on the streets of New York who give money to beggars are often people who have very little themselves. They don’t expect anything in return. It is quite natural. Charity for the sake of making one feel better about oneself is not really charity.

Anonymous gifts are the most honest and admirable.

I am certainly very far from perfect, and I don’t want to sound like a saint. Everyone has shortcomings. Everyone has a side of them that is selfish and everyone has the potential to be evil.

Good and Evil are very hard to explain or understand. I’m sure that evil exists, but it is hard to isolate. Good and evil are intertwined and impossible to separate. They are not completely opposites and in fact are often one and the same.

I’m reading Timothy Leary’s autobiography,
Flashbacks
, which he gave me on a recent visit to Los Angeles.

A few weeks ago I had dinner with Timmy in New York and we talked about computers, drawings, etc. I might be doing some drawings for a new computer program he is developing.

He was commenting on how my drawings were perfect for translation into computers because the drawing line was already very close to the idea of “pixels” (the dots, or squares, that comprise a computer-generated image). I have already, I explained, used computers in Tokyo in 1983 and even earlier on a video-text machine at NYU in 1980. My main problem with the computer is the restriction of the image, in that it is always trapped inside this box (on a screen) and, except in the printing, is very limited in its scale.

I was, however, interested in the tactile experience of drawing, which is very different on a computer. Time-lapse (and/or spatial displacement) occurs when a “mouse” is used to draw. This displacement of image and action creates a new problem to be solved by the “drawer.” The drawer then has the added ability to take the image and manipulate its color, size, and placement. The image becomes a workable entity restricted only by the limitations of the computer program, programmer, and the screen of the monitor itself.

There are endless possibilities to be investigated in this area. Maybe Timmy will be able to convince me to return to this investigation.

I know that it is true that I possess (because of the deductive, composite nature of my line) the ability to use computers very effectively. This line, which is both archaic and universal and futuristic (with its computer capacities), is a very “real” line.

It is, as Brion Gysin wrote, a line closer to a carved line than a drawn line.

I want to write to several of my friends (writers, scholars, etc.) and ask each to write a paragraph about this “line” I utilize. I think it would be interesting to hear Bill Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Tim Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Pierre Alechinsky, Robert Farris Thompson, etc., speak of this line.

It is a privilege to have met these people and have had the opportunity to talk with them. Especially since each had important influences on my work and now have expressed interest in this work. I, in turn, wish to acknowledge their contribution and try to understand my contribution as well.

I am sitting on an airplane in Delhi, on my way to Tokyo. There is one more stop in Hong Kong. I left the airport in Milano this morning. I went there via train through the Swiss Alps and spent the night there. There was a press conference to announce the unveiling of the “Statue of Liberty” painting I did in New York City with 1,000 high-school kids in June which will hang on the “Castle” in the center of Milano. This press conference was a little unsettling because of the way the presentation was made to explain and solicit “sponsorship” for the City Kids Coalition. This was all out of my hands, since I can’t speak Italian and I’m not directly involved with the business aspect of this project. However, it becomes a reflection on me, so I was a bit uneasy.

The business aspect of sponsorship for projects of this kind—that are to benefit, ultimately, City Kids or other worthy causes—can be misconstrued and appear exploitative. It is a difficult area: I am involved because of my interest in the project and the people who will benefit from it, not to help promote the financial supporters (in this case Burger King or Benetton). But the decision to participate or not is weighed against the exploitative side effects and in this case, ultimately, I think it is worth it to have the project exist and to have had the experience of a positive interaction with and lasting effect on these 1,000 students and the people who will see the painting. Even though there is a risk of being manipulated or exploited by the commercial sponsors. I realize I will receive criticism but, again, I think the project itself was much too important to worry about a little criticism.

As in all things: Time will clarify the events that are presently unclear.

This same issue comes up in any critical consideration of my work and work ethic in general. I am sure that in time mine will be understood to have been a very clear, selective, hopefully intelligent, politically sound, humanistic and imaginative approach to the “role” of Contemporary Artists.

The press conference was also a good excuse to see a lot of friends in Milano who I haven’t seen in a while. Daniela Morera, Nally Bellati, Lisa Ponte of Domus, etc.

And Nicola Guiducci, who kept me out till 4:30 in the morning drinking champagne and doing coke.

Then I left for Roma. In the airport there I was changing my prepaid economy-class ticket to first-class when I noticed the lady in front of me had a Grace Jones photo in her notebook. I was tempted to ask her about it and then I saw she had Grace’s passport. So I got to see Grace for 15 crazy minutes in the airport, she on her way to New York City for the premiere of “Vamp” (the movie I painted her for a striptease scene in) and I on my way to Tokyo. The series of events and accidents that led up to the “coincidental” meeting reassures me that I am still in tune with the universe and traveling the right path.

My belief in “chance” and destiny has led me right so far, and whenever things like this remarkable “coincidence” happen, I’m reassured that I’m still on target.

I want to take a break now to write a letter to Timothy Leary. I just finished reading his autobiography somewhere over northern India at 600 miles per hour. It has changed my life . . . again.