(After some silence I first received a postcard from E.F. Higgins, and a bit later his answer, within the envelope also some of his new artistamps).

Reply on 4-3-1996

EFH: Art. At some point, in the development of human beings, we noticed our ability to control our bodies. At first this was mostly useful, to survive. & reproduce. At this early stage, was the start of many future developments, that crystallized for thousands of years, to get to the point of drawing bison on cave walls.

The brain was developing also. Cause & Effect. We get together to chip the flint this way, (the 'ol guy said so), tie the gut rope, such way on the wood (tree-part), & we stick into the big eatable-thing.

28 years old, was OLD. GrandPaw,.....maybe.

And so they persevered. These Humanoids. With their brain growing, their skills developing, & & The strongest leader, always led. But, DRAWING the sticking on the wall!!!! WOW What is that?

Apparently, or maybe, the early OLD, (previously BIG STRONG) learned how to run a crew & explain, in whatever "language" they had back then, how to get the food, & not get dead, on account of getting hooked on one of those nasty tusks.

Survival instincts have thousands of years over religions, Philosophy, & Art. Somewhere in there, as we tribes got bigger, needing a sort of Organization, Heireicy happened again. And what do you suppose they used as an argument:? "Doesn't matter, BOB, you usta be good on the hunt, These drawings, & (& I admit) along with these guys decide you don't know what you're doing." .... & besides,......

Did that cave drawer get amazed at his or her DRAWING, or do you suppose it was a survival instinct? And today, Here in 1996, I wonder who's doing what for what reason.

Back to you R.J.

RJ: What are YOU doing EFH? (to make it easy, what did you do today?)

(On 12-3-1996 I received an envelope from E.F. Higgins with in it two artistamps with an envelope on them with the text "Artist Creative, Originator, Genius, Hommage a Ray - Mail Art". No letter was included, and the envelope the artistamps were sent in was one of the special stamped envelopes I normally use to send my answers/questions in. The envelope was decorated in the typical style of Higgins with artistamps and rubberstamps.)

RJ: How way you correspondance with Ray?

Reply on 30-3-1996

EFH: Kennedy had been shot. I may have been young, but I wasn't old. Yesterday I thought of asking people that write me to send me a batch of stickers or address labels because it seems to take so long to walk around & look up their addresses, after figuring where I put it.

The knees ain't what they used to be. Like most 59 year old men, other than the normal regrets, Ray's Death bothered me. Kennedy's death bothered me in a younger way...Then. I was 25 when my 21 year old brother died, of the bends, working on a oil-rig off Bankock. The T.V. says americans go there to get young sex, & maybe get AIDS. This was before that. & that's that. This is what?

Somewhere in there Bukowski refused to bowl with the Midgets, & I howled it last saturday in SOHO, N.Y.C., where all the Art Galleries have turned into women's shoe shops, and Harry was good news: two things: Couple thou for one of his big Paintings, & the other guy traded him a Jean Michael Basquait.... Buster 'n I used to lend him a buck now & then years ago, when we would sit out on the corner of West-Broadway & Spring St,'s & he was spray painting his poetry.

I have been reading up on computers. Wow! The best way to bowl is get some salad, beers, warm weather, & try your best as you remember saturday mornings in the midwest in the junior bowling league. Remember the bigness of the place. Head high pin-ball machines. DON'T DROP IT! & don't touch those! swimming lessons. The Balanger Brothers stealing those maybe same balls years later to drop them on cemi's... off the overpass. I-94.. Or maybe it was ol 66. Joliet, Illinois inmates make liesense Plates for the cars. No state has anything about bowling on their Liescence Plates. What does it say on the plates of the country of Doo Da? It's a small country

(Here was printed the stamp of Higgins mentioning: "The country of DooDa is 12 feet in any direction from where Higgins is, at any given time.")

& then the girls get there, bringing out the salad, as we're drinking beer, turning over the hamburgers, the new one hours later, sang a better Hank than Hank Williams. & No she wasn't wearing a poka dot dress, but when I went into the kitchen, to see how she'd do on the ice-cube thing, they had the T.V. on, & I noticed how the guys that got strikes, had a Right handed kind of glove, & aimed at the right side of the lane way down there, & they gave it a right handed twist, so's it would look like it's almost ginna get in the gutter, & then would come back, & BOOM!!! hit the #1 ball at about 5:23 (O'Clock)

I don't know where to begin. Fortunately, that's taken care of. Many stories have the average person. But how to end it? I for one don't believe for a minute, Ray jumped into that River. But as we say in Hollywood, But will it make Mney$$$????????

If this interview (to the reader) seems a bit disjointed, it's because the obstinanstance of mailed Q. & A through the mails: When the Galantois where here, we goofed around with a power tool called a "Router". We had great fun drawing on wood with this machine. What it does, this machine, is carve into wood, at 32,000 R.P.M. to facilitate WOOD Prints, on such, usually non-traditional materials as Plywood. Man!, you can ink it up with a hard rubber roller, & Print on anything, & I wonder if it will wear out faster than them Copper Plates that Rembrandt worked on.

Back when I was in High school, I had a Professor, by the name of Dr. Eastwood, encouraged me in the creative writing, since then, I've more gone into the Visuals, than the writing.

(Perhaps it shows!)

Creativity is a wondermunt!... It should definitely be encouraged. The IDEA is not a few, well distributed images or Poems, to Fakely tell somebody, that they're better than anybody else.

OK Here's the Story:

" Diego Rievera, Esher, & Wan Gris walk into this bar in Kankakee, Illinois, (U.S.A.), they have cartoons playing on the T.V.. Diego Rievera brought with him a $100.00 painting of some sort of a Gun-fight, he'd got at the antique shop. Esher was trying to buy schnopps for the bar, as I put in Two bucks worth of Hank on the Juke, trying to remember where I put the Halstead line.....

Written interviews to Creative Genieuses tend to look like this in print.

RJ: Any more news about the country of DOO DA? Do they use firecrackers there?

Reply on 1-6-1996

EFH: Dear RJ: When I was a child, there was a Museum called the "Knight". It was somewhere in Chicago & had a pile of chains, stacked up out in front. The size of the links were about 3 feet, and this was from the Civil War era, used, they said or remembered them saying, "Used to shut the port of Charleston.... had it across the RIVER!!!... no ships could come in or out!"

Inside were neat suits of armor, & miniature little dioramas, similar to what you might see at the N.Y.C. Museums' of Natural history, depicting say something, like... eskimo villages, or early American Indians in their Long-Houses, with part of the little roofs cut away so you could see in, except these dioramas showed people impaled on sharpened trunk-roots on living trees.... & as I remember, the scale was about the same, but I was smaller back then, & only seen the Teddy Roosevelt/Indian statue after I got there.

But I disgress, ....You asked about Doo Da, & If we use firecrackers here.

Firecrackers, traditionally are used to CELEBRATE. The spirit of Independence & all that. Gunpowder, attributed to being invented by the Chinese, before Marco Polo went there, was modifided within the last century to give off more of a silver Bang, than a KA-BOOM, when used in the aforementioned, "Firecrackers".

The "KA-BOOM" fork in the road has certainly been traveled by not only them guys inventing "C-4", Clamore, &assorted other Big Booms, but apparently the Uni-Bomber, several major Govn'ts, & a whole host of greedy "El Ka-Boomers!!!" This is not "FIRECRACKERS", as we have come to know & love the celebration. Thomas Pane, or the guy that wrote the other things other than Gullivers Travels, ...what was his name...? 1 Tom Jefferson. Or maybe you were 12 years old, & you had a friend, name of Jonnie Vance, with a brother that was astationed down in Georgia, & you made a list, & saved up your Paper-route money to get some Lady- Fingers, Bottle-Rockets, & some "16's".

I was 14, she was 13. I told her I'd been shot in a gang war. It was at Chicago beach. I still had the bandage on my right arm, & couldn't get it wet..... I peeked the white, plastic to show her the 32 black stitches & she was duely impressed. She had the most beautiful Blue-Green eyes & not so bad looking in her swim-suit, that I'd seen in days!!!!! (Hard Drive on the Typing fingers today after, once again, becoming,... THE TILE MAN)!!!!!

When the Doctor stitched me up, he asked "Doorknob?". "Empty CO2" I said.

"Gorgonzola!!!" I initially said, looking at the Blue Cheese Brand Firecracker Painting. stacked against the Perforator, "Stilton!!!" I thought loudly to myself, somewhat pleased.

"When we were kids," the doc said, "we used to do doorknobs."

Later, I found out that, he & his gang were making firecrackers, out of matchheads. (Look it up on the Internet). But I swear to you, the guy I talked to, kinda kreepy, Ya know? come to my Painting Show at the "X OXO" Gallery, didn't get the idea from me..... Hells Bells, ......Midwest farmers been making trout ponds for years.... WATER IN, WATER OUT.

"The Stream Runs Trou!" (Ray Kelly & the Rivington School)

I've been doing this stuff for years long enough, to respect, when it says on the lable, "THIN SET-MORTER MIX". (¬ contains PORTLAND CEMENT) I try not to use my hands that are rapidly turning into gravel- scoops, as the mixer-things. I left the hand lotion on the job day before yesterday, & was amazed it wasn't home, after a perfunctory clean-up. I told them, if they want to use some you're welcome, but, I'm taking it home, 'cause yesterday, I missed it.

I am working this job to save up money to get a computer. All winter I didn't feel like painting, I didn't deal much cards, I was as they say HIBERNATING. The guy I'm working for, 's 26....he said he'd been watching T.V. all winter & ......

We're working on 42nd St/10-11th Sts. Avenues. I'm supposed to be there tomorrow in 3 hours. If they fire me, who they gonna get?

It's the Theatre district, Film. (Till this job, haven't been there in years.....& WOW.... will ya look at what they're trying to do! "What'd he say?"

THE IDEA BEING CELEBRATION of the use of Firecrackers in the country of Doo Da. Something for the kids... Legal! Ah, but it's all now well so compartmentalized. "AH, don't worry about that!...Let the experts handle it. Like Dan Rather experting on the NEWS? Like Phil Donahue experting on United Statesers too much fat time, & interest in Perversions? "Look," I'm gonna say to my kids someday, I hope, "That's horsemanure... the reason it don't smell's they eat grain. Mix it with that leaf stuff. (& later) Now this batch is what the tomatoes eat!....got that? Put a batch of it in that old tire, set it in a sunny place, & we're gonna grow some of the best tasting tomatoes (with apologies to Dan Quale) you ever had."

Celebration is not every night. When rare becomes normal, then what do they want. Travelers would bring back strange & un-usual things. Probably from indigenous peoples & some of their stuff or/the food.

With mail art, in the Raw, artists are exposed to these images, ideas, & thoughts poems directly. If we can't, do you think the Normal can? & lets get the ambassadors not appointed by political connections or contributions, but... hey, we are the ambassadors! SEND WHAT YOU WANT.! People without a culture are more apt to....

Ruud, how long you wanna go on with this thing? This kid I met on the train from Chicago, I'm working on the second "Mc" detective thing, sent him 7 pages, & we haven't got him to Australia yet, but he called today, saying maybe it's O.K. If the comic book goes a little long...... Said it was probably right he didn't send the 50 Bucks till I finished the story, but he just got out of school, & was starting on the picture part.

RJ: O.K. I can understand the hint. I will rap up this interview now and see how it would fit in a printed booklet. Unless there was something I really forgot to ask you?

Reply on 23-8-1996

EFH: How about "How's the Fishin'?" Just got back from my cousins wedding out west & saw batches of Kids, all related to me, went to a day of Poderosa Ranch & Trout fishing. Kids are great. My Hat's off to Pawel Petaz, C.T. Chew, Ed Varney, Pat Beilman, Anna Banana & All the rest of 'em (stamp artists) that keep at it in the face of this wonderment. That's the Art.

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