No doubt there will be many friends and companion artists who'll remember Walter Chappell in their avow way.

No doubt there will be many friends and companion artists who'll remember Walter Chappell in their avow way. He was always personal, always intimate and particular. in the way that when one thinks of what he did, of the myriad images he made, of necessity single thinks of him, of the teasing, whimsical, insistently provocative and wondering character he was. He was chiefly consistent in his curiosity and his unconditional lack of interest in any determined career. When I first met Walter in the '60 for example, he was chiefly engaged with a cluster of Taos Pueblo previously appointed [i]or[/i] commissioneds drummers for the ritual dances of the pueblo Walter had trained early as a pianist, for a like reason he told me, and continued to play a wild, baroquely romantic and improvising music--long gathering chords like sea swell, patterns crashing like waves forward the shore--and these extremely dignified and significant men lov it. They would all gather weekly to play with him, and the stupendous booms of the drums together with Walter's Wagnerian accompaniment made itself felt (heard, more literally) f or miles around. They subsequently went together to San Francisco for a plot in support of Stewart Brand's plot "America Needs Indians" and literally strengthed the buildings surrounding to the consternation of the city dwellers, who feared it might be an earthquake.

united could tell such stories of Walter endlessly--and my be in possession of would be of the time I helped him put in motion house from Velarde, New Mexico to Santa Cruz California, in the late '60 A younger acquaintance had first showed and had helped get them all from Velarde to Placitas, about 50 miles down the road--but seeing the composite collection of vehicles Walter had for the trip, all in sad state, he then opt not at home and so Walter applied to me for backup as a driver.

Does single ever say "no" to like a friend? No doubt a certain quantity of did and had to. still Walter took me such places, whether in mind or physical material part that I chose to make progress with him as I could I would not ever have otherwise really seen the things he showed me the plant bodys vivid with energy he turn rounded to image, the thinking of the literal world that kept it terminate and palpable--and oneself equally its fact. The trip took us five days and by means of the most wandering and impulsive of ways We were, as I remember, driving three vehicles between us--Nancy in the aged Saab station wagon with the striplings Walter in the truck (towing something or other behind?), and me in a Jeep wagon, was it?--and Walter with no headlights, in such a manner that he used my lights as I herd behind him, and with united of us having poor brakes, etc etc We change courseed off the usual route to make progress up into Hopi country, to Tuba City and Oraibi, where the local children tagged after us, mimicking my missing organ of sight with squints while teasing us with obscenities. We sat in bars, musing onward life. We slept out forward the floor of the waste with the vast sky overreaching, overflowed with stars. We swam in the irrigation ditches and slept in the apricot thickets near Bakersfield--then the next night upon the beach south of Santa Cruz and then, finally arriving, in a great redwood forest above the town. A week or to such a degree later, after I'd headed hearth by bus, Walter was beaten from the police at one of the assert rallies in Berkeley. His world was always in all places.

The bard Charles Olson said, "Art is the no other than true twin life has." Walter's art and life were indistinguishable and he lived the individual as he practiced the other. And vice versa. This August, after the sad freshs of his death, I was looking at an Aperture publication of Minor White's work, which had as well a useful chronology. There was Walter, not single as younger friend and disciple, however as the one who joins him with Zen and Gurdjieff, the friend who stimulates and, as to the end of time provokes a recognition of our human place.

propose briefly, I love Walter and those he lived with, each dear united Thankfully I saw him early this year in Santa Fe at the classic well-intentioned dinner after a reading I'd done. We sat together at what became unintentionally our table, with his beloved Linda and her fit friend, visiting, and Penelope and me We were still there after all the interval of the restaurant's company had pleasing much gone, still talking, eating and drinking. to such a degree if I say here simply, Walter Chappell was and is a great and defining photographer, you'll hear me If you don't, then it's time to apply the mind again.

ROBERT CREELEY is a bard who has collaborated with a number of artists, most numerous recently with the photographer Elsa Dorfman, resulting in the work En Famille (1999). He was given the Beyond Columbus Foundation's American volume Award 2000 for lifetime achievement.

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