{"id":89118,"date":"2015-08-24T13:14:38","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T17:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=89118"},"modified":"2015-08-24T13:14:38","modified_gmt":"2015-08-24T17:14:38","slug":"the-gordon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/24\/the-gordon\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gordon"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

From a fifties-era Pan Am ad.<\/p><\/div>\n

There was a time when I didn\u2019t know Gordon Bishop,\u00a0but that time\u2019s not worth talking about.<\/p>\n

I met Gordon in his shop, Tropics, sometime in the early eighties. I\u2019d been walking through Soho and noticed a store I hadn\u2019t seen before. Inside was a jumble of Javanese antiques\u2014carved doors; four-poster beds; objects that seemed decorative, ceremonial, and incomprehensible\u2014along with fabrics and wall hangings and kites and sculptures. It looked like Santa\u2019s workshop, if Santa had a penchant for priapic statues of half-dressed men with enormous erections and wicked smiles.<\/p>\n

No one seemed to be working there, but I heard flute and gamelan music coming from the back room. There was a curtain separating me from the music, along with the sort of velvet rope commonly seen in discos, and a hand-painted sign fixed to the rope: DO NOT ENTER<\/small>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I climbed over the rope and peered through the curtain. There was a large, rumpled man sitting on a swivel chair, smoking a clove cigarette. He had dark curly hair and a dark beard, but no moustache, making him look a bit like a sleepy pirate. I leaned against the wall. He nodded to the sounds coming from a tape player.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis music … \u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom Sunda,\u201d he nodded.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt reminds me of\u00a0Astral Weeks<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy wouldn\u2019t it?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

That seemed to put an end to the conversation. He drifted off into a daydream.<\/p>\n

Soon after, we were drinking tea and he was showing me pictures of himself walking in a garden somewhere, holding hands with a pair of monkeys.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey yours?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo!\u201d he said emphatically. And then he thought more seriously about the question: \u201cWell, maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, I think, is when I entered Gordon\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0<\/p>\n

That winter I would stop by the store at least once a week.\u00a0I never bought anything, but I\u2019d bring all my Christmas presents over. I had noticed that the women working there wrapped gifts with a style and a flair that was nearly incomprehensible, with a flurry of papers and ribbons and bows that could take your breath away. I must have brought over fifteen, twenty, twenty-five gifts to be wrapped with care and grace.\u00a0No one seemed to mind.<\/p>\n

I was in the studio at the time, working on a new single with my band. Our producer, Giorgio Gomelsky, who had been the original manager of the Rolling Stones, had thrown a fit while we were adding a guitar solo to a song called \u201cWaiting for the Cavalry.\u201d \u201cWhat are you?\u201d he said. \u201cKansas Fucking Eagles? Guitar, guitar, guitar! What this song needs is\u00a0tree frogs<\/em>! Why don\u2019t you go out to New Jersey and record the sound of tree frogs? That would be a fucking killer solo!\u201d<\/p>\n

This, of course, was right up my alley, and I might have actually gone along with it\u2014to my band\u2019s horror\u2014if I hadn\u2019t discovered that the reason he wanted us in New Jersey was that he\u2019d double booked the studio and wanted to slip another band in for a few hours that night. I locked him out and finished the tracks without him.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew Jersey?\u201d Gordon snorted. \u201cThe tree frogs you want are in Jogjakarta. Best session frogs in the world! The Booker T & The M.G.\u2019s of frogs!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He showed me a photo of the emperor of Java from 1908, seated, with his consort standing behind him, hand lovingly and warningly on his shoulder. Presumably protecting him from tree frogs. It was a beautiful image, and I immediately appropriated it for the cover. When it came out, Gordon put several dozen copies in the window.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

My conversations with Gordon never seemed to have beginnings. I\u2019d pick up the phone and an unmistakable voice would already be talking, as if he\u2019d begun before he\u2019d even dialed:<\/p>\n

\u201cDylan! Did you hear that crap? Are you shitting me?\u201d Or: \u201cI\u2019m never going to another Chinese restaurant! Ever!\u201d Or: \u201cDo you know what they called him in school? BUTCH! GEORGE BUTCH! GEORGE BUTCH, BARBARA BUTCH! Doesn\u2019t that tell you everything!\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Back around 1969 or 1970, Gordon had a cycle of poems accepted somewhere, and he\u2019d gotten a check for three hundred dollars. Three hundred dollars was real money then. He went off to celebrate. Somewhere in the East Village, maybe at the Electric Circus, he ran into a friend.<\/p>\n

\u201cGordon!\u201d he whispered. \u201cThe revolution\u2019s coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gordon nodded. Change was in the air.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need some money. It\u2019s urgent!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat for?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBullets, man. We need bullets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow much do you need?\u201d The money was burning a hole in his pocket. If the revolution was calling, Gordon had to answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree hundred dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a lot of bullets, man. Can\u2019t you just buy them as you need them?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to buy bullets! We\u2019ve got to be totally self-reliant. With three hundred dollars we can buy a machine to make our own bullets. You see?\u201d<\/p>\n

He saw. It made a certain sort of sense, like rolling your own cigarettes.<\/p>\n

So he handed over the three hundred and headed home.<\/p>\n

Only: home wasn\u2019t there anymore. In the way that tides turned back then, everything suddenly went\u00a0argy-bargy.<\/p>\n

He went home to find he\u2019d been evicted from his apartment. It\u00a0wasn\u2019t exactly a surprise, but it was a shock. It might have been noise, it might have been something to do with rent, or the presence of a parrot, or the lack of a parrot. He was out. And his family wasn\u2019t an option. He\u2019d gotten into a fight with his parents, broken up with a girlfriend, lost his keys, gotten angry with his dog, pissed off his editors\u2014except the ones who\u2019d sent him three hundred\u2014and worn out his welcome. When New York turns, it turns hard.<\/p>\n

Gordon put some clothes\u00a0and a few books into a bag and walked down to the West Side Highway with a sign he\u2019d drawn in magic marker:\u00a0HAWAII OR BUST<\/small>.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

He hitchhiked as far as Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, where the first person\u00a0he ran into was his friend from the Electric Circus who wanted to make his own bullets. (When you pit planes against hitchhikers, planes win every time.)<\/p>\n

\u201cMan, am I happy to see you,\u201d Gordon said. \u201cNot that I\u2019m not always happy to see you. But I\u2019m especially happy to see you, as I\u2019m totally broke.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMe too,\u201d his friend nodded. But I\u2019ve got something better than money. Come with me.\u201d They walked to his apartment somewhere nearby and climbed up the stairs, went into the bedroom and there under the bed was a small valise. Inside there were seventy, eighty, maybe a hundred airplane\u00a0tickets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy girlfriend works for Pan Am,\u201d he explained. \u201cShe brings these home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese,\u201d he handed Gordon two tickets, \u201care good for getting you anywhere in the world. And back. You can go anywhere you want to go, but you have to keep going in the same direction. And\u2014here\u2019s the thing\u2014you can\u2019t stay anywhere more than two weeks. These tickets are \u2026 \u201d he waved his hand around in the universal gesture of fishiness and not-quite-rightness, and tilted his head as if to say, You\u2019re a man of the world, you get my drift.\u00a0\u201dYou\u2019re having fun, you lose track of time, a few weeks go by \u2026 you tear up the first ticket and next place you want to go, you use the second. Got it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Got it.<\/p>\n

Gordon took a plane to Mexico. Then to New York, London, Rome. It was summer. He grew a beard. He wrote postcards to everyone he knew, but he didn\u2019t send them. No money.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Gordon would go to an airport bar. He wore a jacket, maybe a tie. Under his arm he carried copies of\u00a0the\u00a0International Herald Tribune<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Le Monde<\/em>. Maybe a book by Pablo Neruda or Fernando Pessoa. He\u2019d tap his watch quizzically and ask for the time\u2014in Spanish, and then in Italian. And then he\u2019d ask for a glass of mineral water. In German. Someone would inevitably look his way.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoy, you sure speak a lot of languages,\u201d they\u2019d say.\u00a0Gordon would shrug and keep reading. But if they made a joke or offered him a cigarette, he\u2019d stop and fold up his paper and look over with a sigh and a tilt of the head that said, more or less,\u00a0here we are between planes, you and I.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you a professor of some sort?\u201d they\u2019d ask. And Gordon would shrug modestly. \u201cIt\u2019s nothing, really. Just a little experiment I\u2019m part of. Going pretty well, you know. But still in its early days. Where are you off to?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat sort of experiment?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t really … \u201d and he\u2019d look at his watch again and the arrival or departure of another flight would be announced over the loudspeaker, and he\u2019d look in the direction of the customs line, and he\u2019d shrug with the sense that time and distance and international datelines were all one to him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

0\u201cLanguage pills,\u201d he\u2019d confess.<\/p>\n

\u201cWait. For real?\u201d<\/p>\n

Gordon would fold the paper again. \u201cIt\u2019s a test being conducted. By the CIA. I don\u2019t work for them. I just volunteered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLanguage pills?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLook,\u201d Gordon would start to get impatient. \u201cHave you read the Bible?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you know we all came from the same people way back when. We all spoke the same language, right? And then \u2026 you remember the\u00a0Tower of Babel? We tried to build a tower all the way up to heaven. God got annoyed, knocked down the tower, smashed it to bits, and just to be sure we couldn\u2019t get organized again, He divided our tongues so we couldn\u2019t understand each other. Right?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething like that. Yes. Turns out it was exactly like that. Turns out that all those languages, all those words, all those tongues are encoded in our DNA. And scientists somewhere in Virginia have figured out a combination of chemicals that can unlock what\u2019s already there in all of us. The roots of all of our languages. The key to all the words spoken all over the world. Pretty cool, huh?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor real?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor real. Early days yet. Doesn\u2019t work with Russian. And Turkish is a bitch. But \u2026 it\u2019s a miracle! Trust me, it\u2019s the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you just take a pill?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMore or less. Sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWow!\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019d start to get up from the bar. \u201cListen, great talking with you. My flight\u2019s about \u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWait. Wait. Where can I \u2026 ?<\/p>\n

\u201cListen, I\u2019m sorry, but you can\u2019t. It\u2019s a closed experiment. I shouldn\u2019t have even mentioned it. You\u2019ll hear about it, the reports will start to come out. First in\u00a0Scientific American<\/em>, then probably in\u00a0the\u00a0Times<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut don\u2019t you\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cListen, my flight\u2019s about to take off. Been really nice talking, but \u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n

And yes, somehow it would turn out that, lo and behold, there was an extra bottle, Gordon just happened to have it there in his pocket, thirty tablets of\u00a0ascorbic\u00a0acid or some such, unmarked, harmless. A sum of money, two hundred, three hundred, would change hands, and life would go on. People will pay anything for a dream.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Gordon married a beautiful Indonesian dancer from a royal family; he worked with Salvador Dal\u00ed\u00a0on a photo book documenting an obsessive German auto enthusiast who ate, over the course of a year, a Volkswagen; he created (there\u2019s no proof, but who am I to doubt him?) a traveling transvestite circus in Singapore; he wrote reams of poetry that was as beautiful as it was incomprehensible; and he seemed to be friends with the most colorful, the most wonderful, and the most gullible people in the world.<\/p>\n

He led a charmed life, until he didn\u2019t. In 1993, there was a car crash in Indonesia; his wife was killed, and he broke every bone in his body. He was airlifted to Paris, then to New York, where he spent more than a year at Mount Sinai being rebuilt, piece by piece. Afterward, more and more housebound, he created a one-man Internet news service to combat the censorship and repression of the Suharto regime in Indonesia. And at all hours of the day and night he seemed to be on the phone with agitators, radicals, troublemakers, and poets.<\/p>\n

His bones healed, but his body remained in a state of shock and chaos. Cancers spread like bedbugs, and he was overwhelmed by the strange and forbidding medications that filled his already full apartment.<\/p>\n

\u201cGulabitis Nagwaczin. Tamatin Noodzcikoff. Petroxxie Remmaken,\u201d he read from the labels. \u201cMan. They sound like bad Turkish actors!\u201d<\/p>\n

He lost an eye, after which we had an outing to Glass Eyes for All Occasions, a shop near Penn Station where you could buy sensible prosthetic eyes as well as more unusual party favors: glass eyes made into cufflinks; eyes you could encase in ice cubes for drinks. (These last came in a party pack with HERE\u2019S LOOKING AT YOU, KID<\/small> emblazoned on the box.) He bought three packs of those.<\/p>\n

But more and more he was a shadow of a shadow. A leg was removed. A breast. Bits of skin. Bits of bone. When he died, in the summer of 2007, there wasn\u2019t much left but his voice and his beard and the smell of clove\u00a0cigarettes. Up till then he\u2019d been unstoppable.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know I\u2019m still going to dance at your wedding,\u201d he told me. I was engaged, yes, but I hadn\u2019t set a date.\u00a0He pointed to where his leg no longer was. \u201cOh, man! You know<\/em> that it\u2019ll be worth it, to see me dance!\u201d<\/p>\n

It was.<\/p>\n

Brian Cullman is a writer and musician living in New York City.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a time when I didn\u2019t know Gordon Bishop,\u00a0but that time\u2019s not worth talking about. I met Gordon in his shop, Tropics, sometime in the early eighties. I\u2019d been walking through Soho and noticed a store I hadn\u2019t seen before. Inside was a jumble of Javanese antiques\u2014carved doors; four-poster beds; objects that seemed decorative, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4393],"tags":[2429,19235,20537,10800,19237,46,125,5068,914,123,19236],"class_list":["post-89118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person","tag-berkeley","tag-gordon-bishop","tag-in-memoriam","tag-jakarta","tag-language-pills","tag-music","tag-new-york-city","tag-pan-am","tag-soho","tag-travel","tag-tree-frogs"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRemembering Gordon Bishop<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Brian Cullman recalls his friend\u2019s extraordinary life.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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