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Image, ink on paper “Watch your step, n.d.” courtesy of Ricco/Maresca Gallery
Joe Massey – 75209: a name and a number. An odd signature—odd even in its placement: cornered, off in the top left, bearing down on nearly every image. This J.M. in Ohio, BOX 511, this prisoner. It reminds me of my penpal—a death row inmate in Florida. He also signs his name and address at the tops of his letters. I remember once I wrote to him and received the same letter back in the mail stamped return to sender a few weeks later. On the front of the envelope was a sticker, placed there by some mailroom clerk, perhaps another inmate, explaining that I had failed to include the prisoner-number and so the letter was undeliverable. Reading that gave me a cold sense of not quite shame, but of something like it. It was the first time I truly considered him as other. He could no longer be simply a name, nor even a name coupled with an address as I was. He was a number.
The Ricco-Maresca gallery in Chelsea, on 22nd street, opened an exhibition of 75209’s work in September, 2019. In the write-up for the exhibit, 75209 is portrayed as a kind of folk legend. A Texan, very little known about him, with humble beginnings as a bell boy and a table waiter, cropping up alongside historical figures. A bit of a vagabond, a criminal who meets a mysterious end. The write-up also contains an excerpt from one of his letters to Charles Henri Ford, editor of the now defunct View magazine, where much of 75209’s work first appeared. The letter begins, “Sir in regards to the no. after my name This no. emphasises [sic] the fact that I have made a mistake in my life and I am trying to make the best of it.”
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When I first wrote to the inmate in Florida, it was because I wanted to understand a prisoner’s life. I had intended to write something on the subject that would, with any luck, evoke empathy. I told him this, and I mentioned to him that it was Nietzsche’s philosophies that first spurred my interest in the topic as a social issue. Particularly, I passed along two quotes from Nietzsche’s book of aphorisms, Human All Too Human, I.
The first:
Our crime against criminals consists in the fact that we treat them as rascals.
And the second:
How comes it that every execution causes us more pain than a murder? It is the coolness of the executioner, the painful preparation, the perception that here a man is being used as an instrument for the intimidation of others. For the guilt is not punished even if there be any: this is ascribable to the teachers, the parents, the environment, in ourselves, not in the murderer—I mean the predisposing circumstances.
I suppose I was trying to explain why I decided to write to him. And also I hoped he would share his opinions on it, as opposed to just exchanging small talk. When he wrote back, I was surprised to learn he too was a “student of Nietzsche,” as he put it. Just the same, he told me I must be a masochist to seek empathy with someone in his position. He then suggested I read some articles from Prison Legal News, which publishes extensively on the rights of prisoners and the abuses of law enforcement if I really wanted to learn more about a prisoner’s life. The horror in the stories he suggested was overwhelming. Each seemed worse than the last. Worse and worse, yet familiar and commonplace: one with a badge looking to snuff out one in chains, sadistically, cruelly, and with impunity. Impunity because they only hurt those who broke the law—those who, removed from the public, were no longer considered human enough to matter.
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Looking at 75209’s art there is a recognizable childishness. The figures are quirky, anatomically underdeveloped, not quite human. The creatures have one foot in reality and one foot in fantasy. The sun’s flashing eyes and expressive mouth remind you of fridge magnets and kindergarten scrawls. And pervading all these scenes and figures is an unwavering flatness expressing a one-dimensional perception. Imprisoned, 75209 is reliant on memory or imagination, or a union of the two (nostalgia), and can only portray what for him remains either unobserved or unobservable.
When I first saw 75209’s work, I knew he had been in prison but I was unaware of the extent of his criminality and confinement. After learning more about the man, the nostalgia and the quirk that I at first associated with the childlike lines and figures quickly shifted to a darker tone. Suddenly I noticed the sun was not always smiling, but instead mostly looked shocked. In some instances, it is cut off by the page’s edge, its eyes glancing back, as though it were fleeing something. And yes, the figures are ill-formed like children’s drawings, but their limbs are markedly twisted, their bodies strangely intertwined. The pen marks are not merely unrefined and hurried with immature impatience, they are frantic, jagged and continuous, as though everything were put on the page in one maddened motion. The text accompanying some of the images has oddly-formed letters, like a toddler first learning to write, and the syntax is just a little off, like someone only just beginning to understand. Still, the underlying coarseness of the language cannot be masked. “Why mother look at my hand,” says one drawing, innocently. But the mother’s face, full of distress, and the hand hidden behind a wall, leaves our wild imaginations unable to dispel violent conclusions.
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After a few months of writing letters, my penpal began signing, “always your friend.” It was a small but meaningful change in our correspondence. Already, the first letter seemed deep in the past. I recall now that when I first found his contact information through Write A Prisoner, there was the option to see what his crime was. There are, after all, only a few that lead to death row.
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One piece in 75209’s collection stands apart more than the others. It bears the same signature, it is on the same paper, with the same blue-black ink, and it has the same downward-slanting script. But this one is only text—a poem:
IT WERE daRk as pITch.
as I stuMblE InTo a duITch.
bEcamE so dumb.
as My body goT NuMb.
a door swuNg OPEN.
NOT a woRd I SPOKEN.
ThERE wERE a RIVER aNd a boat.
soMEthINg Tug at My coaT.
I could boRly dERSIRN.
yET wIThIN ME was a EaRN.
ThERE sTood a Mighty bEINg.
ThE LaRgeS I had EVER SEEINg.
EyEs spaK with FIRE.
wIthIN his haNd a baR.
as Though TO CRush ME.
FaR I couLd NoT FLEE.
It’s an unusual scene, dreamlike or nightmarish. The periods deaden every line, blurring the distinction between complete and fragmented thought, interrupting, adding obscurity, adding fear. It sounds like the narrator is being murdered. (Murdered or, indeed, arrested. It’s not too difficult to imagine that the “bar” which the large, all-powerful being holds, is a nightstick.)
Beyond these speculative interpretations, the AABB rhyme scheme, the shortness of the lines, and the random capitalization, all without a doubt add to the already distinctly childlike quality in 75209’s work. Reading the poem, I can’t help but feel it’s reminiscent of a nursery rhyme and I try to recite it with that simple yet oh-so familiar meter. The instances of slant rhyme and inconsistent syllable counts heighten its crooked feeling. Like any nursery rhyme that has been ripped from its childhood setting or otherwise distorted, it’s hair-raising (in particular Ring a Ring O’ Roses comes to mind). Everything that stresses the innocence of 75209’s work also amplifies the near-deranged and frightening qualities as well. But apparent extremes are never so distant as they appear. Just as the coldest ice burns or the brightest light blinds, the guiltiest killer expresses the innocence of a child. For a child, too, is caught in the greater, incomprehensible circumstances which surround them. And they are not answerable to this circumstance, but rather this circumstance, built by chance, is answerable for them.
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I asked my penpal about his childhood, his young adulthood. He didn’t mention much: his father was a Lutheran, his mother a Pagan. He recalled a time he and his sister went hiking in the woods and came across a set of deer antlers. He wanted to take them but his sister urged him not to. Though he conceded to his sister, he returned to the same wooded spot later that day. His story then takes a magical turn. He claims the bright, hot day suddenly turned dark as twilight and cold. The wind was rising when a buck bounded past him down the game trail. And when the buck was out of sight, the day returned to be as it had been. He took the antlers and went home. I’m inclined to believe him as none of his other letters lay claim to such otherworldly happenings. As for his young adulthood, he mentions riding across the country on a motorcycle, backpacking, being homeless, taking meals from soup kitchens. Though I haven’t asked him about his crime, I’ve always held to the thought that he didn’t mean to do it. I’ve imagined him trying to rob someone to get a meal.
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I Eat. you up. In one of 75209’s more startling works, the signature again anchors the top left while the sun in the top right looks up and away, its mouth rectangular. There are three creatures on the page, all with one eye showing. Each of the three appear to be looking directly at the viewer, not just unblinking, but unable to blink, so fixed is their ill-intended stare. The first creature you notice is below the signature. It’s a camel-like creature all colored-in with those frantic scribbles. All colored-in, that is, except for a human figure, lying supine, like a victim, faceless, within it. Just above is written, “I Eat. you up.” Who is the figure? Faceless, they have no identity now. But whoever it is, they were left whole—un-chewed—and now are trapped, perhaps still alive, within this monster. Next to this is another creature, breaking onto the page from the right, its mouth full of dagger-teeth, larger than the first creature, seemingly poised to eat the first creature. Below—below the ground or in the waves—is a third, sawtoothed creature, also ready to claim his share of the carnage. “You. and who. else, ” it says.
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In the very first letter I received from my penpal he had lovely handwriting. As time went on I noticed it became a little shakier, and I took note of some minor misspellings—“whole,” spelled without the “w,” for instance.
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There are a couple rare examples when 75209 uses tempera, producing rich, earthy reds, grayish purples, deep blacks, and electric greens. In one such work, a black creature (what I would describe as a cubist cat) with mean eyes sits below a six-legged, red, dragon-like monster with a spike on its muzzle. The text, also in red, says “yes you. / who. me.” The use of periods in lieu of question marks is odd enough, but this phrase, which appears in another drawing as well, is curious for its apparently reversed order. The answer, “yes you,” comes first on the left, and the question, “who. me,” second, on the right. In an effort to make somewhat more sense of the seemingly disordered sentences, I wonder how much of a stretch it would be, considering 75209’s offbeat, colloquial diction, to read “who. me.” as “who am I?”
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In a letter dated November 15th, 2017, my penpal hauntingly writes, “everyday a piece of me erodes away like a sandcastle in the coming tide.”
To see oneself diminish in such a rhythmic way must be both anguishing and, unavoidable as it is, sadistically engrossing. Absolutely impossible to look away from. To slowly become unrecognizable to yourself—you would have to look in an attempt to understand. Or else risk becoming unhinged from the resulting discord.
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The accusatory answer, “yes you,” comes before the question of guilt. With only the self to talk to, and no discernible path towards innocence, one becomes trapped in a self-hatred that demands to be acknowledged. The essayist Kenneth Rexroth once wrote, “The artist uses the materials of the world to direct men’s attention back to it.” The prisoner’s sole source of material is his own self. Through this monologic conversation, our attention is being directed towards 75209 as he accuses himself before he even has a chance to deny or question the accusation. Because all he knows is guilt. Guilt is the only sustenance left to him from which he can gather the strength to go on.
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In another letter, dated September 9th of the same year, he tells me he’s going to get some sleep, and signs off, “Thought is deed yet to be put into action.”
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While he was in prison, 75209 could not be influenced. His work is pure. It was born perfectly out of his self. The art and the man—the prisoner—are one and the same. To see the art is to be introduced to him. The strange truth is that after his release from prison in 1965, no one knows what came of him. It’s as if, after leaving his cell, all that he found worth creating, worth sharing, disappeared. The death of the prisoner, as it were, brought the death of the artist, too.
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As time went on, the initial glow of my penpal’s letters arriving in the mailbox began to dim, just as the excitement of any new connection does with growing familiarity. And so I took longer to respond. But when I do eventually write, his reply comes swiftly.
“I hope this missive finds you and all those you hold near and dear to your heart hole [sic], well, and in good spirits,” he writes. Our conversations have become more casual, more comfortable. It seems we take less care in wording each sentence, instead just writing whatever thoughts come to mind. We talk about everyday things. He’s learning how to code. He needs a text book and “those are never cheap.” He has a girlfriend who’s from Sweden and just moved to Florida with her young son. “I’ve never been a social butterfly,” he admits out of the blue, “but those who know me know I’m a standup guy and can be trusted to the nines.”
How we forget: that punishment, by design, is as intolerant as the crime. Yet it goes on without a passing glance, left to gnaw at its intended recipients, ripping through them. They’re falling apart, losing themselves, fading. Kept from our eyes, they live on—forgotten.