(My last letter to Franck, July 19, 2020)
Cher Franck, Please forgive me for allowing our communications to become inactive. I feel guilty about this and remember with great warmth our good days in New York and Paris and the little "club". Our conversations often had a deep and gentle nature perhaps touched with a shared melancholy that moved me very much. And we did special things for each other that showed something of a soulful harmony. And we frequently were playful, humorous, and lighthearted together like young boys that could get excited about music or arranging a party with others. This is not to be forgotten -- a lovely, shared lightness of being in the midst of personal issues and problems. It is rare and comes with the best of my memories of you. Something hard to explain to others. Most people are too protected to allow that level of intimacy and intensity into their lives without pulling back because finally they don't trust the other or themselves. I never felt that way about you. Just the opposite. We had both learned some things about life, its profound indifference and secret openings that are so hard to speak about except perhaps at certain poetic moments -- silence is an opening that words can't close. Can we trust the words that are so wrapped in reversals and contradictions? Perhaps it is only in an indirect, off-kilter, quasi-accidental disclosure that a certain truth sneaks in under the radar. We knew that difficult, ephemeral territory, each in his own way, and we could allude to it in a half-smile and look in the eye, which meant everything and nothing at the same moment. One cannot speak for two, one can hardly speak for oneself, but one can speak of the two and what it was like to be in that rare, shared state of receptivity to another. And so, I think, this should not be lost. Because it is so unusual and rare, elegant and quotidian, foolish and truthful. And it can raise spirits with a subtle grace and warmth of recognition.
Je t'embrasse,
Charles