Between The Flags - Excerpt

But the fifties were my season in heaven. Here the best paintings were made, and music played. Here you could get a copy of Adolphe at Walgreen's and find no place to hide among the columns under Lever House. Everything was happening. If only the critics had been driven out of town, tarred and feathered with copies of Art News. Nobody listened to Barney Newman: "Aesthetics is for the artists like ornithology is for the birds."

The sixties will be greater yet. Up, up into the highest cholesterol. Up, up into the highest brow. Fat will be fashionable. Baldness will be fashionable. The moon will continue to be fashionable. There'll be souped-up elevators in office buildings. There'll be souped up office buildings in outer space. All soups will be cool and chic: gazpacho, vichysoisse, infinity. Everyone will have his bowl of infinity. There'll be second helpings of infinity. Just tell the waiter, you want more. The coolness of it all. The endless whispers of it all send endless shivers up my endless spine. Up, up to the ears. I can hardly hear me.