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they are true, so you cannot argue with him. So I begged him to talk to Irving, since, after all, Irving has believed in him and has arranged these shows. Of course, I don’t know exactly what Don said to him—Don was very much afraid of insulting him by suggesting that the “failure” of the Los Angeles show was somehow Irvings’s fault 10 —but, anyhow, Don did ask for advice and Irving rather wonderfully made a definite suggestion; Don should draw a team of women roller skaters. This seems to have turned Don on at least a bit, and he is investigating their doings, where they race, etc. The idea is to get away from portraits as such (that is, pictures of people who demand that they shall be likenesses). Personally, I feel that Don achieves this every time with his new pen and ink technique; these last drawings have been most of them marvellous. It’s largely, I think, because they are full figure and often surrounded by an environment, while his pencil drawings tend to be heads with very little else. When the pencil drawings succeed, it’s because of a psychological penetration; therefore he has to draw people who are worth penetrating. The ink drawings make a more generalized poetic statement, so they can be of almost anybody.
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    June 21. Thick white fog. Don has gone off to see the women roller skaters this afternoon, then have supper with his parents. But meanwhile something has happened which I feel, hope, is most awfully important; Don talked to Billy Al Bengston on the phone this morning (we were there last night for supper) and told him all about Irving’s suggestion and asked his advice. And Billy Al (who doesn’t like Irving anyhow) said, “Only do what you want to do,” and went on to tell Don that all the artists he knows who have seen Don’s work think very highly of it and that the opinion of artists is all that matters in the long run, Don just has to wait until their opinion is accepted which will probably take at least two years or more. Furthermore, Billy said that he’d like to show Don’s work in his own studio, which consists of several very large rooms and which he now uses instead of a commercial gallery.
    So of course Don is immensely encouraged, as well he may be, for indeed what Billy says about his work is far more impressive than any of the wretched little press notices he has so far had. Don says he now feels he can go ahead. Also, after the talk with Billy, he admitted that he does feel he has made a great breakthrough by starting these ink drawings and particularly by doing them on smaller paper, the paper he was working on, he says, was too big for him. Don wouldn’t be Don if he didn’t add a note of doubt, so he points out that he is now using exactly the same paper and the same pen as David Hockney uses—implying that he is therefore just a copycat! But he is pleased. Billy Al has given him courage. So now I love Billy Al, though he embarrasses me terribly to be with.
    Yesterday was Father’s Day (as far as the Vedanta Society was concerned) and I went there for the lunch. Swami pretty much recovered, but Pavitrananda, who is staying with them, looks ghastly and Swami says he is in serious trouble with his prostate gland, because he insists on being treated by a homeopathic doctor in New York. Swami will take him to his doctor tomorrow.
    There was singing, of course, and Jimmy Barnett surpassed himself. In the midst of it, I got a sudden comic vision of a sort of last-act-of Faust scene. Jimmy is being condemned for his sins, when God’s voice exclaims, “No—he is saved! Because he is shameless. He who is utterly shameless is pure.” This amused me so much that my eyes filled with tears, I was really moved, and the boys, who were singing to us, at us, right into our eyes and hearts like crooners, were very pleased, they felt they were truly hitting the button.
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    June 24. Have just finished