Henry
Flynt: The Intense Years (1954-67)
A chronology with correlative events
bold: Henry Flynt involved
bold
italic: Henry Flynt works
regular: works of others
italics: history
best as of 2007
The inclusion of a correlative event does not imply approval or
disapproval, only that the public was aware of it.
1953
March
5. Stalin’s death
July
27. Korean War armistice.
DNA
discovered
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
Dave Brubeck, Jazz at Oberlin
1954
February. Second Freshman semester of senior high
school. [At
junior high school. Greensboro had a
6-3-3 system.]
February
1954 – August 1956. Client, Guilford
County Mental Health Clinic; principal therapist, Douglas McNair.
March
1. Puerto Rican nationalist assault in
the U.S House of Representatives.
April
22. Army-McCarthy hearings.
May
7. Communist victory over the French at
Dien Bien Phu.
May
17. The Supreme Court rules school
segregation unconstitutional.
May
19. Charles Ives dies.
June
27. Arbenz is overthrown in Guatemala
by a C.I.A.-sponsored coup.
September. Matriculated Greensboro Senior High School
(now Grimsley High School) at age 14, first Sophomore semester. Joined the school orchestra as a matter of
course.
October
31. Algerian war of independence
begins.
November
3. Matisse dies.
November
29. Fermi dies.
c.
1954-56. Violin lessons with J. Kimball
Harriman, “Kim” Harriman, who becomes a nationally prominent string teacher.
c.
1954-56. Joined the Greensboro Symphony
Orchestra, presumably concurrently with starting senior high. At that time the Symphony was a volunteer
orchestra based at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
1954-57. Flynt’s parents insisted that he
occasionally attend church services with them even though he had announced that
he was an unbeliever. It attracted
enough notoriety that Flynt amounted to Greensboro’s village atheist.
c.
1954-7. Attendee, Greensboro Astronomy
Club. Presumably the club had an
organizers’ roster, but there was no formal membership for attendees. The venue for talks was the University of
North Carolina Greensboro. Field trips
to telescope viewings.
no
month
Junius
Scales, chairman of the Communist Party of North and South Carolina, is
arrested under the Smith Act.
Randall Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution
George Abbott, Pajama Game
Dissent
magazine begins publication.
Ad Reinhardt, black paintings
Jasper Johns, Flag (American flag)
Shake, Rattle and Roll (Joe Turner; Bill Haley
cover)
1955
February. Second Sophomore semester of high school.
March
12. Charlie Parker dies.
April
18. Einstein dies.
April 18-24. Bandung Conference, Indonesia.
April
12. Jonas Salk announces that his polio
vaccine is successful.
May
14. Inception of the Warsaw Pact.
August
28. The Emmett Till murder in
Mississippi.
September. First Junior semester of high school.
September
30. James Dean dies.
October
3. Movie Rebel Without a Cause opens.
December
1. Rosa Parks precipitates the Alabama
bus boycott.
December
5. AFL-CIO merger.
no
month
The
antiproton is produced.
N. V. Peale, The
Power of Postitive Thinking
Noam Chomsky, Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory
Foundations
of the Unity of Science, first volume in a series
Leslie Fiedler, An End to Innocence
Will Herberg, Protestant—Catholic—Jew
Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Norman Mailer, The Deer Park
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
Bill Haley, Rock
Around the Clock
Crew-Cuts, Earth
Angel
Bo Diddley, Bo
Diddley
Chuck Berry, Maybelline
Little Richard, Tutti Frutti
1956
February
25. Khrushchev’s secret speech on
Stalin’s crimes.
February. Second Junior semester of high school.
April 13-18 . member of the Greensboro High School
orchestra: when it travelled to St.
Louis to play at the opening session of the Music Educators
National Conference. There were general assemblies, including April 18, when Dave Brubeck, who had become a sensation, gave a talk at the
piano. Some hint of jazz as an
alternative system.
see George Avakian, Down Beat, June 13, 1956, page 14.
on-line article, R. A. Fredrickson, News-Record (Greensboro), March 2005
(March 28 or 31).
The
educators’ organization was originally the Music
Supervisors’ National Conference, see
below.
Summer. Flynt thought of attending Julliard for
summer school, but his teachers told him to go to “Interlochen,” the National
Music Camp in Michigan. The camp was
founded by Joseph Maddy after he directed a national high school orchestra at
the Music Supervisors’ National Conference.
Originally the National High School Orchestra Camp; renamed the National
Music Camp in 1932. Today, Interlochen Center for the Arts. A year or two before Flynt attended, the
camp had gained two major new buildings, the Kresge shell and the Maddy
administration building. The only
fellow-student Flynt saw after that summer was Richard Mendelsohn (at Harvard).
August
11. Jackson Pollock dies.
September. First Senior semester of high school.
Fall. Concertmaster of high school orchestra.
October
23 – November 4. Hungarian uprising.
October
29, 1956. Israel invades Egypt with
Britain and France. [The U.S.
threatened the Soviet Union with a nuclear attack to deter a Soviet
intervention on behalf of Egypt.]
November
6. Eisenhower re-elected President,
defeating “Egghead Adlai.”
early
November. Flynt was elected “most
intellectual” by his high school class.
known from a Nov. 5 letter from a local dairy awarding a milkshake,
obviously a school/business promotion.
no
month
Black
Mountain College, Asheville, North Carolina, becomes inactive in this
year.
Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics
Einstein, The
Meaning of Relativity, 5th edition
C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite
William Whyte, The Organization Man
Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd
James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
Allen Ginsberg’s Howl published
Genet, The
Balcony
George Mathieu, Paintings in Performance, Paris
Stockhausen, Klavierstück
XI
Love
Me Tender, Presley’s first movie
Presley, Heartbreak Hotel
Presley, Hound Dog
Carl Perkins, Blue Suede Shoes
Fats Domino, I’m In Love Again
Chuck Berry, Roll Over Beethoven
Gene Vincent, Be-Bop-A-Lula
Nervous Norvus, Transfusion
1957
January
10-11. Southern Christian Leadership
Conference founded.
January
15. Non-conservation of parity
announced; the Chinese discoverers will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics
that fall (unprecedented rapidity of recognition).
February. Second Senior semester of high school.
March
6. Independence of Ghana.
[fall
1956 or] spring 1957. Inducted into
National Honor Society (NHS). “tapped
for Torchlight.” Flynt’s induction was
opposed by some teachers, almost certainly on the grounds that he did not meet
the “social involvement and leadership” criteria of membership.
The
NHS was formed by the National Association of Secondary Principals (NASSP),
Reston, Virginia.
The Greensboro Record photo of the Torchlight corhort. Date of clipping not saved.
Spring. Flynt quits high school orchestra—unheard of—and
is replaced as Concertmaster by Julia Adams ’58.
April
1957. Notification by letter of award
of Certificate of Merit from National Merit Scholarship Corp.
May
1957. Recipient of honorary scholarship
to Harvard. (No money. Meant that Flynt met the merit criteria for
financial assistance if they had found financial need.)
“Harvard
College Scholarship Goes to Henry A. Flynt, Jr.” The Greensboro Record, May 17, 1957
July. Norman Mailer, "The White Negro," Dissent, Summer 1957
September
1957. Matriculated Harvard at age 17 as
a mathematics major, first Freshman semester.
September
24. Eisenhower sends troops to Little
Rock to enforce public school integration.
October
4. Sputnik launched. Harvard science personnel are abuzz.
Fall. SANE is formed.
no
month
European
Economic Community is established.
Hugh
Everett III proposes the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures
Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Stockhausen, Gruppen
Cage’s course, Experimental Composition,
N.S.S.R. begins
John Coltrane, Blue Train
Jerry Lee Lewis, Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On
Everly Brothers, Wake Up Little Susie
Buddy Holly, Peggy Sue
Jerry Lee Lewis, Great Balls of Fire
1958
January. China begins the Great Leap Forward. A disaster whose magnitude would not become
public for a very long time.
February. Second Freshman semester, Harvard
May 15.
John Cage, Town Hall
Retrospective, New York.
May. End of the semester, Flynt undergoes
psychiatric hospitalization at Harvard’s Mt. Auburn Clinic.
June. Flynt returns to Greensboro for the summer.
July. The U.S. and Britain intervene
comprehensively in the Arab Middle East to suppress Arab nationalism.
September,
first Sophomore semester, Harvard.
Routinely assigned to a residential house, Flynt switches to Dudley, for
off-campus students, and moves into a dingy rooming house.
October
9. Pope Pius XII dies. In the ensuing conclave, Giuseppe Cardinal
Siri was elected Pope, then forced aside before he could appear publicly as
Pope, allowing the election of Roncalli.
[The evidence is peripheral; conclaves are rigorously secret.]
October
28. Pope John XXIII begins his reign.
November.
Lecture by Karlheinz Stockhausen at MIT on electronic music (Gesang). Tony Conrad attended.
November 5.
“New Instrumental and Electronic Music,” lecture by Karlheinz
Stockhausen, Paine Hall, Harvard University.
Conrad and Flynt attended. Life-changing for Flynt as an object-lesson.
December
15. The “Rightist” Liu Shaoqi takes the
Presidency of China from Mao because of the Great Leap Forward disaster.
no
month
First
CND march in Britain.
Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books
J.K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society
Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Genet, The
Blacks
Yves Klein, Le vide
Cecil Taylor (with John Coltrane), Double Clutching
Chuch Berry, Johnny B. Goode
Johnny Otis Show, Willie and the Hand Jive
Duane Eddy, Rebel Rouser
Everly Brothers, Bird Dog
Nick Todd, At the Hop
1959
January
1-7. Victory of the Cuban Revolution.
February. Second Sophomore semester, Harvard
March. China begins its occupation of Tibet.
March. Saul Kripke, “A Completeness Theorem in
Modal Logic,” Journal of Symbolic Logic.
[If this is supposed to be the paper Kripke published while he was in
high school, surely he was at Harvard by this time.]
June. Flynt returns to Greeensboro for the summer.
June
19. Letter from Harvard warning about
low grades. Flynt ignored the warning
(he registered for Quine’s mathematical logic class in September). (He was sampling the intellectual heights,
not steering for a degree.)
July. Nixon visits Moscow, the “kitchen debate.”
July.
Jack Gelber’s The Connection,
The Living Theater.
September. First Junior semester, Harvard. Flynt moves into the rooming house where he
will live until May 1963.
August-September. First Sino-Indian border clashes.
September
15-27. Khrushchev visits the U.S.,
meets with Eisenhower. The AFL-CIO
opposed the invitation to Khrushchev.
Fall. Ugly Drawing
[done in Quine’s class]. Silverman
collection.
October.
Allan Kaprow, 18 Happenings in Six
Parts, Reuben Gallery.
October.
George Brecht, Toward Events: An Arrangement, Reuben Gallery.
November.
Young, Vision.
December 9. A New Music Concert at Harvard, supposed to
end with a serialist piano work performed by a pianist in the Harvard Music
Department, includes Flynt’s “Trio.” The “Trio” actually comprised independent solos for violin, piano, cello
(distinctly different “new music” forms) performed simultaneously. Flynt, violin, Wilder, piano, Miller,
cellist. Because Flynt strolled around
the auditorium to vary sound location, and because Wilder used Tudor’s
technique of punching the piano’s underside, it was a scandal. The Music Department pianist stormed out.
Because this happened, the Harvard Music
Department blocked the inclusion of a Conrad piece in a later concert in spring
1960. Conrad letter to Young, 5/5/60,
cf. Conrad letter to Young, 4/18/60.
no
month
Congress
passes the Landrum-Griffin Act.
The
greatest famine in the 20th century begins in China because of the
Great Leap Forward; it continues into 1961.
Workers
World formed as a split from the SWP, makes an approach to
Armando
Roman’s POC but is rebuffed.
Studies
on the Left begins publication.
Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself
movie, On
the Beach
movie, Hiroshima
Mon Amour
Robert Rauschenberg, Monogram
Frank Stella show black paintings (begun in
1958) in a group exhibition at MOMA
Cage, Indeterminacy (Folkways recording)
Stockhausen, Zyklus
Stockhausen, Refrain
Miles Davis, Kind of Blue
Ornette Coleman, Change of the Century
Ornette Coleman, Tomorrow is the Question
Dave “Baby” Cortez, The Happy Organ
1960
January
4. Death of Albert Camus.
January. The Student League for Industrial Democracy
is renamed SDS, will be much heard from.
January.
La Monte Young, Poem.
January.
Yves Klein, The Painter of Space
Hurls Himself into the Void.
February
1. First sit-in, Greensboro, NC.
February
13. France tests its first atomic bomb.
February
18. Telegram notifying parents that
Flynt is withdrawing from Harvard, on probation for low grades.
February
23. Two letters to Flynt’s parents re
his withdrawal from Harvard.
March 9. Yves Klein, Anthropometries.
March 14.
A Concert of New Music, Living Theater, New York.
March
21. Massacre in Sharpeville, South
Africa.
March.
John Cage, Theater Piece
performed. Review followed in Time magazine, March 21; just the review
was a major influence on Flynt.
April. Chinese Communist Party publishes “Long Live
Leninism!” commencing the public Sino-Soviet dispute.
April. Fair Play for Cuba Committee started in New York.
April.
La Monte Young, Two Sounds.
April.
La Monte Young gives this as date of composition of “566 to Henry Flynt”
[response to Flynt’s Concerto for Kitchen Sink and Monkey Orchestra, 2 January
1961. So Young must have applied the
title to an existing piece.]
April
17. SNCC founded in Raleigh, NC.
April. Fair Play for Cuba Committee started in New York.
Spring. Execution of Caryl Chessman, with attendant
protests.
May
1. Soviet Union shoots down the U2 spy
plane.
May 5. La Monte Young, Composition 1960 #2.
May
9. FDA approves the first birth control
pill.
c. June 1.
Philosophy Proper, Version 1 (14 pages). Privately mimeographed and circulated. Flynt letter to parents 6/1960.
c.
June 1. Flynt garners Chomsky’s verdict
on Philosophy Proper, Version 1. Israel
Scheffler suggested and arranged the encounter at MIT. [This conflicts with my episodic memory, in
which I showed Version 3, a typescript, to Chomsky in 1961—but there is
objective evidence, Flynt letter to parents 6/60, Flynt letter to parents
7/30/60. [Before I showed Version 1 to
Chomsky, I partly revised it, the letter says.
That I don’t remember—surely I had Version 1 mimeographed only once.]
June. Eisenhower’s planned trip to Japan is
cancelled due to demonstrations which include the Zengakuren’s snake-dancing
and the slogan “Eisenhower go to the Hell!”
June
30. Belgian Congo becomes independent.
July. La
Monte Young, Lecture 1960.
July. Sudden recall of all Soviet advisors from
China.
September
14. OPEC is founded.
September. The UN General Assembly at which Khrushchev
and Castro create sensations.
October
1. Nigeria becomes independent.
October.
Cage at International Festival of Contemporary Music, Venice. Time
magazine review, notorious intervention by an audience member.
November. Electronic
music score, November 1960 No. 2 (2 pages).
Young archive.
November
8. Kennedy elected President. He will
later be deemed to have stolen the election.
December. Nam June Paik, Étude for pianoforte, Köln.
December. Musical
score, “Circus,” consisting of four pieces to be performed simultaneously. (1) and (2) are missing; (3) is dated Nov. –
Dec. Young archive.
December 17.
composition 12/17/1960 No. 1.
[what is this, that it is dated at the moment I set off to see Young in
New York? is it too long to have been
influenced by Young’s “short” word pieces?]
c.
December 17. Flynt arrives in New York
to visit Young at the time of the Jennings loft concerts. A life-changing visit for Flynt.
Dec. 18, 19.
Concerts at Yoko Ono’s loft begin with Terry Jennings appearances.
December
20. National Liberation Front (NLF) of
South Vietnam is officially launched.
December.
Approximate date given for so-called Tape 5, Flynt music, whistling,
violin, voice, said to have been given to Maxfield.
late December.
essay, My Work in Music, 6 pages.
Acknowledges Young’s word pieces.
My two letters to Leonard Stein (Young archive) refer to this essay.
no
month
1960
is the last year of the British colonial war in Kenya which crushes the Mau
Mau. Three years later, Kenya will
become independent.
Mössbauer
effect—used to confirm general relativity.
Harvard
Psilocybin Project (Leary, Alpert).
William
F. Buckley founds the Young Americans for Freedom.
Peter
Schumann founds the Bread and Puppet Theater in New York.
Sartre, Critique
of Dialectical Reason
Daniel Bell, The
End of Ideology
Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War
C.
Wright Mills, Listen Yankee
(Nelle)
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Alfred
Hitchcock, Psycho
Stockhausen, Carré
Stockhausen, Kontakte
John Coltrane, My Favorite Things
Ornette Coleman, This Is Our Music
Viscounts, Night Train
Chubby Checker, The Twist
1961
January.
Mathematical System 1, shown to Kripke in Flynt’s room. [destroyed]
[various word pieces stimulated by Young’s oral presentation
of his word pieces in December, such as:]
January 2. Concerto
for Kitchen Sink and Monkey Orchestra.
Young archive.
January 3. Möbius
strip score, called Piece No. 2, 2/3/61.
Documented by second letter to Leonard Stein.
January
17, also given as February.
Assassination of Patrice Lumumba.
Before Feb. 26. Poem
4 completed—the “score” was displayed at the Feb. 26 loft concert. It seems that the “English translation” is
the only surviving vintage holograph.
Silverman collection.
February
11. Eichmann trial begins in Jerusalem.
February
25, Saturday. First loft concert, free
form performance. Recorded by Maxfield.
February
26, Sunday. Performances of notated
pieces; display of scores on a table, including Poem 4 and the Jan. word
pieces. notated pieces. piano tablature piece; high violin piece
(pointillist, disconnected notes on E string beyond the fingerboard)
February. Young begins to solicit submissions to Beatitude East. Flynt to parents 3/1/61. Flynt gives Young an essay on the philosophy
of mathematics before March 29, i.e. before concept art existed. Flynt to parents 3/29/61.
March 10. Concact of
Colored Sheets and Acoustical Scans [Optical Audiorecorder]. March 10 is earliest date given — March
dates proved because a published concept art piece was recycled from a colored
sheet music piece
March.
Robert Morris, Box with the sound of its own making completed.
March
24, Friday. Flynt on WHRB in Cambridge
for one-half hour, tapes of his “musical” performances, including prepared
violin, announcing the avant-garde concert.
Flynt letter to parents 3/29/61.
March
31, Friday. The Harvard Concert.
Richard
Maxfield
La
Monte Young [premiere of Compositions 1961]
possibly
Henry Flynt
Morris’
Box with the sound of its own making was not noted on the announcement but was
displayed in the auditorium.
April
1, Saturday. trial run for the
Young-Flynt duets that will be recorded January 9, 1962.
April.
Yves Klein at Castelli.
April
12. Yuri Gagarin’s space flight.
April
17. Bay of Pigs invasion. The U.S. government strenuously denies any
involvement.
May 4. The first of the 1960s Freedom Rides sets out
May
5. Alan Shepard, the first American in
space.
May
14. Young’s “566 to Henry Flynt” performed by Toshi Ichiyanagi, Carnegie
Recital Hall.
May 19-20.
Second performance of Young’s Compositions 1961, Yoko Ono’s loft.
June.
Robert Morris, Passageway, Yoko Ono’s loft.
June
2, Friday. Lecture on Newness at
Young’s Bank St. apartment, NY. Private
event, no announcement. Date given in
Flynt letter to parents 6/1/61. [Flynt
letter to Young 5/21?/61 proposed June 1, 2, or 3 as the lecture date.]
June
5. Junius Scales is sentenced to six
years in prison for Communist Party membership even though he has left the CP.
Summer.
Young, Blues in B flat, with Terry Jennings.
June. concept art as such crystallized: therefore, in the aftermath of the June New
York visit. First communicated to Tony
Conrad. surviving compositions:
Illusions
6/19/61
Transformations
10/11/1961
Innperseqs
(May-July 1961)
Work Such
That No One Knows What’s Going On (July
1961)
a mystery: concept art version of Mathematical System 4 3/14/61 [not to be
confused with Transformations]. See
below.
Note the “late” date on Transformations. Flynt began submitting for An Anthology
early in 1961, before concept art existed.
In Flynt to Young, 26 September 1961, Flynt asked Young not to publish
the “mathematics thing.” So
“Transformations” could not have been a part of that thing. Thus, Young did not have “Concept Art,” as
published, in hand until after September 1961?
And: Young made a selection from
Flynt’s concept art materials. The
“mathematics thing” does not survive in Young’s archive.
July. Exercise
Awareness-States [Mock Risk Games] [In 1981, Tom Constanten retrieved the
“lost” manuscript. Both versions
achieved publication.]
July. Philosophy
Proper, Version 3 completed and duplicated to be circulated. Mentioned in Flynt letter to Young 5/2/61,
then in Flynt letter to parents 7/3/61.
Mailed to Carnap, he never responded (he didn’t even tell me it was worthless). This cognitive nihilist, “insane extremist”
philosophy monograph, written at 21, was published in my book in 1975.
July
15, Saturday. AG Gallery
presentations: Exercise
Awareness-States, Innperseqs
July
16, Sunday. AG Gallery
presentations: reading of Philosophy
Proper, Version 3.
July
21. Gus Grissom is the second American
to orbit earth.
August. Linact: Incongruities (1 page)
August
13. Communists erect the Berlin Wall.
August 23. “Jazz violin,” two takes. Recorded in Cambridge, MA.
August. Robert F. Williams, the NAACP head in Monroe, NC, flees North Carolina for Cuba.
September
1-6. First Non-Aligned Summit held in
Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
September. “Anthology of Non-Philosophical Cultural
Works” hectographed by Tony Conrad and privately circulated.
Poem 1 (1960-61)
Audart Composition (May 1961)
Audart (July 1961)
Strange Culture Description
(April-May 1961)
Concept Art: WSTNOKWGO (July 1961)
Concept Art: Innperseqs (May-July 1961)
September
18. Dag Hammarskjöld dies in a plane
crash.
October. 22nd Congress of the CPSU,
exacerbating the Sino-Soviet split.
Stalin’s body removed from Lenin’s tomb.
October 25. Date of
postcard, Flynt to Young, which is the only surviving concept art holograph,
and documents the existence of Concept Art version of Mathematical System 4
3/14/61. Young did not use this
addendum in An Anthology.
October. The
Exploitation of Cultural Revolutionaries in Present Societies. [Destroyed.
Was sent to Maciunas, proved by Flynt to Young 10/25/61. The theme comes back in a less agitated way
in “On Social Recognition,” for example.]
November
1. First Women Strike for Peace
national action.
November. Energy
Cube Organism completed. Flynt to Young
11/61. Flynt to Young 11/29/61 proposes
to mail a sketch to Young. [I have a
memory of subsequently presenting it orally to Young and Morris in Young’s
apartment. The January 1962 visit to
New York? Published in 1975.]
November
29. Flynt to Young 11/29/61 mentions
inception of a new work, likely the Perception-Dissociator.
December 8, 1961. Young, Response to WSTNOKWGO.
December
9. Tanganyika becomes independent with
Julius Nyerere as President.
December
11. Official beginning of the Vietnam
War.
December
15. Eichmann receives the death
sentence.
December
19. Goa ceded to India.
December 20. “Audact Nos. 1-3,” this date. Recorded in Cambridge, MA. (#3 will be completed from the source tape, as per the 1961 instructions, in 2008.)
December 20.
recordings of Audact Nos. 0-3.
(reel E1, same reel used for certain 1962 recordings)
no
month
Murray
Gell-Mann introduces SU(3) symmetry, “the eightfold way.”
Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
LeRoi Jones, Preface
to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note
Genet, The
Screens
Rauschenberg, telegram “This is a portrait of
Iris Clert if I say so.”
Manzoni, Magic Base
Manzoni, Line 1000 Meters Long
Yves Klein, Monotone Symphony
Stockhausen, Originale
Ornette Coleman, Free Jazz
John Coltrane, Coltrane “Live” at the Village
Vanguard
Dave Brubeck Quartet, Take Five
B Bumble & the Stingers, Bumble Boogie
Drifters, Sweets for my Sweet
1962
Jan.
8, Monday. first benefit for An Anthology, the Living Theater
Jan. 9, Tuesday.
Flynt-Young fiddle-piano duet recording
Jan. 9. Flynt-Young alto sax-piano duet recording
Jan. 9. Flynt-Young song flute-piano duet recording
Feb. 5.
second benefit for An Anthology, the Living Theater
Feb.
9, Friday. ONCE Festival, Ann Arbor,
WSTNOKWGO performed
Feb.
8 or 9. Flynt’s draft physical. Flynt classified 4F.
Feb.
20. John Glenn flight
Feb. 22. creep
discourse recording (reel E1)
March. Noscol
Version 5 (text)
March
20. C. Wright Mills, professor at
Columbia, dies at age 45.
Spring
1962. Revolutionary Action Movement
(RAM) is founded in Ohio. [founding
date also given as 1963, 1964.]
April
17, Tuesday. “Cognitive” lecture,
Harvard
April
21. Seattle World’s Fair opens
March-May. Note on
Autobiography, My Acognitive “Cultural” Self-Discovery, Creep.
May 8.
premiere of Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Forum
May
15, Tuesday. Acognitive and Creep
lecture, Adams House, Harvard
May. The Important
Significance of the Creep Personality (text, destroyed)
May. “Black and White,” anonymous, Eastern Nigeria Guardian
May-June.
Stayed at 49 Avenue D for two weeks.
Heard North Carolinian Robert F. Williams describe his struggle with the
Klan and the government on WBAI-FM.
Williams was recorded in Cuba by Marc Schleiffer.
June
5, Thursday. Acognitive Culture talk,
49 Avenue D. [date verified from note,
Flynt to parents, on back of announcement sent to them. for some reason it became July 5 in my
records.]
June 9.
George Maciunas, Neo-Dada in the United States, Galerie Parnass,
Wuppertal
June
16. Port Huron Statement of SDS.
June 18. Date given for so-called Tape 8, Flynt, violin and song flute. [Supposedly in Young archive, not located.]
July
1. Progressive Labor Movement formed
after a CP split.
July
3. Algeria becomes independent.
July
6. Death of William Faulkner.
July 15.
Young and ensemble, improvised modal music, 10-4 Group Gallery
July
23. launch of Telstar [cf. Tornadoes,
Telstar, 1962]
August
5. Marilyn Monroe dies.
August
7, Tuesday. Pure Recreation talk,
Harvard
Summer? My New
Concept of General Acognitive Culture (text)
September. James Meredith enrolls in the University of Mississippi, integrating the university.
October
11. Second Vatican Council commences.
October
20. China invades India, administering
humiliating defeats to India. Timed to
coincide with Khrushchev gamble in Cuba.
October
22. Cuban missile crisis
October 24.
Cage, 0 00
November. décollage
No. 3 released with Flynt’s essay “My New Concept of General Acognitive
Culture”
November.
Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life, magazine publication in Moscow.
December
15. The Chinese Communist Party issues
“Workers of All Countries, Unite” against “modern revisionism.”
no
month
Perception-Dissociator drafted mostly during this year. Draft discarded? Piece recreated c. 1966, first published Ikon I/5, April
1968. The work never came to fruition
in its early form, but through it, Flynt motivated himself for such
investigations as:
“The Perception-Dissociation of Physics” (1969), published
1975.
“Superseding Scientific Apprehension of the Inanimate World”
(1990), web site [text only].
Youth
Against War and Fascism formed (Workers World)
The
Simkins hospital integration case in Greensboro begins in 1962 and ends in
1964. The Supreme Court’s decision
forces the integration of all hospitals which receive government money.
Junius
Scales is released from prison.
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy
Michael Harrington, The Other America
Robert Ruark, Uhuru
Robert Williams, Negroes With Guns (Marzani and Munsell)
James Baldwin, Another Country
premiere of Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf
first completion date in reference books for Flaming Creatures
Stockhausen, Momente
Jackie Wilson, I Just Can’t Help It
Booker T & the MGs, Green Onions
Tornados, Telestar
1963
January.
Cage, Variation III, date of composition
early
1963. Vince Copeland visits Boston for
radio appearance and Flynt rides back with him to New York
“early
1963.” James Baldwin, The Fire Next
Time appears as a book
February. From “Culture” to Veramusement [text, destroyed]
Feb. 27. FCTV Press
Release dated 27 Feb. 1963
Feb.
27, Wednesday. demonstrations at
cultural institutions with Conrad and Smith
Feb.
28, Thursday. 49 Bond St., reading of
From Culture to Veramusement
March. FCTV Press Release dated March-April 1963
March
30. The CPSU’s “Open Letter,”
commencing the most intense Sino-Soviet polemics.
April. Dr. King, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
April 23. William Moore, white Baltimore resident, member of CORE, solo civil rights marcher, is shot execution-style on a highway in Alabama.
c.
May 1. Flynt moves to New York, renting a room in a rooming house
May.
release of Arendt, Eichmann in
Jerusalem
May 11-12.
YAM DAY
May. Birmingham civil rights demonstrations opposed by Bull Connor.
May. Flynt visits parents in G’boro, sends letter
to WW [father away from G’boro at photographers’ convention?]
May
25. letter from G’boro publ. in WW
under name Charles Henry
May
25. Organization of African Unity (OAU)
formed in Addis Ababa.
June
3. Pope John XXIII dies.
June. Governor George Wallace's attempt to block integration of the University of Alabama.
June
12. Medgar Evers is murdered.
June
14-17. SDS issues America
and the New Era.
June
21. Pope Paul VI begins his reign.
summer. employed as messenger
summer. An
Anthology shipped
July
1. U.S. Postal Service introduces ZIP
codes
July
7, Sunday. Flynt’s “seminar” at Ben
Patterson’s apartment
July. FCTB
[n.b.] Press Release dated July-August
1963, called #2 when it was actually number 3
August
5. Test Ban Treaty.
August. Mao ZeDong issues “Statement Supporting the
Afro-Americans” credited to the influence of Robert F. Williams, now in Peking.
August
27. W.E.B. DuBois dies in Ghana.
August
28, Wednesday. Washington March
September. Macuinas returns to New York—?
September
15. Birmingham bombing kills four black
children attending Sunday School.
October
12. New
Yorker parody, by Donald Barthelme, of the FCTV March-April press
release. Flynt is depicted as the
extremist buffoon “Henry Mackie.” The
middlebrow Establishment assigns Flynt his place.
November
1. U.S. proxies overthrow Diem in South
Vietnam.
November
22. President Kennedy
assassinated. Johnson succeeds him.
December
12. Kenya becomes independent. This ends what had been a British colonial
war throughout the Fifties.
December 22. Central
Park Transverse Vocals 1-4 recorded
December 25.
Acoustic Hillbilly Jive recorded
December 26.
release of Beatles “I Want to Hold Your Hand”
no
month
dimension 14, Ann Arbor, with two Flynt compositions
Identification of Brend (text, 4 pages)
Leary
and Alpert dismissed from Harvard three years after the beginning of Harvard
Psilocybin Project
Castalia
Institute (Leary, Alpert, Metzner)—nicknamed Millbrook
Paul
Cohen proves the independence of the Continuum Hypothesis
Karl Marx, Early
Writings, ed. T. B. Bottomore
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
LeRoi Jones, Blues
People
1963, second completion date in reference books
for Flaming Creatures
1963, Cage, Variation
IV, date of composition
Beach Boys, Surfin’ U.S.A.
Crystals, Da Doo Ron Ron
Jaynetts, Sally, Go ’Round the Roses
Trashmen, Surfin’ Bird
Kingmen, Louie Louie
1964
January
12. The Arab government of Zanzibar is
overthrown by African nationalist rebels.
January
16. Hello Dolly! opens.
February
7. The Medgar Evers murder trial ends in a mistrial.
February
7. The Beatles arrive in New York.
February. Murray Gell-Mann’s paper, “A Schematic
Model” (quarks).
March
8. Malcolm X breaks with the Nation of
Islam.
March
14. Jack Ruby is convicted of killing
Oswald.
March. Primary Study, Version 7, published in Fluxus V TRE.
March
19. “Program for Genocide in South West
Africa” published in Workers World.
April
1. Brazil, military coup against
Goulart commences the fifteen-year tyranny of the Right. Now known to have been CIA-sponsored.
April
26. Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to
form Tanzania.
April
29, Wednesday. AACI demonstration at
Town Hall. “Fight Musical Decoration of
Fascism!”
Spring. Progressive Labor has existed for two years,
now creates M2M and commences publication of Challenge.
May
27. Nehru dies.
May
28. The PLO is established in
Jerusalem.
May
30. Free Alto recorded at 359 Canal
St. (reel M2)
June
12. Nelson Mandela sentenced to
life imprisonment.
June
19-21. The CP founds the DuBois Clubs
in San Francisco. Similarity of the
name to “the Boys Clubs” is denounced as a Communist trick.
June
22. Now known to have been the date of
the murder of the civil rights workers Goodman, Schwerner, Chaney in
Mississippi.
July
3. Civil Rights Act of 1964
signed into law.
July
14. Publication of the CCP’s Ninth
Comment, “On Khrushchev’s Phony Communism,” written by Mao.
July
18. The Harlem riot.
August
2. Gulf of Tonkin incident. Now known to have been a U.S. government
deception.
August
4. Bodies of the civil rights workers
murered on June 22 discovered in Mississippi.
August
6. London Times literary Supplement,
page 688 “Henry Flynt concept art.”
August
7. Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Now known to
have been unconstitutional.
September
3. London Times LIterary Supplement, page
775, “Henry Flynt’s intellectualized art”; page 828, mentions “My New Concept
of Acognitive Culture,” décollage No. 3.
September
8, Tuesday. AACI demonstration at
Judson Hall. “Picket Stockhausen Concert!”
September
10. Interview with Henry Flynt in Village Voice, Susan Goodman, “Anti-Art
Pickets Pick on Stockhausen.”
September. From Time
magazine review, Sept. 18, 1964, page 81, it is known that Flynt sent a word
piece to Norman Seaman which involved the audience gathering in a dark room
with an airborne cutaneous anesthetic.
(To eliminate all sensation except hearing.) The piece itself, presumably typed on canary paper, does not seem
to have survived. Flynt meant it as a
spoof of modern-music one-upmanship—since that was what Moorman’s “Avant-Garde
Festival” was supposedly about.
September. Probably September, not May: Flynt receives a call at WW from WBAI,
inviting him to speak on the radio to explain the anti-Stockhausen
demonstration. WW vetoes it. (They did not want a junior member to suddenly
get famous for an issue that “lacked clarity.”)
September
27. Warren Commission Report published,
concluding that Kennedy was murdered by a lone assassin.
October
14 (also given as December 10). Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
October
15. Khrushchev is deposed by Brezhnev.
October
15 or 16. China explodes an atomic
bomb. It is now known that the U.S.
contemplated a “surgical strike” to prevent China’s acquisition of the bomb. The question of a surgical strike to prevent
unsavory nations from getting the bomb comes up repeatedly—one wonders if there
was any scenario to hit Pakistan.
October
24. Northern Rhodesia becomes Zambia,
ending 73 years of British rule.
November
3. Johnson elected President.
December
3. Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
December. Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana is ousted by
a joint CIA-British covert operation.
no
month
Bell
proves Bell’s Theorem, action at a distance in quantum mechanics.
Sartre
is awarded the Nobel Prize and is the first and only recipient to decline it.
“Kim”
Harriman leaves the Greensboro school system for the University of Georgia.
Wittgenstein, Philosophische Bemerkungen
Murray Gell-Mann and Yuval Ne’eman, The Eightfold Way
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media
Sartre, Les
Mots
Herbert
Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp,” Partisan Review
Leary
and Metzner, The Psychedelic Experience
movie,
Dr. Strangelove
LeRoi Jones, Dutchman
LeRoi Jones, The
Toilet
LeRoi Jones, The
Slave
Ram Narayan, Inde du nord (BAM LD 094)
Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night
Martha & the Vandellas, Dancing in the
Street
Nashville Teens, Tobacco Road
Zombies, She’s Not There
1965
February
21. Assassination of Malcolm X.
April
28. U.S. intervention in the Domenican
Republic.
August
6. Voting Rights Act.
August
11-16. Watts riots.
August 20. Jonathan Daniels, Episcopal seminarian from New England, is shot dead by state employee Tom Coleman in the course of a civil rights protest in Alabama..
September
3. Lin Biao, Long Live the Victory of
People’s War issued. The Chinese
Communist Party receives this document nervously, sensing its extremism.
October. Indonesian mass murder of Communists. Absence of a Soviet protest speaks volumes.
October
3. Immigration Act of 1965.
October
4. SDS officially severs ties with the
League for Industrial Democracy.
November
11. Ian Smith’s UDI in Rhodesia.
December.
Publication of Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture.
Dec.
2. Lecture to art students [on
Communist cultural policy], Cooper Union.
no
month
HF
is discussed in Ben Vautier’s Tout No. 9 Esthétique (Nice)
any revised chapters of FCTB?
Penzias
and Wilson detect cosmic microwave background radiation. Also given as 1964.
Chomsky, Aspects
of the Theory of Syntax
Wolff, Moore, Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance
Ralph Nader, Unsafe
at Any Speed
Fanon, Wretched
of the Earth, English
The
Autobiography of Malcolm X
Tony Conrad, The Flicker
Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone
Barry McGuire, Eve of Destruction
Petula Clark, Downtown
Dobie Gray, The ‘In’ Crowd
Jr. Walker & the All Stars, Shotgun
Shirley Ellis, The Name Game
Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs, Wolly Bully
Beach Boys, Help Me Rhonda
Righteous Brothers, You’ve Lost That Lovin’
Feelin’
Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues
Yardbirds, For Your Love
James Brown, Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag
1966
January
10. Julian Bond is denied his seat in
the Georgia State Legislature.
January. “Transformations” included in the Arts In
Fusion exhibition, Temple University.
February
17. “Insurrections” recordings at
Walter De Maria’s loft
March
16. “Insurrections” recordings, the
apartment session.
March. “Crisis Over
Zimbabwe” published in The Partisan (New York)
May
14. Henry Flynt tracks, Raga Electric,
Sky Turned Red, Sanders Studio.
May
25. The Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution is launched in China.
June
5 and July 3. Inteviewed with Fwanyanga Mulikita, Zambian Ambassador to the UN,
by Florynce Kennedy, WLIB.
June
6. James Meredith, first known for
enrolling in the University of Mississippi in 1962, is fatally shot.
July
23. Insurrections tracks, Broadway
Recording Studio.
Sept.
16, 17, 23, 24. Flynt performs
(electric violin) as replacement for Cale with the Velvet Underground at the
Dom, New York.
October. Black Panther Party founded.
October
29. Betty Friedan founds NOW.
December 2. “Informal Hillbilly Jive” (does not yet have
boogie intro) and “Echo Rock” recorded.
December 8. Mastertone Studio, editing of existing tracks.
Dec.
9. Issue of L.A. Free Press, this date, Byrd’s interview of Stockhausen, Flynt
and AACI demonstrations mentioned.
Winter 1966. Film
Culture, first publication of “Mock Risk Games.”
December
23. Flynt, not listed on flier,
performs Hillbilly Jive [with newly composed boogie intro inspired by reading
about Coleman in Four Lives in the Be-Bop
Business], Palm Gardens celebration, New York. The pre-assembled audience, prepared to hear the Fugs, is
wowed. Bernard Stollman introduces
himself to Flynt backstage. The
Stollman contact does not lead to a record.
no
month
“Primary Paradox” written
[Primary Study Version 7 recast discursively]
1966 Mathematical Studies written (published 1975)
“Music in the African Ceremony of Possession” written
any revised chapters of FCTB?
Oscar Lewis, La
Vida [culture of poverty]
Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital
Mark Lane, Rush
to Judgment
Mao ZeDong, The
Little Red Book
RAM pamphlet, The World Black Revolution—calls for the creation of a Black
International and a “dictatorship of the world by the Black Underclass through
World Revolution”
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
Simon & Garfunkel, Homeward Bound
Simon & Garfunkel, I Am a Rock
Tommy James & the Shondells, Hanky Panky
Troggs, Wild Thing
Left Banke, Walk Away Renee
Beach Boys, Good Vibrations
1967
January
26. Concert, electric fiddle, Mass Art,
New York. There was no audience. Flynt can wow a pre-assembled audience but
cannot garner an audience.
January
27. Three astronauts die in the Apollo
1 launch pad fire.
February
10. 25th Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution ratified, deals with an incapacitated President.
February
18. J. Robert Oppenheimer dies.
March 8.
Herbert Marcuse, lecture at School of Visual Arts, New York, curated by
Dore Ashton: “Art in the
One-Dimensional Society.” [Published in
Arts Magazine, May 1967.] Flynt
attended, to distribute CMGRLIC on the sidewalk after the lecture, and to scout
out Marcuse. Benn Morea was there, and
challenged Marcuse’s vision of social salvation through romantic art. It was life-changing for Flynt, because it
induced him to read Soviet Marxism.
and to become increasingly dismayed with the “barracks” model of Communism.
March
9. Defection of Svetlana Alliluyeva to
the West.
April
21. Military dictatorship commences in
Greece.
April
28. Muhammad Ali refuses military
service.
May
6. Performance, electric fiddle, Ikon
Magazine benefit, New York.
May
22. Langston Hughes dies.
June
5. The Six-Day War.
June.
The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper album released.
June-July. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are in and
out of jail on drug convictions.
June. Flynt resumes college, at NYU, with a summer
French course.
June
12. U.S. Supreme Court rules that state
prohibitions on interracial marraige are unconstitutional.
June
13. Thurgood Marshall nominated to the
U.S. Supreme Court.
June
14. China conducts its first H-bomb
test.
June
29. Jayne Mansfield dies.
July
6. The Biafran War begins.
July
13-15. Race riots in Newark and
Detroit.
August. “The Soviet Economy and the Communist Party”
written. Amounted to a follow-on to
Marcuse’s Soviet Marxism emphasizing
institutional economics.
September. First fall semester at NYU. Flynt resumes as a math major with the Real
Analysis course using the Royden textbook.
October
8-9. Capture and execution of Che
Guevara in Bolivia.
October
17. Premiere of the love-rock musical
Hair.
Fall. Flynt ends his connection to the organized
Left, mailing “The Soviet Economy” to Sam Marcy.
November. Prospectus for the Journal of Indeterminate
Mathematical Investigations, a flier.
December
3. First human heart transplant
performed by Dr. Christian Bernard.
December
26. Beatles TV film Magical Mystery
Tour premiers.
no
month
“Mock
Risk Games” [recreation from memory of “Exercise Awareness-States”]
“Mock
Risk Games” published in Ikon, New York, 1967.
CMGRLIC
issued in Italian translation as a poster.
ED. 912, Milan.
“The
Conflict in Pure Culture” (1967, 4 pages—anticipates “Art or Brend?”)
“Cybernetics
of Controlled Brain Inputs” written
“Art
or Brend?” written
First
pulsar discovered.
Electroweak
unification and the neutral current.
Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape
Eric Berne, Games
People Play
Norman Podhoretz, Making It
Piri Thomas, Down
These Mean Streets
Norman Mailer, Why Are We in Vietnam?
Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution
Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual
Doors, Light My Fire
Aretha Franklin, Chain of Fools