Richard Harris and Edward Hall

00:04 My name is at Hall. I am 57 years old. Today is Tuesday, June 4th, 2019, and I'm at storycorps Atlanta with my friend and colleague Richard Harris.

00:20 Hi, I'm Richard Harris. I'm 67 years old today is June 4th, 2019 a storycorps Atlanta at the Atlanta Historical Center, and I'm here with my friend dead.

00:36 Richard head

00:39 We met at home of Chris Hall have a relation.

00:46 At Halloween party

00:49 You remember that night, don't you I do. I'm glad I remember that night cuz you know, I'm in most cases the past is a blur to me, but I remember that night vividly. I wish we could tell some other jokes that we swapped that we have a shared we had we do that we have a shared humor and a particular love of some Lenny Bruce bond is our friendship started and funded our yeah, and I know that we have threatened to do stand up and be each other's plant in the audience hasn't happened yet, but I know it doesn't mean it won't it's raining. So, what's the last Stone? What's the last stand up comedy?

01:31 Documentary you've watched concert o i I like there's an English, and actor call Greg Davies and I saw it on Netflix and he's very good at to me great comedy is about sort of dropping you off the cliff with a punchline or a story coming from the unexpected cuz after all real life is unexpected when humor is done right at the reflection of that, I think absolutely I also got in a fight once not a fight difference of opinion with Stephen of the novelist Steven millhauser.

02:13 Who was insisting that surprise was the essence of Comedy I said yes, but in the story you read and he had read his story. I believe the title The Snowman.

02:26 And it's a magic realist.

02:32 It is magic realism and and very funny and there's a moment in it like the this town they start to make these ever more elaborate snow people.

02:45 And I knew the moment that he said and then there were the jugglers and I literally started laughing because I knew it was going to be you know, somebody's juggling the Snowman is juggling snowballs. One of which is suspended in mid-air over its head right when that picture is successfully created in your head. That's just so you could tell from what already happened in the story that that's that that's where it get it crossed over into actual magic realism, and I said I knew where you were going with it and it was funny like I owe as soon as you said jugglers. I knew what that punch line was, so I wasn't surprised by the Revelation. I knew what the Revelation would be.

03:31 It's me. It was that you you laid out all the clues. So expertly that. I knew what the next thing you realize you are on a path. So anyway.

03:48 And I guess it was that same night at that same party that that we found out each of us at the other makes or talk about talk about the kind of art kinds of art that you make a self-taught abstract artist started doing it really doing it in my early thirties. So it's been doing it awhile and it's just been a great gift in my life the idea of making art and coming about it my own way. I didn't like art but you couldn't draw as a child or in school. So I didn't think it didn't even occur to me. I look back now on things that probably push me in the Direction one was as early as 12 years old when my father brought home as a joke at Jackson Pollock. Jigsaw puzzle.

04:49 And he handed it to me and said that we used to do jigsaw puzzles. Once in awhile. I said try this one and then as a later teen I started noticing abstraction and then I just finally reached a point where I couldn't not do it. I was like that as a metaphor for many things in life when you're just driven to do to do something. Go back to the pilot. Jigsaw puzzle were you able to do they wanted to they weren't. Yeah, we did. I mean, I don't know if I ever finished it but that yeah, I was they weren't talking about things like attention deficit when I was a child until I think he's caught my imagination and now my heart is very pattern oriented and it's can be different things. But it also I see where there are ties to Art throughout Mankind's history, and I just I enjoy that cuz I didn't know about all those connections before when I started doing it. So I feel like I'm just part of

05:49 Telling the story forward. You know what that means a lot to me. Did you have an extra face not know it but that would be an example of that. I like that sure and then I just saw as I said self-taught also in art history as well. So

06:07 And looking at a shirt and enjoying a sure there was an exhibit in town last years of yes that I love to do we go to that together now it was different. I went to the show. Yeah. I know I just was driving and saw it and then drove over there. Oh that's right there. So I know it's like 40 pieces. So in different parts of my mind, I found out what what is reasons. I was drawn to that to just pack people have said some of my art looks kind of like Asher and

06:43 I am only I like that cuz I like a sure but I never made the connection that a part of art that was that I discovered words in Islamic art with the tessellation is licensed. And again just not from a spiritual religious up. I'm actually Jewish I wasn't I'm not a true Pius, but I do relate to call Troy but I just love the Curves in the modern work of the tile patterns of Islam. And if you like I'll Hambra in Spain and things like that, but I never do the word tessellations and then within a couple of months I find reading back on that sure that he was inspired by the tessellations and I just love when universes Collide. I love the Serendipity of the situation like that.

07:32 Well, I think I saw pieces of yours, but I'm not sure.

07:39 That I was transported by piece of yours until that night at elise's divorce Valerie, right and you have that and I say this not to take anything away from you. But you know, Don Cooper was the first person I needed I wasn't actually in an exhibition with John Cooper in Mobile, Alabama my hometown and yes, and I was very busy showing Southern abstractions and there was some irony there because

08:13 Artist had to have a connection to the South but every other artist was born in the South and head either state or gone other places, right? I was born in New York and Sam start making art till I was in the South so that was fun. But yeah, I had two pieces of bread probably took one of my larger paintings into their permanent collection. I'm very proud of that. That's very impressive. I'm not sure that's the same it's not as you saw that night. I'm sorry. I don't know. What I was about to say is I grew up in Mobile in the first Museum I ever went to was in Mobile.

08:52 But I think that one that rebuild yeah, I'm not sure if that that older one, which is Tiny and I'm in the middle of Municipal Park overlooking the lake. I'm not sure if that moved or if that's a new institution. I would guess them moved cuz it seems like it was part of that but park and other than I don't know. Okay. I need to ask my sister about that. I can still vividly remember.

09:20 It was probably some it might have been colonial-era. It could have been early cup of vernacular a thing and it was something like

09:29 Sherman on other moral depravity and it's a it's a return of some Minister ministers nowhere to be seen but you can see the text of what had been the sermon shredded his pet. Monkey has a skate like you can see the cage open. The back is murdered the parrot. He's going to move the whole room is in tatters. And now that I know now that I say that laughingly I worry that that it being Mobile in the 1960s that there may have been some racial component to it that I would not have seen at the time. But yeah, so that is the first piece of artwork.

10:16 I really remember like having a reaction to you. So it's incredibly cool to me that you are in that you were in that music. It was only the second time. I've been in Mobile the ironic first time it was in the 1970s as a young traveling salesman and then you know, I was certainly

10:40 You know treated nicely and I remember a great meal with some shrimp remoulade and something it was delicious but visiting of course, I was proud to visit to speak in front of my paintings but having spent a couple of days Inn around downtown mobile and just seeing this.

11:00 I know it's just a sweet kind of in a good way a addict at right word, but also be in building it back and it just felt like you can see why it's their history tied to New Orleans and you know, they started their right the Mardi Gras in San Marcos Maybe I'm Wrong can't start a New Orleans. Of course, you know, I will not do that.

11:39 No, I thought you were headed a very different place with that whole Spiel as as you know, I'm sure I've said this in front of you before the only way I will spend significant time in the state of my birth again is in an urn. No love lost between me and mobile is still a deeply recidivist deeply deeply bigoted Bastion of new Jim Crow that you know, if I knew if I could figure out a way to just take it apart at the joints.

12:18 By pressing a button I would do so understanding. And as I said anyway an apology, I was reacting to the static. I was experienced. Oh, yeah not important when you said Decay. I thought you meant it moral and ethical like I moved to the south at 17 years old from I was born in New York City in the Bronx lived in New Jersey West Orange New Jersey till I was seventeen and we moved here in 1969, which was a pretty powerful year to be anywhere in this country shot your mom and all those, you know, all those things going with you and Woodstock. Was that summer did you go? No, but I did go. I was in the first class of a very proud. I always been in public school my whole education, but when we moved here to Dunwoody in 69 and again, that was not

13:15 It was a it was a different experience. I didn't adjust all that. Well, and for the first time I went up at a new school called Galloway School in Chastain Park, which was if you tuck the makings of a great screenplay was that it was one of them. It was everything from dilettante Coca-Cola heirs to the eldest of Martin Luther King's Children had had further contact as an adult with Dexter and that they were younger than I am but it was so many things that school it was integrated at that in that it was a private school. I mean it was I was standing next to that one of the what they called the assembly room. I was standing next to credit Scott King one day while they were delivering and I will do what year this is 1969.

14:07 They went on to other schools and other things but there was another thing Ellie Callie was a great man. He passed away what 10 years or less than 10 years ago. He was just an interesting man. He'd he was very what you would say conservative military man, but he had this belief in free Progressive education of pass-fail and things like get the credit to the work. One thing. I learned from that very powerful. He was when you give children freedom and they're not used to having it. They will take advantage and there was some funny stories but not frustrating story for the people that were trying to launch in it at school. Will we can Circle back to that before I forget? Do you know if that's is this person related to the artist the Atlanta artist Angus Galloway know but you know how anxious I met him and really like yeah. Yeah and and you know his his wife Amanda.

15:02 Oman I believe she's she might be the African curator at the Michael Carlos Museum. Okay. She's a curator there. I knew they wanted to the go-ahead before I retired from there. I know her and she did a great job for many years now.

15:23 So you're in.

15:27 Atlanta in one Dunwoody suburb go to the Rock Fest the next summer. There was a it was in Byron south of Macon tell me a little bit of it was experienced. I have to ride with some fellow classmates and got down there and it was it was quite an event and you know is everything from actually Jimi Hendrix. I saw Jimi Hendrix perform there just a few months before he died. And so that was fascinating. It was our few hundred thousand people stomping in the jumping and it was it was it was a visual. It was also it was so many different things. It's also when I was reminded by one of the scariest anti-drug things I ever saw was walking by a tent that they were treating

16:25 Overdoses and I saw a young woman convulsing in a dirt road and you know, maybe this isn't a good idea to do these kind of things and so the bad can bring some good things about so I'm going to guess that I was I was going to do my trying to do my best Marc Maron interviewing Terry Gross invitation and say so Richard have you I said, no marijuana does. Yeah, I did that. I was among the type of a lot in high school and then one night I realized also was at a party and I turned to talk to a girl that I liked and some unintelligible words came out of my mouth and I then decided I also like talking a little too much and I didn't want it. So I had experienced it and then said goodbye to a night over bendable swindled by age.

17:25 Yeah, I am I different times. I've been a contracted to it in an abstract way, especially after hearing Oliver Sacks talk about use LSD experiments. What the movie was Robin Williams was Robin sex wasn't a thing that he did I think on Radiolab. Okay audio thing. I just made his story was yeah. Yeah Awakenings was filmed but but I've actually never seen it all my everything. I know about stocks are no other from reading about him or from hearing him on various like NPR things. But yeah, he taught vividly about his and he sorted out his is lysergic experience. Absolute oil. I was surrounded by people that were searching it out there who's there different parts to it? So

18:25 I've never done it at this point. I think I know now, how may he rest in? Peace? Harlan Ellison felt about the stuff like he got to an age where he's liking. You know, I always wished that I'd done it and now I know I never will and so that's kind of my feeling right now. That's why he slipped it to me the problem problem with a simplistic special an intro with children who sang Just say know who was anyting is children young people feel bulletproof. And so if they try something after they've been told something is really bad and it feels good. Even though it's not good for them that can lead them down a dangerous path cuz of the way so they don't have a good sense of mortality. Anyway that we didn't have a younger age. It's not even mortality that I fear. I think would something like LSD. It's that you know,

19:23 Oh, no, I'm thinking specifically about as the British like to say he'll use senegence. We're like, I can't even frame the idea of taking something where I might end up where of brackets breakthroughs and what they're talking about with microdosing you anything that helps people with a wonderful thing and should be pursued over old thinking I agree.

19:55 And I don't think I was also I was also kind of attracted there's another depression treatment. That's right repeated electrical shocks to the brain, which I thought I was getting inadvertently. This may have just been paranoia on my part from the Transformer outside my house like I would I would find my paranoia is good for you. I would write like that that that damn thing was, in my job would like move in sync with its right anyway, so

20:34 I started to talk about the the bendy like and I'm so I mean this in both in the John Cooper, he has that holds a single. Write and write in in radiating fields of color concentric field of color around it. Where is for you they may be one or they may be multiple. And I love dunsworth drive from other elements to my work. If you're in referring to that my again getting back to what I consider a sort of my some of what they called it attention deficit way of processing. I'm calm. By certain patterns and Sophie looking at certain thing. I didn't realize it till I got into it and started doing it and that was another Discovery putting a circle in the

21:34 Which is one of my definite Styles is when I started doing that. I had no idea. What a mondala was. I was in Santa Fe with a someone. I consider what sort of a mentor and who was it? Her name is dr. Sophia the fair and I actually hired her the company I had is a consultant for choosing a better family therapist for 30 years before for many years now becoming a business Consulting in an author and I was with her visiting her and her husband out there and we walked into a metaphysical bookstore, of course in Santa Fe me to walk in and then explain what am I doing paintings with circles in the middle of it and just the concept of a visual meditation and what that brings to the table is fascinating to me, so they're here we have I went about tessellations.

22:34 In a leading in after I was sort of doing something like it and then same thing with Mondo and also I love the calligraphic and so Japanese of creating a circle with Russian think so all these things so I just love the fact that as I'm sure it's true with so many things in the world. I know it's true that there are patterns in Hitman in history that got their taken forward and we don't even have to know how we got from it's just wonderful.

23:08 The effect of standing in front of that that that first man to love yours that I ever saw was astonishing to me and and all the more so when I walked up on it and I realized what seemed to be mathematical Precision on par with Essure was inside nothing of the kind is there they're so roughly done when you right up on them. I was stunned at how kind of rough it was. I let you know. I like that. Yes. I like that 12 also because anyting often times people will look at my art and

23:45 Does it was a digital and I'll say no no, no computers were used or harmed in the making of a yard and you know, because I've grown with it over the years I even embrace the imperfections even more because they don't also with that does is it gives me license to move on to keep moving from painting painting but depending on where you're looking at it in the room. They tend to look very perfect. Yeah. It's kind of like again a neat person or a different, you know, when people say, oh you must be so patient and I said, no, I'm not if you know me I said I just it's a joyful meditation to do it.

24:34 So

24:38 Was there art in the house when you were growing up now?

24:43 I know now my mother when she talks about starting to make clothes as a teenager and she was drawn to fashion and different things like that. And my mother's sister Falls beautiful young the creative side, but nothing for my chicken has a little bit but I can't draw at all and my father who is a writer and he went and got his master's degree in writing 85 years old from Kennesaw. He's a good Rider. So there's there's some creative slant but nothing except my sister did yes, my sister studied fabric design in school, but she and can do but she has not pursued it, but she has a great wonderful decorator and a great love of Aesthetics.

25:35 Tell me your parents and your sisters names, please Karen's my sister and my father is Arthur and my mother is Sydel.

25:43 So that's why I d e l l just like the Spa. My mother was born in Brooklyn my father in the Bronx with 3rd Generation, New York City in the family.

25:57 So for people listening to this, please tell them the connection between so that's what I did for over 30 years 3rd. Gen. I'm sorry it was.

26:14 First generation family business my mother my father my sister and myself started in.

26:21 Early 80s Groove still in business and it's passed through there were things that happened after 08 and some other things that facilitated not being there anymore, but I was the

26:38 CEO for about 15 years last 15 years of it and very proud of touching many people's lives and I was the one who developed the whole concept of spa gift certificates, which might not be Monumental in the history of the world, but it was a major thing and we sold North 250 million and just Atlanta and grew to eight locations and add for number of yours had over five hundred employees. So I'm proud of how many people's lives we touched.

27:09 I never thought about it that way before because I know now.

27:16 You in in what you're doing for income, right? You also get a lot of pleasure. You want to talk about American also tell you that is a 7 other things but

27:34 After the economic conditions and other things led to it last sold the company to someone who had was an executive in the company in run against 11 or 12 in 2011 and

27:53 So I went to a lot I was proud of the way. I handled it of announcing the certain things and when things weren't good, I stood in front of hundreds of employees and now I'm sitting dealt with it, and I'm very proud of some of that but the losing the business.

28:11 Resulted I did the appropriate thing of Falling on My Sword and protecting certain Family Assets and also doing things that help you no further it for the employees of the company. But as I got stuck for a number of years in this whole idea of male ego or shame of you know, how we picture ourselves and 6 and when you're successful and then when you don't have that, you know, I let myself take a deeper dive than I would have liked and so to that end about a year ago as an opening for when I was in the show with one of my paintings. Someone told me they're driving Uber and I said, oh I wouldn't do that and then I said, you know what?

28:54 Next day, I woke up and said Richard you could use a good metaphorical kick in the pants and tell Bill with some of the issues that I just described. And so I started doing it and I liked it. I mean there's parts of it puts me back in touch with my Boulder entrepreneurial self. And you know, it's been good for different things and I see it is as a way I always just like how I described it as I'm Reinventing on the business side, and I'm also you know furthering my art career and you get to polish up your comedy routine. I think yeah, I mean what better thing in life than to share things that make you laugh with someone, you know over and that says it's a movie on Wheels people get in and all of a sudden you start talking in so you can't help but know which people react to and so sometimes you repeat things in a good way you polish your things and it's fun to communicate on that level.

29:55 Who would you say has been the greatest influence on you and your life? Oh my God, it's hard. Let's see who's the greatest influence in my life?

30:06 You know, I just think I'd rather pick a subject than a person in the subject to me is again laughter and humor and dark humor because I do believe that no major strongly believe that no major religion or philosophy acknowledges that strongly enough the role that laughter and humor play. They knowledge. It's important but I'm talking about is a survival thing. I think that's totally legit. You know, the the

30:38 The Magoffin in the name of the Rose is an exercised passage from the New Testament in which Jesus last week. He does not do anywhere and then you I think it's why is it today, He never wins an Academy Award you no drama and often times were praising the actor who gained 20 pounds of learn to walk with a limp or you know any Hall it's fine and he holds it but I say, it's still not even if I wear it. Is there still a piece of so many even funny men great actors who want to be taken seriously supposedly, they don't and why I mean, I understand there's a piece actually from the drama performance standpoint everyone knows it's hard to be funny than it is to be to cry and you know, there's this great thing. I love

31:33 And everything so many comic influence as in front of Mel Brooks line, the difference between comedy and tragedy is if it happens to you, it's funny if it happens to me. It's a tragedy and that's just so brilliant to the I agree and to the to Lenny Bruce to Richard Pryor to Carlin. My favorite George Carlin line is depending how fundamental one is in their beliefs is have negotiable. The idea of killing someone is so watch the news and see that but it's brilliant and it's funny and it's in 1 lawn and so I just can't again that's a huge influence. I'm glad you went here because of course we are on the eve of my return to what I call Weed Court which is of course not not a marijuana bust. But in fact fact that I let my yard and property get overgrown and was cited.

32:33 Went to court two weeks ago and was told you haven't dealt with the overgrowth I said I thought I looked at the citation and saw that it was just a front yards. No, no cuz they showed me photographs of your horribly overgrown backyard. That's what I'm so sorry. I thought it was just the front yard. So you need to try to read the ordinance online. It's not actually possible. And so they actually gave me this what we're going to give you time. How much time do you need? And I said, well, I think a week your honor 2 weeks so he came and I think kind of parallel to your experience with Uber.

33:13 By the time we had got big been doing this like kind of five seven days into it. I was like I want to do this all the time. So I really have the Landscaping bug now. I got up this morning and it was already too late like that. I was still I was like sniffing out with the bolt cutters going it at like, you know, the area and Woody ivy last night at Night Vale because I knew they were going to come, you know by 8 this morning sure to make photographs of the property like 24 hours before court made the Segway because I said, I was glad you you brought up this whole the seriousness of comedy and Richard Pryor, you know, my first trip to court.

34:03 Oh, I was. I was put in mind of the Richard Pryor live black folks go to court expecting Justice and that's exactly what they find. All the bureaucrats are black. There was a smattering of white folk. I think one white couple appeared to have been sighted and kind of a mystery couple look like Father and Son maybe who might have been Turkish might have been South American but the white one loan white woman, who was there clearly work for the good work? So I was like Wow and then a room for black people and me so therefore to make people laugh and relate and to just you know, prior is it said, you know, Bruce Pryor and Marlon started is traditional comics.

34:53 And then, you know Bruce first Bruce paid trials for the First Amendment and how he know he went down based on a lot of things. I don't mean I personally but there's a lot of sadness but he also changed the world in his own way and then you know in that gives people

35:14 Escape from sometimes loneliness or just different things but it can make sense. It's okay to laugh at things just because something is funny doesn't take away from its importance or charges and I'm sort of stealing that I don't remember the exact quote or something kirkegaard says in that was a few hundred years or so. That was pretty cool that he got it back then what do you think of the the portrayal of Lenny Bruce in mrs. Maisel? I think it works as a separate story. I don't I don't know what I mean have different feelings about it. I think it's I love but I like the show and it shows great do I think it might be totally acrobat Lenny Bruce? Probably not my question so much just like it. I like it. I like to see some Lenny Bruce his name out there so many times I love, especially younger.

36:14 But that's so important to in this day of of not being so many polar polarization why we have to work hard to separate people art from who they are as people I think you know cuz you can think they're still can be validity and what someone produced as an artist and we don't have to like them as an individual.

36:39 I'm not saying every case. I'm not interpret my you know, the facts are some really bad people paint. Yeah, it's nothing to do both. Wait. Wait. Wait, do you mean no I meant I think I feel very strongly about is how hesitant I was for many years to call myself an artist cuz I had an informal schooling and I want to see that in people especially younger people. I say if you pick it up and start doing it you are making art and you can use the word that doesn't mean you don't have to have certain. It doesn't take away the respect from people who do have the degrees in the qualifications, right? But it's just different. I agree. I was with my friend Brian Sherman yesterday and he's very big on anybody being able to make our

37:39 I mean, that's what that whole you know, what yesterday's our end-of-year rhe was about right? Those new was not a professional musician in the room.

37:48 Just a bunch of people. You know, Brian said, I'm not even sure what you call us. When I said this is Noise music artist about breaking the rules. Unfortunately a lot of time that's not true. When you look at with the top artists are in the top Galleries and things like that. They tend to be the same off in the same degrees from a lot of the same schools. That doesn't take away from their talent, but it also doesn't tell the whole story and also someone doesn't have to be I say, this is an older as a 67 year-old that you sometimes the joke. I met cuz I don't look like my art people look at it in the end. That's not true as it pays. I learned from the 50s artists and things like that, but people will look at the art of the phone when they look it up on Instagram and I'll say yeah I said you and you look when you look to me it's like you're going to see paintings of ducks flying across the pond.

38:47 Well

38:54 Richard I am so glad we were finally able to get in here together and talk. I've been wanting to do this forever as well and I appreciate it very much. Thank you.

39:07 Thank you.