Friday, January 16, 2009



MEDWOLF
P.O. Box 2174
Battleford, Saskatchewan
S0M 0E0
CANADA

MEDWOLF says: "Send me mailart re: is the great mailartist David Zack really ??
Did Zack surrender down in Mexico or did they take his van and make it surrender????"

Lost Mailart

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Zack (& Others) Quotes

“Art life,” as Michael Mollett is fond of saying, “takes risk.”

“There is nothing that is too personal to be art” (Zack)

“There is no balloon that is too big to be red” (Al Ackerman)

“There is nothing that is private between ants” (Al Ackerman)

“We are famous among ourselves” (Zack?)

“I’m a Community Organization Worker” (Zack)

“Time Is The Simplest Thing” (Clifford Simak (novel title))

“So now it has happened, I am in for Life, the Prison is Art, found my heart there and I Know there is No escape.” (Zack 2-22-79)

“My Shadow is My Graffiti” (H.R. Fricker)

“the ideal individual: one who never rebels against nor is indignant at anything he may encounter” (Motto on “The General’s” (Zack’s Father’s) wall)

“Today, Art is a Prison” (Horacio Zabala)

“Literature is like a Piece of Ass, best sweet and slow” (Zack)

“My favorite thing is for people to write back” (Zack)

“A normal person is one you don’t know very well” (Jean Houston)

“To make the jump outside the hierarchy, outside all hierarchies, is really essential to being a great mailartist” (Zack)

“Now’s right” (Zack)

“What ruined his life was his being the world’s most irritating person” (Ackerman)

“To accept everything one must have the very highest standards” (Neo-N Ooze OZ (Zack))

“Do men put their hands up girls’ skirts because they think they’re puppets?” (Zack)

“Mail it or burn it” (Lon Spiegelman)

“Weed frees a person from “better” or “worse”…” (Zack)

“Correspondence Changed My Life” (rubberstamp by ?)

“Don’t enforce my thoughts” (Cantsin?)

“Ken (Friedman) should wash his socks in Buddha piss” (Ray Johnson)

“Your Ideas Help My Ideas” (?)

“Poetry is anything that can be copied with a copy machine” (Zack)

“If I knew what I was doing, I wouldn’t be doing it.” (Zack)

“Then for about five years, whenever he was not serving his guru, he remained in a remote Shiavite cave-temple in Tapkeshwar, his body covered with ash, singing only for God.” (La Monte Young & ? on Pandit Pran Nath)

“Losing money is almost like making it” (Zack)

“Apologies for the blurry reproduction of the letter, but, of course, this is art too…” (Zack)

“I grew up the son of a symphony conductor and I’d a damn sight sooner see the whole orchestra improvise” (Zack)

“To find happiness in this world give all the love one have.” (?)

“teach good if it meant getting the sack” (Zack)

“How To Keep a Job as University Professor” (“giving details of how I managed to lose jobs which were designed to be held for life”) (Zack)

“The one thing I’m surest of is never to say no.” (Zack)

“In a wife I would desire, what in whores is always found, says William Blake: the lineaments of gratified desire.” (Zack)

“communication without information” (Zack?)

“well I don’t know what to say about my father’s death aside from I need to fix two cellos…” (Zack)

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Friday, December 19, 2008



"Ah hah so you believe in never ending orgasm! Thank God! I was just trying to explain this concept to Tony Lowe..."

Wednesday, December 17, 2008



David Zack "My Philosophy" (1974)

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

from a letter from Al Ackerman (Dec. '08):

"In place of the Hot Chocolate [Enema Tale] (which really doesn't have anything to do with Zack). I'll substitute what is probably my all time favorite Zack story. This one has to do with when Zack first met Ray Johnson in NYC. Right off the bat, Ray handed David a white feather and told him to deliver it to "the Maniac in the Tower." So being the reality-detached character he was, and having little fear, Zack took the white feather around to the address Ray gave him. It was up in a tower, turns out. Zack climbed all 30 or 40 flights of stairs and knocks on this guy's door. "Ray Johnson told me to give you this," he told the guy who answered (a fairly normal-looking individual, according to David). The man thanked Zack and invited him in. Then, as soon as Zack crossed the threshold, the guy jumped on David and started trying to strangle him to death. Zack said he literally had to fight for his life. True story!"

Geez, no wonder Zack called Ray the "meanest man in New York" in his Art in America article!