Frank performed Journey To Lila on two weekends at Franklin Furnace in New York City in June 1989. Here is an excerpt from a letter Frank received from Fred Hatt in 1997, almost 8 years after the performance, who had attended one of those performances. He had just discovered Frank on the web and emailed Frank to introduce himself and tell him about the impact his experience at this performance had on his own work:
I feel like all of these things were potential in my interests and my work at the time in 1989 when I came to experience a journey to the planet Lila with you and your friends. But I had never seen real experiential magic presented as art before – not distanced by anthropology, not burdened by cosmological mysticism or pretensions of grandeur. You showed how simple magical consciousness really is, and how effective in opening people up, expanding their freedom and then going beyond that to make them feel their connectedness. The steps of the journey peeled away layer after layer of psychological armor with scalpel precision. As an artist, I had always felt isolated, a loner, awkward dealing with other people, although I craved collaboration. Some things I learned from your performance changed me immediately, but others grew over a period of long years, nurtured through my own trial and error and through all I learned from so many others along the way, and are growing still. I am no master of magic, but I am free and live my life in joy, and though I enjoy solitude, I no longer feel so isolated or awkward and I love to work with others.
… I am glad that you are still spreading subversive joy and I am glad to be in communication with you since you are one of my heroes and teachers!
Fred
Photos by Annie Sprinkle
