made her choice. Siegel had helped her be a
better artist. She would be loyal to him.
Yet Siegel continually berated her for not being
“proud” of her gratitude to him. She would hear
his criticism and sink into a deep depression,
going off by herself for hours or even days. She
had given up her life for him. I couldn’t
understand why he wasn’t satisfied.
As an adolescent, I turned to food to deal with
the pressure and confusion I was subjected to
constantly in my family and the cult. I had been
thin as a child, but by the time I started Hunter
College Junior High School, I had become
pudgy, given to eating serving-sized bowls of
butterscotch pudding. I hid packages of Oreo
cookies in a piano bench to enjoy while I
watched movies on television.
At Hunter, we were told that we were
intellectually gifted children. I never saw
myself as especially gifted but I had been
exposed to the arts and literature from an early
age, and I enjoyed the demands Hunter made on
me. I also made friends. My best friend Claire
and I would talk on the telephone every night,
letting the receiver hang while we each went to
supper, then returning afterward to pick up
where we had left off. After exams, we rode the
carousel in Central Park and played at FAO
Schwartz on Fifth Avenue.
Siegel told me that if I were honest I would be
telling my intellectual Hunter friends about him
and Aesthetic Realism. He said I was a snob,
using my connection to the girls at Hunter to feel
superior to him.
The people in “the house,” as we called our
group residence, began having meetings to
criticize each other’s ingratitude to Eli Siegel.
Not everyone agreed. I was shocked when one
man said outright that Siegel was a devil. These
dissenters soon moved out. I would sit on the
floor in our living room, watching the faces of
the grown-ups as they criticized each other and
telling myself I should do more to “have Eli
Siegel known.”
By the time I was 14, I weighed 192 pounds.
That year, I lost more than seventy pounds, and
then kept losing. Now, instead of eating
secretly, I secretly stopped eating. I would
monitor my falling weight and pin my skirt
tighter around my waist. Pretty soon, I lost the
use of my right leg. My mother took me to our
family doctor, who said he wanted me to gain 10
pounds before he saw me again. I did gain some
weight, and my leg recovered. However, I
didn’t change my eating habits to be balanced. I
was still obsessed with my weight, eating alone
and differently than other people.
While I was in high school, Siegel started a
poetry group for young people. My friend
Claire loved words, so I invited her. She
enjoyed the group at first, and Siegel wrote her a
note of praise. I began pressuring her to expand
her involvement in Aesthetic Realism. She
resisted and explained that she just could not
devote herself to Siegel or his ideas.
Claire and I had ridden the subway to and from
school together for years. We advised each
other on boys. We got drunk for the first time
together and shared secret cigarettes. We slept
at each other's houses. Now, I told her that if
she could not agree with Aesthetic Realism, I
could not ride the subway with her. We broke
up. She was the last real friend I had outside the
movement until I left.
What Became Destructive, Traumatic,
Growth Inhibiting
By 1960, as the Terrain Gallery continued
promoting Siegel’s work, a few more people
began studying with him but despite some
notoriety, the press, the academic world, the art
world did not come around.
Siegel believed there was a war in each of us as
individuals between liking ourselves because we
respect the outside world, or feeling important
by having contempt for the outside world. He
believed contempt was the source of war,
poverty, racism, crime, and mental illness. He
believed that what he taught could solve the
world’s most urgent problems, and that his
philosophy was the culmination of all
philosophy throughout time. He stopped going
out because he said he did not want to meet
people who reminded him of how unfairly he
was seen. He stopped buying The New York
Times because it “refused to learn from him.”
He said he did not understand why he was the
International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 5, 2014 39
better artist. She would be loyal to him.
Yet Siegel continually berated her for not being
“proud” of her gratitude to him. She would hear
his criticism and sink into a deep depression,
going off by herself for hours or even days. She
had given up her life for him. I couldn’t
understand why he wasn’t satisfied.
As an adolescent, I turned to food to deal with
the pressure and confusion I was subjected to
constantly in my family and the cult. I had been
thin as a child, but by the time I started Hunter
College Junior High School, I had become
pudgy, given to eating serving-sized bowls of
butterscotch pudding. I hid packages of Oreo
cookies in a piano bench to enjoy while I
watched movies on television.
At Hunter, we were told that we were
intellectually gifted children. I never saw
myself as especially gifted but I had been
exposed to the arts and literature from an early
age, and I enjoyed the demands Hunter made on
me. I also made friends. My best friend Claire
and I would talk on the telephone every night,
letting the receiver hang while we each went to
supper, then returning afterward to pick up
where we had left off. After exams, we rode the
carousel in Central Park and played at FAO
Schwartz on Fifth Avenue.
Siegel told me that if I were honest I would be
telling my intellectual Hunter friends about him
and Aesthetic Realism. He said I was a snob,
using my connection to the girls at Hunter to feel
superior to him.
The people in “the house,” as we called our
group residence, began having meetings to
criticize each other’s ingratitude to Eli Siegel.
Not everyone agreed. I was shocked when one
man said outright that Siegel was a devil. These
dissenters soon moved out. I would sit on the
floor in our living room, watching the faces of
the grown-ups as they criticized each other and
telling myself I should do more to “have Eli
Siegel known.”
By the time I was 14, I weighed 192 pounds.
That year, I lost more than seventy pounds, and
then kept losing. Now, instead of eating
secretly, I secretly stopped eating. I would
monitor my falling weight and pin my skirt
tighter around my waist. Pretty soon, I lost the
use of my right leg. My mother took me to our
family doctor, who said he wanted me to gain 10
pounds before he saw me again. I did gain some
weight, and my leg recovered. However, I
didn’t change my eating habits to be balanced. I
was still obsessed with my weight, eating alone
and differently than other people.
While I was in high school, Siegel started a
poetry group for young people. My friend
Claire loved words, so I invited her. She
enjoyed the group at first, and Siegel wrote her a
note of praise. I began pressuring her to expand
her involvement in Aesthetic Realism. She
resisted and explained that she just could not
devote herself to Siegel or his ideas.
Claire and I had ridden the subway to and from
school together for years. We advised each
other on boys. We got drunk for the first time
together and shared secret cigarettes. We slept
at each other's houses. Now, I told her that if
she could not agree with Aesthetic Realism, I
could not ride the subway with her. We broke
up. She was the last real friend I had outside the
movement until I left.
What Became Destructive, Traumatic,
Growth Inhibiting
By 1960, as the Terrain Gallery continued
promoting Siegel’s work, a few more people
began studying with him but despite some
notoriety, the press, the academic world, the art
world did not come around.
Siegel believed there was a war in each of us as
individuals between liking ourselves because we
respect the outside world, or feeling important
by having contempt for the outside world. He
believed contempt was the source of war,
poverty, racism, crime, and mental illness. He
believed that what he taught could solve the
world’s most urgent problems, and that his
philosophy was the culmination of all
philosophy throughout time. He stopped going
out because he said he did not want to meet
people who reminded him of how unfairly he
was seen. He stopped buying The New York
Times because it “refused to learn from him.”
He said he did not understand why he was the
International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 5, 2014 39
