Ezra Maas122
No symbols where none intended123
Ezra did not speak for thirty-four days following the deaths. He had been found three miles away from the family home, his brother clutched tightly in his arms. Daniel had been dead for more than an hour. Following the funerals, Ezra was placed in the care of his uncle H.W.,124 although ‘care’ may be the wrong word. By his own admission, H.W.’s parenting style was a mixture of ‘benign neglect’ and ‘laissez faire’ at best, and if he had problems before the death of Ezra’s parents and brother, they only worsened afterwards. Understandably blaming himself for what had happened, H.W. increasingly turned to drugs and alcohol to lessen his guilt. After the tragedy, and at the recommendation of social services, Ezra spent two years under the supervision of child psychologist Dr Alexander Bion.125 It was only at this point that his Synaesthesia126 was identified.
This neurological condition caused Ezra to associate colours with numbers and letters, such as different shades of the colour red being synonymous with both the letter ‘A’ and the number ‘6’, for example. It was Dr Bion who first identified this condition in Maas and catalogued the particular correspondence between letters, numbers, and colours in the child’s specific variation of the disorder.127
“Even as a child, synaesthesia was evident in his art,” Bion recalled in his diaries. “The characters from his stories, in particular, regularly had a gift for seeing the world with a ‘sensory appetite’ uniquely reminiscent of synaesthesia.”
Arguably, however, Ezra made his greatest progress with a different psychologist. Despite the revelation of Ezra’s synaesthesia, Dr Bion could not get the child to open up to him about the deaths and decided to refer him to his mentor, the renowned psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby, a pioneer of Attachment Theory.128 In a diary entry from the period, Dr Bion wrote:
“I believe the trauma Ezra has suffered has changed him…although I never met his brother Daniel, Ezra has reportedly taken on many of his characteristics…he continues to display an exceptional level of intelligence…if anything his artistic output has increased. However, the nature of his work has become much more abstract, even disturbing, in its content. I have written to my friend John Bowlby, an expert in the effects of parental separation on young children, for his guidance.”
Bowlby, who in 1949 had been commissioned by the World Health Organisation to write a report on the effect of parental deprivation on the mental health of children in post-war Europe, spent several months with Ezra at Dr Bion’s request. It was during these years that Bowlby would fully develop Attachment Theory in three classic papers: The Nature of the Child’s Tie to His Mother (1959), Separation Anxiety (1959), and Grief and Mourning in Infancy and Early Childhood (1960). The latter paper proposed that events which interfere with attachment, such as abrupt separation of the child from familiar people, or the significant inability of carers to be sensitive, responsive or consistent in their interactions, have short-term and possible long-term negative impacts on the child’s emotional and cognitive life. In a letter to his former protégé, dated June 1959, Bowlby wrote:
“This remarkable child has had a profound influence on my work…the loss of the primary care-giving parents in his life has undoubtedly affected him, heightening aspects of his behavior from early childhood, such as his fascination with reinvention and self-improvement, but also causing unforeseen changes in his personality…”.129
The Maas Foundation have described this period as being one of ‘accelerated evolution’, where Ezra embarked on a radical and self-imposed course of personal development which saw him immerse himself in Western and Eastern philosophy and religion, psychoanalysis, mathematics, quantum physics, art, literature, photography, languages, and music.
“Never before or since had a child taken it upon themselves to advance their artistic and intellectual evolution in such an intense and structured manner…”.130
Of his new interests, the Maas Foundation claim that Ezra wrote several unpublished essays and papers on extremely advanced ideas, such as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, and the more recent Everett Many-Worlds interpretation from 1956, as well as discussions of psychoanalytic concepts by the likes of Freud, and Jung.131 He also displayed a newfound interest in photography and filmmaking after inheriting his father’s old Graflex camera. In terms of music, Ezra displayed a particular interest in jazz, which may have been due to the classic records released that year, including Mingus Ah Um by Charles Mingus,132 Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, and Giant Steps by John Coltrane. During this period, he reportedly composed several pieces of jazz himself, including one which was 4,235 measures long and took two hours to perform. Sadly, this was never recorded, and the only copy of the sheet music is believed to be in the possession of The Maas Foundation.
Although it is not known how Ezra came to be interested in jazz,133 music did come up in his discussions with Bowlby, not necessarily in terms of therapy but due to the psychoanalyst’s interest in the different techniques that the boy had chosen, all centered around reinvention, to deal with his loss. The official records of Bowlby’s sessions with Ezra have unfortunately been lost134 although we know of their existence both from Dr Bion’s and Bowlby’s correspondence, and also from the letters H.W. wrote during this period. H.W., it seemed, felt increasingly threatened by Bowlby’s work. In a letter to his friend135 in Tangier dated that year, he wrote:
“Maybe I’m imagining it, but I can’t help but feel like Bowlby is talking about me when he describes the “inability of carers to be sensitive, responsive, or consistent in their interactions”. I think he’s insinuating that I’m having as much of a negative effect on Ezra as the loss of his parents…what rubbish! The independence I give Ezra is only helping his art to grow…”.136
Ezra was eventually discharged from Bowlby’s care in 1960, at the request of his uncle who was concerned about the effect of prolonged psychoanalysis on his artistic progress, and threatened legal action if the treatment continued without his wishes. Critics have accused H.W. of denying Maas the psychological care he needed because of a desire to vicariously fulfil his own artistic ambitions through his nephew’s work. Although this may have been the case, H.W., for better or worse, allowed Ezra to effectively raise himself. Whether this was to avoid influencing his art or simply because he was lost in his own cycle of self-destruction is not clear. Ezra would come to find other maternal and paternal figures, but his uncle was such an absent figure, even when he was there, that he had little choice but to look after his own wellbeing and development. Moreover, it was clear something had changed in him. The outgoing and athletic boy was gone, replaced by an introverted young man who was increasingly rebellious and erratic. Although he continued to excel academically, he often expressed his dissatisfaction with the standard of education available to him, believing school “rewarded punctuality, obedience, and the acceptance of monotony”137 above all else. Ezra became increasingly distant from both teachers and school friends as a result. As H.W. noted in another letter:
“Ezra has become very isolated and increasingly ‘difficult’…they tell me he has even been fighting with teachers and pupils at St Edward’s…of course this is not good, yet I am now convinced these tragedies have happened to us for a reason…I sensed it before, but I know it now…Ezra is undoubtedly a genius and his art, changed by suffering and loss, is truly remarkable…he has filled every room of our house with his work…paintings, sketches, sculptures, stories, poems, plays…he thinks of nothing else…every moment he is creating.”138
At the advice of his uncle, Ezra did not share his artwork with anyone during this period. Other than the art he created at school, his growing body of work did not leave the Maas family home. H.W. felt he would be misinterpreted by “a world that was not ready for the depth of his artistic vision”,139 Instead, Ezra sought recognition in a different way, pseudonymously writing a number of essays, reviews, and articles for magazines and literary journals. These included a Schopenhauerian study of Marcel Proust, a paper on failure, exile, and loss in the work of Samuel Beckett, specifically Krapp’s Last Tape and Happy Days, another on persecution and language in the poetry of Paul Celan, reviews of Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs, and The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick, and articles about a range of other writers and artists including James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Knut Hamsun, Henrik Ibsen, Egon Schiele, and Oskar Kokoschka.
The standard of his critical analysis was already at such a level that it is unlikely that any of these journals, which included The Paris Review, The Outsider, Envoy, The Bookman, London Literary Times, Les Temps Modernes, The New Yorker, The Dublin Magazine, Nimbus, and The Times Literary Supplement, had any idea that a twelve-year-old boy had written these pieces. It was also during this period that Maas is credited with having self-published a translation of Heidegger’s Vom Wesen Des Grundes.140 This followed a paper on Being and Time that he had contributed to the International Journal of Philosophical Studies two years earlier. Maas was known to be interested in artistically engaging with, and representing visually, aspects of Heidegger’s writing, specifically his conception of Dasein141 and authentic existence. By the following year, H.W. had noticed another change in the teenager, as recounted in several letters from the period. The first is dated August 1961:
“He is growing more and more ambitious and I am sad to admit we have clashed repeatedly in the past few months…he is eager to be acknowledged and has talked about leaving school, leaving Oxford, even leaving England…”.
The next letter is from March 1962:
“We have always given each other space, but he is more distant than ever…I know he has been travelling to London alone…he has a secret life, and I suspect new relationships, entirely separate to my teaching now…”.
Later that year, another letter echoed these sentiments:
“I found a letter he had written to the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, requesting a place. He’s never even discussed an interest in film with me…I’m slightly ashamed to admit it, but I tore the letter up…”.
A final letter, this time from 1964, revealed a growing resentment toward his nephew’s talent and a fear that he, himself, would be abandoned:
“I’ve given up writing…everything I write seems meaningless compared to what he is creating now…poetry has been my life these last twenty years, but it’s over, it’s all over…when Ezra finally leaves me, and he will…I will have nothing left…”.
A year later, in December 1965, H.W. Maas was found dead at the Maas home in Oxford following a suspected accidental drug overdose, although suicide cannot be ruled out.142 His tale is a sad one, a lonely and frustrated artist destroyed by addiction, and another tragic footnote in Ezra’s life. For all his faults however, H.W. undoubtedly had a great influence on his nephew and his evolution as an artist, not least in the art and literature he passed on to him and the way he allowed him to develop himself, his work, and his methods, with little interference from others. The events of the next few months were certainly another example of Ezra taking his destiny into his own hands. While the authorities debated what to do with the fifteen-year-old, who was now the last surviving member of his family, Ezra had his own ideas. A few days after his 16th birthday, on 1 January, he packed a bag and disappeared. It was six weeks before he was seen again, some five thousand miles away, reborn as a different person on the streets of a city that would become synonymous with his name.
END
Notes
122. Note to reader: I must admit to being largely unfamiliar with the artwork of Ezra Maas before undertaking this task. Daniel’s own interest was in the man, not his art, and his manuscript is notable for the absence of descriptions or analysis of Maas’s artwork. In his notes, Daniel states that enough has been written about Maas’s most famous artworks to fill a dozen libraries, therefore no more needs to be said, and yet my attempts to educate myself in Maas’s art proved frustrating to say the least. Most of the books that Daniel references in his exhaustive footnotes appear to be out of print. At the same time, since Maas’s disappearance in 2005, the Maas Foundation has withdrawn his works from exhibitions and galleries around the world, while strictly prohibiting the reproduction of images of his art both online and in printed publication. This has essentially had the effect of erasing the art of Ezra Maas from the history books, in much the same way as he has physically disappeared from the world. At the time of writing this, such is the curtain the Maas Foundation has drawn around their founder’s work, it appears that only those willing and able to pay a very high price indeed are able to buy an audience with the art of Ezra Maas – Anonymous.
123. Beckett, Samuel, Watt, Grove Press, (2009).
124. The family’s assets, including Ezra’s inheritance, were also transferred to H.W.’s custodianship.
125. No relation to Dr Wilfred Bion, the psychotherapist who treated Samuel Beckett at the Tavistock Clinic for two years from 1933 – ’35.
126. Synaesthesia is a neurological condition that causes a joining together of sensations that are normally experienced separately. For example, someone with synaesthesia may hear colour or see sound. It is an especially intriguing condition because it challenges assumption that other people's perceptual experiences of the world are the same as our own. Since synaesthesia can involve any combination of the senses, there could be more than 80 subtypes. However, not all have been studied. The most documented form, known as grapheme-colour synaesthesia, sees individual letters and numbers associated with specific colours and sometimes colourful patterns. Other synaesthetes perceive texture in response to sight, hear sounds in response to smells. Many synaesthetes have more than one type of synaesthesia. It is estimated that approximately 3 to 5 percent of the population has some form of synaesthesia, and the condition can run in families. The writer Vladimir Nabokov and the painter David Hockney both had synaesthesia.
127. A handwritten record of this ‘codex’ was later given to Daniel by Bion’s granddaughter.
128. Attachment Theory has been described as the dominant approach to understanding early social development and gave rise to a great surge of empirical research into the formation of children's close relationships.
129. Bowlby briefly referred Ezra to a colleague at Oxford University’s Centre for Cognitive Studies. A transcript entitled ‘Interview with Child M’ was recovered by Daniel during the course of his research. Although the interview is believed to feature Ezra and Dr Conway, it cannot be verified. If it is genuine, the interview certainly testifies to the changes in Ezra’s personality and behaviour described by Bowlby.
130. From www.ezramaas.com/about
131. Note to reader: It is worth reminding ourselves, when considering the validity of claims like this one, that the Maas Foundation writes about its founder in strictly hagiographic terms. Its authorised bio for Maas literally depicts him as a God among men – Anonymous.
132. Interestingly, Charles Mingus’s autobiography was rumoured to have been influenced by Maas in a strange instance of ‘reverse engineering’. Published in 1971, Mingus’s sprawling, exaggerated, quasi-autobiography, Beneath the Underdog: His World as composed by Mingus, was written in a ‘stream of consciousness’ style and covered several aspects of his life that had previously been off-record. As well as his musical and intellectual interests, Mingus goes into great detail about his overstated sexual exploits. He claims to have had over thirty-one affairs over the course of his life (including twenty-six prostitutes in one sitting). This does not include any of his five wives (he claims to have been married to two of them simultaneously). Mingus’s autobiography also serves as an insight into his attitudes about race and society.
133. It is believed that H.W. gave him the records to listen to, but this has never been confirmed.
134. Following a flood at Bowlby’s summer home in the Isle of Skye, Scotland, in 1969.
135. Believed to be his former lover, the beat poet Paul Prescott, although the letters were addressed to a likely fictional ‘Jill’.
136. Kenner, Everett, (Editor), H.W. Maas: The Tangier Letters 1949 – 1965, Routledge, 1980.
137. The Maas Journals Vol.1.
138. Kenner, Everett, (Editor), H.W Maas: The Tangier Letters 1949 – 1965, Routledge, 1980.
139. Kenner, Everett, (Editor), H.W Maas: The Tangier Letters 1949 – 1965, Routledge, 1980.
140. The Essence of Reason.
141. Literally translates as ‘There-Being’ in German and was used by Heidegger to illustrate his ideas on existence or ‘Being there in the world’.
142. The Oxfordshire Constabulary briefly opened an investigation into the circumstances of H.W’s death after allegations by his friend Paul Prescott, who accused Ezra of murdering his uncle. The claims were dismissed and the police took no further action against Ezra.