Mekas cultivated extreme disciples whose fanaticism matched his own.

Evidence

Mekas discovered his most ardent disciple and one of the movement’s most flamboyant personalities. Rubin found an endlessly supportive, uncritical father. In late July, Mekas reported that she was making a film: “Bursting and burning with hallucinations, shooting her first movie, with the excitement of a holy nun, feverishly engaged to rip out fragments of veiled revelations from her subconscious and the world, the sensory experiences and visions of the sad, loveless century, pouring her heart out.” Hers was a fanaticism to match, and even surpass, his own. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 451

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s broader argument about the mentor-disciple dynamics that powered the Lower East Side scene — relevant to reader’s test case of what material/social conditions produce avant-gardes.