Going Without a Phone

From Morton Feldman anecdote about Barnett Newman by William Denton:

When I was living on 19th Street in that building with Barney Newman, who lived upstairs, I remember for about a year I took the phone out. And he came in one day, and he said, “Oh, may I use your phone?” I said, “Well, Barney, it’s disconnected.” He looked at me, and then he looked down at the phone for a long time, and he said to me, “You’re a hero. How is it possible? How did you do it?”

The summer I lived at 107 Hazlitt Street in Peterborough, in my early 20s, I didn’t have a home phone. It was luxurious.