What or where or whom do you come from and why do you care?
My paternal grandmother's family ran a pub (and did some smuggling on
the side)
in Algerkirk, England until 1907 or thereabouts, when as a child she
and family came to Oklahoma,
God knows why. My paternal grandfather was an orphan in Montana,
apparently of Swiss
ancestry according to the orphanage records, although he looked like
an American Indian (?), as do I. My mother was also an
orphan, speaking only French as a child; she had an elaborate story
about an aristocratic
family which she revealed (on her deathbed) to be completely
fabricated . Part of the
supposed family name had come from the brand name of a spool of
embroidery thread.
What dream do you remember most vividly and what message does it
bear?
I don't know if you would call it a dream, but I had an intense
experience at age 15
whereby in the middle of the night I had a hyperrealistic vision of a
battle in Vietnam
called Hamburger Hill. I came out of it sitting up in my bed with my
eyes open.
Two weeks later, the battle in question actually occurred.
Why don’t you listen to what the universe or your mind or your body
or your god whispers ever more closely to you?
I listen, but I'm not one person, like all humans. I am a group of
competing factions.
Usually the one that wants immediate gratification wins. It has
destroyed my life.
If you could, what gift that is impossible for you to give would you
offer and to whom? Why this gift, this person?
I would give my youngest son the ability to clearly define what he
want in life
and the ability to break into small steps the path he needs to reach
those goals.
He is drifting, he will come to grief because of it, and I'm helpless
to stop it.
Describe a person you love. How would you know them without their
face?
I would know either of my sons by their sense of humor…the youngest
is immature, crude, vulgar
and intelligent…he would have appreciated the punk movement had he
been born soon
enough for it. My eldest is analytical, has a wry, dry sense of humor
as befits a
techie.
How did you know you were in love and what makes you unsure of it?
Asking "how you know when you're in love" is like asking how you know
when someone has
hit your finger with a hammer. It's not subtle. I'm talking about
infatuation,
though…
Real love is when you care for someone, and all of the aspects of
their life are woven
into yours, so that your identities are blended. Real hate works the
same way. They're
not mutually exclusive. You become unsure of love when the hatred
part starts to overwhelm
the love part, or worse, when you start not to care either way.
What besides love do you doubt and what makes you doubt it?
I doubt our ability to save ourselves. Everything I see around me
makes me doubt it.
In what way have you betrayed or disappointed yourself or others? In
what way have you been betrayed or disappointed?
I disappointed my father by not becoming the success that he never
became. It seems to
be a family trait.
What are the parameters of your small world?
My rundown house, my two sons, my job that I do obsessively well in
order to compensate
for other disappointments. Friends have been driven away or have
died. It is a very,
very small world at this point.
Why aren’t you more involved in trying to better the world of
others?
Because I can't manage even my own tiny corner.
What does art do, really—are any of the arts anything more than
entertainment?
We can't deal with the complexity and intensity of reality, so we
assign simplified
symbols to all aspects of it and manipulate them instead. We
categorize and
pigeonhole. Read the lyrics to "A Day in The Life", or look at
Buddhism.
We take the ridiculously simplified symbols to be reality. This
emotionally distances
us so that we can bear to make our way. It also makes us a little
dead inside.
Art tries to make us experience reality instead of the symbols. It
has to do this
with implication and with making us experience things vicariously.
Direct statements
just become more sterile symbols that don't touch us directly.