1 00:01:14,408 --> 00:01:16,944 The life of a playwright is tough. 2 00:01:17,578 --> 00:01:19,947 It's not easy, as some people seem to think. 3 00:01:20,547 --> 00:01:23,550 You work hard writing plays, and nobody puts them on. 4 00:01:24,284 --> 00:01:26,687 You take up other lines of work to try to make a living... 5 00:01:27,287 --> 00:01:28,889 I became an actor... 6 00:01:29,223 --> 00:01:31,091 ...and people don't hire you. 7 00:01:31,558 --> 00:01:34,895 So you just spend your days doing the errands of your trade. 8 00:01:36,563 --> 00:01:38,499 Today I'd had to be up by 10.:00 in the morning... 9 00:01:38,966 --> 00:01:40,701 ...to make some important phone calls. 10 00:01:41,168 --> 00:01:44,705 Then I'd gone to the stationery store to buy envelopes. Then to the Xerox shop. 11 00:01:45,572 --> 00:01:47,174 There were dozens of things to do. 12 00:01:53,247 --> 00:01:55,449 By 5.:00 I'd finally made it to the post office... 13 00:01:55,983 --> 00:01:57,985 ...and mailed off several copies of my plays... 14 00:01:58,452 --> 00:02:00,387 ...meanwhile checking constantly with my answering service... 15 00:02:00,854 --> 00:02:03,657 ...to see if my agent had called with any acting work. 16 00:02:04,258 --> 00:02:07,194 In the morning, the mailbox had just been stuffed with bills. 17 00:02:07,828 --> 00:02:09,997 What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to pay them? 18 00:02:10,564 --> 00:02:13,066 After all, I was already doing my best. 19 00:02:15,269 --> 00:02:17,237 I've lived in this city all my life. 20 00:02:17,771 --> 00:02:19,873 I grew up on the Upper East Side... 21 00:02:20,407 --> 00:02:23,610 ...and when I was 10 years old I was rich, I was an aristocrat... 22 00:02:24,344 --> 00:02:27,247 ...riding around in taxis, surrounded by comfort... 23 00:02:27,948 --> 00:02:30,484 ...and all I thought about was art and music. 24 00:02:31,084 --> 00:02:35,556 Now I'm 36, and all I think about is money. 25 00:03:06,186 --> 00:03:07,721 It was now 7.:00... 26 00:03:08,188 --> 00:03:11,191 ...and I would have liked nothing better than to go home and have my girlfriend Debby... 27 00:03:11,859 --> 00:03:14,194 ...cook me a nice, delicious dinner. 28 00:03:14,795 --> 00:03:16,864 But for the last several years our financial circumstances... 29 00:03:17,397 --> 00:03:20,067 ...have forced Debby to work three nights a week as a waitress. 30 00:03:20,667 --> 00:03:23,270 After all, somebody had to bring in a little money. 31 00:03:24,004 --> 00:03:26,206 So I was on my own. 32 00:03:26,807 --> 00:03:29,943 But the worst thing of all was that I'd been trapped by an odd series of circumstances... 33 00:03:30,677 --> 00:03:34,615 ...into agreeing to have dinner with a man I'd been avoiding literally for years. 34 00:03:35,482 --> 00:03:37,084 His name was André Gregory. 35 00:03:37,484 --> 00:03:40,153 At one time he'd been a very close friend of mine... 36 00:03:40,754 --> 00:03:43,090 ...as well as my most valued colleague in the theater. 37 00:03:43,690 --> 00:03:45,626 In fact, he was the man who had first discovered me... 38 00:03:46,026 --> 00:03:48,795 ...and put one of my plays on the professional stage. 39 00:03:49,429 --> 00:03:52,599 When I'd known André, he'd been at the height ofhis career as a theater director. 40 00:03:53,367 --> 00:03:55,769 The amazing work he did with his company, the Manhattan Project... 41 00:03:56,370 --> 00:03:58,972 ...had just stunned audiences throughout the world. 42 00:04:00,841 --> 00:04:03,310 But then something had happened to André. 43 00:04:03,844 --> 00:04:06,380 He dropped out of the theater. He sort of disappeared. 44 00:04:06,980 --> 00:04:09,449 For months at a time, his family seemed only to know that he was traveling... 45 00:04:10,050 --> 00:04:12,152 ...in some odd place like Tibet... 46 00:04:12,653 --> 00:04:14,922 ...which was really weird because he loved his wife and children. 47 00:04:15,455 --> 00:04:17,624 He never used to like to leave home at all. 48 00:04:18,192 --> 00:04:20,994 Or else you'd hear that someone had met him at a party and he'd been telling people... 49 00:04:21,662 --> 00:04:24,464 ...that he talked with trees or something like that. 50 00:04:25,199 --> 00:04:28,068 Obviously, something terrible had happened to André. 51 00:04:35,209 --> 00:04:37,177 The whole idea of meeting him made me very nervous. 52 00:04:37,644 --> 00:04:39,479 I mean, I really wasn't up for that sort of thing. 53 00:04:40,013 --> 00:04:43,150 I had problems of my own. I mean, I couldn't help André. 54 00:04:43,851 --> 00:04:45,652 Was I supposed to be a doctor, or what? 55 00:04:49,356 --> 00:04:50,958 - Hello. - Hello. 56 00:04:52,759 --> 00:04:54,361 - Here you go. - Thank you. 57 00:04:58,966 --> 00:05:02,369 - Yes, sir. - Ah, sir, my name is Wallace Shawn. 58 00:05:03,170 --> 00:05:05,239 I'm expected at the table of André Gregory. 59 00:05:08,175 --> 00:05:09,843 That table will be a moment, sir. 60 00:05:10,244 --> 00:05:12,379 If you like, you may have a drink at the bar. 61 00:05:31,665 --> 00:05:34,134 - Good evening, sir. - Uh, could I have a club soda, please? 62 00:05:34,801 --> 00:05:37,271 I'm sorry, sir. We only serve Source de Pavilion. 63 00:05:37,871 --> 00:05:39,673 Oh, that'd be fine, thank you. 64 00:05:54,955 --> 00:05:57,691 When I'd called André, and he'd suggested that we meet in this particular restaurant... 65 00:05:58,358 --> 00:06:01,962 I'd been rather surprised, because André's taste used to be very ascetic... 66 00:06:02,763 --> 00:06:05,432 ...even though people have always known that he had some money somewhere. 67 00:06:06,033 --> 00:06:08,969 I mean, how the hell else could he have been flying off to Asia and so on... 68 00:06:09,636 --> 00:06:11,972 ...and still have been supporting his family? 69 00:06:14,241 --> 00:06:17,177 The reason I was meeting André was that an acquaintance of mine, George Grassfield... 70 00:06:17,845 --> 00:06:21,048 ...had called me and just insisted that I had to see him. 71 00:06:21,782 --> 00:06:25,185 Apparently, George had been walking his dog in an odd section of town the night before... 72 00:06:25,986 --> 00:06:27,654 ...and he'd suddenly come upon André... 73 00:06:28,055 --> 00:06:30,991 ...leaning against a crumbling old building and sobbing. 74 00:06:31,658 --> 00:06:33,794 André had explained to George that he'd just been watching... 75 00:06:34,261 --> 00:06:36,263 ...the Ingmar Bergman movie Autumn Sonata... 76 00:06:36,797 --> 00:06:38,332 ...about 25 blocks away... 77 00:06:38,799 --> 00:06:41,602 ...and he'd been seized by a fit of ungovernable crying... 78 00:06:42,402 --> 00:06:44,805 ...when the character played by Ingrid Bergman had said... 79 00:06:45,472 --> 00:06:49,276 "I could always live in my art, but never in my life. " 80 00:06:55,415 --> 00:06:57,551 Wallyl... 81 00:06:58,085 --> 00:07:00,153 - Wow. - My God. 82 00:07:04,158 --> 00:07:06,226 I remember, when I first started working with André's company... 83 00:07:06,760 --> 00:07:09,963 I couldn't get over the way the actors would hug when they greeted each other. 84 00:07:10,697 --> 00:07:13,300 "Wow. Now I'm really in the theater, " I thought. 85 00:07:13,834 --> 00:07:15,636 Well, you look terrific. 86 00:07:16,170 --> 00:07:18,438 Well, I feel terrible. 87 00:07:21,041 --> 00:07:22,709 Good evening, sir. Nice to see you again. 88 00:07:23,177 --> 00:07:25,913 Thank you. Good evening. Ah, I think I'll have a spritzer, if I could. 89 00:07:26,580 --> 00:07:28,182 - Yes, sir. - Thank you. 90 00:07:30,184 --> 00:07:31,952 I was feeling incredibly nervous. 91 00:07:32,419 --> 00:07:34,388 I wasn't sure I could stick through an entire meal with him. 92 00:07:34,855 --> 00:07:36,223 Great. 93 00:07:36,590 --> 00:07:38,125 So we talked about this and that. 94 00:07:38,592 --> 00:07:40,460 He told me a few things aboutJerzy Grotowski... 95 00:07:40,994 --> 00:07:42,529 ...the great Polish theater director... 96 00:07:42,996 --> 00:07:45,532 ...who was a friend and almost like a kind of a guru of André's. 97 00:07:46,200 --> 00:07:48,202 He'd also dropped out of the theater. 98 00:07:48,669 --> 00:07:51,271 Grotowski was a pretty unusual character himself. 99 00:07:51,839 --> 00:07:55,042 At one time, he'd been quite fat, then he'd lost an incredible amount of weight... 100 00:07:55,809 --> 00:07:57,678 ...and become very thin and grown a beard. 101 00:07:58,212 --> 00:08:00,547 - Your table is ready, if you feel like sitting down. - Oh. 102 00:08:01,081 --> 00:08:02,683 - Oh. - Yes. Thank you. 103 00:08:10,657 --> 00:08:13,360 I was beginning to realize that the only way to make this evening bearable... 104 00:08:13,961 --> 00:08:16,296 ...would be to ask André a few questions. 105 00:08:16,864 --> 00:08:19,233 Asking questions always relaxes me. 106 00:08:19,766 --> 00:08:21,702 In fact, I sometimes think that my secret profession... 107 00:08:22,169 --> 00:08:24,738 ...is that I'm a private investigator, a detective. 108 00:08:25,372 --> 00:08:27,608 I always enjoy finding out about people. 109 00:08:28,242 --> 00:08:32,513 Even if they're in absolute agony, I always find it very... interesting. 110 00:08:34,848 --> 00:08:38,118 - By the way, is he still thin? - What? 111 00:08:38,852 --> 00:08:41,855 Grotowski. Is he still thin? 112 00:08:42,589 --> 00:08:44,291 Oh. Absolutely. 113 00:08:48,395 --> 00:08:50,864 Oh, waiter? Uh, I think we can do without this. 114 00:08:51,465 --> 00:08:53,433 - Yes, sir. - Thank you. 115 00:08:53,867 --> 00:08:55,469 What about this one? 116 00:08:55,969 --> 00:08:58,539 Seven swimming shrimp. 117 00:09:01,441 --> 00:09:03,110 - Ready for your order? - Ah, yes. 118 00:09:03,577 --> 00:09:05,946 Uh, the Galuska... How... How do you prepare that? 119 00:09:06,446 --> 00:09:08,482 André seemed to know an awful lot about the menu. 120 00:09:09,016 --> 00:09:10,984 - Dumpling with raisins, blanched almonds. - I didn't understand a word of it. 121 00:09:11,451 --> 00:09:13,220 - Very good, I think. - Hmm. 122 00:09:13,687 --> 00:09:15,856 No, I... I think I'll have the Cailles aux Raisin, the quail. 123 00:09:16,356 --> 00:09:18,358 - Very good. - Oh, quails! I'll have that as well. 124 00:09:18,892 --> 00:09:20,494 - Two. - Great. - Great! 125 00:09:20,894 --> 00:09:23,163 And then I think, to begin with, the Terrine de Poissons. 126 00:09:23,697 --> 00:09:25,299 - Yes. - What is that? 127 00:09:25,699 --> 00:09:28,368 Uh, it's a sort of pâte... light, made of fish. 128 00:09:28,969 --> 00:09:31,371 - Does it have bones in it? - No bones. 129 00:09:31,972 --> 00:09:33,707 Perfectly safe. 130 00:09:34,241 --> 00:09:38,111 Well, um...What is the, um, Bramborová Polévka? 131 00:09:38,979 --> 00:09:42,249 It's a potato soup. It's quite delicious. 132 00:09:42,983 --> 00:09:44,718 Oh, well, that's great. I'll have that. 133 00:09:45,252 --> 00:09:47,187 - Thank you very kindly. - Thank you very much. 134 00:09:50,457 --> 00:09:52,059 Well. 135 00:09:53,460 --> 00:09:55,128 When was the last time that we saw each other? 136 00:09:55,596 --> 00:09:57,798 So we talked for a while about my writing and my acting... 137 00:09:58,398 --> 00:09:59,933 ...and about my girlfriend, Debby. 138 00:10:00,400 --> 00:10:03,537 And we talked about his wife, Chiquita, and his two children, Nicolas and Marina. 139 00:10:04,271 --> 00:10:06,139 And I'd stayed back in New York. 140 00:10:06,673 --> 00:10:09,409 Finally, I got around to asking him what he'd been up to in the last few years. 141 00:10:10,077 --> 00:10:11,678 Oh, God. I'm just dying to hear it. 142 00:10:12,079 --> 00:10:13,480 - Really? - Really. 143 00:10:13,881 --> 00:10:16,216 At first, he seemed a little reluctant to go into it... 144 00:10:16,817 --> 00:10:19,820 ...so I just kept asking, and finally he started to answer. 145 00:10:20,487 --> 00:10:22,623 ...conference on paratheatrical work then. 146 00:10:23,223 --> 00:10:26,360 And, uh, this must have been about five years ago... 147 00:10:27,094 --> 00:10:30,831 ...and, uh, Grotowski and I were walking along Fifth Avenue and we were talking. 148 00:10:31,698 --> 00:10:34,635 You see, he'd invited me to come to teach that summer in Poland. 149 00:10:35,302 --> 00:10:38,238 You know, to teach a workshop to actors and directors and whatever. 150 00:10:38,906 --> 00:10:42,576 And I had told him that I didn't want to come, because, really, I had nothing left to teach. 151 00:10:43,377 --> 00:10:45,379 I had nothing left to say. I didn't know anything. 152 00:10:45,846 --> 00:10:47,514 I couldn't teach anything. 153 00:10:47,981 --> 00:10:49,850 Exercises meant nothing to me anymore. 154 00:10:50,250 --> 00:10:52,186 Working on scenes from plays seemed ridiculous. 155 00:10:52,653 --> 00:10:55,656 I - I didn't know what to do. I mean, I just couldn't do it. 156 00:10:56,390 --> 00:10:59,793 So he said, " Why don't you tell me anything you'd like to have if you did a workshop for me. 157 00:11:00,594 --> 00:11:03,330 No matter how outrageous. And maybe I can give it to you. " 158 00:11:03,997 --> 00:11:06,667 So I said, "Well, if you could give me... 159 00:11:07,267 --> 00:11:09,736 "40 Jewish women who speak neither English nor French... 160 00:11:10,270 --> 00:11:12,940 "either women who've been in the theater for a long time and want to leave it... 161 00:11:13,607 --> 00:11:15,142 "but don't know why... 162 00:11:15,609 --> 00:11:18,278 "or young women who love the theater, but have never seen a theater they could love. 163 00:11:18,879 --> 00:11:20,881 "And if these women could play the trumpet or the harp... 164 00:11:21,415 --> 00:11:22,950 ...and if I could work in a forest, I'd come. " 165 00:11:24,885 --> 00:11:27,154 A week later, or two weeks later, he called me from Poland. 166 00:11:27,688 --> 00:11:30,424 And he said, " Well, 40 Jewish women... that's a little hard to find. " 167 00:11:31,091 --> 00:11:34,428 But he said, " I do have 40 women. They all pretty much fit the definition. " 168 00:11:35,162 --> 00:11:37,164 And he said, " I also have some very interesting men... 169 00:11:37,698 --> 00:11:39,366 "but you don't have to work with them. 170 00:11:39,766 --> 00:11:42,169 "These are all people who have in common the fact that they're questioning the theater. 171 00:11:42,769 --> 00:11:45,305 "They don't all play the trumpet or the harp, but they all play a musical instrument. 172 00:11:45,906 --> 00:11:47,641 And none of them speak English. " 173 00:11:48,041 --> 00:11:49,710 And he'd found me a forest, Wally. 174 00:11:50,177 --> 00:11:53,780 And the only inhabitants of this forest were some wild boar and a hermit. 175 00:11:54,581 --> 00:11:56,183 So that was an offer I couldn't refuse. 176 00:11:56,583 --> 00:11:58,185 I had to go. 177 00:11:58,585 --> 00:12:01,855 So, I went to Poland, and it was this wonderful group of young men and women. 178 00:12:02,589 --> 00:12:05,125 And the forest he had found us was absolutely magical. 179 00:12:05,659 --> 00:12:07,261 You know, it was a huge forest. 180 00:12:07,661 --> 00:12:09,263 I mean, the trees were so large... 181 00:12:09,663 --> 00:12:13,333 ...that four or five people linking their arms couldn't get their arms around the trees. 182 00:12:14,201 --> 00:12:17,070 So we were camped out beside the ruins of this tiny little castle... 183 00:12:17,804 --> 00:12:21,475 ...and we would eat around this great stone slab that served as a sort of a table. 184 00:12:22,276 --> 00:12:24,878 And our schedule was that usually we'd start work around sunset... 185 00:12:25,479 --> 00:12:27,881 ...and then generally we'd work until about 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning. 186 00:12:28,482 --> 00:12:30,484 And then, because the Poles love to sing and dance... 187 00:12:31,018 --> 00:12:33,687 ...we'd sing and dance until about 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning. 188 00:12:34,288 --> 00:12:38,091 And then we'd have our food, which was generally bread,jam, cheese and tea. 189 00:12:39,026 --> 00:12:41,762 And then we'd sleep from around noon to sunset. 190 00:12:43,697 --> 00:12:45,365 Now, technically, of course... 191 00:12:45,766 --> 00:12:47,768 Technically, the situation is a very interesting one... 192 00:12:48,302 --> 00:12:50,637 ...because if you find yourself in a forest with a group of 40 people... 193 00:12:51,171 --> 00:12:54,174 ...who don't speak your language, then all your moorings are gone. 194 00:12:54,975 --> 00:12:56,577 What do you mean exactly? 195 00:12:56,977 --> 00:12:59,246 Well, what we'd do is just sit there and wait... 196 00:12:59,780 --> 00:13:02,449 ...for someone to have an impulse to do something. 197 00:13:03,050 --> 00:13:05,719 Now, in a way that's... That's something like a theatrical improvisation. 198 00:13:06,386 --> 00:13:08,922 I mean, you know, if you were a director working on a play by Chekhov... 199 00:13:09,456 --> 00:13:12,125 ...you might have the actors playing the mother, the son and the uncle... 200 00:13:12,793 --> 00:13:15,729 ...all sit around in a room and do a made-up scene that isn't in the play. 201 00:13:16,396 --> 00:13:17,998 For instance, you might say to them... 202 00:13:18,398 --> 00:13:21,134 "All right. Let's say that it's a rainy Sunday afternoon on Sorin's estate... 203 00:13:21,802 --> 00:13:23,604 ...and you're all trapped in the drawing room together. " 204 00:13:24,071 --> 00:13:25,739 And then everyone would improvise... 205 00:13:26,206 --> 00:13:29,743 ...saying and doing what their character might say and do in that circumstance. 206 00:13:30,611 --> 00:13:33,947 Except that in this type of improvisation... the kind we did in Poland... 207 00:13:34,681 --> 00:13:37,017 ...the theme is oneself. 208 00:13:37,618 --> 00:13:39,686 So, you follow the same law of improvisation... 209 00:13:40,220 --> 00:13:42,956 ...which is that you do whatever your impulse, as the character, tells you to do... 210 00:13:43,624 --> 00:13:45,959 ...but in this case, you are the character. 211 00:13:46,493 --> 00:13:49,296 So there's no imaginary situation to hide behind... 212 00:13:50,030 --> 00:13:52,499 ...and there's no other person to hide behind. 213 00:13:53,100 --> 00:13:55,502 What you're doing, in fact, is you're asking those same questions... 214 00:13:56,170 --> 00:14:00,240 ...that Stanislavsky said the actor should constantly ask himself as a character: 215 00:14:01,175 --> 00:14:04,111 Who am I? Why am I here? 216 00:14:04,778 --> 00:14:07,781 Where do I come from, and where am I going? 217 00:14:08,448 --> 00:14:12,052 But instead of applying them to a role, you apply them to yourself. 218 00:14:12,853 --> 00:14:14,721 - Hmm. - Or, to look at it a little differently... 219 00:14:15,189 --> 00:14:16,857 ...in a way, it's like going right back to childhood... 220 00:14:17,257 --> 00:14:19,793 ...where a group of children simply come into a room or are brought into a room... 221 00:14:20,394 --> 00:14:22,262 ...without toys... And begin to play. 222 00:14:22,663 --> 00:14:25,799 Grown-ups were learning how to play again. 223 00:14:26,466 --> 00:14:29,670 So, you would, uh, all sit together somewhere... 224 00:14:30,404 --> 00:14:32,606 ...and, uh, you would play in some way. 225 00:14:33,207 --> 00:14:35,676 - But what would you actually do? - Well, I could give you a good example. 226 00:14:36,410 --> 00:14:39,213 You see, we worked, uh, together for a week in the city... 227 00:14:39,880 --> 00:14:41,548 ...before we went off to our forest. 228 00:14:42,015 --> 00:14:43,884 And of course, Grotowski was there in the city too. 229 00:14:44,418 --> 00:14:46,753 I heard that every night, he conducted something called a beehive. 230 00:14:47,287 --> 00:14:48,856 I loved the sound of this beehive... 231 00:14:49,289 --> 00:14:51,792 ...so a night or two before we were supposed to go off to the country... 232 00:14:52,392 --> 00:14:54,962 I grabbed him by the collar, and I said, "Listen, about this beehive. 233 00:14:55,629 --> 00:14:57,297 "You know, I'd kind of like to participate in one. 234 00:14:57,698 --> 00:15:00,000 Just instinctively I feel it would be something interesting. " 235 00:15:00,634 --> 00:15:03,103 And he said, " Well, certainly. In fact, why don't you, with your group... 236 00:15:03,704 --> 00:15:05,839 ...lead the beehive instead of participating in one?" 237 00:15:06,373 --> 00:15:09,643 You know, I... I got very nervous, you know, and I said, " Well, what is a beehive?" 238 00:15:10,377 --> 00:15:12,579 He said, " Well, a beehive is... 239 00:15:13,113 --> 00:15:15,516 ...at 8:00 a hundred strangers come into a room. " 240 00:15:17,017 --> 00:15:18,986 I said, " Yes?" He said, "Yes, and whatever happens is a beehive. " 241 00:15:19,453 --> 00:15:22,122 I said, " Yes, but what am I supposed to do?" He said, " That's up to you. " 242 00:15:22,789 --> 00:15:25,993 I said, " No, no. I really don't want to do this. I'll just participate. " 243 00:15:26,660 --> 00:15:29,796 And he said, "No, no. You lead the beehive. " 244 00:15:30,464 --> 00:15:32,132 Well, I was terrified, Wally. 245 00:15:32,599 --> 00:15:35,369 I mean, in a way, I felt on stage. 246 00:15:37,004 --> 00:15:38,872 I did it anyway. 247 00:15:39,473 --> 00:15:41,408 God. Well, tell me about it. 248 00:15:41,875 --> 00:15:45,212 You see, there was this song... I have a tape of it. I can play it for you one day. 249 00:15:46,113 --> 00:15:48,749 And it's just unbelievably beautiful. 250 00:15:49,416 --> 00:15:53,287 You see, one of the women in our group knew a few fragments of this song of Saint Francis... 251 00:15:54,221 --> 00:15:56,757 ...and it's a song in which you thank God for your eyes... 252 00:15:57,424 --> 00:16:00,060 ...and you thank God for your heart, and you thank God for your friends... 253 00:16:00,694 --> 00:16:02,362 ...and you thank God for your life. 254 00:16:02,830 --> 00:16:05,299 And it, uh... It repeats itself over and over again. 255 00:16:05,899 --> 00:16:07,467 And this became our theme song. 256 00:16:07,901 --> 00:16:09,570 I really must play this thing for you one day... 257 00:16:09,970 --> 00:16:13,640 ...because you just can't believe that a group of people who don't know how to sing... 258 00:16:14,508 --> 00:16:17,578 ...could create something so beautiful. 259 00:16:18,312 --> 00:16:22,115 So, I decided that when the people arrived for the beehive... 260 00:16:23,016 --> 00:16:25,319 ...that our group would already be there singing this very beautiful song... 261 00:16:25,853 --> 00:16:29,056 ...and that we would simply sing it over and over again. 262 00:16:29,790 --> 00:16:33,794 One of the people decided to bring her very large teddy bear, you know. 263 00:16:34,695 --> 00:16:36,363 Well, she's a little afraid of this event. 264 00:16:36,797 --> 00:16:38,732 And somebody wanted to bring a... A sheet. 265 00:16:39,199 --> 00:16:41,468 And somebody else wanted to bring a large bowl of water... 266 00:16:42,002 --> 00:16:43,871 ...in case people got hot or thirsty. 267 00:16:44,271 --> 00:16:46,206 And somebody suggested that we have candles... 268 00:16:46,673 --> 00:16:50,110 ...that there be no artificial light, but candlelight. 269 00:16:50,878 --> 00:16:53,013 And I remember watching people preparing for this evening. 270 00:16:53,480 --> 00:16:55,349 Of course, there was no makeup, and there were no costumes... 271 00:16:55,816 --> 00:16:57,951 ...but it was exactly the way that people prepare for a performance. 272 00:16:58,452 --> 00:17:01,155 You know, people sort of taking off their jewelry and their watches... 273 00:17:01,788 --> 00:17:04,358 ...and stowing it away and making sure it's all secure. 274 00:17:05,025 --> 00:17:07,427 And then slowly people arrived, the way they would arrive at the theater... 275 00:17:08,028 --> 00:17:10,364 ...in ones and twos and 10s and 15s and what have you. 276 00:17:10,864 --> 00:17:13,367 And we were just sitting there, and we were singing this very beautiful song. 277 00:17:14,001 --> 00:17:16,770 And people started to sit with us and started to learn the song. 278 00:17:17,437 --> 00:17:21,642 Now, there is, of course, as in any performance or improvisation... 279 00:17:22,709 --> 00:17:24,711 ...instinct for when things are gonna get boring. 280 00:17:25,179 --> 00:17:28,448 So, at a certain point... It may have taken an hour to get there, an hour and a half... 281 00:17:29,183 --> 00:17:32,519 I suddenly grabbed this teddy bear and threw it in the air... 282 00:17:33,253 --> 00:17:36,256 ...at which 140 or 130 people suddenly exploded. 283 00:17:36,990 --> 00:17:39,526 You know, it was like a... A Jackson Pollack painting, you know. 284 00:17:40,060 --> 00:17:43,730 Human beings exploded out of this tight little circle that was singing the song. 285 00:17:44,598 --> 00:17:47,000 And before I knew it, there were two circles, dancing, you know... 286 00:17:47,601 --> 00:17:50,337 ...one dancing clockwise, the other dancing counterclockwise... 287 00:17:51,071 --> 00:17:52,873 ...with this rhythm mostly from the waist down. 288 00:17:53,407 --> 00:17:56,977 In other words, like an American Indian dance, with this thumping, persistent rhythm. 289 00:18:02,282 --> 00:18:05,085 Now, you could easily see, 'cause we're talking about group trance... 290 00:18:05,686 --> 00:18:09,356 ...where the line between something like this and something like Hitler's Nuremberg rallies... 291 00:18:10,190 --> 00:18:12,025 ...is, in a way, a very thin line. 292 00:18:14,695 --> 00:18:18,131 Anyway, after about an hour of this wild, hypnotic dancing... 293 00:18:18,899 --> 00:18:21,568 Grotowski and I found ourselves sitting opposite each other in the middle of this whole thing. 294 00:18:22,236 --> 00:18:24,238 And we threw the teddy bear back and forth. 295 00:18:24,705 --> 00:18:26,773 You know, on one level, you could say this is childish. 296 00:18:27,374 --> 00:18:29,243 And I gave the teddy bear suck, suddenly, at my breast. 297 00:18:29,710 --> 00:18:32,312 And then I threw the teddy bear to him, and he gave it suck at his breast. 298 00:18:32,913 --> 00:18:34,915 And then the teddy bear was thrown up into the air again... 299 00:18:35,382 --> 00:18:38,118 ...at which there was another explosion of form into... Something. 300 00:18:38,785 --> 00:18:41,121 And these...What was it like? You know, this is the... 301 00:18:41,655 --> 00:18:44,658 There's something like a kaleidoscope, like a human kaleidoscope. 302 00:18:45,392 --> 00:18:48,929 The evening was made up of shiftings of the kaleidoscope. 303 00:18:49,663 --> 00:18:51,331 Now, the only other things that I remember... 304 00:18:51,798 --> 00:18:53,400 ...other than constantly trying to guide this thing... 305 00:18:53,800 --> 00:18:57,538 ...which was always involved with either movement, rhythm, repetition or song... 306 00:18:58,472 --> 00:19:00,274 Or chanting, because, uh, two people in my group... 307 00:19:00,674 --> 00:19:02,342 ...had brought musical instruments, a flute and a drum... 308 00:19:02,810 --> 00:19:04,478 ...which, of course, are sacred instruments... 309 00:19:04,878 --> 00:19:07,014 ...was that sometimes the room would break up... 310 00:19:07,481 --> 00:19:10,284 ...into six or seven different things going on at once. 311 00:19:10,884 --> 00:19:13,353 You know, six or seven different improvisations... 312 00:19:13,887 --> 00:19:17,090 ...all of which seemed, in some way, related to each other. 313 00:19:17,825 --> 00:19:20,561 It was... It was like a magnificent cobweb. 314 00:19:22,496 --> 00:19:25,899 And at one point, I noticed that Grotowski was at the center of one group... 315 00:19:26,700 --> 00:19:29,036 ...huddled around a bunch of candles that they'd gathered together. 316 00:19:29,703 --> 00:19:32,306 And like a little child fascinated by fire... 317 00:19:32,906 --> 00:19:36,310 I saw that he had his hand right in the flame and was holding it there. 318 00:19:37,110 --> 00:19:39,513 And as I approached his group, I wondered if I could do it. 319 00:19:40,113 --> 00:19:44,117 I put my left hand in the flame and I found I could hold it there for as long as I liked... 320 00:19:44,985 --> 00:19:46,987 ...and there was no burn and no pain. 321 00:19:47,521 --> 00:19:50,924 But when I tried to put my right hand in the flame, I couldn't hold it there for a second. 322 00:19:51,658 --> 00:19:55,796 So Grotowski said, " If it burns, try to change some little thing in yourself. " 323 00:19:56,663 --> 00:19:59,600 And I tried to do that. Didn't work. 324 00:20:00,267 --> 00:20:04,071 Then I remember a very, very beautiful procession with the sheet... 325 00:20:05,005 --> 00:20:07,007 ...and there was somebody being carried below the sheet. 326 00:20:07,474 --> 00:20:10,077 You know, the sheet was like some great biblical canopy. 327 00:20:10,677 --> 00:20:14,214 And the entire group was weaving around the room and chanting. 328 00:20:16,283 --> 00:20:18,552 And then at one point, people were dancing... 329 00:20:19,086 --> 00:20:21,021 ...and I was dancing with a girl... 330 00:20:21,488 --> 00:20:23,624 ...and suddenly our hands began vibrating near each other... 331 00:20:24,091 --> 00:20:25,692 ...like this...vibrating, vibrating. 332 00:20:26,093 --> 00:20:29,029 And we went down to our knees, and suddenly I was sobbing in her arms... 333 00:20:29,696 --> 00:20:33,167 ...and she was sort of cradling me in her arms, and then she started to cry too. 334 00:20:34,034 --> 00:20:36,036 And then we... Then we just hugged each other for a moment. 335 00:20:36,637 --> 00:20:39,306 And, uh, then we joined the dance again. 336 00:20:40,040 --> 00:20:42,843 And then at a certain point, hours later... 337 00:20:43,510 --> 00:20:45,979 ...we returned to the singing of the song of Saint Francis... 338 00:20:46,580 --> 00:20:48,515 ...and that was the end of the beehive. 339 00:20:50,317 --> 00:20:53,787 And then, again, when it was over, it was just like the theater after a performance. 340 00:20:54,588 --> 00:20:57,257 You know, people sort of put on their earrings and their wristwatches... 341 00:20:57,925 --> 00:20:59,526 ...and we went off to the railroad station... 342 00:20:59,860 --> 00:21:03,330 ...to drink a lot of beer and have a good dinner. 343 00:21:04,064 --> 00:21:06,400 Oh, and there was one girl, who wasn't in our group... 344 00:21:07,000 --> 00:21:09,870 ...but who just wouldn't leave, so we took her along with us. 345 00:21:12,272 --> 00:21:13,874 Huh. 346 00:21:19,413 --> 00:21:22,282 God. Well, tell me some of the other things you did with your group. 347 00:21:23,016 --> 00:21:26,086 Well... Oh, I remember once when we were in the city... 348 00:21:26,820 --> 00:21:29,623 ...we tried doing an improvisation...you know, the kind that I used to do in New York. 349 00:21:30,290 --> 00:21:32,292 Uh, everybody was supposed to be on an airplane... 350 00:21:32,826 --> 00:21:35,162 ...and they've all learned from the pilot there's something wrong with the motor. 351 00:21:35,696 --> 00:21:38,098 But what was unusual about this improvisation... 352 00:21:38,699 --> 00:21:41,768 ...was that two people who participated in it... Fell in love. 353 00:21:42,503 --> 00:21:44,104 They've, in fact, married. 354 00:21:44,505 --> 00:21:46,773 And when we were... Yeah, out of fear... 355 00:21:47,307 --> 00:21:49,977 ...of being on this plane, they fell in love... 356 00:21:50,644 --> 00:21:52,379 ...thinking they were going to die at any moment. 357 00:21:52,846 --> 00:21:55,916 And when we went to the forest, these two disappeared... 358 00:21:56,583 --> 00:21:58,585 ...because they understood the... The experiment so well... 359 00:21:59,119 --> 00:22:02,189 ...that they realized that to go off together in the forest was much more important... 360 00:22:02,923 --> 00:22:05,859 ...than any kind of experiment the group could do as a whole. 361 00:22:06,527 --> 00:22:09,263 So, uh, about halfway through the week... 362 00:22:09,863 --> 00:22:11,732 ...we stumbled into a clearing in the forest... 363 00:22:12,199 --> 00:22:15,068 ...and the two of them were fast asleep in each other's arms. 364 00:22:15,669 --> 00:22:17,938 It was around dawn, and we put flowers on them... 365 00:22:18,472 --> 00:22:21,074 ...to let them know we'd been there, and then we crept away. 366 00:22:21,675 --> 00:22:24,478 And then on the last day of our stay in the forest, these two showed up... 367 00:22:25,078 --> 00:22:27,548 ...and they shook me by my hands, and they thanked me very much... 368 00:22:28,081 --> 00:22:30,284 ...for the wonderful work they'd been able to do, you see. 369 00:22:30,818 --> 00:22:33,353 They understood what it was about. 370 00:22:34,021 --> 00:22:36,824 I mean, that, of course, poses the question of what was it about. 371 00:22:38,826 --> 00:22:41,628 But it has...has something to do with living. 372 00:22:45,032 --> 00:22:47,234 And then on the final day of our stay in the forest... 373 00:22:47,835 --> 00:22:49,903 ...the whole group did something so wonderful for me, Wally. 374 00:22:50,504 --> 00:22:52,306 They arranged a christening... a baptism... For me. 375 00:22:52,840 --> 00:22:54,708 And they filled the castle with flowers. 376 00:22:55,242 --> 00:22:57,244 And it was just a miracle of light... 377 00:22:57,711 --> 00:23:00,981 ...because they had literally set up hundreds of candles and torches. 378 00:23:01,715 --> 00:23:04,051 I mean, no church could have looked more beautiful. 379 00:23:04,585 --> 00:23:07,187 There was a simple ceremony, and one of them played the role of my godmother... 380 00:23:07,788 --> 00:23:09,456 ...and another played the role of my godfather. 381 00:23:09,923 --> 00:23:12,926 And I was given a new name. They called me Yendrush. 382 00:23:13,594 --> 00:23:16,463 And some of the people took it completely seriously... 383 00:23:17,064 --> 00:23:18,932 ...and some of them found it funny. 384 00:23:19,399 --> 00:23:22,069 But, uh, I really felt that I had a new name. 385 00:23:23,871 --> 00:23:27,074 And then we had an enormous feast, with blueberries picked from the field... 386 00:23:27,808 --> 00:23:29,877 ...and chocolate someone had gone a great distance to buy... 387 00:23:30,477 --> 00:23:32,079 ...and raspberry soup and rabbit stew. 388 00:23:32,613 --> 00:23:35,149 And we sang Polish songs and Greek songs... 389 00:23:35,682 --> 00:23:38,152 ...and everybody danced for the rest of the night. 390 00:23:38,685 --> 00:23:40,487 - Hmm. - Oh, I have a picture. 391 00:23:43,423 --> 00:23:45,893 See, this was... Let's see. 392 00:23:47,427 --> 00:23:49,830 Oh, yeah. This was me in the forest. See? 393 00:23:50,430 --> 00:23:52,566 - God! - That's what I felt like. 394 00:23:56,103 --> 00:23:58,038 - That's the state I was in. - God. 395 00:23:59,506 --> 00:24:02,643 Yeah. I remember George, uh, told me he'd seen you around that time. 396 00:24:03,443 --> 00:24:05,312 He said you looked like you'd come back from a war. 397 00:24:05,846 --> 00:24:08,649 Yeah, I remember meeting him. He, uh... He asked me a lot of friendly questions. 398 00:24:09,316 --> 00:24:11,118 I think I called you up, too, that summer, didn't I? 399 00:24:11,585 --> 00:24:13,187 Huh. 400 00:24:13,587 --> 00:24:16,123 I think I was out of town. 401 00:24:16,723 --> 00:24:19,793 Yeah, well, most people I met thought there was something wrong with me. 402 00:24:20,527 --> 00:24:23,197 They didn't say that, but I could tell that that was what they thought. 403 00:24:23,797 --> 00:24:25,532 But... 404 00:24:25,999 --> 00:24:29,937 ...you see, what I think I experienced... was... 405 00:24:30,871 --> 00:24:33,140 ...for the first time in my life... 406 00:24:33,674 --> 00:24:35,809 ...to know what it means to be truly alive. 407 00:24:36,276 --> 00:24:37,878 Now, that's very frightening... 408 00:24:38,278 --> 00:24:40,414 ...because with that comes an immediate awareness of death... 409 00:24:40,881 --> 00:24:42,483 'cause they go hand in hand. 410 00:24:42,883 --> 00:24:45,752 You know, the kind of impulse that led to Walt Whitman, that led to Leaves of Grass. 411 00:24:46,420 --> 00:24:48,489 That feeling of being connected to everything... 412 00:24:49,022 --> 00:24:50,891 ...means to also be connected to death. 413 00:24:51,425 --> 00:24:53,227 And that's pretty scary. 414 00:24:53,694 --> 00:24:57,498 But I really felt as if I were floating above the ground, not walking. 415 00:24:58,298 --> 00:25:00,501 You know, and I could do things like go out to the highway... 416 00:25:01,034 --> 00:25:04,238 ...and watch the lights go from red to green and think, " How wonderful. " 417 00:25:05,038 --> 00:25:07,774 And then one day, in the early fall... 418 00:25:08,442 --> 00:25:10,511 I was out in the country, walking in a field... 419 00:25:11,044 --> 00:25:13,847 ...and I suddenly heard a voice say, "Little Prince. " 420 00:25:14,515 --> 00:25:16,850 Of course, The Little Prince was a book that I always thought of... 421 00:25:17,451 --> 00:25:18,986 ...as disgusting, childish treacle. 422 00:25:19,453 --> 00:25:22,122 But still, I thought, " Well, you know, if a voice comes to me in a field"... 423 00:25:22,723 --> 00:25:24,658 This was the first voice I had ever heard. 424 00:25:25,125 --> 00:25:26,793 Maybe I should go and read the book. 425 00:25:27,194 --> 00:25:29,129 Now, that same morning I'd got a letter... 426 00:25:29,596 --> 00:25:31,532 ...from a young woman who'd been in my group in Poland. 427 00:25:31,999 --> 00:25:33,867 And in her letter she'd written, "You have dominated me. " 428 00:25:34,268 --> 00:25:35,936 You know, she spoke very awkward English. 429 00:25:36,403 --> 00:25:38,939 So she'd gone to the dictionary, and she'd crossed out the word " dominated"... 430 00:25:39,606 --> 00:25:41,942 ...and she'd said, "No. The correct word is 'tamed. "' 431 00:25:42,476 --> 00:25:45,145 And then when I went to town and bought the book and started to read it... 432 00:25:45,813 --> 00:25:49,216 I saw that " taming" was the most important word in the whole book. 433 00:25:50,017 --> 00:25:53,220 By the end of the book, I was in tears, I was so moved by the story. 434 00:25:53,887 --> 00:25:56,089 And then I went and tried to write an answer to her letter... 435 00:25:56,623 --> 00:25:58,292 'cause she'd written me a very long letter. 436 00:25:58,692 --> 00:26:01,562 But I just couldn't find the right words, so finally I took my hand... 437 00:26:02,229 --> 00:26:04,565 I put it on a piece of paper, I outlined it with a pen... 438 00:26:05,098 --> 00:26:07,434 ...and I wrote in the center something like, " Your heart is in my hand. " 439 00:26:08,035 --> 00:26:09,436 Something like that. 440 00:26:09,837 --> 00:26:11,505 Then I went over to my brother's house to swim... 441 00:26:11,905 --> 00:26:13,907 'cause he lives nearby in the country and he has a pool. 442 00:26:14,441 --> 00:26:16,109 And he wasn't home. I went into his library... 443 00:26:16,510 --> 00:26:18,979 ...and he had bought at an auction the collected issues of Minotaure. 444 00:26:19,713 --> 00:26:23,383 You know, the surrealist magazine? Oh, it's a great, great surrealist magazine of the '20s and '30s. 445 00:26:24,251 --> 00:26:26,720 And I never...You know, I consider myself a bit of a surrealist. 446 00:26:27,321 --> 00:26:29,456 I had never, ever seen a copy of Minotaure. 447 00:26:29,990 --> 00:26:31,859 And here they all were, bound, year after year. 448 00:26:32,326 --> 00:26:35,128 So, at random, I picked one out, I opened it up... 449 00:26:35,796 --> 00:26:38,532 ...and there was a full-page reproduction of the letter " A"... 450 00:26:39,199 --> 00:26:40,934 ...from Tenniel's Alice In Wonderland. 451 00:26:41,401 --> 00:26:44,071 And I thought, that...Well, you know, it's been a day of coincidences... 452 00:26:44,805 --> 00:26:47,074 ...but that's not unusual that the surrealists would have been interested in Alice... 453 00:26:47,608 --> 00:26:49,276 ...and I did a play of Alice. 454 00:26:49,676 --> 00:26:53,213 So at random, I opened to another page... 455 00:26:54,014 --> 00:26:56,950 ...and there were four handprints. 456 00:26:57,618 --> 00:27:00,020 One was André Breton, another was André Derain... 457 00:27:00,621 --> 00:27:02,823 ...the third was André... I've got it written down somewhere. 458 00:27:03,290 --> 00:27:06,560 It's not Malraux. It's, like, someone... Another of the surrealists. 459 00:27:07,294 --> 00:27:11,298 All A's, and the fourth was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry... 460 00:27:12,232 --> 00:27:13,967 ...who wrote The Little Prince. 461 00:27:14,434 --> 00:27:16,503 And they'd shown these handprints to some kind of expert... 462 00:27:17,037 --> 00:27:19,373 ...without saying whose hands they belonged to. 463 00:27:19,907 --> 00:27:23,043 And under Exupéry's, it said that he was an artist... 464 00:27:23,844 --> 00:27:25,712 ...with very powerful eyes... 465 00:27:26,246 --> 00:27:29,383 ...who was a tamer of wild animals. 466 00:27:30,117 --> 00:27:31,919 I thought, "This is incredible, you know. " 467 00:27:32,452 --> 00:27:35,522 And I looked back to see when the issue came out. 468 00:27:36,256 --> 00:27:39,459 It came out on the newsstands May 12, 1934... 469 00:27:40,194 --> 00:27:43,730 ...and I was born during the day of May 11, 1934. 470 00:27:45,532 --> 00:27:49,803 So, well, that's what started me on, uh, Saint-Exupéry and The Little Prince. 471 00:27:58,278 --> 00:28:00,414 Now, of course today... 472 00:28:00,881 --> 00:28:03,750 ...today I think there's a very fascistic thing under The Little Prince. 473 00:28:04,418 --> 00:28:06,353 You know, I... Well, no, I think there's a kind of... 474 00:28:06,820 --> 00:28:11,358 I think a kind of S.S. Totalitarian sentimentality in there somewhere. 475 00:28:12,292 --> 00:28:14,561 You know, there's something, you know... that... 476 00:28:15,095 --> 00:28:16,964 ...that love of, um... 477 00:28:17,431 --> 00:28:20,968 Well, that masculine love of a certain kind of oily muscle. 478 00:28:21,835 --> 00:28:24,571 You know what I mean? I mean, I can't quite put my finger on it. 479 00:28:25,239 --> 00:28:28,242 But I can just imagine some beautiful S.S. Man... 480 00:28:28,909 --> 00:28:30,577 ...loving The Little Prince. 481 00:28:31,044 --> 00:28:33,180 Now, I don't know why, but there's something wrong with it. It stinks. 482 00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:43,190 Well, didn't George tell me that you were gonna do a play that was based on The Little Prince? 483 00:28:44,057 --> 00:28:46,727 Hmm. Well, what happened, Wally... 484 00:28:48,395 --> 00:28:49,663 ...was that fall I was in New York... 485 00:28:49,997 --> 00:28:52,866 ...and I met this young Japanese Buddhist priest named Kozan... 486 00:28:53,500 --> 00:28:55,602 ...and I thought he was Puck from the Midsummer Night's Dream. 487 00:28:56,136 --> 00:28:57,938 You know, he had this beautiful, delicate smile. 488 00:28:58,505 --> 00:29:00,140 I thought he was the Little Prince. 489 00:29:00,541 --> 00:29:03,343 So, naturally, I decided to go off to the Sahara desert... 490 00:29:04,011 --> 00:29:06,847 ...to work on The Little Prince with two actors and this Japanese monk. 491 00:29:07,614 --> 00:29:09,216 You did? 492 00:29:09,616 --> 00:29:13,720 Well, I mean, I was still in a very peculiar state at that time, Wally. 493 00:29:14,621 --> 00:29:17,491 You know, I would... I would look in the rearview mirror of my car... 494 00:29:18,125 --> 00:29:20,427 ...and see little birds flying out of my mouth. 495 00:29:22,029 --> 00:29:25,499 And I remember always being exhausted in that period. 496 00:29:26,300 --> 00:29:29,770 I always felt weak. You know, I really didn't know what was going on with me. 497 00:29:30,504 --> 00:29:33,774 I would just sit out there all alone in the country for days... 498 00:29:34,508 --> 00:29:37,177 ...and do nothing but write in my diary. 499 00:29:37,845 --> 00:29:40,180 - And I was always thinking about death. - Huh. 500 00:29:40,714 --> 00:29:42,382 But you went to the Sahara. 501 00:29:42,850 --> 00:29:44,585 Oh,yes, we went off into the desert... 502 00:29:45,018 --> 00:29:46,787 ...and we rode through the desert on camels. 503 00:29:47,254 --> 00:29:48,789 And we rode and we rode. 504 00:29:49,256 --> 00:29:51,258 And then at night we would walk out under that enormous sky... 505 00:29:51,692 --> 00:29:53,360 ...and look at the stars. 506 00:29:53,861 --> 00:29:56,864 I just kept thinking about the same things that I was always thinking about at home... 507 00:29:57,531 --> 00:29:59,199 ...particularly about Chiquita. 508 00:29:59,600 --> 00:30:02,469 In fact, I thought about just about nothing but my marriage. 509 00:30:05,038 --> 00:30:06,907 And then I remember one incredibly dark night... 510 00:30:07,407 --> 00:30:10,077 ...being at an oasis, and there were palm trees moving in the wind... 511 00:30:10,677 --> 00:30:13,780 ...and I could hear Kozan singing far away in that beautiful bass voice. 512 00:30:14,481 --> 00:30:16,750 And I tried to follow his voice along the sand. 513 00:30:19,286 --> 00:30:21,822 You see, I thought he had something to teach me, Wally. 514 00:30:23,891 --> 00:30:25,559 And sometimes I would meditate with him. 515 00:30:26,026 --> 00:30:28,428 Sometimes I'd go off and meditate by myself. 516 00:30:30,297 --> 00:30:32,766 You know, I would see images of Chiquita. 517 00:30:33,300 --> 00:30:35,269 Once I actually saw her growing old... 518 00:30:35,702 --> 00:30:37,905 ...and her hair turning gray in front of my eyes. 519 00:30:38,405 --> 00:30:42,509 And I would just wail and yell my lungs out out there on the dunes. 520 00:30:46,446 --> 00:30:49,650 Anyway, the desert was pretty horrible. 521 00:30:50,450 --> 00:30:51,985 It was pretty cold. 522 00:30:52,452 --> 00:30:55,322 We were searching for something, but we couldn't tell if we were finding anything. 523 00:30:56,056 --> 00:30:57,724 You know that once Kozan and I... 524 00:30:58,125 --> 00:31:00,194 ...we were sitting on a dune, and we just ate sand. 525 00:31:00,727 --> 00:31:02,729 No, we weren't trying to be funny. I started, then he started. 526 00:31:03,230 --> 00:31:06,400 We just ate sand and threw up. That's how desperate we were. 527 00:31:07,134 --> 00:31:10,103 In other words, we didn't know why we were there. We didn't know what we were looking for. 528 00:31:10,938 --> 00:31:13,440 The entire thing seemed completely absurd, arid and empty. 529 00:31:14,141 --> 00:31:16,977 It was like, uh... like a last chance or something. 530 00:31:17,611 --> 00:31:19,546 Huh. 531 00:31:20,013 --> 00:31:21,949 So what happened then? 532 00:31:22,416 --> 00:31:24,751 Well, in those days... 533 00:31:25,319 --> 00:31:27,154 I went completely on impulse. 534 00:31:27,621 --> 00:31:30,324 So on impulse I brought Kozan back to stay with us in New York... 535 00:31:30,891 --> 00:31:33,861 ...after we got back from the Sahara, and he stayed for six months. 536 00:31:34,495 --> 00:31:37,831 - And he really sort of took over the whole family, in a way. - What do you mean? 537 00:31:38,665 --> 00:31:42,169 Well, there was certainly a center missing in the house at the time. 538 00:31:42,903 --> 00:31:45,038 There certainly wasn't a father, 'cause I was always thinking... 539 00:31:45,539 --> 00:31:48,375 ...about going off to Tibet or doing God knows what. 540 00:31:49,042 --> 00:31:51,044 And so he taught the whole family to meditate... 541 00:31:51,512 --> 00:31:55,048 ...and he told them all about Asia and the East and his monastery and everything. 542 00:31:55,849 --> 00:31:59,520 He really captivated everybody with an incredible bag of tricks. 543 00:32:00,320 --> 00:32:02,656 He had literally developed himself, Wally... 544 00:32:03,257 --> 00:32:07,127 ...so that he could push on his fingers and rise off out of his chair. 545 00:32:08,061 --> 00:32:09,730 I mean, he could literally go like this... 546 00:32:10,130 --> 00:32:11,932 You know, push on his fingers and go into like a headstand... 547 00:32:12,466 --> 00:32:14,201 ...and just hold himself there with two fingers. 548 00:32:14,601 --> 00:32:16,637 Or if Chiquita would suddenly get a little tension in her neck... 549 00:32:17,137 --> 00:32:19,807 ...well, he'd immediately have her down on the floor, he'd be walking up and down on her back... 550 00:32:20,407 --> 00:32:22,943 ...doing these unbelievable massages, you know. 551 00:32:24,611 --> 00:32:26,280 And the children found him amazing. 552 00:32:26,747 --> 00:32:29,416 I mean, you know, we'd visit friends who had children... 553 00:32:30,017 --> 00:32:31,752 ...and immediately he'd be playing with these children... 554 00:32:32,252 --> 00:32:33,921 ...in a way that, you know, we just can't do. 555 00:32:34,288 --> 00:32:36,557 I mean, those children... just giggles, giggles, giggles... 556 00:32:37,090 --> 00:32:39,960 ...about what this Japanese monk was doing in these holy robes. 557 00:32:40,627 --> 00:32:43,163 I mean, he was an acrobat, a ventriloquist... 558 00:32:43,730 --> 00:32:45,833 ...a magician, everything. 559 00:32:46,300 --> 00:32:47,901 You know, the amazing thing was that... 560 00:32:48,335 --> 00:32:50,304 I don't think he had any interest in children whatsoever. 561 00:32:50,838 --> 00:32:52,639 None at all. I don't think he liked them. 562 00:32:53,106 --> 00:32:54,908 I mean, you know, when he stayed with us... 563 00:32:55,309 --> 00:32:57,578 ...in the first week, really, the kids were just googly-eyed over him. 564 00:32:58,111 --> 00:33:00,581 But then a couple of weeks later, Chiquita and I could be out... 565 00:33:01,114 --> 00:33:03,650 ...and Marina could have flu or a temperature of 104... 566 00:33:04,251 --> 00:33:06,386 ...and he wouldn't even go in and say hello to her. 567 00:33:06,887 --> 00:33:09,723 But he was taking over more and more. 568 00:33:10,424 --> 00:33:12,593 I mean, his own habits had completely changed. 569 00:33:13,127 --> 00:33:17,097 You know, he started wearing these elegant Gucci shoes under his white monk's robes. 570 00:33:18,065 --> 00:33:19,733 He was eating huge amounts of food. 571 00:33:20,134 --> 00:33:23,070 I mean, he ate twice as much as Nicolas ate, you know? 572 00:33:23,737 --> 00:33:25,806 This tiny little Buddhist when I first met him, you know... 573 00:33:26,340 --> 00:33:28,775 ...was eating a little bowl of milk... hot milk with rice... 574 00:33:29,343 --> 00:33:31,478 ...was now eating huge beef. 575 00:33:33,947 --> 00:33:36,216 It was just very strange. 576 00:33:36,717 --> 00:33:39,620 You know, and we had tried working together, but really our work consisted mostly... 577 00:33:40,287 --> 00:33:44,291 ...of my trying to do these incredibly painful prostrations that they do in the monastery. 578 00:33:45,259 --> 00:33:47,761 You know, so really we hadn't been working very much. 579 00:33:48,295 --> 00:33:52,833 Anyway, we were out in the country, and we all went to Christmas mass together. 580 00:33:53,834 --> 00:33:55,669 You know, he was all dressed up in his Buddhist finery. 581 00:33:56,103 --> 00:33:59,439 And it was one of those... One of those awful, dreary Catholic churches on Long Island... 582 00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:03,577 ...where the priest talks about communism and birth control. 583 00:34:04,311 --> 00:34:07,581 And as I was sitting there in mass, I was wondering, " What in the world is going on?" 584 00:34:08,315 --> 00:34:09,983 I mean, here I am. I'm a grown man... 585 00:34:10,450 --> 00:34:12,586 ...and there's this strange person living in the house, and I'm not working... 586 00:34:13,120 --> 00:34:16,056 You know, I was doing nothing but scribbling a little poetry in my diary. 587 00:34:16,723 --> 00:34:20,494 And I can't get a job teaching anymore, and I don't know what I want to do. 588 00:34:21,328 --> 00:34:25,933 When all of a sudden a huge creature appeared, looking at the congregation. 589 00:34:26,934 --> 00:34:30,604 It was about, I'd say, 6'8"... something like that, you know... 590 00:34:31,405 --> 00:34:33,941 ...and it was... it was half bull, half man... 591 00:34:34,541 --> 00:34:36,210 ...and its skin was blue. 592 00:34:36,743 --> 00:34:39,746 It had violets growing out of its eyelids and poppies growing out of its toenails. 593 00:34:40,414 --> 00:34:43,484 And it just stood there for the whole mass. 594 00:34:44,218 --> 00:34:46,220 I mean, I could not make that creature disappear. 595 00:34:46,687 --> 00:34:49,223 You know, I thought, " Oh, well. You know, I'm just seeing this 'cause I'm bored. " 596 00:34:49,823 --> 00:34:54,161 You know, close my... I could not make that creature go away. 597 00:34:55,129 --> 00:34:58,365 Okay. Now, I didn't talk with people about it, because they'd think I was weird... 598 00:34:59,099 --> 00:35:03,704 ...but I felt that this creature was somehow coming to comfort me... 599 00:35:04,705 --> 00:35:07,407 ...that somehow he was appearing to say... 600 00:35:08,108 --> 00:35:11,912 "Well, you may feel low and you might not be able to create a play right now... 601 00:35:12,713 --> 00:35:16,049 "but look at what can come to you on Christmas Eve. Hang on, old friend. 602 00:35:16,817 --> 00:35:19,186 "I may seem weird to you, but on these weird voyages... 603 00:35:19,720 --> 00:35:21,388 "weird creatures appear. 604 00:35:21,822 --> 00:35:25,058 It's part of the journey. You're okay. Hang in there. " 605 00:35:31,064 --> 00:35:33,066 By the way, uh, did you ever see... 606 00:35:33,500 --> 00:35:36,537 ...that play, uh, The Violets are Blue? 607 00:35:39,072 --> 00:35:40,607 No. 608 00:35:41,008 --> 00:35:43,710 Oh, when you mentioned the violets, it-it reminded me of that. 609 00:35:44,344 --> 00:35:46,747 It-It was about, um, people... 610 00:35:47,347 --> 00:35:49,950 ...being, uh, strangled on a... On a submarine. 611 00:35:50,551 --> 00:35:52,352 Hmm. 612 00:35:56,690 --> 00:36:00,794 Well, so that was... that was Christmas. 613 00:36:01,695 --> 00:36:03,964 What happened after that? 614 00:36:04,498 --> 00:36:06,967 - Do you really want to hear about all this? - Yeah. 615 00:36:07,501 --> 00:36:10,604 Well, around that time... 616 00:36:14,441 --> 00:36:17,478 I was beginning to think about going to India. And Kozan suddenly left one day. 617 00:36:18,245 --> 00:36:21,048 I was beginning to get into a lot of very strange ideas around that time. 618 00:36:21,715 --> 00:36:25,052 Now, for example, I'd developed this... Well, I got this idea which I... 619 00:36:25,819 --> 00:36:28,522 Now, it was very appealing to me at the time, you know... 620 00:36:29,123 --> 00:36:31,892 ...which was that I would have a flag, a large flag... 621 00:36:32,493 --> 00:36:34,528 ...and that wherever I worked, this flag would fly. 622 00:36:35,062 --> 00:36:38,565 Or if we were outside, say, with a group, that the flag could be the thing we lay on at night... 623 00:36:39,333 --> 00:36:42,469 ...and that somehow, between working on this flag and lying on this flag... 624 00:36:43,270 --> 00:36:44,805 ...this flag flying over us... 625 00:36:45,272 --> 00:36:48,475 ...that the flag would pick up vibrations of a kind... 626 00:36:49,343 --> 00:36:51,612 ...that would still be in the flag when I brought it home. 627 00:36:52,146 --> 00:36:54,748 So I went down to meet this flag maker that I'd heard about. 628 00:36:55,349 --> 00:36:57,017 And you know, there was this very straightforward-looking guy. 629 00:36:57,417 --> 00:37:01,421 You know, very sweet, really healthy-looking and everything. Nice big, blond. 630 00:37:02,356 --> 00:37:04,825 And he had a beautiful, clean loft down in the village with lovely, happy flags. 631 00:37:05,425 --> 00:37:08,295 And I was all into The Little Prince, and I talked to him about The Little Prince... 632 00:37:08,896 --> 00:37:12,166 ...these adventures and everything, how I needed the flag and what the flag should be. 633 00:37:12,900 --> 00:37:14,835 He seemed to really connect with it. 634 00:37:15,302 --> 00:37:17,437 So, two weeks later, I came back. 635 00:37:17,905 --> 00:37:21,041 He showed me a flag that I thought was very odd, you know... 636 00:37:21,708 --> 00:37:23,377 'cause I had, you know... well, you know... 637 00:37:23,844 --> 00:37:26,647 I had expected something gentle and lyrical. 638 00:37:27,314 --> 00:37:29,249 There was something about this that was so powerful... 639 00:37:29,716 --> 00:37:31,318 ...it was almost overwhelming. 640 00:37:31,718 --> 00:37:33,387 And it did include the Tibetan swastika. 641 00:37:35,322 --> 00:37:37,191 He put a swastika in your flag? 642 00:37:37,658 --> 00:37:39,860 No, it was the Tibetan swastika, not the Nazi swastika. 643 00:37:40,461 --> 00:37:42,329 It's one of the most ancient Tibetan symbols. 644 00:37:42,863 --> 00:37:45,332 And it was just strange, you know? 645 00:37:45,933 --> 00:37:48,936 But I brought it home, because my idea with this flag... 646 00:37:49,670 --> 00:37:51,738 ...was that before I left... you know, before I left for India... 647 00:37:52,272 --> 00:37:55,476 I wanted several people who were close to me to have this flag in the room for the night... 648 00:37:56,276 --> 00:37:59,079 ...to sleep with it, you know, and then in the morning to sew something into the flag. 649 00:37:59,746 --> 00:38:03,083 So I took the flag into Marina, and I said, "Hey, look at this. What do you think of this?" 650 00:38:03,817 --> 00:38:06,153 And she said, " What is that? That's awful. " I said, " It's a flag. " 651 00:38:06,753 --> 00:38:08,088 And she said, " I don't like it. " 652 00:38:08,422 --> 00:38:11,091 I said, " I kind of thought you might like to spend the night with it, you know. " 653 00:38:11,692 --> 00:38:14,228 But she really thought the flag was awful. 654 00:38:14,828 --> 00:38:18,432 So then Chiquita threw this party for me before I left for India... 655 00:38:19,233 --> 00:38:20,968 ...and the apartment was filled with guests. 656 00:38:21,435 --> 00:38:23,971 And at one point Chiquita said, "The flag, the flag. Where's the flag?" 657 00:38:24,638 --> 00:38:27,908 And I said, " Oh, yeah. The flag. " And I go and get the flag, and I open it up. 658 00:38:28,709 --> 00:38:31,912 Chiquita goes absolutely white and runs out of the room and vomits. 659 00:38:32,646 --> 00:38:35,382 So the party just comes to a halt and breaks up. 660 00:38:36,049 --> 00:38:38,252 And then the next day I gave it to this young woman... 661 00:38:38,852 --> 00:38:40,988 ...who'd been in my group in Poland, who was now in New York. 662 00:38:41,522 --> 00:38:44,458 I didn't tell her anything about any of this. 663 00:38:45,125 --> 00:38:47,127 At 5:00 in the morning, she called me up and she said... 664 00:38:47,661 --> 00:38:49,663 "I gotta come and see you right away. " I thought, " Oh, God. " 665 00:38:50,130 --> 00:38:53,267 She came up, and she said, " I saw things... I saw things around this flag. 666 00:38:54,067 --> 00:38:56,537 "Now, I know you're stubborn, and I know you want to take this thing with you... 667 00:38:57,137 --> 00:38:59,606 "but if you'd follow my advice, you'd put it in a hole in the ground... 668 00:39:00,274 --> 00:39:02,609 ...and burn it and cover it with earth, cause the devil's in it. " 669 00:39:03,143 --> 00:39:04,745 I never took the flag with me. 670 00:39:05,145 --> 00:39:08,882 In fact, I gave it to her, and, uh, she... She had a ceremony with it... 671 00:39:09,750 --> 00:39:11,752 ...six months later, in France, with some friends... 672 00:39:12,219 --> 00:39:14,087 ...in which, uh, they did burn it. 673 00:39:15,556 --> 00:39:17,491 God. 674 00:39:17,958 --> 00:39:20,694 That's really, really amazing. 675 00:39:22,896 --> 00:39:25,098 So, did you ever go to India? 676 00:39:25,632 --> 00:39:28,368 Oh, yes, I... I went to India in the spring, Wally... 677 00:39:29,036 --> 00:39:31,104 ...and I came back home feeling all wrong. 678 00:39:31,638 --> 00:39:35,309 I mean, you know, I'd been to India, and I'd just felt like a tourist. 679 00:39:36,109 --> 00:39:38,445 I'd found nothing. 680 00:39:39,046 --> 00:39:42,983 So I was... I was spending, uh, the summer on Long Island with my family... 681 00:39:43,851 --> 00:39:46,320 ...and I heard about this community in Scotland called Findhorn... 682 00:39:46,920 --> 00:39:49,857 ...where people sang and talked and meditated with plants. 683 00:39:50,524 --> 00:39:55,129 And it was founded by several rather middle-class English and Scottish eccentrics. 684 00:39:56,130 --> 00:39:58,132 Some of them intellectuals, and some of them not. 685 00:39:58,665 --> 00:40:00,667 And I'd heard that they'd grown things in soil... 686 00:40:01,135 --> 00:40:03,737 ...that supposedly nothing can grow in, 'cause it's almost beach soil... 687 00:40:04,471 --> 00:40:07,875 ...and that they'd built... Not built... They'd grown the largest cauliflowers in the world... 688 00:40:08,675 --> 00:40:10,344 ...and there are sort of cabbages. 689 00:40:10,744 --> 00:40:13,881 And they've grown trees that can't grow in the British Isles. 690 00:40:14,681 --> 00:40:16,884 So I went there. I mean, it is an amazing place, Wally. 691 00:40:17,417 --> 00:40:20,954 I mean, if there are insects bothering the plants... 692 00:40:21,755 --> 00:40:24,691 ...they will talk with the insects and, you know, make an agreement... 693 00:40:25,359 --> 00:40:28,762 ...by which they'll set aside a special patch of vegetables just for the insects... 694 00:40:29,496 --> 00:40:31,298 ...and then the insects will leave the main part alone. 695 00:40:31,698 --> 00:40:33,367 - Huh. - Things like that. 696 00:40:33,834 --> 00:40:35,836 And everything they do they do beautifully. 697 00:40:36,303 --> 00:40:38,639 I mean, the buildings just shine. 698 00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:42,576 And I mean, for instance, the icebox, the stove, the car... They all have names. 699 00:40:43,310 --> 00:40:45,179 And since you wouldn't treat Helen, the icebox... 700 00:40:45,646 --> 00:40:47,648 ...with any less respect than you would Margaret, your wife... 701 00:40:48,115 --> 00:40:51,318 ...you know, you make sure that Helen is as clean as Margaret, or treated with equal respect. 702 00:40:54,321 --> 00:40:58,125 And when I was there, Wally, I remember being in the woods... 703 00:40:58,926 --> 00:41:02,796 ...and I would look at a leaf, and I would actually see that thing... 704 00:41:03,664 --> 00:41:06,333 ...that is alive in that leaf. 705 00:41:06,934 --> 00:41:09,403 And then I remember just running through the woods as fast as I could... 706 00:41:10,070 --> 00:41:12,139 ...with this incredible laugh coming out of me... 707 00:41:12,673 --> 00:41:17,010 ...and really being in that state,you know, where laughter and tears seem to merge. 708 00:41:17,945 --> 00:41:19,546 I mean, it absolutely blasted me open. 709 00:41:19,947 --> 00:41:22,549 When I came out of Findhorn, I was hallucinating nonstop. 710 00:41:23,150 --> 00:41:25,285 I was seeing clouds as creatures. 711 00:41:25,819 --> 00:41:28,021 The people on the airplane all had animals' faces. 712 00:41:28,555 --> 00:41:31,959 I mean, I was on a trip. It was like being in a William Blake world suddenly. 713 00:41:32,759 --> 00:41:34,361 Things were exploding. 714 00:41:34,761 --> 00:41:38,365 So immediately I went to Belgrade, 'cause I wanted to talk to Grotowski. 715 00:41:39,099 --> 00:41:41,768 Grotowski and I got together at midnight in my hotel room... 716 00:41:42,436 --> 00:41:45,372 ...and we drank instant coffee out of the top of my shaving cream... 717 00:41:46,039 --> 00:41:49,376 ...and we talked from midnight until 11:00 the next morning. 718 00:41:50,244 --> 00:41:52,246 - God. What did he say? - Nothing! 719 00:41:52,713 --> 00:41:54,515 I talked. He didn't say a word. 720 00:41:54,915 --> 00:41:58,051 And...And then I guess really... 721 00:41:59,653 --> 00:42:02,990 ...the last big experience of this kind took place that fall. 722 00:42:03,724 --> 00:42:05,325 It was out at Montauk on Long Island... 723 00:42:05,726 --> 00:42:08,729 ...and there were only about nine of us involved, mostly men. 724 00:42:09,463 --> 00:42:11,932 And we borrowed Dick Avedon's property out at Montauk. 725 00:42:12,533 --> 00:42:15,202 And the country out there is like Heathcliff country. 726 00:42:15,869 --> 00:42:17,938 It's absolutely wild. 727 00:42:18,539 --> 00:42:20,541 What we wanted to do was we wanted to take, you know... 728 00:42:21,074 --> 00:42:22,943 We wanted to take All Souls' Eve, Halloween... 729 00:42:23,477 --> 00:42:25,345 ...and use it as a point of departure for something. 730 00:42:25,879 --> 00:42:28,682 So each one of us prepared some sort of event for the others... 731 00:42:29,483 --> 00:42:31,819 ...somehow in the spirit of All Souls' Eve. 732 00:42:32,352 --> 00:42:34,755 But the biggest event was three of the people... 733 00:42:35,355 --> 00:42:37,357 ...kept disappearing in the middle of the night each night... 734 00:42:37,825 --> 00:42:39,760 ...and we knew they were preparing something big... 735 00:42:40,227 --> 00:42:41,895 ...but we didn't know what. 736 00:42:42,362 --> 00:42:45,833 And midnight on Halloween, under a dark moon, above these cliffs... 737 00:42:46,633 --> 00:42:49,837 ...we were all told to gather at the topmost cliff and that we would be taken somewhere. 738 00:42:50,504 --> 00:42:54,107 And we did. And we waited, and it was very, very cold. 739 00:42:54,908 --> 00:42:58,045 And then the three of them... Helen, Bill and Fred... Showed up wearing white. 740 00:42:58,712 --> 00:43:02,182 You know, something they'd made out of sheets... Looked a little spooky, not funny. 741 00:43:02,916 --> 00:43:06,854 And they took us into the basement of this house that had burned down on the property. 742 00:43:07,721 --> 00:43:11,058 And in this ruined basement, they had set up a table with benches they'd made. 743 00:43:11,859 --> 00:43:16,063 And on this table they had laid out paper, pencils, wine and glasses. 744 00:43:17,064 --> 00:43:21,468 And we were all asked to sit at the table and to make out our last will and testament. 745 00:43:22,469 --> 00:43:25,339 You know, to think about and write down whatever our last words were to the world... 746 00:43:26,140 --> 00:43:27,941 ...or to somebody we were very close to. 747 00:43:28,542 --> 00:43:30,677 And that's quite a task. 748 00:43:31,278 --> 00:43:34,081 I must have been there for about an hour and a half or so, maybe two. 749 00:43:34,882 --> 00:43:37,684 And then one at a time they would ask one of us to come with them... 750 00:43:38,352 --> 00:43:40,020 ...and I was one of the last. 751 00:43:40,487 --> 00:43:42,489 And they came for me, and they put a blindfold on me... 752 00:43:42,956 --> 00:43:44,758 ...and they ran me through these fields... two people. 753 00:43:45,225 --> 00:43:48,629 And they'd found a kind of potting shed... you know, a kind of shed, on the grounds... 754 00:43:49,429 --> 00:43:52,366 ...a little tiny room that had once had tools in it. 755 00:43:53,033 --> 00:43:55,569 And they took me down the steps, into this basement... 756 00:43:56,103 --> 00:44:00,240 ...and the room was just filled with harsh white light. 757 00:44:01,108 --> 00:44:04,044 Then they told me to get undressed and give them all my valuables. 758 00:44:04,711 --> 00:44:06,713 Then they put me on a table, and they sponged me down. 759 00:44:07,247 --> 00:44:10,984 Well, you know, I just started flashing on-on-on death camps and secret police. 760 00:44:11,852 --> 00:44:15,055 I don't know what happened to the other people, but I just started to cry uncontrollably. 761 00:44:15,722 --> 00:44:19,526 Uh, then-then they got me to my feet and they took photographs of me, naked. 762 00:44:20,327 --> 00:44:22,663 And then naked, again blindfolded, I was run through these forests... 763 00:44:23,263 --> 00:44:25,933 ...and we came to a kind of tent made of sheets, with sheets on the ground. 764 00:44:26,533 --> 00:44:28,202 And there were all these naked bodies... 765 00:44:28,669 --> 00:44:31,538 ...huddling together for warmth against the cold. 766 00:44:32,339 --> 00:44:34,074 Must have been left there for about an hour. 767 00:44:34,541 --> 00:44:37,144 And then again, one by one, one at a time, we were led out. 768 00:44:37,744 --> 00:44:39,413 The blindfold was put on... 769 00:44:39,880 --> 00:44:42,950 ...and I felt myself being lowered onto something like a stretcher. 770 00:44:43,684 --> 00:44:47,754 And the stretcher was carried a long way, very slowly, through these forests... 771 00:44:48,689 --> 00:44:53,427 ...and then I felt myself being lowered into the ground. 772 00:44:54,428 --> 00:44:57,498 They had, in fact, dug six graves... 773 00:44:58,232 --> 00:45:00,501 ...eight feet deep. 774 00:45:01,034 --> 00:45:04,638 And then I felt these pieces of wood being put on me. 775 00:45:05,439 --> 00:45:08,308 And I cannot tell you, Wally, what I was going through. 776 00:45:08,909 --> 00:45:11,712 And then the stretcher was lowered into the grave... 777 00:45:12,312 --> 00:45:13,981 ...and then this wood was put on me... 778 00:45:14,448 --> 00:45:16,517 ...and then my valuables were put on me, in my hands. 779 00:45:17,050 --> 00:45:19,319 And they'd taken, you know, a kind of sheet or canvas... 780 00:45:19,853 --> 00:45:21,922 ...and they'd stretched about this much above my head... 781 00:45:22,456 --> 00:45:24,792 ...and then they shoveled dirt into the grave... 782 00:45:26,527 --> 00:45:30,397 ...so that I really had the feeling of being buried alive. 783 00:45:33,333 --> 00:45:35,669 And after being in the grave for about half an hour... 784 00:45:36,270 --> 00:45:39,006 I mean, I didn't know how long I'd be in there... 785 00:45:39,673 --> 00:45:41,742 I was resurrected, lifted out of the grave... 786 00:45:42,276 --> 00:45:44,278 ...blindfold taken off, and run through these fields. 787 00:45:44,745 --> 00:45:48,415 And we came to a great circle of fire, with music and hot wine... 788 00:45:49,283 --> 00:45:51,018 ...and everyone danced until dawn. 789 00:45:51,485 --> 00:45:54,221 And then at dawn... 790 00:45:54,888 --> 00:45:57,357 ...to the best of our ability, we filled up the graves... 791 00:45:57,958 --> 00:46:00,227 ...and went back to New York. 792 00:46:03,764 --> 00:46:06,834 And that was really the last big event. I mean, that was the end. 793 00:46:07,568 --> 00:46:09,169 I mean, you know, I began to realize... 794 00:46:09,570 --> 00:46:11,839 I just didn't want to do these things anymore, you know? 795 00:46:12,372 --> 00:46:16,110 I felt sort of becalmed, you know, like that chapter in Moby Dick... 796 00:46:16,910 --> 00:46:19,446 ...where the wind goes out of the sails. 797 00:46:20,114 --> 00:46:22,382 And then last winter, without, uh, thinking about it very much... 798 00:46:22,916 --> 00:46:26,520 I went to see this agent I know to tell him I was interested in directing plays again. 799 00:46:27,321 --> 00:46:29,323 Actually, he seemed a little surprised... 800 00:46:29,857 --> 00:46:32,726 ...to see that Rip Van Winkle was still alive. 801 00:46:38,932 --> 00:46:40,534 Mmm. 802 00:46:40,934 --> 00:46:42,603 God. 803 00:46:43,070 --> 00:46:44,605 I didn't know they were so small. 804 00:46:47,875 --> 00:46:49,610 Well,you know, frankly... 805 00:46:50,077 --> 00:46:52,412 I'm sort of repelled by the whole story, if you really want to know. 806 00:46:52,946 --> 00:46:54,948 - What? - Ah, you know... 807 00:46:55,482 --> 00:46:57,151 Who did I think I was, you know? 808 00:46:57,551 --> 00:47:01,355 I mean, that's the story of some kind of spoiled princess, you know. 809 00:47:02,289 --> 00:47:04,158 Who did I think I was, the Shah of Iran? 810 00:47:04,691 --> 00:47:08,695 You know, I really wonder if people such as myself are really not Albert Speer, Wally. 811 00:47:09,563 --> 00:47:13,033 - You know, Hitler's architect, Albert Speer? - What? 812 00:47:13,834 --> 00:47:16,837 No, I've been thinking a lot about him recently because, uh, I think I am Speer. 813 00:47:17,571 --> 00:47:20,040 And I think it's time that I was caught and tried the way he was. 814 00:47:20,774 --> 00:47:22,109 What are you talking about? 815 00:47:22,443 --> 00:47:25,646 Well, you know, he was a very cultivated man, an architect, an artist, you know... 816 00:47:26,313 --> 00:47:29,183 ...so he thought the ordinary rules of life didn't apply to him either. 817 00:47:32,453 --> 00:47:35,656 I mean, I really feel that everything I've done... 818 00:47:36,323 --> 00:47:38,459 ...is horrific,just horrific. 819 00:47:38,926 --> 00:47:41,462 My God. But why? 820 00:47:42,062 --> 00:47:45,799 You see...You see, I've seen a lot of death in the last few years, Wally... 821 00:47:46,667 --> 00:47:48,535 ...and there's one thing that's for sure about death... 822 00:47:49,069 --> 00:47:51,138 You do it alone, you see. That seems quite certain, you see. 823 00:47:51,672 --> 00:47:54,208 That I've seen. That the people around your bed mean nothing. 824 00:47:54,875 --> 00:47:57,344 Your reviews mean nothing. Whatever it is, you do it alone. 825 00:47:57,945 --> 00:48:01,348 And so the question is, when I get on my deathbed, what kind of a person am I gonna be? 826 00:48:02,149 --> 00:48:04,485 And I'm just very dubious about the kind of person who would have lived his life... 827 00:48:05,085 --> 00:48:06,620 ...those last few years the way I did. 828 00:48:07,087 --> 00:48:09,223 Why should you feel that way? 829 00:48:09,756 --> 00:48:13,494 You see, I've had a very rough time in the last few months, Wally. 830 00:48:14,361 --> 00:48:17,631 Three different people in my family were in the hospital at the same time. 831 00:48:18,365 --> 00:48:19,967 Then my mother died. 832 00:48:20,367 --> 00:48:22,836 Then Marina had something wrong with her back, and we were terribly worried about her. 833 00:48:23,437 --> 00:48:26,039 You know, so... So, I mean, I'm feeling very raw right now. 834 00:48:26,774 --> 00:48:29,376 I mean, uh... I mean, I can't sleep, my nerves are shot. 835 00:48:29,977 --> 00:48:31,645 I mean, I'm affected by everything. 836 00:48:32,045 --> 00:48:35,449 You know, la-last week I had this really nice director from Norway over for dinner... 837 00:48:36,250 --> 00:48:38,118 ...and he's someone I've known for years and years... 838 00:48:38,519 --> 00:48:40,387 ...and he's somebody that I think I'm quite fond of. 839 00:48:40,854 --> 00:48:43,524 And I was sitting there just thinking that he was a pompous, defensive... 840 00:48:44,124 --> 00:48:46,126 ...conservative stuffed shirt who was only interested in the theater. 841 00:48:46,660 --> 00:48:49,596 He was talking and talking. His mother had been a famous Norwegian comedienne. 842 00:48:50,264 --> 00:48:53,867 I realized he had said " I remember my mother" at least 400 times during the evening. 843 00:48:54,668 --> 00:48:57,204 And he was telling story after story about his mother. 844 00:48:57,871 --> 00:49:00,274 You know, I'd heard these stories 20 times in the past. 845 00:49:00,874 --> 00:49:03,076 He was drinking this whole bottle of bourbon very quietly. 846 00:49:03,677 --> 00:49:05,412 His laugh was so horrible. 847 00:49:05,879 --> 00:49:08,882 You know, I could hear his laugh... the pain in that laugh, the hollowness. 848 00:49:09,550 --> 00:49:11,552 You know, what being that woman's son had done to him. 849 00:49:12,085 --> 00:49:15,155 You know, so at a certain point I just had to ask him to leave... Nicely, you know. 850 00:49:15,889 --> 00:49:18,692 I told him I had to get up early the next morning, 'cause it was so horrible. 851 00:49:19,359 --> 00:49:21,361 It was just as if he had died in my living room. 852 00:49:21,895 --> 00:49:25,299 You know, then I went into the bathroom and cried 'cause I felt I'd lost a friend. 853 00:49:26,100 --> 00:49:27,835 And then after he'd gone, I turned the television on... 854 00:49:28,235 --> 00:49:30,237 ...and there was this guy who had just won the something-something. 855 00:49:30,771 --> 00:49:33,707 Some sports event... Some kind of a great big check and some kind of huge silver bottle. 856 00:49:34,374 --> 00:49:36,376 And he, you know... He couldn't stuff the check in the bottle... 857 00:49:36,844 --> 00:49:39,513 ...and he put the bottle in front of his nose and pretended it was his face. 858 00:49:40,114 --> 00:49:42,049 He wasn't really listening to the guy who was interviewing him... 859 00:49:42,516 --> 00:49:45,385 ...but he was smiling malevolently at his friends, and I looked at that guy and I thought... 860 00:49:46,053 --> 00:49:49,389 "What a horrible, empty, manipulative rat. " 861 00:49:50,124 --> 00:49:53,393 Then I thought, " That guy is me. " 862 00:49:54,128 --> 00:49:56,797 Then last night actually, you know, it was our 20th wedding anniversary... 863 00:49:57,464 --> 00:49:59,333 ...and I took Chiquita to see this show about Billie Holiday. 864 00:49:59,733 --> 00:50:02,669 I looked at these show business people who know nothing about Billie Holiday, nothing. 865 00:50:03,337 --> 00:50:06,473 You see, they were really kind of, in a way, intellectual creeps. 866 00:50:07,141 --> 00:50:10,344 And I suddenly had this feeling. I mean, you know I was just sitting there, crying through most of the show. 867 00:50:11,078 --> 00:50:13,413 And I suddenly had this feeling I was just as creepy as they were... 868 00:50:13,947 --> 00:50:15,616 ...and that my whole life had been a sham... 869 00:50:16,083 --> 00:50:18,418 ...and I didn't have the guts to be Billie Holiday either. 870 00:50:18,952 --> 00:50:22,089 I mean, I really feel that I'm just washed up, wiped out. 871 00:50:22,890 --> 00:50:25,092 I feel I've just squandered my life. 872 00:50:29,096 --> 00:50:32,299 André, now, how can you say something like that? 873 00:50:33,100 --> 00:50:34,635 I mean... 874 00:50:42,776 --> 00:50:47,448 Well, you know, I may be in a very emotional state right now, Wally... 875 00:50:48,449 --> 00:50:50,984 ...but since I've come back home I've just been finding the world we're living in... 876 00:50:51,518 --> 00:50:53,654 ...more and more upsetting. 877 00:50:54,121 --> 00:50:56,590 I mean, last week I went down to the Public Theater one afternoon. 878 00:50:57,124 --> 00:50:58,992 You know, when I walked in, I said hello to everybody... 879 00:50:59,460 --> 00:51:01,795 'cause I know them all, and they all know me, they're always very friendly. 880 00:51:02,329 --> 00:51:05,599 You know that seven or eight people told me how wonderful I looked? 881 00:51:06,333 --> 00:51:09,269 And then one person... One... A woman who runs the casting office, said... 882 00:51:09,937 --> 00:51:11,605 "Gee, you look horrible. Is something wrong?" 883 00:51:12,072 --> 00:51:14,541 Now, she...You know, we started talking. Of course, I started telling her things. 884 00:51:15,142 --> 00:51:18,412 And she suddenly burst into tears because an aunt of hers who's 80... 885 00:51:19,279 --> 00:51:22,749 ...whom she's very fond of, went into the hospital for a cataract, which was solved. 886 00:51:23,550 --> 00:51:26,487 But the nurse was so sloppy, she didn't put the bed rails up... 887 00:51:27,154 --> 00:51:29,756 ...and so the aunt fell out of bed and is now a complete cripple. 888 00:51:30,357 --> 00:51:32,292 So you know, we were talking about hospitals. 889 00:51:32,759 --> 00:51:35,496 Now, you know, this woman, because of who she is... 890 00:51:36,163 --> 00:51:38,098 You know, 'cause this had happened to her very, very recently. 891 00:51:38,565 --> 00:51:41,502 - She could see me with complete clarity. - Uh-huh. 892 00:51:42,169 --> 00:51:43,837 She didn't know anything about what I'd been going through. 893 00:51:44,238 --> 00:51:46,440 But the other people, what they saw was this tan, or this shirt... 894 00:51:46,974 --> 00:51:48,642 ...or the fact that the shirt goes well with the tan. 895 00:51:49,042 --> 00:51:50,644 So they said, " Gee, you look wonderful. " 896 00:51:51,044 --> 00:51:53,781 Now, they're living in an insane dreamworld. 897 00:51:54,448 --> 00:51:57,117 They're not looking. That seems very strange to me. 898 00:51:57,718 --> 00:52:00,387 Right, because they just didn't see anything, somehow... 899 00:52:01,054 --> 00:52:03,924 ...except, uh, the few little things that they wanted to see. 900 00:52:07,528 --> 00:52:11,331 Yeah, you know, it's like what happened just before my mother died. 901 00:52:12,132 --> 00:52:14,134 You know, we'd gone to the hospital to see my mother... 902 00:52:14,668 --> 00:52:16,670 ...and I went in to see her... 903 00:52:17,137 --> 00:52:20,941 ...and I saw this woman who looked as bad as any survivor of Auschwitz or Dachau. 904 00:52:21,875 --> 00:52:24,945 And I was out in the hall sort of comforting my father... 905 00:52:25,679 --> 00:52:29,016 ...when a doctor who was a specialist in a problem she had with her arm... 906 00:52:29,750 --> 00:52:32,085 ...went into her room and came out just beaming. 907 00:52:32,686 --> 00:52:35,823 And he said, " Boy, don't we have a lot of reason to feel great? 908 00:52:36,557 --> 00:52:39,560 Isn't it wonderful how she's coming along?" 909 00:52:40,294 --> 00:52:44,364 Now, all he saw was the arm. That's all he saw. 910 00:52:45,299 --> 00:52:48,969 Now, here's another person who's existing in a dream. 911 00:52:49,770 --> 00:52:51,772 Who, on top of that, is a kind of butcher... 912 00:52:52,372 --> 00:52:54,174 ...who's committing a kind of familial murder... 913 00:52:54,641 --> 00:52:57,311 ...because when he comes out of that room, he psychically kills us... 914 00:52:57,978 --> 00:52:59,646 ...by taking us into a dream world... 915 00:53:00,047 --> 00:53:02,916 ...where we become confused and frightened... 916 00:53:03,584 --> 00:53:06,320 'cause the moment before, we saw somebody who already looked dead... 917 00:53:06,920 --> 00:53:10,724 ...and now here comes a specialist who tells us they're in wonderful shape. 918 00:53:11,525 --> 00:53:13,794 I mean, they were literally driving my father crazy. 919 00:53:14,328 --> 00:53:16,930 I mean, you know, here's an 82-year-old man who's very emotional... 920 00:53:17,531 --> 00:53:20,067 ...and you know, and if you go in one moment, and you see the person's dying... 921 00:53:20,667 --> 00:53:23,203 ...and you don't want them to die, and then a doctor comes out five minutes later... 922 00:53:23,737 --> 00:53:25,405 ...and tells you they're in wonderful shape... 923 00:53:25,873 --> 00:53:28,075 I mean, you know, you can go crazy. 924 00:53:28,542 --> 00:53:31,745 - Yeah. I know what you mean. - I mean, the doctor didn't see my mother. 925 00:53:32,479 --> 00:53:34,548 The people at the Public Theater didn't see me. 926 00:53:35,082 --> 00:53:37,551 I mean, we're just walking around in some kind of fog. 927 00:53:38,152 --> 00:53:41,622 I think we're all in a trance. We're walking around like zombies. 928 00:53:42,356 --> 00:53:45,359 I don't... I don't think we're even aware of ourselves or our own reaction to things. 929 00:53:46,093 --> 00:53:48,495 We...We're just going around all day like unconscious machines... 930 00:53:49,096 --> 00:53:51,632 ...and meanwhile there's all of this rage and worry and uneasiness... 931 00:53:52,299 --> 00:53:54,034 ...just building up and building up inside us. 932 00:53:54,501 --> 00:53:56,370 That's right. It just builds up, uh... 933 00:53:56,904 --> 00:53:59,640 ...and then it just leaps out inappropriately. 934 00:54:01,708 --> 00:54:03,844 I mean, I remember when I was, uh, acting in this play... 935 00:54:04,445 --> 00:54:06,046 ...based on The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. 936 00:54:06,447 --> 00:54:08,449 And I was playing the part of the cat. 937 00:54:08,982 --> 00:54:10,984 But they had trouble, uh, making up my cat suit... 938 00:54:11,452 --> 00:54:14,521 ...so I didn't get it delivered to me till the night of the first performance. 939 00:54:15,255 --> 00:54:18,258 Particularly the head... I mean, I'd never even had a chance to try it on. 940 00:54:18,926 --> 00:54:21,862 And about four of my fellow actors actually came up to me... 941 00:54:22,529 --> 00:54:24,731 ...and they said these things which I just couldn't help thinking... 942 00:54:25,265 --> 00:54:26,867 ...were attempts to destroy me. 943 00:54:27,267 --> 00:54:30,537 You know, one of them said, uh, "Oh, well, now that head... 944 00:54:31,271 --> 00:54:33,340 "will totally change your hearing in the performance. 945 00:54:34,141 --> 00:54:36,743 "You may hear everything completely differently... 946 00:54:37,277 --> 00:54:39,146 "and it may be very upsetting. 947 00:54:39,613 --> 00:54:42,282 "Now, I was once in a performance where I was wearing earmuffs... 948 00:54:42,883 --> 00:54:46,019 ...and I couldn't hear anything anybody said. " 949 00:54:46,687 --> 00:54:49,823 And then another one said, " Oh, you know, whenever I wear even a hat on stage... 950 00:54:50,491 --> 00:54:52,092 I tend to faint. " 951 00:54:52,493 --> 00:54:55,028 I mean, those remarks were just full of hostility... 952 00:54:55,629 --> 00:54:58,432 ...because, I mean, if I'd listened to those people, I would have gone out there on stage... 953 00:54:59,099 --> 00:55:01,435 ...and I wouldn't have been able to hear anything, and I would have fainted. 954 00:55:02,035 --> 00:55:03,704 But the hostility was completely inappropriate... 955 00:55:04,104 --> 00:55:05,706 ...because, in fact, those people liked me. 956 00:55:06,106 --> 00:55:09,042 I mean, that hostility was just some feeling that was, you know... 957 00:55:09,710 --> 00:55:12,045 ...left over from some previous experience. 958 00:55:12,646 --> 00:55:15,449 Because somehow in our social existence today... 959 00:55:16,116 --> 00:55:18,786 ...we're only allowed to express our feelings, uh... 960 00:55:19,453 --> 00:55:21,188 ...weirdly and indirectly. 961 00:55:21,655 --> 00:55:23,724 If you express them directly, everybody goes crazy. 962 00:55:24,191 --> 00:55:26,794 Well, did you express your feelings about what those people said to you? 963 00:55:27,394 --> 00:55:30,798 No. I mean, I didn't even know what I felt till I thought about it later. 964 00:55:31,598 --> 00:55:34,468 And I mean, at the most, you know, in a situation like that, uh... 965 00:55:35,068 --> 00:55:36,937 ...even if I had known what I felt... 966 00:55:37,404 --> 00:55:39,673 I might say something, if I'm really annoyed... 967 00:55:40,207 --> 00:55:43,410 ...like, uh, " Oh, yeah. Well, that's just fascinating... 968 00:55:44,077 --> 00:55:47,214 ...and, uh, I probably will faint tonight,just as you did. " 969 00:55:47,881 --> 00:55:50,350 I do just the same thing myself. 970 00:55:50,884 --> 00:55:53,687 We can't be direct, so we end up saying the weirdest things. 971 00:55:54,288 --> 00:55:56,957 I mean, I remember a night. It was a couple of weeks after my mother died. 972 00:55:57,624 --> 00:55:59,159 And I was in pretty bad shape. 973 00:55:59,626 --> 00:56:01,361 And I had dinner with three relatively close friends... 974 00:56:01,829 --> 00:56:03,497 ...two of whom had known my mother quite well... 975 00:56:03,897 --> 00:56:06,033 ...and all three of whom had known me for years. 976 00:56:06,500 --> 00:56:08,836 You know that we went through that entire evening without my being able to... 977 00:56:09,436 --> 00:56:11,105 ...for a moment, get anywhere near what... 978 00:56:11,505 --> 00:56:13,307 Not that I wanted to sit and have this dreary evening... 979 00:56:13,841 --> 00:56:16,176 ...in which I was talking about all this pain that I was going through and everything. 980 00:56:16,710 --> 00:56:18,112 Really, not at all. 981 00:56:18,512 --> 00:56:20,247 But the fact that nobody could say... 982 00:56:20,714 --> 00:56:23,117 "Gee, what a shame about your mother" or " How are you feeling?" 983 00:56:23,717 --> 00:56:26,453 It was just as if nothing had happened. They were all making these jokes and laughing. 984 00:56:27,121 --> 00:56:28,789 I got quite crazy, as a matter of fact. 985 00:56:29,189 --> 00:56:31,258 One of these people mentioned a certain man whom I don't like very much... 986 00:56:31,792 --> 00:56:35,062 ...and I started screeching about how he had just been found in the Bronx River... 987 00:56:35,796 --> 00:56:39,199 ...and his penis had dropped off from gonorrhea, and all kinds of insane things. 988 00:56:40,000 --> 00:56:43,937 And later, when I got home, I realized I'd just been desperate to break through this ice. 989 00:56:44,805 --> 00:56:46,073 Yeah. 990 00:56:46,406 --> 00:56:49,743 I mean, do you realize, Wally, if you brought that situation into a Tibetan home... 991 00:56:50,477 --> 00:56:53,013 That'd be just so far out. I mean, they wouldn't be able to understand it. 992 00:56:53,614 --> 00:56:55,616 That would be simply... simply so weird, Wally. 993 00:56:56,083 --> 00:56:59,353 If four Tibetans came together, and tragedy had just struck one of the ones... 994 00:57:00,087 --> 00:57:03,957 ...and they spent the whole evening going... 995 00:57:04,825 --> 00:57:06,627 I mean,you know, Tibetans would have looked at that... 996 00:57:07,094 --> 00:57:09,696 ...and would have thought that was the most unimaginable behavior. 997 00:57:10,297 --> 00:57:12,232 - But for us, that's common behavior. - Mm-hmm. 998 00:57:12,699 --> 00:57:15,836 I mean, really, the... The Africans would have probably put their spears into all four of us... 999 00:57:16,603 --> 00:57:18,205 'cause it would have driven them crazy. 1000 00:57:18,639 --> 00:57:20,707 They would have thought we were dangerous animals or something like that. 1001 00:57:21,241 --> 00:57:24,378 - Right. - I mean, that's absolutely abnormal behavior. 1002 00:57:25,112 --> 00:57:26,947 Is everything all right, gentlemen? 1003 00:57:27,414 --> 00:57:28,982 - Great. - Yeah. 1004 00:57:33,387 --> 00:57:35,255 But those are typical evenings for us. 1005 00:57:35,722 --> 00:57:39,193 I mean, we go to dinners and parties like that all the time. 1006 00:57:39,993 --> 00:57:42,529 These evenings are really like sort of sickly dreams... 1007 00:57:43,063 --> 00:57:45,199 ...because people are talking in symbols. 1008 00:57:45,666 --> 00:57:49,203 Everyone is sort of floating through this fog of symbols and unconscious feelings. 1009 00:57:50,003 --> 00:57:52,005 No one says what they're really thinking about. 1010 00:57:52,473 --> 00:57:56,643 Then people will start making these jokes that are really some sort of secret code. 1011 00:57:57,611 --> 00:57:59,613 Right. Well, what often happens in some of these evenings... 1012 00:58:00,080 --> 00:58:03,750 ...is that these really crazy little fantasies will just start being played with, you know... 1013 00:58:04,618 --> 00:58:07,154 ...and everyone will be talking at once and sort of saying... 1014 00:58:07,821 --> 00:58:10,958 "Hey, wouldn't it be great if Frank Sinatra and Mrs. Nixon and blah-blah-blah... 1015 00:58:11,658 --> 00:58:13,761 ...were in such and such a situation?" 1016 00:58:14,294 --> 00:58:17,097 You know, always with famous people, and always sort of grotesque. 1017 00:58:17,831 --> 00:58:19,967 Or people will be talking about some horrible thing... 1018 00:58:20,501 --> 00:58:24,238 ...like... Like, uh, the death of that girl in the car with Ted Kennedy... 1019 00:58:25,105 --> 00:58:27,074 ...and they'll just be roaring with laughter. 1020 00:58:27,574 --> 00:58:29,643 I mean, it's really amazing. It's just unbelievable. 1021 00:58:30,177 --> 00:58:34,448 That's the only way anything is expressed, through these completely insane jokes. 1022 00:58:35,382 --> 00:58:38,051 I mean, I think that's why I never understand what's going on at a party. 1023 00:58:38,685 --> 00:58:41,321 I'm always completely confused. 1024 00:58:42,022 --> 00:58:45,926 You know, uh, Debby once said, after one of these New York evenings... 1025 00:58:46,794 --> 00:58:48,729 ...she thought she'd traveled a greater distance... 1026 00:58:49,196 --> 00:58:52,099 ...just by journeying from her origins in the suburbs of Chicago... 1027 00:58:52,800 --> 00:58:54,401 ...to that New York evening... 1028 00:58:54,802 --> 00:58:57,337 ...than her grandmother had traveled in, uh, making her way... 1029 00:58:58,005 --> 00:59:00,140 ...from the steppes of Russia to the suburbs of Chicago. 1030 00:59:00,674 --> 00:59:02,609 I think that's right. 1031 00:59:04,178 --> 00:59:06,346 You know, it may... it may be, Wally, that one of the reasons... 1032 00:59:06,880 --> 00:59:08,482 ...that we don't know what's going on... 1033 00:59:08,882 --> 00:59:11,285 ...is that when we're there at a party, we're all too busy performing. 1034 00:59:11,885 --> 00:59:12,953 Uh-huh. 1035 00:59:13,287 --> 00:59:16,090 That was one of the reasons that, uh, Grotowski gave up the theater. 1036 00:59:16,824 --> 00:59:20,227 He just felt that people in their lives now were performing so well... 1037 00:59:21,028 --> 00:59:23,230 ...that performance in the theater was sort of superfluous... 1038 00:59:23,797 --> 00:59:25,399 ...and, in a way, obscene. 1039 00:59:25,766 --> 00:59:27,534 Huh. 1040 00:59:28,102 --> 00:59:30,370 Isn't it amazing how often a doctor... 1041 00:59:30,871 --> 00:59:33,173 ...will live up to our expectation of how a doctor should look? 1042 00:59:33,707 --> 00:59:36,643 When you see a terrorist on television, he looks just like a terrorist. 1043 00:59:37,311 --> 00:59:39,379 I mean, we live in a world in which fathers... 1044 00:59:39,847 --> 00:59:41,715 ...or single people, or artists... 1045 00:59:42,182 --> 00:59:44,051 ...are all trying to live up to someone's fantasy... 1046 00:59:44,451 --> 00:59:47,721 ...of how a father, or a single person, or an artist should look and behave. 1047 00:59:48,455 --> 00:59:50,791 They all act as if they know exactly how they ought to conduct themselves... 1048 00:59:51,391 --> 00:59:52,960 ...at every single moment... 1049 00:59:53,393 --> 00:59:55,129 ...and they all seem totally self-confident. 1050 00:59:55,596 --> 00:59:57,664 Of course, privately people are very mixed up about themselves. 1051 00:59:58,198 --> 00:59:59,066 Yeah. 1052 00:59:59,399 --> 01:00:01,201 They don't know what they should be doing with their lives. 1053 01:00:01,702 --> 01:00:03,437 - They're reading all these self-help books. - Oh, God! 1054 01:00:04,004 --> 01:00:06,006 I mean, those books are just so touching, because they show... 1055 01:00:06,607 --> 01:00:09,009 ...how desperately curious we all are to know how all the others of us... 1056 01:00:09,610 --> 01:00:11,145 ...are really getting on in life... 1057 01:00:11,612 --> 01:00:13,814 ...even though, by performing these roles all the time... 1058 01:00:14,414 --> 01:00:16,884 ...we're just hiding the reality of ourselves from everybody else. 1059 01:00:17,484 --> 01:00:19,653 I mean, we live in such ludicrous ignorance of each other. 1060 01:00:20,220 --> 01:00:22,022 We usually don't know the things we'd like to know... 1061 01:00:22,489 --> 01:00:24,158 ...even about our supposedly closest friends. 1062 01:00:24,625 --> 01:00:26,160 I mean... I mean, you know... 1063 01:00:26,560 --> 01:00:28,629 ...suppose you're going through some kind of hell in your own life. 1064 01:00:29,163 --> 01:00:32,032 Well, you would love to know if your friends have experienced similar things. 1065 01:00:32,699 --> 01:00:34,268 But we just don't dare to ask each other. 1066 01:00:34,668 --> 01:00:36,703 No. It would be like asking your friend to drop his role. 1067 01:00:37,171 --> 01:00:40,040 I mean, we just put no value at all on perceiving reality. 1068 01:00:40,641 --> 01:00:43,644 I mean, on the contrary, this incredible emphasis that we all place now... 1069 01:00:44,378 --> 01:00:46,046 ...on our so-called careers... 1070 01:00:46,447 --> 01:00:50,317 ...automatically makes perceiving reality a very low priority... 1071 01:00:51,185 --> 01:00:55,055 ...because if your life is organized around trying to be successful in a career... 1072 01:00:55,856 --> 01:01:00,127 ...well, it just doesn't matter what you perceive or what you experience. 1073 01:01:01,061 --> 01:01:03,864 You can really sort of shut your mind off for years ahead, in a way. 1074 01:01:04,465 --> 01:01:06,934 You can sort of turn on the automatic pilot. 1075 01:01:07,468 --> 01:01:10,337 You know,just the way your mother's doctor had on his automatic pilot... 1076 01:01:10,971 --> 01:01:12,806 ...when he went in and he looked at the arm... 1077 01:01:13,273 --> 01:01:15,275 ...and he totally failed to perceive anything else. 1078 01:01:15,809 --> 01:01:19,146 That's right. Our... Our minds are just focused on these goals and plans... 1079 01:01:19,880 --> 01:01:21,482 ...which in themselves are not reality. 1080 01:01:21,849 --> 01:01:24,618 No. Goals and plans are not... 1081 01:01:25,285 --> 01:01:28,922 I mean, they're... They're fantasy. They're part of a dream life. 1082 01:01:29,757 --> 01:01:32,659 I mean, you know, it always just does seem so ridiculous, somehow... 1083 01:01:33,360 --> 01:01:36,430 ...that everybody has to have his little... His little goal in life. 1084 01:01:37,197 --> 01:01:40,768 I mean, it's so absurd, in a way, when you consider that it doesn't matter which one it is. 1085 01:01:41,568 --> 01:01:43,570 Right. And because people's concentration is on their goals... 1086 01:01:44,037 --> 01:01:46,573 ...in their life they just live each moment by habit. 1087 01:01:47,207 --> 01:01:49,843 Really, like the Norwegian telling the same stories over and over again. 1088 01:01:50,444 --> 01:01:52,579 - Mm-hmm. - Life becomes habitual. 1089 01:01:53,080 --> 01:01:54,915 And it is today. 1090 01:01:55,382 --> 01:01:57,050 I mean, very few things happen now like that moment... 1091 01:01:57,451 --> 01:01:59,787 ...when Marlon Brando sent the Indian woman to accept the Oscar... 1092 01:02:00,387 --> 01:02:01,922 ...and everything went haywire. 1093 01:02:02,389 --> 01:02:04,358 Things just very rarely go haywire now. 1094 01:02:04,858 --> 01:02:07,394 And if you're just operating by habit... 1095 01:02:07,995 --> 01:02:10,330 ...then you're not really living. 1096 01:02:10,998 --> 01:02:13,133 I mean, you know, in Sanskrit, the root of the verb " to be"... 1097 01:02:13,667 --> 01:02:15,602 ...is the same as " to grow" or " to make grow. " 1098 01:02:16,036 --> 01:02:17,671 Huh. 1099 01:02:21,408 --> 01:02:22,943 - Do you know about Roc? - Hmm? 1100 01:02:23,410 --> 01:02:25,145 Oh, well. 1101 01:02:25,612 --> 01:02:27,281 Roc was a wonderful man. 1102 01:02:27,681 --> 01:02:29,483 He was one of the founders of Findhorn... 1103 01:02:29,950 --> 01:02:33,554 ...and he was one of Scotland's...well, he was Scotland's greatest mathematician... 1104 01:02:34,388 --> 01:02:36,457 ...and he was one of the century's great mathematicians. 1105 01:02:36,957 --> 01:02:41,228 And he prided himself on the fact that he had no fantasy life, no dream life... 1106 01:02:42,162 --> 01:02:44,398 ...nothing to stand be... no imaginary life... 1107 01:02:44,965 --> 01:02:48,635 ...nothing to stand between him and the direct perception of mathematics. 1108 01:02:49,436 --> 01:02:52,739 And one day when he was in his mid-50s, he was walking in the gardens of Edinburgh... 1109 01:02:53,574 --> 01:02:55,909 ...and he saw a faun. 1110 01:02:56,477 --> 01:02:59,446 The faun was very surprised because fauns have always been able to see people... 1111 01:03:00,180 --> 01:03:02,316 ...but you know, very few people ever see them. 1112 01:03:02,850 --> 01:03:05,119 You know, uh, those little imaginary creatures. 1113 01:03:05,652 --> 01:03:07,287 - Not a deer. - Oh. 1114 01:03:07,654 --> 01:03:10,324 - You call them fauns, don't you? - I thought a fawn was a baby deer. 1115 01:03:10,991 --> 01:03:13,627 Yeah, well, there's a deer that's called a fawn, but these are like those little imagi... 1116 01:03:14,261 --> 01:03:16,396 - Oh! The kind that Debussy... - Yes. Right. 1117 01:03:16,964 --> 01:03:19,833 Well, so he got to know the faun, and he got to know other fauns... 1118 01:03:20,467 --> 01:03:22,369 ...and a series of conversations began... 1119 01:03:22,870 --> 01:03:25,205 ...and more and more fauns would come out every afternoon to meet him. 1120 01:03:25,806 --> 01:03:27,341 And he'd have talks with the fauns. 1121 01:03:27,775 --> 01:03:30,544 Then one day, after a while, when, you know, they'd really gotten to know him... 1122 01:03:31,145 --> 01:03:33,213 ...they asked him if he would like to meet Pan... 1123 01:03:33,747 --> 01:03:35,482 ...because Pan would like to meet him. 1124 01:03:35,949 --> 01:03:37,618 And of course, Pan was afraid of terrifying him... 1125 01:03:38,085 --> 01:03:40,254 ...because he knew of the Christian misconception... 1126 01:03:40,754 --> 01:03:43,757 ...which portrayed Pan as an evil creature, which he's not. 1127 01:03:44,458 --> 01:03:46,894 But Roc said he would love to meet Pan, and so they met... 1128 01:03:47,428 --> 01:03:49,696 ...and Pan indirectly sent him on his way on a journey... 1129 01:03:50,364 --> 01:03:53,967 ...in which he met the other people who began Findhorn. 1130 01:03:54,768 --> 01:03:57,304 But Roc used to practice certain exercises... 1131 01:03:57,971 --> 01:04:00,574 ...like, uh, for instance, if he were right-handed... 1132 01:04:01,141 --> 01:04:03,043 ...all today he would do everything with his left hand. 1133 01:04:03,577 --> 01:04:05,779 All day... Eating, writing, everything... Opening doors... 1134 01:04:06,380 --> 01:04:08,682 ...in order to break the habits of living. 1135 01:04:09,249 --> 01:04:11,385 Because the great danger, he felt, for him... 1136 01:04:11,852 --> 01:04:14,588 ...was to fall into a trance, out of habit. 1137 01:04:15,255 --> 01:04:19,026 He had a whole series of very simple exercises that he had invented... 1138 01:04:19,860 --> 01:04:23,330 ...just to keep seeing, feeling, remembering. 1139 01:04:24,198 --> 01:04:25,866 Because you have to learn now. 1140 01:04:26,266 --> 01:04:28,669 It didn't used to be necessary, but today you have to learn something... 1141 01:04:29,269 --> 01:04:31,004 ...like, uh, are you really hungry... 1142 01:04:31,472 --> 01:04:34,074 ...or are you just stuffing your face... 1143 01:04:34,675 --> 01:04:36,477 Because that's what you do, out of habit? 1144 01:04:36,977 --> 01:04:39,113 I mean, you can afford to do it, so you do it... 1145 01:04:39,680 --> 01:04:41,281 ...whether you're hungry or not. 1146 01:04:41,615 --> 01:04:43,951 You know, if you go to the Buddhist Meditation Center... 1147 01:04:44,551 --> 01:04:46,620 ...they make you taste each bite of your food... 1148 01:04:47,154 --> 01:04:50,157 ...so it takes two hours... it's horrible... To eat your lunch. 1149 01:04:50,824 --> 01:04:53,694 But you're conscious of the taste of your food. 1150 01:04:54,361 --> 01:04:57,097 If you're just eating out of habit, then you don't taste the food... 1151 01:04:57,765 --> 01:05:00,167 ...and you're not conscious of the reality of what's happening to you. 1152 01:05:00,768 --> 01:05:02,436 You enter the dream world again. 1153 01:05:02,870 --> 01:05:05,773 Now, do you think maybe we live in this dream world... 1154 01:05:06,440 --> 01:05:09,243 ...because we do so many things every day that affect us in ways... 1155 01:05:09,843 --> 01:05:12,713 ...that somehow we're just not aware of? 1156 01:05:13,380 --> 01:05:16,917 I mean, you know, I was thinking, um, last Christmas... 1157 01:05:17,785 --> 01:05:20,421 Debby and I were given an electric blanket. 1158 01:05:21,054 --> 01:05:24,958 I can tell you that it is just such a marvelous advance... 1159 01:05:25,826 --> 01:05:29,663 ...over our old way of life, and it is just great. 1160 01:05:30,531 --> 01:05:33,400 But, uh, it is quite different from not having an electric blanket... 1161 01:05:34,067 --> 01:05:36,470 ...and I sometimes sort of wonder, well, what is it doing to me? 1162 01:05:37,070 --> 01:05:40,073 I mean, I sort of feel, uh, I'm not sleeping quite in the same way. 1163 01:05:40,774 --> 01:05:42,342 No, you wouldn't be. 1164 01:05:42,743 --> 01:05:45,145 I mean, uh, and my dreams are sort of different... 1165 01:05:45,779 --> 01:05:48,082 ...and I feel a little bit different when I get up in the morning. 1166 01:05:49,616 --> 01:05:52,553 I wouldn't put an electric blanket on for anything. 1167 01:05:53,220 --> 01:05:57,157 First, I'd be worried I might get electrocuted. No, I don't trust technology. 1168 01:05:58,025 --> 01:06:01,028 But I mean, the main thing, Wally, is that I think that that kind of comfort... 1169 01:06:01,762 --> 01:06:04,431 ...just separates you from reality in a very direct way. 1170 01:06:05,032 --> 01:06:07,301 - You mean... - I mean, if you don't have that electric blanket... 1171 01:06:07,835 --> 01:06:10,104 ...and your apartment is cold and you need to put on another blanket... 1172 01:06:10,637 --> 01:06:13,507 ...or go into the closet and pile up coats on top of the blankets you have... 1173 01:06:14,174 --> 01:06:15,976 ...well, then you know it's cold. 1174 01:06:16,443 --> 01:06:18,245 And that sets up a link of things. 1175 01:06:18,779 --> 01:06:21,682 You have compassion for the per... Well, is the person next to you cold? 1176 01:06:22,382 --> 01:06:24,184 Are there other people in the world who are cold? 1177 01:06:24,618 --> 01:06:26,653 What a cold night! I like the cold. 1178 01:06:27,154 --> 01:06:30,023 My God, I never realized. I don't want a blanket. It's fun being cold. 1179 01:06:30,657 --> 01:06:33,460 I can snuggle up against you even more because it's cold. 1180 01:06:34,161 --> 01:06:36,196 All sorts of things occur to you. 1181 01:06:36,864 --> 01:06:39,633 Turn on that electric blanket, and it's like taking a tranquilizer... 1182 01:06:40,267 --> 01:06:42,336 ...or it's like being lobotomized by watching television. 1183 01:06:42,803 --> 01:06:44,404 I think you enter the dream world again. 1184 01:06:46,406 --> 01:06:49,009 I mean, what does it do to us, Wally, living in an environment... 1185 01:06:49,643 --> 01:06:52,980 ...where something as massive as the seasons, or winter, or cold... 1186 01:06:53,781 --> 01:06:55,616 ...don't in any way affect us? 1187 01:06:56,016 --> 01:06:57,618 I mean, we're animals, after all. 1188 01:06:58,018 --> 01:06:59,653 I mean, what does that mean? 1189 01:07:00,053 --> 01:07:02,623 I think that means that instead of living under the sun... 1190 01:07:03,223 --> 01:07:05,492 ...and the moon and the sky and the stars... 1191 01:07:06,026 --> 01:07:08,395 ...we're living in a fantasy world of our own making. 1192 01:07:08,962 --> 01:07:11,698 Yeah, but I mean, I would never give up my electric blanket, André. 1193 01:07:12,433 --> 01:07:14,668 I mean, because New York is cold in the winter. 1194 01:07:15,235 --> 01:07:17,905 I mean, our apartment is cold. It's a difficult environment. 1195 01:07:18,572 --> 01:07:20,374 I mean, our lives are tough enough as it is. 1196 01:07:20,841 --> 01:07:23,777 I'm not looking for ways to get rid of the few things that provide relief and comfort. 1197 01:07:24,445 --> 01:07:26,747 I mean, on the contrary, I'm looking for more comfort... 1198 01:07:27,381 --> 01:07:29,249 ...because, uh, the world is very abrasive. 1199 01:07:29,783 --> 01:07:31,752 I mean, uh, I'm trying to protect myself... 1200 01:07:32,219 --> 01:07:35,255 ...because, really, there are these abrasive beatings to be avoided everywhere you look. 1201 01:07:35,923 --> 01:07:39,259 But, Wally, don't you... Don't you see that comfort can be dangerous? 1202 01:07:40,060 --> 01:07:42,729 I mean, you like to be comfortable, and I like to be comfortable too... 1203 01:07:43,330 --> 01:07:46,266 ...but comfort can lull you into a dangerous tranquillity. 1204 01:07:47,935 --> 01:07:50,471 I mean, my mother knew a woman, Lady Hatfield... 1205 01:07:51,004 --> 01:07:52,806 ...who was one of the richest women in the world... 1206 01:07:53,207 --> 01:07:55,976 ...and she died of starvation because all she would eat was chicken. 1207 01:07:56,610 --> 01:07:58,946 I mean, she just liked chicken, Wally, and that was all she would eat. 1208 01:07:59,546 --> 01:08:02,082 And actually her body was starving, but she didn't know it... 1209 01:08:02,616 --> 01:08:05,619 'cause she was quite happy eating her chicken, and so she finally died. 1210 01:08:06,353 --> 01:08:09,823 See, I honestly believe that we're all like Lady Hatfield now. 1211 01:08:10,624 --> 01:08:13,894 We're having a lovely, comfortable time with our electric blankets and our chicken... 1212 01:08:14,628 --> 01:08:17,898 ...and meanwhile we're starving because we're so cut off from contact with reality... 1213 01:08:18,632 --> 01:08:21,802 ...that we're not getting any real sustenance, 'cause we don't see the world. 1214 01:08:22,569 --> 01:08:24,104 We don't see ourselves. 1215 01:08:24,571 --> 01:08:26,306 We don't see how our actions affect other people. 1216 01:08:26,774 --> 01:08:29,309 Have you read Martin Buber's book On Hasidism? 1217 01:08:29,977 --> 01:08:31,812 - No. - Well, here's a view of life. 1218 01:08:32,246 --> 01:08:34,748 I mean, he talks about the belief of the HasidicJews... 1219 01:08:35,315 --> 01:08:36,917 ...that there are spirits chained in everything. 1220 01:08:37,317 --> 01:08:39,753 There are spirits chained in you. There are spirits chained in me. 1221 01:08:40,320 --> 01:08:42,256 Well, there are spirits chained in this table. 1222 01:08:42,723 --> 01:08:46,827 And that prayer is the action of liberating these enchained embryo-like spirits... 1223 01:08:47,728 --> 01:08:49,463 ...and that every action of ours in life... 1224 01:08:49,930 --> 01:08:52,466 ...whether it's, uh, doing business, or making love... 1225 01:08:53,000 --> 01:08:54,668 ...or having dinner together, or whatever... 1226 01:08:55,169 --> 01:08:57,304 ...that every action of ours should be a prayer... 1227 01:08:57,805 --> 01:08:59,339 ...a sacrament in the world. 1228 01:08:59,773 --> 01:09:01,942 Now, do you think we're living like that? 1229 01:09:02,409 --> 01:09:04,078 Why do you think we're not living like that? 1230 01:09:04,545 --> 01:09:07,014 I think it's because if we allowed ourselves to see what we do every day... 1231 01:09:07,648 --> 01:09:09,316 ...we might just find it too nauseating. 1232 01:09:09,750 --> 01:09:11,285 I mean, the way we treat other people. 1233 01:09:11,752 --> 01:09:14,755 You know, every day, several times a day, I walk into my apartment building. 1234 01:09:15,422 --> 01:09:18,358 The doorman calls me Mr. Gregory, and I call him Jimmy. 1235 01:09:18,992 --> 01:09:21,628 Already, what's the difference between that... 1236 01:09:22,229 --> 01:09:24,565 ...and the Southern plantation owner who's got slaves? 1237 01:09:25,165 --> 01:09:27,668 You see, I think that an act of murder is committed in that moment... 1238 01:09:28,235 --> 01:09:29,903 ...when I walk into that building. 1239 01:09:30,370 --> 01:09:33,774 Because here's a dignified, intelligent man... a man of my own age... 1240 01:09:34,508 --> 01:09:37,511 ...and when I call him Jimmy, then he becomes a child, and I'm an adult... 1241 01:09:38,245 --> 01:09:40,180 ...because I can buy my way into the building. 1242 01:09:40,647 --> 01:09:42,783 Right. That's right. 1243 01:09:43,317 --> 01:09:46,587 I mean, my God, when I was a Latin teacher... 1244 01:09:47,321 --> 01:09:49,056 I mean, people used to treat me... 1245 01:09:49,523 --> 01:09:51,792 I mean, uh, you know, if I would go to a party... 1246 01:09:52,326 --> 01:09:54,728 ...of professional or literary people... 1247 01:09:55,329 --> 01:09:58,265 I mean, I was just treated, uh, in the nicest sense of the word... 1248 01:09:58,966 --> 01:10:00,267 ...uh, like a dog. 1249 01:10:00,734 --> 01:10:02,402 I mean, in other words, there was no question... 1250 01:10:02,803 --> 01:10:05,806 ...of my being able to participate on an equal basis in a conversation with people. 1251 01:10:06,507 --> 01:10:08,575 I mean, you know, I'd occasionally have conversations with people... 1252 01:10:09,143 --> 01:10:11,211 ...but then, uh, when they asked what I did... 1253 01:10:11,745 --> 01:10:13,747 ...which would always happen after about five minutes... 1254 01:10:14,214 --> 01:10:16,083 ...uh, you know, their faces... 1255 01:10:16,517 --> 01:10:19,620 Even if they were enjoying the conversation, or they were flirting with me, or whatever it was... 1256 01:10:20,354 --> 01:10:23,190 ...their faces would just have that expression just like the portcullis crashing down. 1257 01:10:23,824 --> 01:10:26,627 You know, those medieval gates. They would just walk away. 1258 01:10:27,361 --> 01:10:30,097 I mean, I literally lived like a dog. 1259 01:10:30,831 --> 01:10:33,767 And I mean, uh, when Debby was working as a secretary, you know... 1260 01:10:34,435 --> 01:10:37,371 ...if she would tell people what she did, they would just go insane. 1261 01:10:38,105 --> 01:10:40,040 I mean, it would be just as if she'd said, uh... 1262 01:10:40,507 --> 01:10:44,511 "Oh, well, I've been serving a life sentence recently, uh, for child murdering. " 1263 01:10:46,547 --> 01:10:49,883 I mean, my God, you know, when you talk about our attitudes toward other people... 1264 01:10:51,785 --> 01:10:53,454 I mean, I think of myself... 1265 01:10:53,921 --> 01:10:57,257 ...as just a very decent, good person, you know... 1266 01:10:57,991 --> 01:10:59,927 ...just because I think I'm reasonably friendly... 1267 01:11:00,394 --> 01:11:02,262 ...to most of the people I happen to meet every day. 1268 01:11:02,763 --> 01:11:04,998 I mean, I really think of myself quite smugly. 1269 01:11:05,532 --> 01:11:08,068 I just think I'm a perfectly nice guy, uh, you know... 1270 01:11:08,735 --> 01:11:11,271 ...so long as I think of the world as consisting of, you know... 1271 01:11:11,939 --> 01:11:14,274 ...just the small circle of the people that I know as friends... 1272 01:11:14,808 --> 01:11:17,344 ...or the few people that we know in this little world of our little hobbies... 1273 01:11:17,945 --> 01:11:19,480 ...the theater or whatever it is. 1274 01:11:19,913 --> 01:11:22,416 And I'm really quite self-satisfied. I'm just quite happy with myself. 1275 01:11:23,016 --> 01:11:24,752 I just have no complaint about myself. 1276 01:11:25,219 --> 01:11:26,887 I mean, you know, let's face it. 1277 01:11:27,354 --> 01:11:30,491 I mean, there's a whole enormous world out there that I just don't ever think about. 1278 01:11:31,191 --> 01:11:34,695 I certainly don't take responsibility for how I've lived in that world. 1279 01:11:35,496 --> 01:11:37,831 I mean, you know, if I were actually to sort of confront the fact... 1280 01:11:38,432 --> 01:11:40,167 ...that I'm sort of sharing this stage... 1281 01:11:40,734 --> 01:11:42,703 ...with-with-with this starving person in Africa somewhere... 1282 01:11:43,303 --> 01:11:45,339 ...well, I wouldn't feel so great about myself. 1283 01:11:45,906 --> 01:11:49,843 So naturally I just... I just blot all those people right out of my perception. 1284 01:11:50,744 --> 01:11:53,280 So, of course... of course, I'm ignoring... 1285 01:11:53,914 --> 01:11:56,650 ...a whole section of the real world. 1286 01:11:57,418 --> 01:11:59,386 But frankly, you know... 1287 01:11:59,953 --> 01:12:03,524 ...when I write a play, in a way, one of the things I guess I think I'm trying to do... 1288 01:12:04,324 --> 01:12:06,994 ...is I'm trying to bring myself up against some little bits of reality... 1289 01:12:07,594 --> 01:12:10,130 ...and I'm trying to share that, uh, with an audience. 1290 01:12:12,199 --> 01:12:14,668 I mean... I mean, of course we all know, uh... 1291 01:12:15,202 --> 01:12:17,337 ...the theater is, uh, in terrible shape today. 1292 01:12:17,805 --> 01:12:21,475 I mean, uh... I mean, at least a few years ago people who really cared about the theater... 1293 01:12:22,342 --> 01:12:24,211 ...used to say, " The theater is dead. " 1294 01:12:24,745 --> 01:12:27,147 And now everybody's redefined the theater in such a trivial way... 1295 01:12:27,748 --> 01:12:29,283 ...that, I mean... I mean, God... 1296 01:12:29,750 --> 01:12:33,220 I know people who are involved with the theater who go to see things now that... 1297 01:12:34,021 --> 01:12:35,956 I mean, a few years ago these same people... 1298 01:12:36,423 --> 01:12:38,826 ...would have just been embarrassed to have even seen some of these plays. 1299 01:12:39,426 --> 01:12:41,495 I mean, they would have just shrunk, you know,just in horror... 1300 01:12:42,029 --> 01:12:43,831 ...at the superficiality of these things. 1301 01:12:44,298 --> 01:12:46,500 But now they say, "Oh, that was pretty good. " 1302 01:12:46,967 --> 01:12:48,635 It's just incredible. 1303 01:12:49,136 --> 01:12:51,672 And I really just find that attitude unbearable... 1304 01:12:52,306 --> 01:12:55,509 ...because I really do think the theater can do something very important. 1305 01:12:56,210 --> 01:13:00,180 I mean, I do think the theater can help bring people in contact with reality. 1306 01:13:01,115 --> 01:13:05,018 Now, now, you may not feel that at all. You may just find that totally absurd. 1307 01:13:07,187 --> 01:13:09,656 Yeah, but, Wally, don't you see the dilemma? 1308 01:13:10,190 --> 01:13:13,527 You're not taking into account the period we're living in. 1309 01:13:14,328 --> 01:13:16,063 I mean, of course that's what the theater should do. 1310 01:13:16,530 --> 01:13:18,198 I mean, I've always felt that. 1311 01:13:18,599 --> 01:13:21,402 You know, when I was a young director, and I directed the Bacchae at Yale... 1312 01:13:22,136 --> 01:13:24,805 ...my impulse, when Pentheus has been killed by his mother and the Furies... 1313 01:13:25,406 --> 01:13:27,541 ...and they pull the tree back, and they tie him to the tree... 1314 01:13:28,142 --> 01:13:30,878 ...and fling him into the air, and he flies through space and he's killed... 1315 01:13:31,545 --> 01:13:33,947 ...and they rip him to shreds and I guess cut off his head... 1316 01:13:34,481 --> 01:13:37,551 ...my impulse was that the thing to do was to get a head from the New Haven morgue... 1317 01:13:38,285 --> 01:13:39,887 ...and pass it around the audience. 1318 01:13:40,287 --> 01:13:42,689 Now, I wanted Agawe to bring on a real head... 1319 01:13:43,290 --> 01:13:45,292 ...and that this head should be passed around the audience... 1320 01:13:45,826 --> 01:13:48,829 ...so that somehow people realized that this stuff was real, see? 1321 01:13:49,496 --> 01:13:51,698 That it was real stuff. 1322 01:13:52,166 --> 01:13:55,302 - Now, the actress playing Agawe absolutely refused to do it. 1323 01:13:55,969 --> 01:13:57,771 You know, Gordon Craig used to talk about... 1324 01:13:58,172 --> 01:14:01,708 ...why is there gold or silver in the churches or something... The great cathedrals... 1325 01:14:02,509 --> 01:14:05,446 ...when actors could be wearing gold and silver? 1326 01:14:06,113 --> 01:14:09,183 And I mean, people who saw Eleonora Duse in the last couple of years of her life, Wally... 1327 01:14:09,917 --> 01:14:12,719 ...people said that is was like seeing light on stage, or mist... 1328 01:14:13,387 --> 01:14:14,988 ...or the essence of something. 1329 01:14:15,389 --> 01:14:17,658 I mean, then when you think about Bertolt Brecht... 1330 01:14:18,192 --> 01:14:20,794 He somehow created a theater in which people could observe... 1331 01:14:21,395 --> 01:14:23,197 ...that was vastly entertaining and exciting... 1332 01:14:23,730 --> 01:14:26,200 ...but in which the excitement didn't overwhelm you. 1333 01:14:26,934 --> 01:14:30,404 He somehow allowed you the distance between the play and yourself... 1334 01:14:31,205 --> 01:14:33,607 ...that, in fact, two human beings need in order to live together. 1335 01:14:34,208 --> 01:14:37,544 You know, the question is whether the theater now can do for an audience... 1336 01:14:38,278 --> 01:14:41,148 ...what Brecht tried to do or what Craig or Duse tried to do. 1337 01:14:41,815 --> 01:14:43,417 Can it do it now? 1338 01:14:43,817 --> 01:14:46,553 'Cause, you see, I think that people today are so deeply asleep... 1339 01:14:47,221 --> 01:14:49,490 ...that unless, you know, you're putting on those sort of superficial plays... 1340 01:14:49,957 --> 01:14:51,825 ...that just help your audience to sleep more comfortably... 1341 01:14:52,292 --> 01:14:54,628 ...it's very hard to know what to do in the theater. 1342 01:14:57,164 --> 01:15:01,034 Because, you see, I think that if you put on serious, contemporary plays... 1343 01:15:01,902 --> 01:15:03,504 ...by writers like yourself... 1344 01:15:03,904 --> 01:15:06,173 ...you may only be helping to deaden the audience in a different way. 1345 01:15:06,707 --> 01:15:08,776 What do you mean? 1346 01:15:09,309 --> 01:15:11,044 Well, I mean, Wally... 1347 01:15:11,512 --> 01:15:14,248 ...how does it affect an audience to put on one of these plays... 1348 01:15:14,915 --> 01:15:17,384 ...in which you show that people are totally isolated now... 1349 01:15:17,985 --> 01:15:20,654 ...and they can't reach each other, and their lives are desperate? 1350 01:15:21,321 --> 01:15:24,057 Or how does it affect them to see a play that shows that our world... 1351 01:15:24,725 --> 01:15:28,195 ...is full of nothing but shocking sexual events, and terror, and violence? 1352 01:15:28,996 --> 01:15:30,931 Does that help to wake up a sleeping audience? 1353 01:15:31,398 --> 01:15:34,001 See, I don't think so, 'cause I think it's very likely... 1354 01:15:34,601 --> 01:15:37,071 ...that the picture of the world that you're showing them in a play like that... 1355 01:15:37,805 --> 01:15:40,274 ...is exactly the picture of the world they have already. 1356 01:15:40,874 --> 01:15:43,210 I mean, you know, they know their own lives and relationships... 1357 01:15:43,811 --> 01:15:45,479 ...are difficult and painful. 1358 01:15:45,879 --> 01:15:47,614 And if they watch the evening news on television... 1359 01:15:48,082 --> 01:15:50,751 ...well, there what they see is a terrifying, chaotic universe... 1360 01:15:51,351 --> 01:15:54,688 ...full of rapes and murders and hands cut off by subway cars... 1361 01:15:55,489 --> 01:15:58,425 ...and children pushing their parents out of windows. 1362 01:15:59,093 --> 01:16:01,829 So the play tells them that their impression of the world is correct... 1363 01:16:02,496 --> 01:16:04,164 ...and that there's absolutely no way out. 1364 01:16:04,565 --> 01:16:06,166 There's nothing they can do. 1365 01:16:06,567 --> 01:16:09,036 And they end up feeling passive and impotent. 1366 01:16:09,570 --> 01:16:11,705 I mean, look... Look, at something like that christening... 1367 01:16:12,172 --> 01:16:14,108 ...that my group arranged for me in the forest in Poland. 1368 01:16:14,575 --> 01:16:17,111 Well, there was an example of something that really had all the elements of theater. 1369 01:16:17,711 --> 01:16:20,380 It was worked on carefully. It was thought about carefully. 1370 01:16:20,981 --> 01:16:22,916 It was done with exquisite taste and magic. 1371 01:16:23,383 --> 01:16:25,185 And they, in fact, created something... 1372 01:16:25,719 --> 01:16:28,789 ...which, in this case, was, in a way, just for an audience of one...just for me. 1373 01:16:29,523 --> 01:16:32,726 But they created something that had ritual, love, surprise... 1374 01:16:33,527 --> 01:16:35,062 ...denouement, beginning, a middle and end... 1375 01:16:35,529 --> 01:16:38,265 ...and was an incredibly beautiful piece of theater. 1376 01:16:38,866 --> 01:16:40,734 And the impact that it had on its audience... On me... 1377 01:16:41,201 --> 01:16:43,137 ...was somehow a totally positive one. 1378 01:16:43,604 --> 01:16:45,672 It didn't deaden me. It brought me to life. 1379 01:16:48,942 --> 01:16:50,878 Yeah, but I mean, are you saying that it's impossible... 1380 01:16:51,345 --> 01:16:54,815 I mean, uh... I mean... I mean, uh, isn't it a little upsetting... 1381 01:16:55,549 --> 01:16:58,752 ...to come to the conclusion that there's no way to wake people up anymore... 1382 01:16:59,486 --> 01:17:03,090 ...except to involve them in some kind of a strange, uh, christening in Poland... 1383 01:17:03,891 --> 01:17:06,093 ...or some kind of a strange experience on top of Mount Everest? 1384 01:17:06,560 --> 01:17:10,164 I mean, uh, because, uh, you know that the awful thing is... 1385 01:17:11,098 --> 01:17:12,833 ...if you really say that it's-it's necessary... 1386 01:17:13,367 --> 01:17:15,502 ...to, uh, take everybody to, uh, Everest... 1387 01:17:15,969 --> 01:17:19,306 ...it's really tough, because everybody can't be taken to Everest. 1388 01:17:20,107 --> 01:17:22,776 I mean, there must have been periods in history when it would have been possible... 1389 01:17:23,377 --> 01:17:25,779 ...to, uh, save the patient through less drastic measures. 1390 01:17:26,380 --> 01:17:28,515 I mean, there must have been periods when in order to give people... 1391 01:17:29,116 --> 01:17:30,784 ...a strong or meaningful experience... 1392 01:17:31,185 --> 01:17:33,654 ...you wouldn't actually have to take them to Everest. 1393 01:17:34,321 --> 01:17:36,190 But you do now. In some way or other, you do now. 1394 01:17:36,723 --> 01:17:39,059 You know, there was a time when you could have just, for instance, written... 1395 01:17:39,593 --> 01:17:42,396 I don't know, uh, Sense and Sensibility byJane Austen. 1396 01:17:43,063 --> 01:17:46,066 And I'm sure the people who read it had a pretty strong experience. I'm sure they did. 1397 01:17:46,800 --> 01:17:49,069 I mean, all right, now you're saying that people today wouldn't get it. 1398 01:17:49,536 --> 01:17:52,539 Maybe that's true. But I mean, isn't there any kind of writing or any kind of a play... 1399 01:17:53,273 --> 01:17:55,342 I mean, isn't it still legitimate for writers... 1400 01:17:55,876 --> 01:17:58,612 ...to try to portray reality so that people can see it? 1401 01:17:59,279 --> 01:18:02,616 I mean, really, tell me, why do we require a trip to Mount Everest... 1402 01:18:03,350 --> 01:18:05,285 ...in order to be able to perceive one moment of reality? 1403 01:18:05,753 --> 01:18:08,088 I mean... I mean, is Mount Everest more real than New York? 1404 01:18:08,689 --> 01:18:10,424 I mean, isn't New York real? 1405 01:18:10,891 --> 01:18:14,294 I mean, you see, I think if you could become fully aware... 1406 01:18:15,095 --> 01:18:17,898 ...of what existed in the cigar store next door to this restaurant... 1407 01:18:18,699 --> 01:18:20,234 I think it would just blow your brains out. 1408 01:18:20,701 --> 01:18:22,770 I mean... I mean, isn't there just as much reality to be perceived... 1409 01:18:23,303 --> 01:18:24,972 ...in a cigar store as there is on Mount Everest? 1410 01:18:25,372 --> 01:18:26,707 I mean, what do you think? 1411 01:18:27,107 --> 01:18:29,309 I think that not only is there nothing more real about Mount Everest... 1412 01:18:29,910 --> 01:18:31,578 I think there's nothing that different, in a certain way. 1413 01:18:31,979 --> 01:18:34,047 I mean, because reality is uniform, in a way... 1414 01:18:34,581 --> 01:18:36,250 ...so that if your... if your perceptions are... 1415 01:18:36,717 --> 01:18:39,052 I mean, if your own mechanism is operating correctly... 1416 01:18:39,586 --> 01:18:42,322 ...it would become irrelevant to go to Mount Everest, and sort of absurd... 1417 01:18:42,990 --> 01:18:45,325 ...because, I mean... it just... I mean, of course, on some level, I mean... 1418 01:18:45,859 --> 01:18:48,862 ...obviously it's very different from a cigar store on 7 th Avenue. 1419 01:18:49,596 --> 01:18:52,266 - But I mean... - Well, I agree with you, Wally. 1420 01:18:52,866 --> 01:18:55,069 But the problem is that people can't see the cigar store now. 1421 01:18:55,669 --> 01:18:57,671 I mean, things don't affect people the way they used to. 1422 01:18:58,138 --> 01:19:00,140 I mean, it may very well be that 10 years from now... 1423 01:19:00,674 --> 01:19:03,010 ...people will pay $10,000 in cash to be castrated... 1424 01:19:03,544 --> 01:19:05,746 ...just in order to be affected by something. 1425 01:19:07,748 --> 01:19:10,350 Well, why...why do you think that is? I mean, why is that? 1426 01:19:10,951 --> 01:19:14,755 I mean, is it just because people are lazy today, or they're bored? 1427 01:19:15,556 --> 01:19:18,158 I mean, are we just like bored, spoiled children... 1428 01:19:18,759 --> 01:19:20,894 ...who've just been lying in the bathtub all day... 1429 01:19:21,361 --> 01:19:23,297 ...just playing with their plastic duck... 1430 01:19:23,764 --> 01:19:26,567 ...and now they're just thinking, "Well, what can I do?" 1431 01:19:28,702 --> 01:19:31,038 Okay. Yes. We're bored. 1432 01:19:31,572 --> 01:19:33,173 We're all bored now. 1433 01:19:33,574 --> 01:19:35,375 But has it every occurred to you, Wally, that the process... 1434 01:19:35,909 --> 01:19:37,978 ...that creates this boredom that we see in the world now... 1435 01:19:38,445 --> 01:19:42,116 ...may very well be a self-perpetuating, unconscious form of brainwashing... 1436 01:19:42,983 --> 01:19:45,652 ...created by a world totalitarian government based on money... 1437 01:19:46,253 --> 01:19:48,522 ...and that all of this is much more dangerous than one thinks... 1438 01:19:49,056 --> 01:19:51,392 ...and it's not just a question of individual survival, Wally... 1439 01:19:51,925 --> 01:19:53,927 ...but that somebody who's bored is asleep... 1440 01:19:54,461 --> 01:19:57,064 ...and somebody who's asleep will not say no? 1441 01:19:57,731 --> 01:20:00,000 See, I keep meeting these people... I mean, uh,just a few days ago... 1442 01:20:00,667 --> 01:20:02,269 I met this man whom I greatly admire. 1443 01:20:02,669 --> 01:20:04,605 He's a Swedish physicist. Gustav Björnstrand. 1444 01:20:05,072 --> 01:20:07,141 And he told me that he no longer watches television... 1445 01:20:07,674 --> 01:20:10,077 ...he doesn't read newspapers, and he doesn't read magazines. 1446 01:20:10,677 --> 01:20:12,546 He's completely cut them out of his life... 1447 01:20:13,080 --> 01:20:16,817 ...because he really does feel that we're living in some kind of Orwellian nightmare now... 1448 01:20:17,684 --> 01:20:21,021 ...and that everything that you hear now contributes to turning you into a robot. 1449 01:20:22,756 --> 01:20:25,759 And when I was at Findhorn, I met this extraordinary English tree expert... 1450 01:20:26,493 --> 01:20:28,228 ...who had devoted his life to saving trees. 1451 01:20:28,695 --> 01:20:30,697 Just got back from Washington, lobbying to save the redwoods. 1452 01:20:31,165 --> 01:20:33,567 He's 84 years old, and he always travels with a backpack... 1453 01:20:34,168 --> 01:20:35,769 'cause he never knows where he's gonna be tomorrow. 1454 01:20:36,170 --> 01:20:38,639 And when I met him at Findhorn, he said to me, " Where are you from?" 1455 01:20:39,239 --> 01:20:41,842 I said, " New York. " He said, " Ah, New York. Yes, that's a very interesting place. 1456 01:20:42,443 --> 01:20:45,712 Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?" 1457 01:20:46,447 --> 01:20:48,649 And I said, " Oh, yes. " And he said, "Why do you think they don't leave?" 1458 01:20:49,183 --> 01:20:52,453 I gave him different banal theories. He said, " Oh, I don't think it's that way at all. " 1459 01:20:53,120 --> 01:20:56,924 He said, " I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp... 1460 01:20:57,725 --> 01:20:59,860 "where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves... 1461 01:21:00,327 --> 01:21:03,263 "and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing they've built. 1462 01:21:04,064 --> 01:21:05,666 "They've built their own prison. 1463 01:21:06,066 --> 01:21:07,668 "And so they exist in a state of schizophrenia... 1464 01:21:08,135 --> 01:21:09,737 "where they are both guards and prisoners. 1465 01:21:10,137 --> 01:21:12,940 "And as a result, they no longer have... having been lobotomized... 1466 01:21:13,540 --> 01:21:15,542 "the capacity to leave the prison they've made... 1467 01:21:16,076 --> 01:21:18,479 ...or to even see it as a prison. " 1468 01:21:19,079 --> 01:21:21,749 And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree... 1469 01:21:22,349 --> 01:21:23,951 ...and he said, " This is a pine tree. " 1470 01:21:24,351 --> 01:21:27,354 He put it in my hand and he said, "Escape before it's too late. " 1471 01:21:29,289 --> 01:21:31,425 See, actually, for two or three years now... 1472 01:21:31,959 --> 01:21:35,562 Chiquita and I have had this very unpleasant feeling that we really should get out. 1473 01:21:36,363 --> 01:21:38,699 We really feel likeJews in Germany in the late '30s. 1474 01:21:39,299 --> 01:21:40,834 Get out of here. 1475 01:21:41,235 --> 01:21:42,903 Of course, the problem is where to go. 1476 01:21:43,437 --> 01:21:47,441 'Cause it seems quite obvious that the whole world is going in the same direction. 1477 01:21:50,244 --> 01:21:52,980 See, I think it's quite possible that the 1960s... 1478 01:21:53,647 --> 01:21:57,584 ...represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished... 1479 01:21:58,452 --> 01:22:00,721 ...and that this is the beginning of the rest of the future, now... 1480 01:22:01,255 --> 01:22:04,591 ...and that from now on there'll simply be all these robots walking around... 1481 01:22:05,325 --> 01:22:07,261 ...feeling nothing, thinking nothing. 1482 01:22:07,728 --> 01:22:10,264 And there'll be nobody left almost to remind them... 1483 01:22:10,864 --> 01:22:13,534 ...that there once was a species called a human being... 1484 01:22:14,268 --> 01:22:15,803 ...with feelings and thoughts... 1485 01:22:16,270 --> 01:22:18,672 ...and that history and memory are right now being erased... 1486 01:22:19,273 --> 01:22:21,675 ...and soon nobody will really remember... 1487 01:22:22,276 --> 01:22:24,078 ...that life existed on the planet. 1488 01:22:26,080 --> 01:22:29,817 Now, of course, Björnstrand feels that there's really almost no hope... 1489 01:22:30,684 --> 01:22:33,420 ...and that we're probably going back to a very savage... 1490 01:22:34,088 --> 01:22:36,623 ...lawless, terrifying period. 1491 01:22:37,291 --> 01:22:39,293 Findhorn people see it a little differently. 1492 01:22:39,760 --> 01:22:42,096 They're feeling that there'll be these pockets of light... 1493 01:22:42,629 --> 01:22:44,364 ...springing up in different parts of the world... 1494 01:22:44,832 --> 01:22:48,435 ...and that these will be, in a way, invisible planets on this planet... 1495 01:22:49,236 --> 01:22:51,305 ...and that as we, or the world, grow colder... 1496 01:22:51,839 --> 01:22:54,842 ...we can take invisible space journeys to these different planets... 1497 01:22:55,509 --> 01:22:58,445 ...refuel for what it is we need to do on the planet itself... 1498 01:22:59,113 --> 01:23:01,048 ...and come back. 1499 01:23:01,515 --> 01:23:03,851 And it's their feeling that there have to be centers now... 1500 01:23:04,451 --> 01:23:08,055 ...where people can come and reconstruct a new future for the world. 1501 01:23:08,856 --> 01:23:10,524 And when I was talking to, uh, Gustav Björnstrand... 1502 01:23:10,924 --> 01:23:13,594 ...he was saying that actually these centers are growing up everywhere now... 1503 01:23:14,261 --> 01:23:16,730 ...and that what they're trying to do, which is what Findhorn was trying to do... 1504 01:23:17,464 --> 01:23:19,199 ...and, in a way, what I was trying to do... 1505 01:23:19,733 --> 01:23:21,668 I mean, these things can't be given names... 1506 01:23:22,136 --> 01:23:25,672 ...but in a way, these are all attempts at creating a new kind of school... 1507 01:23:26,473 --> 01:23:28,275 ...or a new kind of monastery. 1508 01:23:28,742 --> 01:23:30,811 And Björnstrand talks about the concept of" reserves"... 1509 01:23:31,345 --> 01:23:33,614 ...islands of safety where history can be remembered... 1510 01:23:34,148 --> 01:23:36,283 ...and the human being can continue to function... 1511 01:23:36,884 --> 01:23:39,887 ...in order to maintain the species through a dark age. 1512 01:23:42,556 --> 01:23:44,558 In other words, we're talking about an underground... 1513 01:23:45,025 --> 01:23:47,227 ...which did exist in a different way during the Dark Ages... 1514 01:23:47,761 --> 01:23:50,030 ...among the mystical orders of the church. 1515 01:23:50,564 --> 01:23:52,299 And the purpose of this underground... 1516 01:23:52,766 --> 01:23:57,104 ...is to find out how to preserve the light, life, the culture... 1517 01:23:58,038 --> 01:24:00,908 ...how to keep things living. 1518 01:24:01,508 --> 01:24:03,977 You see, I keep thinking that what we need... 1519 01:24:04,511 --> 01:24:06,847 ...is a new language... 1520 01:24:07,448 --> 01:24:09,316 ...a language of the heart... 1521 01:24:09,716 --> 01:24:12,986 ...a language, as in the Polish forest, where language wasn't needed. 1522 01:24:13,721 --> 01:24:17,858 Some kind of language between people that is a new kind of poetry... 1523 01:24:18,726 --> 01:24:22,596 ...that's the poetry of the dancing bee that tells us where the honey is. 1524 01:24:23,464 --> 01:24:25,933 And I think that in order to create that language... 1525 01:24:26,667 --> 01:24:29,470 ...you're going to have to learn how you can go through a looking glass... 1526 01:24:30,270 --> 01:24:31,805 ...into another kind of perception... 1527 01:24:32,272 --> 01:24:36,343 ...where you have that sense of being united to all things... 1528 01:24:37,277 --> 01:24:39,947 ...and suddenly you understand everything. 1529 01:24:49,623 --> 01:24:51,492 Are you ready for some dessert? 1530 01:24:51,959 --> 01:24:53,761 Uh, I think I'll just have an espresso. Thank you. 1531 01:24:54,228 --> 01:24:57,498 - Very good. - I'll... I'll also have one. Thank you. 1532 01:24:58,232 --> 01:25:00,968 And...And, uh, could I also have, uh, an amaretto? 1533 01:25:01,635 --> 01:25:03,837 Certainly, sir. 1534 01:25:04,438 --> 01:25:06,173 Thank you. 1535 01:25:06,640 --> 01:25:10,177 You see, Wally, there's this incredible building that they built at Findhorn. 1536 01:25:10,911 --> 01:25:13,113 And the man who designed it had never designed anything in his life. 1537 01:25:13,647 --> 01:25:15,315 He wrote children's books. 1538 01:25:15,716 --> 01:25:18,318 And some people wanted it to be a sort of hall of meditation... 1539 01:25:18,919 --> 01:25:20,921 ...and others wanted it to be a kind of lecture hall. 1540 01:25:21,455 --> 01:25:24,858 But the psychic part of the community wanted it to serve another function as well... 1541 01:25:25,659 --> 01:25:28,662 ...because they wanted it to be a kind of spaceship which at night could rise up... 1542 01:25:29,329 --> 01:25:31,665 ...and let the U.F.O.'s know that this was a safe place to land... 1543 01:25:32,266 --> 01:25:33,934 ...and that they would find friends there. 1544 01:25:34,334 --> 01:25:37,404 So, the problem was... 'cause it needed a massive kind of roof... 1545 01:25:38,138 --> 01:25:40,741 ...was how to have a roof that would stay on the building... 1546 01:25:41,341 --> 01:25:44,144 ...but at the same time be able to fly up at night and meet the flying saucers. 1547 01:25:44,812 --> 01:25:47,147 So, the architect meditated and meditated... 1548 01:25:47,748 --> 01:25:50,084 ...and he finally came up with the very simple solution... 1549 01:25:50,617 --> 01:25:52,553 ...of not actually joining the roof to the building... 1550 01:25:53,020 --> 01:25:54,621 ...which means that it should fall off... 1551 01:25:55,022 --> 01:25:57,691 ...because they have great gales up in northern Scotland. 1552 01:25:58,292 --> 01:26:01,228 So, to keep it from falling off, he got beach stones from the beach... 1553 01:26:01,895 --> 01:26:04,164 ...or we did, 'cause I-I worked on this building... 1554 01:26:04,832 --> 01:26:06,500 ...all up and down the roof, just like that. 1555 01:26:06,900 --> 01:26:10,504 And the idea was that the energy that would flow from stone to stone... 1556 01:26:11,305 --> 01:26:12,973 ...would be so strong, you see... 1557 01:26:13,440 --> 01:26:16,176 ...that it would keep the roof down under any conditions... 1558 01:26:16,844 --> 01:26:20,581 ...but at the same time, if the roof needed to go up, it would be light enough to go up. 1559 01:26:21,448 --> 01:26:24,518 Well... it works, you see. 1560 01:26:25,252 --> 01:26:27,321 Now, architects don't know why it works... 1561 01:26:27,855 --> 01:26:29,523 ...and it shouldn't work, 'cause it should fall off. 1562 01:26:29,923 --> 01:26:31,525 But it works. It does work. 1563 01:26:31,925 --> 01:26:34,995 The gales blow, and the roof should fall off, but it doesn't fall off. 1564 01:26:40,334 --> 01:26:41,935 Yep. 1565 01:26:42,336 --> 01:26:43,937 Well, uh... 1566 01:26:45,339 --> 01:26:47,608 ...do you want to know my actual response to all this? 1567 01:26:48,142 --> 01:26:50,077 - Do you want to hear my actual response? - Yes! 1568 01:26:52,212 --> 01:26:54,148 See, my actual response... I mean... 1569 01:26:54,615 --> 01:26:58,886 I mean... I mean, I'm just trying to... To survive, you know? 1570 01:26:59,820 --> 01:27:02,423 I mean, I'm just trying to earn a living... 1571 01:27:03,023 --> 01:27:05,225 ...just trying to pay my rent and my bills. 1572 01:27:05,692 --> 01:27:07,694 I mean, uh... 1573 01:27:08,228 --> 01:27:10,964 Ah, I live my life. 1574 01:27:11,698 --> 01:27:14,234 I enjoy staying home with Debby. 1575 01:27:14,835 --> 01:27:17,237 I'm reading Charlton Heston's autobiography. 1576 01:27:17,838 --> 01:27:19,173 And that's that. 1577 01:27:19,506 --> 01:27:21,975 I mean, you know... I mean, occasionally, maybe... 1578 01:27:22,509 --> 01:27:26,180 Debby and I will step outside, we'll go to a party or something. 1579 01:27:27,047 --> 01:27:29,917 And if I can occasionally get my little talent together and write a little play... 1580 01:27:30,651 --> 01:27:32,453 ...well, then that's just... that's just wonderful. 1581 01:27:32,920 --> 01:27:35,322 And I mean, I enjoy reading about other little plays people have written... 1582 01:27:35,923 --> 01:27:38,726 ...and reading the reviews of those plays and what people said about them... 1583 01:27:39,460 --> 01:27:42,129 ...and what people said about what people said. 1584 01:27:42,730 --> 01:27:46,467 And I mean, I have... I have a list of errands and responsibilities that I keep in a notebook. 1585 01:27:47,334 --> 01:27:49,336 I enjoy going through the notebook... 1586 01:27:49,803 --> 01:27:51,805 ...carrying out the responsibilities, doing the errands... 1587 01:27:52,339 --> 01:27:55,008 ...and crossing them off the list. 1588 01:27:55,609 --> 01:27:59,279 And, I mean, I just... I just don't know how anybody could enjoy anything more... 1589 01:28:00,080 --> 01:28:03,751 ...than I enjoy, uh, reading Charlton Heston's autobiography... 1590 01:28:04,618 --> 01:28:06,954 ...or, uh, you know, uh, getting up in the morning... 1591 01:28:07,488 --> 01:28:10,424 ...and having the cup of cold coffee that's been waiting for me all night... 1592 01:28:11,091 --> 01:28:13,227 ...still there for me to drink in the morning... 1593 01:28:13,694 --> 01:28:16,563 ...and no cockroach or fly has-has died in it overnight. 1594 01:28:17,231 --> 01:28:19,366 I mean, I'm just so thrilled when I get up... 1595 01:28:20,033 --> 01:28:22,836 ...and I see that coffee there, just the way I wanted it. 1596 01:28:23,504 --> 01:28:25,439 I mean, I just can't imagine... 1597 01:28:25,906 --> 01:28:28,108 ...how anybody could enjoy something else any more than that. 1598 01:28:28,642 --> 01:28:31,779 I mean... I mean, obviously, if the cockroach... if there is a dead cockroach in it... 1599 01:28:32,513 --> 01:28:34,848 ...well, then I just have a feeling of disappointment, and I'm sad. 1600 01:28:35,449 --> 01:28:37,985 But I mean, I... I just... I just don't think... 1601 01:28:38,652 --> 01:28:40,521 I feel the need for anything more than all this. 1602 01:28:41,055 --> 01:28:43,190 Whereas, you know, you seem to be saying... 1603 01:28:43,724 --> 01:28:46,126 ...that, uh... 1604 01:28:46,727 --> 01:28:49,463 ...it's inconceivable that anybody could be having a meaningful life today... 1605 01:28:50,130 --> 01:28:51,932 ...and, you know, everyone is totally destroyed... 1606 01:28:52,399 --> 01:28:54,468 ...and we all need to live in these outposts. 1607 01:28:55,135 --> 01:28:57,271 But I mean, you know, I just can't believe... Even for you... 1608 01:28:57,805 --> 01:29:00,541 I mean, don't you find... Isn't it pleasant just to get up in the morning... 1609 01:29:01,208 --> 01:29:04,144 ...and there's Chiquita, there are the children... 1610 01:29:04,812 --> 01:29:06,814 ...and The Times is delivered, you can read it. 1611 01:29:07,281 --> 01:29:09,750 I mean, maybe you'll direct a play, maybe you won't direct a play. 1612 01:29:10,284 --> 01:29:12,486 But forget about the play that you may or may not direct. 1613 01:29:13,020 --> 01:29:16,890 Why is it necessary to...Why not lean back and just enjoy these details? 1614 01:29:17,691 --> 01:29:21,495 I mean, and there'd be a delicious cup of coffee and a piece of coffeecake. 1615 01:29:22,296 --> 01:29:24,565 I mean, why is it necessary to have more than this... 1616 01:29:25,099 --> 01:29:27,034 ...or to even think about having more than this? 1617 01:29:27,501 --> 01:29:30,237 I mean, I don't really know what you're talking about. 1618 01:29:32,106 --> 01:29:34,374 I mean... I mean, I know what you're talking about... 1619 01:29:34,908 --> 01:29:37,244 ...but I don't really know what you're talking about. 1620 01:29:37,845 --> 01:29:40,514 And I mean, you know, even if I were to totally agree with you, you know... 1621 01:29:41,115 --> 01:29:43,784 ...and even if I were to accept the idea that there's just no way for anybody... 1622 01:29:44,451 --> 01:29:46,120 ...to have personal happiness now... 1623 01:29:46,520 --> 01:29:48,522 ...well, you know, I still couldn't accept the idea... 1624 01:29:48,989 --> 01:29:51,191 ...that the way to make life wonderful would be to just totally... 1625 01:29:51,725 --> 01:29:53,660 ...you know, reject Western civilization... 1626 01:29:54,128 --> 01:29:56,864 ...and fall back into some kind of belief in some kind of weird something... 1627 01:29:57,464 --> 01:29:59,466 I mean, I don't even know how to begin talking about this... 1628 01:30:00,067 --> 01:30:02,870 ...but you know, in the Middle Ages... 1629 01:30:03,470 --> 01:30:06,473 ...before the arrival of scientific thinking as we know it today... 1630 01:30:07,207 --> 01:30:09,143 ...well, people could believe anything. 1631 01:30:09,610 --> 01:30:11,812 Anything could be true... the statue of the Virgin Mary... 1632 01:30:12,279 --> 01:30:13,947 ...could speak or bleed or whatever it was. 1633 01:30:14,415 --> 01:30:16,083 But the wonderful thing that happened... 1634 01:30:16,483 --> 01:30:19,019 ...was that then in the development of science in the Western world... 1635 01:30:19,620 --> 01:30:23,490 ...certain things did come slowly to be known and understood. 1636 01:30:24,425 --> 01:30:26,560 I mean, you know... 1637 01:30:27,094 --> 01:30:29,963 ...obviously, all ideas in science are constantly being revised. 1638 01:30:30,631 --> 01:30:32,166 I mean, that's the whole point. 1639 01:30:32,633 --> 01:30:36,770 But we do at least know that the universe has some shape and order... 1640 01:30:37,704 --> 01:30:41,442 ...and that, uh, you know, trees do not turn into people or goddesses... 1641 01:30:42,309 --> 01:30:44,244 ...and there are very good reasons why they don't... 1642 01:30:44,712 --> 01:30:46,647 ...and you can't just believe absolutely anything. 1643 01:30:47,114 --> 01:30:48,716 Whereas, the things that you're talking about... 1644 01:30:49,116 --> 01:30:52,052 I mean... I mean, you found the handprint in the book... 1645 01:30:52,720 --> 01:30:56,056 ...and there were... There were three Andrés and one Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. 1646 01:30:56,790 --> 01:30:59,059 And to me that is a coincidence. 1647 01:30:59,593 --> 01:31:02,129 But...And-And then, you know, the people who put that book together... 1648 01:31:02,663 --> 01:31:04,531 ...well, they had their own reasons for putting it together. 1649 01:31:04,998 --> 01:31:07,668 But to you it was significant, as if that book had been written 40 years ago... 1650 01:31:08,268 --> 01:31:11,538 ...so that you would see it, as if it was planned for you, in a way. 1651 01:31:12,406 --> 01:31:14,074 I mean, really... I mean... 1652 01:31:14,475 --> 01:31:18,345 I mean, all right, let's say, if I get a fortune cookie in a Chinese restaurant... 1653 01:31:19,213 --> 01:31:20,881 I mean, of course, even I have a tendency... 1654 01:31:21,281 --> 01:31:23,617 I mean, you know... I mean, of course, I would hardly throw it out. 1655 01:31:24,218 --> 01:31:26,620 I mean, I read it. I read it, and... And, uh... 1656 01:31:27,221 --> 01:31:29,957 I just instinctively sort of... You know, if it says something like, uh... 1657 01:31:30,624 --> 01:31:33,627 "A conversation with a dark-haired man will be very important for you"... 1658 01:31:34,294 --> 01:31:36,764 ...well, I just instinctively think, you know, "Who do I know who has dark hair? 1659 01:31:37,431 --> 01:31:39,767 Did we have a conversation? What did we talk about?" 1660 01:31:40,300 --> 01:31:43,904 In other words, uh, there's something in me that makes me read it... 1661 01:31:44,705 --> 01:31:47,708 ...and I instinctively interpret it as if it were an omen of the future. 1662 01:31:48,375 --> 01:31:51,378 But in my conscious opinion, which is so fundamental to my whole view of life... 1663 01:31:52,112 --> 01:31:54,715 I mean, I would just have to change totally to not have this opinion. 1664 01:31:55,315 --> 01:31:56,984 In my conscious opinion, this is simply something... 1665 01:31:57,384 --> 01:32:00,921 ...that was written in the cookie factory several years ago and in no way refers to me. 1666 01:32:01,655 --> 01:32:03,924 I mean, you know, the... The fact that I got it... 1667 01:32:04,458 --> 01:32:06,727 I mean, the man who wrote it did not know anything about me. 1668 01:32:07,261 --> 01:32:08,929 I mean, he could not have known anything about me. 1669 01:32:09,396 --> 01:32:11,665 There's no way that this cookie could actually have to do with me. 1670 01:32:12,199 --> 01:32:14,268 And the fact that I've gotten it is just basically a joke. 1671 01:32:14,802 --> 01:32:17,137 And I mean, if I were gonna go on a trip on an airplane... 1672 01:32:17,671 --> 01:32:19,339 ...and I got a fortune cookie that said " Don't go"... 1673 01:32:19,807 --> 01:32:22,943 I mean, of course, I admit I might feel a bit nervous for about one second. 1674 01:32:23,677 --> 01:32:25,813 But in fact, I would go because, I mean... 1675 01:32:26,280 --> 01:32:28,282 ...that trip is gonna be successful or unsuccessful... 1676 01:32:28,816 --> 01:32:30,951 ...based on the state of the airplane and the state of the pilot. 1677 01:32:31,485 --> 01:32:33,754 And the cookie is in no position to know about that. 1678 01:32:34,288 --> 01:32:35,889 And I mean, you know, it's the same... 1679 01:32:36,290 --> 01:32:38,625 ...with any kind of, uh, prophecy, or a sign, or an omen. 1680 01:32:39,226 --> 01:32:42,896 Because if you believe in omens, then that means that the universe... 1681 01:32:43,697 --> 01:32:45,699 I mean, I don't even know how to begin to describe this. 1682 01:32:46,233 --> 01:32:49,036 That means that the future is somehow sending messages... 1683 01:32:49,770 --> 01:32:51,438 ...backwards to the present. 1684 01:32:51,905 --> 01:32:54,641 Which-Which means that the future must exist in some sense already... 1685 01:32:55,309 --> 01:32:57,778 ...in order to be able to send these messages. 1686 01:32:58,379 --> 01:33:01,782 And it also means that things in the universe are there for a purpose... To give us messages. 1687 01:33:02,583 --> 01:33:04,585 Whereas I think that things in the universe are just there. 1688 01:33:05,052 --> 01:33:06,653 I mean, they don't mean anything. 1689 01:33:07,054 --> 01:33:10,858 I mean, you know, if the turtle's egg falls out of the tree and splashes on the paving stones... 1690 01:33:11,658 --> 01:33:14,261 ...it's just because that turtle was clumsy... by accident. 1691 01:33:14,862 --> 01:33:18,332 And-And to decide whether to send my ships off to war on the basis of that... 1692 01:33:19,066 --> 01:33:20,734 ...seems a big mistake to me. 1693 01:33:21,268 --> 01:33:24,204 Well, what information would you send your ships to war on? 1694 01:33:25,005 --> 01:33:26,407 Because if it's all meaningless... 1695 01:33:26,807 --> 01:33:28,342 ...what's the difference whether you accept the fortune cookie... 1696 01:33:28,876 --> 01:33:30,544 ...or the statistics of the Ford Foundation? 1697 01:33:31,011 --> 01:33:32,679 It doesn't seem to matter. 1698 01:33:33,080 --> 01:33:36,483 Well, the meaningless fact of the fortune cookie or the turtle's egg... 1699 01:33:37,284 --> 01:33:40,421 ...can't possibly have any relevance to the subject you're analyzing. 1700 01:33:41,221 --> 01:33:43,891 Whereas a group of meaningless facts that are collected and interpreted... 1701 01:33:44,491 --> 01:33:47,294 ...in a scientific way may quite possibly be relevant. 1702 01:33:47,961 --> 01:33:50,230 Because the wonderful thing about scientific theories about things... 1703 01:33:50,764 --> 01:33:53,767 ...is that they're based on experiments that can be repeated. 1704 01:33:55,502 --> 01:33:57,104 Hmm. 1705 01:34:12,252 --> 01:34:14,054 Well, it's true, Wally. 1706 01:34:14,455 --> 01:34:16,724 I mean, you know, following omens and so on... 1707 01:34:17,257 --> 01:34:19,593 ...is probably just a way of letting ourselves off the hook... 1708 01:34:20,194 --> 01:34:23,731 ...so that we don't have to take individual responsibility for our own actions. 1709 01:34:24,598 --> 01:34:26,467 But I mean, giving yourself over to the unconscious... 1710 01:34:27,000 --> 01:34:31,405 ...can leave you vulnerable to all sorts of very frightening manipulation. 1711 01:34:32,406 --> 01:34:35,142 And in all the work that I was involved in, there was always that danger. 1712 01:34:35,809 --> 01:34:38,812 And there was always that question of tampering with people's lives... 1713 01:34:39,480 --> 01:34:42,483 ...because if I lead one of these workshops, then I do become partly a doctor... 1714 01:34:43,217 --> 01:34:44,952 ...and partly a therapist, and partly a priest. 1715 01:34:45,419 --> 01:34:49,089 And I'm not a doctor, or a therapist, or a priest. 1716 01:34:49,890 --> 01:34:52,025 And already some of these new monasteries... 1717 01:34:52,559 --> 01:34:54,628 ...or communities or whatever we've been talking about... 1718 01:34:55,162 --> 01:34:56,897 ...are becoming institutionalized... 1719 01:34:57,364 --> 01:35:00,033 ...and I guess even in a way, at times, sort of fascistic. 1720 01:35:00,634 --> 01:35:03,971 You know, there's a sort of self-satisfied elitist paranoia that grows up... 1721 01:35:04,772 --> 01:35:07,307 ...a feeling of" them" and " us"... that is very unsettling. 1722 01:35:07,975 --> 01:35:11,512 But I mean, uh, the thing is, Wally, I think it's the exaggerated worship of science... 1723 01:35:12,246 --> 01:35:13,847 ...that has led us into this situation. 1724 01:35:14,248 --> 01:35:16,450 I mean, science has been held up to us as a magical force... 1725 01:35:16,984 --> 01:35:18,652 ...that would somehow solve everything. 1726 01:35:19,053 --> 01:35:20,921 Well, quite the contrary. It's done quite the contrary. 1727 01:35:21,388 --> 01:35:23,057 It's destroyed everything. 1728 01:35:23,457 --> 01:35:25,059 So that is what has really led, I think... 1729 01:35:25,459 --> 01:35:28,796 ...to this very strong, deep reaction against science that we're seeing now... 1730 01:35:29,596 --> 01:35:31,799 ...just as the Nazi demons that were released in the '30s in Germany... 1731 01:35:32,399 --> 01:35:35,536 ...were probably a reaction against a certain oppressive kind of knowledge... 1732 01:35:36,270 --> 01:35:38,338 ...and culture and rational thinking. 1733 01:35:38,872 --> 01:35:41,809 So I agree that we're talking about something potentially very dangerous. 1734 01:35:42,476 --> 01:35:45,145 But modern science has not been particularly less dangerous. 1735 01:35:45,813 --> 01:35:47,481 Right. Well, I agree with you. 1736 01:35:47,881 --> 01:35:49,483 I completely agree. 1737 01:35:51,685 --> 01:35:53,754 No, you know, the truth is... 1738 01:35:54,288 --> 01:35:57,691 I think I do know what really disturbs me about the work you've described... 1739 01:35:58,492 --> 01:36:00,961 ...and I don't even know if I can express it. 1740 01:36:01,562 --> 01:36:04,832 But somehow it seems that the whole point of the work that you did in those workshops... 1741 01:36:05,566 --> 01:36:08,836 ...when you get right down to it and you ask what was it really about... 1742 01:36:09,570 --> 01:36:11,171 The whole point, really, I think... 1743 01:36:11,572 --> 01:36:14,241 ...was to enable the people in the workshops, including yourself... 1744 01:36:14,842 --> 01:36:18,445 ...to somehow sort of strip away every scrap of purposefulness... 1745 01:36:19,246 --> 01:36:21,448 ...from certain selected moments. 1746 01:36:21,982 --> 01:36:24,651 And the point of it was so that you would then all be able to experience... 1747 01:36:25,252 --> 01:36:27,921 ...somehow just pure being. 1748 01:36:28,589 --> 01:36:31,792 In other words, you were trying to discover what it would be like to live for certain moments... 1749 01:36:32,593 --> 01:36:35,129 ...without having any particular thing that you were supposed to be doing. 1750 01:36:35,796 --> 01:36:37,664 And I think I just simply object to that. 1751 01:36:38,198 --> 01:36:40,734 I mean, I just don't think I accept the idea that there should be moments... 1752 01:36:41,402 --> 01:36:43,203 ...in which you're not trying to do anything. 1753 01:36:43,670 --> 01:36:47,007 I think, uh, it's our nature, uh, to do things. 1754 01:36:47,808 --> 01:36:49,343 I think we should do things. 1755 01:36:49,743 --> 01:36:51,478 I think that, uh, purposefulness... 1756 01:36:51,945 --> 01:36:55,549 ...is part of our ineradicable basic human structure. 1757 01:36:56,350 --> 01:36:58,685 And to say that we ought to be able to live without it... 1758 01:36:59,286 --> 01:37:02,623 ...is like saying that, uh, a tree ought to be able to live without branches or roots. 1759 01:37:03,357 --> 01:37:05,626 But... But actually, without branches or roots, it wouldn't be a tree. 1760 01:37:06,160 --> 01:37:08,495 I mean, it would just be a log. Do you see what I'm saying? 1761 01:37:09,029 --> 01:37:10,497 Uh-huh. Uh-huh. 1762 01:37:10,831 --> 01:37:13,634 I mean, in other words, if I'm sitting at home and I have nothing to do... 1763 01:37:14,368 --> 01:37:15,969 ...well, I naturally reach for a book. 1764 01:37:16,370 --> 01:37:19,440 I mean, what would be so great about just sitting there and, uh, doing nothing? 1765 01:37:20,174 --> 01:37:21,709 It just seems absurd. 1766 01:37:22,176 --> 01:37:23,377 And if Debby is there? 1767 01:37:24,978 --> 01:37:26,513 Well, that's just the same thing. 1768 01:37:26,980 --> 01:37:29,383 I mean, is there really such a thing as, uh... 1769 01:37:29,983 --> 01:37:33,187 ...two people doing nothing but just being together? 1770 01:37:33,987 --> 01:37:35,656 I mean, would they simply then... 1771 01:37:36,056 --> 01:37:38,525 ...be, uh, " relating," to use the word we're always using? 1772 01:37:39,193 --> 01:37:40,728 I mean, what would that mean? 1773 01:37:41,195 --> 01:37:42,863 I mean, either we're gonna have a conversation... 1774 01:37:43,263 --> 01:37:44,998 ...or we're going to, uh, carry out the garbage... 1775 01:37:45,599 --> 01:37:48,469 ...or we're going to do something, separately or together. 1776 01:37:49,203 --> 01:37:50,738 I mean, do you see what I'm saying? 1777 01:37:51,138 --> 01:37:54,408 I mean, what does it mean to just, uh, simply, uh, sit there? 1778 01:37:55,142 --> 01:37:57,077 That makes you nervous. 1779 01:37:57,544 --> 01:38:01,215 Well, well, why shouldn't it make me nervous? It just seems ridiculous to me. 1780 01:38:02,082 --> 01:38:03,751 That's interesting, Wally. 1781 01:38:05,152 --> 01:38:08,355 You know, when I went to Ladakh in western Tibet and stayed on a farm for a month... 1782 01:38:09,022 --> 01:38:12,292 ...well, there, you know, when people come over in the evening for tea, nobody says anything. 1783 01:38:13,026 --> 01:38:14,828 Unless there's something to say, but there almost never is. 1784 01:38:15,229 --> 01:38:18,165 So they just sit there and drink their tea, and it doesn't seem to bother them. 1785 01:38:21,835 --> 01:38:24,104 I mean, you see, the trouble, Wally, with always being active and doing things... 1786 01:38:24,638 --> 01:38:27,241 ...is that I think it's quite possible to do all sorts of things... 1787 01:38:27,841 --> 01:38:30,711 ...and at the same time be completely dead inside. 1788 01:38:31,378 --> 01:38:33,380 I mean, you're doing all these things, but are you doing them... 1789 01:38:33,847 --> 01:38:35,582 ...because you really feel an impulse to do them... 1790 01:38:36,050 --> 01:38:38,385 ...or are you doing them mechanically, as we were saying before? 1791 01:38:38,986 --> 01:38:41,121 Because I really do believe that if you're just living mechanically... 1792 01:38:41,655 --> 01:38:43,457 ...then you have to change your life. 1793 01:38:43,991 --> 01:38:46,460 I mean, you know, when you're young, you go out on dates all the time. 1794 01:38:47,061 --> 01:38:49,463 You go dancing or something. You're floating free. 1795 01:38:50,064 --> 01:38:52,666 And then one day suddenly you find yourself in a relationship... 1796 01:38:53,333 --> 01:38:55,069 ...and suddenly everything freezes. 1797 01:38:55,536 --> 01:38:57,871 And this can be true in your work as well. 1798 01:38:58,472 --> 01:39:00,808 And I mean, of course, if you're really alive inside... 1799 01:39:01,341 --> 01:39:02,943 ...then of course there's no problem. 1800 01:39:03,343 --> 01:39:05,279 I mean, if you're living with somebody in one little room... 1801 01:39:05,746 --> 01:39:08,082 ...and there's a life going on between you and the person you're living with... 1802 01:39:08,615 --> 01:39:12,286 ...well, then a whole adventure can be going on right in that room. 1803 01:39:13,153 --> 01:39:16,156 But there's always the danger that things can go dead. 1804 01:39:16,824 --> 01:39:19,827 Then I really do think you have to kind of become a hobo or something, you know... 1805 01:39:20,561 --> 01:39:22,296 ...like Kerouac, and go out on the road. 1806 01:39:22,763 --> 01:39:24,565 I really believe that. 1807 01:39:25,032 --> 01:39:28,302 You know, it's not that wonderful to spend your life on the road. 1808 01:39:29,036 --> 01:39:32,840 My own overwhelming preference is to stay in that room if you can. 1809 01:39:33,640 --> 01:39:36,310 But you know, if you live with somebody for a long time, people are constantly saying... 1810 01:39:36,977 --> 01:39:39,980 "Well, of course it's not as great as it used to be, but that's only natural. 1811 01:39:40,647 --> 01:39:43,584 The first blush of a romance goes, and that's the way it has to be. " 1812 01:39:44,251 --> 01:39:46,920 Now, I totally disagree with that. 1813 01:39:47,588 --> 01:39:51,392 But I do think that you have to constantly ask yourself the question, with total frankness: 1814 01:39:52,259 --> 01:39:53,994 Is your marriage still a marriage? 1815 01:39:54,461 --> 01:39:56,263 Is the sacramental element there? 1816 01:39:56,730 --> 01:39:58,932 Just as you have to ask about the sacramental element in your work... 1817 01:39:59,466 --> 01:40:01,402 Is it still there? 1818 01:40:01,935 --> 01:40:04,138 I mean, it's a very frightening thing, Wally, to have to suddenly realize... 1819 01:40:04,605 --> 01:40:08,208 ...that, my God, I thought I was living my life, but in fact I haven't been a human being. 1820 01:40:09,009 --> 01:40:10,611 I've been a performer. 1821 01:40:11,011 --> 01:40:13,614 I haven't been living. I've been acting. I've... I've acted the role of the father. 1822 01:40:14,214 --> 01:40:17,217 I've acted the role of the husband. I've acted the role of the friend. 1823 01:40:17,951 --> 01:40:20,821 I've acted the role of the writer, or director, or what have you. 1824 01:40:21,422 --> 01:40:24,625 I've lived in the same room with this person, but I haven't really seen them. 1825 01:40:25,359 --> 01:40:28,762 I haven't really heard them. I haven't really been with them. 1826 01:40:29,563 --> 01:40:31,699 Yeah, I know some people are just sometimes... 1827 01:40:32,366 --> 01:40:34,435 ...uh, existing just side by side. 1828 01:40:35,035 --> 01:40:39,106 I mean, uh, the other person's, uh, face could just turn into a great wolf's face... 1829 01:40:40,040 --> 01:40:42,376 ...and, uh, it just wouldn't be noticed. 1830 01:40:42,976 --> 01:40:45,713 And it wouldn't be noticed, no. It wouldn't be noticed. 1831 01:40:47,581 --> 01:40:49,383 I mean, when I was in Israel a little while ago... 1832 01:40:49,850 --> 01:40:51,985 I mean, I have this picture of Chiquita that was taken when she... 1833 01:40:52,519 --> 01:40:55,522 I always carry it with me. It was taken when she was about 26 or something. 1834 01:40:56,256 --> 01:40:58,592 And it's in summer, and she's stretched out on a terrace... 1835 01:40:59,126 --> 01:41:01,528 ...in this sort of old-fashioned long skirt that's kind of pulled up. 1836 01:41:02,129 --> 01:41:04,198 And she's slim and sensual and beautiful. 1837 01:41:04,732 --> 01:41:08,402 And I've always looked at that picture and just thought about just how sexy she looks. 1838 01:41:09,203 --> 01:41:11,138 And then last year in Israel, I looked at the picture... 1839 01:41:11,605 --> 01:41:15,209 ...and I realized that that face in the picture was the saddest face in the world. 1840 01:41:16,009 --> 01:41:18,612 That girl at that time was just lost... 1841 01:41:19,213 --> 01:41:20,814 ...so sad and so alone. 1842 01:41:21,215 --> 01:41:24,218 I've been carrying this picture for years and not ever really seeing what it is, you know. 1843 01:41:24,952 --> 01:41:27,488 I just never really looked at the picture. 1844 01:41:30,023 --> 01:41:33,627 And then, at a certain point, I realized I'd just gone for a good 18 years unable to feel... 1845 01:41:34,428 --> 01:41:36,296 ...except in the most extreme situations. 1846 01:41:36,764 --> 01:41:39,233 I mean, to some extent, I still had the ability to live in my work. 1847 01:41:39,967 --> 01:41:41,502 That was why I was such a work junkie. 1848 01:41:41,969 --> 01:41:45,439 That was why I felt that every play that I did was a matter of my life or my death. 1849 01:41:46,240 --> 01:41:47,975 But in my real life, I was dead. 1850 01:41:48,442 --> 01:41:50,577 I was a robot. 1851 01:41:51,178 --> 01:41:53,580 I mean, I didn't even allow myself to get angry or annoyed. 1852 01:41:54,114 --> 01:41:56,450 I mean, you know, today Chiquita, Nicolas, Marina... 1853 01:41:57,051 --> 01:42:00,320 All day long, as people do, they do things that annoy me and they say things that annoy me. 1854 01:42:01,055 --> 01:42:03,323 And today I get annoyed. And they say, " Why are you annoyed?" 1855 01:42:03,857 --> 01:42:05,592 And I say, " Because you're annoying," you know. 1856 01:42:07,594 --> 01:42:09,530 And when I allowed myself to consider the possibility... 1857 01:42:09,997 --> 01:42:12,132 ...of not spending the rest of my life with Chiquita... 1858 01:42:12,733 --> 01:42:15,736 I realized that what I wanted most in life was to always be with her. 1859 01:42:17,805 --> 01:42:20,607 But at that time, I hadn't learned what it would be like to let yourself react... 1860 01:42:21,208 --> 01:42:22,810 ...to another human being. 1861 01:42:23,210 --> 01:42:24,878 And if you can't react to another person... 1862 01:42:25,345 --> 01:42:28,015 ...then there's no possibility of action or interaction. 1863 01:42:28,615 --> 01:42:32,820 And if there isn't, I don't really know what the word " love" means... 1864 01:42:33,754 --> 01:42:37,758 ...except duty, obligation, sentimentality, fear. 1865 01:42:41,028 --> 01:42:43,097 I mean... 1866 01:42:44,565 --> 01:42:46,233 I don't know about you, Wally, but I... 1867 01:42:46,767 --> 01:42:50,104 I just had to put myself into a kind of training program to learn how to be a human being. 1868 01:42:50,838 --> 01:42:52,639 I mean, how did I feel about anything? I didn't know. 1869 01:42:53,173 --> 01:42:56,710 What kind of things did I like? What kind of people did I really want to be with? You know? 1870 01:42:57,511 --> 01:42:59,513 And the only way that I could think of to find out... 1871 01:43:00,047 --> 01:43:03,317 ...was to just cut out all the noise and stop performing all the time... 1872 01:43:04,051 --> 01:43:06,854 ...and just listen to what was inside me. 1873 01:43:07,521 --> 01:43:10,057 See, I think a time comes when you need to do that. 1874 01:43:10,591 --> 01:43:13,127 Now, maybe in order to do it, you have to go to the Sahara... 1875 01:43:13,727 --> 01:43:15,396 ...and maybe you can do it at home. 1876 01:43:15,796 --> 01:43:17,731 But you need to cut out the noise. 1877 01:43:22,403 --> 01:43:24,071 Yeah. Of course, personally, I- I just, uh... 1878 01:43:24,538 --> 01:43:27,541 I usually don't, uh... like those quiet moments, you know. 1879 01:43:28,208 --> 01:43:29,676 I really don't. 1880 01:43:30,010 --> 01:43:33,947 I mean, uh, I don't know if it's that, uh, Freudian thing or what... 1881 01:43:34,815 --> 01:43:37,017 But, uh, you know, the fear of unconscious impulses... 1882 01:43:37,551 --> 01:43:40,220 ...or my own aggression or whatever, but, uh... 1883 01:43:40,821 --> 01:43:43,891 ...if things get too quiet, and I find myself just, uh, sitting there... 1884 01:43:44,625 --> 01:43:46,226 ...you know, as we were saying before... 1885 01:43:46,627 --> 01:43:50,431 I mean, whether I'm by myself, or-or I'm-I'm with someone else... 1886 01:43:51,365 --> 01:43:53,901 I just, uh... I just have this feeling of... 1887 01:43:54,501 --> 01:43:57,838 ...uh, my God, I'm going to be revealed. 1888 01:43:58,706 --> 01:44:02,109 In other words, I'm adequate to do any sort of a task, um... 1889 01:44:02,910 --> 01:44:06,180 ...but I'm not adequate, uh, just to... To be a human being. 1890 01:44:06,914 --> 01:44:08,515 I mean, in other words, I'm not, uh... 1891 01:44:08,916 --> 01:44:11,652 If I'm just, uh, trapped there and I'm not allowed to do things... 1892 01:44:12,319 --> 01:44:15,189 ...but all I can do is just, um, be there... 1893 01:44:15,789 --> 01:44:17,725 ...well, I'll just fail. 1894 01:44:18,192 --> 01:44:19,793 I mean, in other words, uh... 1895 01:44:20,194 --> 01:44:22,196 I can pass any other sort of a test... 1896 01:44:22,730 --> 01:44:25,933 ...and, you know, I can even get an " A" if I put in the required effort... 1897 01:44:26,600 --> 01:44:28,402 ...but I just don't, uh... 1898 01:44:28,936 --> 01:44:31,071 I just don't have a clue how to pass this test. 1899 01:44:31,739 --> 01:44:34,541 I mean... I mean, of course, I realize this isn't a test... 1900 01:44:35,209 --> 01:44:37,478 ...but, um, I see it as a test... 1901 01:44:38,011 --> 01:44:39,680 ...and I feel I'm going to fail it. 1902 01:44:40,147 --> 01:44:41,682 I mean, it's... it's very scary. 1903 01:44:42,149 --> 01:44:45,686 I just feel, uh,just totally at sea. I mean... 1904 01:44:46,553 --> 01:44:48,555 Well, you know, I could imagine a life, Wally... 1905 01:44:49,022 --> 01:44:53,027 ...in which each day would become an incredible, monumental, creative task... 1906 01:44:53,961 --> 01:44:55,763 ...and we're not necessarily up to it. 1907 01:44:56,230 --> 01:44:59,033 I mean, if you felt like walking out on the person you live with, you'd walk out. 1908 01:44:59,700 --> 01:45:01,368 Then if you felt like it, you'd come back. 1909 01:45:01,835 --> 01:45:04,838 But meanwhile, the other person would have reacted to your walking out. 1910 01:45:05,639 --> 01:45:08,308 It would be a life of such feeling. 1911 01:45:08,909 --> 01:45:10,844 I mean, what was amazing in the workshops I led... 1912 01:45:11,311 --> 01:45:14,314 ...was how quickly people seemed to fall into enthusiasm... 1913 01:45:14,982 --> 01:45:18,585 ...celebration,joy, wonder, abandon, wildness, tenderness. 1914 01:45:19,386 --> 01:45:21,255 Could we stand to live like that? 1915 01:45:21,722 --> 01:45:24,258 Yeah, I think it's that moment of contact with another person. 1916 01:45:24,792 --> 01:45:26,393 I mean, that's what scares us. 1917 01:45:26,794 --> 01:45:29,663 I mean, that moment of being face to face with another person. 1918 01:45:30,330 --> 01:45:31,865 I mean, now... 1919 01:45:32,332 --> 01:45:35,803 You wouldn't think it would be so frightening. It's strange that we find it so frightening. 1920 01:45:36,603 --> 01:45:38,205 Well, it isn't that strange. 1921 01:45:38,605 --> 01:45:41,275 I mean, first of all, there are some pretty good reasons for being frightened. 1922 01:45:41,942 --> 01:45:45,479 I mean, you know, the human being is a complex and dangerous creature. 1923 01:45:46,346 --> 01:45:48,482 I mean, really, if you start living each moment? 1924 01:45:49,016 --> 01:45:50,684 Christ, that's quite a challenge. 1925 01:45:51,151 --> 01:45:54,154 I mean, if you really reach out and you're really in touch with the other person... 1926 01:45:54,822 --> 01:45:57,624 ...well, that really is something to strive for, I think, I really do. 1927 01:45:58,292 --> 01:46:00,561 Yeah, it's just so pathetic if one doesn't do that. 1928 01:46:01,095 --> 01:46:04,698 Of course there's a problem, because the closer you come, I think, to another human being... 1929 01:46:05,632 --> 01:46:08,102 ...the more completely mysterious... and unreachable... 1930 01:46:08,702 --> 01:46:10,304 ...that person becomes. 1931 01:46:10,704 --> 01:46:13,774 I mean, you know, you have to reach out, you have to go back and forth with them... 1932 01:46:14,508 --> 01:46:17,778 ...and you have to relate, and yet you're relating to a ghost or something. 1933 01:46:18,512 --> 01:46:20,180 I don't know, because we're ghosts. 1934 01:46:20,581 --> 01:46:23,784 We're phantoms. Who are we? 1935 01:46:24,518 --> 01:46:26,854 And that's to face, to confront the fact that you're completely alone. 1936 01:46:27,388 --> 01:46:29,723 And to accept that you're alone is to accept death. 1937 01:46:30,324 --> 01:46:32,993 You mean, because somehow when you are alone, you're alone with death. 1938 01:46:33,594 --> 01:46:37,131 I mean, nothing's obstructing your view of it, or something like that. 1939 01:46:37,931 --> 01:46:39,400 Right. 1940 01:46:39,800 --> 01:46:42,202 You know, if I understood it correctly, I think, uh, Heidegger said... 1941 01:46:42,803 --> 01:46:46,273 ...that, uh, if you were to experience your own being to the full... 1942 01:46:47,141 --> 01:46:51,278 ...you'd be experiencing the decay of that being toward death... 1943 01:46:52,212 --> 01:46:54,148 ...as a part of your experience. 1944 01:46:54,615 --> 01:46:57,284 You know, in the sexual act there's that moment of complete forgetting... 1945 01:46:57,885 --> 01:46:59,219 ...which is so incredible. 1946 01:46:59,620 --> 01:47:01,422 Then in the next moment, you start to think about things: 1947 01:47:01,889 --> 01:47:03,757 ...work on the play, what you've got to do tomorrow. 1948 01:47:04,224 --> 01:47:07,161 I don't know if this is true of you, but I think it must be quite common. 1949 01:47:07,828 --> 01:47:09,897 The world comes in quite fast. 1950 01:47:10,364 --> 01:47:13,300 Now, that again may be because we're afraid to stay in that place of forgetting... 1951 01:47:13,967 --> 01:47:15,636 ...because that, again, is close to death. 1952 01:47:16,103 --> 01:47:18,105 Like people who are afraid to go to sleep. 1953 01:47:18,572 --> 01:47:21,842 In other words, you interrelate, and you don't know what the next moment will bring. 1954 01:47:22,576 --> 01:47:24,244 And to not know what the next moment will bring... 1955 01:47:24,712 --> 01:47:26,380 ...brings you closer to a perception of death. 1956 01:47:26,780 --> 01:47:29,917 You see, that's why I think that people have affairs. 1957 01:47:30,584 --> 01:47:32,586 I mean, you know, in the theater, if you get good reviews... 1958 01:47:33,120 --> 01:47:35,122 ...you feel for a moment that you've got your hands on something. 1959 01:47:35,589 --> 01:47:37,458 You know what I mean? I mean, it's a good feeling. 1960 01:47:37,925 --> 01:47:39,793 But then that feeling goes quite quickly. 1961 01:47:40,327 --> 01:47:43,063 And once again you don't know quite what you should do next. 1962 01:47:43,731 --> 01:47:45,065 What'll happen? 1963 01:47:45,399 --> 01:47:47,468 Well, have an affair, and up to a certain point... 1964 01:47:48,135 --> 01:47:50,270 ...you can really feel that you're on firm ground, you know. 1965 01:47:50,804 --> 01:47:53,807 There's a sexual conquest to be made. There are different questions. 1966 01:47:54,541 --> 01:47:56,210 Does she enjoy the ears being nibbled? 1967 01:47:56,610 --> 01:47:59,413 How intensely can you talk about Schopenhauer at some elegant French restaurant? 1968 01:48:00,080 --> 01:48:02,082 Whatever nonsense it is. 1969 01:48:02,616 --> 01:48:05,953 It's all, I think, to give you the semblance that there's firm earth. 1970 01:48:06,687 --> 01:48:09,957 Well, have a real relationship with a person that goes on for years... 1971 01:48:10,691 --> 01:48:12,960 That's completely unpredictable. 1972 01:48:13,494 --> 01:48:16,163 Then you've cut off all your ties to the land, and you're sailing into the unknown... 1973 01:48:16,764 --> 01:48:18,766 ...into uncharted seas. 1974 01:48:19,366 --> 01:48:23,237 I mean, you know, people hold on to these images of father, mother, husband, wife... 1975 01:48:24,171 --> 01:48:25,773 ...again for the same reason... 1976 01:48:26,173 --> 01:48:29,043 'cause they seem to provide some firm ground. 1977 01:48:29,777 --> 01:48:31,712 But there's no wife there. 1978 01:48:32,179 --> 01:48:33,847 What does that mean? A wife. 1979 01:48:34,314 --> 01:48:36,517 A husband. A son. 1980 01:48:37,117 --> 01:48:38,786 A baby holds your hands... 1981 01:48:39,186 --> 01:48:42,189 ...and then suddenly there's this huge man lifting you off the ground... 1982 01:48:42,923 --> 01:48:44,458 ...and then he's gone. 1983 01:48:44,925 --> 01:48:46,460 Where's that son? 1984 01:49:06,013 --> 01:49:09,349 All the other customers seemed to have left hours ago. 1985 01:49:10,084 --> 01:49:13,620 We got the bill, and André paid for our dinner. 1986 01:49:14,355 --> 01:49:15,622 Really? 1987 01:49:42,182 --> 01:49:43,984 I treated myself to a taxi. 1988 01:49:45,919 --> 01:49:47,988 I rode home through the city streets. 1989 01:49:49,590 --> 01:49:51,859 There wasn't a street, there wasn't a building... 1990 01:49:52,393 --> 01:49:55,062 ...that wasn't connected to some memory in my mind. 1991 01:49:57,131 --> 01:49:59,666 There, I was buying a suit with my father. 1992 01:50:02,870 --> 01:50:05,739 There, I was having an ice cream soda after school. 1993 01:50:10,411 --> 01:50:13,213 When I finally came in, Debby was home from work... 1994 01:50:13,881 --> 01:50:16,817 ...and I told her everything about my dinner with André.