from What's Your Idea of a Good Time? (Tuumba Press, 2006)

[p. 61-62, April 1981, "ANSWERS TO BILL'S SECOND QUESTIONS]

What for you is so great about Dante? It's that it is a fantasy about ethics that attempts to talk about everything, and that you can make diagrams of the structure of the whole book & hold it all in mind at once plus the poetry. Dante tells about all my favorite subjects.

What would you like to change about the world? Good lord, do you really want me to go into this? First off we'd get rid of capitalism entirely... blah blah blah... no more rigidity no work ethic no Puritanism, you see it's boring to actually say. The world would turn into even more boring societies of benevolent hippie types assuming "control" of everything. No violence, etc., we'd all live like whales in extreme states of superbly complicated communication between & among each other and all the tension of already-enacted civilization would be utilized in forms of that. There was this jingle that children used to sing on my block in Brooklyn & it went: I hate the world and the world hates me, ha ha ha ha he he he. Oh dear I haven't answered your questions but you get the drift, as they say. That's why to envision the world in an epic ethical work is so fascinating to me. David Garcia who's the rector of St. Mark's church, constantly talks at our staff meetings about political work he's involved in & he talks in terms of centuries. He says things like, this current staff at St. Mark's will be remembered for doing this & that, about the importance of all the arts projects saving their archives for study, etc. When I read the newspapers & see a man in a suit surrounded by men in suits talking to a man in a suit or shot by a man who maybe wasn't in a suit, well at the very least I wish political leaders to be more handsome and dressed in fascinating outfits in bright colors though maybe they're allergic to bee stings & that's why they look that way. I would like very much to have been an American Indian before the advent of the white man & to have lived in a society that sang incessantly but never had a written language because they didn't have to make lists of what to bring with them when they go because they didn't have all that much stuff. I would also like to have. And for everyone to be able to have, all the natural pleasures simultaneous with all the, no, I'll have to rephrase that, all the pleasures of art and society too, in nature. Does that make sense? I hope you're not laughing at me but this is what I think about. Ask me more.


[p. 62-63, April 1981, "ANSWERS TO BILL'S SECOND QUESTIONS]

Have you ever taken LSD? What happened? It's funny I think your questions are so astute instinctually (Hannah Weiner told me today she saw words so she wouldn't have to have instincts) as to make me tell a coherent sotyr (satyr? I meant story). Because in that very house I was just telling about I had the most amazing experiences which were like what people tell all about when they take LSD. I've never taken it. But I saw "trains of thought" with other people & had a bee talk to me & saw Hawthorne in a vision but he was a white chicken & endless streams of tricky verbal coincidences like in dreams began to happen to me. But when I did take mescaline once I walked into the woods in early spring & saw afterwords, and can still see, that each lustrous leaf is outlined with an impeccable black line, and another time I played cowboys and Indians on the streets of West Stockbridge, a small town and then lost it all, imperceptibly, because my girlfriend with whom I was tripping started to have a fight with her boyfriend who was tight-assed and overbearing. In the city I used to give people who were taking LSD guided tours when I had a car, I would be their little Virgil & supervise a night from sunset to dawn, winding up usually in Brooklyn or Staten Island for the sunrise. I did this because I loved being with people who were on acid but I was always terrified of taking it myself because I couldn't stand the idea of so many hours being locked into this overwhelming drug, like being on Demerol in labor. Once I spent an amazing time with Ted while he was on acid but I can't tell what happened except he kept insisting on playing "My Best Friend" over and over on the record player, this was at Anne's house. I chewed a few psychedelic mushrooms once at a seder in the country but nothing happened except that I played the saxophone & did an improvised concert on this piano for evidently hours.