1 00:01:14,808 --> 00:01:17,344 The life of a playwright is tough. 2 00:01:17,978 --> 00:01:20,347 It's not easy, as some people seem to think. 3 00:01:20,947 --> 00:01:23,950 You work hard writing plays, and nobody puts them on. 4 00:01:24,684 --> 00:01:27,087 You take up other lines of work to try to make a living... 5 00:01:27,687 --> 00:01:29,289 I became an actor... 6 00:01:29,623 --> 00:01:31,491 and people don't hire you. 7 00:01:31,958 --> 00:01:35,295 So you just spend your days doing the errands of your trade. 8 00:01:36,963 --> 00:01:38,899 Today I'd had to be up by 10.:00 in the morning... 9 00:01:39,366 --> 00:01:41,101 to make some important phone calls. 10 00:01:41,568 --> 00:01:45,105 Then I'd gone to the stationery store to buy envelopes. Then to the Xerox shop. 11 00:01:45,972 --> 00:01:47,574 There were dozens of things to do. 12 00:01:53,647 --> 00:01:55,849 By 5.:00 I'd finally made it to the post office... 13 00:01:56,383 --> 00:01:58,385 and mailed off several copies of my plays... 14 00:01:58,852 --> 00:02:00,787 meanwhile checking constantly with my answering service... 15 00:02:01,254 --> 00:02:04,057 to see if my agent had called with any acting work. 16 00:02:04,658 --> 00:02:07,594 In the morning, the mailbox had just been stuffed with bills. 17 00:02:08,228 --> 00:02:10,397 What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to pay them? 18 00:02:10,964 --> 00:02:13,466 After all, I was already doing my best. 19 00:02:15,669 --> 00:02:17,637 I've lived in this city all my life. 20 00:02:18,171 --> 00:02:20,273 I grew up on the Upper East Side... 21 00:02:20,807 --> 00:02:24,010 and when I was 10 years old I was rich, I was an aristocrat... 22 00:02:24,744 --> 00:02:27,647 riding around in taxis, surrounded by comfort... 23 00:02:28,348 --> 00:02:30,884 and all I thought about was art and music. 24 00:02:31,484 --> 00:02:35,956 Now I'm 36, and all I think about is money. 25 00:03:06,586 --> 00:03:08,121 It was now 7.:00... 26 00:03:08,588 --> 00:03:11,591 and I would have liked nothing better than to go home and have my girlfriend Debby... 27 00:03:12,259 --> 00:03:14,594 cook me a nice, delicious dinner. 28 00:03:15,195 --> 00:03:17,264 But for the last several years our financial circumstances... 29 00:03:17,797 --> 00:03:20,467 have forced Debby to work three nights a week as a waitress. 30 00:03:21,067 --> 00:03:23,670 After all, somebody had to bring in a little money. 31 00:03:24,404 --> 00:03:26,606 So I was on my own. 32 00:03:27,207 --> 00:03:30,343 But the worst thing of all was that I'd been trapped by an odd series of circumstances... 33 00:03:31,077 --> 00:03:35,015 into agreeing to have dinner with a man I'd been avoiding literally for years. 34 00:03:35,882 --> 00:03:37,484 His name was André Gregory. 35 00:03:37,884 --> 00:03:40,553 At one time he'd been a very close friend of mine... 36 00:03:41,154 --> 00:03:43,490 as well as my most valued colleague in the theater. 37 00:03:44,090 --> 00:03:46,026 In fact, he was the man who had first discovered me... 38 00:03:46,426 --> 00:03:49,195 and put one of my plays on the professional stage. 39 00:03:49,829 --> 00:03:52,999 When I'd known André, he'd been at the height of his career as a theater director. 40 00:03:53,767 --> 00:03:56,169 The amazing work he did with his company, the Manhattan Project... 41 00:03:56,770 --> 00:03:59,372 had just stunned audiences throughout the world. 42 00:04:01,241 --> 00:04:03,710 But then something had happened to André. 43 00:04:04,244 --> 00:04:06,780 He dropped out of the theater. He sort of disappeared. 44 00:04:07,380 --> 00:04:09,849 For months at a time, his family seemed only to know that he was traveling... 45 00:04:10,450 --> 00:04:12,552 in some odd place like Tibet... 46 00:04:13,053 --> 00:04:15,322 which was really weird because he loved his wife and children. 47 00:04:15,855 --> 00:04:18,024 He never used to like to leave home at all. 48 00:04:18,592 --> 00:04:21,394 Or else you'd hear that someone had met him at a party and he'd been telling people... 49 00:04:22,062 --> 00:04:24,864 that he talked with trees or something like that. 50 00:04:25,599 --> 00:04:28,468 Obviously, something terrible had happened to André. 51 00:04:35,609 --> 00:04:37,577 The whole idea of meeting him made me very nervous. 52 00:04:38,044 --> 00:04:39,879 I mean, I really wasn't up for that sort of thing. 53 00:04:40,413 --> 00:04:43,550 I had problems of my own. I mean, I couldn't help André. 54 00:04:44,251 --> 00:04:46,052 Was I supposed to be a doctor, or what? 55 00:04:49,756 --> 00:04:51,358 - Hello. - Hello. 56 00:04:53,159 --> 00:04:54,761 - Here you go. - Thank you. 57 00:04:59,366 --> 00:05:02,769 - Yes, sir. - Ah, sir, my name is Wallace Shawn. 58 00:05:03,570 --> 00:05:05,639 I'm expected at the table of André Gregory. 59 00:05:08,575 --> 00:05:10,243 That table will be a moment, sir. 60 00:05:10,644 --> 00:05:12,779 If you like, you may have a drink at the bar. 61 00:05:32,065 --> 00:05:34,534 - Good evening, sir. - Uh, could I have a club soda, please? 62 00:05:35,201 --> 00:05:37,671 I'm sorry, sir. We only serve Source de Pavilion. 63 00:05:38,271 --> 00:05:40,073 Oh, that'd be fine, thank you. 64 00:05:55,355 --> 00:05:58,091 When I'd called André, and he'd suggested that we meet in this particular restaurant... 65 00:05:58,758 --> 00:06:02,362 I'd been rather surprised, because André's taste used to be very ascetic... 66 00:06:03,163 --> 00:06:05,832 even though people have always known that he had some money somewhere. 67 00:06:06,433 --> 00:06:09,369 I mean, how the hell else could he have been flying off to Asia and so on... 68 00:06:10,036 --> 00:06:12,372 and still have been supporting his family? 69 00:06:14,641 --> 00:06:17,577 The reason I was meeting André was that an acquaintance of mine, George Grassfield... 70 00:06:18,245 --> 00:06:21,448 had called me and just insisted that I had to see him. 71 00:06:22,182 --> 00:06:25,585 Apparently, George had been walking his dog in an odd section of town the night before... 72 00:06:26,386 --> 00:06:28,054 and he'd suddenly come upon André... 73 00:06:28,455 --> 00:06:31,391 leaning against a crumbling old building and sobbing. 74 00:06:32,058 --> 00:06:34,194 André had explained to George that he'd just been watching... 75 00:06:34,661 --> 00:06:36,663 the Ingmar Bergman movie Autumn Sonata... 76 00:06:37,197 --> 00:06:38,732 about 25 blocks away... 77 00:06:39,199 --> 00:06:42,002 and he'd been seized by a fit of ungovernable crying... 78 00:06:42,802 --> 00:06:45,205 when the character played by Ingrid Bergman had said... 79 00:06:45,872 --> 00:06:49,676 "I could always live in my art, but never in my life. " 80 00:06:55,815 --> 00:06:57,951 Wallyl... 81 00:06:58,485 --> 00:07:00,553 - Wow. - My God. 82 00:07:04,558 --> 00:07:06,626 I remember, when I first started working with André's company... 83 00:07:07,160 --> 00:07:10,363 I couldn't get over the way the actors would hug when they greeted each other. 84 00:07:11,097 --> 00:07:13,700 "Wow. Now I'm really in the theater, " I thought. 85 00:07:14,234 --> 00:07:16,036 Well, you look terrific. 86 00:07:16,570 --> 00:07:18,838 Well, I feel terrible. 87 00:07:21,441 --> 00:07:23,109 Good evening, sir. Nice to see you again. 88 00:07:23,577 --> 00:07:26,313 Thank you. Good evening. Ah, I think I'll have a spritzer, if I could. 89 00:07:26,980 --> 00:07:28,582 - Yes, sir. - Thank you. 90 00:07:30,584 --> 00:07:32,352 I was feeling incredibly nervous. 91 00:07:32,819 --> 00:07:34,788 I wasn't sure I could stick through an entire meal with him. 92 00:07:35,255 --> 00:07:36,623 Great. 93 00:07:36,990 --> 00:07:38,525 So we talked about this and that. 94 00:07:38,992 --> 00:07:40,860 He told me a few things aboutJerzy Grotowski... 95 00:07:41,394 --> 00:07:42,929 the great Polish theater director... 96 00:07:43,396 --> 00:07:45,932 who was a friend and almost like a kind of a guru of André's. 97 00:07:46,600 --> 00:07:48,602 He'd also dropped out of the theater. 98 00:07:49,069 --> 00:07:51,671 Grotowski was a pretty unusual character himself. 99 00:07:52,239 --> 00:07:55,442 At one time, he'd been quite fat, then he'd lost an incredible amount of weight... 100 00:07:56,209 --> 00:07:58,078 and become very thin and grown a beard. 101 00:07:58,612 --> 00:08:00,947 - Your table is ready, if you feel like sitting down. - Oh. 102 00:08:01,481 --> 00:08:03,083 - Oh. - Yes. Thank you. 103 00:08:11,057 --> 00:08:13,760 I was beginning to realize that the only way to make this evening bearable... 104 00:08:14,361 --> 00:08:16,696 would be to ask André a few questions. 105 00:08:17,264 --> 00:08:19,633 Asking questions always relaxes me. 106 00:08:20,166 --> 00:08:22,102 In fact, I sometimes think that my secret profession... 107 00:08:22,569 --> 00:08:25,138 is that I'm a private investigator, a detective. 108 00:08:25,772 --> 00:08:28,008 I always enjoy finding out about people. 109 00:08:28,642 --> 00:08:32,913 Even if they're in absolute agony, I always find it very... interesting. 110 00:08:35,248 --> 00:08:38,518 - By the way, is he still thin? - What? 111 00:08:39,252 --> 00:08:42,255 Grotowski. Is he still thin? 112 00:08:42,989 --> 00:08:44,691 Oh. Absolutely. 113 00:08:48,795 --> 00:08:51,264 Oh, waiter? Uh, I think we can do without this. 114 00:08:51,865 --> 00:08:53,833 - Yes, sir. - Thank you. 115 00:08:54,267 --> 00:08:55,869 What about this one? 116 00:08:56,369 --> 00:08:58,939 Seven swimming shrimp. 117 00:09:01,841 --> 00:09:03,510 - Ready for your order? - Ah, yes. 118 00:09:03,977 --> 00:09:06,346 Uh, the Galuska... How... How do you prepare that? 119 00:09:06,846 --> 00:09:08,882 André seemed to know an awful lot about the menu. 120 00:09:09,416 --> 00:09:11,384 - Dumpling with raisins, blanched almonds. - I didn't understand a word of it. 121 00:09:11,851 --> 00:09:13,620 - Very good, I think. - Hmm. 122 00:09:14,087 --> 00:09:16,256 No, I... I think I'll have the Cailles aux Raisin, the quail. 123 00:09:16,756 --> 00:09:18,758 - Very good. - Oh, quails! I'll have that as well. 124 00:09:19,292 --> 00:09:20,894 - Two. - Great. - Great! 125 00:09:21,294 --> 00:09:23,563 And then I think, to begin with, the Terrine de Poissons. 126 00:09:24,097 --> 00:09:25,699 - Yes. - What is that? 127 00:09:26,099 --> 00:09:28,768 Uh, it's a sort of pâte... light, made of fish. 128 00:09:29,369 --> 00:09:31,771 - Does it have bones in it? - No bones. 129 00:09:32,372 --> 00:09:34,107 Perfectly safe. 130 00:09:34,641 --> 00:09:38,511 Well, um... What is the, um, Bramborová Polévka? 131 00:09:39,379 --> 00:09:42,649 It's a potato soup. It's quite delicious. 132 00:09:43,383 --> 00:09:45,118 Oh, well, that's great. I'll have that. 133 00:09:45,652 --> 00:09:47,587 - Thank you very kindly. - Thank you very much. 134 00:09:50,857 --> 00:09:52,459 Well. 135 00:09:53,860 --> 00:09:55,528 When was the last time that we saw each other? 136 00:09:55,996 --> 00:09:58,198 So we talked for a while about my writing and my acting... 137 00:09:58,798 --> 00:10:00,333 and about my girlfriend, Debby. 138 00:10:00,800 --> 00:10:03,937 And we talked about his wife, Chiquita, and his two children, Nicolas and Marina. 139 00:10:04,671 --> 00:10:06,539 And I'd stayed back in New York. 140 00:10:07,073 --> 00:10:09,809 Finally, I got around to asking him what he'd been up to in the last few years. 141 00:10:10,477 --> 00:10:12,078 Oh, God. I'm just dying to hear it. 142 00:10:12,479 --> 00:10:13,880 - Really? - Really. 143 00:10:14,281 --> 00:10:16,616 At first, he seemed a little reluctant to go into it... 144 00:10:17,217 --> 00:10:20,220 so I just kept asking, and finally he started to answer. 145 00:10:20,887 --> 00:10:23,023 conference on paratheatrical work then. 146 00:10:23,623 --> 00:10:26,760 And, uh, this must have been about five years ago... 147 00:10:27,494 --> 00:10:31,231 and, uh, Grotowski and I were walking along Fifth Avenue and we were talking. 148 00:10:32,098 --> 00:10:35,035 You see, he'd invited me to come to teach that summer in Poland. 149 00:10:35,702 --> 00:10:38,638 You know, to teach a workshop to actors and directors and whatever. 150 00:10:39,306 --> 00:10:42,976 And I had told him that I didn't want to come, because, really, I had nothing left to teach. 151 00:10:43,777 --> 00:10:45,779 I had nothing left to say. I didn't know anything. 152 00:10:46,246 --> 00:10:47,914 I couldn't teach anything. 153 00:10:48,381 --> 00:10:50,250 Exercises meant nothing to me anymore. 154 00:10:50,650 --> 00:10:52,586 Working on scenes from plays seemed ridiculous. 155 00:10:53,053 --> 00:10:56,056 I - I didn't know what to do. I mean, I just couldn't do it. 156 00:10:56,790 --> 00:11:00,193 So he said, " Why don't you tell me anything you'd like to have if you did a workshop for me. 157 00:11:00,994 --> 00:11:03,730 No matter how outrageous. And maybe I can give it to you. " 158 00:11:04,397 --> 00:11:07,067 So I said, "Well, if you could give me... 159 00:11:07,667 --> 00:11:10,136 "40 Jewish women who speak neither English nor French... 160 00:11:10,670 --> 00:11:13,340 "either women who've been in the theater for a long time and want to leave it... 161 00:11:14,007 --> 00:11:15,542 "but don't know why... 162 00:11:16,009 --> 00:11:18,678 "or young women who love the theater, but have never seen a theater they could love. 163 00:11:19,279 --> 00:11:21,281 "And if these women could play the trumpet or the harp... 164 00:11:21,815 --> 00:11:23,350 and if I could work in a forest, I'd come. " 165 00:11:25,285 --> 00:11:27,554 A week later, or two weeks later, he called me from Poland. 166 00:11:28,088 --> 00:11:30,824 And he said, " Well, 40 Jewish women... that's a little hard to find. " 167 00:11:31,491 --> 00:11:34,828 But he said, " I do have 40 women. They all pretty much fit the definition. " 168 00:11:35,562 --> 00:11:37,564 And he said, " I also have some very interesting men... 169 00:11:38,098 --> 00:11:39,766 "but you don't have to work with them. 170 00:11:40,166 --> 00:11:42,569 "These are all people who have in common the fact that they're questioning the theater. 171 00:11:43,169 --> 00:11:45,705 "They don't all play the trumpet or the harp, but they all play a musical instrument. 172 00:11:46,306 --> 00:11:48,041 And none of them speak English. " 173 00:11:48,441 --> 00:11:50,110 And he'd found me a forest, Wally. 174 00:11:50,577 --> 00:11:54,180 And the only inhabitants of this forest were some wild boar and a hermit. 175 00:11:54,981 --> 00:11:56,583 So that was an offer I couldn't refuse. 176 00:11:56,983 --> 00:11:58,585 I had to go. 177 00:11:58,985 --> 00:12:02,255 So, I went to Poland, and it was this wonderful group of young men and women. 178 00:12:02,989 --> 00:12:05,525 And the forest he had found us was absolutely magical. 179 00:12:06,059 --> 00:12:07,661 You know, it was a huge forest. 180 00:12:08,061 --> 00:12:09,663 I mean, the trees were so large... 181 00:12:10,063 --> 00:12:13,733 that four or five people linking their arms couldn't get their arms around the trees. 182 00:12:14,601 --> 00:12:17,470 So we were camped out beside the ruins of this tiny little castle... 183 00:12:18,204 --> 00:12:21,875 and we would eat around this great stone slab that served as a sort of a table. 184 00:12:22,676 --> 00:12:25,278 And our schedule was that usually we'd start work around sunset... 185 00:12:25,879 --> 00:12:28,281 and then generally we'd work until about 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning. 186 00:12:28,882 --> 00:12:30,884 And then, because the Poles love to sing and dance... 187 00:12:31,418 --> 00:12:34,087 we'd sing and dance until about 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning. 188 00:12:34,688 --> 00:12:38,491 And then we'd have our food, which was generally bread, jam, cheese and tea. 189 00:12:39,426 --> 00:12:42,162 And then we'd sleep from around noon to sunset. 190 00:12:44,097 --> 00:12:45,765 Now, technically, of course... 191 00:12:46,166 --> 00:12:48,168 Technically, the situation is a very interesting one... 192 00:12:48,702 --> 00:12:51,037 because if you find yourself in a forest with a group of 40 people... 193 00:12:51,571 --> 00:12:54,574 who don't speak your language, then all your moorings are gone. 194 00:12:55,375 --> 00:12:56,977 What do you mean exactly? 195 00:12:57,377 --> 00:12:59,646 Well, what we'd do is just sit there and wait... 196 00:13:00,180 --> 00:13:02,849 for someone to have an impulse to do something. 197 00:13:03,450 --> 00:13:06,119 Now, in a way that's... That's something like a theatrical improvisation. 198 00:13:06,786 --> 00:13:09,322 I mean, you know, if you were a director working on a play by Chekhov... 199 00:13:09,856 --> 00:13:12,525 you might have the actors playing the mother, the son and the uncle... 200 00:13:13,193 --> 00:13:16,129 all sit around in a room and do a made-up scene that isn't in the play. 201 00:13:16,796 --> 00:13:18,398 For instance, you might say to them... 202 00:13:18,798 --> 00:13:21,534 "All right. Let's say that it's a rainy Sunday afternoon on Sorin's estate... 203 00:13:22,202 --> 00:13:24,004 and you're all trapped in the drawing room together. " 204 00:13:24,471 --> 00:13:26,139 And then everyone would improvise... 205 00:13:26,606 --> 00:13:30,143 saying and doing what their character might say and do in that circumstance. 206 00:13:31,011 --> 00:13:34,347 Except that in this type of improvisation... the kind we did in Poland... 207 00:13:35,081 --> 00:13:37,417 the theme is oneself. 208 00:13:38,018 --> 00:13:40,086 So, you follow the same law of improvisation... 209 00:13:40,620 --> 00:13:43,356 which is that you do whatever your impulse, as the character, tells you to do... 210 00:13:44,024 --> 00:13:46,359 but in this case, you are the character. 211 00:13:46,893 --> 00:13:49,696 So there's no imaginary situation to hide behind... 212 00:13:50,430 --> 00:13:52,899 and there's no other person to hide behind. 213 00:13:53,500 --> 00:13:55,902 What you're doing, in fact, is you're asking those same questions... 214 00:13:56,570 --> 00:14:00,640 that Stanislavsky said the actor should constantly ask himself as a character: 215 00:14:01,575 --> 00:14:04,511 Who am I? Why am I here? 216 00:14:05,178 --> 00:14:08,181 Where do I come from, and where am I going? 217 00:14:08,848 --> 00:14:12,452 But instead of applying them to a role, you apply them to yourself. 218 00:14:13,253 --> 00:14:15,121 - Hmm. - Or, to look at it a little differently... 219 00:14:15,589 --> 00:14:17,257 in a way, it's like going right back to childhood... 220 00:14:17,657 --> 00:14:20,193 where a group of children simply come into a room or are brought into a room... 221 00:14:20,794 --> 00:14:22,662 without toys... And begin to play. 222 00:14:23,063 --> 00:14:26,199 Grown-ups were learning how to play again. 223 00:14:26,866 --> 00:14:30,070 So, you would, uh, all sit together somewhere... 224 00:14:30,804 --> 00:14:33,006 and, uh, you would play in some way. 225 00:14:33,607 --> 00:14:36,076 - But what would you actually do? - Well, I could give you a good example. 226 00:14:36,810 --> 00:14:39,613 You see, we worked, uh, together for a week in the city... 227 00:14:40,280 --> 00:14:41,948 before we went off to our forest. 228 00:14:42,415 --> 00:14:44,284 And of course, Grotowski was there in the city too. 229 00:14:44,818 --> 00:14:47,153 I heard that every night, he conducted something called a beehive. 230 00:14:47,687 --> 00:14:49,256 I loved the sound of this beehive... 231 00:14:49,689 --> 00:14:52,192 so a night or two before we were supposed to go off to the country... 232 00:14:52,792 --> 00:14:55,362 I grabbed him by the collar, and I said, "Listen, about this beehive. 233 00:14:56,029 --> 00:14:57,697 "You know, I'd kind of like to participate in one. 234 00:14:58,098 --> 00:15:00,400 Just instinctively I feel it would be something interesting. " 235 00:15:01,034 --> 00:15:03,503 And he said, " Well, certainly. In fact, why don't you, with your group... 236 00:15:04,104 --> 00:15:06,239 lead the beehive instead of participating in one?" 237 00:15:06,773 --> 00:15:10,043 You know, I... I got very nervous, you know, and I said, " Well, what is a beehive?" 238 00:15:10,777 --> 00:15:12,979 He said, " Well, a beehive is... 239 00:15:13,513 --> 00:15:15,916 at 8:00 a hundred strangers come into a room. " 240 00:15:17,417 --> 00:15:19,386 I said, " Yes?" He said, "Yes, and whatever happens is a beehive. " 241 00:15:19,853 --> 00:15:22,522 I said, " Yes, but what am I supposed to do?" He said, " That's up to you. " 242 00:15:23,189 --> 00:15:26,393 I said, " No, no. I really don't want to do this. I'll just participate. " 243 00:15:27,060 --> 00:15:30,196 And he said, "No, no. You lead the beehive. " 244 00:15:30,864 --> 00:15:32,532 Well, I was terrified, Wally. 245 00:15:32,999 --> 00:15:35,769 I mean, in a way, I felt on stage. 246 00:15:37,404 --> 00:15:39,272 I did it anyway. 247 00:15:39,873 --> 00:15:41,808 God. Well, tell me about it. 248 00:15:42,275 --> 00:15:45,612 You see, there was this song... I have a tape of it. I can play it for you one day. 249 00:15:46,513 --> 00:15:49,149 And it's just unbelievably beautiful. 250 00:15:49,816 --> 00:15:53,687 You see, one of the women in our group knew a few fragments of this song of Saint Francis... 251 00:15:54,621 --> 00:15:57,157 and it's a song in which you thank God for your eyes... 252 00:15:57,824 --> 00:16:00,460 and you thank God for your heart, and you thank God for your friends... 253 00:16:01,094 --> 00:16:02,762 and you thank God for your life. 254 00:16:03,230 --> 00:16:05,699 And it, uh... It repeats itself over and over again. 255 00:16:06,299 --> 00:16:07,867 And this became our theme song. 256 00:16:08,301 --> 00:16:09,970 I really must play this thing for you one day... 257 00:16:10,370 --> 00:16:14,040 because you just can't believe that a group of people who don't know how to sing... 258 00:16:14,908 --> 00:16:17,978 could create something so beautiful. 259 00:16:18,712 --> 00:16:22,515 So, I decided that when the people arrived for the beehive... 260 00:16:23,416 --> 00:16:25,719 that our group would already be there singing this very beautiful song... 261 00:16:26,253 --> 00:16:29,456 and that we would simply sing it over and over again. 262 00:16:30,190 --> 00:16:34,194 One of the people decided to bring her very large teddy bear, you know. 263 00:16:35,095 --> 00:16:36,763 Well, she's a little afraid of this event. 264 00:16:37,197 --> 00:16:39,132 And somebody wanted to bring a... A sheet. 265 00:16:39,599 --> 00:16:41,868 And somebody else wanted to bring a large bowl of water... 266 00:16:42,402 --> 00:16:44,271 in case people got hot or thirsty. 267 00:16:44,671 --> 00:16:46,606 And somebody suggested that we have candles... 268 00:16:47,073 --> 00:16:50,510 that there be no artificial light, but candlelight. 269 00:16:51,278 --> 00:16:53,413 And I remember watching people preparing for this evening. 270 00:16:53,880 --> 00:16:55,749 Of course, there was no makeup, and there were no costumes... 271 00:16:56,216 --> 00:16:58,351 but it was exactly the way that people prepare for a performance. 272 00:16:58,852 --> 00:17:01,555 You know, people sort of taking off their jewelry and their watches... 273 00:17:02,188 --> 00:17:04,758 and stowing it away and making sure it's all secure. 274 00:17:05,425 --> 00:17:07,827 And then slowly people arrived, the way they would arrive at the theater... 275 00:17:08,428 --> 00:17:10,764 in ones and twos and 10s and 15s and what have you. 276 00:17:11,264 --> 00:17:13,767 And we were just sitting there, and we were singing this very beautiful song. 277 00:17:14,401 --> 00:17:17,170 And people started to sit with us and started to learn the song. 278 00:17:17,837 --> 00:17:22,042 Now, there is, of course, as in any performance or improvisation... 279 00:17:23,109 --> 00:17:25,111 instinct for when things are gonna get boring. 280 00:17:25,579 --> 00:17:28,848 So, at a certain point... It may have taken an hour to get there, an hour and a half... 281 00:17:29,583 --> 00:17:32,919 I suddenly grabbed this teddy bear and threw it in the air... 282 00:17:33,653 --> 00:17:36,656 at which 140 or 130 people suddenly exploded. 283 00:17:37,390 --> 00:17:39,926 You know, it was like a... A Jackson Pollack painting, you know. 284 00:17:40,460 --> 00:17:44,130 Human beings exploded out of this tight little circle that was singing the song. 285 00:17:44,998 --> 00:17:47,400 And before I knew it, there were two circles, dancing, you know... 286 00:17:48,001 --> 00:17:50,737 one dancing clockwise, the other dancing counterclockwise... 287 00:17:51,471 --> 00:17:53,273 with this rhythm mostly from the waist down. 288 00:17:53,807 --> 00:17:57,377 In other words, like an American Indian dance, with this thumping, persistent rhythm. 289 00:18:02,682 --> 00:18:05,485 Now, you could easily see, 'cause we're talking about group trance... 290 00:18:06,086 --> 00:18:09,756 where the line between something like this and something like Hitler's Nuremberg rallies... 291 00:18:10,590 --> 00:18:12,425 is, in a way, a very thin line. 292 00:18:15,095 --> 00:18:18,531 Anyway, after about an hour of this wild, hypnotic dancing... 293 00:18:19,299 --> 00:18:21,968 Grotowski and I found ourselves sitting opposite each other in the middle of this whole thing. 294 00:18:22,636 --> 00:18:24,638 And we threw the teddy bear back and forth. 295 00:18:25,105 --> 00:18:27,173 You know, on one level, you could say this is childish. 296 00:18:27,774 --> 00:18:29,643 And I gave the teddy bear suck, suddenly, at my breast. 297 00:18:30,110 --> 00:18:32,712 And then I threw the teddy bear to him, and he gave it suck at his breast. 298 00:18:33,313 --> 00:18:35,315 And then the teddy bear was thrown up into the air again... 299 00:18:35,782 --> 00:18:38,518 at which there was another explosion of form into... Something. 300 00:18:39,185 --> 00:18:41,521 And these... What was it like? You know, this is the... 301 00:18:42,055 --> 00:18:45,058 There's something like a kaleidoscope, like a human kaleidoscope. 302 00:18:45,792 --> 00:18:49,329 The evening was made up of shiftings of the kaleidoscope. 303 00:18:50,063 --> 00:18:51,731 Now, the only other things that I remember... 304 00:18:52,198 --> 00:18:53,800 other than constantly trying to guide this thing... 305 00:18:54,200 --> 00:18:57,938 which was always involved with either movement, rhythm, repetition or song... 306 00:18:58,872 --> 00:19:00,674 Or chanting, because, uh, two people in my group... 307 00:19:01,074 --> 00:19:02,742 had brought musical instruments, a flute and a drum... 308 00:19:03,210 --> 00:19:04,878 which, of course, are sacred instruments... 309 00:19:05,278 --> 00:19:07,414 was that sometimes the room would break up... 310 00:19:07,881 --> 00:19:10,684 into six or seven different things going on at once. 311 00:19:11,284 --> 00:19:13,753 You know, six or seven different improvisations... 312 00:19:14,287 --> 00:19:17,490 all of which seemed, in some way, related to each other. 313 00:19:18,225 --> 00:19:20,961 It was... It was like a magnificent cobweb. 314 00:19:22,896 --> 00:19:26,299 And at one point, I noticed that Grotowski was at the center of one group... 315 00:19:27,100 --> 00:19:29,436 huddled around a bunch of candles that they'd gathered together. 316 00:19:30,103 --> 00:19:32,706 And like a little child fascinated by fire... 317 00:19:33,306 --> 00:19:36,710 I saw that he had his hand right in the flame and was holding it there. 318 00:19:37,510 --> 00:19:39,913 And as I approached his group, I wondered if I could do it. 319 00:19:40,513 --> 00:19:44,517 I put my left hand in the flame and I found I could hold it there for as long as I liked... 320 00:19:45,385 --> 00:19:47,387 and there was no burn and no pain. 321 00:19:47,921 --> 00:19:51,324 But when I tried to put my right hand in the flame, I couldn't hold it there for a second. 322 00:19:52,058 --> 00:19:56,196 So Grotowski said, " If it burns, try to change some little thing in yourself. " 323 00:19:57,063 --> 00:20:00,000 And I tried to do that. Didn't work. 324 00:20:00,667 --> 00:20:04,471 Then I remember a very, very beautiful procession with the sheet... 325 00:20:05,405 --> 00:20:07,407 and there was somebody being carried below the sheet. 326 00:20:07,874 --> 00:20:10,477 You know, the sheet was like some great biblical canopy. 327 00:20:11,077 --> 00:20:14,614 And the entire group was weaving around the room and chanting. 328 00:20:16,683 --> 00:20:18,952 And then at one point, people were dancing... 329 00:20:19,486 --> 00:20:21,421 and I was dancing with a girl... 330 00:20:21,888 --> 00:20:24,024 and suddenly our hands began vibrating near each other... 331 00:20:24,491 --> 00:20:26,092 like this... vibrating, vibrating. 332 00:20:26,493 --> 00:20:29,429 And we went down to our knees, and suddenly I was sobbing in her arms... 333 00:20:30,096 --> 00:20:33,567 and she was sort of cradling me in her arms, and then she started to cry too. 334 00:20:34,434 --> 00:20:36,436 And then we... Then we just hugged each other for a moment. 335 00:20:37,037 --> 00:20:39,706 And, uh, then we joined the dance again. 336 00:20:40,440 --> 00:20:43,243 And then at a certain point, hours later... 337 00:20:43,910 --> 00:20:46,379 we returned to the singing of the song of Saint Francis... 338 00:20:46,980 --> 00:20:48,915 and that was the end of the beehive. 339 00:20:50,717 --> 00:20:54,187 And then, again, when it was over, it was just like the theater after a performance. 340 00:20:54,988 --> 00:20:57,657 You know, people sort of put on their earrings and their wristwatches... 341 00:20:58,325 --> 00:20:59,926 and we went off to the railroad station... 342 00:21:00,260 --> 00:21:03,730 to drink a lot of beer and have a good dinner. 343 00:21:04,464 --> 00:21:06,800 Oh, and there was one girl, who wasn't in our group... 344 00:21:07,400 --> 00:21:10,270 but who just wouldn't leave, so we took her along with us. 345 00:21:12,672 --> 00:21:14,274 Huh. 346 00:21:19,813 --> 00:21:22,682 God. Well, tell me some of the other things you did with your group. 347 00:21:23,416 --> 00:21:26,486 Well... Oh, I remember once when we were in the city... 348 00:21:27,220 --> 00:21:30,023 we tried doing an improvisation... you know, the kind that I used to do in New York. 349 00:21:30,690 --> 00:21:32,692 Uh, everybody was supposed to be on an airplane... 350 00:21:33,226 --> 00:21:35,562 and they've all learned from the pilot there's something wrong with the motor. 351 00:21:36,096 --> 00:21:38,498 But what was unusual about this improvisation... 352 00:21:39,099 --> 00:21:42,168 was that two people who participated in it... Fell in love. 353 00:21:42,903 --> 00:21:44,504 They've, in fact, married. 354 00:21:44,905 --> 00:21:47,173 And when we were... Yeah, out of fear... 355 00:21:47,707 --> 00:21:50,377 of being on this plane, they fell in love... 356 00:21:51,044 --> 00:21:52,779 thinking they were going to die at any moment. 357 00:21:53,246 --> 00:21:56,316 And when we went to the forest, these two disappeared... 358 00:21:56,983 --> 00:21:58,985 because they understood the... The experiment so well... 359 00:21:59,519 --> 00:22:02,589 that they realized that to go off together in the forest was much more important... 360 00:22:03,323 --> 00:22:06,259 than any kind of experiment the group could do as a whole. 361 00:22:06,927 --> 00:22:09,663 So, uh, about halfway through the week... 362 00:22:10,263 --> 00:22:12,132 we stumbled into a clearing in the forest... 363 00:22:12,599 --> 00:22:15,468 and the two of them were fast asleep in each other's arms. 364 00:22:16,069 --> 00:22:18,338 It was around dawn, and we put flowers on them... 365 00:22:18,872 --> 00:22:21,474 to let them know we'd been there, and then we crept away. 366 00:22:22,075 --> 00:22:24,878 And then on the last day of our stay in the forest, these two showed up... 367 00:22:25,478 --> 00:22:27,948 and they shook me by my hands, and they thanked me very much... 368 00:22:28,481 --> 00:22:30,684 for the wonderful work they'd been able to do, you see. 369 00:22:31,218 --> 00:22:33,753 They understood what it was about. 370 00:22:34,421 --> 00:22:37,224 I mean, that, of course, poses the question of what was it about. 371 00:22:39,226 --> 00:22:42,028 But it has... has something to do with living. 372 00:22:45,432 --> 00:22:47,634 And then on the final day of our stay in the forest... 373 00:22:48,235 --> 00:22:50,303 the whole group did something so wonderful for me, Wally. 374 00:22:50,904 --> 00:22:52,706 They arranged a christening... a baptism... For me. 375 00:22:53,240 --> 00:22:55,108 And they filled the castle with flowers. 376 00:22:55,642 --> 00:22:57,644 And it was just a miracle of light... 377 00:22:58,111 --> 00:23:01,381 because they had literally set up hundreds of candles and torches. 378 00:23:02,115 --> 00:23:04,451 I mean, no church could have looked more beautiful. 379 00:23:04,985 --> 00:23:07,587 There was a simple ceremony, and one of them played the role of my godmother... 380 00:23:08,188 --> 00:23:09,856 and another played the role of my godfather. 381 00:23:10,323 --> 00:23:13,326 And I was given a new name. They called me Yendrush. 382 00:23:13,994 --> 00:23:16,863 And some of the people took it completely seriously... 383 00:23:17,464 --> 00:23:19,332 and some of them found it funny. 384 00:23:19,799 --> 00:23:22,469 But, uh, I really felt that I had a new name. 385 00:23:24,271 --> 00:23:27,474 And then we had an enormous feast, with blueberries picked from the field... 386 00:23:28,208 --> 00:23:30,277 and chocolate someone had gone a great distance to buy... 387 00:23:30,877 --> 00:23:32,479 and raspberry soup and rabbit stew. 388 00:23:33,013 --> 00:23:35,549 And we sang Polish songs and Greek songs... 389 00:23:36,082 --> 00:23:38,552 and everybody danced for the rest of the night. 390 00:23:39,085 --> 00:23:40,887 - Hmm. - Oh, I have a picture. 391 00:23:43,823 --> 00:23:46,293 See, this was... Let's see. 392 00:23:47,827 --> 00:23:50,230 Oh, yeah. This was me in the forest. See? 393 00:23:50,830 --> 00:23:52,966 - God! - That's what I felt like. 394 00:23:56,503 --> 00:23:58,438 - That's the state I was in. - God. 395 00:23:59,906 --> 00:24:03,043 Yeah. I remember George, uh, told me he'd seen you around that time. 396 00:24:03,843 --> 00:24:05,712 He said you looked like you'd come back from a war. 397 00:24:06,246 --> 00:24:09,049 Yeah, I remember meeting him. He, uh... He asked me a lot of friendly questions. 398 00:24:09,716 --> 00:24:11,518 I think I called you up, too, that summer, didn't I? 399 00:24:11,985 --> 00:24:13,587 Huh. 400 00:24:13,987 --> 00:24:16,523 I think I was out of town. 401 00:24:17,123 --> 00:24:20,193 Yeah, well, most people I met thought there was something wrong with me. 402 00:24:20,927 --> 00:24:23,597 They didn't say that, but I could tell that that was what they thought. 403 00:24:24,197 --> 00:24:25,932 But... 404 00:24:26,399 --> 00:24:30,337 you see, what I think I experienced... was... 405 00:24:31,271 --> 00:24:33,540 for the first time in my life... 406 00:24:34,074 --> 00:24:36,209 to know what it means to be truly alive. 407 00:24:36,676 --> 00:24:38,278 Now, that's very frightening... 408 00:24:38,678 --> 00:24:40,814 because with that comes an immediate awareness of death... 409 00:24:41,281 --> 00:24:42,883 'cause they go hand in hand. 410 00:24:43,283 --> 00:24:46,152 You know, the kind of impulse that led to Walt Whitman, that led to Leaves of Grass. 411 00:24:46,820 --> 00:24:48,889 That feeling of being connected to everything... 412 00:24:49,422 --> 00:24:51,291 means to also be connected to death. 413 00:24:51,825 --> 00:24:53,627 And that's pretty scary. 414 00:24:54,094 --> 00:24:57,898 But I really felt as if I were floating above the ground, not walking. 415 00:24:58,698 --> 00:25:00,901 You know, and I could do things like go out to the highway... 416 00:25:01,434 --> 00:25:04,638 and watch the lights go from red to green and think, " How wonderful. " 417 00:25:05,438 --> 00:25:08,174 And then one day, in the early fall... 418 00:25:08,842 --> 00:25:10,911 I was out in the country, walking in a field... 419 00:25:11,444 --> 00:25:14,247 and I suddenly heard a voice say, "Little Prince. " 420 00:25:14,915 --> 00:25:17,250 Of course, The Little Prince was a book that I always thought of... 421 00:25:17,851 --> 00:25:19,386 as disgusting, childish treacle. 422 00:25:19,853 --> 00:25:22,522 But still, I thought, " Well, you know, if a voice comes to me in a field"... 423 00:25:23,123 --> 00:25:25,058 This was the first voice I had ever heard. 424 00:25:25,525 --> 00:25:27,193 Maybe I should go and read the book. 425 00:25:27,594 --> 00:25:29,529 Now, that same morning I'd got a letter... 426 00:25:29,996 --> 00:25:31,932 from a young woman who'd been in my group in Poland. 427 00:25:32,399 --> 00:25:34,267 And in her letter she'd written, "You have dominated me. " 428 00:25:34,668 --> 00:25:36,336 You know, she spoke very awkward English. 429 00:25:36,803 --> 00:25:39,339 So she'd gone to the dictionary, and she'd crossed out the word " dominated"... 430 00:25:40,006 --> 00:25:42,342 and she'd said, "No. The correct word is 'tamed. "' 431 00:25:42,876 --> 00:25:45,545 And then when I went to town and bought the book and started to read it... 432 00:25:46,213 --> 00:25:49,616 I saw that " taming" was the most important word in the whole book. 433 00:25:50,417 --> 00:25:53,620 By the end of the book, I was in tears, I was so moved by the story. 434 00:25:54,287 --> 00:25:56,489 And then I went and tried to write an answer to her letter... 435 00:25:57,023 --> 00:25:58,692 'cause she'd written me a very long letter. 436 00:25:59,092 --> 00:26:01,962 But I just couldn't find the right words, so finally I took my hand... 437 00:26:02,629 --> 00:26:04,965 I put it on a piece of paper, I outlined it with a pen... 438 00:26:05,498 --> 00:26:07,834 and I wrote in the center something like, " Your heart is in my hand. " 439 00:26:08,435 --> 00:26:09,836 Something like that. 440 00:26:10,237 --> 00:26:11,905 Then I went over to my brother's house to swim... 441 00:26:12,305 --> 00:26:14,307 'cause he lives nearby in the country and he has a pool. 442 00:26:14,841 --> 00:26:16,509 And he wasn't home. I went into his library... 443 00:26:16,910 --> 00:26:19,379 and he had bought at an auction the collected issues of Minotaure. 444 00:26:20,113 --> 00:26:23,783 You know, the surrealist magazine? Oh, it's a great, great surrealist magazine of the '20s and '30s. 445 00:26:24,651 --> 00:26:27,120 And I never... You know, I consider myself a bit of a surrealist. 446 00:26:27,721 --> 00:26:29,856 I had never, ever seen a copy of Minotaure. 447 00:26:30,390 --> 00:26:32,259 And here they all were, bound, year after year. 448 00:26:32,726 --> 00:26:35,528 So, at random, I picked one out, I opened it up... 449 00:26:36,196 --> 00:26:38,932 and there was a full-page reproduction of the letter " A"... 450 00:26:39,599 --> 00:26:41,334 from Tenniel's Alice In Wonderland. 451 00:26:41,801 --> 00:26:44,471 And I thought, that... Well, you know, it's been a day of coincidences... 452 00:26:45,205 --> 00:26:47,474 but that's not unusual that the surrealists would have been interested in Alice... 453 00:26:48,008 --> 00:26:49,676 and I did a play of Alice. 454 00:26:50,076 --> 00:26:53,613 So at random, I opened to another page... 455 00:26:54,414 --> 00:26:57,350 and there were four handprints. 456 00:26:58,018 --> 00:27:00,420 One was André Breton, another was André Derain... 457 00:27:01,021 --> 00:27:03,223 the third was André... I've got it written down somewhere. 458 00:27:03,690 --> 00:27:06,960 It's not Malraux. It's, like, someone... Another of the surrealists. 459 00:27:07,694 --> 00:27:11,698 All A's, and the fourth was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry... 460 00:27:12,632 --> 00:27:14,367 who wrote The Little Prince. 461 00:27:14,834 --> 00:27:16,903 And they'd shown these handprints to some kind of expert... 462 00:27:17,437 --> 00:27:19,773 without saying whose hands they belonged to. 463 00:27:20,307 --> 00:27:23,443 And under Exupéry's, it said that he was an artist... 464 00:27:24,244 --> 00:27:26,112 with very powerful eyes... 465 00:27:26,646 --> 00:27:29,783 who was a tamer of wild animals. 466 00:27:30,517 --> 00:27:32,319 I thought, "This is incredible, you know. " 467 00:27:32,852 --> 00:27:35,922 And I looked back to see when the issue came out. 468 00:27:36,656 --> 00:27:39,859 It came out on the newsstands May 12, 1934... 469 00:27:40,594 --> 00:27:44,130 and I was born during the day of May 11, 1934. 470 00:27:45,932 --> 00:27:50,203 So, well, that's what started me on, uh, Saint-Exupéry and The Little Prince. 471 00:27:58,678 --> 00:28:00,814 Now, of course today... 472 00:28:01,281 --> 00:28:04,150 today I think there's a very fascistic thing under The Little Prince. 473 00:28:04,818 --> 00:28:06,753 You know, I... Well, no, I think there's a kind of... 474 00:28:07,220 --> 00:28:11,758 I think a kind of S.S. Totalitarian sentimentality in there somewhere. 475 00:28:12,692 --> 00:28:14,961 You know, there's something, you know... that... 476 00:28:15,495 --> 00:28:17,364 that love of, um... 477 00:28:17,831 --> 00:28:21,368 Well, that masculine love of a certain kind of oily muscle. 478 00:28:22,235 --> 00:28:24,971 You know what I mean? I mean, I can't quite put my finger on it. 479 00:28:25,639 --> 00:28:28,642 But I can just imagine some beautiful S.S. Man... 480 00:28:29,309 --> 00:28:30,977 loving The Little Prince. 481 00:28:31,444 --> 00:28:33,580 Now, I don't know why, but there's something wrong with it. It stinks. 482 00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:43,590 Well, didn't George tell me that you were gonna do a play that was based on The Little Prince? 483 00:28:44,457 --> 00:28:47,127 Hmm. Well, what happened, Wally... 484 00:28:48,795 --> 00:28:50,063 was that fall I was in New York... 485 00:28:50,397 --> 00:28:53,266 and I met this young Japanese Buddhist priest named Kozan... 486 00:28:53,900 --> 00:28:56,002 and I thought he was Puck from the Midsummer Night's Dream. 487 00:28:56,536 --> 00:28:58,338 You know, he had this beautiful, delicate smile. 488 00:28:58,905 --> 00:29:00,540 I thought he was the Little Prince. 489 00:29:00,941 --> 00:29:03,743 So, naturally, I decided to go off to the Sahara desert... 490 00:29:04,411 --> 00:29:07,247 to work on The Little Prince with two actors and this Japanese monk. 491 00:29:08,014 --> 00:29:09,616 You did? 492 00:29:10,016 --> 00:29:14,120 Well, I mean, I was still in a very peculiar state at that time, Wally. 493 00:29:15,021 --> 00:29:17,891 You know, I would... I would look in the rearview mirror of my car... 494 00:29:18,525 --> 00:29:20,827 and see little birds flying out of my mouth. 495 00:29:22,429 --> 00:29:25,899 And I remember always being exhausted in that period. 496 00:29:26,700 --> 00:29:30,170 I always felt weak. You know, I really didn't know what was going on with me. 497 00:29:30,904 --> 00:29:34,174 I would just sit out there all alone in the country for days... 498 00:29:34,908 --> 00:29:37,577 and do nothing but write in my diary. 499 00:29:38,245 --> 00:29:40,580 - And I was always thinking about death. - Huh. 500 00:29:41,114 --> 00:29:42,782 But you went to the Sahara. 501 00:29:43,250 --> 00:29:44,985 Oh, yes, we went off into the desert... 502 00:29:45,418 --> 00:29:47,187 and we rode through the desert on camels. 503 00:29:47,654 --> 00:29:49,189 And we rode and we rode. 504 00:29:49,656 --> 00:29:51,658 And then at night we would walk out under that enormous sky... 505 00:29:52,092 --> 00:29:53,760 and look at the stars. 506 00:29:54,261 --> 00:29:57,264 I just kept thinking about the same things that I was always thinking about at home... 507 00:29:57,931 --> 00:29:59,599 particularly about Chiquita. 508 00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,869 In fact, I thought about just about nothing but my marriage. 509 00:30:05,438 --> 00:30:07,307 And then I remember one incredibly dark night... 510 00:30:07,807 --> 00:30:10,477 being at an oasis, and there were palm trees moving in the wind... 511 00:30:11,077 --> 00:30:14,180 and I could hear Kozan singing far away in that beautiful bass voice. 512 00:30:14,881 --> 00:30:17,150 And I tried to follow his voice along the sand. 513 00:30:19,686 --> 00:30:22,222 You see, I thought he had something to teach me, Wally. 514 00:30:24,291 --> 00:30:25,959 And sometimes I would meditate with him. 515 00:30:26,426 --> 00:30:28,828 Sometimes I'd go off and meditate by myself. 516 00:30:30,697 --> 00:30:33,166 You know, I would see images of Chiquita. 517 00:30:33,700 --> 00:30:35,669 Once I actually saw her growing old... 518 00:30:36,102 --> 00:30:38,305 and her hair turning gray in front of my eyes. 519 00:30:38,805 --> 00:30:42,909 And I would just wail and yell my lungs out out there on the dunes. 520 00:30:46,846 --> 00:30:50,050 Anyway, the desert was pretty horrible. 521 00:30:50,850 --> 00:30:52,385 It was pretty cold. 522 00:30:52,852 --> 00:30:55,722 We were searching for something, but we couldn't tell if we were finding anything. 523 00:30:56,456 --> 00:30:58,124 You know that once Kozan and I... 524 00:30:58,525 --> 00:31:00,594 we were sitting on a dune, and we just ate sand. 525 00:31:01,127 --> 00:31:03,129 No, we weren't trying to be funny. I started, then he started. 526 00:31:03,630 --> 00:31:06,800 We just ate sand and threw up. That's how desperate we were. 527 00:31:07,534 --> 00:31:10,503 In other words, we didn't know why we were there. We didn't know what we were looking for. 528 00:31:11,338 --> 00:31:13,840 The entire thing seemed completely absurd, arid and empty. 529 00:31:14,541 --> 00:31:17,377 It was like, uh... like a last chance or something. 530 00:31:18,011 --> 00:31:19,946 Huh. 531 00:31:20,413 --> 00:31:22,349 So what happened then? 532 00:31:22,816 --> 00:31:25,151 Well, in those days... 533 00:31:25,719 --> 00:31:27,554 I went completely on impulse. 534 00:31:28,021 --> 00:31:30,724 So on impulse I brought Kozan back to stay with us in New York... 535 00:31:31,291 --> 00:31:34,261 after we got back from the Sahara, and he stayed for six months. 536 00:31:34,895 --> 00:31:38,231 - And he really sort of took over the whole family, in a way. - What do you mean? 537 00:31:39,065 --> 00:31:42,569 Well, there was certainly a center missing in the house at the time. 538 00:31:43,303 --> 00:31:45,438 There certainly wasn't a father, 'cause I was always thinking... 539 00:31:45,939 --> 00:31:48,775 about going off to Tibet or doing God knows what. 540 00:31:49,442 --> 00:31:51,444 And so he taught the whole family to meditate... 541 00:31:51,912 --> 00:31:55,448 and he told them all about Asia and the East and his monastery and everything. 542 00:31:56,249 --> 00:31:59,920 He really captivated everybody with an incredible bag of tricks. 543 00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:03,056 He had literally developed himself, Wally... 544 00:32:03,657 --> 00:32:07,527 so that he could push on his fingers and rise off out of his chair. 545 00:32:08,461 --> 00:32:10,130 I mean, he could literally go like this... 546 00:32:10,530 --> 00:32:12,332 You know, push on his fingers and go into like a headstand... 547 00:32:12,866 --> 00:32:14,601 and just hold himself there with two fingers. 548 00:32:15,001 --> 00:32:17,037 Or if Chiquita would suddenly get a little tension in her neck... 549 00:32:17,537 --> 00:32:20,207 well, he'd immediately have her down on the floor, he'd be walking up and down on her back... 550 00:32:20,807 --> 00:32:23,343 doing these unbelievable massages, you know. 551 00:32:25,011 --> 00:32:26,680 And the children found him amazing. 552 00:32:27,147 --> 00:32:29,816 I mean, you know, we'd visit friends who had children... 553 00:32:30,417 --> 00:32:32,152 and immediately he'd be playing with these children... 554 00:32:32,652 --> 00:32:34,321 in a way that, you know, we just can't do. 555 00:32:34,688 --> 00:32:36,957 I mean, those children... just giggles, giggles, giggles... 556 00:32:37,490 --> 00:32:40,360 about what this Japanese monk was doing in these holy robes. 557 00:32:41,027 --> 00:32:43,563 I mean, he was an acrobat, a ventriloquist... 558 00:32:44,130 --> 00:32:46,233 a magician, everything. 559 00:32:46,700 --> 00:32:48,301 You know, the amazing thing was that... 560 00:32:48,735 --> 00:32:50,704 I don't think he had any interest in children whatsoever. 561 00:32:51,238 --> 00:32:53,039 None at all. I don't think he liked them. 562 00:32:53,506 --> 00:32:55,308 I mean, you know, when he stayed with us... 563 00:32:55,709 --> 00:32:57,978 in the first week, really, the kids were just googly-eyed over him. 564 00:32:58,511 --> 00:33:00,981 But then a couple of weeks later, Chiquita and I could be out... 565 00:33:01,514 --> 00:33:04,050 and Marina could have flu or a temperature of 104... 566 00:33:04,651 --> 00:33:06,786 and he wouldn't even go in and say hello to her. 567 00:33:07,287 --> 00:33:10,123 But he was taking over more and more. 568 00:33:10,824 --> 00:33:12,993 I mean, his own habits had completely changed. 569 00:33:13,527 --> 00:33:17,497 You know, he started wearing these elegant Gucci shoes under his white monk's robes. 570 00:33:18,465 --> 00:33:20,133 He was eating huge amounts of food. 571 00:33:20,534 --> 00:33:23,470 I mean, he ate twice as much as Nicolas ate, you know? 572 00:33:24,137 --> 00:33:26,206 This tiny little Buddhist when I first met him, you know... 573 00:33:26,740 --> 00:33:29,175 was eating a little bowl of milk... hot milk with rice... 574 00:33:29,743 --> 00:33:31,878 was now eating huge beef. 575 00:33:34,347 --> 00:33:36,616 It was just very strange. 576 00:33:37,117 --> 00:33:40,020 You know, and we had tried working together, but really our work consisted mostly... 577 00:33:40,687 --> 00:33:44,691 of my trying to do these incredibly painful prostrations that they do in the monastery. 578 00:33:45,659 --> 00:33:48,161 You know, so really we hadn't been working very much. 579 00:33:48,695 --> 00:33:53,233 Anyway, we were out in the country, and we all went to Christmas mass together. 580 00:33:54,234 --> 00:33:56,069 You know, he was all dressed up in his Buddhist finery. 581 00:33:56,503 --> 00:33:59,839 And it was one of those... One of those awful, dreary Catholic churches on Long Island... 582 00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:03,977 where the priest talks about communism and birth control. 583 00:34:04,711 --> 00:34:07,981 And as I was sitting there in mass, I was wondering, " What in the world is going on?" 584 00:34:08,715 --> 00:34:10,383 I mean, here I am. I'm a grown man... 585 00:34:10,850 --> 00:34:12,986 and there's this strange person living in the house, and I'm not working... 586 00:34:13,520 --> 00:34:16,456 You know, I was doing nothing but scribbling a little poetry in my diary. 587 00:34:17,123 --> 00:34:20,894 And I can't get a job teaching anymore, and I don't know what I want to do. 588 00:34:21,728 --> 00:34:26,333 When all of a sudden a huge creature appeared, looking at the congregation. 589 00:34:27,334 --> 00:34:31,004 It was about, I'd say, 6'8"... something like that, you know... 590 00:34:31,805 --> 00:34:34,341 and it was... it was half bull, half man... 591 00:34:34,941 --> 00:34:36,610 and its skin was blue. 592 00:34:37,143 --> 00:34:40,146 It had violets growing out of its eyelids and poppies growing out of its toenails. 593 00:34:40,814 --> 00:34:43,884 And it just stood there for the whole mass. 594 00:34:44,618 --> 00:34:46,620 I mean, I could not make that creature disappear. 595 00:34:47,087 --> 00:34:49,623 You know, I thought, " Oh, well. You know, I'm just seeing this 'cause I'm bored. " 596 00:34:50,223 --> 00:34:54,561 You know, close my... I could not make that creature go away. 597 00:34:55,529 --> 00:34:58,765 Okay. Now, I didn't talk with people about it, because they'd think I was weird... 598 00:34:59,499 --> 00:35:04,104 but I felt that this creature was somehow coming to comfort me... 599 00:35:05,105 --> 00:35:07,807 that somehow he was appearing to say... 600 00:35:08,508 --> 00:35:12,312 "Well, you may feel low and you might not be able to create a play right now... 601 00:35:13,113 --> 00:35:16,449 "but look at what can come to you on Christmas Eve. Hang on, old friend. 602 00:35:17,217 --> 00:35:19,586 "I may seem weird to you, but on these weird voyages... 603 00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:21,788 "weird creatures appear. 604 00:35:22,222 --> 00:35:25,458 It's part of the journey. You're okay. Hang in there. " 605 00:35:31,464 --> 00:35:33,466 By the way, uh, did you ever see... 606 00:35:33,900 --> 00:35:36,937 that play, uh, The Violets are Blue? 607 00:35:39,472 --> 00:35:41,007 No. 608 00:35:41,408 --> 00:35:44,110 Oh, when you mentioned the violets, it-it reminded me of that. 609 00:35:44,744 --> 00:35:47,147 It-It was about, um, people... 610 00:35:47,747 --> 00:35:50,350 being, uh, strangled on a... On a submarine. 611 00:35:50,951 --> 00:35:52,752 Hmm. 612 00:35:57,090 --> 00:36:01,194 Well, so that was... that was Christmas. 613 00:36:02,095 --> 00:36:04,364 What happened after that? 614 00:36:04,898 --> 00:36:07,367 - Do you really want to hear about all this? - Yeah. 615 00:36:07,901 --> 00:36:11,004 Well, around that time... 616 00:36:14,841 --> 00:36:17,878 I was beginning to think about going to India. And Kozan suddenly left one day. 617 00:36:18,645 --> 00:36:21,448 I was beginning to get into a lot of very strange ideas around that time. 618 00:36:22,115 --> 00:36:25,452 Now, for example, I'd developed this... Well, I got this idea which I... 619 00:36:26,219 --> 00:36:28,922 Now, it was very appealing to me at the time, you know... 620 00:36:29,523 --> 00:36:32,292 which was that I would have a flag, a large flag... 621 00:36:32,893 --> 00:36:34,928 and that wherever I worked, this flag would fly. 622 00:36:35,462 --> 00:36:38,965 Or if we were outside, say, with a group, that the flag could be the thing we lay on at night... 623 00:36:39,733 --> 00:36:42,869 and that somehow, between working on this flag and lying on this flag... 624 00:36:43,670 --> 00:36:45,205 this flag flying over us... 625 00:36:45,672 --> 00:36:48,875 that the flag would pick up vibrations of a kind... 626 00:36:49,743 --> 00:36:52,012 that would still be in the flag when I brought it home. 627 00:36:52,546 --> 00:36:55,148 So I went down to meet this flag maker that I'd heard about. 628 00:36:55,749 --> 00:36:57,417 And you know, there was this very straightforward-looking guy. 629 00:36:57,817 --> 00:37:01,821 You know, very sweet, really healthy-looking and everything. Nice big, blond. 630 00:37:02,756 --> 00:37:05,225 And he had a beautiful, clean loft down in the village with lovely, happy flags. 631 00:37:05,825 --> 00:37:08,695 And I was all into The Little Prince, and I talked to him about The Little Prince... 632 00:37:09,296 --> 00:37:12,566 these adventures and everything, how I needed the flag and what the flag should be. 633 00:37:13,300 --> 00:37:15,235 He seemed to really connect with it. 634 00:37:15,702 --> 00:37:17,837 So, two weeks later, I came back. 635 00:37:18,305 --> 00:37:21,441 He showed me a flag that I thought was very odd, you know... 636 00:37:22,108 --> 00:37:23,777 'cause I had, you know... well, you know... 637 00:37:24,244 --> 00:37:27,047 I had expected something gentle and lyrical. 638 00:37:27,714 --> 00:37:29,649 There was something about this that was so powerful... 639 00:37:30,116 --> 00:37:31,718 it was almost overwhelming. 640 00:37:32,118 --> 00:37:33,787 And it did include the Tibetan swastika. 641 00:37:35,722 --> 00:37:37,591 He put a swastika in your flag? 642 00:37:38,058 --> 00:37:40,260 No, it was the Tibetan swastika, not the Nazi swastika. 643 00:37:40,861 --> 00:37:42,729 It's one of the most ancient Tibetan symbols. 644 00:37:43,263 --> 00:37:45,732 And it was just strange, you know? 645 00:37:46,333 --> 00:37:49,336 But I brought it home, because my idea with this flag... 646 00:37:50,070 --> 00:37:52,138 was that before I left... you know, before I left for India... 647 00:37:52,672 --> 00:37:55,876 I wanted several people who were close to me to have this flag in the room for the night... 648 00:37:56,676 --> 00:37:59,479 to sleep with it, you know, and then in the morning to sew something into the flag. 649 00:38:00,146 --> 00:38:03,483 So I took the flag into Marina, and I said, "Hey, look at this. What do you think of this?" 650 00:38:04,217 --> 00:38:06,553 And she said, " What is that? That's awful. " I said, " It's a flag. " 651 00:38:07,153 --> 00:38:08,488 And she said, " I don't like it. " 652 00:38:08,822 --> 00:38:11,491 I said, " I kind of thought you might like to spend the night with it, you know. " 653 00:38:12,092 --> 00:38:14,628 But she really thought the flag was awful. 654 00:38:15,228 --> 00:38:18,832 So then Chiquita threw this party for me before I left for India... 655 00:38:19,633 --> 00:38:21,368 and the apartment was filled with guests. 656 00:38:21,835 --> 00:38:24,371 And at one point Chiquita said, "The flag, the flag. Where's the flag?" 657 00:38:25,038 --> 00:38:28,308 And I said, " Oh, yeah. The flag. " And I go and get the flag, and I open it up. 658 00:38:29,109 --> 00:38:32,312 Chiquita goes absolutely white and runs out of the room and vomits. 659 00:38:33,046 --> 00:38:35,782 So the party just comes to a halt and breaks up. 660 00:38:36,449 --> 00:38:38,652 And then the next day I gave it to this young woman... 661 00:38:39,252 --> 00:38:41,388 who'd been in my group in Poland, who was now in New York. 662 00:38:41,922 --> 00:38:44,858 I didn't tell her anything about any of this. 663 00:38:45,525 --> 00:38:47,527 At 5:00 in the morning, she called me up and she said... 664 00:38:48,061 --> 00:38:50,063 "I gotta come and see you right away. " I thought, " Oh, God. " 665 00:38:50,530 --> 00:38:53,667 She came up, and she said, " I saw things... I saw things around this flag. 666 00:38:54,467 --> 00:38:56,937 "Now, I know you're stubborn, and I know you want to take this thing with you... 667 00:38:57,537 --> 00:39:00,006 "but if you'd follow my advice, you'd put it in a hole in the ground... 668 00:39:00,674 --> 00:39:03,009 and burn it and cover it with earth, cause the devil's in it. " 669 00:39:03,543 --> 00:39:05,145 I never took the flag with me. 670 00:39:05,545 --> 00:39:09,282 In fact, I gave it to her, and, uh, she... She had a ceremony with it... 671 00:39:10,150 --> 00:39:12,152 six months later, in France, with some friends... 672 00:39:12,619 --> 00:39:14,487 in which, uh, they did burn it. 673 00:39:15,956 --> 00:39:17,891 God. 674 00:39:18,358 --> 00:39:21,094 That's really, really amazing. 675 00:39:23,296 --> 00:39:25,498 So, did you ever go to India? 676 00:39:26,032 --> 00:39:28,768 Oh, yes, I... I went to India in the spring, Wally... 677 00:39:29,436 --> 00:39:31,504 and I came back home feeling all wrong. 678 00:39:32,038 --> 00:39:35,709 I mean, you know, I'd been to India, and I'd just felt like a tourist. 679 00:39:36,509 --> 00:39:38,845 I'd found nothing. 680 00:39:39,446 --> 00:39:43,383 So I was... I was spending, uh, the summer on Long Island with my family... 681 00:39:44,251 --> 00:39:46,720 and I heard about this community in Scotland called Findhorn... 682 00:39:47,320 --> 00:39:50,257 where people sang and talked and meditated with plants. 683 00:39:50,924 --> 00:39:55,529 And it was founded by several rather middle-class English and Scottish eccentrics. 684 00:39:56,530 --> 00:39:58,532 Some of them intellectuals, and some of them not. 685 00:39:59,065 --> 00:40:01,067 And I'd heard that they'd grown things in soil... 686 00:40:01,535 --> 00:40:04,137 that supposedly nothing can grow in, 'cause it's almost beach soil... 687 00:40:04,871 --> 00:40:08,275 and that they'd built... Not built... They'd grown the largest cauliflowers in the world... 688 00:40:09,075 --> 00:40:10,744 and there are sort of cabbages. 689 00:40:11,144 --> 00:40:14,281 And they've grown trees that can't grow in the British Isles. 690 00:40:15,081 --> 00:40:17,284 So I went there. I mean, it is an amazing place, Wally. 691 00:40:17,817 --> 00:40:21,354 I mean, if there are insects bothering the plants... 692 00:40:22,155 --> 00:40:25,091 they will talk with the insects and, you know, make an agreement... 693 00:40:25,759 --> 00:40:29,162 by which they'll set aside a special patch of vegetables just for the insects... 694 00:40:29,896 --> 00:40:31,698 and then the insects will leave the main part alone. 695 00:40:32,098 --> 00:40:33,767 - Huh. - Things like that. 696 00:40:34,234 --> 00:40:36,236 And everything they do they do beautifully. 697 00:40:36,703 --> 00:40:39,039 I mean, the buildings just shine. 698 00:40:39,639 --> 00:40:42,976 And I mean, for instance, the icebox, the stove, the car... They all have names. 699 00:40:43,710 --> 00:40:45,579 And since you wouldn't treat Helen, the icebox... 700 00:40:46,046 --> 00:40:48,048 with any less respect than you would Margaret, your wife... 701 00:40:48,515 --> 00:40:51,718 you know, you make sure that Helen is as clean as Margaret, or treated with equal respect. 702 00:40:54,721 --> 00:40:58,525 And when I was there, Wally, I remember being in the woods... 703 00:40:59,326 --> 00:41:03,196 and I would look at a leaf, and I would actually see that thing... 704 00:41:04,064 --> 00:41:06,733 that is alive in that leaf. 705 00:41:07,334 --> 00:41:09,803 And then I remember just running through the woods as fast as I could... 706 00:41:10,470 --> 00:41:12,539 with this incredible laugh coming out of me... 707 00:41:13,073 --> 00:41:17,410 and really being in that state, you know, where laughter and tears seem to merge. 708 00:41:18,345 --> 00:41:19,946 I mean, it absolutely blasted me open. 709 00:41:20,347 --> 00:41:22,949 When I came out of Findhorn, I was hallucinating nonstop. 710 00:41:23,550 --> 00:41:25,685 I was seeing clouds as creatures. 711 00:41:26,219 --> 00:41:28,421 The people on the airplane all had animals' faces. 712 00:41:28,955 --> 00:41:32,359 I mean, I was on a trip. It was like being in a William Blake world suddenly. 713 00:41:33,159 --> 00:41:34,761 Things were exploding. 714 00:41:35,161 --> 00:41:38,765 So immediately I went to Belgrade, 'cause I wanted to talk to Grotowski. 715 00:41:39,499 --> 00:41:42,168 Grotowski and I got together at midnight in my hotel room... 716 00:41:42,836 --> 00:41:45,772 and we drank instant coffee out of the top of my shaving cream... 717 00:41:46,439 --> 00:41:49,776 and we talked from midnight until 11:00 the next morning. 718 00:41:50,644 --> 00:41:52,646 - God. What did he say? - Nothing! 719 00:41:53,113 --> 00:41:54,915 I talked. He didn't say a word. 720 00:41:55,315 --> 00:41:58,451 And... And then I guess really... 721 00:42:00,053 --> 00:42:03,390 the last big experience of this kind took place that fall. 722 00:42:04,124 --> 00:42:05,725 It was out at Montauk on Long Island... 723 00:42:06,126 --> 00:42:09,129 and there were only about nine of us involved, mostly men. 724 00:42:09,863 --> 00:42:12,332 And we borrowed Dick Avedon's property out at Montauk. 725 00:42:12,933 --> 00:42:15,602 And the country out there is like Heathcliff country. 726 00:42:16,269 --> 00:42:18,338 It's absolutely wild. 727 00:42:18,939 --> 00:42:20,941 What we wanted to do was we wanted to take, you know... 728 00:42:21,474 --> 00:42:23,343 We wanted to take All Souls' Eve, Halloween... 729 00:42:23,877 --> 00:42:25,745 and use it as a point of departure for something. 730 00:42:26,279 --> 00:42:29,082 So each one of us prepared some sort of event for the others... 731 00:42:29,883 --> 00:42:32,219 somehow in the spirit of All Souls' Eve. 732 00:42:32,752 --> 00:42:35,155 But the biggest event was three of the people... 733 00:42:35,755 --> 00:42:37,757 kept disappearing in the middle of the night each night... 734 00:42:38,225 --> 00:42:40,160 and we knew they were preparing something big... 735 00:42:40,627 --> 00:42:42,295 but we didn't know what. 736 00:42:42,762 --> 00:42:46,233 And midnight on Halloween, under a dark moon, above these cliffs... 737 00:42:47,033 --> 00:42:50,237 we were all told to gather at the topmost cliff and that we would be taken somewhere. 738 00:42:50,904 --> 00:42:54,507 And we did. And we waited, and it was very, very cold. 739 00:42:55,308 --> 00:42:58,445 And then the three of them... Helen, Bill and Fred... Showed up wearing white. 740 00:42:59,112 --> 00:43:02,582 You know, something they'd made out of sheets... Looked a little spooky, not funny. 741 00:43:03,316 --> 00:43:07,254 And they took us into the basement of this house that had burned down on the property. 742 00:43:08,121 --> 00:43:11,458 And in this ruined basement, they had set up a table with benches they'd made. 743 00:43:12,259 --> 00:43:16,463 And on this table they had laid out paper, pencils, wine and glasses. 744 00:43:17,464 --> 00:43:21,868 And we were all asked to sit at the table and to make out our last will and testament. 745 00:43:22,869 --> 00:43:25,739 You know, to think about and write down whatever our last words were to the world... 746 00:43:26,540 --> 00:43:28,341 or to somebody we were very close to. 747 00:43:28,942 --> 00:43:31,077 And that's quite a task. 748 00:43:31,678 --> 00:43:34,481 I must have been there for about an hour and a half or so, maybe two. 749 00:43:35,282 --> 00:43:38,084 And then one at a time they would ask one of us to come with them... 750 00:43:38,752 --> 00:43:40,420 and I was one of the last. 751 00:43:40,887 --> 00:43:42,889 And they came for me, and they put a blindfold on me... 752 00:43:43,356 --> 00:43:45,158 and they ran me through these fields... two people. 753 00:43:45,625 --> 00:43:49,029 And they'd found a kind of potting shed... you know, a kind of shed, on the grounds... 754 00:43:49,829 --> 00:43:52,766 a little tiny room that had once had tools in it. 755 00:43:53,433 --> 00:43:55,969 And they took me down the steps, into this basement... 756 00:43:56,503 --> 00:44:00,640 and the room was just filled with harsh white light. 757 00:44:01,508 --> 00:44:04,444 Then they told me to get undressed and give them all my valuables. 758 00:44:05,111 --> 00:44:07,113 Then they put me on a table, and they sponged me down. 759 00:44:07,647 --> 00:44:11,384 Well, you know, I just started flashing on-on-on death camps and secret police. 760 00:44:12,252 --> 00:44:15,455 I don't know what happened to the other people, but I just started to cry uncontrollably. 761 00:44:16,122 --> 00:44:19,926 Uh, then-then they got me to my feet and they took photographs of me, naked. 762 00:44:20,727 --> 00:44:23,063 And then naked, again blindfolded, I was run through these forests... 763 00:44:23,663 --> 00:44:26,333 and we came to a kind of tent made of sheets, with sheets on the ground. 764 00:44:26,933 --> 00:44:28,602 And there were all these naked bodies... 765 00:44:29,069 --> 00:44:31,938 huddling together for warmth against the cold. 766 00:44:32,739 --> 00:44:34,474 Must have been left there for about an hour. 767 00:44:34,941 --> 00:44:37,544 And then again, one by one, one at a time, we were led out. 768 00:44:38,144 --> 00:44:39,813 The blindfold was put on... 769 00:44:40,280 --> 00:44:43,350 and I felt myself being lowered onto something like a stretcher. 770 00:44:44,084 --> 00:44:48,154 And the stretcher was carried a long way, very slowly, through these forests... 771 00:44:49,089 --> 00:44:53,827 and then I felt myself being lowered into the ground. 772 00:44:54,828 --> 00:44:57,898 They had, in fact, dug six graves... 773 00:44:58,632 --> 00:45:00,901 eight feet deep. 774 00:45:01,434 --> 00:45:05,038 And then I felt these pieces of wood being put on me. 775 00:45:05,839 --> 00:45:08,708 And I cannot tell you, Wally, what I was going through. 776 00:45:09,309 --> 00:45:12,112 And then the stretcher was lowered into the grave... 777 00:45:12,712 --> 00:45:14,381 and then this wood was put on me... 778 00:45:14,848 --> 00:45:16,917 and then my valuables were put on me, in my hands. 779 00:45:17,450 --> 00:45:19,719 And they'd taken, you know, a kind of sheet or canvas... 780 00:45:20,253 --> 00:45:22,322 and they'd stretched about this much above my head... 781 00:45:22,856 --> 00:45:25,192 and then they shoveled dirt into the grave... 782 00:45:26,927 --> 00:45:30,797 so that I really had the feeling of being buried alive. 783 00:45:33,733 --> 00:45:36,069 And after being in the grave for about half an hour... 784 00:45:36,670 --> 00:45:39,406 I mean, I didn't know how long I'd be in there... 785 00:45:40,073 --> 00:45:42,142 I was resurrected, lifted out of the grave... 786 00:45:42,676 --> 00:45:44,678 blindfold taken off, and run through these fields. 787 00:45:45,145 --> 00:45:48,815 And we came to a great circle of fire, with music and hot wine... 788 00:45:49,683 --> 00:45:51,418 and everyone danced until dawn. 789 00:45:51,885 --> 00:45:54,621 And then at dawn... 790 00:45:55,288 --> 00:45:57,757 to the best of our ability, we filled up the graves... 791 00:45:58,358 --> 00:46:00,627 and went back to New York. 792 00:46:04,164 --> 00:46:07,234 And that was really the last big event. I mean, that was the end. 793 00:46:07,968 --> 00:46:09,569 I mean, you know, I began to realize... 794 00:46:09,970 --> 00:46:12,239 I just didn't want to do these things anymore, you know? 795 00:46:12,772 --> 00:46:16,510 I felt sort of becalmed, you know, like that chapter in Moby Dick... 796 00:46:17,310 --> 00:46:19,846 where the wind goes out of the sails. 797 00:46:20,514 --> 00:46:22,782 And then last winter, without, uh, thinking about it very much... 798 00:46:23,316 --> 00:46:26,920 I went to see this agent I know to tell him I was interested in directing plays again. 799 00:46:27,721 --> 00:46:29,723 Actually, he seemed a little surprised... 800 00:46:30,257 --> 00:46:33,126 to see that Rip Van Winkle was still alive. 801 00:46:39,332 --> 00:46:40,934 Mmm. 802 00:46:41,334 --> 00:46:43,003 God. 803 00:46:43,470 --> 00:46:45,005 I didn't know they were so small. 804 00:46:48,275 --> 00:46:50,010 Well, you know, frankly... 805 00:46:50,477 --> 00:46:52,812 I'm sort of repelled by the whole story, if you really want to know. 806 00:46:53,346 --> 00:46:55,348 - What? - Ah, you know... 807 00:46:55,882 --> 00:46:57,551 Who did I think I was, you know? 808 00:46:57,951 --> 00:47:01,755 I mean, that's the story of some kind of spoiled princess, you know. 809 00:47:02,689 --> 00:47:04,558 Who did I think I was, the Shah of Iran? 810 00:47:05,091 --> 00:47:09,095 You know, I really wonder if people such as myself are really not Albert Speer, Wally. 811 00:47:09,963 --> 00:47:13,433 - You know, Hitler's architect, Albert Speer? - What? 812 00:47:14,234 --> 00:47:17,237 No, I've been thinking a lot about him recently because, uh, I think I am Speer. 813 00:47:17,971 --> 00:47:20,440 And I think it's time that I was caught and tried the way he was. 814 00:47:21,174 --> 00:47:22,509 What are you talking about? 815 00:47:22,843 --> 00:47:26,046 Well, you know, he was a very cultivated man, an architect, an artist, you know... 816 00:47:26,713 --> 00:47:29,583 so he thought the ordinary rules of life didn't apply to him either. 817 00:47:32,853 --> 00:47:36,056 I mean, I really feel that everything I've done... 818 00:47:36,723 --> 00:47:38,859 is horrific, just horrific. 819 00:47:39,326 --> 00:47:41,862 My God. But why? 820 00:47:42,462 --> 00:47:46,199 You see... You see, I've seen a lot of death in the last few years, Wally... 821 00:47:47,067 --> 00:47:48,935 and there's one thing that's for sure about death... 822 00:47:49,469 --> 00:47:51,538 You do it alone, you see. That seems quite certain, you see. 823 00:47:52,072 --> 00:47:54,608 That I've seen. That the people around your bed mean nothing. 824 00:47:55,275 --> 00:47:57,744 Your reviews mean nothing. Whatever it is, you do it alone. 825 00:47:58,345 --> 00:48:01,748 And so the question is, when I get on my deathbed, what kind of a person am I gonna be? 826 00:48:02,549 --> 00:48:04,885 And I'm just very dubious about the kind of person who would have lived his life... 827 00:48:05,485 --> 00:48:07,020 those last few years the way I did. 828 00:48:07,487 --> 00:48:09,623 Why should you feel that way? 829 00:48:10,156 --> 00:48:13,894 You see, I've had a very rough time in the last few months, Wally. 830 00:48:14,761 --> 00:48:18,031 Three different people in my family were in the hospital at the same time. 831 00:48:18,765 --> 00:48:20,367 Then my mother died. 832 00:48:20,767 --> 00:48:23,236 Then Marina had something wrong with her back, and we were terribly worried about her. 833 00:48:23,837 --> 00:48:26,439 You know, so... So, I mean, I'm feeling very raw right now. 834 00:48:27,174 --> 00:48:29,776 I mean, uh... I mean, I can't sleep, my nerves are shot. 835 00:48:30,377 --> 00:48:32,045 I mean, I'm affected by everything. 836 00:48:32,445 --> 00:48:35,849 You know, la-last week I had this really nice director from Norway over for dinner... 837 00:48:36,650 --> 00:48:38,518 and he's someone I've known for years and years... 838 00:48:38,919 --> 00:48:40,787 and he's somebody that I think I'm quite fond of. 839 00:48:41,254 --> 00:48:43,924 And I was sitting there just thinking that he was a pompous, defensive... 840 00:48:44,524 --> 00:48:46,526 conservative stuffed shirt who was only interested in the theater. 841 00:48:47,060 --> 00:48:49,996 He was talking and talking. His mother had been a famous Norwegian comedienne. 842 00:48:50,664 --> 00:48:54,267 I realized he had said " I remember my mother" at least 400 times during the evening. 843 00:48:55,068 --> 00:48:57,604 And he was telling story after story about his mother. 844 00:48:58,271 --> 00:49:00,674 You know, I'd heard these stories 20 times in the past. 845 00:49:01,274 --> 00:49:03,476 He was drinking this whole bottle of bourbon very quietly. 846 00:49:04,077 --> 00:49:05,812 His laugh was so horrible. 847 00:49:06,279 --> 00:49:09,282 You know, I could hear his laugh... the pain in that laugh, the hollowness. 848 00:49:09,950 --> 00:49:11,952 You know, what being that woman's son had done to him. 849 00:49:12,485 --> 00:49:15,555 You know, so at a certain point I just had to ask him to leave... Nicely, you know. 850 00:49:16,289 --> 00:49:19,092 I told him I had to get up early the next morning, 'cause it was so horrible. 851 00:49:19,759 --> 00:49:21,761 It was just as if he had died in my living room. 852 00:49:22,295 --> 00:49:25,699 You know, then I went into the bathroom and cried 'cause I felt I'd lost a friend. 853 00:49:26,500 --> 00:49:28,235 And then after he'd gone, I turned the television on... 854 00:49:28,635 --> 00:49:30,637 and there was this guy who had just won the something-something. 855 00:49:31,171 --> 00:49:34,107 Some sports event... Some kind of a great big check and some kind of huge silver bottle. 856 00:49:34,774 --> 00:49:36,776 And he, you know... He couldn't stuff the check in the bottle... 857 00:49:37,244 --> 00:49:39,913 and he put the bottle in front of his nose and pretended it was his face. 858 00:49:40,514 --> 00:49:42,449 He wasn't really listening to the guy who was interviewing him... 859 00:49:42,916 --> 00:49:45,785 but he was smiling malevolently at his friends, and I looked at that guy and I thought... 860 00:49:46,453 --> 00:49:49,789 "What a horrible, empty, manipulative rat. " 861 00:49:50,524 --> 00:49:53,793 Then I thought, " That guy is me. " 862 00:49:54,528 --> 00:49:57,197 Then last night actually, you know, it was our 20th wedding anniversary... 863 00:49:57,864 --> 00:49:59,733 and I took Chiquita to see this show about Billie Holiday. 864 00:50:00,133 --> 00:50:03,069 I looked at these show business people who know nothing about Billie Holiday, nothing. 865 00:50:03,737 --> 00:50:06,873 You see, they were really kind of, in a way, intellectual creeps. 866 00:50:07,541 --> 00:50:10,744 And I suddenly had this feeling. I mean, you know I was just sitting there, crying through most of the show. 867 00:50:11,478 --> 00:50:13,813 And I suddenly had this feeling I was just as creepy as they were... 868 00:50:14,347 --> 00:50:16,016 and that my whole life had been a sham... 869 00:50:16,483 --> 00:50:18,818 and I didn't have the guts to be Billie Holiday either. 870 00:50:19,352 --> 00:50:22,489 I mean, I really feel that I'm just washed up, wiped out. 871 00:50:23,290 --> 00:50:25,492 I feel I've just squandered my life. 872 00:50:29,496 --> 00:50:32,699 André, now, how can you say something like that? 873 00:50:33,500 --> 00:50:35,035 I mean... 874 00:50:43,176 --> 00:50:47,848 Well, you know, I may be in a very emotional state right now, Wally... 875 00:50:48,849 --> 00:50:51,384 but since I've come back home I've just been finding the world we're living in... 876 00:50:51,918 --> 00:50:54,054 more and more upsetting. 877 00:50:54,521 --> 00:50:56,990 I mean, last week I went down to the Public Theater one afternoon. 878 00:50:57,524 --> 00:50:59,392 You know, when I walked in, I said hello to everybody... 879 00:50:59,860 --> 00:51:02,195 'cause I know them all, and they all know me, they're always very friendly. 880 00:51:02,729 --> 00:51:05,999 You know that seven or eight people told me how wonderful I looked? 881 00:51:06,733 --> 00:51:09,669 And then one person... One... A woman who runs the casting office, said... 882 00:51:10,337 --> 00:51:12,005 "Gee, you look horrible. Is something wrong?" 883 00:51:12,472 --> 00:51:14,941 Now, she... You know, we started talking. Of course, I started telling her things. 884 00:51:15,542 --> 00:51:18,812 And she suddenly burst into tears because an aunt of hers who's 80... 885 00:51:19,679 --> 00:51:23,149 whom she's very fond of, went into the hospital for a cataract, which was solved. 886 00:51:23,950 --> 00:51:26,887 But the nurse was so sloppy, she didn't put the bed rails up... 887 00:51:27,554 --> 00:51:30,156 and so the aunt fell out of bed and is now a complete cripple. 888 00:51:30,757 --> 00:51:32,692 So you know, we were talking about hospitals. 889 00:51:33,159 --> 00:51:35,896 Now, you know, this woman, because of who she is... 890 00:51:36,563 --> 00:51:38,498 You know, 'cause this had happened to her very, very recently. 891 00:51:38,965 --> 00:51:41,902 - She could see me with complete clarity. - Uh-huh. 892 00:51:42,569 --> 00:51:44,237 She didn't know anything about what I'd been going through. 893 00:51:44,638 --> 00:51:46,840 But the other people, what they saw was this tan, or this shirt... 894 00:51:47,374 --> 00:51:49,042 or the fact that the shirt goes well with the tan. 895 00:51:49,442 --> 00:51:51,044 So they said, " Gee, you look wonderful. " 896 00:51:51,444 --> 00:51:54,181 Now, they're living in an insane dreamworld. 897 00:51:54,848 --> 00:51:57,517 They're not looking. That seems very strange to me. 898 00:51:58,118 --> 00:52:00,787 Right, because they just didn't see anything, somehow... 899 00:52:01,454 --> 00:52:04,324 except, uh, the few little things that they wanted to see. 900 00:52:07,928 --> 00:52:11,731 Yeah, you know, it's like what happened just before my mother died. 901 00:52:12,532 --> 00:52:14,534 You know, we'd gone to the hospital to see my mother... 902 00:52:15,068 --> 00:52:17,070 and I went in to see her... 903 00:52:17,537 --> 00:52:21,341 and I saw this woman who looked as bad as any survivor of Auschwitz or Dachau. 904 00:52:22,275 --> 00:52:25,345 And I was out in the hall sort of comforting my father... 905 00:52:26,079 --> 00:52:29,416 when a doctor who was a specialist in a problem she had with her arm... 906 00:52:30,150 --> 00:52:32,485 went into her room and came out just beaming. 907 00:52:33,086 --> 00:52:36,223 And he said, " Boy, don't we have a lot of reason to feel great? 908 00:52:36,957 --> 00:52:39,960 Isn't it wonderful how she's coming along?" 909 00:52:40,694 --> 00:52:44,764 Now, all he saw was the arm. That's all he saw. 910 00:52:45,699 --> 00:52:49,369 Now, here's another person who's existing in a dream. 911 00:52:50,170 --> 00:52:52,172 Who, on top of that, is a kind of butcher... 912 00:52:52,772 --> 00:52:54,574 who's committing a kind of familial murder... 913 00:52:55,041 --> 00:52:57,711 because when he comes out of that room, he psychically kills us... 914 00:52:58,378 --> 00:53:00,046 by taking us into a dream world... 915 00:53:00,447 --> 00:53:03,316 where we become confused and frightened... 916 00:53:03,984 --> 00:53:06,720 'cause the moment before, we saw somebody who already looked dead... 917 00:53:07,320 --> 00:53:11,124 and now here comes a specialist who tells us they're in wonderful shape. 918 00:53:11,925 --> 00:53:14,194 I mean, they were literally driving my father crazy. 919 00:53:14,728 --> 00:53:17,330 I mean, you know, here's an 82-year-old man who's very emotional... 920 00:53:17,931 --> 00:53:20,467 and you know, and if you go in one moment, and you see the person's dying... 921 00:53:21,067 --> 00:53:23,603 and you don't want them to die, and then a doctor comes out five minutes later... 922 00:53:24,137 --> 00:53:25,805 and tells you they're in wonderful shape... 923 00:53:26,273 --> 00:53:28,475 I mean, you know, you can go crazy. 924 00:53:28,942 --> 00:53:32,145 - Yeah. I know what you mean. - I mean, the doctor didn't see my mother. 925 00:53:32,879 --> 00:53:34,948 The people at the Public Theater didn't see me. 926 00:53:35,482 --> 00:53:37,951 I mean, we're just walking around in some kind of fog. 927 00:53:38,552 --> 00:53:42,022 I think we're all in a trance. We're walking around like zombies. 928 00:53:42,756 --> 00:53:45,759 I don't... I don't think we're even aware of ourselves or our own reaction to things. 929 00:53:46,493 --> 00:53:48,895 We... We're just going around all day like unconscious machines... 930 00:53:49,496 --> 00:53:52,032 and meanwhile there's all of this rage and worry and uneasiness... 931 00:53:52,699 --> 00:53:54,434 just building up and building up inside us. 932 00:53:54,901 --> 00:53:56,770 That's right. It just builds up, uh... 933 00:53:57,304 --> 00:54:00,040 and then it just leaps out inappropriately. 934 00:54:02,108 --> 00:54:04,244 I mean, I remember when I was, uh, acting in this play... 935 00:54:04,845 --> 00:54:06,446 based on The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. 936 00:54:06,847 --> 00:54:08,849 And I was playing the part of the cat. 937 00:54:09,382 --> 00:54:11,384 But they had trouble, uh, making up my cat suit... 938 00:54:11,852 --> 00:54:14,921 so I didn't get it delivered to me till the night of the first performance. 939 00:54:15,655 --> 00:54:18,658 Particularly the head... I mean, I'd never even had a chance to try it on. 940 00:54:19,326 --> 00:54:22,262 And about four of my fellow actors actually came up to me... 941 00:54:22,929 --> 00:54:25,131 and they said these things which I just couldn't help thinking... 942 00:54:25,665 --> 00:54:27,267 were attempts to destroy me. 943 00:54:27,667 --> 00:54:30,937 You know, one of them said, uh, "Oh, well, now that head... 944 00:54:31,671 --> 00:54:33,740 "will totally change your hearing in the performance. 945 00:54:34,541 --> 00:54:37,143 "You may hear everything completely differently... 946 00:54:37,677 --> 00:54:39,546 "and it may be very upsetting. 947 00:54:40,013 --> 00:54:42,682 "Now, I was once in a performance where I was wearing earmuffs... 948 00:54:43,283 --> 00:54:46,419 and I couldn't hear anything anybody said. " 949 00:54:47,087 --> 00:54:50,223 And then another one said, " Oh, you know, whenever I wear even a hat on stage... 950 00:54:50,891 --> 00:54:52,492 I tend to faint. " 951 00:54:52,893 --> 00:54:55,428 I mean, those remarks were just full of hostility... 952 00:54:56,029 --> 00:54:58,832 because, I mean, if I'd listened to those people, I would have gone out there on stage... 953 00:54:59,499 --> 00:55:01,835 and I wouldn't have been able to hear anything, and I would have fainted. 954 00:55:02,435 --> 00:55:04,104 But the hostility was completely inappropriate... 955 00:55:04,504 --> 00:55:06,106 because, in fact, those people liked me. 956 00:55:06,506 --> 00:55:09,442 I mean, that hostility was just some feeling that was, you know... 957 00:55:10,110 --> 00:55:12,445 left over from some previous experience. 958 00:55:13,046 --> 00:55:15,849 Because somehow in our social existence today... 959 00:55:16,516 --> 00:55:19,186 we're only allowed to express our feelings, uh... 960 00:55:19,853 --> 00:55:21,588 weirdly and indirectly. 961 00:55:22,055 --> 00:55:24,124 If you express them directly, everybody goes crazy. 962 00:55:24,591 --> 00:55:27,194 Well, did you express your feelings about what those people said to you? 963 00:55:27,794 --> 00:55:31,198 No. I mean, I didn't even know what I felt till I thought about it later. 964 00:55:31,998 --> 00:55:34,868 And I mean, at the most, you know, in a situation like that, uh... 965 00:55:35,468 --> 00:55:37,337 even if I had known what I felt... 966 00:55:37,804 --> 00:55:40,073 I might say something, if I'm really annoyed... 967 00:55:40,607 --> 00:55:43,810 like, uh, " Oh, yeah. Well, that's just fascinating... 968 00:55:44,477 --> 00:55:47,614 and, uh, I probably will faint tonight, just as you did. " 969 00:55:48,281 --> 00:55:50,750 I do just the same thing myself. 970 00:55:51,284 --> 00:55:54,087 We can't be direct, so we end up saying the weirdest things. 971 00:55:54,688 --> 00:55:57,357 I mean, I remember a night. It was a couple of weeks after my mother died. 972 00:55:58,024 --> 00:55:59,559 And I was in pretty bad shape. 973 00:56:00,026 --> 00:56:01,761 And I had dinner with three relatively close friends... 974 00:56:02,229 --> 00:56:03,897 two of whom had known my mother quite well... 975 00:56:04,297 --> 00:56:06,433 and all three of whom had known me for years. 976 00:56:06,900 --> 00:56:09,236 You know that we went through that entire evening without my being able to... 977 00:56:09,836 --> 00:56:11,505 for a moment, get anywhere near what... 978 00:56:11,905 --> 00:56:13,707 Not that I wanted to sit and have this dreary evening... 979 00:56:14,241 --> 00:56:16,576 in which I was talking about all this pain that I was going through and everything. 980 00:56:17,110 --> 00:56:18,512 Really, not at all. 981 00:56:18,912 --> 00:56:20,647 But the fact that nobody could say... 982 00:56:21,114 --> 00:56:23,517 "Gee, what a shame about your mother" or " How are you feeling?" 983 00:56:24,117 --> 00:56:26,853 It was just as if nothing had happened. They were all making these jokes and laughing. 984 00:56:27,521 --> 00:56:29,189 I got quite crazy, as a matter of fact. 985 00:56:29,589 --> 00:56:31,658 One of these people mentioned a certain man whom I don't like very much... 986 00:56:32,192 --> 00:56:35,462 and I started screeching about how he had just been found in the Bronx River... 987 00:56:36,196 --> 00:56:39,599 and his penis had dropped off from gonorrhea, and all kinds of insane things. 988 00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:44,337 And later, when I got home, I realized I'd just been desperate to break through this ice. 989 00:56:45,205 --> 00:56:46,473 Yeah. 990 00:56:46,806 --> 00:56:50,143 I mean, do you realize, Wally, if you brought that situation into a Tibetan home... 991 00:56:50,877 --> 00:56:53,413 That'd be just so far out. I mean, they wouldn't be able to understand it. 992 00:56:54,014 --> 00:56:56,016 That would be simply... simply so weird, Wally. 993 00:56:56,483 --> 00:56:59,753 If four Tibetans came together, and tragedy had just struck one of the ones... 994 00:57:00,487 --> 00:57:04,357 and they spent the whole evening going... 995 00:57:05,225 --> 00:57:07,027 I mean, you know, Tibetans would have looked at that... 996 00:57:07,494 --> 00:57:10,096 and would have thought that was the most unimaginable behavior. 997 00:57:10,697 --> 00:57:12,632 - But for us, that's common behavior. - Mm-hmm. 998 00:57:13,099 --> 00:57:16,236 I mean, really, the... The Africans would have probably put their spears into all four of us... 999 00:57:17,003 --> 00:57:18,605 'cause it would have driven them crazy. 1000 00:57:19,039 --> 00:57:21,107 They would have thought we were dangerous animals or something like that. 1001 00:57:21,641 --> 00:57:24,778 - Right. - I mean, that's absolutely abnormal behavior. 1002 00:57:25,512 --> 00:57:27,347 Is everything all right, gentlemen? 1003 00:57:27,814 --> 00:57:29,382 - Great. - Yeah. 1004 00:57:33,787 --> 00:57:35,655 But those are typical evenings for us. 1005 00:57:36,122 --> 00:57:39,593 I mean, we go to dinners and parties like that all the time. 1006 00:57:40,393 --> 00:57:42,929 These evenings are really like sort of sickly dreams... 1007 00:57:43,463 --> 00:57:45,599 because people are talking in symbols. 1008 00:57:46,066 --> 00:57:49,603 Everyone is sort of floating through this fog of symbols and unconscious feelings. 1009 00:57:50,403 --> 00:57:52,405 No one says what they're really thinking about. 1010 00:57:52,873 --> 00:57:57,043 Then people will start making these jokes that are really some sort of secret code. 1011 00:57:58,011 --> 00:58:00,013 Right. Well, what often happens in some of these evenings... 1012 00:58:00,480 --> 00:58:04,150 is that these really crazy little fantasies will just start being played with, you know... 1013 00:58:05,018 --> 00:58:07,554 and everyone will be talking at once and sort of saying... 1014 00:58:08,221 --> 00:58:11,358 "Hey, wouldn't it be great if Frank Sinatra and Mrs. Nixon and blah-blah-blah... 1015 00:58:12,058 --> 00:58:14,161 were in such and such a situation?" 1016 00:58:14,694 --> 00:58:17,497 You know, always with famous people, and always sort of grotesque. 1017 00:58:18,231 --> 00:58:20,367 Or people will be talking about some horrible thing... 1018 00:58:20,901 --> 00:58:24,638 like... Like, uh, the death of that girl in the car with Ted Kennedy... 1019 00:58:25,505 --> 00:58:27,474 and they'll just be roaring with laughter. 1020 00:58:27,974 --> 00:58:30,043 I mean, it's really amazing. It's just unbelievable. 1021 00:58:30,577 --> 00:58:34,848 That's the only way anything is expressed, through these completely insane jokes. 1022 00:58:35,782 --> 00:58:38,451 I mean, I think that's why I never understand what's going on at a party. 1023 00:58:39,085 --> 00:58:41,721 I'm always completely confused. 1024 00:58:42,422 --> 00:58:46,326 You know, uh, Debby once said, after one of these New York evenings... 1025 00:58:47,194 --> 00:58:49,129 she thought she'd traveled a greater distance... 1026 00:58:49,596 --> 00:58:52,499 just by journeying from her origins in the suburbs of Chicago... 1027 00:58:53,200 --> 00:58:54,801 to that New York evening... 1028 00:58:55,202 --> 00:58:57,737 than her grandmother had traveled in, uh, making her way... 1029 00:58:58,405 --> 00:59:00,540 from the steppes of Russia to the suburbs of Chicago. 1030 00:59:01,074 --> 00:59:03,009 I think that's right. 1031 00:59:04,578 --> 00:59:06,746 You know, it may... it may be, Wally, that one of the reasons... 1032 00:59:07,280 --> 00:59:08,882 that we don't know what's going on... 1033 00:59:09,282 --> 00:59:11,685 is that when we're there at a party, we're all too busy performing. 1034 00:59:12,285 --> 00:59:13,353 Uh-huh. 1035 00:59:13,687 --> 00:59:16,490 That was one of the reasons that, uh, Grotowski gave up the theater. 1036 00:59:17,224 --> 00:59:20,627 He just felt that people in their lives now were performing so well... 1037 00:59:21,428 --> 00:59:23,630 that performance in the theater was sort of superfluous... 1038 00:59:24,197 --> 00:59:25,799 and, in a way, obscene. 1039 00:59:26,166 --> 00:59:27,934 Huh. 1040 00:59:28,502 --> 00:59:30,770 Isn't it amazing how often a doctor... 1041 00:59:31,271 --> 00:59:33,573 will live up to our expectation of how a doctor should look? 1042 00:59:34,107 --> 00:59:37,043 When you see a terrorist on television, he looks just like a terrorist. 1043 00:59:37,711 --> 00:59:39,779 I mean, we live in a world in which fathers... 1044 00:59:40,247 --> 00:59:42,115 or single people, or artists... 1045 00:59:42,582 --> 00:59:44,451 are all trying to live up to someone's fantasy... 1046 00:59:44,851 --> 00:59:48,121 of how a father, or a single person, or an artist should look and behave. 1047 00:59:48,855 --> 00:59:51,191 They all act as if they know exactly how they ought to conduct themselves... 1048 00:59:51,791 --> 00:59:53,360 at every single moment... 1049 00:59:53,793 --> 00:59:55,529 and they all seem totally self-confident. 1050 00:59:55,996 --> 00:59:58,064 Of course, privately people are very mixed up about themselves. 1051 00:59:58,598 --> 00:59:59,466 Yeah. 1052 00:59:59,799 --> 01:00:01,601 They don't know what they should be doing with their lives. 1053 01:00:02,102 --> 01:00:03,837 - They're reading all these self-help books. - Oh, God! 1054 01:00:04,404 --> 01:00:06,406 I mean, those books are just so touching, because they show... 1055 01:00:07,007 --> 01:00:09,409 how desperately curious we all are to know how all the others of us... 1056 01:00:10,010 --> 01:00:11,545 are really getting on in life... 1057 01:00:12,012 --> 01:00:14,214 even though, by performing these roles all the time... 1058 01:00:14,814 --> 01:00:17,284 we're just hiding the reality of ourselves from everybody else. 1059 01:00:17,884 --> 01:00:20,053 I mean, we live in such ludicrous ignorance of each other. 1060 01:00:20,620 --> 01:00:22,422 We usually don't know the things we'd like to know... 1061 01:00:22,889 --> 01:00:24,558 even about our supposedly closest friends. 1062 01:00:25,025 --> 01:00:26,560 I mean... I mean, you know... 1063 01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:29,029 suppose you're going through some kind of hell in your own life. 1064 01:00:29,563 --> 01:00:32,432 Well, you would love to know if your friends have experienced similar things. 1065 01:00:33,099 --> 01:00:34,668 But we just don't dare to ask each other. 1066 01:00:35,068 --> 01:00:37,103 No. It would be like asking your friend to drop his role. 1067 01:00:37,571 --> 01:00:40,440 I mean, we just put no value at all on perceiving reality. 1068 01:00:41,041 --> 01:00:44,044 I mean, on the contrary, this incredible emphasis that we all place now... 1069 01:00:44,778 --> 01:00:46,446 on our so-called careers... 1070 01:00:46,847 --> 01:00:50,717 automatically makes perceiving reality a very low priority... 1071 01:00:51,585 --> 01:00:55,455 because if your life is organized around trying to be successful in a career... 1072 01:00:56,256 --> 01:01:00,527 well, it just doesn't matter what you perceive or what you experience. 1073 01:01:01,461 --> 01:01:04,264 You can really sort of shut your mind off for years ahead, in a way. 1074 01:01:04,865 --> 01:01:07,334 You can sort of turn on the automatic pilot. 1075 01:01:07,868 --> 01:01:10,737 You know, just the way your mother's doctor had on his automatic pilot... 1076 01:01:11,371 --> 01:01:13,206 when he went in and he looked at the arm... 1077 01:01:13,673 --> 01:01:15,675 and he totally failed to perceive anything else. 1078 01:01:16,209 --> 01:01:19,546 That's right. Our... Our minds are just focused on these goals and plans... 1079 01:01:20,280 --> 01:01:21,882 which in themselves are not reality. 1080 01:01:22,249 --> 01:01:25,018 No. Goals and plans are not... 1081 01:01:25,685 --> 01:01:29,322 I mean, they're... They're fantasy. They're part of a dream life. 1082 01:01:30,157 --> 01:01:33,059 I mean, you know, it always just does seem so ridiculous, somehow... 1083 01:01:33,760 --> 01:01:36,830 that everybody has to have his little... His little goal in life. 1084 01:01:37,597 --> 01:01:41,168 I mean, it's so absurd, in a way, when you consider that it doesn't matter which one it is. 1085 01:01:41,968 --> 01:01:43,970 Right. And because people's concentration is on their goals... 1086 01:01:44,437 --> 01:01:46,973 in their life they just live each moment by habit. 1087 01:01:47,607 --> 01:01:50,243 Really, like the Norwegian telling the same stories over and over again. 1088 01:01:50,844 --> 01:01:52,979 - Mm-hmm. - Life becomes habitual. 1089 01:01:53,480 --> 01:01:55,315 And it is today. 1090 01:01:55,782 --> 01:01:57,450 I mean, very few things happen now like that moment... 1091 01:01:57,851 --> 01:02:00,187 when Marlon Brando sent the Indian woman to accept the Oscar... 1092 01:02:00,787 --> 01:02:02,322 and everything went haywire. 1093 01:02:02,789 --> 01:02:04,758 Things just very rarely go haywire now. 1094 01:02:05,258 --> 01:02:07,794 And if you're just operating by habit... 1095 01:02:08,395 --> 01:02:10,730 then you're not really living. 1096 01:02:11,398 --> 01:02:13,533 I mean, you know, in Sanskrit, the root of the verb " to be"... 1097 01:02:14,067 --> 01:02:16,002 is the same as " to grow" or " to make grow. " 1098 01:02:16,436 --> 01:02:18,071 Huh. 1099 01:02:21,808 --> 01:02:23,343 - Do you know about Roc? - Hmm? 1100 01:02:23,810 --> 01:02:25,545 Oh, well. 1101 01:02:26,012 --> 01:02:27,681 Roc was a wonderful man. 1102 01:02:28,081 --> 01:02:29,883 He was one of the founders of Findhorn... 1103 01:02:30,350 --> 01:02:33,954 and he was one of Scotland's... well, he was Scotland's greatest mathematician... 1104 01:02:34,788 --> 01:02:36,857 and he was one of the century's great mathematicians. 1105 01:02:37,357 --> 01:02:41,628 And he prided himself on the fact that he had no fantasy life, no dream life... 1106 01:02:42,562 --> 01:02:44,798 nothing to stand be... no imaginary life... 1107 01:02:45,365 --> 01:02:49,035 nothing to stand between him and the direct perception of mathematics. 1108 01:02:49,836 --> 01:02:53,139 And one day when he was in his mid-50s, he was walking in the gardens of Edinburgh... 1109 01:02:53,974 --> 01:02:56,309 and he saw a faun. 1110 01:02:56,877 --> 01:02:59,846 The faun was very surprised because fauns have always been able to see people... 1111 01:03:00,580 --> 01:03:02,716 but you know, very few people ever see them. 1112 01:03:03,250 --> 01:03:05,519 You know, uh, those little imaginary creatures. 1113 01:03:06,052 --> 01:03:07,687 - Not a deer. - Oh. 1114 01:03:08,054 --> 01:03:10,724 - You call them fauns, don't you? - I thought a fawn was a baby deer. 1115 01:03:11,391 --> 01:03:14,027 Yeah, well, there's a deer that's called a fawn, but these are like those little imagi... 1116 01:03:14,661 --> 01:03:16,796 - Oh! The kind that Debussy... - Yes. Right. 1117 01:03:17,364 --> 01:03:20,233 Well, so he got to know the faun, and he got to know other fauns... 1118 01:03:20,867 --> 01:03:22,769 and a series of conversations began... 1119 01:03:23,270 --> 01:03:25,605 and more and more fauns would come out every afternoon to meet him. 1120 01:03:26,206 --> 01:03:27,741 And he'd have talks with the fauns. 1121 01:03:28,175 --> 01:03:30,944 Then one day, after a while, when, you know, they'd really gotten to know him... 1122 01:03:31,545 --> 01:03:33,613 they asked him if he would like to meet Pan... 1123 01:03:34,147 --> 01:03:35,882 because Pan would like to meet him. 1124 01:03:36,349 --> 01:03:38,018 And of course, Pan was afraid of terrifying him... 1125 01:03:38,485 --> 01:03:40,654 because he knew of the Christian misconception... 1126 01:03:41,154 --> 01:03:44,157 which portrayed Pan as an evil creature, which he's not. 1127 01:03:44,858 --> 01:03:47,294 But Roc said he would love to meet Pan, and so they met... 1128 01:03:47,828 --> 01:03:50,096 and Pan indirectly sent him on his way on a journey... 1129 01:03:50,764 --> 01:03:54,367 in which he met the other people who began Findhorn. 1130 01:03:55,168 --> 01:03:57,704 But Roc used to practice certain exercises... 1131 01:03:58,371 --> 01:04:00,974 like, uh, for instance, if he were right-handed... 1132 01:04:01,541 --> 01:04:03,443 all today he would do everything with his left hand. 1133 01:04:03,977 --> 01:04:06,179 All day... Eating, writing, everything... Opening doors... 1134 01:04:06,780 --> 01:04:09,082 in order to break the habits of living. 1135 01:04:09,649 --> 01:04:11,785 Because the great danger, he felt, for him... 1136 01:04:12,252 --> 01:04:14,988 was to fall into a trance, out of habit. 1137 01:04:15,655 --> 01:04:19,426 He had a whole series of very simple exercises that he had invented... 1138 01:04:20,260 --> 01:04:23,730 just to keep seeing, feeling, remembering. 1139 01:04:24,598 --> 01:04:26,266 Because you have to learn now. 1140 01:04:26,666 --> 01:04:29,069 It didn't used to be necessary, but today you have to learn something... 1141 01:04:29,669 --> 01:04:31,404 like, uh, are you really hungry... 1142 01:04:31,872 --> 01:04:34,474 or are you just stuffing your face... 1143 01:04:35,075 --> 01:04:36,877 Because that's what you do, out of habit? 1144 01:04:37,377 --> 01:04:39,513 I mean, you can afford to do it, so you do it... 1145 01:04:40,080 --> 01:04:41,681 whether you're hungry or not. 1146 01:04:42,015 --> 01:04:44,351 You know, if you go to the Buddhist Meditation Center... 1147 01:04:44,951 --> 01:04:47,020 they make you taste each bite of your food... 1148 01:04:47,554 --> 01:04:50,557 so it takes two hours... it's horrible... To eat your lunch. 1149 01:04:51,224 --> 01:04:54,094 But you're conscious of the taste of your food. 1150 01:04:54,761 --> 01:04:57,497 If you're just eating out of habit, then you don't taste the food... 1151 01:04:58,165 --> 01:05:00,567 and you're not conscious of the reality of what's happening to you. 1152 01:05:01,168 --> 01:05:02,836 You enter the dream world again. 1153 01:05:03,270 --> 01:05:06,173 Now, do you think maybe we live in this dream world... 1154 01:05:06,840 --> 01:05:09,643 because we do so many things every day that affect us in ways... 1155 01:05:10,243 --> 01:05:13,113 that somehow we're just not aware of? 1156 01:05:13,780 --> 01:05:17,317 I mean, you know, I was thinking, um, last Christmas... 1157 01:05:18,185 --> 01:05:20,821 Debby and I were given an electric blanket. 1158 01:05:21,454 --> 01:05:25,358 I can tell you that it is just such a marvelous advance... 1159 01:05:26,226 --> 01:05:30,063 over our old way of life, and it is just great. 1160 01:05:30,931 --> 01:05:33,800 But, uh, it is quite different from not having an electric blanket... 1161 01:05:34,467 --> 01:05:36,870 and I sometimes sort of wonder, well, what is it doing to me? 1162 01:05:37,470 --> 01:05:40,473 I mean, I sort of feel, uh, I'm not sleeping quite in the same way. 1163 01:05:41,174 --> 01:05:42,742 No, you wouldn't be. 1164 01:05:43,143 --> 01:05:45,545 I mean, uh, and my dreams are sort of different... 1165 01:05:46,179 --> 01:05:48,482 and I feel a little bit different when I get up in the morning. 1166 01:05:50,016 --> 01:05:52,953 I wouldn't put an electric blanket on for anything. 1167 01:05:53,620 --> 01:05:57,557 First, I'd be worried I might get electrocuted. No, I don't trust technology. 1168 01:05:58,425 --> 01:06:01,428 But I mean, the main thing, Wally, is that I think that that kind of comfort... 1169 01:06:02,162 --> 01:06:04,831 just separates you from reality in a very direct way. 1170 01:06:05,432 --> 01:06:07,701 - You mean... - I mean, if you don't have that electric blanket... 1171 01:06:08,235 --> 01:06:10,504 and your apartment is cold and you need to put on another blanket... 1172 01:06:11,037 --> 01:06:13,907 or go into the closet and pile up coats on top of the blankets you have... 1173 01:06:14,574 --> 01:06:16,376 well, then you know it's cold. 1174 01:06:16,843 --> 01:06:18,645 And that sets up a link of things. 1175 01:06:19,179 --> 01:06:22,082 You have compassion for the per... Well, is the person next to you cold? 1176 01:06:22,782 --> 01:06:24,584 Are there other people in the world who are cold? 1177 01:06:25,018 --> 01:06:27,053 What a cold night! I like the cold. 1178 01:06:27,554 --> 01:06:30,423 My God, I never realized. I don't want a blanket. It's fun being cold. 1179 01:06:31,057 --> 01:06:33,860 I can snuggle up against you even more because it's cold. 1180 01:06:34,561 --> 01:06:36,596 All sorts of things occur to you. 1181 01:06:37,264 --> 01:06:40,033 Turn on that electric blanket, and it's like taking a tranquilizer... 1182 01:06:40,667 --> 01:06:42,736 or it's like being lobotomized by watching television. 1183 01:06:43,203 --> 01:06:44,804 I think you enter the dream world again. 1184 01:06:46,806 --> 01:06:49,409 I mean, what does it do to us, Wally, living in an environment... 1185 01:06:50,043 --> 01:06:53,380 where something as massive as the seasons, or winter, or cold... 1186 01:06:54,181 --> 01:06:56,016 don't in any way affect us? 1187 01:06:56,416 --> 01:06:58,018 I mean, we're animals, after all. 1188 01:06:58,418 --> 01:07:00,053 I mean, what does that mean? 1189 01:07:00,453 --> 01:07:03,023 I think that means that instead of living under the sun... 1190 01:07:03,623 --> 01:07:05,892 and the moon and the sky and the stars... 1191 01:07:06,426 --> 01:07:08,795 we're living in a fantasy world of our own making. 1192 01:07:09,362 --> 01:07:12,098 Yeah, but I mean, I would never give up my electric blanket, André. 1193 01:07:12,833 --> 01:07:15,068 I mean, because New York is cold in the winter. 1194 01:07:15,635 --> 01:07:18,305 I mean, our apartment is cold. It's a difficult environment. 1195 01:07:18,972 --> 01:07:20,774 I mean, our lives are tough enough as it is. 1196 01:07:21,241 --> 01:07:24,177 I'm not looking for ways to get rid of the few things that provide relief and comfort. 1197 01:07:24,845 --> 01:07:27,147 I mean, on the contrary, I'm looking for more comfort... 1198 01:07:27,781 --> 01:07:29,649 because, uh, the world is very abrasive. 1199 01:07:30,183 --> 01:07:32,152 I mean, uh, I'm trying to protect myself... 1200 01:07:32,619 --> 01:07:35,655 because, really, there are these abrasive beatings to be avoided everywhere you look. 1201 01:07:36,323 --> 01:07:39,659 But, Wally, don't you... Don't you see that comfort can be dangerous? 1202 01:07:40,460 --> 01:07:43,129 I mean, you like to be comfortable, and I like to be comfortable too... 1203 01:07:43,730 --> 01:07:46,666 but comfort can lull you into a dangerous tranquillity. 1204 01:07:48,335 --> 01:07:50,871 I mean, my mother knew a woman, Lady Hatfield... 1205 01:07:51,404 --> 01:07:53,206 who was one of the richest women in the world... 1206 01:07:53,607 --> 01:07:56,376 and she died of starvation because all she would eat was chicken. 1207 01:07:57,010 --> 01:07:59,346 I mean, she just liked chicken, Wally, and that was all she would eat. 1208 01:07:59,946 --> 01:08:02,482 And actually her body was starving, but she didn't know it... 1209 01:08:03,016 --> 01:08:06,019 'cause she was quite happy eating her chicken, and so she finally died. 1210 01:08:06,753 --> 01:08:10,223 See, I honestly believe that we're all like Lady Hatfield now. 1211 01:08:11,024 --> 01:08:14,294 We're having a lovely, comfortable time with our electric blankets and our chicken... 1212 01:08:15,028 --> 01:08:18,298 and meanwhile we're starving because we're so cut off from contact with reality... 1213 01:08:19,032 --> 01:08:22,202 that we're not getting any real sustenance, 'cause we don't see the world. 1214 01:08:22,969 --> 01:08:24,504 We don't see ourselves. 1215 01:08:24,971 --> 01:08:26,706 We don't see how our actions affect other people. 1216 01:08:27,174 --> 01:08:29,709 Have you read Martin Buber's book On Hasidism? 1217 01:08:30,377 --> 01:08:32,212 - No. - Well, here's a view of life. 1218 01:08:32,646 --> 01:08:35,148 I mean, he talks about the belief of the HasidicJews... 1219 01:08:35,715 --> 01:08:37,317 that there are spirits chained in everything. 1220 01:08:37,717 --> 01:08:40,153 There are spirits chained in you. There are spirits chained in me. 1221 01:08:40,720 --> 01:08:42,656 Well, there are spirits chained in this table. 1222 01:08:43,123 --> 01:08:47,227 And that prayer is the action of liberating these enchained embryo-like spirits... 1223 01:08:48,128 --> 01:08:49,863 and that every action of ours in life... 1224 01:08:50,330 --> 01:08:52,866 whether it's, uh, doing business, or making love... 1225 01:08:53,400 --> 01:08:55,068 or having dinner together, or whatever... 1226 01:08:55,569 --> 01:08:57,704 that every action of ours should be a prayer... 1227 01:08:58,205 --> 01:08:59,739 a sacrament in the world. 1228 01:09:00,173 --> 01:09:02,342 Now, do you think we're living like that? 1229 01:09:02,809 --> 01:09:04,478 Why do you think we're not living like that? 1230 01:09:04,945 --> 01:09:07,414 I think it's because if we allowed ourselves to see what we do every day... 1231 01:09:08,048 --> 01:09:09,716 we might just find it too nauseating. 1232 01:09:10,150 --> 01:09:11,685 I mean, the way we treat other people. 1233 01:09:12,152 --> 01:09:15,155 You know, every day, several times a day, I walk into my apartment building. 1234 01:09:15,822 --> 01:09:18,758 The doorman calls me Mr. Gregory, and I call him Jimmy. 1235 01:09:19,392 --> 01:09:22,028 Already, what's the difference between that... 1236 01:09:22,629 --> 01:09:24,965 and the Southern plantation owner who's got slaves? 1237 01:09:25,565 --> 01:09:28,068 You see, I think that an act of murder is committed in that moment... 1238 01:09:28,635 --> 01:09:30,303 when I walk into that building. 1239 01:09:30,770 --> 01:09:34,174 Because here's a dignified, intelligent man... a man of my own age... 1240 01:09:34,908 --> 01:09:37,911 and when I call him Jimmy, then he becomes a child, and I'm an adult... 1241 01:09:38,645 --> 01:09:40,580 because I can buy my way into the building. 1242 01:09:41,047 --> 01:09:43,183 Right. That's right. 1243 01:09:43,717 --> 01:09:46,987 I mean, my God, when I was a Latin teacher... 1244 01:09:47,721 --> 01:09:49,456 I mean, people used to treat me... 1245 01:09:49,923 --> 01:09:52,192 I mean, uh, you know, if I would go to a party... 1246 01:09:52,726 --> 01:09:55,128 of professional or literary people... 1247 01:09:55,729 --> 01:09:58,665 I mean, I was just treated, uh, in the nicest sense of the word... 1248 01:09:59,366 --> 01:10:00,667 uh, like a dog. 1249 01:10:01,134 --> 01:10:02,802 I mean, in other words, there was no question... 1250 01:10:03,203 --> 01:10:06,206 of my being able to participate on an equal basis in a conversation with people. 1251 01:10:06,907 --> 01:10:08,975 I mean, you know, I'd occasionally have conversations with people... 1252 01:10:09,543 --> 01:10:11,611 but then, uh, when they asked what I did... 1253 01:10:12,145 --> 01:10:14,147 which would always happen after about five minutes... 1254 01:10:14,614 --> 01:10:16,483 uh, you know, their faces... 1255 01:10:16,917 --> 01:10:20,020 Even if they were enjoying the conversation, or they were flirting with me, or whatever it was... 1256 01:10:20,754 --> 01:10:23,590 their faces would just have that expression just like the portcullis crashing down. 1257 01:10:24,224 --> 01:10:27,027 You know, those medieval gates. They would just walk away. 1258 01:10:27,761 --> 01:10:30,497 I mean, I literally lived like a dog. 1259 01:10:31,231 --> 01:10:34,167 And I mean, uh, when Debby was working as a secretary, you know... 1260 01:10:34,835 --> 01:10:37,771 if she would tell people what she did, they would just go insane. 1261 01:10:38,505 --> 01:10:40,440 I mean, it would be just as if she'd said, uh... 1262 01:10:40,907 --> 01:10:44,911 "Oh, well, I've been serving a life sentence recently, uh, for child murdering. " 1263 01:10:46,947 --> 01:10:50,283 I mean, my God, you know, when you talk about our attitudes toward other people... 1264 01:10:52,185 --> 01:10:53,854 I mean, I think of myself... 1265 01:10:54,321 --> 01:10:57,657 as just a very decent, good person, you know... 1266 01:10:58,391 --> 01:11:00,327 just because I think I'm reasonably friendly... 1267 01:11:00,794 --> 01:11:02,662 to most of the people I happen to meet every day. 1268 01:11:03,163 --> 01:11:05,398 I mean, I really think of myself quite smugly. 1269 01:11:05,932 --> 01:11:08,468 I just think I'm a perfectly nice guy, uh, you know... 1270 01:11:09,135 --> 01:11:11,671 so long as I think of the world as consisting of, you know... 1271 01:11:12,339 --> 01:11:14,674 just the small circle of the people that I know as friends... 1272 01:11:15,208 --> 01:11:17,744 or the few people that we know in this little world of our little hobbies... 1273 01:11:18,345 --> 01:11:19,880 the theater or whatever it is. 1274 01:11:20,313 --> 01:11:22,816 And I'm really quite self-satisfied. I'm just quite happy with myself. 1275 01:11:23,416 --> 01:11:25,152 I just have no complaint about myself. 1276 01:11:25,619 --> 01:11:27,287 I mean, you know, let's face it. 1277 01:11:27,754 --> 01:11:30,891 I mean, there's a whole enormous world out there that I just don't ever think about. 1278 01:11:31,591 --> 01:11:35,095 I certainly don't take responsibility for how I've lived in that world. 1279 01:11:35,896 --> 01:11:38,231 I mean, you know, if I were actually to sort of confront the fact... 1280 01:11:38,832 --> 01:11:40,567 that I'm sort of sharing this stage... 1281 01:11:41,134 --> 01:11:43,103 with-with-with this starving person in Africa somewhere... 1282 01:11:43,703 --> 01:11:45,739 well, I wouldn't feel so great about myself. 1283 01:11:46,306 --> 01:11:50,243 So naturally I just... I just blot all those people right out of my perception. 1284 01:11:51,144 --> 01:11:53,680 So, of course... of course, I'm ignoring... 1285 01:11:54,314 --> 01:11:57,050 a whole section of the real world. 1286 01:11:57,818 --> 01:11:59,786 But frankly, you know... 1287 01:12:00,353 --> 01:12:03,924 when I write a play, in a way, one of the things I guess I think I'm trying to do... 1288 01:12:04,724 --> 01:12:07,394 is I'm trying to bring myself up against some little bits of reality... 1289 01:12:07,994 --> 01:12:10,530 and I'm trying to share that, uh, with an audience. 1290 01:12:12,599 --> 01:12:15,068 I mean... I mean, of course we all know, uh... 1291 01:12:15,602 --> 01:12:17,737 the theater is, uh, in terrible shape today. 1292 01:12:18,205 --> 01:12:21,875 I mean, uh... I mean, at least a few years ago people who really cared about the theater... 1293 01:12:22,742 --> 01:12:24,611 used to say, " The theater is dead. " 1294 01:12:25,145 --> 01:12:27,547 And now everybody's redefined the theater in such a trivial way... 1295 01:12:28,148 --> 01:12:29,683 that, I mean... I mean, God... 1296 01:12:30,150 --> 01:12:33,620 I know people who are involved with the theater who go to see things now that... 1297 01:12:34,421 --> 01:12:36,356 I mean, a few years ago these same people... 1298 01:12:36,823 --> 01:12:39,226 would have just been embarrassed to have even seen some of these plays. 1299 01:12:39,826 --> 01:12:41,895 I mean, they would have just shrunk, you know, just in horror... 1300 01:12:42,429 --> 01:12:44,231 at the superficiality of these things. 1301 01:12:44,698 --> 01:12:46,900 But now they say, "Oh, that was pretty good. " 1302 01:12:47,367 --> 01:12:49,035 It's just incredible. 1303 01:12:49,536 --> 01:12:52,072 And I really just find that attitude unbearable... 1304 01:12:52,706 --> 01:12:55,909 because I really do think the theater can do something very important. 1305 01:12:56,610 --> 01:13:00,580 I mean, I do think the theater can help bring people in contact with reality. 1306 01:13:01,515 --> 01:13:05,418 Now, now, you may not feel that at all. You may just find that totally absurd. 1307 01:13:07,587 --> 01:13:10,056 Yeah, but, Wally, don't you see the dilemma? 1308 01:13:10,590 --> 01:13:13,927 You're not taking into account the period we're living in. 1309 01:13:14,728 --> 01:13:16,463 I mean, of course that's what the theater should do. 1310 01:13:16,930 --> 01:13:18,598 I mean, I've always felt that. 1311 01:13:18,999 --> 01:13:21,802 You know, when I was a young director, and I directed the Bacchae at Yale... 1312 01:13:22,536 --> 01:13:25,205 my impulse, when Pentheus has been killed by his mother and the Furies... 1313 01:13:25,806 --> 01:13:27,941 and they pull the tree back, and they tie him to the tree... 1314 01:13:28,542 --> 01:13:31,278 and fling him into the air, and he flies through space and he's killed... 1315 01:13:31,945 --> 01:13:34,347 and they rip him to shreds and I guess cut off his head... 1316 01:13:34,881 --> 01:13:37,951 my impulse was that the thing to do was to get a head from the New Haven morgue... 1317 01:13:38,685 --> 01:13:40,287 and pass it around the audience. 1318 01:13:40,687 --> 01:13:43,089 Now, I wanted Agawe to bring on a real head... 1319 01:13:43,690 --> 01:13:45,692 and that this head should be passed around the audience... 1320 01:13:46,226 --> 01:13:49,229 so that somehow people realized that this stuff was real, see? 1321 01:13:49,896 --> 01:13:52,098 That it was real stuff. 1322 01:13:52,566 --> 01:13:55,702 - Now, the actress playing Agawe absolutely refused to do it. 1323 01:13:56,369 --> 01:13:58,171 You know, Gordon Craig used to talk about... 1324 01:13:58,572 --> 01:14:02,108 why is there gold or silver in the churches or something... The great cathedrals... 1325 01:14:02,909 --> 01:14:05,846 when actors could be wearing gold and silver? 1326 01:14:06,513 --> 01:14:09,583 And I mean, people who saw Eleonora Duse in the last couple of years of her life, Wally... 1327 01:14:10,317 --> 01:14:13,119 people said that is was like seeing light on stage, or mist... 1328 01:14:13,787 --> 01:14:15,388 or the essence of something. 1329 01:14:15,789 --> 01:14:18,058 I mean, then when you think about Bertolt Brecht... 1330 01:14:18,592 --> 01:14:21,194 He somehow created a theater in which people could observe... 1331 01:14:21,795 --> 01:14:23,597 that was vastly entertaining and exciting... 1332 01:14:24,130 --> 01:14:26,600 but in which the excitement didn't overwhelm you. 1333 01:14:27,334 --> 01:14:30,804 He somehow allowed you the distance between the play and yourself... 1334 01:14:31,605 --> 01:14:34,007 that, in fact, two human beings need in order to live together. 1335 01:14:34,608 --> 01:14:37,944 You know, the question is whether the theater now can do for an audience... 1336 01:14:38,678 --> 01:14:41,548 what Brecht tried to do or what Craig or Duse tried to do. 1337 01:14:42,215 --> 01:14:43,817 Can it do it now? 1338 01:14:44,217 --> 01:14:46,953 'Cause, you see, I think that people today are so deeply asleep... 1339 01:14:47,621 --> 01:14:49,890 that unless, you know, you're putting on those sort of superficial plays... 1340 01:14:50,357 --> 01:14:52,225 that just help your audience to sleep more comfortably... 1341 01:14:52,692 --> 01:14:55,028 it's very hard to know what to do in the theater. 1342 01:14:57,564 --> 01:15:01,434 Because, you see, I think that if you put on serious, contemporary plays... 1343 01:15:02,302 --> 01:15:03,904 by writers like yourself... 1344 01:15:04,304 --> 01:15:06,573 you may only be helping to deaden the audience in a different way. 1345 01:15:07,107 --> 01:15:09,176 What do you mean? 1346 01:15:09,709 --> 01:15:11,444 Well, I mean, Wally... 1347 01:15:11,912 --> 01:15:14,648 how does it affect an audience to put on one of these plays... 1348 01:15:15,315 --> 01:15:17,784 in which you show that people are totally isolated now... 1349 01:15:18,385 --> 01:15:21,054 and they can't reach each other, and their lives are desperate? 1350 01:15:21,721 --> 01:15:24,457 Or how does it affect them to see a play that shows that our world... 1351 01:15:25,125 --> 01:15:28,595 is full of nothing but shocking sexual events, and terror, and violence? 1352 01:15:29,396 --> 01:15:31,331 Does that help to wake up a sleeping audience? 1353 01:15:31,798 --> 01:15:34,401 See, I don't think so, 'cause I think it's very likely... 1354 01:15:35,001 --> 01:15:37,471 that the picture of the world that you're showing them in a play like that... 1355 01:15:38,205 --> 01:15:40,674 is exactly the picture of the world they have already. 1356 01:15:41,274 --> 01:15:43,610 I mean, you know, they know their own lives and relationships... 1357 01:15:44,211 --> 01:15:45,879 are difficult and painful. 1358 01:15:46,279 --> 01:15:48,014 And if they watch the evening news on television... 1359 01:15:48,482 --> 01:15:51,151 well, there what they see is a terrifying, chaotic universe... 1360 01:15:51,751 --> 01:15:55,088 full of rapes and murders and hands cut off by subway cars... 1361 01:15:55,889 --> 01:15:58,825 and children pushing their parents out of windows. 1362 01:15:59,493 --> 01:16:02,229 So the play tells them that their impression of the world is correct... 1363 01:16:02,896 --> 01:16:04,564 and that there's absolutely no way out. 1364 01:16:04,965 --> 01:16:06,566 There's nothing they can do. 1365 01:16:06,967 --> 01:16:09,436 And they end up feeling passive and impotent. 1366 01:16:09,970 --> 01:16:12,105 I mean, look... Look, at something like that christening... 1367 01:16:12,572 --> 01:16:14,508 that my group arranged for me in the forest in Poland. 1368 01:16:14,975 --> 01:16:17,511 Well, there was an example of something that really had all the elements of theater. 1369 01:16:18,111 --> 01:16:20,780 It was worked on carefully. It was thought about carefully. 1370 01:16:21,381 --> 01:16:23,316 It was done with exquisite taste and magic. 1371 01:16:23,783 --> 01:16:25,585 And they, in fact, created something... 1372 01:16:26,119 --> 01:16:29,189 which, in this case, was, in a way, just for an audience of one... just for me. 1373 01:16:29,923 --> 01:16:33,126 But they created something that had ritual, love, surprise... 1374 01:16:33,927 --> 01:16:35,462 denouement, beginning, a middle and end... 1375 01:16:35,929 --> 01:16:38,665 and was an incredibly beautiful piece of theater. 1376 01:16:39,266 --> 01:16:41,134 And the impact that it had on its audience... On me... 1377 01:16:41,601 --> 01:16:43,537 was somehow a totally positive one. 1378 01:16:44,004 --> 01:16:46,072 It didn't deaden me. It brought me to life. 1379 01:16:49,342 --> 01:16:51,278 Yeah, but I mean, are you saying that it's impossible... 1380 01:16:51,745 --> 01:16:55,215 I mean, uh... I mean... I mean, uh, isn't it a little upsetting... 1381 01:16:55,949 --> 01:16:59,152 to come to the conclusion that there's no way to wake people up anymore... 1382 01:16:59,886 --> 01:17:03,490 except to involve them in some kind of a strange, uh, christening in Poland... 1383 01:17:04,291 --> 01:17:06,493 or some kind of a strange experience on top of Mount Everest? 1384 01:17:06,960 --> 01:17:10,564 I mean, uh, because, uh, you know that the awful thing is... 1385 01:17:11,498 --> 01:17:13,233 if you really say that it's-it's necessary... 1386 01:17:13,767 --> 01:17:15,902 to, uh, take everybody to, uh, Everest... 1387 01:17:16,369 --> 01:17:19,706 it's really tough, because everybody can't be taken to Everest. 1388 01:17:20,507 --> 01:17:23,176 I mean, there must have been periods in history when it would have been possible... 1389 01:17:23,777 --> 01:17:26,179 to, uh, save the patient through less drastic measures. 1390 01:17:26,780 --> 01:17:28,915 I mean, there must have been periods when in order to give people... 1391 01:17:29,516 --> 01:17:31,184 a strong or meaningful experience... 1392 01:17:31,585 --> 01:17:34,054 you wouldn't actually have to take them to Everest. 1393 01:17:34,721 --> 01:17:36,590 But you do now. In some way or other, you do now. 1394 01:17:37,123 --> 01:17:39,459 You know, there was a time when you could have just, for instance, written... 1395 01:17:39,993 --> 01:17:42,796 I don't know, uh, Sense and Sensibility byJane Austen. 1396 01:17:43,463 --> 01:17:46,466 And I'm sure the people who read it had a pretty strong experience. I'm sure they did. 1397 01:17:47,200 --> 01:17:49,469 I mean, all right, now you're saying that people today wouldn't get it. 1398 01:17:49,936 --> 01:17:52,939 Maybe that's true. But I mean, isn't there any kind of writing or any kind of a play... 1399 01:17:53,673 --> 01:17:55,742 I mean, isn't it still legitimate for writers... 1400 01:17:56,276 --> 01:17:59,012 to try to portray reality so that people can see it? 1401 01:17:59,679 --> 01:18:03,016 I mean, really, tell me, why do we require a trip to Mount Everest... 1402 01:18:03,750 --> 01:18:05,685 in order to be able to perceive one moment of reality? 1403 01:18:06,153 --> 01:18:08,488 I mean... I mean, is Mount Everest more real than New York? 1404 01:18:09,089 --> 01:18:10,824 I mean, isn't New York real? 1405 01:18:11,291 --> 01:18:14,694 I mean, you see, I think if you could become fully aware... 1406 01:18:15,495 --> 01:18:18,298 of what existed in the cigar store next door to this restaurant... 1407 01:18:19,099 --> 01:18:20,634 I think it would just blow your brains out. 1408 01:18:21,101 --> 01:18:23,170 I mean... I mean, isn't there just as much reality to be perceived... 1409 01:18:23,703 --> 01:18:25,372 in a cigar store as there is on Mount Everest? 1410 01:18:25,772 --> 01:18:27,107 I mean, what do you think? 1411 01:18:27,507 --> 01:18:29,709 I think that not only is there nothing more real about Mount Everest... 1412 01:18:30,310 --> 01:18:31,978 I think there's nothing that different, in a certain way. 1413 01:18:32,379 --> 01:18:34,447 I mean, because reality is uniform, in a way... 1414 01:18:34,981 --> 01:18:36,650 so that if your... if your perceptions are... 1415 01:18:37,117 --> 01:18:39,452 I mean, if your own mechanism is operating correctly... 1416 01:18:39,986 --> 01:18:42,722 it would become irrelevant to go to Mount Everest, and sort of absurd... 1417 01:18:43,390 --> 01:18:45,725 because, I mean... it just... I mean, of course, on some level, I mean... 1418 01:18:46,259 --> 01:18:49,262 obviously it's very different from a cigar store on 7 th Avenue. 1419 01:18:49,996 --> 01:18:52,666 - But I mean... - Well, I agree with you, Wally. 1420 01:18:53,266 --> 01:18:55,469 But the problem is that people can't see the cigar store now. 1421 01:18:56,069 --> 01:18:58,071 I mean, things don't affect people the way they used to. 1422 01:18:58,538 --> 01:19:00,540 I mean, it may very well be that 10 years from now... 1423 01:19:01,074 --> 01:19:03,410 people will pay $10,000 in cash to be castrated... 1424 01:19:03,944 --> 01:19:06,146 just in order to be affected by something. 1425 01:19:08,148 --> 01:19:10,750 Well, why... why do you think that is? I mean, why is that? 1426 01:19:11,351 --> 01:19:15,155 I mean, is it just because people are lazy today, or they're bored? 1427 01:19:15,956 --> 01:19:18,558 I mean, are we just like bored, spoiled children... 1428 01:19:19,159 --> 01:19:21,294 who've just been lying in the bathtub all day... 1429 01:19:21,761 --> 01:19:23,697 just playing with their plastic duck... 1430 01:19:24,164 --> 01:19:26,967 and now they're just thinking, "Well, what can I do?" 1431 01:19:29,102 --> 01:19:31,438 Okay. Yes. We're bored. 1432 01:19:31,972 --> 01:19:33,573 We're all bored now. 1433 01:19:33,974 --> 01:19:35,775 But has it every occurred to you, Wally, that the process... 1434 01:19:36,309 --> 01:19:38,378 that creates this boredom that we see in the world now... 1435 01:19:38,845 --> 01:19:42,516 may very well be a self-perpetuating, unconscious form of brainwashing... 1436 01:19:43,383 --> 01:19:46,052 created by a world totalitarian government based on money... 1437 01:19:46,653 --> 01:19:48,922 and that all of this is much more dangerous than one thinks... 1438 01:19:49,456 --> 01:19:51,792 and it's not just a question of individual survival, Wally... 1439 01:19:52,325 --> 01:19:54,327 but that somebody who's bored is asleep... 1440 01:19:54,861 --> 01:19:57,464 and somebody who's asleep will not say no? 1441 01:19:58,131 --> 01:20:00,400 See, I keep meeting these people... I mean, uh, just a few days ago... 1442 01:20:01,067 --> 01:20:02,669 I met this man whom I greatly admire. 1443 01:20:03,069 --> 01:20:05,005 He's a Swedish physicist. Gustav Björnstrand. 1444 01:20:05,472 --> 01:20:07,541 And he told me that he no longer watches television... 1445 01:20:08,074 --> 01:20:10,477 he doesn't read newspapers, and he doesn't read magazines. 1446 01:20:11,077 --> 01:20:12,946 He's completely cut them out of his life... 1447 01:20:13,480 --> 01:20:17,217 because he really does feel that we're living in some kind of Orwellian nightmare now... 1448 01:20:18,084 --> 01:20:21,421 and that everything that you hear now contributes to turning you into a robot. 1449 01:20:23,156 --> 01:20:26,159 And when I was at Findhorn, I met this extraordinary English tree expert... 1450 01:20:26,893 --> 01:20:28,628 who had devoted his life to saving trees. 1451 01:20:29,095 --> 01:20:31,097 Just got back from Washington, lobbying to save the redwoods. 1452 01:20:31,565 --> 01:20:33,967 He's 84 years old, and he always travels with a backpack... 1453 01:20:34,568 --> 01:20:36,169 'cause he never knows where he's gonna be tomorrow. 1454 01:20:36,570 --> 01:20:39,039 And when I met him at Findhorn, he said to me, " Where are you from?" 1455 01:20:39,639 --> 01:20:42,242 I said, " New York. " He said, " Ah, New York. Yes, that's a very interesting place. 1456 01:20:42,843 --> 01:20:46,112 Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?" 1457 01:20:46,847 --> 01:20:49,049 And I said, " Oh, yes. " And he said, "Why do you think they don't leave?" 1458 01:20:49,583 --> 01:20:52,853 I gave him different banal theories. He said, " Oh, I don't think it's that way at all. " 1459 01:20:53,520 --> 01:20:57,324 He said, " I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp... 1460 01:20:58,125 --> 01:21:00,260 "where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves... 1461 01:21:00,727 --> 01:21:03,663 "and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing they've built. 1462 01:21:04,464 --> 01:21:06,066 "They've built their own prison. 1463 01:21:06,466 --> 01:21:08,068 "And so they exist in a state of schizophrenia... 1464 01:21:08,535 --> 01:21:10,137 "where they are both guards and prisoners. 1465 01:21:10,537 --> 01:21:13,340 "And as a result, they no longer have... having been lobotomized... 1466 01:21:13,940 --> 01:21:15,942 "the capacity to leave the prison they've made... 1467 01:21:16,476 --> 01:21:18,879 or to even see it as a prison. " 1468 01:21:19,479 --> 01:21:22,149 And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree... 1469 01:21:22,749 --> 01:21:24,351 and he said, " This is a pine tree. " 1470 01:21:24,751 --> 01:21:27,754 He put it in my hand and he said, "Escape before it's too late. " 1471 01:21:29,689 --> 01:21:31,825 See, actually, for two or three years now... 1472 01:21:32,359 --> 01:21:35,962 Chiquita and I have had this very unpleasant feeling that we really should get out. 1473 01:21:36,763 --> 01:21:39,099 We really feel likeJews in Germany in the late '30s. 1474 01:21:39,699 --> 01:21:41,234 Get out of here. 1475 01:21:41,635 --> 01:21:43,303 Of course, the problem is where to go. 1476 01:21:43,837 --> 01:21:47,841 'Cause it seems quite obvious that the whole world is going in the same direction. 1477 01:21:50,644 --> 01:21:53,380 See, I think it's quite possible that the 1960s... 1478 01:21:54,047 --> 01:21:57,984 represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished... 1479 01:21:58,852 --> 01:22:01,121 and that this is the beginning of the rest of the future, now... 1480 01:22:01,655 --> 01:22:04,991 and that from now on there'll simply be all these robots walking around... 1481 01:22:05,725 --> 01:22:07,661 feeling nothing, thinking nothing. 1482 01:22:08,128 --> 01:22:10,664 And there'll be nobody left almost to remind them... 1483 01:22:11,264 --> 01:22:13,934 that there once was a species called a human being... 1484 01:22:14,668 --> 01:22:16,203 with feelings and thoughts... 1485 01:22:16,670 --> 01:22:19,072 and that history and memory are right now being erased... 1486 01:22:19,673 --> 01:22:22,075 and soon nobody will really remember... 1487 01:22:22,676 --> 01:22:24,478 that life existed on the planet. 1488 01:22:26,480 --> 01:22:30,217 Now, of course, Björnstrand feels that there's really almost no hope... 1489 01:22:31,084 --> 01:22:33,820 and that we're probably going back to a very savage... 1490 01:22:34,488 --> 01:22:37,023 lawless, terrifying period. 1491 01:22:37,691 --> 01:22:39,693 Findhorn people see it a little differently. 1492 01:22:40,160 --> 01:22:42,496 They're feeling that there'll be these pockets of light... 1493 01:22:43,029 --> 01:22:44,764 springing up in different parts of the world... 1494 01:22:45,232 --> 01:22:48,835 and that these will be, in a way, invisible planets on this planet... 1495 01:22:49,636 --> 01:22:51,705 and that as we, or the world, grow colder... 1496 01:22:52,239 --> 01:22:55,242 we can take invisible space journeys to these different planets... 1497 01:22:55,909 --> 01:22:58,845 refuel for what it is we need to do on the planet itself... 1498 01:22:59,513 --> 01:23:01,448 and come back. 1499 01:23:01,915 --> 01:23:04,251 And it's their feeling that there have to be centers now... 1500 01:23:04,851 --> 01:23:08,455 where people can come and reconstruct a new future for the world. 1501 01:23:09,256 --> 01:23:10,924 And when I was talking to, uh, Gustav Björnstrand... 1502 01:23:11,324 --> 01:23:13,994 he was saying that actually these centers are growing up everywhere now... 1503 01:23:14,661 --> 01:23:17,130 and that what they're trying to do, which is what Findhorn was trying to do... 1504 01:23:17,864 --> 01:23:19,599 and, in a way, what I was trying to do... 1505 01:23:20,133 --> 01:23:22,068 I mean, these things can't be given names... 1506 01:23:22,536 --> 01:23:26,072 but in a way, these are all attempts at creating a new kind of school... 1507 01:23:26,873 --> 01:23:28,675 or a new kind of monastery. 1508 01:23:29,142 --> 01:23:31,211 And Björnstrand talks about the concept of" reserves"... 1509 01:23:31,745 --> 01:23:34,014 islands of safety where history can be remembered... 1510 01:23:34,548 --> 01:23:36,683 and the human being can continue to function... 1511 01:23:37,284 --> 01:23:40,287 in order to maintain the species through a dark age. 1512 01:23:42,956 --> 01:23:44,958 In other words, we're talking about an underground... 1513 01:23:45,425 --> 01:23:47,627 which did exist in a different way during the Dark Ages... 1514 01:23:48,161 --> 01:23:50,430 among the mystical orders of the church. 1515 01:23:50,964 --> 01:23:52,699 And the purpose of this underground... 1516 01:23:53,166 --> 01:23:57,504 is to find out how to preserve the light, life, the culture... 1517 01:23:58,438 --> 01:24:01,308 how to keep things living. 1518 01:24:01,908 --> 01:24:04,377 You see, I keep thinking that what we need... 1519 01:24:04,911 --> 01:24:07,247 is a new language... 1520 01:24:07,848 --> 01:24:09,716 a language of the heart... 1521 01:24:10,116 --> 01:24:13,386 a language, as in the Polish forest, where language wasn't needed. 1522 01:24:14,121 --> 01:24:18,258 Some kind of language between people that is a new kind of poetry... 1523 01:24:19,126 --> 01:24:22,996 that's the poetry of the dancing bee that tells us where the honey is. 1524 01:24:23,864 --> 01:24:26,333 And I think that in order to create that language... 1525 01:24:27,067 --> 01:24:29,870 you're going to have to learn how you can go through a looking glass... 1526 01:24:30,670 --> 01:24:32,205 into another kind of perception... 1527 01:24:32,672 --> 01:24:36,743 where you have that sense of being united to all things... 1528 01:24:37,677 --> 01:24:40,347 and suddenly you understand everything. 1529 01:24:50,023 --> 01:24:51,892 Are you ready for some dessert? 1530 01:24:52,359 --> 01:24:54,161 Uh, I think I'll just have an espresso. Thank you. 1531 01:24:54,628 --> 01:24:57,898 - Very good. - I'll... I'll also have one. Thank you. 1532 01:24:58,632 --> 01:25:01,368 And... And, uh, could I also have, uh, an amaretto? 1533 01:25:02,035 --> 01:25:04,237 Certainly, sir. 1534 01:25:04,838 --> 01:25:06,573 Thank you. 1535 01:25:07,040 --> 01:25:10,577 You see, Wally, there's this incredible building that they built at Findhorn. 1536 01:25:11,311 --> 01:25:13,513 And the man who designed it had never designed anything in his life. 1537 01:25:14,047 --> 01:25:15,715 He wrote children's books. 1538 01:25:16,116 --> 01:25:18,718 And some people wanted it to be a sort of hall of meditation... 1539 01:25:19,319 --> 01:25:21,321 and others wanted it to be a kind of lecture hall. 1540 01:25:21,855 --> 01:25:25,258 But the psychic part of the community wanted it to serve another function as well... 1541 01:25:26,059 --> 01:25:29,062 because they wanted it to be a kind of spaceship which at night could rise up... 1542 01:25:29,729 --> 01:25:32,065 and let the U.F.O.'s know that this was a safe place to land... 1543 01:25:32,666 --> 01:25:34,334 and that they would find friends there. 1544 01:25:34,734 --> 01:25:37,804 So, the problem was... 'cause it needed a massive kind of roof... 1545 01:25:38,538 --> 01:25:41,141 was how to have a roof that would stay on the building... 1546 01:25:41,741 --> 01:25:44,544 but at the same time be able to fly up at night and meet the flying saucers. 1547 01:25:45,212 --> 01:25:47,547 So, the architect meditated and meditated... 1548 01:25:48,148 --> 01:25:50,484 and he finally came up with the very simple solution... 1549 01:25:51,017 --> 01:25:52,953 of not actually joining the roof to the building... 1550 01:25:53,420 --> 01:25:55,021 which means that it should fall off... 1551 01:25:55,422 --> 01:25:58,091 because they have great gales up in northern Scotland. 1552 01:25:58,692 --> 01:26:01,628 So, to keep it from falling off, he got beach stones from the beach... 1553 01:26:02,295 --> 01:26:04,564 or we did, 'cause I-I worked on this building... 1554 01:26:05,232 --> 01:26:06,900 all up and down the roof, just like that. 1555 01:26:07,300 --> 01:26:10,904 And the idea was that the energy that would flow from stone to stone... 1556 01:26:11,705 --> 01:26:13,373 would be so strong, you see... 1557 01:26:13,840 --> 01:26:16,576 that it would keep the roof down under any conditions... 1558 01:26:17,244 --> 01:26:20,981 but at the same time, if the roof needed to go up, it would be light enough to go up. 1559 01:26:21,848 --> 01:26:24,918 Well... it works, you see. 1560 01:26:25,652 --> 01:26:27,721 Now, architects don't know why it works... 1561 01:26:28,255 --> 01:26:29,923 and it shouldn't work, 'cause it should fall off. 1562 01:26:30,323 --> 01:26:31,925 But it works. It does work. 1563 01:26:32,325 --> 01:26:35,395 The gales blow, and the roof should fall off, but it doesn't fall off. 1564 01:26:40,734 --> 01:26:42,335 Yep. 1565 01:26:42,736 --> 01:26:44,337 Well, uh... 1566 01:26:45,739 --> 01:26:48,008 do you want to know my actual response to all this? 1567 01:26:48,542 --> 01:26:50,477 - Do you want to hear my actual response? - Yes! 1568 01:26:52,612 --> 01:26:54,548 See, my actual response... I mean... 1569 01:26:55,015 --> 01:26:59,286 I mean... I mean, I'm just trying to... To survive, you know? 1570 01:27:00,220 --> 01:27:02,823 I mean, I'm just trying to earn a living... 1571 01:27:03,423 --> 01:27:05,625 just trying to pay my rent and my bills. 1572 01:27:06,092 --> 01:27:08,094 I mean, uh... 1573 01:27:08,628 --> 01:27:11,364 Ah, I live my life. 1574 01:27:12,098 --> 01:27:14,634 I enjoy staying home with Debby. 1575 01:27:15,235 --> 01:27:17,637 I'm reading Charlton Heston's autobiography. 1576 01:27:18,238 --> 01:27:19,573 And that's that. 1577 01:27:19,906 --> 01:27:22,375 I mean, you know... I mean, occasionally, maybe... 1578 01:27:22,909 --> 01:27:26,580 Debby and I will step outside, we'll go to a party or something. 1579 01:27:27,447 --> 01:27:30,317 And if I can occasionally get my little talent together and write a little play... 1580 01:27:31,051 --> 01:27:32,853 well, then that's just... that's just wonderful. 1581 01:27:33,320 --> 01:27:35,722 And I mean, I enjoy reading about other little plays people have written... 1582 01:27:36,323 --> 01:27:39,126 and reading the reviews of those plays and what people said about them... 1583 01:27:39,860 --> 01:27:42,529 and what people said about what people said. 1584 01:27:43,130 --> 01:27:46,867 And I mean, I have... I have a list of errands and responsibilities that I keep in a notebook. 1585 01:27:47,734 --> 01:27:49,736 I enjoy going through the notebook... 1586 01:27:50,203 --> 01:27:52,205 carrying out the responsibilities, doing the errands... 1587 01:27:52,739 --> 01:27:55,408 and crossing them off the list. 1588 01:27:56,009 --> 01:27:59,679 And, I mean, I just... I just don't know how anybody could enjoy anything more... 1589 01:28:00,480 --> 01:28:04,151 than I enjoy, uh, reading Charlton Heston's autobiography... 1590 01:28:05,018 --> 01:28:07,354 or, uh, you know, uh, getting up in the morning... 1591 01:28:07,888 --> 01:28:10,824 and having the cup of cold coffee that's been waiting for me all night... 1592 01:28:11,491 --> 01:28:13,627 still there for me to drink in the morning... 1593 01:28:14,094 --> 01:28:16,963 and no cockroach or fly has-has died in it overnight. 1594 01:28:17,631 --> 01:28:19,766 I mean, I'm just so thrilled when I get up... 1595 01:28:20,433 --> 01:28:23,236 and I see that coffee there, just the way I wanted it. 1596 01:28:23,904 --> 01:28:25,839 I mean, I just can't imagine... 1597 01:28:26,306 --> 01:28:28,508 how anybody could enjoy something else any more than that. 1598 01:28:29,042 --> 01:28:32,179 I mean... I mean, obviously, if the cockroach... if there is a dead cockroach in it... 1599 01:28:32,913 --> 01:28:35,248 well, then I just have a feeling of disappointment, and I'm sad. 1600 01:28:35,849 --> 01:28:38,385 But I mean, I... I just... I just don't think... 1601 01:28:39,052 --> 01:28:40,921 I feel the need for anything more than all this. 1602 01:28:41,455 --> 01:28:43,590 Whereas, you know, you seem to be saying... 1603 01:28:44,124 --> 01:28:46,526 that, uh... 1604 01:28:47,127 --> 01:28:49,863 it's inconceivable that anybody could be having a meaningful life today... 1605 01:28:50,530 --> 01:28:52,332 and, you know, everyone is totally destroyed... 1606 01:28:52,799 --> 01:28:54,868 and we all need to live in these outposts. 1607 01:28:55,535 --> 01:28:57,671 But I mean, you know, I just can't believe... Even for you... 1608 01:28:58,205 --> 01:29:00,941 I mean, don't you find... Isn't it pleasant just to get up in the morning... 1609 01:29:01,608 --> 01:29:04,544 and there's Chiquita, there are the children... 1610 01:29:05,212 --> 01:29:07,214 and The Times is delivered, you can read it. 1611 01:29:07,681 --> 01:29:10,150 I mean, maybe you'll direct a play, maybe you won't direct a play. 1612 01:29:10,684 --> 01:29:12,886 But forget about the play that you may or may not direct. 1613 01:29:13,420 --> 01:29:17,290 Why is it necessary to... Why not lean back and just enjoy these details? 1614 01:29:18,091 --> 01:29:21,895 I mean, and there'd be a delicious cup of coffee and a piece of coffeecake. 1615 01:29:22,696 --> 01:29:24,965 I mean, why is it necessary to have more than this... 1616 01:29:25,499 --> 01:29:27,434 or to even think about having more than this? 1617 01:29:27,901 --> 01:29:30,637 I mean, I don't really know what you're talking about. 1618 01:29:32,506 --> 01:29:34,774 I mean... I mean, I know what you're talking about... 1619 01:29:35,308 --> 01:29:37,644 but I don't really know what you're talking about. 1620 01:29:38,245 --> 01:29:40,914 And I mean, you know, even if I were to totally agree with you, you know... 1621 01:29:41,515 --> 01:29:44,184 and even if I were to accept the idea that there's just no way for anybody... 1622 01:29:44,851 --> 01:29:46,520 to have personal happiness now... 1623 01:29:46,920 --> 01:29:48,922 well, you know, I still couldn't accept the idea... 1624 01:29:49,389 --> 01:29:51,591 that the way to make life wonderful would be to just totally... 1625 01:29:52,125 --> 01:29:54,060 you know, reject Western civilization... 1626 01:29:54,528 --> 01:29:57,264 and fall back into some kind of belief in some kind of weird something... 1627 01:29:57,864 --> 01:29:59,866 I mean, I don't even know how to begin talking about this... 1628 01:30:00,467 --> 01:30:03,270 but you know, in the Middle Ages... 1629 01:30:03,870 --> 01:30:06,873 before the arrival of scientific thinking as we know it today... 1630 01:30:07,607 --> 01:30:09,543 well, people could believe anything. 1631 01:30:10,010 --> 01:30:12,212 Anything could be true... the statue of the Virgin Mary... 1632 01:30:12,679 --> 01:30:14,347 could speak or bleed or whatever it was. 1633 01:30:14,815 --> 01:30:16,483 But the wonderful thing that happened... 1634 01:30:16,883 --> 01:30:19,419 was that then in the development of science in the Western world... 1635 01:30:20,020 --> 01:30:23,890 certain things did come slowly to be known and understood. 1636 01:30:24,825 --> 01:30:26,960 I mean, you know... 1637 01:30:27,494 --> 01:30:30,363 obviously, all ideas in science are constantly being revised. 1638 01:30:31,031 --> 01:30:32,566 I mean, that's the whole point. 1639 01:30:33,033 --> 01:30:37,170 But we do at least know that the universe has some shape and order... 1640 01:30:38,104 --> 01:30:41,842 and that, uh, you know, trees do not turn into people or goddesses... 1641 01:30:42,709 --> 01:30:44,644 and there are very good reasons why they don't... 1642 01:30:45,112 --> 01:30:47,047 and you can't just believe absolutely anything. 1643 01:30:47,514 --> 01:30:49,116 Whereas, the things that you're talking about... 1644 01:30:49,516 --> 01:30:52,452 I mean... I mean, you found the handprint in the book... 1645 01:30:53,120 --> 01:30:56,456 and there were... There were three Andrés and one Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. 1646 01:30:57,190 --> 01:30:59,459 And to me that is a coincidence. 1647 01:30:59,993 --> 01:31:02,529 But... And-And then, you know, the people who put that book together... 1648 01:31:03,063 --> 01:31:04,931 well, they had their own reasons for putting it together. 1649 01:31:05,398 --> 01:31:08,068 But to you it was significant, as if that book had been written 40 years ago... 1650 01:31:08,668 --> 01:31:11,938 so that you would see it, as if it was planned for you, in a way. 1651 01:31:12,806 --> 01:31:14,474 I mean, really... I mean... 1652 01:31:14,875 --> 01:31:18,745 I mean, all right, let's say, if I get a fortune cookie in a Chinese restaurant... 1653 01:31:19,613 --> 01:31:21,281 I mean, of course, even I have a tendency... 1654 01:31:21,681 --> 01:31:24,017 I mean, you know... I mean, of course, I would hardly throw it out. 1655 01:31:24,618 --> 01:31:27,020 I mean, I read it. I read it, and... And, uh... 1656 01:31:27,621 --> 01:31:30,357 I just instinctively sort of... You know, if it says something like, uh... 1657 01:31:31,024 --> 01:31:34,027 "A conversation with a dark-haired man will be very important for you"... 1658 01:31:34,694 --> 01:31:37,164 well, I just instinctively think, you know, "Who do I know who has dark hair? 1659 01:31:37,831 --> 01:31:40,167 Did we have a conversation? What did we talk about?" 1660 01:31:40,700 --> 01:31:44,304 In other words, uh, there's something in me that makes me read it... 1661 01:31:45,105 --> 01:31:48,108 and I instinctively interpret it as if it were an omen of the future. 1662 01:31:48,775 --> 01:31:51,778 But in my conscious opinion, which is so fundamental to my whole view of life... 1663 01:31:52,512 --> 01:31:55,115 I mean, I would just have to change totally to not have this opinion. 1664 01:31:55,715 --> 01:31:57,384 In my conscious opinion, this is simply something... 1665 01:31:57,784 --> 01:32:01,321 that was written in the cookie factory several years ago and in no way refers to me. 1666 01:32:02,055 --> 01:32:04,324 I mean, you know, the... The fact that I got it... 1667 01:32:04,858 --> 01:32:07,127 I mean, the man who wrote it did not know anything about me. 1668 01:32:07,661 --> 01:32:09,329 I mean, he could not have known anything about me. 1669 01:32:09,796 --> 01:32:12,065 There's no way that this cookie could actually have to do with me. 1670 01:32:12,599 --> 01:32:14,668 And the fact that I've gotten it is just basically a joke. 1671 01:32:15,202 --> 01:32:17,537 And I mean, if I were gonna go on a trip on an airplane... 1672 01:32:18,071 --> 01:32:19,739 and I got a fortune cookie that said " Don't go"... 1673 01:32:20,207 --> 01:32:23,343 I mean, of course, I admit I might feel a bit nervous for about one second. 1674 01:32:24,077 --> 01:32:26,213 But in fact, I would go because, I mean... 1675 01:32:26,680 --> 01:32:28,682 that trip is gonna be successful or unsuccessful... 1676 01:32:29,216 --> 01:32:31,351 based on the state of the airplane and the state of the pilot. 1677 01:32:31,885 --> 01:32:34,154 And the cookie is in no position to know about that. 1678 01:32:34,688 --> 01:32:36,289 And I mean, you know, it's the same... 1679 01:32:36,690 --> 01:32:39,025 with any kind of, uh, prophecy, or a sign, or an omen. 1680 01:32:39,626 --> 01:32:43,296 Because if you believe in omens, then that means that the universe... 1681 01:32:44,097 --> 01:32:46,099 I mean, I don't even know how to begin to describe this. 1682 01:32:46,633 --> 01:32:49,436 That means that the future is somehow sending messages... 1683 01:32:50,170 --> 01:32:51,838 backwards to the present. 1684 01:32:52,305 --> 01:32:55,041 Which-Which means that the future must exist in some sense already... 1685 01:32:55,709 --> 01:32:58,178 in order to be able to send these messages. 1686 01:32:58,779 --> 01:33:02,182 And it also means that things in the universe are there for a purpose... To give us messages. 1687 01:33:02,983 --> 01:33:04,985 Whereas I think that things in the universe are just there. 1688 01:33:05,452 --> 01:33:07,053 I mean, they don't mean anything. 1689 01:33:07,454 --> 01:33:11,258 I mean, you know, if the turtle's egg falls out of the tree and splashes on the paving stones... 1690 01:33:12,058 --> 01:33:14,661 it's just because that turtle was clumsy... by accident. 1691 01:33:15,262 --> 01:33:18,732 And-And to decide whether to send my ships off to war on the basis of that... 1692 01:33:19,466 --> 01:33:21,134 seems a big mistake to me. 1693 01:33:21,668 --> 01:33:24,604 Well, what information would you send your ships to war on? 1694 01:33:25,405 --> 01:33:26,807 Because if it's all meaningless... 1695 01:33:27,207 --> 01:33:28,742 what's the difference whether you accept the fortune cookie... 1696 01:33:29,276 --> 01:33:30,944 or the statistics of the Ford Foundation? 1697 01:33:31,411 --> 01:33:33,079 It doesn't seem to matter. 1698 01:33:33,480 --> 01:33:36,883 Well, the meaningless fact of the fortune cookie or the turtle's egg... 1699 01:33:37,684 --> 01:33:40,821 can't possibly have any relevance to the subject you're analyzing. 1700 01:33:41,621 --> 01:33:44,291 Whereas a group of meaningless facts that are collected and interpreted... 1701 01:33:44,891 --> 01:33:47,694 in a scientific way may quite possibly be relevant. 1702 01:33:48,361 --> 01:33:50,630 Because the wonderful thing about scientific theories about things... 1703 01:33:51,164 --> 01:33:54,167 is that they're based on experiments that can be repeated. 1704 01:33:55,902 --> 01:33:57,504 Hmm. 1705 01:34:12,652 --> 01:34:14,454 Well, it's true, Wally. 1706 01:34:14,855 --> 01:34:17,124 I mean, you know, following omens and so on... 1707 01:34:17,657 --> 01:34:19,993 is probably just a way of letting ourselves off the hook... 1708 01:34:20,594 --> 01:34:24,131 so that we don't have to take individual responsibility for our own actions. 1709 01:34:24,998 --> 01:34:26,867 But I mean, giving yourself over to the unconscious... 1710 01:34:27,400 --> 01:34:31,805 can leave you vulnerable to all sorts of very frightening manipulation. 1711 01:34:32,806 --> 01:34:35,542 And in all the work that I was involved in, there was always that danger. 1712 01:34:36,209 --> 01:34:39,212 And there was always that question of tampering with people's lives... 1713 01:34:39,880 --> 01:34:42,883 because if I lead one of these workshops, then I do become partly a doctor... 1714 01:34:43,617 --> 01:34:45,352 and partly a therapist, and partly a priest. 1715 01:34:45,819 --> 01:34:49,489 And I'm not a doctor, or a therapist, or a priest. 1716 01:34:50,290 --> 01:34:52,425 And already some of these new monasteries... 1717 01:34:52,959 --> 01:34:55,028 or communities or whatever we've been talking about... 1718 01:34:55,562 --> 01:34:57,297 are becoming institutionalized... 1719 01:34:57,764 --> 01:35:00,433 and I guess even in a way, at times, sort of fascistic. 1720 01:35:01,034 --> 01:35:04,371 You know, there's a sort of self-satisfied elitist paranoia that grows up... 1721 01:35:05,172 --> 01:35:07,707 a feeling of" them" and " us"... that is very unsettling. 1722 01:35:08,375 --> 01:35:11,912 But I mean, uh, the thing is, Wally, I think it's the exaggerated worship of science... 1723 01:35:12,646 --> 01:35:14,247 that has led us into this situation. 1724 01:35:14,648 --> 01:35:16,850 I mean, science has been held up to us as a magical force... 1725 01:35:17,384 --> 01:35:19,052 that would somehow solve everything. 1726 01:35:19,453 --> 01:35:21,321 Well, quite the contrary. It's done quite the contrary. 1727 01:35:21,788 --> 01:35:23,457 It's destroyed everything. 1728 01:35:23,857 --> 01:35:25,459 So that is what has really led, I think... 1729 01:35:25,859 --> 01:35:29,196 to this very strong, deep reaction against science that we're seeing now... 1730 01:35:29,996 --> 01:35:32,199 just as the Nazi demons that were released in the '30s in Germany... 1731 01:35:32,799 --> 01:35:35,936 were probably a reaction against a certain oppressive kind of knowledge... 1732 01:35:36,670 --> 01:35:38,738 and culture and rational thinking. 1733 01:35:39,272 --> 01:35:42,209 So I agree that we're talking about something potentially very dangerous. 1734 01:35:42,876 --> 01:35:45,545 But modern science has not been particularly less dangerous. 1735 01:35:46,213 --> 01:35:47,881 Right. Well, I agree with you. 1736 01:35:48,281 --> 01:35:49,883 I completely agree. 1737 01:35:52,085 --> 01:35:54,154 No, you know, the truth is... 1738 01:35:54,688 --> 01:35:58,091 I think I do know what really disturbs me about the work you've described... 1739 01:35:58,892 --> 01:36:01,361 and I don't even know if I can express it. 1740 01:36:01,962 --> 01:36:05,232 But somehow it seems that the whole point of the work that you did in those workshops... 1741 01:36:05,966 --> 01:36:09,236 when you get right down to it and you ask what was it really about... 1742 01:36:09,970 --> 01:36:11,571 The whole point, really, I think... 1743 01:36:11,972 --> 01:36:14,641 was to enable the people in the workshops, including yourself... 1744 01:36:15,242 --> 01:36:18,845 to somehow sort of strip away every scrap of purposefulness... 1745 01:36:19,646 --> 01:36:21,848 from certain selected moments. 1746 01:36:22,382 --> 01:36:25,051 And the point of it was so that you would then all be able to experience... 1747 01:36:25,652 --> 01:36:28,321 somehow just pure being. 1748 01:36:28,989 --> 01:36:32,192 In other words, you were trying to discover what it would be like to live for certain moments... 1749 01:36:32,993 --> 01:36:35,529 without having any particular thing that you were supposed to be doing. 1750 01:36:36,196 --> 01:36:38,064 And I think I just simply object to that. 1751 01:36:38,598 --> 01:36:41,134 I mean, I just don't think I accept the idea that there should be moments... 1752 01:36:41,802 --> 01:36:43,603 in which you're not trying to do anything. 1753 01:36:44,070 --> 01:36:47,407 I think, uh, it's our nature, uh, to do things. 1754 01:36:48,208 --> 01:36:49,743 I think we should do things. 1755 01:36:50,143 --> 01:36:51,878 I think that, uh, purposefulness... 1756 01:36:52,345 --> 01:36:55,949 is part of our ineradicable basic human structure. 1757 01:36:56,750 --> 01:36:59,085 And to say that we ought to be able to live without it... 1758 01:36:59,686 --> 01:37:03,023 is like saying that, uh, a tree ought to be able to live without branches or roots. 1759 01:37:03,757 --> 01:37:06,026 But... But actually, without branches or roots, it wouldn't be a tree. 1760 01:37:06,560 --> 01:37:08,895 I mean, it would just be a log. Do you see what I'm saying? 1761 01:37:09,429 --> 01:37:10,897 Uh-huh. Uh-huh. 1762 01:37:11,231 --> 01:37:14,034 I mean, in other words, if I'm sitting at home and I have nothing to do... 1763 01:37:14,768 --> 01:37:16,369 well, I naturally reach for a book. 1764 01:37:16,770 --> 01:37:19,840 I mean, what would be so great about just sitting there and, uh, doing nothing? 1765 01:37:20,574 --> 01:37:22,109 It just seems absurd. 1766 01:37:22,576 --> 01:37:23,777 And if Debby is there? 1767 01:37:25,378 --> 01:37:26,913 Well, that's just the same thing. 1768 01:37:27,380 --> 01:37:29,783 I mean, is there really such a thing as, uh... 1769 01:37:30,383 --> 01:37:33,587 two people doing nothing but just being together? 1770 01:37:34,387 --> 01:37:36,056 I mean, would they simply then... 1771 01:37:36,456 --> 01:37:38,925 be, uh, " relating," to use the word we're always using? 1772 01:37:39,593 --> 01:37:41,128 I mean, what would that mean? 1773 01:37:41,595 --> 01:37:43,263 I mean, either we're gonna have a conversation... 1774 01:37:43,663 --> 01:37:45,398 or we're going to, uh, carry out the garbage... 1775 01:37:45,999 --> 01:37:48,869 or we're going to do something, separately or together. 1776 01:37:49,603 --> 01:37:51,138 I mean, do you see what I'm saying? 1777 01:37:51,538 --> 01:37:54,808 I mean, what does it mean to just, uh, simply, uh, sit there? 1778 01:37:55,542 --> 01:37:57,477 That makes you nervous. 1779 01:37:57,944 --> 01:38:01,615 Well, well, why shouldn't it make me nervous? It just seems ridiculous to me. 1780 01:38:02,482 --> 01:38:04,151 That's interesting, Wally. 1781 01:38:05,552 --> 01:38:08,755 You know, when I went to Ladakh in western Tibet and stayed on a farm for a month... 1782 01:38:09,422 --> 01:38:12,692 well, there, you know, when people come over in the evening for tea, nobody says anything. 1783 01:38:13,426 --> 01:38:15,228 Unless there's something to say, but there almost never is. 1784 01:38:15,629 --> 01:38:18,565 So they just sit there and drink their tea, and it doesn't seem to bother them. 1785 01:38:22,235 --> 01:38:24,504 I mean, you see, the trouble, Wally, with always being active and doing things... 1786 01:38:25,038 --> 01:38:27,641 is that I think it's quite possible to do all sorts of things... 1787 01:38:28,241 --> 01:38:31,111 and at the same time be completely dead inside. 1788 01:38:31,778 --> 01:38:33,780 I mean, you're doing all these things, but are you doing them... 1789 01:38:34,247 --> 01:38:35,982 because you really feel an impulse to do them... 1790 01:38:36,450 --> 01:38:38,785 or are you doing them mechanically, as we were saying before? 1791 01:38:39,386 --> 01:38:41,521 Because I really do believe that if you're just living mechanically... 1792 01:38:42,055 --> 01:38:43,857 then you have to change your life. 1793 01:38:44,391 --> 01:38:46,860 I mean, you know, when you're young, you go out on dates all the time. 1794 01:38:47,461 --> 01:38:49,863 You go dancing or something. You're floating free. 1795 01:38:50,464 --> 01:38:53,066 And then one day suddenly you find yourself in a relationship... 1796 01:38:53,733 --> 01:38:55,469 and suddenly everything freezes. 1797 01:38:55,936 --> 01:38:58,271 And this can be true in your work as well. 1798 01:38:58,872 --> 01:39:01,208 And I mean, of course, if you're really alive inside... 1799 01:39:01,741 --> 01:39:03,343 then of course there's no problem. 1800 01:39:03,743 --> 01:39:05,679 I mean, if you're living with somebody in one little room... 1801 01:39:06,146 --> 01:39:08,482 and there's a life going on between you and the person you're living with... 1802 01:39:09,015 --> 01:39:12,686 well, then a whole adventure can be going on right in that room. 1803 01:39:13,553 --> 01:39:16,556 But there's always the danger that things can go dead. 1804 01:39:17,224 --> 01:39:20,227 Then I really do think you have to kind of become a hobo or something, you know... 1805 01:39:20,961 --> 01:39:22,696 like Kerouac, and go out on the road. 1806 01:39:23,163 --> 01:39:24,965 I really believe that. 1807 01:39:25,432 --> 01:39:28,702 You know, it's not that wonderful to spend your life on the road. 1808 01:39:29,436 --> 01:39:33,240 My own overwhelming preference is to stay in that room if you can. 1809 01:39:34,040 --> 01:39:36,710 But you know, if you live with somebody for a long time, people are constantly saying... 1810 01:39:37,377 --> 01:39:40,380 "Well, of course it's not as great as it used to be, but that's only natural. 1811 01:39:41,047 --> 01:39:43,984 The first blush of a romance goes, and that's the way it has to be. " 1812 01:39:44,651 --> 01:39:47,320 Now, I totally disagree with that. 1813 01:39:47,988 --> 01:39:51,792 But I do think that you have to constantly ask yourself the question, with total frankness: 1814 01:39:52,659 --> 01:39:54,394 Is your marriage still a marriage? 1815 01:39:54,861 --> 01:39:56,663 Is the sacramental element there? 1816 01:39:57,130 --> 01:39:59,332 Just as you have to ask about the sacramental element in your work... 1817 01:39:59,866 --> 01:40:01,802 Is it still there? 1818 01:40:02,335 --> 01:40:04,538 I mean, it's a very frightening thing, Wally, to have to suddenly realize... 1819 01:40:05,005 --> 01:40:08,608 that, my God, I thought I was living my life, but in fact I haven't been a human being. 1820 01:40:09,409 --> 01:40:11,011 I've been a performer. 1821 01:40:11,411 --> 01:40:14,014 I haven't been living. I've been acting. I've... I've acted the role of the father. 1822 01:40:14,614 --> 01:40:17,617 I've acted the role of the husband. I've acted the role of the friend. 1823 01:40:18,351 --> 01:40:21,221 I've acted the role of the writer, or director, or what have you. 1824 01:40:21,822 --> 01:40:25,025 I've lived in the same room with this person, but I haven't really seen them. 1825 01:40:25,759 --> 01:40:29,162 I haven't really heard them. I haven't really been with them. 1826 01:40:29,963 --> 01:40:32,099 Yeah, I know some people are just sometimes... 1827 01:40:32,766 --> 01:40:34,835 uh, existing just side by side. 1828 01:40:35,435 --> 01:40:39,506 I mean, uh, the other person's, uh, face could just turn into a great wolf's face... 1829 01:40:40,440 --> 01:40:42,776 and, uh, it just wouldn't be noticed. 1830 01:40:43,376 --> 01:40:46,113 And it wouldn't be noticed, no. It wouldn't be noticed. 1831 01:40:47,981 --> 01:40:49,783 I mean, when I was in Israel a little while ago... 1832 01:40:50,250 --> 01:40:52,385 I mean, I have this picture of Chiquita that was taken when she... 1833 01:40:52,919 --> 01:40:55,922 I always carry it with me. It was taken when she was about 26 or something. 1834 01:40:56,656 --> 01:40:58,992 And it's in summer, and she's stretched out on a terrace... 1835 01:40:59,526 --> 01:41:01,928 in this sort of old-fashioned long skirt that's kind of pulled up. 1836 01:41:02,529 --> 01:41:04,598 And she's slim and sensual and beautiful. 1837 01:41:05,132 --> 01:41:08,802 And I've always looked at that picture and just thought about just how sexy she looks. 1838 01:41:09,603 --> 01:41:11,538 And then last year in Israel, I looked at the picture... 1839 01:41:12,005 --> 01:41:15,609 and I realized that that face in the picture was the saddest face in the world. 1840 01:41:16,409 --> 01:41:19,012 That girl at that time was just lost... 1841 01:41:19,613 --> 01:41:21,214 so sad and so alone. 1842 01:41:21,615 --> 01:41:24,618 I've been carrying this picture for years and not ever really seeing what it is, you know. 1843 01:41:25,352 --> 01:41:27,888 I just never really looked at the picture. 1844 01:41:30,423 --> 01:41:34,027 And then, at a certain point, I realized I'd just gone for a good 18 years unable to feel... 1845 01:41:34,828 --> 01:41:36,696 except in the most extreme situations. 1846 01:41:37,164 --> 01:41:39,633 I mean, to some extent, I still had the ability to live in my work. 1847 01:41:40,367 --> 01:41:41,902 That was why I was such a work junkie. 1848 01:41:42,369 --> 01:41:45,839 That was why I felt that every play that I did was a matter of my life or my death. 1849 01:41:46,640 --> 01:41:48,375 But in my real life, I was dead. 1850 01:41:48,842 --> 01:41:50,977 I was a robot. 1851 01:41:51,578 --> 01:41:53,980 I mean, I didn't even allow myself to get angry or annoyed. 1852 01:41:54,514 --> 01:41:56,850 I mean, you know, today Chiquita, Nicolas, Marina... 1853 01:41:57,451 --> 01:42:00,720 All day long, as people do, they do things that annoy me and they say things that annoy me. 1854 01:42:01,455 --> 01:42:03,723 And today I get annoyed. And they say, " Why are you annoyed?" 1855 01:42:04,257 --> 01:42:05,992 And I say, " Because you're annoying," you know. 1856 01:42:07,994 --> 01:42:09,930 And when I allowed myself to consider the possibility... 1857 01:42:10,397 --> 01:42:12,532 of not spending the rest of my life with Chiquita... 1858 01:42:13,133 --> 01:42:16,136 I realized that what I wanted most in life was to always be with her. 1859 01:42:18,205 --> 01:42:21,007 But at that time, I hadn't learned what it would be like to let yourself react... 1860 01:42:21,608 --> 01:42:23,210 to another human being. 1861 01:42:23,610 --> 01:42:25,278 And if you can't react to another person... 1862 01:42:25,745 --> 01:42:28,415 then there's no possibility of action or interaction. 1863 01:42:29,015 --> 01:42:33,220 And if there isn't, I don't really know what the word " love" means... 1864 01:42:34,154 --> 01:42:38,158 except duty, obligation, sentimentality, fear. 1865 01:42:41,428 --> 01:42:43,497 I mean... 1866 01:42:44,965 --> 01:42:46,633 I don't know about you, Wally, but I... 1867 01:42:47,167 --> 01:42:50,504 I just had to put myself into a kind of training program to learn how to be a human being. 1868 01:42:51,238 --> 01:42:53,039 I mean, how did I feel about anything? I didn't know. 1869 01:42:53,573 --> 01:42:57,110 What kind of things did I like? What kind of people did I really want to be with? You know? 1870 01:42:57,911 --> 01:42:59,913 And the only way that I could think of to find out... 1871 01:43:00,447 --> 01:43:03,717 was to just cut out all the noise and stop performing all the time... 1872 01:43:04,451 --> 01:43:07,254 and just listen to what was inside me. 1873 01:43:07,921 --> 01:43:10,457 See, I think a time comes when you need to do that. 1874 01:43:10,991 --> 01:43:13,527 Now, maybe in order to do it, you have to go to the Sahara... 1875 01:43:14,127 --> 01:43:15,796 and maybe you can do it at home. 1876 01:43:16,196 --> 01:43:18,131 But you need to cut out the noise. 1877 01:43:22,803 --> 01:43:24,471 Yeah. Of course, personally, I- I just, uh... 1878 01:43:24,938 --> 01:43:27,941 I usually don't, uh... like those quiet moments, you know. 1879 01:43:28,608 --> 01:43:30,076 I really don't. 1880 01:43:30,410 --> 01:43:34,347 I mean, uh, I don't know if it's that, uh, Freudian thing or what... 1881 01:43:35,215 --> 01:43:37,417 But, uh, you know, the fear of unconscious impulses... 1882 01:43:37,951 --> 01:43:40,620 or my own aggression or whatever, but, uh... 1883 01:43:41,221 --> 01:43:44,291 if things get too quiet, and I find myself just, uh, sitting there... 1884 01:43:45,025 --> 01:43:46,626 you know, as we were saying before... 1885 01:43:47,027 --> 01:43:50,831 I mean, whether I'm by myself, or-or I'm-I'm with someone else... 1886 01:43:51,765 --> 01:43:54,301 I just, uh... I just have this feeling of... 1887 01:43:54,901 --> 01:43:58,238 uh, my God, I'm going to be revealed. 1888 01:43:59,106 --> 01:44:02,509 In other words, I'm adequate to do any sort of a task, um... 1889 01:44:03,310 --> 01:44:06,580 but I'm not adequate, uh, just to... To be a human being. 1890 01:44:07,314 --> 01:44:08,915 I mean, in other words, I'm not, uh... 1891 01:44:09,316 --> 01:44:12,052 If I'm just, uh, trapped there and I'm not allowed to do things... 1892 01:44:12,719 --> 01:44:15,589 but all I can do is just, um, be there... 1893 01:44:16,189 --> 01:44:18,125 well, I'll just fail. 1894 01:44:18,592 --> 01:44:20,193 I mean, in other words, uh... 1895 01:44:20,594 --> 01:44:22,596 I can pass any other sort of a test... 1896 01:44:23,130 --> 01:44:26,333 and, you know, I can even get an " A" if I put in the required effort... 1897 01:44:27,000 --> 01:44:28,802 but I just don't, uh... 1898 01:44:29,336 --> 01:44:31,471 I just don't have a clue how to pass this test. 1899 01:44:32,139 --> 01:44:34,941 I mean... I mean, of course, I realize this isn't a test... 1900 01:44:35,609 --> 01:44:37,878 but, um, I see it as a test... 1901 01:44:38,411 --> 01:44:40,080 and I feel I'm going to fail it. 1902 01:44:40,547 --> 01:44:42,082 I mean, it's... it's very scary. 1903 01:44:42,549 --> 01:44:46,086 I just feel, uh, just totally at sea. I mean... 1904 01:44:46,953 --> 01:44:48,955 Well, you know, I could imagine a life, Wally... 1905 01:44:49,422 --> 01:44:53,427 in which each day would become an incredible, monumental, creative task... 1906 01:44:54,361 --> 01:44:56,163 and we're not necessarily up to it. 1907 01:44:56,630 --> 01:44:59,433 I mean, if you felt like walking out on the person you live with, you'd walk out. 1908 01:45:00,100 --> 01:45:01,768 Then if you felt like it, you'd come back. 1909 01:45:02,235 --> 01:45:05,238 But meanwhile, the other person would have reacted to your walking out. 1910 01:45:06,039 --> 01:45:08,708 It would be a life of such feeling. 1911 01:45:09,309 --> 01:45:11,244 I mean, what was amazing in the workshops I led... 1912 01:45:11,711 --> 01:45:14,714 was how quickly people seemed to fall into enthusiasm... 1913 01:45:15,382 --> 01:45:18,985 celebration, joy, wonder, abandon, wildness, tenderness. 1914 01:45:19,786 --> 01:45:21,655 Could we stand to live like that? 1915 01:45:22,122 --> 01:45:24,658 Yeah, I think it's that moment of contact with another person. 1916 01:45:25,192 --> 01:45:26,793 I mean, that's what scares us. 1917 01:45:27,194 --> 01:45:30,063 I mean, that moment of being face to face with another person. 1918 01:45:30,730 --> 01:45:32,265 I mean, now... 1919 01:45:32,732 --> 01:45:36,203 You wouldn't think it would be so frightening. It's strange that we find it so frightening. 1920 01:45:37,003 --> 01:45:38,605 Well, it isn't that strange. 1921 01:45:39,005 --> 01:45:41,675 I mean, first of all, there are some pretty good reasons for being frightened. 1922 01:45:42,342 --> 01:45:45,879 I mean, you know, the human being is a complex and dangerous creature. 1923 01:45:46,746 --> 01:45:48,882 I mean, really, if you start living each moment? 1924 01:45:49,416 --> 01:45:51,084 Christ, that's quite a challenge. 1925 01:45:51,551 --> 01:45:54,554 I mean, if you really reach out and you're really in touch with the other person... 1926 01:45:55,222 --> 01:45:58,024 well, that really is something to strive for, I think, I really do. 1927 01:45:58,692 --> 01:46:00,961 Yeah, it's just so pathetic if one doesn't do that. 1928 01:46:01,495 --> 01:46:05,098 Of course there's a problem, because the closer you come, I think, to another human being... 1929 01:46:06,032 --> 01:46:08,502 the more completely mysterious... and unreachable... 1930 01:46:09,102 --> 01:46:10,704 that person becomes. 1931 01:46:11,104 --> 01:46:14,174 I mean, you know, you have to reach out, you have to go back and forth with them... 1932 01:46:14,908 --> 01:46:18,178 and you have to relate, and yet you're relating to a ghost or something. 1933 01:46:18,912 --> 01:46:20,580 I don't know, because we're ghosts. 1934 01:46:20,981 --> 01:46:24,184 We're phantoms. Who are we? 1935 01:46:24,918 --> 01:46:27,254 And that's to face, to confront the fact that you're completely alone. 1936 01:46:27,788 --> 01:46:30,123 And to accept that you're alone is to accept death. 1937 01:46:30,724 --> 01:46:33,393 You mean, because somehow when you are alone, you're alone with death. 1938 01:46:33,994 --> 01:46:37,531 I mean, nothing's obstructing your view of it, or something like that. 1939 01:46:38,331 --> 01:46:39,800 Right. 1940 01:46:40,200 --> 01:46:42,602 You know, if I understood it correctly, I think, uh, Heidegger said... 1941 01:46:43,203 --> 01:46:46,673 that, uh, if you were to experience your own being to the full... 1942 01:46:47,541 --> 01:46:51,678 you'd be experiencing the decay of that being toward death... 1943 01:46:52,612 --> 01:46:54,548 as a part of your experience. 1944 01:46:55,015 --> 01:46:57,684 You know, in the sexual act there's that moment of complete forgetting... 1945 01:46:58,285 --> 01:46:59,619 which is so incredible. 1946 01:47:00,020 --> 01:47:01,822 Then in the next moment, you start to think about things: 1947 01:47:02,289 --> 01:47:04,157 work on the play, what you've got to do tomorrow. 1948 01:47:04,624 --> 01:47:07,561 I don't know if this is true of you, but I think it must be quite common. 1949 01:47:08,228 --> 01:47:10,297 The world comes in quite fast. 1950 01:47:10,764 --> 01:47:13,700 Now, that again may be because we're afraid to stay in that place of forgetting... 1951 01:47:14,367 --> 01:47:16,036 because that, again, is close to death. 1952 01:47:16,503 --> 01:47:18,505 Like people who are afraid to go to sleep. 1953 01:47:18,972 --> 01:47:22,242 In other words, you interrelate, and you don't know what the next moment will bring. 1954 01:47:22,976 --> 01:47:24,644 And to not know what the next moment will bring... 1955 01:47:25,112 --> 01:47:26,780 brings you closer to a perception of death. 1956 01:47:27,180 --> 01:47:30,317 You see, that's why I think that people have affairs. 1957 01:47:30,984 --> 01:47:32,986 I mean, you know, in the theater, if you get good reviews... 1958 01:47:33,520 --> 01:47:35,522 you feel for a moment that you've got your hands on something. 1959 01:47:35,989 --> 01:47:37,858 You know what I mean? I mean, it's a good feeling. 1960 01:47:38,325 --> 01:47:40,193 But then that feeling goes quite quickly. 1961 01:47:40,727 --> 01:47:43,463 And once again you don't know quite what you should do next. 1962 01:47:44,131 --> 01:47:45,465 What'll happen? 1963 01:47:45,799 --> 01:47:47,868 Well, have an affair, and up to a certain point... 1964 01:47:48,535 --> 01:47:50,670 you can really feel that you're on firm ground, you know. 1965 01:47:51,204 --> 01:47:54,207 There's a sexual conquest to be made. There are different questions. 1966 01:47:54,941 --> 01:47:56,610 Does she enjoy the ears being nibbled? 1967 01:47:57,010 --> 01:47:59,813 How intensely can you talk about Schopenhauer at some elegant French restaurant? 1968 01:48:00,480 --> 01:48:02,482 Whatever nonsense it is. 1969 01:48:03,016 --> 01:48:06,353 It's all, I think, to give you the semblance that there's firm earth. 1970 01:48:07,087 --> 01:48:10,357 Well, have a real relationship with a person that goes on for years... 1971 01:48:11,091 --> 01:48:13,360 That's completely unpredictable. 1972 01:48:13,894 --> 01:48:16,563 Then you've cut off all your ties to the land, and you're sailing into the unknown... 1973 01:48:17,164 --> 01:48:19,166 into uncharted seas. 1974 01:48:19,766 --> 01:48:23,637 I mean, you know, people hold on to these images of father, mother, husband, wife... 1975 01:48:24,571 --> 01:48:26,173 again for the same reason... 1976 01:48:26,573 --> 01:48:29,443 'cause they seem to provide some firm ground. 1977 01:48:30,177 --> 01:48:32,112 But there's no wife there. 1978 01:48:32,579 --> 01:48:34,247 What does that mean? A wife. 1979 01:48:34,714 --> 01:48:36,917 A husband. A son. 1980 01:48:37,517 --> 01:48:39,186 A baby holds your hands... 1981 01:48:39,586 --> 01:48:42,589 and then suddenly there's this huge man lifting you off the ground... 1982 01:48:43,323 --> 01:48:44,858 and then he's gone. 1983 01:48:45,325 --> 01:48:46,860 Where's that son? 1984 01:49:06,413 --> 01:49:09,749 All the other customers seemed to have left hours ago. 1985 01:49:10,484 --> 01:49:14,020 We got the bill, and André paid for our dinner. 1986 01:49:14,755 --> 01:49:16,022 Really? 1987 01:49:42,582 --> 01:49:44,384 I treated myself to a taxi. 1988 01:49:46,319 --> 01:49:48,388 I rode home through the city streets. 1989 01:49:49,990 --> 01:49:52,259 There wasn't a street, there wasn't a building... 1990 01:49:52,793 --> 01:49:55,462 that wasn't connected to some memory in my mind. 1991 01:49:57,531 --> 01:50:00,066 There, I was buying a suit with my father. 1992 01:50:03,270 --> 01:50:06,139 There, I was having an ice cream soda after school. 1993 01:50:10,811 --> 01:50:13,613 When I finally came in, Debby was home from work... 1994 01:50:14,281 --> 01:50:17,217 and I told her everything about my dinner with André.