Studs Terkel, in a 1975 interview with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, continues from here (and concludes today). See previous sections here, here and here
For the full interview – see here
ST: So we’re talking about demons, aren’t we? And, and a way exorcising demons in the writing, aren’t we? Before..
AG: The demons of habit, the demons of conditioning, the demons of addiction.
ST: Again we come to
AG: The demons of power control.
ST: Suppose, suppose we alternate. Before Bill goes into reading an excerpt from Naked Lunch, you have something I noticed called “Going to Chicago”.
[The audio of Allen Ginsberg reading two poems he wrote about the 1968 Democratic convention – “Grant Park: August 28th, 1968” and “Going to Chicago” (which he introduces here as “Flying to Chicago to the Convention” are made available here from Allen’s performance at the Phil Ochs Memorial Concert at Felt Forum in New York City in 1976, a month after the musicians death].
AG: Yeah, that’s flying August 24th, 1968. Flying here to have a consultation with the, Earl Bush, former Mayor Daley’s public relations man, who I think was, went to jail. Who
ST: Who has, since then, yes, he’s some unfortunate..
AG: Well, Bush was trying to call off this, our anti-war protest, saying “Listen, I’m telling you, we’re gonna settle the war. Just.. Mayor Daley told me, trust, trust us.”
ST: Oh, Daley’s gonna settle the war?!
AG: We’re gonna settle the wars, so don’t go protest.” So I was flying to Chicago to sort of meet Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis and look over the things and talk with City Hall and see if we could get a permit to go to Lincoln Park.
ST: Because you, I guess you have the possibility of horror, there’s always the antic aspect, there’s always a comic aspect. This is also one of the..attributes of Allen Ginsburg’s writing, isn’t it, Bill?
WSB: Yes, it is, it is indeed.
AG: What you got there, Bill?
WSB: Well, I could read,.. “Bradley the Buyer”.
AG: That was, to get back to the point we were making about control as an addiction, or the relations between the addict and the police, the symbiotic relation, I guess, that..
ST: You want to set the scene for this, Bill? Or just – you want to preface this by describing the scene, or is this self-descriptive?
WSB: I think it’s more or less self-descriptive.
ST: Naked Lunch
WSB: This is a reading from Naked Lunch
ST: Of course there are about four or five different dimensions to this, aren’t there?
ST: And what’s so funny, though, when did you write, when was Naked Lunch first written?
WSB: It was written, really from over a period of years from 1954, and they were about a thousand pages of manuscript.
ST: So, about 20 years ago, in short, Bill Burroughs called the shot.
AG: Exactly.
ST: About 20 years ago. First of all the most vivid and horrendous descriptions of addiction, dope addiction. But then comes the irony..
AG: …of the analysis of the actual condition.
ST: …And of industry itself.
AG: Yes.
ST: And
AG: They’re afraid. the threat to the industry on all levels.
ST: On all levels.
AG: That, see, the point is that the Drug Enforcement Administration now has swollen its addiction to power and money to a $110 million budget a year. It’s this vast bureaucracy now dependent on junk!.
ST: But what’s so funny.. because the great humor.. drug addiction.. you watch the tv commercials, and you’re watching all those patent medicines, and you’re watching all those drugs that are legal, you know, completely, that just take care of colds and headaches and constipation
AG: Well, not the only drugs, petrochemicals.
WSB: Most of those completely worthless.
ST: But drugs nonetheless.
WSB: Yes.
AG: Well drugs, but then also alcohol, then also cigarettes, but then also automobiles and also oil and also energy consumption, the whole addiction to the material growth economy. In fact, you could even finally see capitalists growth economy notions as a sign of a oil burner habit
WSB: Absolutely.
ST: Leading up to gross, gross national product. I suppose gross would be the most descriptive adjective.
AG: I have a poem, oddly, written about flying to Chicago, talking about this point. Looking down from an airplane on Chicago.
ST: He’s got addiction all over again.
AG: Well, actually, I was making use of Bill’s metaphor.
WSB: Yeah, I was coming way back to the beginning of this conversation. About an hour ago, almost, the matter of Bill’s metaphor of the addiction, every aspect of our lives. Power addiction. Even as you were think, I’m thinking of one more you could add there, sports watching addiction, primarily by the males of the American population.
AG: The passivity of it.
ST: That aspect of it too, the passivity! Yeah, oh, by the (way), isn’t there also an addiction.. passivity, supineness, the watching, the spectator, also an addiction in itself, isn’t it?
WSB: Well, a lot of people say it was partly television addiction.
AG: What’s it, what’s a cure? Yeah, I have a cure-all here. Okay. (Here) goes – I remember – I think there’s a de-addiction in the…
WSB: Empty.
AG: …willingness to observe the vastness, the spaciousness and the emptiness of the place where we all are together, with our habits, which fill up this emptiness with microphones, radios, complaints, voices screaming, voices demanding, voices wanting, voices…
ST: Rejecting..
AG: Rejecting voices, babbling and insisting, aggression. Aggression materialized into automobiles. Aggression materialized into billions of dollars, $100 billion worth of Pentagon hardware heavy metal. So it’s the willingness to, like. empty out the mind and to exist without a matter-habit, so to speak, just short putting it in short form.
ST: This is not too removed then from you yourself, connecting, fusing, the writings you do, the poetry and the various essays.
AG: With Buddhist meditation.
ST: With meditation, with also participation. So there are you, Allen Ginsberg, taking part, there you were, not accidentally, with Bill Burroughs, even though you weren’t on assignment from Esquire, you’d have been there anyway in Lincoln Park, ’68, or in Prague that day
AG: Chanting “Om” in Prague and chanting “Om” in Chicago.
ST: That’s also part of it, too.
AG: Chanting in Michigan, but [turns to WSB] what, what is your, Bill? What’s your
de-addiction medicine, or practice, or yoga, or suggestion for whoever is listening?
WSB: Well, I think it’s very much the same as yours, Allen, it’s the emptying, emptying of the mind, the ability to look at the whole situation without saying anything about it, compulsively, either in protest or in agreement. And this, as we know it is very difficult to do. And.. Buddhism, meditation. is one way of achieving this.
ST: That’s..
AG: ..an American practice that you think..
WSB: Well, no, but it does seems to me that..
AG: I think we need to develop an America practice.
WSB: ..that it is useful to use scientific discoveries since we have them. There’s biofeedback, which enables you to know when you are, when there are alpha waves, the waves of relaxation, and and, um, alert receptiveness are in your mind. And then then when you learn this, you can achieve it at will. That’s one I think, very useful adjunct to achieving
ST: There was a practice that you were talking about in London a couple of years ago, when I visited, which was, um, imagining alternative opposite states of emotion, using words. Can you describe that a little?
WSB: Well, I think that exercise is very much a yogic exercise, it’s known as the opposites. That is, you imagine, say, you imagine failure. Let yourself, let yourself experience failure. And then you imagine success, so that in a sense, failure then will tune in success. Or fear will tune in courage. If you really let the fear come in, and let it flow through you and out the other side, that is the beginning of courage, it’s not trying to suppress fear that you have.
ST: You know, it’s interesting. Allen asked you a moment ago, is there an American equivalent, an indigenous United States equivalent to what, to Buddhism or the, and you just did it. You see? He said we are addicted to the other addiction,.success, number one! And somehow, if you’re not number one, you’re through. You’re incompetent, you’re impotent, you’re not number..
AG: The whole theory of our foreign policy, America being number one. So..
ST: So now what, what, I, if I follow Bill, using the opposite is, “Hey, wait a minute. Maybe if you fail in something, it does not mean you’re dead. It merely means you’re human.” Maybe you’ll find that passivity is what it’s all about.
AG: But what Bill was proposing was that we not be afraid to experience the sensation of being a failure, a total failure. Of being beat. Or and then and then also experience the sensation of total victory and go through a whole series of emotional oppositions, experiencing them both as objective experiences rather than being afraid of them.
ST: As we’re talking, the hour goes, but we know we do believe in continuity and flow. And so Friday night there’ll be more than a continuation of what happened, there will be an offering.
AG: But Studs, I’m wondering, does this sound like a continuation of our conversation way back then in ’59?
ST: Absolutely. Absolutely. It was ’59, and perhaps a continuation of your first meeting with Bill Burroughs back then.
AG: Oh, sure. I’d like it to continues for the next couple decades.
ST: Oh, I hope so. And perhaps we will, thanks to certain..
AG: I hope we’ve learned something out of it after all these years
ST: You know, after I tell the audience about again, reminding them of the Poetry Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, where Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs will be reading, and offering, and indeed performing and participating. That’s this Friday, eight o’clock and it’s quite an experience, by the way. It’ll be a very salubrious one for everybody. 237 East Ontario Street. You know, music is always good, and to end our conversation with – you said instead of “OM” something like “AH! .” So Bill Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg. Thank you very much.
AG: This space we’re sharing through sound and purification of speech.
ST: Ahhh-men!