Fourteen years ago today, Gregory Corso passed away. We salute him today with a vintage audio recording (from the Naropa Assembly Hall, November 11, 1981). Gregory reads unpublished works and poems from his recently-published New Directions book, (published just the previous month), Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit.
It being Gregory (reader’s warning) there’s a lot of slang, scorn, and potentially alienating expletives. There’s also the patented Corso didacticism, (so very few, if any, poems, get a complete unadulterated reading – many lines are commented on – several he congratulates himself on, (though avoiding, as he later points out, the fatal sin, or so he would propose it anyway, of Odyssean arrogance (hubris, pride)).
An unidentified female voice is the first voice heard on the tape, announcing an upcoming Ginsberg-Orlovsky reading and workshops by Ram Dass and also – “We’re happy to have with us the famous mad man, great heart, Captain of Poetry, Gregory Corso” (but Gregory is having none of it – “not madness, the certification of madness is my choice”) – “Yeah, well, I’m no mad man. I am the Player. Dig the game. I’m the Fool, playing – The Fool always won out. If you look at Parsifal, Perceval, he got the shot, right? He’s the one who grabbed it. Well? You know about that? Does anybody here know about that? – that the Fool won out – alright? – but I ain’t no fool (I might be a dopey fuck but I ain’t no fool!). “Mad man”! (ha!) – but.. [turning to Brian Jackson] introduce me, kid.
Brian Jackson: I think this person is a sharp muthafuckin poet-man, Mr Gregory Corso.
Gregory begins reading from unpublished work (clearly off recently-created manuscripts or typescripts, since, on a number of occasions, he finds it hard to properly decipher his own writing (the transcriber was presented with similar challenges regarding the audio document, most notably, registering line-breaks and Gregory’s confessedly less-than-stellar pronunciation and this should certainly be kept in mind)
GC: Thank you. Watch me poop and write, poop the new shit. Hey kid, cool it, don’t take it over from me. I guessed your age, right? Watch the ball-game.
This (first) one’s called “Me As Teacher” – “I attended school and I liked the place/grass and a little locust-leaf shadows likewise/ Writing was discussed/They said we create values in the process of living/Daren’t we awake their historical progress?/Be abstract and you’ll wish you’d been specific/It’s a fact/When I was studying values in use/Judged on their own ground/Am I still abstruse?/ Walking along, a student said off-hand/ “Relevant” and “Plausible” were words that I understand/ A pleasing statement, anonymous friend, a student/ Certainly the means must not defeat the end” – (That’s a good shot. I mean, that’s like the Peripatetic school, right? You’re walking with the kid, right?, and he’s telling you the shot, he’s saying (that) “relevant” and “plausible” were the only things he could understand (because most of the mothers would lay on me “well, what’s relevant about it, man?”, you know, “where’s the relevancy?”) – Me As Teacher)
Alright, “The Dopey Fuck Game” – “O to be a dopey fuck!” – (here we go!)- “If I, like Mozart, could have my wish” (Humphrey Bogart. my wish) – “O to be a symbol of the power of heaven/standing at the clavichord/with an unmendable hole in my pants” – (me and Humphrey Bogart, no Mozart and Humphrey Bogart combined in me – dig the game – the Dopey Fuck)
I may, I might, I must” – “If you will tell me why the death shot appears.. you know, plausible?.. passable?.. plausible? – I, then, will tell you why I think that I can get across it, if I try. I love my parents (I hardly knew them), I love people, but they tell me I’ve got to die – and I don’t trust people – they’re unreliable – If you believe them, you’re going to die, you’re going to go. I’m a big fucker, I’m going to knock it out (death/fear of death) causes pain, causes a lot of bullshit in life..)
[The burbling sound of a child in the audience, the first of a number of distractions, distracts him“] – Excuse me? – They say that kids know the shot, right?. Alright
“Blessed is the Asshole” – “Who does not sit in the seat of the hole?/The people who do not denigrate deprecate denunciate?/ Who is not characteristically intemperate?/Who does not excuse retreat equivocate/and will be heard?/Ah Gregory!/there are those who mongrelize and there are those who heighten anything they touch/ although it may very well be/ that Gregory’s self-portrait were not said to be he.. [Child starts crying again]
(And you’re going to dig it, kid. No, don’t hold his mouth, he’s going to dig it, I’m going to give him the game on it) – “Diversity controversy tolerance/In that citadel of learning we have a fort/that ought/ to arm us well/Blessed is the man who takes the risk of a decision/Ask the lady, “Hi, can I sit by you?” – (No, no, I did it wrong – alright, here I go) – “Ask the lady, “Hi, can I suck your dick?”- (Usually it (the answer) is “I haven’t got one” or “You’re crude” – alright? – dig the game, right?) – “Is it right as I see it?/ Is it (in) the best interests of all?/ Alas, the poet’s companions are now political,/living self-indulgently until the moral senses drowned/ having lost all power of comparison,/thinking license emancipates one,/slaves who they themselves have bound/brazen authors downright soiled/and downright spoiled/ as if sound and exceptional/ are the old quasi-modest counterfeit..” – (Yeah, watch out for poets. They’re people, (and) people are unreliable – dig the game) – “Conscience against character..” – (what’s this word I wrote? – well, I’ll spare it, but I think I can continue with..) – “Conscience against character/..affronted by private lies and public shame/Blessed is the author/who favors what the supercilious do not favor/who will not comply/ blessed the unaccomodating lady man – [ I come from my mother’s cunt, I’m a lady man, I’m a he-she – Here’s the end of the poem] – “Blessed be the he-she/ who’s faith is different from possessiveness/ of a kind not framed by things/which do appear/ who will not visualize the feet /whose illuminated eye has seen the shaft that gilds the Sultan’s tower/and loves, by choice, all fucking beauty” – (I connect here high-class language with my New York-ese. My.. what is it? adjective? – “fucking beauty” (sure, it’s a strong word))
Audience member: The word!
GC: What word? “Fucking beauty”?
Audience member: No, the one before that
GC: It’s an adjective
Audience member: Excuse me?
GC: An adjective
Audience member: An adjective?
GC: Well, what do you put before a noun, kid?
“How The Dinosaurians Bit The Dust – “Partaking of the miraculous, since never known literally/Durer’s Rhinoceros might have startled us equally/it’s black and white spine elaborately/ like another porcupine of fern/ the mouth isn’t auk or egret/was too black to discern/to expose as a silhouette/what the double-embattled thistle of jet/this advantages apparently/has never shot a quill/was it some joyous fantasy/playing elder eared exhibit of spines…..” [Gregory breaks off and addresses the audience] – (You know, I’d give up and read something funny. I’ll make you laugh on the next one, the funny one, I’ll give it to ya, kid (I’m going to do it for the kid, it’s called “How Not To Die” – watch the game – alright..) – “playing elder eared exhibit of spines/rooted in the sooty moss/or moss…” [Gregory breaks off again] – (This is so fuckin’ important. Don’t you know how the dinosaurs died? – they don’t know! – they lived three-hundred-mill on this planet, three hundred years, and I’m going to tell you how they went out, it’s almost over – ok) – “or trains/ supported by porcupines or fairies/eleven yards long/as when the lightning shines on thistle-fine spears among the prongs/and veins above lanes/in the shorter pronged/with the forest for nurse..” – (Yeah, watch out, that’s what happens, the forest is the nurse of the dinosaur) – “also dark at the base/where needle debris springs/and shows no full mark the setting for..” [Gregory can barely read his own writing] – t-h-e-o? – “the setting for theory” – (It’s all theory) – “Mind you should be..” – (I should get this right, it’s so beautiful, last line – “Mind, you should be pleased that (that) animal is not a waverer/ and rather than fight…” – (and this is tyrannosaurus rex, who, at (on) this planet, this s0-beautiful planet, had to bring, to chop him up, dig it) – “let the prime meat fall shallow oppressor intruder insister/you have foound a resister/ – me/ They died of constipation/the juices of fern where no more grew/goodbye, my unfortunate brother” – (That’s how the fuckers died, (they) couldn’t eat any more fern, it was lubricant, they couldn’t shit anymore, they were too big, (they) died of constipation. It’s a theory as good as any other fucker.)
GC (addressing the child in the audience): Alright kid, this is for you. This is called “How Not To Die”, alright? – Watch it, it’s a good one, it’s going to make you laugh.
Audience member: Mic?
GC: His name is Mike?
Audience member; Use the mic(rophone).
GC: Hit the mic. You can hear me, right?
Audience member: No (we) can’t hear you.
Alright – “How Not To Die” – “Around people if I feel I’m going to die, I excuse myself, saying “I gotta go”/”Go where?”, they want to know – (dig that shit, man) – “”Go where?”, they want to know/I don’t answer, I just get out of there away from them/because somehow they sense something wrong/and never know what to do/It scares them such suddenness/ How awful to just sit there/and they asking, “Are you ok?”,/ “Can we get you something?”/”Do you want to lie down?”/Yegods! People!/Who wants to die amongst People?/especially when they can’t do shit./To the movies/to the movies/that’s where I go when I feel that I’m going to die/So far it’s worked.” -(Did you get that one? – Now, let’s see,, the last of the new ones, and then…
This one’s called “To The Snail” – Escargot? Snails? – “If compression is the grace of style, you have it” -(oh, shoot, they can’t get the fucker, man! – it’s got that shell, right? – it moves right in – read it again?) -“If compression is the grace of style, you have it” – (that’s a snail, right? You ever think of writing any fuckin’ poems with snails, any of you guys?)
GC: Oh, this is a nice one – I have no title for it. This is very recent – “What is our innocence..” – [the child in the audience begins to cry again] – (Yeah, well, kid, you better.. kid, I’m going to tell you something, I don’t mind the sound of life on this planet. Don’t take the kid out, leave the kid here, I want to give him a shot of innocence) – What is our innocence, what is our guilt/ All are bare-assed/therefore none is safe/and courage?/when is it to your liking?” -(oh boy!)
Oh, this one, last one of the new ones. You’re going to love it. Oh boy, oh boy. It’s called “Ireland”. I’ve got no Irish shot in me, but Irish are poets, Irish are poets – dig the game – yeah, Irish have poetry in their souls, man. Alright, here it goes..] – “Spenser‘s Ireland has not altered/A place as kind as it is green/ the greenest place I’ve never seen/ Every name is a tune/Denunciations do not affect the culprit/nor blows/but it is torture to him not to be spoken to/ They’re natural/ the coat, like Venus’ mantle/lined with stars/buttoned close at the neck/ the sleeves new from disuse..”- (Yeah, I can touch the poets, man. I ain’t Irish, but I know the fuckin’ poets. That’s why I give to the Irish)- “If in Ireland they play the harp backward at need/and gather at mid-day the seed/of the fern/ eluding their giants/all covered with iron/might there be fern seed for unlearning…” (oh, this is a great word, I can never pronounce it – obduracy? – yeah, obduracy) – “and for reinstating the enchantment/hinted characters seldom have mothers in Irish stories..” – (it’s true, you ever check out on Irish stories) – hinted characters seldom have mothers in Irish stories/but they all have grandmothers/ It was Irish/a match, not a marriage, was made/When your great-great-great grandmother said was native genius for disunion/although your suitor be perfection,/one objection/is enough,/he is not.” – (that’s the game with the grandma – It’s not over – there’s just one more, one more shot – is it? – no, it’s a little longer, this is my little long-beyond, then) – “His satisfaction/and man’s trustworthy nearness even in the dark/flutes his ecstatic bursts of joy/ – the caraway seed spotted sparrow/perched in the dew-drenched Jupiter [sic]…”- (juniper – that’s the gin, right? – you know, jupiner seeds?, gin? – Juniper? – juniper, alright) – “beside the window-ledge/this little hedge-sparrow/that wakes up seven men as sooner than the law..” – (that’s a fact, Audobon, those bird-watchers will tell you that – alright..) – “The live oak’s darkening filagree of undulating bows/the etched solidity of a cypher’sinvisible now from the aged English hackberry/become with lost identity/part of the ground/as sunset flames increasingly/against the half-chiselled blackening ridge of green/while clouds expanding above the town’s assertiveness/dwarf it, dwarf arrogance/that can misunderstand importance/and offer the child an imitation of what glory is..” – (and now, here’s the end of it – yeah – Irish) – “outwitting the Fairies/befriending the Furies” – (oh boy, that’s a tough shot with them) – “Whoever, again and again, says,/”I’ll never give in never sees/ that you’re not free until you’ve been made captive by supreme belief/Credulity..” – ( Credulity? – how do you say”credulity”? – my pronunciation sometimes sucks – Credulity) – “Credulity, you say/when large dainty fingers/trimmingly divide the wings of the fly/from mid-July/knel and wrap it with peacock tail/or tie wood/and buzzers wing their pride/ It, like the enchanters, isn’t care – (where’s that lady? – “madness” – the certification of madness is my choice) – “not madness/concerning hands divide/flaps for damask..” – (do you know what damask is? – the Irish linen – they do it beautifully, huh?) – “flaps for damask/that when bleached by Irish weather/has the silvered chamoised leather..” – (how do you.. that’s French, “chamois” – C-H-A-M-O-I-S – chamois leather) – “(woolen) tightness of a skin/twisted torcs” – (T-O-R-C-S) – “and gold new spoon shaped lunar lay/aren’t jewelry/ like the purple pole fricasized tree airy/ the gallimot, sony and the hen of the heath/and the linnet spin its sweet/bespeak relentlessly then they are to me/like enchanted Earl Gerald/who changed himself into a stag/and a great green-eyed cat of the mountain/ This commodity makes..” – (this is the end) – “This commodity makes them invisible/They disappeared./ The Irish say/their trouble is your trouble/and your joy is their joy/I wish I could believe it./I am troubled/I’m dissatisfied/I’m not Irish.” –
(Two shots to this one – they’re in a fucked-up place today (brother and brother killing each other) right? – and they do have the spirit of poesy in them)
[At approximately twenty-six-and-three-quarter minutes in, Gregory turns to his new book, Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit.]
GC: Okay, I’ll read from my new book, ok – and I’ll take it, I’ll take it at random. I think it all works. I like this book best of all the books I’ve written. Now, I started..what? 1946? -I’m fifty-one years old, so how old was I? I was sixteen years old and just a baby.
Alright, take the shot – “Liability” – dig the game of Liability – “My enemies are by jealousy made/ They await my inevitable fall with cold patience”- (I’m going to win, I’m going to win over those fuckers, because I never went to hurt. Now here it goes, this is the two lines that saves me) – “Like some blessed thing/I survived the hazards of being me” – (right? I got the fucker there. So..) – “Everywhere I walk is ill-carpeted..Bars are crowded with assassinators/I order a drink and begin to fall apart/Envious eyes flash upon my fix/I speak the unspeakable/ I say “My mother’s an asshole” – (because we’re Italians, you see – I didn’t tell them their mothers were assholes (because, you know, I’d get myself hurt) but they, if they were smart, they knew what I was talking about. Only because he called me an asshole and made a mistake (he meant to say it to the guy next to me) – Alright – so here it goes)- “The bartender a truncated tyrant is the creepiest of hypocrites” – (and that’s the opposite of poetry, folks – hypocrisy, watch the game) – “Powerless in the sunshine he’s Hitler in his dank dive and I am waiting for his digital ax/eighty-six” – (You face that in life, right? You go into a bar right? and the bartender thinks he’s a big deal behind the bar and all that shit)
This is a good one for you. This happens with people. It’s called “Ah…Well” – (Ah, three dots, well) – “Ah…well/People… Nobody really loves them/ not even people/Want of love/…no one owes anyone anything/Whomsoever pays dues hasn’t/(I know of no collector)..” – (I knew I’d rip it off – You know how many people say they paid their dues? There must be a lot of fuckin’ goodies there, man, that they paid. Alright..) – “I know of no collector/They pay themselves./Those who demand respect/ are seldom deserving/ – not to show disrespect is enough – ” – (right? who the fuck are they to say “Give me respect”.. Don’t be disrespectful, I think, that’s the best shot, right? They’re unreliable, they’re dumb-asses, they can blow you away – too much, right?..) – “People love only themselves/ and not too well/Love for another/, either in passion or compassion/ stems from the heart’s desperate need” – (That’s a fact, right? You’ve got to hold a hairy bag of water, right? – “Oh, you’re beautiful, oh boy,oh boy..”) – “The universe is alone/and people are alone in it/The Pope doesn’t really love me/nor I he/Christ his invisible love/ I knew for a lover too” – (That’s a nice shot. Boy, the head worked well there. Sure did right? – That fucker he’s up there, he’s representative of the Christos, right? – I knew that fucker for a lover too) – “People bring on fear and pity/I fear human fragility -(ok? – I don’t want to see anybody hurt. I don’t like it, (something wrong there)) – “I pity coolies of humility” – (that’s why I never became a Buddhist, I never became anything. I like it all. This was laid down on the planet. I check it out. I see the goodies in it. I say “ok”, but I don’t fall for it. The big one came with my son, five years old – should I lay a God trip on him? – No fuckin’ way. I’ll say, “hey, here’s the ball-game, this is how it’s laid out, what do you think? – check it. Never be an atheist because that’s being like a Christian, it’s like being a Buddhist, you’ve got to fall for something. Disbelief or belief, the same shot. Right, check it out. Here it goes.) – “It’s always a bad day for someone/Pain, Death, the Big Lie of Life/The apothecarian earth blooms the poppy/at best” – (Now, that last line was tough for me, because I talk about my son, my children, and if I have to say that “there’s a chemical on the planet that’s going to ease the pain of life for you, kid”, right? – that ain’t right (for me, it’s right, it ain’t for another) – but I open my fuckin’ mouth, and it’s printed, and they think I’m smart, man, then they’re going to take me for that, alright? You know what this is called? – not conscience, it’s called consideration)
Let’s see what else I can give you here. Oh yes, I’ll give you one that a lot of people like – I don’t know about it, though, I don’t know about it. Yeah it could’ve been done.. it’s going to be done.. better, because I took the whole ball-game of poetry in this one poem, one page, what all poets write about, I took the whole subject.
It’s called “The Whole Mess, Almost”:
I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life
First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
“Don’t! I’ll tell awful things about you!”
“Oh yeah? Well, I’ve nothing to hide … OUT!”
Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:
“It’s not my fault! I’m not the cause of it all!” “OUT!”
Then Love, cooing bribes: “You’ll never know impotency!
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!”
I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:
“You always end up a bummer!”
I picked up Faith Hope Charity
all three clinging together:
“Without us you’ll surely die!”
“With you I’m going nuts! Goodbye!”
Then Beauty … ah, Beauty —
As I led her to the window
I told her: “You I loved best in life
… but you’re a killer; Beauty kills!
Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her
“You saved me!” she cried
I put her down and told her: “Move on.”
Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.
The only thing left in the room was Death
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
“I’m not real!” It cried
“I’m just a rumor spread by life … ”
Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left—
All I could do with Humor was to say:
“Out the window with the window!”
(You see, the wise man would have walked out the door. I saved Beauty (I gave them all capitals, except money – lower-case “m”)
What would you like to hear, kid? – Come on, I’m asking. You want to hear something? – Alright, this is “Getting to the Poem” – think again – ” Getting to the Poem – I have lived by the grace of Jews and girls” – [ oh boy!]
Audience member: How do you do it?
GC: How do I do it? I’m a human being,right? and I’ve got a good head. I’m Poet-Man. Chicks dig me. Jews are a little amazed by me, they think I’m meshuga or something. Alright, dig the game, alright..) – “I have lived by the grace of Jews and girls/I have nothing/and am not wanting/I write poems from the spirit for the spirit/and have everything/A poet’s fate is by choice/I have chosen/and am well pleased..” [child in the audience is heard again] – A child’s voice, you see, it works!) – “A drunk dreamer in reality/is an awful contradiction/Loved one fall away from me and I am become wanting..” – (they know I’m a sharp fucker, but I play the game, keep it cool, play the adult game and all that – except, (it’s) my choice) – “Self-diagnosis: A penniless living legend/needs get the monies/or write more poems/or both/If you have a choice/between two things and can’t decide – take both/ It’s not right for me to be wanting.”
GC: This one’s called “The Day Before the Phenomenon” – This one’s called “The Day Before the.. let’s see if I can pronounce it – “phenomenon?” (no “a” on it)
Audience member: Close enough
GC: Ok, so you got it?, right? – this is the day before it happened, alright? – “Did you know..” – )I got to look at someone’s eyes when I say this shit. I’m going to pick a tough lady) – “Did you now who I was before I knew? – “Did you now who I was before I knew?/I knew you after I asked “Who am I?”/Never did you tell me who you were/I only learned to know/when I poem’d it so/And you?/Is that when you knew too?”
(Yeah, that’s a fucker, man.. there’s no arrogance in it, see? You can play the arrogance game. I’lll give you a poem on the arrogance, how I won out on it. What’s that? Villon? dear Villon (I’m touching big fuckers here Socrates, Villon, and myself), here it goes, this is my connection with Villon, Francois Villon – “Dear Villon” – “Villon, how brotherly our similarities…/ altar-boys attending the priest’s skirt;/purpling the coffins/Thieves: you having stolen the Devil’s Fart – (Yeah, let me explain that to you. Near the Sorbonne, they built up a little kind of marble statue where the devil farted. He, as a collegiate kid, would rip it off, right? – ok) – “Thieves: you having stolen the Devil’s Fart /And I stealing what was mine/ (not because, like our brother Kerouac said:/everything is mine because I am poor/ Rather: nothing is mine, a Prince of Poetry/ made to roam the outskirts of society/taking, if I needed a coat, what was taken/from the lamb.” – (Again, choice – a muthafuckin’ cop with a gun who will pop out – pow-pow-pow! – “you won’t take that coat!” – alright?) – “Killers: you killed the priest who slit your lip” – (Villon was very handsome, smart, and then this dumb-ass teacher-priest was always running after him, huh? – and he got so bugged..the priest let the young blood.. so Villon just took the knife away and slid (it) between the second and third buttons and then the whole world topples for that fucker – out – ok – dig) – “Killers; you killed the priest who slit your lip/In that respect, I’m unlike you and thankfully so” – (see, he ain’t my brother that way -dig the ball-game) – “What sooty life, eh what?, oh Villon/An after-rain has launder’d this day” – (You ever see it? when it rains? – somehow everything seems to be clean in the sky and all that. So..) – “An after-rain has launder’d this day/blued is the white of it – (the best color that you can give to blue is white, right?) – “blued is the white of it/Yet when O when/shall unsoiled navies pass by again?” – (I think, with their white suits, these navy guys – pow-pow-pow-pow-pow!) – “I knew the same I knew before/Now I would less knowledge than more/for I know knowledge to be/such information as fattens memory…/aye, wisdom is a lean thing/for regard that head on his death-bed/hemlocking:”All I know is I know nothing”… (Well, Mr Socrates, huh? – fuckin’ Delphic Oracle tells him “Know thyself” (that’s the big ball-game, “Know thyself”) and on his death-bed he says “All I know is I know nothing”! – That’s a big cop-out. But Villon at least says this..) – “You at least claim to know everything/but yourself”.. (That’s a fact, that happens a lot with people, they know an awful lot, but they’re so etiquette-y, something’s happening there. So here’s where I played the arrogance (and it’s not arrogant – a man who says he knows everything is arrogant, but this is the way I put it ) – Me – “I claim to know all there is to know because there ain’t that much to know” (I took it, I took the fucker, better than old Socrates, the old fart, man – he played the early Christ game (what? five hundred years before Christ?) – to take the hemlock (“okay, I’m going to do this shit and die”) – it’s like a Christ-like death, right? – but to say “”All I know is I know nothing”? – boy-oh-boy-oh-boy! – your brother (your sister, whatever he is), Mr Homer, Mary Homer… Socrates, Homer, all these big ones, Heraclitus (Heraclitus was a smart man, he’s the one who said you can’t walk in(to) the same (scene) twice, you can’t do it, right? – it’s pre-Socratic, it’s pre-this guy-who-hemlocked-himself-out)
GC: (Okay, let me give you one that I might like, man, here.. let me see.. Yeah, I think it [Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit) is my nicest book, really, really – (and) I’m going to fix the fucker up too – see, a lot of mistakes they made here . Ah, “To my daughter” – dig, she’s a New Yorker, seventeen-years-old, right? – I don’t want this.. dig the shit.. – “For Miranda”) – “My daughter/ walks in grace/like a sharp New Yorker..” – (badam!) – You’ve got to know how to walk in New York, lots of people, right?
[More sounds from the child in the audience] – “I don’t want this”
GC: You don’t want this? Come up here, bring the kid up here. I’m going to read to the kid. Tell him I’ve got one little fairy tale here. Come on, bring the kid up, come on, it’s all in the same ball-game. You don’t want to come up here? You think I’m some kind of monster? (she’s right, when I put this book out, I thought of myself as a monster, I thought it sounded smart at the time, you see). I’ll give it to you..it’s at the end..and it’s not, for me –
“Man is mystical, Woman, magical” (- alright?)- “A free spirit is a divine fuck-up” -(I’m the fuck-up) “..Am I related closer to it than the god from whom we are created?” –
(You got it? – I’ve got to take the monster shot (some of this is going to be changed), so, okay.. here is the “Guide To My Infant Son” (and you can hear, you can get this one). There’s one word here that people tell me I can change it one of two ways – (it’s a guide to my infant son)) – “Simple perfection/ Perfect simplicity/it’s easy/like painting a flower/or snapping it dead” – (Now someone told me, “why not plant the flower?” – have the shot of planting the flower and then snapping it dead. No – painting a flower – sure, sure, sure.)
Alright, (I’ll) give you one that I like and then I think we’ll call it a night. Oh, this is for my wife number two, this is a short one for my wife [“For Lisa 2”] – “I saw an angel today/without wings/with human smile/ and nothing to say” – nothing to say…
[Audio for this recording – essential audio – may be heard here (through to approximately forty-nine-and-three-quarter minutes in]