Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg in conversation (and regarding Allen’s photographs) continues from here
GC: Now here’s our friend, Alan Ansen. Alan Ansen was (W.H.) Auden’s secretary
AG: During the ‘Forties. I think he helped type up Age of Anxiety, and..
GC: … he loves William Burroughs, Look at how Burroughs looks great in that.
AG: Ansen’s getting a big book of poetry out, by the way..
GC: I’m happy for him.
AG: And I hear it’s really good. His life’s work has never been published before and all of a sudden he’s going to turn out to be another rich genius.
GC: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. Ansen.. That.. He’s very classy, you know. You know that thing in your book for your birthday?
AG: Yeah
GC: You see, everybody had an accolade for you,
AG: Yeah.
GC: He took it like he had to have some literary discussion. Then, I split my sides laughing my ass off, because, he was always talking about, well, this guy writes this way – (and) all it’s supposed to be to be, “Hi Al, Happy 60thYear!” – Anyway, look, (he’s a) good actor, tho’.
AG: Yeah. Do you know what they’re doing?
GC: Yeah He’s strangling…er… he’s strangling Ansen?
AG: You know what literary reference that is?
GC: Oh well let me see now. William Burroughs hanging Alan Ansen, take off on Naked Lunch..
AG: “Blue Movie” (the “Blue Movie” episode in Naked Lunch)
GC: The Blue Movie – Of course! – orgasm.
AG: Hanging orgasm.
GC: They do that today, don’t they? People hang themselves, you know. So these kids they say commit suicide, really aren’t commiting suicide. These middle-class kids, they learn to do that, they put crack, they put something under their nose too, amyl-nitrate?
AG: Amyl-nitrate
GC: Amyl-nitrate, right?, so that it holds the blood in the neck, right? so you have a big orgasm..
AG: So what happens?.. the brain doesn’t get any blood?
GC: The brain doesn’t get any blood, so when you’re coming.. Something weird – but, oh my god, I would never screw around with my coming, would you?
AG: No. No.
GC: See, I had a dream once, it was scary, that I came and couldn’t stop coming!
AG: Mmmm.
GC: Now that’s beautiful, but it’s scary.
AG: So how did it feel in the dream?
GC: Beautiful, but weird. I woke up, I was scared. Couldn’t breathe. If you come, you don’t stop coming, Allen. I put in the poem, I said. “I dreamt I came and kept on coming”. So this here Blue Movie’s weird. Supposedly when you..
AG: When the neck snaps, the whole nervous system spasms and you come.
GC: And then you come, right?
AG: That’s the metaphor for involuntary coming, from, actually, from sodomy.
GC: That’s right.
AG: It’s a metaphor for sodomy.
GC: That’s where the mandrake comes from, right? because the hanging man..
AG: ..drops of seed on the ground..
GC: He drops his seed on the ground. The mandrake root grows under the gallows, okay..
GC: (That’s) a good picture, Al. Hey, they both look so great. Boy, what handsome people we knew! We knew handsome people.
to be continued