Allen Ginsberg 1985 Naropa classroom discussion continues from here.
AG: What… somebody else? You raised your hand.
Student: (I know someone who believes in myths, to be available for recycling)
AG: So what good is recycling myth? In other words, what function does a myth have if it’s got to be recycled, regurgitated? Does it help anybody? – I mean, what use is.. What’s the use of myth?
Student: (Well, a myth… gives a shape for you to follow… and, recycling it, you find a shape…)
AG. How do you know the shape you’re talking about will be helpful..?
Student: (Well, it contains innumerable things..(and)..)
AG: “Contains” meaning “defines”? – or?
Student: Yeah, defined…by the people (or) re-invent(ed)…..
AG: So that (it) has some social function that way, I guess. – Yes?
Student (2): But you can help others by giving.. showing, or feeling, some…spaciousness (and they can identify in that)
AG: Yeah, well that’s a Buddhist view, which is…
Student (3): I think art has to be for the artist, you know, not.. only that person, reacting to the world. communicating their understanding, and not trying to educate.
AG: It has to be.. or doesn’t (have to be)?
Student (3): It has to be for that person, you know, but the outcome, the reaction, the response.. without the artist trying to please, or, trying to be powerful, or trying to be universal, it just has to just, like, come out.
AG: Yeah, but those are two separate, two separate theories. How do you feel about that?. On one hand, you say it should indicate.. it should communicate.. open up a sense of.. spaciousness, and she’s saying that if it tends to do that then it’s not such a good idea, that it should be for the artist himself.
Student (3): It’s up to the artist.. It’s not for the people out there, it’s for the artist himself.
AG: Well, it’s neither. Then, it’s neither the artist nor the audience, it’s the the art itself! But “the art itself”, that’s just a bunch of words, (or paint, (or stone))
Student(4): The art itself isn’t, I mean, isn’t either, I mean. that’s what it is.
Student (5) – “Language is a virus”
Student (6) – It’s an energy!
AG: And energy. Well, how does that spaciousness… Well, wait a minute, what do you think of that? (this front-row, this gang in the front row, trying to…) how do you feel about that? – Who’s the lady who said “spaciousness”? – Yeah, could you comment on what the folks here are saying? Did you follow what they were saying?
Student (2): Yeah
AG: So how does that sound?
Student(2): Well, I mean, in the long term (it all works out without contradiction).….and I think that when you talk about the kind of people that you’re talking about….. if they’re doing it just for themselves, getting their “ya-yas” themselves, I don’t think.. (if you only) get your “yas-yas” out, I don’t think that works particularly well.
Student (7): Once the ya-yas are a universal “ya-yas”
AG: And she is defining the universal “ya-ya” as a sense of spaciousness.
Student (2): Yes. Spaciousness.
Student (7): I look at the problem from a kind of different point of view. And that is, that all cultures and all languages have always produced poetry, always, continually, like babies, and..
AG So why have we got to go on doing that anyway? … What good does it do anybody?
Student (7): Well, I, you know, I ask myself why we produce babies too, but we do. It’s a kind of human given and it’s pretty much wired into the central nervous system.
AG: But I think if you just leave it at that, saying it’s there, that might be alright, but..
Student (7): It’s too bad that it’s not (everyone..)
AG: You don’t get any insight into its functional..functionality, and therefore you don’t get any insight into the ground that you could apply yourself to it then. I’m asking this question so as to establish some kind of attitude, or ground, or see if there is any common ground that we all have, or can be determined, that will inspire people to take it really seriously, instead of just, as she said, “Ya-yas”, or “jack-off”, or…
to be continued
Audio for the above begins here, at approximately sixty-six-and-a-quarter minutes in and concludes at approximately eighty-one-and-a-half minutes in