Allen Ginsberg Naropa class continues from here
Student: I read in a publication some of Nietzsche‘s notebooks writing about Thus Spake Zarathustra that he said all the images came directly out of his subconscious .. (that) he was just recording them..
AG: (Yes), Except, see the difficulty I always found is what’s the subconscious? I don’t seem to have one. Or if I think of something I think of it, so it’s conscious. If I don’t think of it, I don’t think of it. What’s the difference between the conscious and the subconscious? I never could figure it out. Except maybe the conscious is something you talk about and the subconscious is something you know but you don’t like to talk about, or something. But is there any real … I don’t know what the subconscious is actually anymore. It doesn’t seem … I don’t think it’s a very practical term, because I don’t … we get dreams that bubble up out of nowhere, so you could say it’s subscious down there, nowhere. So everything comes from there, not just funny poems. If I say “Look at the tree,” I didn’t know I was going to say that until I thought of saying that, so it came from my subconscious to say “Look at the little tree.” So everything comes from the subconscious, sort of. I mean, regular consciousness as well as dreams as well as … well, I don’t know. I don’t know what the subconscious is, is what I’m meaning. It’s a term that everybody takes for granted that it means something but if we had to put our finger on it for practical purposes, like “My poetry comes from the subconscious.” (I’d have to say) “No, it doesn’t. Mine comes from the conscious.” “Well, mine comes from the subconscious.” They’re both big thinking eyeballs. Everybody’s a big thinking eyeball.
to be continued
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately twenty-six-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately twenty-eight-and-a-quarter minutes in