in conversation with Allen in May of 1965 at City Lights. Neal speaks out
(somewhat controversially):
Interviewer (to Allen): You don’t seem to share Neal’s total pessimism, at least not in the same way?
NC:… Well, you just.. you’ve got to get rid of the slough, you know, an awful lot of skin, there’s an awful lot of people around that are dead already, (they) may as well be dead
AG: No.. that’s a pretty… Who? Like who?
NC: Well, like all the extremists, all the Civil Rights, all the kiddies.., anybody on any extreme..
AG: On both sides?
NC: On every side, that’s right. You’ve got to have a panoramic view to this thing. The earth’s gonna tilt a little bit, the natural catastrophes are happening, all the forms are dead. I mean, you can handle.. Say you talk to a policeman and, you know, all forms are known. (I) went here yesterday and jumping and jittery around and so looked like I was high so I just let people think I was high. Everything has forms, everything’s known and the forms are changing, there’s no life in the forms. Life goes where the new forms are, see, you’re not gonna have.. I mean, you may as well.. All of this, this is all hindsight that you’re talking about. It’s already too late. The Pentagon has taken care of all.. We’re doing this deliberately, as far as that goes.
AG: The Pentagon is doing what deliberately?
NC: Well, I don’t know who’s running the country, do you?
AG: No, I have no idea who’s running the country.
NC: Well, let’s hold off.
AG: That’s the whole point. Nobody knows who’s running the country anymore!
NC: Well, just enjoy it.
AG: (exasperated) For years he’s been talking like that!
**********************
AG: Try not to become paranoid. The United States is the cause of the paranoia. The United States has become paranoid in return. It’s a two-way deal and the United States has just as responsible as anybody else. So I think it’s our guilt and it’s about time we faced up to it and changed policy entirely.It’s been going on like twenty years and everybody’s life is being destroyed by it.
NC: A lot more destroyed. It’s kind of an armageddon, you know … gotta kill a lot of people out in the next year or so..
AG: What, you think it’s all…
NC: Oh sure, sure, just sort of the test period, you know, get rid of a few million here and there. Country air, natural catastrophes, earthquakes and everything on the coast. People everywhere, the extremists, civil rights, all that mess.
AG: You think it’s a big dividing point?
NC: Well, you gotta clean up a lot of mess you know after getting out of balance. Why, drop all the dead….John 15-1
AG: John 15-1? What’s it say there?
NC: Oh on the branches, figs on the branches or something, you know, and he cleans up the house, (woman does), but those that bear fruit, he “purgeth”! – So, naturally, not bearing any fruit, you’re gonna kill a few.
Editorial note – John 15 – verses 1 & 2 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit”
AG: You have a pessimistic view.
NC: It’s not pessimistic, it’s obvious that all the extremists, a year from now, won’t even be here , let alone the..
AG: Extremists? Will we be here then?
NC: I don’t think you will.
AG: We’re extremists now?
NC: Well, no, just kind of a focal point.
AG: Well, it’s getting scary.
These snippets and outtakes are from Allen’s May 1965 reading of Kral Majales at City Lights courtesy of Jerry Aronson’s The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg
and here, courtesy David Hoffman, is another Cassady crazy rap:
Hear more Neal babble (with The Grateful Dead quietly noodling behind him) (recorded live at The Strait Theater, San Francisco, July 23 1967)