Inspiration Peak: Inspirational Quotes, Poetry and Short StoriesLearn To Be Quiet
Franz Kafka
You need not do anything.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, just wait.
You need not even wait,
just learn to be quiet, still and solitary.
And the world will freely offer itself to you unmasked.
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
Tuesday, 16 December 2008
Friday, 12 December 2008
Sunday, 23 November 2008
A Most Beautiful & Brave Woman
http://www.moonspheres.com/iam.html
I am a mother, servant and a wife. I am a sister, a daughter, and a friend. I am all of these things.
I am a woman who loves with all that I am and defends what I love fiercely. I am both loving and loyal to the people I choose to surround myself with - my friends and family.
I am a mother, servant and a wife. I am a sister, a daughter, and a friend. I am all of these things.
I am a woman who loves with all that I am and defends what I love fiercely. I am both loving and loyal to the people I choose to surround myself with - my friends and family.
Sunday, 19 October 2008
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
Thursday, 2 October 2008
Mad Dog Palin : Rolling Stone
Mad Dog Palin : Rolling StoneSarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.
AMERICA: Freedom To Fascism. Aaron Russo Interview.
AMERICA: Freedom To Fascism. Aaron Russo Interview.AMERICA: Freedom To Fascism. Aaron Russo Interview
OUR FIRST LOOK AT TIM BURTON'S ALICE IN WONDERLAND! | INF Daily
OUR FIRST LOOK AT TIM BURTON'S ALICE IN WONDERLAND! | INF DailyOUR FIRST LOOK AT TIM BURTON'S ALICE IN WONDERLAND!
Lisa Gerrard Interview
Lisa Gerrard InterviewThe unique and outstanding Australian vocalist and composer Lisa Gerrard gained worldwide recognition as half of the ethereal/alternative world music group, Dead Can Dance, with Brendan Perry.
Since disbanding in 1998 (reuniting temporarily for a world tour in 2005), Gerrard has focused on a wide range of projects, from movie scores (inc. Gladiator, Heat, The Insider) to enterprising solo albums such as 1995's The Mirror Pool, and more recently, The Silver Tree,
Also in 2007, the 4AD label released the unmissable retrospective album, The Best of Lisa Gerrard, exploring many of the highlights from Gerrard's various solo and collaborative projects to date.
There seems like no better time to question Lisa on her past, present and future...
Since disbanding in 1998 (reuniting temporarily for a world tour in 2005), Gerrard has focused on a wide range of projects, from movie scores (inc. Gladiator, Heat, The Insider) to enterprising solo albums such as 1995's The Mirror Pool, and more recently, The Silver Tree,
Also in 2007, the 4AD label released the unmissable retrospective album, The Best of Lisa Gerrard, exploring many of the highlights from Gerrard's various solo and collaborative projects to date.
There seems like no better time to question Lisa on her past, present and future...
Friday, 26 September 2008
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Friday, 19 September 2008
Monday, 8 September 2008
Sunday, 7 September 2008
Sunday, 31 August 2008
Sunday, 24 August 2008
Humans: Are We Carnivores or Vegetarians by Nature?
Humans: Are We Carnivores or Vegetarians by Nature?
Although some historians and anthropologists say that man is historically omnivorous, our anatomical equipment teeth, jaws, and digestive system favors a fleshless diet. The American Dietetic Association notes that “most of mankind for most of human history has lived on vegetarian or near-vegetarian diets.”
And much of the world still lives that way. Even on most industrialized countries, the love affair with meat is less than a hundred years old. It started with the refrigerator car and the twentieth-century consumer society. But even with the twentieth century, man’s body hasn’t adapted to eating meat. The prominent Swedish scientist Karl von Linne states, “Man’s structure, external and internal, compared with that of the other animals, shows that fruit and succulent vegetables constitute his natural food.”
Comparison between carnivores, herbivores and humans
When you look at the comparison between herbivores and humans, we compare much more closely to herbivores than meat eating animals. Humans are clearly not designed to digest and ingest meat.
* Meat-eaters: have claws
Herbivores: no claws
Humans: no claws
* Meat-eaters: have no skin pores and perspire through the tongue
Herbivores: perspire through skin pores
Humans: perspire through skin pores
* Meat-eaters: have sharp front teeth for tearing, with no flat molar teeth for grinding
Herbivores: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding
Humans: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding
* Meat-eaters: have intestinal tract that is only 3 times their body length so that rapidly decaying meat can pass through quickly
Herbivores: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.
Humans: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.
* Meat-eaters: have strong hydrochloric acid in stomach to digest meat
Herbivores: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater
Humans: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater
* Meat-eaters: salivary glands in mouth not needed to pre-digest grains and fruits.
Herbivores: well-developed salivary glands which are necessary to pre-digest grains and fruits
Humans: well-developed salivary glands, which are necessary to pre-digest, grains and fruits
* Meat-eaters: have acid saliva with no enzyme ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Herbivores: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Humans: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Based on a chart by A.D. Andrews, Fit Food for Men, (Chicago: American Hygiene Society, 1970)
Clearly if humans were meant to eat meat we wouldn’t have so many crucial ingestive/digestive similarities with animals that are herbivores.
Why do people eat meat?
Many people ask me, “If we weren’t supposed to eat meat than why do we?”. It is because we are conditioned to eat meat. Also, the ADA (American Dietetic Association) tells us that “most of mankind for most of human history has lived on a vegetarian or Lacto-ovo vegetarian diet.
A popular statement that meat eaters say is; “In the wild, animals kill other animals for food. It’s nature.” First of all, we are not in the wild. Secondly, we can easily live without eating meat and killing, not to mention we’d be healthier. And finally, as I have already shown, we weren’t meant to eat meat. Meat and seafood putrefies within 4 hours after consumption and the remnants cling to the walls of the stomach and intestines for 3-4 days or longer than if a person is constipated. Furthermore, the reaction of saliva in humans is more alkaline, whereas in the case of flesh-eating or preying animals, it is clearly acidic. The alkaline saliva does not act properly on meat.
The final point I would like to make on how we as humans were not meant to eat meat is this. All omnivorous and carnivorous animals eat their meat raw. When a lion kills an herbivore for food, it tears right into the stomach area to eat the organs that are filled with blood (nutrients). While eating the stomach, liver, intestine, etc., the lion laps the blood in the process of eating the dead animals flesh. Even bears that are omnivores eat salmon raw. However, eating raw or bloody meat disgust us as humans. Therefore, we must cook it and season it to buffer the taste of flesh.
If a deer is burned in a forest fire, a carnivorous animal will NOT eat its flesh. Even circus lions have to be feed raw meat so that they will not starve to death. If humans were truly meant to eat meat, then we would eat all of our meat raw and bloody. The thought of eating such meat makes one’s stomach turn. This is my point on how we as humans are conditioned to believe that animal flesh is good for us and that we were meant to consume it for survival and health purposes. If we are true carnivores or omnivores, cooking our meat and seasoning it with salt, ketchup, or tabasco sauce would disguise and we as humans would refuse to eat our meat in this form.
Although some historians and anthropologists say that man is historically omnivorous, our anatomical equipment teeth, jaws, and digestive system favors a fleshless diet. The American Dietetic Association notes that “most of mankind for most of human history has lived on vegetarian or near-vegetarian diets.”
And much of the world still lives that way. Even on most industrialized countries, the love affair with meat is less than a hundred years old. It started with the refrigerator car and the twentieth-century consumer society. But even with the twentieth century, man’s body hasn’t adapted to eating meat. The prominent Swedish scientist Karl von Linne states, “Man’s structure, external and internal, compared with that of the other animals, shows that fruit and succulent vegetables constitute his natural food.”
Comparison between carnivores, herbivores and humans
When you look at the comparison between herbivores and humans, we compare much more closely to herbivores than meat eating animals. Humans are clearly not designed to digest and ingest meat.
* Meat-eaters: have claws
Herbivores: no claws
Humans: no claws
* Meat-eaters: have no skin pores and perspire through the tongue
Herbivores: perspire through skin pores
Humans: perspire through skin pores
* Meat-eaters: have sharp front teeth for tearing, with no flat molar teeth for grinding
Herbivores: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding
Humans: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding
* Meat-eaters: have intestinal tract that is only 3 times their body length so that rapidly decaying meat can pass through quickly
Herbivores: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.
Humans: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.
* Meat-eaters: have strong hydrochloric acid in stomach to digest meat
Herbivores: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater
Humans: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater
* Meat-eaters: salivary glands in mouth not needed to pre-digest grains and fruits.
Herbivores: well-developed salivary glands which are necessary to pre-digest grains and fruits
Humans: well-developed salivary glands, which are necessary to pre-digest, grains and fruits
* Meat-eaters: have acid saliva with no enzyme ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Herbivores: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Humans: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Based on a chart by A.D. Andrews, Fit Food for Men, (Chicago: American Hygiene Society, 1970)
Clearly if humans were meant to eat meat we wouldn’t have so many crucial ingestive/digestive similarities with animals that are herbivores.
Why do people eat meat?
Many people ask me, “If we weren’t supposed to eat meat than why do we?”. It is because we are conditioned to eat meat. Also, the ADA (American Dietetic Association) tells us that “most of mankind for most of human history has lived on a vegetarian or Lacto-ovo vegetarian diet.
A popular statement that meat eaters say is; “In the wild, animals kill other animals for food. It’s nature.” First of all, we are not in the wild. Secondly, we can easily live without eating meat and killing, not to mention we’d be healthier. And finally, as I have already shown, we weren’t meant to eat meat. Meat and seafood putrefies within 4 hours after consumption and the remnants cling to the walls of the stomach and intestines for 3-4 days or longer than if a person is constipated. Furthermore, the reaction of saliva in humans is more alkaline, whereas in the case of flesh-eating or preying animals, it is clearly acidic. The alkaline saliva does not act properly on meat.
The final point I would like to make on how we as humans were not meant to eat meat is this. All omnivorous and carnivorous animals eat their meat raw. When a lion kills an herbivore for food, it tears right into the stomach area to eat the organs that are filled with blood (nutrients). While eating the stomach, liver, intestine, etc., the lion laps the blood in the process of eating the dead animals flesh. Even bears that are omnivores eat salmon raw. However, eating raw or bloody meat disgust us as humans. Therefore, we must cook it and season it to buffer the taste of flesh.
If a deer is burned in a forest fire, a carnivorous animal will NOT eat its flesh. Even circus lions have to be feed raw meat so that they will not starve to death. If humans were truly meant to eat meat, then we would eat all of our meat raw and bloody. The thought of eating such meat makes one’s stomach turn. This is my point on how we as humans are conditioned to believe that animal flesh is good for us and that we were meant to consume it for survival and health purposes. If we are true carnivores or omnivores, cooking our meat and seasoning it with salt, ketchup, or tabasco sauce would disguise and we as humans would refuse to eat our meat in this form.
Saturday, 23 August 2008
snopes.com: Dolores Aguilar Obituary
snopes.com: Dolores Aguilar Obituary
Dolores Aguilar 1929 - Aug. 7, 2008
Dolores Aguilar, born in 1929 in New Mexico, left us on August 7, 2008. She will be met in the afterlife by her husband, Raymond, her son, Paul Jr., and daughter, Ruby. She is survived by her daughters Marietta, Mitzi, Stella, Beatrice, Virginia and Ramona, and son Billy; grandchildren, Donnelle, Joe, Mitzie, Maria, Mario, Marty, Tynette, Tania, Leta, Alexandria, Tommy, Billy, Mathew, Raymond, Kenny, Javier, Lisa, Ashlie and Michael; great-grandchildren, Brendan, Joseph, Karissa, Jacob, Delaney, Shawn, Cienna, Bailey, Christian, Andre Jr., Andrea, Keith, Saeed, Nujaymah, Salma, Merissa, Emily, Jayci, Isabella, Samantha and Emily. I apologize if I missed anyone.
Dolores had no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life. I speak for the majority of her family when I say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed and there will be no lamenting over her passing. Her family will remember Dolores and amongst ourselves we will remember her in our own way, which were mostly sad and troubling times throughout the years. We may have some fond memories of her and perhaps we will think of those times too. But I truly believe at the end of the day ALL of us will really only miss what we never had, a good and kind mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. I hope she is finally at peace with herself.
As for the rest of us left behind, I hope this is the beginning of a time of healing and learning to be a family again. There will be no service, no prayers and no closure for the family she spent a lifetime tearing apart. We cannot come together in the end to see to it that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren can say their goodbyes. So I say here for all of us, GOOD BYE, MOM.
Dolores Aguilar 1929 - Aug. 7, 2008
Dolores Aguilar, born in 1929 in New Mexico, left us on August 7, 2008. She will be met in the afterlife by her husband, Raymond, her son, Paul Jr., and daughter, Ruby. She is survived by her daughters Marietta, Mitzi, Stella, Beatrice, Virginia and Ramona, and son Billy; grandchildren, Donnelle, Joe, Mitzie, Maria, Mario, Marty, Tynette, Tania, Leta, Alexandria, Tommy, Billy, Mathew, Raymond, Kenny, Javier, Lisa, Ashlie and Michael; great-grandchildren, Brendan, Joseph, Karissa, Jacob, Delaney, Shawn, Cienna, Bailey, Christian, Andre Jr., Andrea, Keith, Saeed, Nujaymah, Salma, Merissa, Emily, Jayci, Isabella, Samantha and Emily. I apologize if I missed anyone.
Dolores had no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life. I speak for the majority of her family when I say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed and there will be no lamenting over her passing. Her family will remember Dolores and amongst ourselves we will remember her in our own way, which were mostly sad and troubling times throughout the years. We may have some fond memories of her and perhaps we will think of those times too. But I truly believe at the end of the day ALL of us will really only miss what we never had, a good and kind mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. I hope she is finally at peace with herself.
As for the rest of us left behind, I hope this is the beginning of a time of healing and learning to be a family again. There will be no service, no prayers and no closure for the family she spent a lifetime tearing apart. We cannot come together in the end to see to it that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren can say their goodbyes. So I say here for all of us, GOOD BYE, MOM.
Tuesday, 19 August 2008
10 Simple Ways to Achieve Balance in your Life | EnlightenmentRing.com
10 Simple Ways to Achieve Balance in your Life | EnlightenmentRing.com
We are always struggling to find balance in our lives. With the constant demands of work and family, often our mind, body and spirit pay the price for getting things done. What follows are several important strategies you can employ today that will help you achieve a terrific balance and give you the power to do more things that really matter.
1. Don’t work yourself to death. Set some boundaries when it comes to your work life. Predetermine certain days of the weeks, or hours of the day when you only focus on yourself or your family. Instead of causing you to fall behind, this will actually help you work more efficiently during the rest of the week.
2. Don’t let regret enter your life. The things in your past have already occurred. You have no power to change these things. Why then, do so many of us allow regret to throw us off of our balance? Living in the present, and enjoying each moment as it occurs, is one of the easiest ways to enjoy more spiritual and mental balance in your life.
3. Don’t take on too much. It is hard for many of us to delegate responsibility to others. Whether it is at work or in the home, we become victims of the “I’ll just do it myself” mentality. The result is that we spend too much time focusing on certain aspects of our lives while neglecting others. We quickly forget that everything is a trade-off. Learn to delegate to co-workers, family members and your spouse. Return the favor for them to achieve an even greater balance.
4. Treat yourself to something nice. Many times we don’t reward ourselves enough. While it is kind and decent to always try to put other people first, this should not come at the expense of our own well-being. If you work hard, reward is the proper balance to putting forth that effort.
5. Be nice to others. In order to achieve real spiritual fulfillment, one must rise above the fray and…just be a nicer person. Acting with kindness to other human beings has a “pay it forward” effect that not only makes you feel good, but improves the world around you as well.
6. Get organized and reduce clutter. Sometimes, we look back on a particularly busy day and ask ourselves, “what, exactly just happened here?” Lives filled with too much clutter and racing around from Point A to Point B are going to lead to stress and health issues. Take a day and get organized. Prioritize your life. Like a garage sale, it may be time to get rid of some things that are cluttering up the corners of your life.
7. Get back to basics. For many people seeking balance, there’s nothing better than the traditional arts of meditation, yoga or acupuncture. All three can provide a pathway to spirituality and greater union of the mind, body and spirit. In a stressful, ever-changing world, constants such as these can be an ideal way to achieve balance.
8. Be positive. Far too often, a negative attitude can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or to put it another way, when we keep focusing on bad things, they often end up happening. Positive, upbeat people have a clearer point of view and generally speaking get more of what they want out of life…including proper balance.
9. Exercise often and eat right. A healthy body is the quickest way to a healthy mind and spirit. Proper nutrition provides the fuel for exercise, which in turn enhances every aspect of your life.
10. Have more fun. Many experts assert that consulting with your “inner child” as often as possible is the key to striking a harmonious balance in life. You remember your inner child, right? The little person who understood the simple pleasures of life and the importance of play? Get back to that child today and find out how you can inject some activities that aren’t so serious into your day to day existence.
We are always struggling to find balance in our lives. With the constant demands of work and family, often our mind, body and spirit pay the price for getting things done. What follows are several important strategies you can employ today that will help you achieve a terrific balance and give you the power to do more things that really matter.
1. Don’t work yourself to death. Set some boundaries when it comes to your work life. Predetermine certain days of the weeks, or hours of the day when you only focus on yourself or your family. Instead of causing you to fall behind, this will actually help you work more efficiently during the rest of the week.
2. Don’t let regret enter your life. The things in your past have already occurred. You have no power to change these things. Why then, do so many of us allow regret to throw us off of our balance? Living in the present, and enjoying each moment as it occurs, is one of the easiest ways to enjoy more spiritual and mental balance in your life.
3. Don’t take on too much. It is hard for many of us to delegate responsibility to others. Whether it is at work or in the home, we become victims of the “I’ll just do it myself” mentality. The result is that we spend too much time focusing on certain aspects of our lives while neglecting others. We quickly forget that everything is a trade-off. Learn to delegate to co-workers, family members and your spouse. Return the favor for them to achieve an even greater balance.
4. Treat yourself to something nice. Many times we don’t reward ourselves enough. While it is kind and decent to always try to put other people first, this should not come at the expense of our own well-being. If you work hard, reward is the proper balance to putting forth that effort.
5. Be nice to others. In order to achieve real spiritual fulfillment, one must rise above the fray and…just be a nicer person. Acting with kindness to other human beings has a “pay it forward” effect that not only makes you feel good, but improves the world around you as well.
6. Get organized and reduce clutter. Sometimes, we look back on a particularly busy day and ask ourselves, “what, exactly just happened here?” Lives filled with too much clutter and racing around from Point A to Point B are going to lead to stress and health issues. Take a day and get organized. Prioritize your life. Like a garage sale, it may be time to get rid of some things that are cluttering up the corners of your life.
7. Get back to basics. For many people seeking balance, there’s nothing better than the traditional arts of meditation, yoga or acupuncture. All three can provide a pathway to spirituality and greater union of the mind, body and spirit. In a stressful, ever-changing world, constants such as these can be an ideal way to achieve balance.
8. Be positive. Far too often, a negative attitude can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or to put it another way, when we keep focusing on bad things, they often end up happening. Positive, upbeat people have a clearer point of view and generally speaking get more of what they want out of life…including proper balance.
9. Exercise often and eat right. A healthy body is the quickest way to a healthy mind and spirit. Proper nutrition provides the fuel for exercise, which in turn enhances every aspect of your life.
10. Have more fun. Many experts assert that consulting with your “inner child” as often as possible is the key to striking a harmonious balance in life. You remember your inner child, right? The little person who understood the simple pleasures of life and the importance of play? Get back to that child today and find out how you can inject some activities that aren’t so serious into your day to day existence.
Tuesday, 5 August 2008
Introverts and Extraverts
Introverts and Extraverts
Realize the draining effect a conversation can have on someone.
No matter how fabulous a person you are, keep in mind that introverts simply prefer their internal world to the external world. They might start off with a fully charged battery, but while they’re engaged in conversation, that battery is steadily draining. How long it lasts depends on various factors, but be sure to keep an eye out for when they’re starting to lose interest. Be more to the point with introverts, and save most of your chatting for extraverts who will appreciate it more.
Remember that introverts need their alone time.
Perhaps the hardest thing for extraverts to understand about introverts is that someone could actually want to be alone. Not because they don’t like to have fun, or because they hate people, but just because they prefer their internal world, and they need to return to it to be energized. If someone doesn’t want to hang out with you, don’t try to push them, because they just need their “me” time. Of course, there’s always the possibility that they just don’t like you!
Realize the draining effect a conversation can have on someone.
No matter how fabulous a person you are, keep in mind that introverts simply prefer their internal world to the external world. They might start off with a fully charged battery, but while they’re engaged in conversation, that battery is steadily draining. How long it lasts depends on various factors, but be sure to keep an eye out for when they’re starting to lose interest. Be more to the point with introverts, and save most of your chatting for extraverts who will appreciate it more.
Remember that introverts need their alone time.
Perhaps the hardest thing for extraverts to understand about introverts is that someone could actually want to be alone. Not because they don’t like to have fun, or because they hate people, but just because they prefer their internal world, and they need to return to it to be energized. If someone doesn’t want to hang out with you, don’t try to push them, because they just need their “me” time. Of course, there’s always the possibility that they just don’t like you!
Friday, 11 July 2008
Sunday, 6 July 2008
The Hidden Giant #1: “Food” — Vegetarianism : Planetsave
The Hidden Giant #1: “Food” — Vegetarianism : Planetsave: "."
At a time when environmental degradation and massive environmental problems have become increasingly obvious and harmful to human health (as well as the health and existence of many other species), meat production per person has nearly doubled. Granted, there are many contributors to the environmental crises we face, but this is one of the largest and, at the same time, one of the most hidden and least discussed.
For more information on the relationship between food and the environment, take a look at the UN FAO report or this webpage on the link between food and the environment.
We are the top of creation, as they say, and as we proceed, so does our planet.
We may proceed in destruction, including taking the lives of nature’s more highly evolved species to “satisfy” our tongue and stomach.
Or we may proceed in more highly evolved care for life.
Our actions come back to us.
It is a more important issue than saving the environment that sustains us, physically, but it is a critical issue in this realm as well and should not be ignored just because it is considered to be more important to the realm of morals and spiritual life.
Life is to be cherished, and not only the life of our own, but the lives of our brother and sister animals and organisms.
Without taking care for the lives of other highly evolved creatures, we threaten our own lives and the lives of our future generations.
This is a great forgotten issue in many environmental discussions and societies.
At a time when environmental degradation and massive environmental problems have become increasingly obvious and harmful to human health (as well as the health and existence of many other species), meat production per person has nearly doubled. Granted, there are many contributors to the environmental crises we face, but this is one of the largest and, at the same time, one of the most hidden and least discussed.
For more information on the relationship between food and the environment, take a look at the UN FAO report or this webpage on the link between food and the environment.
We are the top of creation, as they say, and as we proceed, so does our planet.
We may proceed in destruction, including taking the lives of nature’s more highly evolved species to “satisfy” our tongue and stomach.
Or we may proceed in more highly evolved care for life.
Our actions come back to us.
It is a more important issue than saving the environment that sustains us, physically, but it is a critical issue in this realm as well and should not be ignored just because it is considered to be more important to the realm of morals and spiritual life.
Life is to be cherished, and not only the life of our own, but the lives of our brother and sister animals and organisms.
Without taking care for the lives of other highly evolved creatures, we threaten our own lives and the lives of our future generations.
This is a great forgotten issue in many environmental discussions and societies.
Thursday, 3 July 2008
Thieves steal Joy Division singer's memorial stone - Yahoo! News UK
Thieves steal Joy Division singer's memorial stone - Yahoo! News UK
SICK BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thieves steal Joy Division singer's memorial stone
Reuters
Reuters - Thursday, July 3 01:50 pm
LONDON (Reuters) - Thieves have stolen a memorial stone for Ian Curtis, frontman of the influential post-punk band Joy Division.
(Advertisement)
The stone, bearing the epitaph "Love Will Tear Us Apart" -- the title of the band's most famous song -- was taken from Macclesfield Crematorium in northern England on Monday or Tuesday, police said.
Fans from all over the world would travel to the site to pay their respects, often leaving messages and tokens behind.
A married man, Curtis committed suicide in 1980 at the age of 23, shortly before the band, an inspiration for many other groups and musicians, were due to begin a U.S. tour.
He had struggled to deal with the demands of combining home life and being in the band, the strain of epilepsy and falling in love with another woman. His personal troubles were often reflected in dark, painful lyrics, which he wrote.
Local officials have appealed for the stone's return.
"I'm shocked this has happened," said Bill North of Macclesfield Borough Council. "Someone's gone to a great deal of trouble to remove the memorial stone and I hope our appeal will help return it as soon as possible."
Curtis's widow Debbie had been informed, the council said.
"This is a very unusual theft and I am confident that someone locally will have knowledge about who is responsible or where the memorial stone is at present," said police Inspector Gareth Woods.
Curtis returned to prominence after two films about his life were released last year. After his death, the three other members of Joy Division went on to form the successful band New Order.
(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Keith Weir)
SICK BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thieves steal Joy Division singer's memorial stone
Reuters
Reuters - Thursday, July 3 01:50 pm
LONDON (Reuters) - Thieves have stolen a memorial stone for Ian Curtis, frontman of the influential post-punk band Joy Division.
(Advertisement)
The stone, bearing the epitaph "Love Will Tear Us Apart" -- the title of the band's most famous song -- was taken from Macclesfield Crematorium in northern England on Monday or Tuesday, police said.
Fans from all over the world would travel to the site to pay their respects, often leaving messages and tokens behind.
A married man, Curtis committed suicide in 1980 at the age of 23, shortly before the band, an inspiration for many other groups and musicians, were due to begin a U.S. tour.
He had struggled to deal with the demands of combining home life and being in the band, the strain of epilepsy and falling in love with another woman. His personal troubles were often reflected in dark, painful lyrics, which he wrote.
Local officials have appealed for the stone's return.
"I'm shocked this has happened," said Bill North of Macclesfield Borough Council. "Someone's gone to a great deal of trouble to remove the memorial stone and I hope our appeal will help return it as soon as possible."
Curtis's widow Debbie had been informed, the council said.
"This is a very unusual theft and I am confident that someone locally will have knowledge about who is responsible or where the memorial stone is at present," said police Inspector Gareth Woods.
Curtis returned to prominence after two films about his life were released last year. After his death, the three other members of Joy Division went on to form the successful band New Order.
(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Keith Weir)
Monday, 30 June 2008
George Carlin's Last Interview | Psychology Today Blogs
George Carlin's Last Interview | Psychology Today BlogsGeorge Carlin's Last Interview
By Jay Dixit on June 23, 2008 in Brainstorm
George CarlinTen days ago, on Friday, June 13th, 2008, I had the extraordinary privilege of talking to George Carlin. As far as I know it was the last in-depth interview he gave before he passed away yesterday at age 71. Originally it was slated to run as a 350-word Q&A on the back page of Psychology Today. But I was so excited to talk to him—and he was so generous with his time—that I just kept on going. By the end I had over 14,000 words.
On stage, George Carlin came across as a grouch, often vulgar and sometimes misanthropic. But with me he was patient and warm, happy to talk through the minutiae of his creative process and eager to share stories about his childhood, his evolution as a comic, and his influence. What struck me most was the joy in his voice as he talked about the wonderful feeling he got in his gut while writing. I was also moved by the gratitude he expressed for his mother, who he said “saved” him and his brother—leaving her bullying, alcoholic husband when George was just two months old, getting a job during the worst years of the Depression, and raising two boys on her own.
He spoke about the pride he took in his work. As a ninth-grade dropout, he said, it was gratifying to see his words quoted in textbooks, classrooms, and courtrooms. And he was proud to have inspired other comedy greats, who routinely called him to say, "If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be doing this." As he looked back on his astonishingly prolific 50-year career—which includes 130 Tonight Show appearances, 23 albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, and one Supreme Court case—the interview became a sort of retrospective of his life.
Finally, after two hours, he gently mentioned that his arm was getting tired from holding the phone. “I really appreciate all the thought you’ve put into all these questions. Really, it’s the most complete interview I’ve ever done,” he said. “Is it tomorrow yet? I think it is.”
“It feels like it is,” I said, struggling to keep up with his wit.
“All this is for a quote unquote back page?” he said.
“This is for the back page, but, I don’t know, I just love you and your work so much!” I gushed. “I just had so much I wanted to ask.”
At the time, I was embarrassed by what I’d said. But when I heard the sad news this morning, my feelings changed instantly. I’m honored that I got to speak to him, and I’m grateful that I got to tell him how much I admired him before he died.
It would be impossible to overstate George Carlin’s contribution to standup comedy. Along with Richard Pryor and a few others, he essentially created the genre as we know it today. But he was more than just a comedy pioneer. He was a freethinker who never backed down, and he truly changed the course of American culture. He will be missed. —Jay Dixit
The Interview
What follows are edited highlights. They represent a little over half of the interview.
How do you think about comedy and self-expression? Expressing what’s within vs. looking at the outside world and making observations?
Self-expression is a hallmark of an artist, of art, to get something off one’s chest, to sing one’s song. So that element is present in all art. And comedy, although it is not one of the fine arts—it’s a vulgar art, it’s one of the people’s arts, it’s the spoken word, the writing that goes into it is an art form—it’s certainly artistry. So self-expression is the key to even standing up and saying, "Hey, listen to me." Self-expression can be based on looking at the world and making observations about it or not. Comedy can also be based on describing one’s inner self—doing anecdotes, talking about your own fears. Woody Allen taps into a lot of self-analysis in his comedy. But I don’t think these things are mutually exclusive. I think self-expression is present at all times, and whether or not you’re talking about the outside world or your responses to it depends on the moment and the subject.
Do you go around observing and trying to collect funny things? Or do you just live your life and then say how you feel about what you happen to have seen?
I’m 71, and I’ve been doing this for a little over 50 years, doing it at a fairly visible level for 40. By this time it’s all second nature. It’s all a machine that works a certain way: the observations, the immediate evaluation of the observation, and then the mental filing of it, or writing it down on a piece of paper. I’ve often described the way a 20-year-old versus, say, a 60- or a 70-year-old, the way it works. A 20-year-old has a limited amount of data they’ve experienced, either seeing or listening to the world. At 70 it’s a much richer storage area, the matrix inside is more textured, and has more contours to it. So, observations made by a 20-year-old are compared against a data set that is incomplete. Observations made by a 60-year-old are compared against a much richer data set. And the observations have more resonance, they’re richer.
So if I write something down, some observation—I see something on television that reminds me of something I wanted to say already—the first time I write it, the first time I hear it, it makes an impression. The first time I write it down, it makes a second impression, a deeper path. Every time I look at that piece of paper, until I file it in my file, each time, the path gets a little richer and deeper so that these things are all in there.
Now at this age, I have a network of knowledge and data and observations and feelings and values and evaluations I have in me that do things automatically. And then when I sit down to consciously write, that's when I bring the craftsmanship. That's when I pull everything together and say, how I can best express that? And then as you write, you find more, 'cause the mind is looking for further connections. And these things just flow into your head and you write them. And the writing is the really wonderful part. A lot of this is discovery. A lot of things are lying around waiting to be discovered and that's our job is to just notice them and bring them to life.
Do you think that the richness you described comes from just being able to access more experiences, having information on file? Or is it judgment?
Well, that's true, too. The machine that does all this learns what it is you want—it learns what it is that serves your purpose and it begins to tailor the synthesis. It synthesizes these observations and these comparisons. Comedy’s all about comparisons and contrasts and congruities and incongruities and heightenings and understatement and exaggeration. The mind has all of that stuff built in, and it learns which ones pay off the best for you. It's probably related to the pleasure center. You get so much pleasure finding good observations and finding which things are the richest things you can say, that probably the brain remembers how that happened and learns to provide the best stuff. Maybe you have a little silent editor in there.
You talked about how comedy's all about incongruities, contrasts, exaggeration. Do you think about those techniques or those principles of humor consciously?
It happens automatically. Sometimes there’s a conscious heightening, you'll recognize you've just chosen an image to make a point. Then your mind will just suddenly throw something at you that's stronger—a heightening, to raise the stakes, a stronger word, a more visceral image, something that lights up the imagination, much better than the original thought. So you’re aware that you’re heightening and exaggerating further but you don't use the word exaggeration or anything like that. All that stuff is just happening. And sometimes, afterward, I’ll look at something and say, “If I were giving a comedy lecture, that would be a good example.” I often think in those terms.
Do you think there are any downsides to having gotten to the point where you are, where all of this is happening automatically? Or are there some advantages a 20-year-old would have?
Well, I would imagine there are some that I can’t put my finger on because I don't remember what it was like. I was a different man. I don't know—the advantage that a 20 year old would have would be more longevity to look forward to.
You talked about how wonderful it is, this feeling of writing. So what is your process like?
I take a lot of single-page notes, little memo pad notes. I make a lot of notes on those things. For when I'm not near a little memo pad, I have a digital recorder. Most of the note-taking happens while I’m watching television.
Because the world is undifferentiated on the television set. You may be watching the news channel, but it’s going to cover the breadth of American life and the human experience. It's gonna go from suicide bombings to frivolous consumer goods. It's a broad window on the world, and a lot of things are already established in my mind as things I say, things that I'm interested in, things that are fodder for my machine. And when I see something that relates to one of them, I know it instantly and if it's a further exaggeration and a further addition, or an exception—if it plays into furthering my purpose, I jot it down.
When I harvest the pieces of paper and I go through them and sort them, the one lucky thing I got in my genetic package was a great methodical left brain. I have a very orderly mind that wants to classify and index things and label them and store them according to that. I had a boss in radio when I was 18 years old, and my boss told me to write down every idea I get even if I can't use it at the time, and then file it away and have a system for filing it away—because a good idea is of no use to you unless you can find it. And that stuck with me.
And what's your filing system?
There’s a large segment of it devoted to language, which is a love of mine. And a rich area for my work talking about how we talk. One of the files is called “The Way We Talk.” And it's about certain voguish words that come into style and remain there. But then there are subfiles. Everything has subfiles. There's one that says "Crime." There's "Crime" and there's "Law," there’s "Sex" and there’s "Race." And there’s "Humans"—that’s obviously a big folder with a lot of smaller folders in it, it’s about the human race and the human species and experiences and observations I have about that, or data that I've found about it. You know, 6 million people stepped on land mines this year. Those things interest me.
And there's "America," and America is a major category, of course. It breaks down into the culture, and the culture breaks down into further things. It’s like nested boxes, like the Russian dolls—it's just folders within folders within folders. But I know how to navigate it very well, and I’m a Macintosh a guy and so Spotlight helps me a lot. I just get on Spotlight and say, let's see, if I say "asshole” and “minister," I then can find what I want find.
What's the process of going from something that's true about the world—observing it—to actually making people laugh?
I begin with the knowledge that my audience knows me thoroughly. I know the things they will trust coming from me, and I know they'll allow me to do exposition that’s necessary to set the stage for the piece of material. The funny—that’s part of the genetic package. The genetic marker for language came through my family. My grandfather, whom I didn’t know, was a New York City policeman. I did not know him. During his adult life, he wrote out Shakespeare’s tragedies longhand just for the joy it gave him. And he asked questions about language at his dinner table, my mother told me. My mother had a great love of language, and a great gift for language. The Irish have a genetic tradition, it seems, an affinity for language and expression. And so I got that. The Irish say: "You don’t lick it off the rocks, kid." It comes in the blood. So, I have that and I don’t have to do anything about it.
As Noel Coward said, “All I ever had was a talent to amuse.” I have a talent to amuse and I have a way of finding the joke, a way of expressing things through exaggeration, interesting images, whatever goes in, whatever the parts are that go into making these things work.
I try to come in through the side door. One of the voguish terms, which is so repellant to me, “thinking outside the box.” To settle for that kind of language is embarrassing. But that's a very useful picture. I try to come in through the side door, the side window, to come in from a direction they’re not expecting, to see something in a different way. That's the job that I give myself. So, how can I talk about something eminently familiar to them, on my terms, in a new way, that engages their imagination?
The jokes come. You don’t look for them. It’s all automatic, and, I think, genetic. My father was an after dinner speaker, was a great raconteur. He was an ad salesman for space in newspapers during the 1930s, when that was the primary medium of advertising, and my mother was in advertising her whole life. They both were very funny, and they both were very gifted verbally. So, those things come to you automatically. It's like being a child prodigy with the violin or the piano. It's not something you try for or you have to do too much about except work at it. And that's what I try to do.
How is it that you find things that are unexpected?
I don’t know. But I want to add an element I overlooked. Psychology. We're talking about a magazine called Psychology Today.
As a child, my father was gone. I had no grandparents; they were all dead. Had no real cousins to play with, and I didn’t give a shit, frankly. I experienced my life in a very happy way, but, what I want to say to you is, I was alone as a child. My father was dead. My mother left him when I was 2 months old and he died when I was 8 years old. He drank too much and he was a bully and she had the courage to take two boys, one of them two months old and one of them 5 years old and to leave him in 1937 and get back into the business world and get a job and raise us through the end of the Depression and through the Second World War. She did a great job, but she was at work until 7 or 7:30 at night many nights.
So I spent a lot of time on my own. In the house or out around the neighborhood or sneaking in the subway, going down to 42nd street, traveling around Manhattan Island, learning it as a youngster. And I experienced that—because psychologists ask you not if something's good or bad, but how do you experience it—I experienced that as freedom, independence, autonomy. And I was brought up on that feeling. That’s what made me, I think, able to quit school, and go out and try to start my life and career early, because I had that strength.
And my mother had that strength. I witnessed it. I mean, what she did was she took us away from him and saved us. So, those qualities of being alone like that fostered in me a need for adult approval and attention. Now they say that it's kind of a common cliché that comedians just want attention. But it's an element that's very important. The job is called "look at me." That's the name of this job. “Look at me. Ain't I smart? Ain't I cute? Ain't I clever?"
I needed to be—not the center of attention—but I needed to be able to attract attention when I wanted it, through my stunts and my fooling around physically with faces or postures or voices I would do. Then it became funny the things I would say, and I became more of a wit than simply a mimic and a clown. And so, those things were all important in this. The fact that I didn’t finish school left me with a lifelong need to prove that I’m smart, prove it to myself, maybe to the world. “Ain't I smart, ain't I cute, ain't I clever.” “Listen to me, listen to what I got to say.” So, those things are important elements in the drive behind all of this.
You made an analogy to playing the violin. I wanted to ask you about mastery. You’ve been doing this for, as you said, over 50 years, and it seems like you've only gotten better with time. So I'm wondering what you think has enabled you to do that. Is it like playing the violin? Is it just practice? Is it getting good feedback? Is it—you know, what is it that allows you to hone your craft?
The feedback that I’ve gotten has been through the success of the career. That’s a reinforcing factor. I say: Oh, that works, oh that’s what I do, I see. I think with anything you do over a long period of time, you should be getting better at it. I'm talking about craft, art, or drive that comes from inside.
What is your philosophy about physical performance? You walk around a lot, you make a lot of gestures.
It’s just second nature, you don’t think about it at all. And I don’t pace as much on stage as I used to, maybe it’s my age, I don’t know. I don't feel limited physically, in that respect, but it's just something I’ve grown into.
Were you always making people laugh, sort of automatically, just because of your personality?
Yeah. As I was describing, this is a job for a showoff. In those 8 years of grammar school that I had—the 9th year was kind of a it was a Irish catholic Christian brothers, and it was a much more brutal setting than these lovely nuns we had. So I think of those 8 years as my education. I got the work very easily, I didn’t have any trouble grasping the work, and so I had time to clown, time to signal to my buddy, make a face, make a fart under the arm, I was a bit of a class clown, I was a neighborhood cut-up.
I eventually started doing routines when I was about 14, 15 16. I would do routines on the street corner for my buddies on the stoop. My mother wanted me to finish high school, go to college, be an advertising man, be a businessman like the men at her office whom she admired. But she couldn’t stop this other machine that was revving up.
I had an 8th grade graduation from the grammar school—it was the only graduation I ever had. And in 9th grade, while I was at that school, I had a Brother, one of the brothers who taught, his name was Brother Conrad. My mother had said to me, now George, I didn't get you a graduation present, and this was June 1951, this was now the fall of 1951, when I'm in first year of high school. She said, “I didn't get you a graduation present, so you be thinking about what you might want.”
Brother Conrad was telling the class one day that because he had a clergyman's discount rate, he could get cameras for people. Then he mentioned tape recorders and man, the bell went off in my head! Tape recorders at that time were virtually unknown to the average person. They may have heard about them here or there. They were not consumer items.
She bought me a tape recorder, a Webcor. And that became a tool for me to put some of these verbal impulses to work. I began to produce little radio shows on it at home by using the phonograph. Playing a record on the phonograph, like playing the Dragnet theme. Dun da dun dun. Dun da dun dun duuun.
Then I would fade the phonograph down and I would come in and I would do my make-believe announcer. I did newscasts, I did sports. A lot of the things that I ventured into professionally in my first stage of comedy I was doing on that tape recorder. I recorded a whole half hour of story—it was like a vignette, like a series of vignettes, a drama, about my neighborhood. And guess what: I made fun of authority figures.
So my mother—in spite what she wanted me to do for her, to be a great reflection on her, go to college and be a businessman—she knew this was something I needed. And she got that for me, and it helped accelerate the beginnings of my putting this dream together that I had. I was 14 when I got that tape recorder. They were the size of a Buick. They were not little handy things. And she was smart enough to get me one. That's an important part of my development.
Can you remember the first joke you ever told?
No. But I do remember the first time I ever made my mother laugh. And unfortunately, it’s lost on me what it was I said. But I noticed the moment, I knew something had happened, this was when I was very young. My mother laughed fairly frequently. But I knew the difference between her social laugh and her really spontaneous laugh when she was caught off guard—which is the key to laugher, being off guard. And I said something to her, and I saw that in her and it registered with me. And it made the point. I wouldn’t have remembered it as well as I do if it hadn’t meant a lot to me. It was a kind of a little mark along the way, a little badge of honor. It meant I had said something witty. I didn’t clown, I wasn’t making a face or standing in a funny angle. I had said something witty. I had probably turned some situation around, exaggerated one element, and made a joke.
I want to talk about the transformation that you did in the 60s when you went from what you once termed the “middle-American comic” to this different persona—it was much more subversive. How did that happen and why did that happen?
I was always swimming against the tide. I was always out of step. Not only did I quit school, but I got kicked out of three schools along the way. I eventually got asked to leave the air force a year early—it wasn’t dishonorable, but it was a general discharge, which is a step down—because I did not shape up, I didn’t like authority, I had three court-martials. I was kicked off the alter boys, I was kicked off the choirboys, I was kicked out of the boy scouts, I was kicked out of summer camp. I never fit and I didn’t like conforming. And sometimes it just broke through the membrane, and I was out.
By the end of the 60s, all of my friends, the musician friends of mine, had gone through a transition in their dress, and especially in their music, and what I noticed was that all of these great artists—Bob Dylan, Buffalo Springfield, Joan Baez—all of these people were using their art to express themselves politically and socially. And I was not. I was still doing people-pleasing.
I was 30, and I resonated much more truly with the 20-year-olds. I was more in line with them than I was with these people I was entertaining in nightclubs. I began to notice that. I began to be affected by it, and along the way, the judicious use of some mescaline and some LSD managed to accelerate the process. It gave me more of an insight into how false the world was I was settling for, and to see that there was something much richer and better and more authentic. And those changes happened, they just—they happened naturally and organically. It took about 2 years for the total changeover to occur.
My beard got a little longer, the hair got a little longer, the clothing changed, and then I suddenly found myself being as—the best combination of both, this person I really was who was kind of out of step, antiauthoritarian, who also had these skills and talents that he was honing to express himself. And so I started expressing those feelings.
In what way did the mescaline and LSD give you the insight and the confidence to make this transformation? What role did the drugs play?
Well, It was just passive, I don’t know. See, I had always been a marijuana smoker, a pretty heavy user of marijuana, all these years I’m talking about when I was in this other world of mainstream television, nightclubs. So marijuana is a hallucinogen and it is also a value-changing drug, as are acid and mescaline. They are hallucinogens and they are value-changing drugs. They alter, assist in shifting one’s perspective on the world which usually is informed by your values. And so I had already, my body, my mind, and myself—I already had a kind of a thick layer of this out-of-stepness.
And so I was already across that street. And I just hadn’t, you know, bought a house on that side yet. So, the LSD was a much stronger experience, and the mescaline, and I don’t know what they did or how they did it, I just know that going through that gave me the confidence in these changes I was feeling, in this direction, this metamorphosis, I was in the middle of. I gained confidence in it and I took strength from it, feeling that I was right that I was really on the right path, that I was being true to myself. And that was what counted to me, to be true to myself—my mother had always said that. To thine—Shakespeare—“To thine own self be true.” She loved quoting the classics, and she quoted Emerson or Shakespeare or whoever it was she thought was appropriate for her lesson. And to thine own self be true. And I just—I just had to be who I felt like I was, not who I had led them to believe I was.
So after that transformation, to what extent is the persona that you have on stage—to what extent is it your real personality? I know you’re making jokes and some of that involves exaggeration, but do you feel that you’re acting angrier, more bitter, more caustic on stage? Or are you just being yourself as accurately as possible?
I’ve addressed this before when the question is asked more bluntly: Are you an angry man? What are you angry about; what are you so angry about? I don’t live an angry life, not an angry person. I rarely lose my temper, can’t remember the last time, never had a physical fight in my life, don’t carry grudges, don’t carry resentment either. Very very lucky in those respects. But I feel a very strong alienation and dissatisfaction from my groups.
Abraham Maslow said the fully realized man does not identify with the local group. When I saw that, it rang another bell. I thought: bingo! I do not identify with the local group, I do not feel a part of it. I really have never felt like a participant, I’ve always felt like an observer. Always. I only identified this in retrospect, way after the fact, that I have been on the outside, and I don’t like being on the inside. I don’t like being in their world. I’ve never felt comfortable there; I don’t belong to that. So, when he says the “local group,” I take that as meaning a lot of things: the local social clubs or fraternal orders, or lodges or associations or clubs of any kind, things where you sacrifice your individual identity for the sake of a group, for the sake of the group mind. I’ve always felt different and outside. Now, I also extended that, once again in retrospect, as I examined my feelings.
I don’t really identify with America, I don’t really feel like an American or part of the American experience, and I don’t really feel like a member of the human race, to tell you the truth. I know I am, but I really don’t. All the definitions are there, but I don’t really feel a part of it. I think I have found a detached point of view, an ideal emotional detachment from the American experience and culture and the human experience and culture and human choices.
But even if I am a cynic, they say if you scratch a cynic, you find a disappointed idealist—that’s what’s underneath. That’s the little flicker of flame, has a little life in it, the idealist: I would love to be able to entertain that side of me, but it doesn’t work like that. I don’t see what’s in it yet, I mean I just like it out here.
I’m not an angry person, just very disappointed and contemptuous of my fellow humans’ choices—and on stage those feelings sometimes are exaggerated for a theatric stage—you’re on a stage you have an audience of 2500 or 3000 people: you need to project the feelings, the emotions it’s heightened, and people mistake it for a personal anger but it’s more dissatisfaction, disappointment and contempt for these things we’ve settled for.
So it sounds like it is your true personality, but it’s heightened for the stage.
It is my true personality, but it’s not an angry personality. Anger is a handy term and boy words are tricky, as we know. What one man perceives as anger, another person—in my case the deliverer of material—is, “Don’t you see it, don’t you see how badly you’re doing?” It’s like shaking a child—which you’re not supposed to do.
So let me latch onto that feeling. You’re grabbing somebody and you’re saying, “Don’t you see it?” But if you really don’t care about America, then why are you doing it? Why are you on stage? Is it just because you want to express yourself? Do you hope you can influence people in some way?
You’ve hit on the contradiction, and it’s one I don’t understand the resolution to, if there is one. Sometimes people say, do I try to make audiences think? I say: No no no, because that really would be the kiss of death. But what I want them to know is that I’m thinking. It’s part of that showoff and dropout syndrome. I think I need to show them that I have brought myself to a cleverer, smarter spot than they have. In doing so, “Can’t you see this? can’t you see?” And a lot of them do. I get amazing things said to me. And they’re frequent enough that I know these things are multiplied by those who have never encountered you. One person who says, “You really changed my outlook on things or the way I view X Y or Z,” for everyone who says that to you, there are a thousand, ten thousand who’ll never get to tell you that. There are people who take something away form what I do, and I know that and it pleases me and I am proud of that. And it means the student is a bit of a teacher.
But yeah, of course I care. Of course I care. My daughter has pinned me on that. She says of course you care, can’t you hear it? And I say yeah yeah yeah, but they gotta prove it to me first. Show me you care people and then I’ll let some of it out; right now I just want to scold you a little bit.
So how would you say that you feel towards people? You say on the one hand you are sort of contemptuous but on the other hand you want their approval in some way? Is that not a contradiction?
Yeah, it sounds like it has the makings of a contradiction; I guess by definition it does. I am contemptuous of the mass. That’s the thing I need to explain. One on one with people, I have great capacity and great compassion. I don’t like standing around 20 minutes talking to somebody, but when I see individuals, I see their individual beauty. I’m aware of the potential—and I don’t mean this happened every time I meet someone—but when I see people, I sort of see the potential for the whole species. When you look in their eyes, you can see a hologram of the human species and you kind of know what we could have been. It’s the group behavior that I’m talking about on stage.
Let’s switch gears a little bit and let me ask you about religion. I mean you were talking about it decades ago. Now, atheism and religion bashing have gone mainstream: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris. You were way ahead of the curve. What’s it like hearing them saying many of the things you said in the 1970s?
I’ve read some of the books you’ve mentioned and some of the reasons of existence and God and what a bad name religion has given God. I just kind of do this, I just keep moving along. I don’t really judge it… I reserve my evaluations and judgments for the parts that I do, the lines I add. I don’t think about myself in the larger world very much.
Richard Dawkins did use an excerpt of mine for a chapter heading. I noticed that. It’s nice. Not to overdo this thing, but when you’re a dropout and the culture accepts you and begins to quote and they teach some of your stuff in communications class and communications law and I hear this all the time and professors ask to use things in their textbooks, this is kind of my honorary baccalaureate. When these things happen I think good, well, there’s a little thumb on my chest, feather in my cap. I notice those things, and I feel good about what I’ve chosen and how I do it. As Lily Tomlin once said, and I am going to get this wrong so it’s a paraphrase, she said to be considered a success in a mediocre culture doesn’t say a lot for you.
You were central in the Supreme Court case in which justices affirmed the government's right to regulate your “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” act on the public airwaves. How do you think about the role of vulgarity in your humor?
I used to point out that when I was a little boy in the 40s, I was told to look up to and admire solders and sailors, policemen, firemen, and athletes, were objects of childhood hero worship. We all know how they talk. So apparently these words do not corrupt morally. This was the thing I couldn’t put together.
I use the words because I’m from that ethos. I’m from the street in New York, hung around in a tough neighborhood. It was common to curse, you make your point. It’s a very effective language. I try not to overdo it. It’s never to shock. I know where it fits, it’s never to shock. There’s no shock value left in words. Humor is base on surprise, and surprise is a milder way of saying shock. It’s surprise that makes the joke.
What’s the funniest bit you’ve ever heard?
Sometimes jokes have a wonderful logic to them. I’ll give you one that, even to people that don’t mind mild cursing, bothers some people—especially women. Short joke. The wonderful thing about it is the logic of the joke, the ingenuity.
Father and son, little son are out on the back porch, passing the day, father says to son, “Do you have perhaps any questions for me about sex?” And he says, “Well, yeah Dad, what is that hairy area on Mommy?” And the father says, “Well, that’s her vulva.” And the boy says, “Well then what’s a cunt?” And the father says, “That’s rest of Mommy.”
And that joke strikes a nerve, hits a chord—men who’ve been divorced more than twice really like that. It makes beautiful use of that man’s thought. To arrive at that distinction—to take it from the real to the figurative. From cunt as a sexual part to cunt as a term of derision for women, just as men are called assholes by certain women—and they deserve it. It’s funny how we use words. The fact that a mean woman is called a cunt and a mean man is called a prick. I have a long thing I’d like to write someday about language and the way we address each other.
How has your comedy changed over the years?
You know for a guy who didn’t do homework, the thing that’s happened is this: that 6th grade showoff that kid who had to sing a song at meetings, who won the medal at camp for being funniest guy at amateur night 5 years in a row. He didn’t do his homework then. I didn’t do book reports, but now what’s happened is that showoff has a partner who does his homework and the left/right brain are allied, united, now in a way they weren’t. I’m using my organizational ability, and my writing ability which is careful process, informed by art, but still a craft of putting things together, I’ve somehow become more integrated. I do my homework now but I stand up and show off. So I got both, I got the best of both sixth grade worlds.
You asked me to remind you to tell me about Arthur Koestler.
That was another impact. I was doing nightclub comedy down in the Village. I was down there in ’63, ’64, and my friend told me about Arthur Koestler’s book about the act of creation and it had a section on humor.
He was talking about the creative process. There was an illustration on the panel that showed a triptych. On the left panel, there were these names of artistic pursuits. There were poets, painter, composer. And one of them was jester. I was only interested in the jester. What he said about each of these, he said these individuals on the left hand side can transcend the panels of the triptych by creative growth.
The jester makes jokes, he’s funny, he makes fun, he ridicules. But if his ridicules are based on sound ideas and thinking, then he can proceed to the second panel, which is the thinker—he called it the philosopher. The jester becomes the philosopher, and if he does these things with dazzling language that we marvel at, then he becomes a poet too. Then the jester can be a thinking jester who thinks poetically.
I didn’t see that and say, “That’s what I am going to do,” but I guess it made an impression on me. I was never afraid to grow and change. I never was afraid of reversing my field on people, and I just think I’ve become a touch of each of those second and third descriptions and I definitely have a gift for language that is rhythmic and attractive to the ear, and I have interesting imagery which I guess is a poetic touch. And I like the fact that most of my things are based on solid ideas, things I’ve thought about in a new way for me, things for which I have said “Well, what about this? Suppose you look at it this way? How about that?” And then you heighten and exaggerate that, because comedy’s all about heightening and exaggerating. And anyways I guess I was impressed that there was another thing from my early life that probably at least influenced me to some level.
It sounds like you think of yourself much more as a writer than a performer—is that true? How do you think about performing?
It’s my primary delivery system. I used to, in my early years, when I would do an interview I was always proud to tell the writer that I wrote my own material, if they asked me or even if they didn’t. I wanted to be distinguished from the ones who didn’t do that, and I was proud of it, so I would say I am a comedian who writes his own material. And then at some point, I discovered what I really had become was a writer who performs his own material.
This was a really important distinction for me to notice—it happened way after the fact. I’m a writer. I think of myself as a writer. First of all, I’m an entertainer; I’m in the vulgar arts. I travel around talking and saying things and entertaining, but it’s in service of my art and it’s informed by that. So I get to write for two destinations. The writing is what gives me the joy, especially editing myself for the page, and getting something ready to show to the editors, and then to have a first draft and get it back and work to fix it, I love reworking, I love editing, love love love revision, revision, revision, revision.
And computers changed my life, the fact that you can move text as easily as you can move text, and say, “Wait a minute, these two things belong together, these two things go together, page 2 and page 5: similar ideas, put ’em together!” But the person who is most a part of me is the performer, is the standup, the guy who says, “Hey look at me, listen to this!” I do that because that’s what I do, I love doing it.
And I love the feeling I get in my gut when I’m watching on the computer screen that is close to being realized the way I would like it to be. the feeling I get in my gut is “Wait’ll they hear this, wait’ll I tell them this, I can’t wait to tell them!” It’s like the guy on the end of the bench: “Put me in coach, put me in!” They call to me, I can tell which ones are pregnant, which ones need to be moved up to a higher level of readiness, and it’s because I can’t wait to say them, I can’t wait to share them with people.
You know, you get 2500 people, acting as a single organism: the audience is a single organism and it’s you and it. And to have that feeling of mastery up there—it’s an assertion of power: here I am, I have the microphone, you came here for this express purpose. You’re sitting not in tables at nightclubs with waiters and glasses, you’re seated all facing forward in order to enjoy this and here I am, and wait till you hear this! There’s nothing like it in my experience that I could aspire to. It has as much a payoff as writing, which has a big payoff.
So, sitting in front of a computer, “Wait till they hear this, this is great material.” What’s the difference between that and actually standing on stage hearing the audience roaring with laughter?
The difference is, at the computer you can stop, think back, think forward, look around, turn the page as it were, you can see the whole world all at once. On stage you’re only in a single moment ever—your mind can hear what you just said. This is a funny thing that happens for me: when I’m up there doing something I’ve memorized perfectly, and it has pauses in it—and of course the laughs are all the pauses. As you’re going along, you’re thinking of what you’re saying, you want to give it the proper vocal values, so you are kind of thinking about it, not reaching for the words, but kind of thinking about them. You’re also aware of the echo of what you just said, and whether it worked or not, and what that might mean. It’s all part of the trigonometry, I guess. And then there is the faint anticipation of what comes next.
It’s like the feeling of conducting an orchestra. It’s like conducting an orchestra, this group of people who already like you, predisposed to appreciate you, at your service, at you’re command, and you’re just waving the baton and bringing them in, leading them forward and it’s just a nice kind of feeling.
Let me ask you about your influence—how do you feel that you have influenced other comedians?
I hear that from some of them, who say, “I wouldn’t be doing this were it not for you.” I talked to a very prominent name in comedy today who wanted to pay me some kind compliments about the recent HBO show, he hasn’t been able to catch up with me, I won’t mention him, but everybody would know his name. He said also in passing, “You know, I wouldn’t be doing this without you.” There have been people, who, I don’t know, because I came along at a certain time. Richard Pryor and I went through our changes at the same time, he became prominent at the same time. I had this kind of reemergence. I’m sure Richard Pryor would hear those things. I’m sure Woody Allen hears those things. I don’t take them as singular to me. But I know they’re true when I’m told, I realized I could be myself, could talk about this and that and not be afraid; I’m sure all artists hear similar things, especially ones who have lasted a while.
[Note: Jerry Seinfeld has since identified himself as the prominent comedian who spoke to George Carlin just before I did. "I called him to compliment him on his most recent special on HBO," writes Seinfeld in a New York Times op-ed. "Seventy years old and he cranks out another hour of great new stuff. He was in a hotel room in Las Vegas getting ready for his show. He was a monster." —JD]
Do you mentor other comedians?
No. I’m not collegial, I don’t hang out. I’m soloist, I like my solitude, I don’t really hang around with comedians—this person I talked to today, I now have his phone number. I have maybe five phone numbers. I’m not in show business because I don’t have to go to the meetings, I’m just not a part of it, I don’t belong to it. When you “belong” to something. You want to think about that word, “belong.” People should think about that: it means they own you. If you belong to something it owns you, and I just don’t care for that. I like spinning out here like one of those subatomic particles that they can’t quite pin down.
Has your sense of humor helped you in other areas of your life, besides your career as a professional comedian? Meeting people? Making friends? Dealing with loss?
I don’t know about any of those aspects. But I know that the art of not taking things seriously often bleeds over into the self, to not take yourself too seriously. You can tell from my answers that I take what I do very seriously, and I think about it. But I don’t really take myself that seriously.
I know that I’ve accomplished a good deal. I was just nominated for this year’s Mark Twain prize at the Kennedy Center, so these things over the years mean, "Yeah, good job, George.” I don’t take myself very seriously, though, at least I don’t think so. I try to see the reality and not get carried away with the emotion. What’s the reality? What's going on here? What’s the ground floor? What’s the reality? Let’s look at the situation: "So he’s dead, she’s hurt, and you don’t feel good." OK, so let’s figure this out.
I like to say two things in life that mean the most: genetics and luck. When you look at it realistically, genetics is luck too. Because you could have been born in some really terrible situation and never had a chance to realize yourself or see who you were. And so the luck of genetics and then after that, circumstances, those are the two guiding things. Knowing what to do about it, taking advantage of it, that’s fine, that's good, good for you. But still, those two elements mean everything.
My arm is getting tired here. The crook of my arm.
I guess I'm pretty much done. We've been talking for a long time and I really appreciate your taking all this time. Was there a good question you thought people should ask that never got asked?
No, because you covered some of the ones, as they came along. As I looked at the list yesterday, I thought the list gave me an opportunity for several places where I want, need to be heard—such as the anger thing, development, and the changes I went through in the late 60s. They were all in there so I feel good.
So the last question is: What are you working on now?
I have a piece of material that I’m doing on stage these days. I'm in Las Vegas now. I do weekends here, I do four nights on weekends as part of my year of touring. I go mostly to concert halls and theaters, around 80 or 90 of 'em a year. But I come down here around three or four. So I’m down here. This piece of material called, “There’s Too Much Fucking Music,” which is my way of looking at… how much music there is, I guess. It’s just my way of looking at the world and saying something that people don’t notice and figuring out a new way. And it’s filled with exaggeration and stuff. I'm doing that on stage a little bit. I’m not giving myself any pressure.
The lady in my life Sally Wade and I are waiting for our house to be finished remodeling. We’re in temporary quarters. It's kind of onerous. We’re lucky we found a place right down the street but the price we pay for being right down the street is that it’s not really suitable in terms of space and structure for our needs. So we’re really in combat duty. It’s been a tough time. Not so tough you can’t work it out, you know, but just enough so it’s broken some of my work habits. And I’m enjoying my break from them and I know where I have to go on the next book, I have a book that I'm going to start organizing the files, reorganizing, renaming, reclassifying, putting things together, taking things apart. And there’ll be another HBO show as these pieces on stage begin to take form.
Is there anything else you want to add?
No! And I really appreciate all the thought you’ve put into all these questions. Really, it’s the most complete interview I’ve ever done. Is it tomorrow yet? I think it is.
By Jay Dixit on June 23, 2008 in Brainstorm
George CarlinTen days ago, on Friday, June 13th, 2008, I had the extraordinary privilege of talking to George Carlin. As far as I know it was the last in-depth interview he gave before he passed away yesterday at age 71. Originally it was slated to run as a 350-word Q&A on the back page of Psychology Today. But I was so excited to talk to him—and he was so generous with his time—that I just kept on going. By the end I had over 14,000 words.
On stage, George Carlin came across as a grouch, often vulgar and sometimes misanthropic. But with me he was patient and warm, happy to talk through the minutiae of his creative process and eager to share stories about his childhood, his evolution as a comic, and his influence. What struck me most was the joy in his voice as he talked about the wonderful feeling he got in his gut while writing. I was also moved by the gratitude he expressed for his mother, who he said “saved” him and his brother—leaving her bullying, alcoholic husband when George was just two months old, getting a job during the worst years of the Depression, and raising two boys on her own.
He spoke about the pride he took in his work. As a ninth-grade dropout, he said, it was gratifying to see his words quoted in textbooks, classrooms, and courtrooms. And he was proud to have inspired other comedy greats, who routinely called him to say, "If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be doing this." As he looked back on his astonishingly prolific 50-year career—which includes 130 Tonight Show appearances, 23 albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, and one Supreme Court case—the interview became a sort of retrospective of his life.
Finally, after two hours, he gently mentioned that his arm was getting tired from holding the phone. “I really appreciate all the thought you’ve put into all these questions. Really, it’s the most complete interview I’ve ever done,” he said. “Is it tomorrow yet? I think it is.”
“It feels like it is,” I said, struggling to keep up with his wit.
“All this is for a quote unquote back page?” he said.
“This is for the back page, but, I don’t know, I just love you and your work so much!” I gushed. “I just had so much I wanted to ask.”
At the time, I was embarrassed by what I’d said. But when I heard the sad news this morning, my feelings changed instantly. I’m honored that I got to speak to him, and I’m grateful that I got to tell him how much I admired him before he died.
It would be impossible to overstate George Carlin’s contribution to standup comedy. Along with Richard Pryor and a few others, he essentially created the genre as we know it today. But he was more than just a comedy pioneer. He was a freethinker who never backed down, and he truly changed the course of American culture. He will be missed. —Jay Dixit
The Interview
What follows are edited highlights. They represent a little over half of the interview.
How do you think about comedy and self-expression? Expressing what’s within vs. looking at the outside world and making observations?
Self-expression is a hallmark of an artist, of art, to get something off one’s chest, to sing one’s song. So that element is present in all art. And comedy, although it is not one of the fine arts—it’s a vulgar art, it’s one of the people’s arts, it’s the spoken word, the writing that goes into it is an art form—it’s certainly artistry. So self-expression is the key to even standing up and saying, "Hey, listen to me." Self-expression can be based on looking at the world and making observations about it or not. Comedy can also be based on describing one’s inner self—doing anecdotes, talking about your own fears. Woody Allen taps into a lot of self-analysis in his comedy. But I don’t think these things are mutually exclusive. I think self-expression is present at all times, and whether or not you’re talking about the outside world or your responses to it depends on the moment and the subject.
Do you go around observing and trying to collect funny things? Or do you just live your life and then say how you feel about what you happen to have seen?
I’m 71, and I’ve been doing this for a little over 50 years, doing it at a fairly visible level for 40. By this time it’s all second nature. It’s all a machine that works a certain way: the observations, the immediate evaluation of the observation, and then the mental filing of it, or writing it down on a piece of paper. I’ve often described the way a 20-year-old versus, say, a 60- or a 70-year-old, the way it works. A 20-year-old has a limited amount of data they’ve experienced, either seeing or listening to the world. At 70 it’s a much richer storage area, the matrix inside is more textured, and has more contours to it. So, observations made by a 20-year-old are compared against a data set that is incomplete. Observations made by a 60-year-old are compared against a much richer data set. And the observations have more resonance, they’re richer.
So if I write something down, some observation—I see something on television that reminds me of something I wanted to say already—the first time I write it, the first time I hear it, it makes an impression. The first time I write it down, it makes a second impression, a deeper path. Every time I look at that piece of paper, until I file it in my file, each time, the path gets a little richer and deeper so that these things are all in there.
Now at this age, I have a network of knowledge and data and observations and feelings and values and evaluations I have in me that do things automatically. And then when I sit down to consciously write, that's when I bring the craftsmanship. That's when I pull everything together and say, how I can best express that? And then as you write, you find more, 'cause the mind is looking for further connections. And these things just flow into your head and you write them. And the writing is the really wonderful part. A lot of this is discovery. A lot of things are lying around waiting to be discovered and that's our job is to just notice them and bring them to life.
Do you think that the richness you described comes from just being able to access more experiences, having information on file? Or is it judgment?
Well, that's true, too. The machine that does all this learns what it is you want—it learns what it is that serves your purpose and it begins to tailor the synthesis. It synthesizes these observations and these comparisons. Comedy’s all about comparisons and contrasts and congruities and incongruities and heightenings and understatement and exaggeration. The mind has all of that stuff built in, and it learns which ones pay off the best for you. It's probably related to the pleasure center. You get so much pleasure finding good observations and finding which things are the richest things you can say, that probably the brain remembers how that happened and learns to provide the best stuff. Maybe you have a little silent editor in there.
You talked about how comedy's all about incongruities, contrasts, exaggeration. Do you think about those techniques or those principles of humor consciously?
It happens automatically. Sometimes there’s a conscious heightening, you'll recognize you've just chosen an image to make a point. Then your mind will just suddenly throw something at you that's stronger—a heightening, to raise the stakes, a stronger word, a more visceral image, something that lights up the imagination, much better than the original thought. So you’re aware that you’re heightening and exaggerating further but you don't use the word exaggeration or anything like that. All that stuff is just happening. And sometimes, afterward, I’ll look at something and say, “If I were giving a comedy lecture, that would be a good example.” I often think in those terms.
Do you think there are any downsides to having gotten to the point where you are, where all of this is happening automatically? Or are there some advantages a 20-year-old would have?
Well, I would imagine there are some that I can’t put my finger on because I don't remember what it was like. I was a different man. I don't know—the advantage that a 20 year old would have would be more longevity to look forward to.
You talked about how wonderful it is, this feeling of writing. So what is your process like?
I take a lot of single-page notes, little memo pad notes. I make a lot of notes on those things. For when I'm not near a little memo pad, I have a digital recorder. Most of the note-taking happens while I’m watching television.
Because the world is undifferentiated on the television set. You may be watching the news channel, but it’s going to cover the breadth of American life and the human experience. It's gonna go from suicide bombings to frivolous consumer goods. It's a broad window on the world, and a lot of things are already established in my mind as things I say, things that I'm interested in, things that are fodder for my machine. And when I see something that relates to one of them, I know it instantly and if it's a further exaggeration and a further addition, or an exception—if it plays into furthering my purpose, I jot it down.
When I harvest the pieces of paper and I go through them and sort them, the one lucky thing I got in my genetic package was a great methodical left brain. I have a very orderly mind that wants to classify and index things and label them and store them according to that. I had a boss in radio when I was 18 years old, and my boss told me to write down every idea I get even if I can't use it at the time, and then file it away and have a system for filing it away—because a good idea is of no use to you unless you can find it. And that stuck with me.
And what's your filing system?
There’s a large segment of it devoted to language, which is a love of mine. And a rich area for my work talking about how we talk. One of the files is called “The Way We Talk.” And it's about certain voguish words that come into style and remain there. But then there are subfiles. Everything has subfiles. There's one that says "Crime." There's "Crime" and there's "Law," there’s "Sex" and there’s "Race." And there’s "Humans"—that’s obviously a big folder with a lot of smaller folders in it, it’s about the human race and the human species and experiences and observations I have about that, or data that I've found about it. You know, 6 million people stepped on land mines this year. Those things interest me.
And there's "America," and America is a major category, of course. It breaks down into the culture, and the culture breaks down into further things. It’s like nested boxes, like the Russian dolls—it's just folders within folders within folders. But I know how to navigate it very well, and I’m a Macintosh a guy and so Spotlight helps me a lot. I just get on Spotlight and say, let's see, if I say "asshole” and “minister," I then can find what I want find.
What's the process of going from something that's true about the world—observing it—to actually making people laugh?
I begin with the knowledge that my audience knows me thoroughly. I know the things they will trust coming from me, and I know they'll allow me to do exposition that’s necessary to set the stage for the piece of material. The funny—that’s part of the genetic package. The genetic marker for language came through my family. My grandfather, whom I didn’t know, was a New York City policeman. I did not know him. During his adult life, he wrote out Shakespeare’s tragedies longhand just for the joy it gave him. And he asked questions about language at his dinner table, my mother told me. My mother had a great love of language, and a great gift for language. The Irish have a genetic tradition, it seems, an affinity for language and expression. And so I got that. The Irish say: "You don’t lick it off the rocks, kid." It comes in the blood. So, I have that and I don’t have to do anything about it.
As Noel Coward said, “All I ever had was a talent to amuse.” I have a talent to amuse and I have a way of finding the joke, a way of expressing things through exaggeration, interesting images, whatever goes in, whatever the parts are that go into making these things work.
I try to come in through the side door. One of the voguish terms, which is so repellant to me, “thinking outside the box.” To settle for that kind of language is embarrassing. But that's a very useful picture. I try to come in through the side door, the side window, to come in from a direction they’re not expecting, to see something in a different way. That's the job that I give myself. So, how can I talk about something eminently familiar to them, on my terms, in a new way, that engages their imagination?
The jokes come. You don’t look for them. It’s all automatic, and, I think, genetic. My father was an after dinner speaker, was a great raconteur. He was an ad salesman for space in newspapers during the 1930s, when that was the primary medium of advertising, and my mother was in advertising her whole life. They both were very funny, and they both were very gifted verbally. So, those things come to you automatically. It's like being a child prodigy with the violin or the piano. It's not something you try for or you have to do too much about except work at it. And that's what I try to do.
How is it that you find things that are unexpected?
I don’t know. But I want to add an element I overlooked. Psychology. We're talking about a magazine called Psychology Today.
As a child, my father was gone. I had no grandparents; they were all dead. Had no real cousins to play with, and I didn’t give a shit, frankly. I experienced my life in a very happy way, but, what I want to say to you is, I was alone as a child. My father was dead. My mother left him when I was 2 months old and he died when I was 8 years old. He drank too much and he was a bully and she had the courage to take two boys, one of them two months old and one of them 5 years old and to leave him in 1937 and get back into the business world and get a job and raise us through the end of the Depression and through the Second World War. She did a great job, but she was at work until 7 or 7:30 at night many nights.
So I spent a lot of time on my own. In the house or out around the neighborhood or sneaking in the subway, going down to 42nd street, traveling around Manhattan Island, learning it as a youngster. And I experienced that—because psychologists ask you not if something's good or bad, but how do you experience it—I experienced that as freedom, independence, autonomy. And I was brought up on that feeling. That’s what made me, I think, able to quit school, and go out and try to start my life and career early, because I had that strength.
And my mother had that strength. I witnessed it. I mean, what she did was she took us away from him and saved us. So, those qualities of being alone like that fostered in me a need for adult approval and attention. Now they say that it's kind of a common cliché that comedians just want attention. But it's an element that's very important. The job is called "look at me." That's the name of this job. “Look at me. Ain't I smart? Ain't I cute? Ain't I clever?"
I needed to be—not the center of attention—but I needed to be able to attract attention when I wanted it, through my stunts and my fooling around physically with faces or postures or voices I would do. Then it became funny the things I would say, and I became more of a wit than simply a mimic and a clown. And so, those things were all important in this. The fact that I didn’t finish school left me with a lifelong need to prove that I’m smart, prove it to myself, maybe to the world. “Ain't I smart, ain't I cute, ain't I clever.” “Listen to me, listen to what I got to say.” So, those things are important elements in the drive behind all of this.
You made an analogy to playing the violin. I wanted to ask you about mastery. You’ve been doing this for, as you said, over 50 years, and it seems like you've only gotten better with time. So I'm wondering what you think has enabled you to do that. Is it like playing the violin? Is it just practice? Is it getting good feedback? Is it—you know, what is it that allows you to hone your craft?
The feedback that I’ve gotten has been through the success of the career. That’s a reinforcing factor. I say: Oh, that works, oh that’s what I do, I see. I think with anything you do over a long period of time, you should be getting better at it. I'm talking about craft, art, or drive that comes from inside.
What is your philosophy about physical performance? You walk around a lot, you make a lot of gestures.
It’s just second nature, you don’t think about it at all. And I don’t pace as much on stage as I used to, maybe it’s my age, I don’t know. I don't feel limited physically, in that respect, but it's just something I’ve grown into.
Were you always making people laugh, sort of automatically, just because of your personality?
Yeah. As I was describing, this is a job for a showoff. In those 8 years of grammar school that I had—the 9th year was kind of a it was a Irish catholic Christian brothers, and it was a much more brutal setting than these lovely nuns we had. So I think of those 8 years as my education. I got the work very easily, I didn’t have any trouble grasping the work, and so I had time to clown, time to signal to my buddy, make a face, make a fart under the arm, I was a bit of a class clown, I was a neighborhood cut-up.
I eventually started doing routines when I was about 14, 15 16. I would do routines on the street corner for my buddies on the stoop. My mother wanted me to finish high school, go to college, be an advertising man, be a businessman like the men at her office whom she admired. But she couldn’t stop this other machine that was revving up.
I had an 8th grade graduation from the grammar school—it was the only graduation I ever had. And in 9th grade, while I was at that school, I had a Brother, one of the brothers who taught, his name was Brother Conrad. My mother had said to me, now George, I didn't get you a graduation present, and this was June 1951, this was now the fall of 1951, when I'm in first year of high school. She said, “I didn't get you a graduation present, so you be thinking about what you might want.”
Brother Conrad was telling the class one day that because he had a clergyman's discount rate, he could get cameras for people. Then he mentioned tape recorders and man, the bell went off in my head! Tape recorders at that time were virtually unknown to the average person. They may have heard about them here or there. They were not consumer items.
She bought me a tape recorder, a Webcor. And that became a tool for me to put some of these verbal impulses to work. I began to produce little radio shows on it at home by using the phonograph. Playing a record on the phonograph, like playing the Dragnet theme. Dun da dun dun. Dun da dun dun duuun.
Then I would fade the phonograph down and I would come in and I would do my make-believe announcer. I did newscasts, I did sports. A lot of the things that I ventured into professionally in my first stage of comedy I was doing on that tape recorder. I recorded a whole half hour of story—it was like a vignette, like a series of vignettes, a drama, about my neighborhood. And guess what: I made fun of authority figures.
So my mother—in spite what she wanted me to do for her, to be a great reflection on her, go to college and be a businessman—she knew this was something I needed. And she got that for me, and it helped accelerate the beginnings of my putting this dream together that I had. I was 14 when I got that tape recorder. They were the size of a Buick. They were not little handy things. And she was smart enough to get me one. That's an important part of my development.
Can you remember the first joke you ever told?
No. But I do remember the first time I ever made my mother laugh. And unfortunately, it’s lost on me what it was I said. But I noticed the moment, I knew something had happened, this was when I was very young. My mother laughed fairly frequently. But I knew the difference between her social laugh and her really spontaneous laugh when she was caught off guard—which is the key to laugher, being off guard. And I said something to her, and I saw that in her and it registered with me. And it made the point. I wouldn’t have remembered it as well as I do if it hadn’t meant a lot to me. It was a kind of a little mark along the way, a little badge of honor. It meant I had said something witty. I didn’t clown, I wasn’t making a face or standing in a funny angle. I had said something witty. I had probably turned some situation around, exaggerated one element, and made a joke.
I want to talk about the transformation that you did in the 60s when you went from what you once termed the “middle-American comic” to this different persona—it was much more subversive. How did that happen and why did that happen?
I was always swimming against the tide. I was always out of step. Not only did I quit school, but I got kicked out of three schools along the way. I eventually got asked to leave the air force a year early—it wasn’t dishonorable, but it was a general discharge, which is a step down—because I did not shape up, I didn’t like authority, I had three court-martials. I was kicked off the alter boys, I was kicked off the choirboys, I was kicked out of the boy scouts, I was kicked out of summer camp. I never fit and I didn’t like conforming. And sometimes it just broke through the membrane, and I was out.
By the end of the 60s, all of my friends, the musician friends of mine, had gone through a transition in their dress, and especially in their music, and what I noticed was that all of these great artists—Bob Dylan, Buffalo Springfield, Joan Baez—all of these people were using their art to express themselves politically and socially. And I was not. I was still doing people-pleasing.
I was 30, and I resonated much more truly with the 20-year-olds. I was more in line with them than I was with these people I was entertaining in nightclubs. I began to notice that. I began to be affected by it, and along the way, the judicious use of some mescaline and some LSD managed to accelerate the process. It gave me more of an insight into how false the world was I was settling for, and to see that there was something much richer and better and more authentic. And those changes happened, they just—they happened naturally and organically. It took about 2 years for the total changeover to occur.
My beard got a little longer, the hair got a little longer, the clothing changed, and then I suddenly found myself being as—the best combination of both, this person I really was who was kind of out of step, antiauthoritarian, who also had these skills and talents that he was honing to express himself. And so I started expressing those feelings.
In what way did the mescaline and LSD give you the insight and the confidence to make this transformation? What role did the drugs play?
Well, It was just passive, I don’t know. See, I had always been a marijuana smoker, a pretty heavy user of marijuana, all these years I’m talking about when I was in this other world of mainstream television, nightclubs. So marijuana is a hallucinogen and it is also a value-changing drug, as are acid and mescaline. They are hallucinogens and they are value-changing drugs. They alter, assist in shifting one’s perspective on the world which usually is informed by your values. And so I had already, my body, my mind, and myself—I already had a kind of a thick layer of this out-of-stepness.
And so I was already across that street. And I just hadn’t, you know, bought a house on that side yet. So, the LSD was a much stronger experience, and the mescaline, and I don’t know what they did or how they did it, I just know that going through that gave me the confidence in these changes I was feeling, in this direction, this metamorphosis, I was in the middle of. I gained confidence in it and I took strength from it, feeling that I was right that I was really on the right path, that I was being true to myself. And that was what counted to me, to be true to myself—my mother had always said that. To thine—Shakespeare—“To thine own self be true.” She loved quoting the classics, and she quoted Emerson or Shakespeare or whoever it was she thought was appropriate for her lesson. And to thine own self be true. And I just—I just had to be who I felt like I was, not who I had led them to believe I was.
So after that transformation, to what extent is the persona that you have on stage—to what extent is it your real personality? I know you’re making jokes and some of that involves exaggeration, but do you feel that you’re acting angrier, more bitter, more caustic on stage? Or are you just being yourself as accurately as possible?
I’ve addressed this before when the question is asked more bluntly: Are you an angry man? What are you angry about; what are you so angry about? I don’t live an angry life, not an angry person. I rarely lose my temper, can’t remember the last time, never had a physical fight in my life, don’t carry grudges, don’t carry resentment either. Very very lucky in those respects. But I feel a very strong alienation and dissatisfaction from my groups.
Abraham Maslow said the fully realized man does not identify with the local group. When I saw that, it rang another bell. I thought: bingo! I do not identify with the local group, I do not feel a part of it. I really have never felt like a participant, I’ve always felt like an observer. Always. I only identified this in retrospect, way after the fact, that I have been on the outside, and I don’t like being on the inside. I don’t like being in their world. I’ve never felt comfortable there; I don’t belong to that. So, when he says the “local group,” I take that as meaning a lot of things: the local social clubs or fraternal orders, or lodges or associations or clubs of any kind, things where you sacrifice your individual identity for the sake of a group, for the sake of the group mind. I’ve always felt different and outside. Now, I also extended that, once again in retrospect, as I examined my feelings.
I don’t really identify with America, I don’t really feel like an American or part of the American experience, and I don’t really feel like a member of the human race, to tell you the truth. I know I am, but I really don’t. All the definitions are there, but I don’t really feel a part of it. I think I have found a detached point of view, an ideal emotional detachment from the American experience and culture and the human experience and culture and human choices.
But even if I am a cynic, they say if you scratch a cynic, you find a disappointed idealist—that’s what’s underneath. That’s the little flicker of flame, has a little life in it, the idealist: I would love to be able to entertain that side of me, but it doesn’t work like that. I don’t see what’s in it yet, I mean I just like it out here.
I’m not an angry person, just very disappointed and contemptuous of my fellow humans’ choices—and on stage those feelings sometimes are exaggerated for a theatric stage—you’re on a stage you have an audience of 2500 or 3000 people: you need to project the feelings, the emotions it’s heightened, and people mistake it for a personal anger but it’s more dissatisfaction, disappointment and contempt for these things we’ve settled for.
So it sounds like it is your true personality, but it’s heightened for the stage.
It is my true personality, but it’s not an angry personality. Anger is a handy term and boy words are tricky, as we know. What one man perceives as anger, another person—in my case the deliverer of material—is, “Don’t you see it, don’t you see how badly you’re doing?” It’s like shaking a child—which you’re not supposed to do.
So let me latch onto that feeling. You’re grabbing somebody and you’re saying, “Don’t you see it?” But if you really don’t care about America, then why are you doing it? Why are you on stage? Is it just because you want to express yourself? Do you hope you can influence people in some way?
You’ve hit on the contradiction, and it’s one I don’t understand the resolution to, if there is one. Sometimes people say, do I try to make audiences think? I say: No no no, because that really would be the kiss of death. But what I want them to know is that I’m thinking. It’s part of that showoff and dropout syndrome. I think I need to show them that I have brought myself to a cleverer, smarter spot than they have. In doing so, “Can’t you see this? can’t you see?” And a lot of them do. I get amazing things said to me. And they’re frequent enough that I know these things are multiplied by those who have never encountered you. One person who says, “You really changed my outlook on things or the way I view X Y or Z,” for everyone who says that to you, there are a thousand, ten thousand who’ll never get to tell you that. There are people who take something away form what I do, and I know that and it pleases me and I am proud of that. And it means the student is a bit of a teacher.
But yeah, of course I care. Of course I care. My daughter has pinned me on that. She says of course you care, can’t you hear it? And I say yeah yeah yeah, but they gotta prove it to me first. Show me you care people and then I’ll let some of it out; right now I just want to scold you a little bit.
So how would you say that you feel towards people? You say on the one hand you are sort of contemptuous but on the other hand you want their approval in some way? Is that not a contradiction?
Yeah, it sounds like it has the makings of a contradiction; I guess by definition it does. I am contemptuous of the mass. That’s the thing I need to explain. One on one with people, I have great capacity and great compassion. I don’t like standing around 20 minutes talking to somebody, but when I see individuals, I see their individual beauty. I’m aware of the potential—and I don’t mean this happened every time I meet someone—but when I see people, I sort of see the potential for the whole species. When you look in their eyes, you can see a hologram of the human species and you kind of know what we could have been. It’s the group behavior that I’m talking about on stage.
Let’s switch gears a little bit and let me ask you about religion. I mean you were talking about it decades ago. Now, atheism and religion bashing have gone mainstream: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris. You were way ahead of the curve. What’s it like hearing them saying many of the things you said in the 1970s?
I’ve read some of the books you’ve mentioned and some of the reasons of existence and God and what a bad name religion has given God. I just kind of do this, I just keep moving along. I don’t really judge it… I reserve my evaluations and judgments for the parts that I do, the lines I add. I don’t think about myself in the larger world very much.
Richard Dawkins did use an excerpt of mine for a chapter heading. I noticed that. It’s nice. Not to overdo this thing, but when you’re a dropout and the culture accepts you and begins to quote and they teach some of your stuff in communications class and communications law and I hear this all the time and professors ask to use things in their textbooks, this is kind of my honorary baccalaureate. When these things happen I think good, well, there’s a little thumb on my chest, feather in my cap. I notice those things, and I feel good about what I’ve chosen and how I do it. As Lily Tomlin once said, and I am going to get this wrong so it’s a paraphrase, she said to be considered a success in a mediocre culture doesn’t say a lot for you.
You were central in the Supreme Court case in which justices affirmed the government's right to regulate your “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” act on the public airwaves. How do you think about the role of vulgarity in your humor?
I used to point out that when I was a little boy in the 40s, I was told to look up to and admire solders and sailors, policemen, firemen, and athletes, were objects of childhood hero worship. We all know how they talk. So apparently these words do not corrupt morally. This was the thing I couldn’t put together.
I use the words because I’m from that ethos. I’m from the street in New York, hung around in a tough neighborhood. It was common to curse, you make your point. It’s a very effective language. I try not to overdo it. It’s never to shock. I know where it fits, it’s never to shock. There’s no shock value left in words. Humor is base on surprise, and surprise is a milder way of saying shock. It’s surprise that makes the joke.
What’s the funniest bit you’ve ever heard?
Sometimes jokes have a wonderful logic to them. I’ll give you one that, even to people that don’t mind mild cursing, bothers some people—especially women. Short joke. The wonderful thing about it is the logic of the joke, the ingenuity.
Father and son, little son are out on the back porch, passing the day, father says to son, “Do you have perhaps any questions for me about sex?” And he says, “Well, yeah Dad, what is that hairy area on Mommy?” And the father says, “Well, that’s her vulva.” And the boy says, “Well then what’s a cunt?” And the father says, “That’s rest of Mommy.”
And that joke strikes a nerve, hits a chord—men who’ve been divorced more than twice really like that. It makes beautiful use of that man’s thought. To arrive at that distinction—to take it from the real to the figurative. From cunt as a sexual part to cunt as a term of derision for women, just as men are called assholes by certain women—and they deserve it. It’s funny how we use words. The fact that a mean woman is called a cunt and a mean man is called a prick. I have a long thing I’d like to write someday about language and the way we address each other.
How has your comedy changed over the years?
You know for a guy who didn’t do homework, the thing that’s happened is this: that 6th grade showoff that kid who had to sing a song at meetings, who won the medal at camp for being funniest guy at amateur night 5 years in a row. He didn’t do his homework then. I didn’t do book reports, but now what’s happened is that showoff has a partner who does his homework and the left/right brain are allied, united, now in a way they weren’t. I’m using my organizational ability, and my writing ability which is careful process, informed by art, but still a craft of putting things together, I’ve somehow become more integrated. I do my homework now but I stand up and show off. So I got both, I got the best of both sixth grade worlds.
You asked me to remind you to tell me about Arthur Koestler.
That was another impact. I was doing nightclub comedy down in the Village. I was down there in ’63, ’64, and my friend told me about Arthur Koestler’s book about the act of creation and it had a section on humor.
He was talking about the creative process. There was an illustration on the panel that showed a triptych. On the left panel, there were these names of artistic pursuits. There were poets, painter, composer. And one of them was jester. I was only interested in the jester. What he said about each of these, he said these individuals on the left hand side can transcend the panels of the triptych by creative growth.
The jester makes jokes, he’s funny, he makes fun, he ridicules. But if his ridicules are based on sound ideas and thinking, then he can proceed to the second panel, which is the thinker—he called it the philosopher. The jester becomes the philosopher, and if he does these things with dazzling language that we marvel at, then he becomes a poet too. Then the jester can be a thinking jester who thinks poetically.
I didn’t see that and say, “That’s what I am going to do,” but I guess it made an impression on me. I was never afraid to grow and change. I never was afraid of reversing my field on people, and I just think I’ve become a touch of each of those second and third descriptions and I definitely have a gift for language that is rhythmic and attractive to the ear, and I have interesting imagery which I guess is a poetic touch. And I like the fact that most of my things are based on solid ideas, things I’ve thought about in a new way for me, things for which I have said “Well, what about this? Suppose you look at it this way? How about that?” And then you heighten and exaggerate that, because comedy’s all about heightening and exaggerating. And anyways I guess I was impressed that there was another thing from my early life that probably at least influenced me to some level.
It sounds like you think of yourself much more as a writer than a performer—is that true? How do you think about performing?
It’s my primary delivery system. I used to, in my early years, when I would do an interview I was always proud to tell the writer that I wrote my own material, if they asked me or even if they didn’t. I wanted to be distinguished from the ones who didn’t do that, and I was proud of it, so I would say I am a comedian who writes his own material. And then at some point, I discovered what I really had become was a writer who performs his own material.
This was a really important distinction for me to notice—it happened way after the fact. I’m a writer. I think of myself as a writer. First of all, I’m an entertainer; I’m in the vulgar arts. I travel around talking and saying things and entertaining, but it’s in service of my art and it’s informed by that. So I get to write for two destinations. The writing is what gives me the joy, especially editing myself for the page, and getting something ready to show to the editors, and then to have a first draft and get it back and work to fix it, I love reworking, I love editing, love love love revision, revision, revision, revision.
And computers changed my life, the fact that you can move text as easily as you can move text, and say, “Wait a minute, these two things belong together, these two things go together, page 2 and page 5: similar ideas, put ’em together!” But the person who is most a part of me is the performer, is the standup, the guy who says, “Hey look at me, listen to this!” I do that because that’s what I do, I love doing it.
And I love the feeling I get in my gut when I’m watching on the computer screen that is close to being realized the way I would like it to be. the feeling I get in my gut is “Wait’ll they hear this, wait’ll I tell them this, I can’t wait to tell them!” It’s like the guy on the end of the bench: “Put me in coach, put me in!” They call to me, I can tell which ones are pregnant, which ones need to be moved up to a higher level of readiness, and it’s because I can’t wait to say them, I can’t wait to share them with people.
You know, you get 2500 people, acting as a single organism: the audience is a single organism and it’s you and it. And to have that feeling of mastery up there—it’s an assertion of power: here I am, I have the microphone, you came here for this express purpose. You’re sitting not in tables at nightclubs with waiters and glasses, you’re seated all facing forward in order to enjoy this and here I am, and wait till you hear this! There’s nothing like it in my experience that I could aspire to. It has as much a payoff as writing, which has a big payoff.
So, sitting in front of a computer, “Wait till they hear this, this is great material.” What’s the difference between that and actually standing on stage hearing the audience roaring with laughter?
The difference is, at the computer you can stop, think back, think forward, look around, turn the page as it were, you can see the whole world all at once. On stage you’re only in a single moment ever—your mind can hear what you just said. This is a funny thing that happens for me: when I’m up there doing something I’ve memorized perfectly, and it has pauses in it—and of course the laughs are all the pauses. As you’re going along, you’re thinking of what you’re saying, you want to give it the proper vocal values, so you are kind of thinking about it, not reaching for the words, but kind of thinking about them. You’re also aware of the echo of what you just said, and whether it worked or not, and what that might mean. It’s all part of the trigonometry, I guess. And then there is the faint anticipation of what comes next.
It’s like the feeling of conducting an orchestra. It’s like conducting an orchestra, this group of people who already like you, predisposed to appreciate you, at your service, at you’re command, and you’re just waving the baton and bringing them in, leading them forward and it’s just a nice kind of feeling.
Let me ask you about your influence—how do you feel that you have influenced other comedians?
I hear that from some of them, who say, “I wouldn’t be doing this were it not for you.” I talked to a very prominent name in comedy today who wanted to pay me some kind compliments about the recent HBO show, he hasn’t been able to catch up with me, I won’t mention him, but everybody would know his name. He said also in passing, “You know, I wouldn’t be doing this without you.” There have been people, who, I don’t know, because I came along at a certain time. Richard Pryor and I went through our changes at the same time, he became prominent at the same time. I had this kind of reemergence. I’m sure Richard Pryor would hear those things. I’m sure Woody Allen hears those things. I don’t take them as singular to me. But I know they’re true when I’m told, I realized I could be myself, could talk about this and that and not be afraid; I’m sure all artists hear similar things, especially ones who have lasted a while.
[Note: Jerry Seinfeld has since identified himself as the prominent comedian who spoke to George Carlin just before I did. "I called him to compliment him on his most recent special on HBO," writes Seinfeld in a New York Times op-ed. "Seventy years old and he cranks out another hour of great new stuff. He was in a hotel room in Las Vegas getting ready for his show. He was a monster." —JD]
Do you mentor other comedians?
No. I’m not collegial, I don’t hang out. I’m soloist, I like my solitude, I don’t really hang around with comedians—this person I talked to today, I now have his phone number. I have maybe five phone numbers. I’m not in show business because I don’t have to go to the meetings, I’m just not a part of it, I don’t belong to it. When you “belong” to something. You want to think about that word, “belong.” People should think about that: it means they own you. If you belong to something it owns you, and I just don’t care for that. I like spinning out here like one of those subatomic particles that they can’t quite pin down.
Has your sense of humor helped you in other areas of your life, besides your career as a professional comedian? Meeting people? Making friends? Dealing with loss?
I don’t know about any of those aspects. But I know that the art of not taking things seriously often bleeds over into the self, to not take yourself too seriously. You can tell from my answers that I take what I do very seriously, and I think about it. But I don’t really take myself that seriously.
I know that I’ve accomplished a good deal. I was just nominated for this year’s Mark Twain prize at the Kennedy Center, so these things over the years mean, "Yeah, good job, George.” I don’t take myself very seriously, though, at least I don’t think so. I try to see the reality and not get carried away with the emotion. What’s the reality? What's going on here? What’s the ground floor? What’s the reality? Let’s look at the situation: "So he’s dead, she’s hurt, and you don’t feel good." OK, so let’s figure this out.
I like to say two things in life that mean the most: genetics and luck. When you look at it realistically, genetics is luck too. Because you could have been born in some really terrible situation and never had a chance to realize yourself or see who you were. And so the luck of genetics and then after that, circumstances, those are the two guiding things. Knowing what to do about it, taking advantage of it, that’s fine, that's good, good for you. But still, those two elements mean everything.
My arm is getting tired here. The crook of my arm.
I guess I'm pretty much done. We've been talking for a long time and I really appreciate your taking all this time. Was there a good question you thought people should ask that never got asked?
No, because you covered some of the ones, as they came along. As I looked at the list yesterday, I thought the list gave me an opportunity for several places where I want, need to be heard—such as the anger thing, development, and the changes I went through in the late 60s. They were all in there so I feel good.
So the last question is: What are you working on now?
I have a piece of material that I’m doing on stage these days. I'm in Las Vegas now. I do weekends here, I do four nights on weekends as part of my year of touring. I go mostly to concert halls and theaters, around 80 or 90 of 'em a year. But I come down here around three or four. So I’m down here. This piece of material called, “There’s Too Much Fucking Music,” which is my way of looking at… how much music there is, I guess. It’s just my way of looking at the world and saying something that people don’t notice and figuring out a new way. And it’s filled with exaggeration and stuff. I'm doing that on stage a little bit. I’m not giving myself any pressure.
The lady in my life Sally Wade and I are waiting for our house to be finished remodeling. We’re in temporary quarters. It's kind of onerous. We’re lucky we found a place right down the street but the price we pay for being right down the street is that it’s not really suitable in terms of space and structure for our needs. So we’re really in combat duty. It’s been a tough time. Not so tough you can’t work it out, you know, but just enough so it’s broken some of my work habits. And I’m enjoying my break from them and I know where I have to go on the next book, I have a book that I'm going to start organizing the files, reorganizing, renaming, reclassifying, putting things together, taking things apart. And there’ll be another HBO show as these pieces on stage begin to take form.
Is there anything else you want to add?
No! And I really appreciate all the thought you’ve put into all these questions. Really, it’s the most complete interview I’ve ever done. Is it tomorrow yet? I think it is.
Thursday, 19 June 2008
Perfecting the Art of Frugal Living in NYC : NPR
Perfecting the Art of Frugal Living in NYC : NPR
"You don't stop," she says. "There is no depression if you don't stop."
Dillard supplements her monthly Social Security check by charging $10 an hour to care for people's pets. She says her total income is $29,000 a year.
She has all kinds of advice for living cheaply, but still living well: Buy things at the 99 cent store. Make chili for the week. If you order pizza, pick it up yourself so you don't have to tip. And, she says, don't associate with people who bring you down.
"The first thing I do when I go out of my building," she says, "I look at the sky, white clouds and a blue sky, my heart goes pitter-pat."
There is something miraculous, Virgona says, about seeing the way the light falls and then perhaps getting a part of that light into a piece of work. When that happens, he says, you feel that you are part of what it really means, "that you are part of the light."
"You don't stop," she says. "There is no depression if you don't stop."
Dillard supplements her monthly Social Security check by charging $10 an hour to care for people's pets. She says her total income is $29,000 a year.
She has all kinds of advice for living cheaply, but still living well: Buy things at the 99 cent store. Make chili for the week. If you order pizza, pick it up yourself so you don't have to tip. And, she says, don't associate with people who bring you down.
"The first thing I do when I go out of my building," she says, "I look at the sky, white clouds and a blue sky, my heart goes pitter-pat."
There is something miraculous, Virgona says, about seeing the way the light falls and then perhaps getting a part of that light into a piece of work. When that happens, he says, you feel that you are part of what it really means, "that you are part of the light."
Tuesday, 17 June 2008
Overheard in New York | The Voice of the City
Overheard in New York | The Voice of the City
Chick eating a Boston Kreme: Mmm, I love this shit.
Dude: Yeah, enjoy your pastry filled with cum.
Chick: If cum ever tasted this good, I'd never get off my knees.
--Bloomingdale's, Lexington
Chick eating a Boston Kreme: Mmm, I love this shit.
Dude: Yeah, enjoy your pastry filled with cum.
Chick: If cum ever tasted this good, I'd never get off my knees.
--Bloomingdale's, Lexington
Sunday, 8 June 2008
Sunday, 1 June 2008
Welcome to C R E A T I V E R E F U G E
Welcome to C R E A T I V E R E F U G E
n hour talking with artist Ralph Steadman can best be described as “a journey of a thousand miles.” Whether he’s humbly dissecting his formidable craft, reminiscing about his “Gonzo” days of fear and loathing with Hunter S. Thompson, or weighing in on politics, religion, technology, or fine wine—this eclectic Brit brings his seven decades of wit and wisdom to every topic he explores. I caught him by phone recently, between projects at his home in Kent.
Mike: Like few artists I’ve seen, your art really speaks for itself. How would you describe your craft to someone unfamiliar with your body of work?
Ralph: It’s like a shortcut to the essence of what I’m trying to say. The shortcut being that I can’t be bothered too much with fine detail. I have to go straight for it and make my comments do damage, if you know what I mean. That might sound awful, saying I want to damage something. An example would be in the making of strong visual comments about social issues. It’s a kind of violence. And the only way to do violence in my experience is you have to be violent in the drawing. You have to use your pen like a sword, like a knife, and cut and slash and burn (laugh). I have been known to burn things. I’ve used flame on a picture to burn a part of it to make it do what I wanted to do with it. I mean, not the whole damn thing (laugh), but I’ve done that too, by mistake. Speaking of fire, I just illustrated Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, not Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911, though I think his was a backhanded compliment to Ray Bradbury actually. It’s the same kind of protest as Ray’s for the burning of books, though Michael Moore’s against stupid white men isn’t he?
M: Indeed. Your editorial cartoons convey strong feelings towards the current state of global affairs. Does a project like your collaboration with Mr. Bradbury help you blow off some steam?
R: Yes, but I can’t really satisfy the kind of frustration you must be feeling right now as well about the tragedy in Chechnya last week. That must rank as one of the most unspeakable acts of evil one can imagine. What kind of cause can you believe in that says it’s okay to shoot that little girl running across the playground? What kind of ideal would you have to justify that? I don’t get it. And they claim they show their strength by killing. I say you show your weakness by killing. I wrote a piece on my Web site about it called, "So... 3000 B.C. and Beyond...".
M: I enjoyed that piece, as well as the other editorials on your site. However, I really found myself drawn to your illustrations. They have always struck me as almost magically spontaneous. How did you develop your style?
R: I never took up drawing until my nineteenth year. I tried everything else first. I was an aircraft engineer. That’s where my straight lines and circles come from. So that might explain to some people why I use straight lines, and why I use circles, and why my drawings can resemble a plan, and then there’s freedom, and wildness. The combination is what creates a tension, you know. The tightness. I learned to draw by going to life classes for seven years, and practicing, and just learning how to draw. You have to develop that coordination between the hand, eye, and the mind. Those three form a triangle. The hand and the eye need to be coordinated through the digesting mechanism of the brain, or the mind. And I worry about the young today not learning to draw. I think they feel they can do it a lot quicker through Photoshop.
Artwork by Ralph Steadman
Above: Artwork (detail) by Ralph Steadman.
View slideshow.
M: So you see a bit of a devil in the computerization of drawing?
R: I think [the computer] is a wonderful tool. I can get things done quickly. I can’t draw in a computer, it just doesn’t work. But I can draw out of it, put it into the computer, then work more on it. You know, lay in a few colors or whatever. That’s fun. It’s a great tool, but it’s not the answer to it all. You don’t think, “Good, I don’t have to draw anymore. I can just draw that in here and drag that over there and put this together with that and I got myself a picture.” And the whole line thing. I can’t control a pen line on a computer. It’s too bloody fast. In a way it’s uncontrollably fast, it’s just silly. And [a computer generated line] is not really a “feeling” line. I think a line is either alive or dead. A lot of people do pencil first and then go over the pencil with a pen to make the finished picture, and it dies because you haven’t experienced it at the moment, you’re just going over secondhand material. You’ve got to do it straight on with the pen. You’ve got to commit yourself to it straight away.
M: Do you make use of preliminary sketches?
R: I try to use the barest of scribbles of what it might be. People ask, “Well can you send us a rough?” And I say, “Well I can’t send you a rough because if I do a rough, that’s the picture.” Or, “That’s not the picture and never will it be, that’s the rough. And you might prefer the bloody rough (laugh)!” You’re wasting your time, and your energy by the way. So that seems to me to be an unnecessary aspect of it. You have to get your work well enough known so [the client] knows what to expect. Otherwise, don’t ask. They know they’ll get something.
M: How would you describe your brushwork?
R: When people ask me for a little sketch [for a charitable cause] I usually whack a sheet of paper on the board, let it dry, and then add a bird’s beak, couple of eyes, legs, wings, or turn it into a prairie dog, you know (laugh). Whatever it suggests, that’s what I draw. It’s amazing when you hit a piece of paper with a lovely ink-soaked paintbrush and it whacks all over the place. It's part of that thing I talked about earlier, the damage, the violence. And the violence expresses something in a certain direction when you go “thwop”, let it dry, and then turn it into something that people accept as artistic license. They may not think it looks like whatever it is [supposed to portray], but it is a semblance of something. And I’d like people to accept it on that basis, you know. As just a creative outburst.
M: Have you had much trouble with people trying to mimic your style?
R: There have been a few. I see my terrible lettering has been made into a font (laugh). Check it out when you get a chance.
Mac Download PC Download
Collateral Damage font by Chris Hunt, courtesy of Chank.com
—Chanks, Chank!
M: Do you see your art as a creative outlet, a livelihood, or a weapon?
R: All that. Well of course, it’s been a livelihood for all my life. I tried nearly everything else first. I tried to be an aircraft engineer, a manager at Woolworths, a rat catcher, I worked on motorbikes at the fairground. Then I saw this advert that read, “You Too Can Learn to Draw & Earn Pounds.” It was a press art school course. I took that while I did my military service and that’s ultimately what kept me off the streets I guess.
M: Well they sure delivered on their promise in your case.
R: Well, in a way they did. I mean, I did my two years in the military buggerin’ about, I was in radar. This press arts course had twelve lessons on how to draw; each was a month in duration. So after a dozen lessons the implication was that you could draw (laugh). And another five pounds would get you six more lessons on how to be a cartoonist. What it did was to get me interested; it was a kind of reason for trying to be an artist.
M: I’m assuming you completed the course.
R: Yes, and I sent a few cartoons off before I came out of the Royal Air Force, and I got a call to go to London to have an interview with a large newspaper group. They said, “Would you like a job when you come out?” And I said, “What do I do?” “You do drawings for our [northern England] papers.” And I said, “Yeah, I’ll do that.” So for three years I was a working artist, the only regular job I ever had (laugh). Then I was made redundant because the paper was bought up, and the only job I was offered was to be a black and white artist doing crossword puzzles—painting the little squares and so forth. So I left and found an agent on Fleet Street in London and became a working cartoonist.
M: Your collaborations with Hunter S. Thompson certainly proved to be a seminal event in your career— at least on this side of the Pond. How did this relationship unfold?
R: I had been in the States for a few weeks looking for work and I was contacted by Scanlons, a real radical magazine against Nixon, which eventually got them on his blacklist. Someone in England had found my collective work which was called, Still Life with Raspberry (fart noise, laugh). It was all my 60s work in one book. They said, “Would you like to go to Kentucky with this ex-Hells Angel, who just shaved his head, named Hunter S. Thompson—who wants to go back and find the evil, decadent people he knew growing up? He doesn’t want a photographer. We looked at your book and it has lots of ugly faces in it so we thought you might be the right guy.” So I met Hunter and we made the trip, and he really couldn’t write the piece. He was suffering from writer’s block, but he did take loads of notes down. And the piece became just that—exactly what happened to us. That’s what we called the “new journalism” that Tom Wolfe wrote about; the first “gonzo” piece. Our next project was in Rhode Island where we got in the way of the America’s Cup yacht race. We had a rock band on board. We were like a pirate ship getting in between the racers trying to get to the finish line. There were so many delays it started to get boring. It was horrible. I got seasick. Hunter was taking pills, so by the end I asked, “What are those pills?” “They’re just psilocybin, Ralph. Hallucinogenics. I don’t know if you need them though if you’re just seasick.” “I have to try something,” I said. I’d never had a drug before or since. It completely scoured my mind.
M: Did you forget about your seasickness?
R: Oh, I forgot all about that. I was seeing all kinds of things—snarly red-eyed dogs and such. When I went back to New York, Hunter must have gone ahead and said, “I think you’ve got a basket case on your hands. He doesn’t know where he is. I think somebody better meet him at the airport.” And of course, nobody was there. A friend sent a cab for me. When I got to the doctor I was apparently purple, palpitating, and in a hell of a state.
M: Were you still hallucinating when you got to New York?
A: I was coming down, but Hunter said I had been up for ninety hours straight (laugh)!
Artwork by Ralph Steadman
Above: Artwork by Ralph Steadman.
View slideshow.
M: Speaking of projects with Hunter, having been one of the artists to immortalize Las Vegas with Fear and Loathing, how do you feel about the town today? Have you been back?
R: I love it. For a lot of reasons, I think it’s a fantastic place. My daughter got married there the year before last. Though I’m sorry they’re turning it into a sex-oriented place and not as much for everybody, you know. When I first went there in the 70s the streets just went out to the end of town and ended in sand. It was still all very primitive in a lot of ways. Hunter’s book is rather dated now. I mean it has all been so built up. They could ruin it completely if they’re not careful.
M: Getting back to your craft, do you see any contemporary artists or movements you find particularly worthwhile?
R: No (laugh). I’m inspired by Goya, Picasso, Du Champ, and all the surrealists. Andre Gide the writer. All those kind of weird things, I love all that stuff. That’s what inspires me. But I’m not really inspired by other cartoonists.
M: You work in many mediums. Would you describe yourself in a word as a cartoonist?
R: Well, part of me is a cartoonist. But you see I think all art in a way is cartoon because it's just a way of looking, isn’t it. It’s a way of responding to what you’re looking at. The information you’re getting, you respond to it this way—it’s not academically accurate because that’s not important. The most important thing is how you’re expressing what you’re looking at. And also, what you are drawing would not exist were you not looking at that thing you were drawing. You can dream something up, but it wouldn’t be that specific thing if you were looking at a tree, and you were going to try to draw the tree. How you draw that tree would not exist were you not looking at it, no matter how inaccurately you draw it. It still has a semblance of a tree. It can’t be the tree, because no matter how accurately you draw it its still only a drawing. I mean, Picasso was a cartoonist. He took the line everywhere. That was a kind of a cartoon expression. He did a series of etchings in the late 60s, when he was an old man, and they were called Suite 347 because there were 347 of them—all done in a five month period during 1967. He was like a sponge. Whatever he drew it just came from whatever he was looking at, which at the time included television and Errol Flynn movies and such. It’s like a vacuum cleaner, drawing it in and out it cometh, spilling out another way. And I guess that’s what one does as much as one can. But there are only so many hours in the day, so you never can catch everything. So you just do what you can do (laugh).
M: You probably saw this closer coming, but what advice would you give to the next generation?
R: Learn to draw again. Get yourself familiar with the world you live in. No matter how electronic you become you’re going to need the world itself. I think this is most important. In fact, [this familiarization] informs electronics in a way. Just as much as electronics are convenient, so the world around you is informative. That’s my only sadness about kids, they seem to be looking for the easy way, you know. It’s not easy. Never was. Never a picnic. And it never gets any easier, that’s the point. It pisses me off a bit (laugh).
M: Life or the creative process?
R: The creative process. Though there are no mistakes in art. A mistake is an opportunity to do something else. It suggests something else. You’ll think, “Oh fuck, it’s a mistake.... No, wait a minute, there’s something good in here." It can’t be a mistake. And who knows when you’re finished. I think you’re usually finished when you’ve lost interest.
M: Is that your personal signal that a project is complete?
R: Yes. You’ve done it. You’ve said what you will. And then you’re on to the next thing.
© 2004 Mike Buchheit
n hour talking with artist Ralph Steadman can best be described as “a journey of a thousand miles.” Whether he’s humbly dissecting his formidable craft, reminiscing about his “Gonzo” days of fear and loathing with Hunter S. Thompson, or weighing in on politics, religion, technology, or fine wine—this eclectic Brit brings his seven decades of wit and wisdom to every topic he explores. I caught him by phone recently, between projects at his home in Kent.
Mike: Like few artists I’ve seen, your art really speaks for itself. How would you describe your craft to someone unfamiliar with your body of work?
Ralph: It’s like a shortcut to the essence of what I’m trying to say. The shortcut being that I can’t be bothered too much with fine detail. I have to go straight for it and make my comments do damage, if you know what I mean. That might sound awful, saying I want to damage something. An example would be in the making of strong visual comments about social issues. It’s a kind of violence. And the only way to do violence in my experience is you have to be violent in the drawing. You have to use your pen like a sword, like a knife, and cut and slash and burn (laugh). I have been known to burn things. I’ve used flame on a picture to burn a part of it to make it do what I wanted to do with it. I mean, not the whole damn thing (laugh), but I’ve done that too, by mistake. Speaking of fire, I just illustrated Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, not Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911, though I think his was a backhanded compliment to Ray Bradbury actually. It’s the same kind of protest as Ray’s for the burning of books, though Michael Moore’s against stupid white men isn’t he?
M: Indeed. Your editorial cartoons convey strong feelings towards the current state of global affairs. Does a project like your collaboration with Mr. Bradbury help you blow off some steam?
R: Yes, but I can’t really satisfy the kind of frustration you must be feeling right now as well about the tragedy in Chechnya last week. That must rank as one of the most unspeakable acts of evil one can imagine. What kind of cause can you believe in that says it’s okay to shoot that little girl running across the playground? What kind of ideal would you have to justify that? I don’t get it. And they claim they show their strength by killing. I say you show your weakness by killing. I wrote a piece on my Web site about it called, "So... 3000 B.C. and Beyond...".
M: I enjoyed that piece, as well as the other editorials on your site. However, I really found myself drawn to your illustrations. They have always struck me as almost magically spontaneous. How did you develop your style?
R: I never took up drawing until my nineteenth year. I tried everything else first. I was an aircraft engineer. That’s where my straight lines and circles come from. So that might explain to some people why I use straight lines, and why I use circles, and why my drawings can resemble a plan, and then there’s freedom, and wildness. The combination is what creates a tension, you know. The tightness. I learned to draw by going to life classes for seven years, and practicing, and just learning how to draw. You have to develop that coordination between the hand, eye, and the mind. Those three form a triangle. The hand and the eye need to be coordinated through the digesting mechanism of the brain, or the mind. And I worry about the young today not learning to draw. I think they feel they can do it a lot quicker through Photoshop.
Artwork by Ralph Steadman
Above: Artwork (detail) by Ralph Steadman.
View slideshow.
M: So you see a bit of a devil in the computerization of drawing?
R: I think [the computer] is a wonderful tool. I can get things done quickly. I can’t draw in a computer, it just doesn’t work. But I can draw out of it, put it into the computer, then work more on it. You know, lay in a few colors or whatever. That’s fun. It’s a great tool, but it’s not the answer to it all. You don’t think, “Good, I don’t have to draw anymore. I can just draw that in here and drag that over there and put this together with that and I got myself a picture.” And the whole line thing. I can’t control a pen line on a computer. It’s too bloody fast. In a way it’s uncontrollably fast, it’s just silly. And [a computer generated line] is not really a “feeling” line. I think a line is either alive or dead. A lot of people do pencil first and then go over the pencil with a pen to make the finished picture, and it dies because you haven’t experienced it at the moment, you’re just going over secondhand material. You’ve got to do it straight on with the pen. You’ve got to commit yourself to it straight away.
M: Do you make use of preliminary sketches?
R: I try to use the barest of scribbles of what it might be. People ask, “Well can you send us a rough?” And I say, “Well I can’t send you a rough because if I do a rough, that’s the picture.” Or, “That’s not the picture and never will it be, that’s the rough. And you might prefer the bloody rough (laugh)!” You’re wasting your time, and your energy by the way. So that seems to me to be an unnecessary aspect of it. You have to get your work well enough known so [the client] knows what to expect. Otherwise, don’t ask. They know they’ll get something.
M: How would you describe your brushwork?
R: When people ask me for a little sketch [for a charitable cause] I usually whack a sheet of paper on the board, let it dry, and then add a bird’s beak, couple of eyes, legs, wings, or turn it into a prairie dog, you know (laugh). Whatever it suggests, that’s what I draw. It’s amazing when you hit a piece of paper with a lovely ink-soaked paintbrush and it whacks all over the place. It's part of that thing I talked about earlier, the damage, the violence. And the violence expresses something in a certain direction when you go “thwop”, let it dry, and then turn it into something that people accept as artistic license. They may not think it looks like whatever it is [supposed to portray], but it is a semblance of something. And I’d like people to accept it on that basis, you know. As just a creative outburst.
M: Have you had much trouble with people trying to mimic your style?
R: There have been a few. I see my terrible lettering has been made into a font (laugh). Check it out when you get a chance.
Mac Download PC Download
Collateral Damage font by Chris Hunt, courtesy of Chank.com
—Chanks, Chank!
M: Do you see your art as a creative outlet, a livelihood, or a weapon?
R: All that. Well of course, it’s been a livelihood for all my life. I tried nearly everything else first. I tried to be an aircraft engineer, a manager at Woolworths, a rat catcher, I worked on motorbikes at the fairground. Then I saw this advert that read, “You Too Can Learn to Draw & Earn Pounds.” It was a press art school course. I took that while I did my military service and that’s ultimately what kept me off the streets I guess.
M: Well they sure delivered on their promise in your case.
R: Well, in a way they did. I mean, I did my two years in the military buggerin’ about, I was in radar. This press arts course had twelve lessons on how to draw; each was a month in duration. So after a dozen lessons the implication was that you could draw (laugh). And another five pounds would get you six more lessons on how to be a cartoonist. What it did was to get me interested; it was a kind of reason for trying to be an artist.
M: I’m assuming you completed the course.
R: Yes, and I sent a few cartoons off before I came out of the Royal Air Force, and I got a call to go to London to have an interview with a large newspaper group. They said, “Would you like a job when you come out?” And I said, “What do I do?” “You do drawings for our [northern England] papers.” And I said, “Yeah, I’ll do that.” So for three years I was a working artist, the only regular job I ever had (laugh). Then I was made redundant because the paper was bought up, and the only job I was offered was to be a black and white artist doing crossword puzzles—painting the little squares and so forth. So I left and found an agent on Fleet Street in London and became a working cartoonist.
M: Your collaborations with Hunter S. Thompson certainly proved to be a seminal event in your career— at least on this side of the Pond. How did this relationship unfold?
R: I had been in the States for a few weeks looking for work and I was contacted by Scanlons, a real radical magazine against Nixon, which eventually got them on his blacklist. Someone in England had found my collective work which was called, Still Life with Raspberry (fart noise, laugh). It was all my 60s work in one book. They said, “Would you like to go to Kentucky with this ex-Hells Angel, who just shaved his head, named Hunter S. Thompson—who wants to go back and find the evil, decadent people he knew growing up? He doesn’t want a photographer. We looked at your book and it has lots of ugly faces in it so we thought you might be the right guy.” So I met Hunter and we made the trip, and he really couldn’t write the piece. He was suffering from writer’s block, but he did take loads of notes down. And the piece became just that—exactly what happened to us. That’s what we called the “new journalism” that Tom Wolfe wrote about; the first “gonzo” piece. Our next project was in Rhode Island where we got in the way of the America’s Cup yacht race. We had a rock band on board. We were like a pirate ship getting in between the racers trying to get to the finish line. There were so many delays it started to get boring. It was horrible. I got seasick. Hunter was taking pills, so by the end I asked, “What are those pills?” “They’re just psilocybin, Ralph. Hallucinogenics. I don’t know if you need them though if you’re just seasick.” “I have to try something,” I said. I’d never had a drug before or since. It completely scoured my mind.
M: Did you forget about your seasickness?
R: Oh, I forgot all about that. I was seeing all kinds of things—snarly red-eyed dogs and such. When I went back to New York, Hunter must have gone ahead and said, “I think you’ve got a basket case on your hands. He doesn’t know where he is. I think somebody better meet him at the airport.” And of course, nobody was there. A friend sent a cab for me. When I got to the doctor I was apparently purple, palpitating, and in a hell of a state.
M: Were you still hallucinating when you got to New York?
A: I was coming down, but Hunter said I had been up for ninety hours straight (laugh)!
Artwork by Ralph Steadman
Above: Artwork by Ralph Steadman.
View slideshow.
M: Speaking of projects with Hunter, having been one of the artists to immortalize Las Vegas with Fear and Loathing, how do you feel about the town today? Have you been back?
R: I love it. For a lot of reasons, I think it’s a fantastic place. My daughter got married there the year before last. Though I’m sorry they’re turning it into a sex-oriented place and not as much for everybody, you know. When I first went there in the 70s the streets just went out to the end of town and ended in sand. It was still all very primitive in a lot of ways. Hunter’s book is rather dated now. I mean it has all been so built up. They could ruin it completely if they’re not careful.
M: Getting back to your craft, do you see any contemporary artists or movements you find particularly worthwhile?
R: No (laugh). I’m inspired by Goya, Picasso, Du Champ, and all the surrealists. Andre Gide the writer. All those kind of weird things, I love all that stuff. That’s what inspires me. But I’m not really inspired by other cartoonists.
M: You work in many mediums. Would you describe yourself in a word as a cartoonist?
R: Well, part of me is a cartoonist. But you see I think all art in a way is cartoon because it's just a way of looking, isn’t it. It’s a way of responding to what you’re looking at. The information you’re getting, you respond to it this way—it’s not academically accurate because that’s not important. The most important thing is how you’re expressing what you’re looking at. And also, what you are drawing would not exist were you not looking at that thing you were drawing. You can dream something up, but it wouldn’t be that specific thing if you were looking at a tree, and you were going to try to draw the tree. How you draw that tree would not exist were you not looking at it, no matter how inaccurately you draw it. It still has a semblance of a tree. It can’t be the tree, because no matter how accurately you draw it its still only a drawing. I mean, Picasso was a cartoonist. He took the line everywhere. That was a kind of a cartoon expression. He did a series of etchings in the late 60s, when he was an old man, and they were called Suite 347 because there were 347 of them—all done in a five month period during 1967. He was like a sponge. Whatever he drew it just came from whatever he was looking at, which at the time included television and Errol Flynn movies and such. It’s like a vacuum cleaner, drawing it in and out it cometh, spilling out another way. And I guess that’s what one does as much as one can. But there are only so many hours in the day, so you never can catch everything. So you just do what you can do (laugh).
M: You probably saw this closer coming, but what advice would you give to the next generation?
R: Learn to draw again. Get yourself familiar with the world you live in. No matter how electronic you become you’re going to need the world itself. I think this is most important. In fact, [this familiarization] informs electronics in a way. Just as much as electronics are convenient, so the world around you is informative. That’s my only sadness about kids, they seem to be looking for the easy way, you know. It’s not easy. Never was. Never a picnic. And it never gets any easier, that’s the point. It pisses me off a bit (laugh).
M: Life or the creative process?
R: The creative process. Though there are no mistakes in art. A mistake is an opportunity to do something else. It suggests something else. You’ll think, “Oh fuck, it’s a mistake.... No, wait a minute, there’s something good in here." It can’t be a mistake. And who knows when you’re finished. I think you’re usually finished when you’ve lost interest.
M: Is that your personal signal that a project is complete?
R: Yes. You’ve done it. You’ve said what you will. And then you’re on to the next thing.
© 2004 Mike Buchheit
Thursday, 29 May 2008
Weight Loss Surgery - My journey to thin!
Weight Loss Surgery - My journey to thin!
Meet Molly
My brother sent me an email about Molly and I wanted to share her story with you.
Meet Molly. She’s a gray speckled pony who was abandoned by her owners when Katrina hit southern Louisiana, USA . She spent weeks on her own before finally being rescued and taken to a farm where abandoned animals were stockpiled. While there, she was attacked by a pit bull terrier, and almost died. Her gnawed right front leg became infected and her vet went to LSU for help. But LSU was overwhelmed, and this pony was a welfare case. You know how that goes.
But after surgeon Rustin Moore met Molly, he changed his mind. He saw how the pony was careful to lie down on different sides so she didn’t seem to get sores, and how she allowed people to handle her. She protected her injured leg. She constantly shifted her weight, and didn’t overload her good leg. She was a smart pony with a serious survival ethic.
Moore agreed to remove her leg below the knee and a temporary artificial limb was built. Molly walked out of the clinic and her story really begins there.
“This was the right horse and the right owner,” Moore insists.
Molly happened to be a one-in-a-million patient. She’s tough as nails, but sweet, and she was willing to cope with pain. She made it obvious she understood (that) she was in trouble. The other important factor, according to Moore , is having a truly committed and compliant owner who is dedicated to providing the daily care required over the lifetime of the horse.
Molly’s story turns into a parable for life in post-Katrina Louisiana . The little pony gained weight, her mane felt a comb. A human prosthesis designer built her a leg.
The prosthetic has given Molly a whole new life, Allison Barca DVM, Molly’s regular vet, reports. And she asks for it! She will put her little limb out, and come to you and let you know that she wants you to put it on. Sometimes she wants you to take it off too.” And sometimes, Molly gets away from Barca. “It can be pretty bad when you can’t catch a three-legged horse”, she laughs.
Most important of all, Molly has a job now. Kay, the rescue farm owner, started taking Molly to shelters, hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation centers. Anywhere she thought that people needed hope. Wherever Molly went, she showed people her pluck. She inspired people. And she had a good time doing it.
“It’s obvious to me that Molly had a bigger role to play in life”, Moore said, “She survived the hurricane, she survived a horrible injury, and now she is giving hope to others.
“She’s not back to normal,” Barca concluded, “but she’s going to be better. To me, she could be a symbol for New Orleans itself.”
This is Molly’s most recent prosthesis. The bottom photo shows the ground surface that she stands on, which has a smiley face embossed in it. Wherever Molly goes, she leaves a smiley hoof print behind!
Now when I complain that losing weight is too hard or I want a piece of cake or a pat of butter, I’ll think about Molly and smile. What I’m putting up with is nothing.
Meet Molly
My brother sent me an email about Molly and I wanted to share her story with you.
Meet Molly. She’s a gray speckled pony who was abandoned by her owners when Katrina hit southern Louisiana, USA . She spent weeks on her own before finally being rescued and taken to a farm where abandoned animals were stockpiled. While there, she was attacked by a pit bull terrier, and almost died. Her gnawed right front leg became infected and her vet went to LSU for help. But LSU was overwhelmed, and this pony was a welfare case. You know how that goes.
But after surgeon Rustin Moore met Molly, he changed his mind. He saw how the pony was careful to lie down on different sides so she didn’t seem to get sores, and how she allowed people to handle her. She protected her injured leg. She constantly shifted her weight, and didn’t overload her good leg. She was a smart pony with a serious survival ethic.
Moore agreed to remove her leg below the knee and a temporary artificial limb was built. Molly walked out of the clinic and her story really begins there.
“This was the right horse and the right owner,” Moore insists.
Molly happened to be a one-in-a-million patient. She’s tough as nails, but sweet, and she was willing to cope with pain. She made it obvious she understood (that) she was in trouble. The other important factor, according to Moore , is having a truly committed and compliant owner who is dedicated to providing the daily care required over the lifetime of the horse.
Molly’s story turns into a parable for life in post-Katrina Louisiana . The little pony gained weight, her mane felt a comb. A human prosthesis designer built her a leg.
The prosthetic has given Molly a whole new life, Allison Barca DVM, Molly’s regular vet, reports. And she asks for it! She will put her little limb out, and come to you and let you know that she wants you to put it on. Sometimes she wants you to take it off too.” And sometimes, Molly gets away from Barca. “It can be pretty bad when you can’t catch a three-legged horse”, she laughs.
Most important of all, Molly has a job now. Kay, the rescue farm owner, started taking Molly to shelters, hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation centers. Anywhere she thought that people needed hope. Wherever Molly went, she showed people her pluck. She inspired people. And she had a good time doing it.
“It’s obvious to me that Molly had a bigger role to play in life”, Moore said, “She survived the hurricane, she survived a horrible injury, and now she is giving hope to others.
“She’s not back to normal,” Barca concluded, “but she’s going to be better. To me, she could be a symbol for New Orleans itself.”
This is Molly’s most recent prosthesis. The bottom photo shows the ground surface that she stands on, which has a smiley face embossed in it. Wherever Molly goes, she leaves a smiley hoof print behind!
Now when I complain that losing weight is too hard or I want a piece of cake or a pat of butter, I’ll think about Molly and smile. What I’m putting up with is nothing.
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
OwenKelly.net » Blog Archive » Dalai Lama’s 18 rules for living
OwenKelly.net » Blog Archive » Dalai Lama’s 18 rules for living
Dalai Lama’s 18 rules for living
At the start of the new millennium the Dalai Lama apparently issued eighteen rules ofr living. Since word travels slowly in the digital age these have only just reached me.
1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three Rs:
1. Respect for self
2. Respect for others
3. Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
Dalai Lama’s 18 rules for living
At the start of the new millennium the Dalai Lama apparently issued eighteen rules ofr living. Since word travels slowly in the digital age these have only just reached me.
1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three Rs:
1. Respect for self
2. Respect for others
3. Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
Saturday, 24 May 2008
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
Saturday, 10 May 2008
Off the record| Music | This is London
Off the record| Music | This is London
STANDING UP FOR GOTHS
After giving life sentences this week to two of the five teenagers who beat 20-year-old Sophie Lancaster to death for being a goth, the judge said to Brendan Harris (15) and Ryan Herbert (16): “This was a hate crime against these completely harmless people targeted because their appearance was different to yours.”
Following Sophie's shocking death, after she'd tried to protect her boyfriend, Robert Maltby, from the attackers, her mother, Sylvia, set up a memorial fund — Stamp Out Prejudice Hatred + Intolerance Everywhere (SOPHIE), at www.myspace.com /inmemoryofsophie — which has become the internet focal point for a heartfelt campaign. On 28 March, 7,153 people signed a petition calling for the Government to “widen the definition of hate crime' to include crimes committed against a person or persons, on the basis of their appearance or sub-cultural interests.”
Number 10 has responded with a polite no', because “these are not intrinsic characteristics of a person and could be potentially be very wide ranging, including for example allegiance to football teams — which makes this a very difficult category to legislate for”.
Yet as the blog Alterophobia (http://alterophobia.blogspot.com) exhaustively details, abuse against people who align themselves with goth culture is rife worldwide. And if any alternative lifestyle is as intrinsic to a person's being as a religious faith, it is this one. Appropriately for a murky world fascinated by vampires, goth is the subculture that never dies. Indeed, it is more popular than ever.
Yes, you can grow out of it, unlike your sexuality, disability, race or other categories that are officially included in the classification of hate crime — but many don't. Emerging from the post-punk scene of the early Eighties in the black-clad shape of bands such as Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Sisters of Mercy, the early proponents of goth still thrive. Both Siouxsie Sioux and The Mission (an offshoot of Sisters of Mercy) performed major London shows as recently as March this year, and in the same month Bauhaus released their first album since 1983. The spirit of pioneering Soho club night The Batcave has been kept alive (or undead) by Inferno at Camden's Electric Ballroom and Slime-light at Electrowerkz in Islington, which claims to have a membership of 10,000.
Musically, the sound has splintered many times, but the macabre, glamorous aesthetic remains. There's the sexually charged metal of Marilyn Manson, the garage punk of London's latest ghouls The Horrors, and theatrical rockers My Chemical Romance, figureheads of the milder emo scene who still thrive on similar dark imagery and songs of outsiderdom. The latter two groups have both been victimised for their style: My Chemical Romance were bottled off at the 2006 Reading Festival and Horrors singer Faris Rotter lost a tooth after being assaulted by seven people in Whitechapel the same summer.
Goth attracts the alienated and lonely, hence the perception that it's a world of losers. With their white faces, lank hair and extensive piercings they are still more likely to be laughed at than physically attacked. The other British goths in the news this year were the couple who were kicked off a bus in West Yorkshire because one was holding the other by a dog lead, which gave the papers a good giggle.
Yet time and again we hear that for all the violent music and horror imagery, they couldn't be a more mild-mannered and peaceful bunch. If the sympathetic public reaction to the Sophie Lancaster case is anything to go by, we know who the real losers are.
STANDING UP FOR GOTHS
After giving life sentences this week to two of the five teenagers who beat 20-year-old Sophie Lancaster to death for being a goth, the judge said to Brendan Harris (15) and Ryan Herbert (16): “This was a hate crime against these completely harmless people targeted because their appearance was different to yours.”
Following Sophie's shocking death, after she'd tried to protect her boyfriend, Robert Maltby, from the attackers, her mother, Sylvia, set up a memorial fund — Stamp Out Prejudice Hatred + Intolerance Everywhere (SOPHIE), at www.myspace.com /inmemoryofsophie — which has become the internet focal point for a heartfelt campaign. On 28 March, 7,153 people signed a petition calling for the Government to “widen the definition of hate crime' to include crimes committed against a person or persons, on the basis of their appearance or sub-cultural interests.”
Number 10 has responded with a polite no', because “these are not intrinsic characteristics of a person and could be potentially be very wide ranging, including for example allegiance to football teams — which makes this a very difficult category to legislate for”.
Yet as the blog Alterophobia (http://alterophobia.blogspot.com) exhaustively details, abuse against people who align themselves with goth culture is rife worldwide. And if any alternative lifestyle is as intrinsic to a person's being as a religious faith, it is this one. Appropriately for a murky world fascinated by vampires, goth is the subculture that never dies. Indeed, it is more popular than ever.
Yes, you can grow out of it, unlike your sexuality, disability, race or other categories that are officially included in the classification of hate crime — but many don't. Emerging from the post-punk scene of the early Eighties in the black-clad shape of bands such as Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Sisters of Mercy, the early proponents of goth still thrive. Both Siouxsie Sioux and The Mission (an offshoot of Sisters of Mercy) performed major London shows as recently as March this year, and in the same month Bauhaus released their first album since 1983. The spirit of pioneering Soho club night The Batcave has been kept alive (or undead) by Inferno at Camden's Electric Ballroom and Slime-light at Electrowerkz in Islington, which claims to have a membership of 10,000.
Musically, the sound has splintered many times, but the macabre, glamorous aesthetic remains. There's the sexually charged metal of Marilyn Manson, the garage punk of London's latest ghouls The Horrors, and theatrical rockers My Chemical Romance, figureheads of the milder emo scene who still thrive on similar dark imagery and songs of outsiderdom. The latter two groups have both been victimised for their style: My Chemical Romance were bottled off at the 2006 Reading Festival and Horrors singer Faris Rotter lost a tooth after being assaulted by seven people in Whitechapel the same summer.
Goth attracts the alienated and lonely, hence the perception that it's a world of losers. With their white faces, lank hair and extensive piercings they are still more likely to be laughed at than physically attacked. The other British goths in the news this year were the couple who were kicked off a bus in West Yorkshire because one was holding the other by a dog lead, which gave the papers a good giggle.
Yet time and again we hear that for all the violent music and horror imagery, they couldn't be a more mild-mannered and peaceful bunch. If the sympathetic public reaction to the Sophie Lancaster case is anything to go by, we know who the real losers are.
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
Monday, 28 April 2008
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
Monday, 14 April 2008
Wednesday, 2 April 2008
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Saturday, 29 March 2008
Friday, 7 March 2008
BBC - 6 Music - Bjork gig leads to ban
BBC - 6 Music - Bjork gig leads to banBjork gig leads to ban
Chinese authorities to clamp down on overseas acts
07 Mar 2008 - Chinese authorities are threatening to clamp down on foreign performers after Bjork’s recent outburst during a concert in Shanghai.
China’s Culture Ministry posted a statement on their website, highlighting their disapproval of the singer’s decision to shout “Tibet! Tibet!” after performing the track Declare Independence during her gig in Shanghai on 2 March.
The Ministry stated that Bjork’s "political show has not only broken Chinese laws and regulations and hurt the feeling of Chinese people, but also went against the professional code of an artist.”
China will now impose restrictions on foreign acts performing in the country: “We will further tighten controls on foreign artists performing in China in order to prevent similar cases from happening in the future.”
“We will further tighten controls on foreign artists performing in China in order to prevent similar cases from happening in the future.”
- Chinese Culture Ministry
Bjork’s comments attracted political attention given the sensitivity associated with China’s 58 year rule over Tibet. The Culture Ministry said: “there is no country that admits that Tibet is an 'independent country.”
Bjork dedicated Declare Independence to Kosovo after a gig in Japan last month.
She is yet to comment on the Chinese Culture Ministry’s statement.
Jacqueline Springer
Chinese authorities to clamp down on overseas acts
07 Mar 2008 - Chinese authorities are threatening to clamp down on foreign performers after Bjork’s recent outburst during a concert in Shanghai.
China’s Culture Ministry posted a statement on their website, highlighting their disapproval of the singer’s decision to shout “Tibet! Tibet!” after performing the track Declare Independence during her gig in Shanghai on 2 March.
The Ministry stated that Bjork’s "political show has not only broken Chinese laws and regulations and hurt the feeling of Chinese people, but also went against the professional code of an artist.”
China will now impose restrictions on foreign acts performing in the country: “We will further tighten controls on foreign artists performing in China in order to prevent similar cases from happening in the future.”
“We will further tighten controls on foreign artists performing in China in order to prevent similar cases from happening in the future.”
- Chinese Culture Ministry
Bjork’s comments attracted political attention given the sensitivity associated with China’s 58 year rule over Tibet. The Culture Ministry said: “there is no country that admits that Tibet is an 'independent country.”
Bjork dedicated Declare Independence to Kosovo after a gig in Japan last month.
She is yet to comment on the Chinese Culture Ministry’s statement.
Jacqueline Springer
Sunday, 17 February 2008
Saturday, 2 February 2008
Even Happier: a little bit happier, one post at a time
Even Happier: a little bit happier, one post at a time
You have a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for as long as you live. How you take care of it - or fail to take care of it - can make an enormous difference to the quality of your life.
You learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called Life. Each day, you will be presented with opportunities to learn what you need to know. The lessons presented are often completely different from those you think you need.
There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error and experimentation. You can learn as much from failure as you can from success. I know you have heard this many times, and that's because it is true.
A lesson is repeated until it is learned. Each lesson is presented to you in various forms until you have learned it.
Learning lessons does not end. There is no stage of life that does not contain some lessons. As long as you live there will be something more to learn.
Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself. When tempted to criticize others, ask yourself why you feel so strongly.
What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you create with those tools and resources is up to you.
The answers lie inside of you. The answer to life’s eternal questions lie within your grasp. All you need to do is ask, look, listen and receive.
You have a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for as long as you live. How you take care of it - or fail to take care of it - can make an enormous difference to the quality of your life.
You learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called Life. Each day, you will be presented with opportunities to learn what you need to know. The lessons presented are often completely different from those you think you need.
There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error and experimentation. You can learn as much from failure as you can from success. I know you have heard this many times, and that's because it is true.
A lesson is repeated until it is learned. Each lesson is presented to you in various forms until you have learned it.
Learning lessons does not end. There is no stage of life that does not contain some lessons. As long as you live there will be something more to learn.
Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself. When tempted to criticize others, ask yourself why you feel so strongly.
What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you create with those tools and resources is up to you.
The answers lie inside of you. The answer to life’s eternal questions lie within your grasp. All you need to do is ask, look, listen and receive.
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