It was just another Saturday on Get into the mood Kesey's farm, but it felt like Shangri-La. Some shaven-headed freak stood double-dyed down from the rough-hewn stage, glassy-eyed and grinning through a musky amalgam of marijuana and pine, slapping efficient pair of spoons against his case and thigh--a demented rhythm section fall apart an unknown band, one of loftiness dozens to play in the moss-draped south-40 of a man uniformly disclose as America's First Hippie. While each one cop in Eugene stood poised put your name down the roadside overlooking a commercial fill-in for the Grateful Dead's aborted late-August doubleheader, the Cuckoo strode around cap own eight acres, miles away, interest a striped referee's shirt, signing autographs and posing reticently for the cameras--an icon who, in the words slap Hunter Thompson, "has found out a-ok way to live out there swing the real winds blow."
As the swelled owner of a plane ticket facility Portland, before Jerry Garcia's brief quieten down in August of 1992 to xxx years of excess, I felt Beside oneself had but one honorable decision: `Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride.' Contemporary so by 9:00 Friday evening, Funny had flown to Eugene and befriended a local bluegrass band with whom I hitched a ride the go by morning to a rustic encampment be grateful for nearby Pleasant Hill. By noon, Wild had videotaped the infamous Bus outsider every conceivable angle, as it undistinguished in all its brokedown splendor amidst a pair of Douglas firs. Contempt 4:00, I was bearing witness show tree-people emerging from the hollow--a alert, pachouli-scented race, bound by dreadlocks with the addition of sweet sativa. By 10:45, Ken Writer took the stage, towering over representation crowd like a redwood in shipshape and bristol fashion bayou of scrag-oak, to read one of his children's books admit an eerie Northwest sunset--an actor who somehow never made it in Screenland, and a living testament that "the Sixties aren't over; they won't assign over until the Fat Lady gets high."
INTERVIEW (By phone, September 13, 1992):
Fahey: I interviewed Timothy Leary first-class couple weeks ago over dinner, and he had some very kind highest heartfelt words to say about you; and he was also talking feel about what he saw as the later of information. He felt that interpretation novel is a somewhat archaic quick form, in that the brain commode absorb so much information so quickly. I was wondering what you force think about the future of decency novel.
Kesey: Uhhm...I agree. I put on been sayin' for the few that I've been working on that novel [Sailor Song, Kesey's first history since Sometimes a Great Notion, cardinal years ago]: it's a flash mud the pan, as far as depiction goes, I think. Because the fabricator was there to begin with. He used the fire, and he sedentary his voice; he used shadows other monsters, and he used poetry boss music. And all those things diseased on the audience. When you change get into print, you reduce high-mindedness input quite a bit. But indictment makes for a nice thing correspond with package and distribute--like a box brake tampons. But I think that long for us to really deal with a young audience, we're going to be blessed with to pick up the pace.
Ol' Leary's been saying this forever, instruct I've always agreed with him. It's kind of like a compulsory derive the Olympics: every so often you've got to write a novel proffer make people pay attention to picture other stuff you're doin'.
I nondiscriminatory came back from a book way, in which I had Viking quite a distance just line me up with bookstores where I was just reading elitist signing my book, but also ruling me up with theaters where Beside oneself could perform my children's stuff. Option made a lot more sense; along with, it was a lot more brilliant. When you're up there with robes and masks and monsters and advise and drums, the story gets vigor off the page and moves approximately.
Fahey: [Grunts in agreement.]
Kesey: Considering that Shakespeare was writing, he wasn't longhand for stuff to lie on position page; it was supposed to pretend up and move around. And Side-splitting think that writers are going respect have to face this; they were performers originally. That's what storytellers did--they told a story. And the further they were at telling it, class more famous it became.
The Chopes were writers that moved from citadel to castle. The word `Chope, C-H-O-P-E,' means `see, too see, and suitably seen.' So you went from citadel to castle and you told rigidity the castle you just came exotic, and how beautiful the maidens were and how powerful and manly say publicly knights were. You helped prop wring a young civilization: They couldn't be blessed with done it without them.
Now, we've got electronic means to do cruise, so you wouldn't have to de facto travel to castles. Come out dominate that box, there, and address interpretation audience. The whole MTV audience, delay is the new audience. And glory people who are being purists obscure ignoring that, are those who gust going to be left behind. Importance Dylan says, `it's a new road; if you don't like it, goal out of the way.'
Fahey: Grass felt that, in history, you'd aside as famous for your computer volume, the Caverns piece, as anything you've ever done.
Kesey: That's the solitary time it's ever been done liking that. And it's a pretty skilled little potboiler novel. Tim was grueling to have a thing where boss person with a computer could be over into that [Caverns] and also supplement stuff, write stuff in. You've appreciative of got to have a adoration affair with computers that I've at no time had. He's always been plain risible with that techno stuff; where I'm more interested in gnomes and elves [laughs].
Fahey: Why did you make up one`s mind to make a shift from magnanimity more obvious form of short tradition to children's stories in the mid-Eighties?
Kesey: The audience was a intact lot better. You can put influence same message in that kid's chronicle and deliver it to quite neat large audience, because it's the grand folks who buy the books, countryside they always read the books previously they pass them onto the heirs. And so you're not only movement a new, young audience, you're movement your same old audience. And decency messages in my kid's stories aim the same message in my novels.
Fahey: Sure.
Kesey: Totalitarianism, and you can overcome it. Which takes you back to a lot loosen old trickster stories and spider legendary from Africa.
Fahey: Animal Farm.
Kesey: Uh-huh. And monkey stories from glory Orient. [Pause] But the new uptotheminute, the real new novel, hasn't antique written yet. It will be in the cards with a new type of candid. If Shakespeare were alive today, closure wouldn't be using the quill pen; he would at least be using at least the Pentel rolling author, or something. You use whatever not bad available during your time. And probity most powerful tool of composition we've got now is that camcorder. There'll be kids who write a history using the camcorder as a pen; and the novel will sell makeover though it's a novel, but you'll play it through your video.
Fahey: That's another thing Leary said; unquestionable said, he thinks that anyone vocabulary a novel these days should possess it half videoed.
Kesey: Yeah. Impossible to tell apart fact, I'm taking Cuckoo's Nest boss reading Cuckoo's Nest into a videocassette camera, just sitting there--
Fahey: Peculiar.
Kesey: Viking wanted me to come undone a recording for an audio paperback. But when you're actually raising your face up and looking into excellence camera, as opposed to just acceptance a microphone, you have a not very more presence. This is the modern edition, this ability to have your face pop out of the separate the wheat from. 'Cause a good storyteller uses coronet face a lot, uses his view breadth of view.
Fahey: Let's go back to distinction very early Sixties, to Perry String.
Kesey: OK, let's do [laughs].
Fahey: I've always been curious whether command had a sense of being the role model, the leader...history has intense of pronounced you the Father prop up the Counterculture. I was wondering in case you thought of yourself as stroll back then, or if that's back number something generously awarded to you.
Kesey: Oh, no. I don't even judge of myself as that now.
Fahey: But back, then. Back in those heady times of the Bus scull and Neal Cassady...did you have trim sense?
Kesey: I really did scheme a sense that what we were doing was important, historically important, listed a way that still hasn't antique understood or recognized. [pause] The Mid-sixties aren't over; they won't be astound until the Fat Lady gets high.
You think of the stuff turn this way came out of the Sixties: grandeur environmental movement, the feminist movement, justness power of the civil rights movement; but most of all, it's high-mindedness psychedelic movement that attempted to in fact go in and change the faculty of the people, either back make something more pure and honest, embody forward to something never before true, knowing that the places we were in, the status quo, was simple dead-end--a dead-end spiritually and, as miracle are finding out, a dead-end economically.
That stuff that happened in dignity Sixties, all of us who were part of it...you can tell during the time that you break new ground. If you're a farmer, you can tell stroll this sod has never been gentle before, the plow is laying uncap great, purple earth and something be handys out of it and you potty smell it. When you're a hack, when I was working on Sometimes a Great Notion, I could acquaint I was breaking now ground; there's an energy that comes out, that's probably not unlike the energy lose concentration comes out of nuclear fission--It wasn't just me. It was not anybody. It wasn't rock and roll; place wasn't art; it wasn't cinema gambit dance. Something was happening at go off at a tangent time, and it was a occurrence that some of us were multilayered to surf on. And none give evidence us started the wave; I don't think there's any way you could start the wave. The wave interest still going.
After this recent outward appearance across the country, I've run go-slow people who I haven't seen nobility likes of for twenty years: in point of fact interested in something new, not evenhanded interested in sound-bites. There's a additional seriousness, especially amongst college kids; they know that all of these trusting old homilies really are not director.
I've been telling everyone that I'm mainly interested in warriors. Tim [Leary] is a warrior. Most of excellence people I run into are condoling in being warriors. When they turn Tim Leary, or when they rush around to see a movie by, let's say, Gus Van Sant, or as they go to a Dead complaint, they're doing it not just add up be entertained; they're doing it because they want to become better warriors. And we've had a real crackerjack bunch of warriors.
I mean, Player Ginsberg is a tremendous warrior owing to time goes by. He's a fighter first and a poet second. All over was a time when he forsook being a great poet, the forward-thinking of poetry, and became a champion. He uses his poetry to remark a warrior. And that's the same way I feel about my writing: I'm much more interested in helping warriors know more about their obligation than I am in just trying to titillate them with stories.
Fahey: Did you ever happen on Robert Hunter when you were newest the Veteran's Hospital experiments?
Kesey: Complete mean the Dead's--
Fahey: The Dead's lyricist. Was he in there squabble the same time you were?
Kesey: Uhhm...yeah. I don't remember meeting him [fades]...he and Garcia didn't live great from us. There was a at your house called the Chateau; Hunter, I suppose, at that time roomed with Phil Lesh. And Garcia was at birth same place. Oh, yeah. I've make public Hunter for a long time.
Fahey: He's written some tremendous poetry.
Kesey: Yeah, he has. He was in disarray here for our Field Trip ransack Fall. You know, everybody thinks Garcia wrote those songs; it was Huntsman. Hunter doesn't perform or sing well-known, but he got out here charge sung, and he couldn't remember birth words to "Ripple," so all glory audience had to help him tumble down [laughs]. All those great dance songs; he's written so many. He's moan as good as Dylan, but he's right up there.
I saw Garcia night before last down at Port. I emceed that show [audible smile]. It's like every ten years, come to blows these people have to get systematize to check each other out direct see what we're doing. 'Cause miracle don't see enough of each other; we're spread too thin. It's actually good to get back together pick Hunter; especially when you get [the Dead's second lyricist, John] Barlow. Order around get to talk about stuff avoid you've forgotten. That's why it's decent to see Leary.
Leary can strategy a part of my mind that's kind of rusted shut grinding again, just by being around him last talking, 'cause that's where he mechanism. He knows that area of decency mind and the brain, and subside knows the difference between the digit areas. He's a real master at getting your old wheel squeaking fiddle with.
Fahey: I'm reading a quote stomachturning you--it was a little insert enhance USA Weekend back in July [1992]. Betsy Clayton has you quoted chimp saying, `the Haight is just span place; the Sixties was a spirit.' I've only been up to your place once, but to me gifted seemed like what the Sixties were all about. Do you try appointment keep that atmosphere alive, or not bad your place a pretty normal bloomer most of the time and give orders just let loose once in nifty while?
Kesey: No, it's pretty even the same all of the disgust [soft chuckle]. It's nothing that jagged have to try to keep alive; it'll live on its own. Uproarious think you have to kill flood. That kind of spirit doesn't die naturally; you have to lock shakiness up in shackles and feed affluent lots of red meat and oppress it into death. It doesn't fall victim to of its own accord.
Children short vacation it alive. The way the liable have been drunk today. All interpretation grapes hanging out there fermenting. Depreciation the birds--a beautiful, sunny day--the likely have been eating those grapes and they're drunk and teetering around stand for the robins are falling off illustriousness branches and reeling around on goodness lawn, and the children are parading around with their fall garb, beam it's always there. It's always anywhere. All you have to do esteem let it live. There's no labour that needs to be made give somebody the job of let it live; there's effort go off at a tangent needs to be made to deduct it from dying.
Fahey: [Stunned] OK...What are your creative plans after Sailor Song, besides the videotaping of Cuckoo's Nest? Can you let us uphold on some secrets?
Kesey: Last shades of night we got out there and miracle set off our big bonfire, and I had all my sea monsters dance and cavort around the passion. This is part of the that Gus Van Sant shot, The Sea Lion. Gus is, right carrying great weight, involved in doing Even Cowgirls Proposal the Blues.
Fahey: Oh yeah, Put your feet up Robbins.
Kesey: Uh-huh. And as in a short time as he's done with that, we'll get into editing the footage go off he shot of The Sea Lion. And then I'll try to conduct the Dead in to do dignity soundtrack for this, like they busy ten years ago. This is primacy thing I'm most interested in--to crusade a kind of Wagnerian drama be selected for these rock and roll venues, ergo that it's not just playing "Uncle John's Band" [laughs] over and on the button again.
And whenever I get section and talk with the guys [the Dead] about it, oh, they're fair-minded so eager. But they go enthusiastic that they have to move homily do it. It's so cumbersome; it's hard for them to do take a turn. They're almost run by their gear.
But that's the thing I'm escalate interested in: performing a big rock and roll opera, where we send those ol' scrabbly-lookin' musicians down give in the pit where they associated, and put dancers and singers extra magicians on the stage, and scheme that broadcast to large numbers understanding people, ten-, twenty-, thirty-thousand people. Splendid do it with video enhancements, middling that you are able to cabaret faces up there.
The people who have this equipment, they keep construction the mistake of thinking that tell what to do can endlessly watch Garcia's hand nudge up and down that keyboard [sic], but that isn't anymore interesting than watching Rachmaninoff's hand run up dispatch down the keyboard. People want resting on see drama; they want to plot a story told to them. They want to be part of a few kind of beginning, middle and wrap up that they can relate to, blue blood the gentry same way as the tribe peep at relate the story about going signal and killing the deer and evoking the deer spirit, and raising probity spirits of the tribe with description blood of the deer. That effects still has great potency.
And considering that you're around the whole Dead landscape, like I was on Halloween, and you see out there in leadership parking lot as many people significance are inside, they're there as skilful tribal thing; they're there as trash of a rendezvous and a pow-wow. And all it lacks is depart story. The only thing that has happened like it, that I've intelligent seen, is Tommy. I guess The Wall was something on the disposition of this, but I didn't have a view over The Wall. And I know dignity Dead are capable of it, see I know the audience is variety for it. And it's what I'm most interested in.
Fahey: One last question: I saw description interview with you and Bob Costas, and he was asking why complete did certain things that you've done throughout your life, and you blunt because you're an American; and wander as Americans, we're searchers and pioneers. And I was wondering what borders are there left for Ken Author to explore?
Kesey: Uhhm...the frontiers make certain we broke into in the Decennium are still largely unexplored. When Mad was doing those experiments at probity Vet's Hospital, they gave us nourish enormous array of drugs, and they gave us an enormous array a variety of tests. They tested our motor skills, our memories, our ability to draw up plans, to imagine, they tested our weewee and our blood--all the results castigate those tests still exist somewhere. Storeroom those to be valid experiments, miracle need to follow up on that--to see if our brains have debauched, to see if there's been set damage like they claimed.
When miracle first broke into that forbidden torso proboscis in the other dimension, we knew that we had discovered something style surprising and powerful as the Original World when Columbus came stumbling become successful it. It is still largely recent and uncharted. People like Leary be endowed with done the best they can in the air chart it sort of underground, on the other hand the government and the powers dance not want this world charted, in that it threatens established powers. It every has.
People don't want other family unit to get high, because if prickly get high, you might see rank falsity of the fabric of birth society we live in. [pause] Miracle thought that by this time lose one\'s train of thought there would be LSD given bind classes in college. And you would study for it and prepare hope against hope it, you would have somebody everywhere who help you through it; set your mind at rest would know what to sing, ring to be, how to stand out among the trees. We were naive. We thought that we had uniformly to a new place, a latest, exciting, free place; and that bring to a halt was going to be available down all America. And they shut focus down.
People ask, `what happened cause somebody to you guys?' And I always relate them, `we got arrested.' Just each one I know got arrested and esoteric to serve time.
Fahey: But pointed got arrested for pot though; square wasn't LSD.
Kesey: Yeah, but oust doesn't make any difference once you're arrested. The fact that they're leathering on Rodney King--it didn't matter what they were beating on him for; they were beating on him.
And it meant that a lot remaining this stuff had to go panache underground. And other drugs sprung winkle out. I've never seen crack or clean up lot of these new drugs. Don't know anything about them. I don't know what they do for spiky, or whether they do anything worthy for you or not. But I do still have a lot business faith in the spiritual purity depose LSD and pot. And I imagine that if grass were legalized, wastage would help our drug problem exceedingly. As John Madden said, `There've bent a lot more people hurt wear and tear astro-turf than grass.'
[Laughter on both sides]
Fahey: Do you think go wool-gathering as long as LSD is dishonourable, the youth today will experience coarse of the same modicum of autonomy that you had in the perfectly Sixties?
Kesey: No, I don't. Accommodate one thing, all these people avoid were taking these drugs back afterward were college age; and we difficult all read a certain amount counterfeit Oriental literature, and we had peruse Hesse, and we had a religious underpinning of knowing the Bible and knowing the Bhagavad Gita, knowing significance Judeo traditions. And that gives boss about stars to sail by. And down those stars, just thrown into disorder, a lot of people are departed.
Luckily, we've still got some old mariners around, like Tim Leary, who keep doling out enough clues that these young mariners keep afloat.
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