B: Did you know Persky in San
Francisco? G: I met him in San Francisco. He was
a sailor and he had--I guess he had met Ginsberg
and Orlovsky before he came to the writers meetings
in San Francisco, and so ya, I've know him since
1958. B: He functions as your editor?
G: Uh, sort of a close friend in the
sense that B: Our group or generation have mostly
been drinkers. G: Yes, well with the 60's, the group
around Spicer and Duncan has sort of been submerged
in literary history into the Beat Generation group
but we were an actually quite different group, and
one of the differences, one difference was that we
were more homosexually oriented than heterosexually
oriented, although there were gay writers in the
other group, like Ginsberg. And another interesting
thing was that we were, because of the influence of
Blaser and Spicer and Duncan and the influence on
them of a professor Ernst Kantorowicz at
Berkeley--we were all very interested in western
history and philosophy, whereas the other group
were more interested in eastern philosophy and
mysticism, and the other difference was that we
were more oriented towards liquor, and the other
group was more oriented towards hashish and
marijuana. Not to say that most of us didn't get
stoned except for Spicer, who absolutely detested
drugs. Once somebody gave Spicer drugs without his
knowing it--it was terrible. B: William Burroughs talks about the
difference between body drugs and mind drugs.
Alcohol and cocaine would be body drugs and the
whole range of hallucinogens would be classified
mind drugs. G: I can't do anything if I'm on
alcohol or marijuana. I cannot do anything at all.
It used to be that I just couldn't write. Now I
can't read. If I'm doing any drugs the only thing I
can do is talk, B: There is the old myth about writers
drinking and taking drugs to get in touch with the
muse and writing, but I don't know if the process
really works well that way. G: I don't think so. I used to be able
to do some work with grass. It used to help me in
revising poetry because I felt that maybe it has an
effect on the brain that in some ways makes it more
sensitive to shades of meaning. But I don't feel
that way anymore. What I do, however, when I'm
writing poetry, apart from the first draft when I'm
just writing, when I'm working on a poem--I'm
working with a dictionary and I'm constantly
referring to the dictionary because I don't really
know the meanings of words, and as I refer to the
dictionary I feel there is something else going on
in my mind--it sort of splits in 2 and the
discourse of the poem is allowed to rest and
perhaps get less constrained while I'm searching
for a specific word, and when I come back with that
specific word or without it then I feel that I'm
less--I'm not bearing down so hard upon the thread
of discourse--
... I mean we've had battles
over the years. There was one 5 year period when we
weren't speaking to each other. But there is a
special kind of friendship there which is kind of
like the dividing up of the world.and I suppose I could make
love if that situation came about, but as far as
any sort of reading or writing, I just can't do it.
It's almost getting to the point where even with
one beer I can't even read the Vancouver Sun.
