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- [00:02]
Actor/Interviewee
Tetragrammaton.
- [00:24]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I think that potential is certainly a universal characteristic of man. I don't mean to speak in such broad philosophic terms, but I, within the realm of my own experience, I see pretension in myself. I think that anyone who pauses for a moment and examines his motivations will find sometimes that they are not all what they seem, that our motivations are complex and they are not as simple as we would like them. And I think in a world where pretension exists so to such degree we can only conclude that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts and that each of us in its own small way contributes to the aggregate pretension, the national pretension, perhaps by his own pretensions.
- [01:26]
Interviewer
Do you think we keep these things to ourselves?
- [01:29]
Philosopher/Interviewee
We don't like at all to keep these things inside of us. We don't like to admit these things. We would much rather say we're right. And conversely, there are many people who would like to say I'm always wrong.
- [01:43]
Interviewer
Who do you mean?
- [01:46]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Whores, pimps, criminals, alcoholics, unfortunates, psychopaths, people suffering nervous breakdowns tend to deride themselves in the same way that people who are. Who are oriented to a superior point of view as a result of. Not of being so terrified of issues and conflicts. That I think was so well stated in this. In the poem by. I can't remember his name, it was Dover Beach. But anyhow, he said, for we are here as on a darkling plain swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night. I think that perhaps poetically and accurately and concisely describes a pervasive condition.
- [02:47]
Interviewer
Do you think it's all or nothing thinking and that we're not looking at people in a nuanced way?
- [02:53]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I think we tend to make heroes out of people as we tend to make enemies. And we like to think of ourselves as pure as Christian soldiers who are marching onward, or aesthetic philosophers who are braving the rigors of confusion and man's eternal despair and his sufferings at the hands of ignorance. But it's not nearly as clean as that. And even the most high bound intellectual people, the most esoteric thinkers, at least the ones I've met, I think I have experienced something with them that perhaps leads me to conclude that communication with oneself, it's very, very difficult thing to achieve. And usually if you talk to someone long enough and delicately enough, you eventually will find that there's an inconsistency with what they say and what they feel. Or on the other hand, there is a Consistency with what they feel, perhaps they don't know and what they say and what they do. But that interaction, that interrelationship between what we think of or what we do and how we act and what we believe and what we feel very often passes and we don't see it. They're just ships that pass in the night.
- [04:23]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [04:24]
Philosopher/Interviewee
In that respect, I feel that we must include ourselves.
- [04:29]
Interviewer
You sound interested in knowing yourself. Do you think we all share that same quest to know who we are?
- [04:36]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I don't think it's the quest of all people generally. No, I think that is the. It's the quest of a few people. There was a book by Gerald Sykes called the Hidden Remnant. And in this book he discusses issues that touch very pertinently on this theme. Since time immemorial it has been the advice of those who are wise or pretend to be wise, or the disciples that have written down what they consider to be wise observations about life. And most of them I think can be summed up in the famous phrase that the unexamined life is not worth living. And that the beginning of all wisdom is in self knowledge and that the world is a reflection of oneself. Certainly today it behooves us more than ever to examine these things.
- [05:37]
Interviewer
Would you say there's a lack of self knowledge or understanding?
- [05:41]
Philosopher/Interviewee
So often people say, well, don't tell me. I know you know. I don't know my own mind. I certainly do. The infinite delicacy, the gossamer, the. The ineffable smoke like quality of the mind to rationalize, to justify its own feelings. If you hate someone. Well, let's examine for instance the hatred of the negro by the Southerner or the hatred of the white by the black Muslims. If you examine, you talk to Elijah Muhammad.
- [06:22]
Actor/Interviewee
Yeah, Muhammad.
- [06:24]
Interviewer
Elijah, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is what he calls himself.
- [06:30]
Philosopher/Interviewee
You will find contained in his dialectic of hatred, the absence of hatred. You will find that he. That there is no visible evidence or statement of hatred. And yet the position certainly is one, that of someone who is reacting to suffering. The reasons that he just that he gives are perfectly true, 100% true. But the motivations are different. The motivations are completely different. And very often people can be 100% right for 100% wrong reasons.
- [07:14]
Interviewer
Can you think of an example?
- [07:16]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I was talking to a woman the other day, an airline hostess. And she said. She came from Georgia in Southerner. And I said, do believe in separate but equal facilities? And she said, no, I believe in integration. I think that they ought to be integrated But I wouldn't want to. I don't think that the races are mixed. I don't think that the races should be mongrelized. And I said, why not? And in the course of the argument which I won't relate here, which was too extensive, it really wasn't an argument, it was an exchange of views. Finally, when she came down to the last analysis of her assumptions, it was based on what she felt. It was not based on anything of what she thought. Because as she reached out to find reasons and justifications, it wasn't the cleverness of my dialectic that defeated her. It was just a simple observation of a few obvious facts, such as the perfectly wonderful example of integrated living that has taken place in Hawaii, which is the mixture of three, perhaps three races, three or four races and many, many different nationalities. And that is perhaps the most salient example of what can happen. And it's perfectly delightful to be to behold that society because it's a complete, living, documented contradiction to this mongrelization point of view that is so often expressed. But nevertheless, getting returned to what we were talking about, it seems to me that the average Southerner has a very difficult time, as does the average Northerner, in inspecting his real motivations. Because we don't really like to admit that we are confused or admit that we are frightened or admit that we are full of doubt. We don't like to. We like to just blot it out and say, no, that condition doesn't exist. I know my own mind, don't tell me, don't give me any of your 25 cent psychoanalysis. Well, and perhaps that's. That's absolutely right.
- [09:39]
Interviewer
You've talked about the commodification of the actor.
- [09:43]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Yes, well, in regards to that, I think that in order to profit, I think that it is one thing to blame and to criticize. But as we do, perhaps we do that, we must realize that these observations we have always applied to ourselves initially. Because the tendency, you know, for most people seems to me, and most nations, oddly enough, is to say, well, the enemy is out there, the evil is out there, the negative factors are outside myself.
- [10:20]
Interviewer
Explain what you mean.
- [10:21]
Philosopher/Interviewee
For instance, most of the Negroes in this country are rightfully and justifiably concerned with the outrages that have been perpetrated against them ever since they came here as slaves. And they have a perfectly decent, justifiable ethical ground to stand on and to support their claims and their desires. And I don't mean to qualify that at all, but if we examine, for instance, the history of the oldest republic in the western hemisphere. It is the Republic of Haiti, which was formed many, many, many years ago. I think it was in the 15th century. Men like Henri Christophe and Toussaint Louverture and Dessalines and all those great negro ex slaves who threw off this colonial yoke and established their own democracy pattern after the French.
- [11:28]
Interviewer
It doesn't seem like that's the solution either.
- [11:31]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Well, today, if you any cursory examination of Haitian history will show that it doesn't matter whether you're black or white, or whether you're oppressed or whether you are free or no matter what you are, the fact is that they are there. They have have yet to be able to establish a kind of government and a kind of a pattern of life that is wholesome because there is starvation, there is terrible social inequities and the most distressing mal distribution of profits and wealth and advantages. And in all those years they have never been able to do it. So we have. We can't assume that just because these things are lifted that everything is going to be all right.
- [12:28]
Interviewer
What about here in America?
- [12:29]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Here in America we have all the advantages that we could have everywhere in the world, Anywhere in the world. We are a living dream. We are just a perfect example of what can be achieved and what the benefits are of an integrated industrial society that has all the all its wants satisfied.
- [12:51]
Interviewer
Why is there so much dissatisfaction then?
- [12:54]
Philosopher/Interviewee
The interest that you have. You were concerned about these issues and the truth and what is going on with people. What are people really saying? And you are awash with doubts and concerns and you are not at rest, you are not at peace. Your personality does not remind me that of some of the Tahitians who I've seen who are peaceful people, the Eskimos. I am not either. And I think that we are representative in many respects of all Americans who have all these advantages but do not have the essential ingredient, which is a sense of well being and a sense of peace. We don't have it. We certainly aren't raging neurotics, we certainly aren't psychotic, we're not extreme, despite what publicity might say of us. But nevertheless, we still are missing something. And, and it's that ineffable, indescribable X quality that we really must have. And it certainly is not in money. It certainly is not in the attainment of material goods and manufactured things, Although we certainly pursue it through whiskey, sex, notoriety, success, money, television sets, boating, Kiwanis activities, good doing, Playboy club, perfect example. Status images. We'll Try to find it anywhere in the world that we can because we think it's outside. But of course it never is.
- [14:24]
Interviewer
Would you say you're more in tune with indigenous cultures than our materialist society?
- [14:30]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I don't think that we realize what the goal is. I think that the goal that all of us want is. It's dangerous to generalize in this term because it's such a. Such a subtle issue and it's like protoplasm or rather ectoplasm in its nature. But certainly we do not want strife. We do not want it, but that seems inconsistent with what we do because we seem to. To want strife. We seem to chase after it.
- [15:08]
Interviewer
Do you think we chase after strife or conflict because of fear?
- [15:12]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I think that it is much easier to find an external enemy to fight than it is an internal enemy. Hitler is a perfectly wonderful, salient, eternal example of a man who was a paranoid. He was a man who felt attacked inwardly by his feelings. He was a man who had a crushing sense of inadequacy and purposelessness. He was a man who felt that it was necessary to conquer the world. And of course what he really wanted to do was to conquer his own emotions, his own dreadful. His own feelings of dread and fear and his own feelings that one part of him was attacking another part of him. So he attacked the Jews. Now, as among all bigots, they will find a reason to attack the Jews or the Chinese or whoever it is. But he felt that it was necessary to attack these people. And then after he saw that the Jews were going to be killed and exterminated, which he did, 6 million of them. Then it was the Ukraine's, the Slavs rather, and he felt that they should all. So they were being exterminated. There were some millions of them, I don't know how many than the Poles. But he had to exterminate all these people, get them out, because they were the enemies.
- [16:37]
Interviewer
Where would it end?
- [16:38]
Philosopher/Interviewee
If he had conquered the world, if he had gotten the heavy hydrogen from Norway, had he perfected the atomic bomb and the buzz bomb and assuming that he did conquer the world, you can be assured that he would have killed the Negro, he would have killed the Japanese, he would have killed everybody except the pure Aryans or done something, done the most he could to destroy. And then finally when he was left with the pure Aryans, then he would, he would qualify what was purely Aryan. And eventually he would have been perhaps left with himself. Or he would have attacked the left handed people of the world because their minds were diseased that they were badly formed or something. But this man had to attack externally. Now, many Germans will tell you that he made important contributions to Germany because he came at a time when Germany was certainly economically oppressed and suffering. And it's certainly true he did build.
- [17:40]
Interviewer
Roads, hospitals, while Mussolini famously made the trains run on time.
- [17:45]
Philosopher/Interviewee
We always like to have things neat, and of course, they're never neat.
- [17:48]
Interviewer
Do you think there's some unconscious motive going on within us now?
- [17:53]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I noticed something interesting in the Freedom Riders. There was one man who went down there and was beaten up very badly. And he put a sign on himself when he came back that said, I am a victim of racial prejudice. He was a white man, and he put this sign on himself and stood there with his head just listening slightly.
- [18:19]
Actor/Interviewee
To the left with these great bulges.
- [18:21]
Philosopher/Interviewee
And bruises and things. But he put himself on display as a martyr. Now, had there been no justifiable and reasonable issue to devote himself to, he might have found something else. It's likely that he would have found some other cause so that he could have had himself beaten and into a pulp so that he could hang a different sign on him and say, I am a martyr.
- [18:49]
Interviewer
You're talking about labeling.
- [18:51]
Philosopher/Interviewee
We like to think that the trouble that we have is going to be solved by one thing or another. It's either getting all the blacks out of our way, getting all the whites out of our way, and allowing us to have a decent life, Getting all the rich people out of our way, getting all the disease out of our way. Whatever it is.
- [19:15]
Interviewer
Imperfection is a natural thing, but often gets scapegoated. Does that sound right?
- [19:21]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I think that perhaps the key word.
- [19:24]
Actor/Interviewee
In your remarks is scapegoat.
- [19:26]
Philosopher/Interviewee
We all must find a scapegoat. It's too uncomfortable. It gives us a feeling of hopelessness to accuse ourselves of our iniquities, our inadequacies, or whatever it is. So we must find a face of that evil outwardly.
- [19:42]
Interviewer
Do you think these are common thoughts.
- [19:45]
Philosopher/Interviewee
As we were talking about yesterday? Joseph Campbell articulated that theme so well in the Hero of the Thousand Faces because he traces the history of man's eternal search for the face of evil, for the face of good, for the face of virtue and for the face of badness, the idolatrous and relentless search for God and the devil. And we have our own personal gods and our own personal devils, and we have our system of archangels, and we have our system of arch devils. I'd say, yeah, and we worship them. And if you ask everybody in the World. What must we do to have a decent world? Some of them will say, you have to take women's rights away because the women are really running the country and they're really out to get you. They own 89% of the economy and the laws are all in favor of the women. And that's what I think we ought to do. Somebody else will say, well, we ought to segregate all the peoples of the world and have no kind of mixture at all and put the mulattoes and all the racial mixtures into one group.
- [21:11]
Interviewer
You're talking about apartheid.
- [21:12]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Yes. Everybody has a different idea as to how to solve the world. What is useful and what is not useful, what is good and what is not good. And the pursuit, not only the pursuit, but the implementation of trying to achieve that leads us in the eternal circle.
- [21:33]
Interviewer
So what can we do?
- [21:34]
Philosopher/Interviewee
It seems so painfully clear that if the world were all a shining democracy, at least shining in the concept that most American thinks that America is a shining example of democracy, which I think it is not, then it would be swell. The communists think, well, if everybody was communized, it would be a wonderful world. Well, the minute that that happened, the. That the sun rose on those circumstances would be the day that you would have people saying, fighting one another for some other reason. Because the world has never been without conflict. And I think it behooves us now. Well, it's absolutely imperative that we do it because it is one world, whether we like it or not. It might not be one world, but it's one planet. And it behooves us now to scientifically apply all our technology and investigative capacities to the nature of hatred, to the nature of man himself that produces the chaos in South Vietnam, or the murder of the American Indian in the Sand Creek massacre, or the Communists blood purge in Hungary. We have to do that because we cannot, I think we can no longer go along with a luxurious and comforting concept that there is an intrinsic difference between the Russian and the American or the Chinese and the Indonesian.
- [23:12]
Interviewer
This was the theme of your film One Eyed Jacks, wasn't it?
- [23:16]
Philosopher/Interviewee
It was. It wasn't fortunately articulated in the way I'd wanted it because I wanted to show that the spectrum of good and bad exists in all people and that we cannot dispense with it. We have a duty to Carol Chessman as we have a duty to Dr. Schweitzer. We have to respect the nature of hatred, but we have to understand it in order to dissolve it. We cannot dissolve it by attacking it with Hatred and the age old writ that says that we should return that love for hatred doesn't mean that we should stand there and allow ourselves to be pounded into a pulp by somebody who is. It simply means, at least to me.
- [24:01]
Interviewer
You mean an eye for an eye.
- [24:04]
Philosopher/Interviewee
We should deal with it with intelligence and with perception and not return in kind what it is. Certainly we're not going to let Carol Chessman run loose and commit those crimes and be as socially destructive as he was. But he is a part of us. Society did something to him. One thing that's pleasing and encouraging is the fact that the old concepts of sin and badness are being revised in the courts. Because unbeknownst to themselves, the judiciary, the people who pass judgment on criminals and things are coming to understand that there must be some. There must be Some reason that 15 or five young teenage people will stomp a crippled boy to death, stomp him to death, kick him, mash him into the ground and expunge his life. It's a mystery why we did that. There's no rationalization. There's no reason for that. We can't say that they're insane because we test them and they're not. We can't say that they are. They're evil, because they're not. They're just. We don't know what to call them. Eventually we start hovering around the possibility that something is not right with these people and maybe something's not right with our society.
- [25:25]
Interviewer
So the question is, is the problem with the people or the society?
- [25:29]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Now that is. That's a good question. Because instead of being broken on the wheel as they did in England, and punished and flailed, which of course produced nothing, we are now trying to apply some of our knowledge gained in recent years to these extraordinary acts. But whatever we've done it has resulted now in a swinging change, a slowly growing arc that is aiming towards an understanding of the dynamics of human feeling and behavior.
- [26:09]
Interviewer
You sound optimistic.
- [26:11]
Philosopher/Interviewee
You see, of all the wonders that science has yet produced and not produced, but of all the wonders in this age of scientific investigation, the greatest wonder of all is that science itself has not, until very recently, focused itself on the nature of man and what comprises him. What are the component parts of him? What makes him do this?
- [26:39]
Interviewer
So we're studying these things.
- [26:41]
Philosopher/Interviewee
We do it most amazingly in our motivational research laboratories in order to sell people cigarettes that give them cancer or underarm deodorants. And we will do anything to exploit him. We will do everything that we can to study his discomforts. And his hopes, his fears, his foibles, his wants, his needs move up to quality. We must sell him quality. We must sell him stature because he feels so inferior. This whole Playboy phenomena is interesting because it satisfies that urge of people feeling totally inadequate and totally without stature and individual reward. So we give them a kind of.
- [27:26]
Interviewer
An ersatz, a replacement or a bait.
- [27:29]
Philosopher/Interviewee
And switch mail order sophistication and meaning because it is. It has the word private. It happened to have probably several million members. It's hardly private, but at least it's.
- [27:44]
Interviewer
Clever enough to sustain the illusion, a sense of belonging.
- [27:48]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Yes, but I think that wholesale, wholesale attacks on things are now being in many, many areas and congregations is now being examined so that the quality of wholesale and frontal assault on any issue, even on this issue that we're talking about is undergoing examination.
- [28:18]
Interviewer
Do you think your performances are singled out because you bring this understanding into your roles?
- [28:26]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I don't think that it's related to that, if I may disagree. I think that those are just Superman superficial manifestations of what I have come to find as a result of the examination myself. I think that it's always in poor taste and certainly question will they use oneself as a reference point in that regard. In respect, I don't choose to use myself as a personal example, but I think that perhaps on the other hand, that's the only frame of reference. It's the only index and it's the only lexicon that we can refer to.
- [29:12]
Interviewer
I suppose the only one we have a possibility of knowing is ourselves.
- [29:17]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Certainly I can't refer to your experiences about what the world is about. I can't refer to CP Snow. I'm not going to investigate Edith Sitwell. I must view the world from what the world is and what the world is from the point of view of myself. Because I see the world through not only my retina, but to my psychological retina.
- [29:43]
Interviewer
That's a good point.
- [29:44]
Philosopher/Interviewee
And I have to understand how I see the world because no matter where I look, my psychological flaws, whatever they are, and we all have them, each and every one of us, we have very definite concepts of what is good, what is bad, what is usable, what is not, what is interesting, what is boring, what is peaceful, what is threatening. And I have to learn my special language about myself in order to be able to begin to communicate with somebody else. Because if I don't know, if I don't know where those areas are, I won't know when the information is fed back into me from somebody else that it is Automatically being deflected and bouncing off the hard core of ignorance.
- [30:33]
Interviewer
Well, how can you gauge that?
- [30:35]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I must make constant adjustments for what the other person is saying in relation to the perceptors, that I must have knowledge of my own perceptors and how I receive language. For instance, you can tell me something that will irritate me and you can express a point of view that might be unsettling to me. But then I have to ask myself, well, why is that point of view unsettling? And the first thing that I'm going to do is say I'm going to reach into the bag full of rat and I'm going to hurl a few generalizations which might be very smart, might.
- [31:11]
Actor/Interviewee
Be very adroit, might be very clever.
- [31:13]
Philosopher/Interviewee
You know, and insidious in their, in their use.
- [31:17]
Interviewer
They might not be accurate, though.
- [31:19]
Philosopher/Interviewee
They might be completely wrong when the real reason lies in some other area that I just can't bear to look at. And most practically seen, you see this phenomenon in the south. And these poor desperate people are so filled with a terror of what's going to happen if the Negroes come into power, they grab any reason under the sun. Under the sun. And they completely ignore, in their fear and in their distress, they completely ignore the possibility that as a result of suppressing these people for so long, they feel enormously guilty, feel they unconsciously anticipate a great wave of hostility. Part of which is real certainly, because.
- [32:12]
Actor/Interviewee
The black Muslim movement is an indication.
- [32:15]
Philosopher/Interviewee
That all is not rosy with the Negro and that what at one time passed for a happy, go lucky stereotype, the lurking antagonism in that creature who had undergone humiliation and hopelessness and degradation to its, you know, to its fullest measure, has now come to life. But it seems that they now, the people in the south are undergoing very important challenges and they're asking themselves all kinds of strange questions. And eventually, as a result of this pressure, the arrest of Martin Luther King, these people going down and forcing these issues, an answer is going to be forthcoming. And sooner than we expect, people are going to be living together in peace, perhaps not entirely peace, but they're going to be living together and enjoying some measure of reasonable social intercourse. And all these dreams of what was going to happen isn't going to happen.
- [33:18]
Interviewer
When we find a scapegoat, we can avoid our own role in the problem.
- [33:26]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I'd like to use that as an illustration. It's reminiscent of the old parable that the three blind men were walking along and they saw an elephant and One felt the sight of it and says, oh, here's a wall. We've run into a wall. Someone else, someone. The other one grabbed the tail and says, by no means. This is. This is a snake. A snake with hair on the end of it. And the other one felt the leg and said, you're both wrong. It's a trunk. Well, returning to what we were saying before, you saw what Kenneth Tynan saw, you saw what perhaps Harold Kluhman saw. Now someone else saw something different. It all depends on our particular disposition.
- [34:05]
Interviewer
Well, how does something connect in a timeless way?
- [34:10]
Philosopher/Interviewee
That's always been a mystery to me. Because Shakespeare has lived through the ages because he has communicated something eternal. He has communicated something in a major way. He has said something that has affected all of us. So he has lived. But there are others who in their day were considered great, but who died off because they didn't have this universal touch, these universal tentacles that just spread into the future because they lacked a universality of communication.
- [34:46]
Interviewer
If you were to play Hamlet, considering how often it's been done, do you think your interpretation would be different than ones that have come before?
- [34:57]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Yes, I suppose. Well, anybody that would do Hamlet would alter in some degree, in some. Some poetic flavor, the nature of the man, his relationships and his aspirations, his fears. Some would accentuate the confusion. Some would accentuate the poignancy. Some would very clearly delineate the philosophical stalemate that Hamlet finds himself in. And according to the man, they would bring to life some part or illuminate some part of the mosaic that is Hamlet today.
- [35:41]
Interviewer
How do you mean mosaic?
- [35:44]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I use the word mosaic because I think that accurately describes what Hamlet is. Because it is a mosaic of many, many things, many, many points of view, any and all of which can be successfully illuminated and accentuated and still without disturbing the main theme of the piece, it holds itself intact.
- [36:06]
Interviewer
Do you think Shakespeare's particular in some way, or would this go for most playwrights?
- [36:12]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I think that if a playwright has great, great power.
- [36:21]
Actor/Interviewee
Well, I'll give you an example.
- [36:22]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I don't think that John. What's his name, wrote Teahouse of the August Moon.
- [36:28]
Interviewer
John Patrick.
- [36:29]
Philosopher/Interviewee
John Patrick is a great playwright. I think that he is. He is a fine craftsman and that he wrote a wonderful play, delightful play. An extraordinary technical virtuosity in many respects. For instance, I feel that I did not play that role well at all. I felt that I was miscast for it and that I didn't do very well in it. Certainly not as well as Davey Wayne or Eli Wanna. But nevertheless, that play had such strength in construction that it carried. It carried the bad performance of myself. And I think a performance less valuable than some others by Glenn Ford. I don't think that Danny Mann directed it very well either.
- [37:13]
Interviewer
The story was still delivered, whatever it was.
- [37:16]
Philosopher/Interviewee
The strength of the play, the framework carried us through because it was successful. That is almost an actor, proof, director, proof vehicle. It had the fiber to support the most incredible errors of interpretation and rendition.
- [37:34]
Actor/Interviewee
Wow.
- [37:35]
Philosopher/Interviewee
And such is the play of Tennessee Williams, Streetcarning Desire.
- [37:41]
Interviewer
Do you think of yourself as a craftsman or an artist?
- [37:46]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Well, I didn't say that I was a craftsman. I really don't. Well, I think that I don't know what an artist is. I don't know really how to apply that. There are some people who will say that Yehudi Minguin is not an artist. He is an interpretive creator. And that an artist is someone who does. Makes an original contribution, who performs the service of creating wholly something that is separate from the work of other people. And that William Capel, who unfortunately died in this airplane crash, was not an artist. And that Leonard Bernstein is not an artist. He's an interpreter in that respect. I don't know how to answer it.
- [38:35]
Interviewer
Do you think of yourself as an artist?
- [38:37]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I live in a world that deals with dollars and cents in a very crass fashion. That movie production is thought of as product. It's the law of supply and demand now contained within that. I think, for instance, as within the world of journalism, the Manchester Guardian certainly lives in a world of law that is controlled by the law of supply and demand. They have to supply the demand that is made on them for a certain quality of news, certain quality of information and interpretation that will not be tolerated by, let's say, the likes of a Time magazine brand of journalism.
- [39:19]
Actor/Interviewee
So it's.
- [39:21]
Philosopher/Interviewee
With many respects, I don't feel that it's entirely appropriate that I should, say, call myself an artist.
- [39:29]
Interviewer
Well, I feel comfortable calling you an.
- [39:30]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Artist when I have those associations. I think that there's great potential about artistry. And perhaps it's out of my respect for what it means to be an artist that I don't choose to call myself one because I think it's not something that's easily come by.
- [39:48]
Interviewer
How about in theater?
- [39:49]
Philosopher/Interviewee
In the theater, Just because, you know, you see the same kind of very practical monetary considerations governing theatrical enterprise here. Of course, I don't know. I've seen artistry on television. To my way of thinking, I've seen the spirit of what I think is artistry. Dedication and beauty.
- [40:13]
Interviewer
You use the word interpreter. Are you a fan of jazz?
- [40:18]
Actor/Interviewee
Yeah.
- [40:19]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I really don't have a good enough ear to know what is there. It's very difficult for me to communicate with jazz in a really fine way. I, of course, appreciate it.
- [40:31]
Interviewer
But jazz is improvisational. Do you see acting as improvisational as well?
- [40:38]
Actor/Interviewee
Yes, I suppose so.
- [40:40]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I don't mean to mince words about it.
- [40:43]
Actor/Interviewee
Certainly the actor is obliged to make a creative contribution.
- [40:47]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I think that the actor has to borrow the form of the writer to bring his contributions to life.
- [40:58]
Actor/Interviewee
I think that the technique that I use is primarily an intuitive one and.
- [41:03]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Can be seen many, many place in the world in many many different circumstances. For instance, Eleanor Duza is a woman who, contrasted with Sarah Bernard, used a technique of feeling in the participation of her emotions and her intuitions in her acting. A man by the name of Alfonso Bedoya, who played in the Treasure of Sierra Madre, he played the bandit, gave a spectacular, intuitive performance.
- [41:33]
Actor/Interviewee
The one with the big hat, the gold hat, yes.
- [41:35]
Philosopher/Interviewee
That was his wonderful performance. Never been.
- [41:39]
Actor/Interviewee
He doesn't know Stanislavski from.
- [41:42]
Philosopher/Interviewee
From Hamburger or Hot Tamale. But he gave a marvelous performance. This fellow that played him, Bicycle Thief, certainly not an actor.
- [41:53]
Actor/Interviewee
So it's, I think, readily discernible that people.
- [41:58]
Philosopher/Interviewee
It's an ordinary technique, and it's not limited to. Well, I suppose it is, if what Duza did is jazz. And I suppose what I did is jazz too, and perhaps is an accurate phrase. I wanted to ask you a question, though. You sit and you ask many questions, and it's so often. It's so often, as the case, we get no impression of you as a person. We don't know what goes on in your mind. And you are of enormous influence and a vital concern to many people and many listeners. And I think that it perhaps is not inappropriate that I ask you a.
- [42:34]
Actor/Interviewee
Few questions about yourself.
- [42:35]
Philosopher/Interviewee
And this might startle you, but I think that you, in the spirit of communication, you have also an obligation to describe some of your feelings and your points of view. I was wondering, what is it about this particular kind of work that interests you? Why are you preoccupied with these questions? What is the nature of your search and your furrowing out this information from people of all kinds and all manner. What kind of contribution does it make to you as a person?
- [43:10]
Interviewer
I'm just curious. I like to learn. I'm naturally curious.
- [43:16]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I'd like to point out something, you see, when I ask you a simple question, such as, please describe what it is that you feel about and what the reasons are that you do it. You find yourself, I've noticed, tense and concerned and perhaps a little confused and a little unsettled by the question. And I mean to point out, I think this bears very, very importantly and what we were talking about before, of how difficult it is really to ascertain the nature of what we do. It's very difficult. When you ask me a question about something, I really have to, you know, I can give you a glib answer and I can just suddenly start talking and feeling. But if I want to answer the question honestly, I have to really search in my mind and the questions that I. You could ask me a question. Most of the questions you've asked me, I have asked myself before.
- [44:18]
Actor/Interviewee
Other subjects I have approached, I've asked myself before.
- [44:21]
Philosopher/Interviewee
So I've come up with an answer. And whether it's right or wrong, you know, history will bear out or further inspection will corroborate. In this illustration, we find that when someone that you are interviewing suddenly turns around and asks you a question, it's. You have to do a great deal of communication with yourself. Suddenly a whole system of finding and inspection and search begins. And I think that it's useful perhaps to observe that it is not easy for any of us when we are asked the simplest question, to give a simple answer.
- [45:01]
Interviewer
I love that you ponder the questions and answer them seriously. What thoughts are you occupied with these days?
- [45:09]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I've noticed that the members of the military forces who are directly instrumental in the setting off of atomic warheads have to be people who have to pass very strong and stringent and exhaustive psychological tests to realize and to make absolutely sure that it will not fall, the decision will not fall to a man who is emotionally unstable.
- [45:40]
Interviewer
What do you think that means?
- [45:41]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Yes, what does it mean? Emotionally unstable by their own standards, by the standards of the army, not by the standards of anyone else. What, they employ psychiatrists and psychologists to investigate these people. Now, I think with that we begin to see the encroachment of scientific investigation as it is properly applied and perhaps should be properly applied to our governmental figures. Now we examine the life of Bobby Kennedy and let us say he is out to get Mr. Hoffa. Now, let us say that he is not out to get Mr. Hoffa or he is out to get the. What do they call it? The.
- [46:24]
Interviewer
The Syndicate.
- [46:25]
Philosopher/Interviewee
He wants to get the Syndicate. Now, how much of a personal challenge, how much of his personal feelings is involved in that, and how much is just a reasonable, cold heart intellectual task that confronts him? It's something that only he can ask, but we can ascertain to a certain extent. There must be something personal about it. Jimmy Hoffa's defense of himself certainly is not completely the defense of his union. It's not his defense of Dave Beck or the principles of labor. Certainly there are. He's defending other issues, lateral issues, hidden issues that we don't see.
- [47:04]
Interviewer
What are your thoughts on the people in charge?
- [47:06]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Mr. Khrushchev and Mr. De Gaulle, Mr. McMillan, President Kennedy are all people who are very human, perhaps all too human, in face of the most incredible responsibilities and the most awesome decisions that they have to make in this world. And it doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility or usefulness that a man like Senator Talmadge or Senator Ellender, who are people notable for their. Well, yes, their beliefs and their politics tempered by their political locations in this country, or people like Senator McCarthy, that it would be valuable to examine them. It would be valuable to see what an examination of Senator McCarthy might produce or Mr. John Bircher or Whitaker Chambers, or Paul Robeson or Elijah Muhammad. What is in the nature of these people that makes them leaders? Now, we are not so naive in America now as to believe we intuitively know it. But we are not so naive as to believe that Richard Nixon is devoid of feeling. When he went before the press, he made an enormous political error. And he showed himself a weakness that perhaps might have been dangerous had he been the President of the United States and been faced with a challenge of Cuba. He showed that he was a man of emotional vehemence and a kind of an emotional quality that he had heretofore denied.
- [48:55]
Interviewer
How did you see it?
- [48:56]
Philosopher/Interviewee
We saw it in his face. Some people are more controlled than others. We don't know what extent Mr. Kennedy makes an emotional decision. We don't know if he ever says, well, for God's sake, what's the matter with you out there? Well, why can't you do it? We don't know what he said to the Governor when Mississippi over the telephone. We don't know what emotions went surging and coursing through him. But what we do know is that the world is filled with atomic bombs today and that the unexamined life of a politician is a dangerous life. And that irresponsible and people who are unprepared to handle situations cannot afford. We cannot afford the luxury of their indulgence in positions that they do not rightfully belong in.
- [49:49]
Interviewer
Do you suppose we all could use a bit of self examination?
- [49:52]
Actor/Interviewee
Well, I don't suppose it's any more important for us now than it ever was, or I don't suppose proportionately more people are examining their lives now than they ever were before. There are some people who stand head and shoulders above the others and above the rest of us because they, for one reason or another, are obliged to find these insights at whatever cost it is to themselves and the world around them. But I certainly think it behoves everyone to do that. But not all of us are disposed that way. But certainly we'll have to examine our politicians, they will have to examine themselves, and we will have to examine them much more closely because the responsibility of the politician is much greater today than it ever was. And I think that these influences slowly will make their concentric influences felt all over the world. And I think the day eventually will come when men like Khrushchev, Mao, Zedong, Zakarno, Siguin, Rhe, Chiang Kai, Shek, de Gaulle, all of these men and whatever time we find them will be men of men chosen more carefully through examination of themselves and examination of the peoples, because the enormous responsibility that they hold.
- [51:22]
Interviewer
Do you think it would be of value for each of us to do deep self examination?
- [51:30]
Actor/Interviewee
Well, yes, but I think that that kind of knowledge and depth is reserved only for a few special people who are willing to go through, to make the journey through the night sea, as someone once said it. Yes, to find one's centers. And whether it is found through investigations of the applications of the mystique of Zen Buddhism or psychoanalysis or some other active, vital inspecting technique or philosophy, they will find it. But I think it's too optimistic to suppose. I don't think that history ever indicates that people en masse are willing to make that enormous sacrifice.
- [52:19]
Interviewer
How important is having a life of meaning?
- [52:23]
Actor/Interviewee
Well, life is always given meaning by people. Whether it's having a lot of money or being sexually virile, or having power, a status symbol, or a lot of property or influence, or whatever it is that whatever it is that symbolizes success and meaning for people, people go on pursuing it.
- [52:49]
Interviewer
What are some ways that people can live beyond that surface level?
- [52:53]
Actor/Interviewee
I think that it is now clear there are certain techniques that have been developed and are being developed, applied to the human being perhaps offers a fairer explanation and a more useful one as to what he is and how he works and why he works. We constantly are reminded that criminals and people of misfortune of that kind are being examined from the point of view of being ill, not from the point of view of being Sick. And gradually those experiments and their findings come down to the everyday level, of course, which is always dangerous too.
- [53:40]
Interviewer
Were you moved by the Kurosawa film Akiru?
- [53:44]
Actor/Interviewee
I was moved by the display of character that this man had. That by his bravery and his. His refinements as a person. How little it was for him to want to make a municipal recreation area for children. But that was in his last moments of life, his glory. And there was something very touching about that. The man was purified and he became whole and dedicated. And I think wherever we see that kind of dedication, it's moving to us.
- [54:26]
Interviewer
It gave his life meaning, didn't it?
- [54:29]
Actor/Interviewee
Let us not say it gave his life a meaning, but it gave his life more meaning. All our lives have meaning. Your life as an interviewer, as someone who was curious about the common point of view and the esoteric point of view. The secretary who sits across the room talking on the telephone has a meaning to her life. I have a meaning to my life, diversified as it might be. But how much that meaning is valuable to us, I think varies from person to person. How real our meanings are to ourselves, I think varies from person to person. And there's no way to judge that. I can't judge the realness or the usefulness that your meaning has for you. And it's difficult for you to judge that. For me, it's something that, because we're different organisms, it's something we must judge for ourselves.
- [55:25]
Interviewer
How did you choose to do the film the Ugly American?
- [55:28]
Actor/Interviewee
Well, I felt that it was. There were many comments that many things that I felt convinced about that I would like to articulate. Many sentiments and observations that I felt a kinship with that were contained in this. Not all. Many of I disagree with and some I wish had been more and some I wish had been less. But nevertheless the, the total impression of the film does share to a great extent my personal feelings as well as George's and Mel Tucker's and Stuart Stern. This was a picture made in concert.
- [56:10]
Interviewer
Who were Mel and Stuart?
- [56:11]
Actor/Interviewee
Stuart Stern was the writer, Mel Tucker was the producer.
- [56:15]
Interviewer
I see.
- [56:16]
Actor/Interviewee
And that was why I, I chose this film. Actually. It wasn't the, the. The part so much as it was the film itself.
- [56:29]
Interviewer
How were you different than your 20 year old self or the 20 year olds of today?
- [56:36]
Actor/Interviewee
How they differ is something I don't know. And that's a result of the ineffable distance between one age and another. If it were easy to communicate with another age, then we'd never have any trouble with Learning because all that was ever written, all that was ever useful has been written rather and is accessible in literature and art philosophy. But we read it and we might as well be reading hieroglyphics because you can't learn how to live except through living. And you can't communicate things that you've learned in any way. Everybody has to learn it for themselves and it's just hopeless to try and cram down the or cram into the brains of others. First of all, we don't have any right to do that, I don't think, to invade the minds of others. I think everyone has certainly a right and a duty to come to their own conclusions.
- [57:35]
Interviewer
How do you think you've been perceived earlier in your life versus now?
- [57:39]
Actor/Interviewee
I was impressed by the fact that at one time I was in some respect the hero of young. And now I am not. Someone else has taken my place because I've gone beyond. I'm no longer a teenage symbol and.
- [57:56]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Someone else has done it. But there again they have their own.
- [57:59]
Actor/Interviewee
Their own gods, their own worshipers, their own heroes. I've come to realize that the hero with a thousand faces is the hero of a thousand different people and that.
- [58:15]
Interviewer
Do you miss being the hero?
- [58:18]
Actor/Interviewee
I've outworn my usefulness as a hero to the teenager. They want someone else and the spirit of rebellion stated in a different way. And I was impressed with that and also with the strangeness. The strangers are looking down the funnel of the years into a time when I was 18, 19 and 20. And that it might as well be a hundred years away. It's not just whatever it is.
- [58:54]
Interviewer
Do you think kids today are as cool as you were when you were young?
- [58:57]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Yes, I think they're.
- [58:59]
Actor/Interviewee
They tend to be more cynical, more questioning. They're assaulted by so many lies every day. The false lies on television, the attitude of the announcers, the way the products are pushed, the sort of heisting and psychological second story mend push around. Everybody knows it's a lie and that so much that we live as a lie and it's taken for granted that we live in terms of lies. But the question isn't so much whether it's true or not, but how much of a lie there is in it. And I think that they are so loaded with false values on every hand that they become a little cynical.
- [59:57]
Interviewer
What do you think about that?
- [59:58]
Actor/Interviewee
I think it's a healthy reaction. It's something done in self defense and they don't believe it. The kind of. The kind of world, the kind of Christian world that is taught them in the churches. And the kind of Christian world that they meet on Madison Avenue is vastly different. And there's a large schism in our society as a result of this endless relentless push for the mother money.
- [60:29]
Interviewer
I know that you're a father. What do you tell your children?
- [60:33]
Actor/Interviewee
Tell them about what?
- [60:34]
Interviewer
About the world today.
- [60:36]
Actor/Interviewee
I don't tell them anything. I tell them something. When they ask me, they say what is this? Or why is this? And I try to explain it to them as simply as I can. For instance, people have come up to me, much to my discomfort while my son was there, and gone through this rather embarrassing ritual of asking for my autograph. And the magical touch, rubbing the touchstone, the lucky stone of the hero and looking adoringly and worshipfully at this symbol strange, peculiar manifestation of our funny life here in America. So I was signing this autograph. I couldn't do otherwise. I always sign for children because they really don't know any better. But it's so distressing when you see adults indulging in this sad talisman seeking kind of thing.
- [61:42]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Yeah, but sometimes you just have to.
- [61:44]
Actor/Interviewee
Do it because you don't want to be offensive.
- [61:48]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Anyhow, he was there.
- [61:50]
Actor/Interviewee
I happened to be with my older boy.
- [61:52]
Interviewer
What was your son's reaction, Daddy, why.
- [61:54]
Actor/Interviewee
Does he want your name? Well, I had to scrape the inside of my brain to give him a decent answer. I said, well, I don't know why they want my name.
- [62:05]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Some people do that.
- [62:06]
Actor/Interviewee
Some people just think it's lucky if they have things. They have rabbits feet and they have little charms and some people like me and they want a memento from having been near me. And so they want me to scribble something. It was quite difficult to answer.
- [62:26]
Interviewer
Wow, it must be difficult for them.
- [62:29]
Actor/Interviewee
I think that the task set out for them is enormous. I think to be the sons of a famous man is an awful burden. And it's awfully tough because I'll have to live up and be constantly known as my sons. I will not be known as their father. They'll be known as my sons. And that's an ugly, ugly burden. And I hope to find some way to protect them if I can to bring them up in some place where they are protected from this thing.
- [63:06]
Interviewer
Where do you mean?
- [63:08]
Actor/Interviewee
In other places in the world it doesn't matter who I am and I'm just another two legged person walking around. But when they go to school then they very quickly become aware of the fact that their father is somebody who was somehow an important commodity in everyone's home and everyone's life. And I think he's seen. You can't keep the kids away from the television. You can't be there all the time. They see it. It's an enormous problem and I wish I could spare them that. But they'll just have to bullet through as best they can. And with all the help I can give them.
- [63:54]
Interviewer
You use the word important commodity. Do you see it that way?
- [63:59]
Actor/Interviewee
Yes. I think that we're all bought and sold in one way or another. A few of us aren't, but there's a price tag on all of us. If you see ideas on television sold, you see political ideals, ideas that are bought.
- [64:20]
Philosopher/Interviewee
I mean the.
- [64:21]
Actor/Interviewee
The mere expression of the word I don't buy. That comes from a kind of mercantile invasion of the American mind. The values of buying and selling. And you can even buy stature, as we discussed before, by being in the Playboy Club or move up to quality by drinking a certain beer. And it's. It's perfectly absurd and sad, but nevertheless, that's the world we live in.
- [64:55]
Interviewer
Do you think cynicism is the answer? I don't know if you can answer that question.
- [65:00]
Actor/Interviewee
I can't answer. And I've done the best I can with my age and my life. I don't think that I'm a raging success in my life. I don't think that I've achieved certain things that I would perhaps like to have achieved within the realm of my own soul. But then we do what we can. We can't do any better than we can. And we use the techniques and the reserve fuel tanks that are afforded us. And maybe his life will be less pressured in some way. Maybe. It's so hard to tell when nations and empires rise and fall within a period of 25 years. And they're fantastic revelations by science. It'll be difficult to predict how difficult the world will be.
- [65:52]
Interviewer
It's impossible to know. Let's see what's revealed.
- [65:56]
Actor/Interviewee
As I get older, I have become more convinced that a simple way of life, a life that is directly related to living, the getting of food and the making of it, the preparing of it, work that is directly related to living, such as the kind of work that you find in almost any primitive community.
- [66:23]
Interviewer
It's funny, we think of primitive as backwards.
- [66:27]
Actor/Interviewee
I think it's fundamentally more wholesome. I think that richness and success is just so poorly distorts life. It hasn't really meant anything. I think that it tends to mean something because people think, well, they'll have.
- [66:45]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Security, but they don't.
- [66:47]
Actor/Interviewee
We don't have economic security here. We're little islands separated one from another. You know, if you starve, you have to go to the state, but you're a social reject if you're poor and you haven't. If you're not successful, there's something, something.
- [67:03]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Sick about you, something malignant and unusable.
- [67:06]
Actor/Interviewee
People don't like to be around failure. At least failure in the common sense. And they can't understand people, can't understand other people turning their back on material goods and not taking full advantage of it when you can.
- [67:24]
Interviewer
You're speaking of an old way of living in tune with nature, outside of modern society. No consumer culture.
- [67:33]
Actor/Interviewee
Well, they have no sense of what it is to have or have not. They have bananas, they have coconuts, they have breadfruit, they have fish in the lagoon, they want a house, they stick some palm fronds together and a few hunks of wood, and for a few pennies they can get a pareo. And they live perfectly happy.
- [67:54]
Interviewer
Sounds like paradise that the Tahitians don't.
- [67:56]
Actor/Interviewee
Work except when they want something specific. But that will of course change when the marketing psychologists invade that area. When the world communication system is complete, then if the Japanese then flood the South Pacific with a lot of television sets, then the marketeers will invade the realm of the Tahitian also and force a market, force him to want things, tease him into it, cajoling him into it, shame him into it, humiliate him into it, saying, you're poor, you're backward, you're no good, you're not civilized.
- [68:37]
Interviewer
The advances in technology and mechanization isn't negative per se, but the way that it's happening seems to be having a profoundly negative effect.
- [68:50]
Actor/Interviewee
Yes, I think that America has not finished with its pioneering in this world. Oddly enough, we are pioneering a great many things. Certainly we're pioneering through an age of the inundation of our lives with material things, the inundation of our minds with material considerations. And so often we're criticized as a tinker toy society and a gadget oriented civilization. And with a butt of so many jokes as a result of that.
- [69:27]
Interviewer
Isn't that the basis of the American system?
- [69:30]
Actor/Interviewee
I think when you go to Paris now, or Germany or go to Italy, you'll find the same kind of merchandising psychology, the same kind of mercantile thinking. The forced markets so often remind me of forced feeding geese when they stuff a metal pipe down a goose's throat and pour Corn in it to swell his liver. That's what they've done to us. They've swollen our liver. We've done that to ourselves. And it'll take time for us to understand what we're doing to ourselves. That it really doesn't mean anything.
- [70:03]
Interviewer
It's a race to nowhere, the rat.
- [70:06]
Actor/Interviewee
Race, the, you know, the conniving and racing lust that we have for success finds its counterfeit.
- [70:16]
Interviewer
Why did you make the decision to become an actor?
- [70:20]
Actor/Interviewee
I don't know the reasons for the reason that we do. Things are lost, I think, in the very subtle nature of our being. I suppose. I once thought that if you took a handful of sand and threw it up into the air in the wind, you could predict, if you knew all the factors, the weight of each grain of sand, its location in the mass, its shape, its specific density, the application of the pressure, the force of the wind. Theoretically, you could predict what would happen if you knew all the factors and where each sand grain was located, exactly what was happening in its relation, its weight, its collision force in relation to the mass. But I don't think that that's possible. And in the same way, it's not possible to understand what we do. And I can make guesses at it and probes at it, but I don't suppose I could really tell you why it's lost in the tangle of all the things that make up what I am as a person, which is infinitely complex and intricate and perhaps beyond our perception, at least beyond mine.
- [71:49]
Interviewer
I hope it's been enjoyable for you to ponder today's thoughts.
- [71:54]
Actor/Interviewee
I think that something very useful has come out of this discussion and many of the discussions I've had recently. I think that exchanges of this kind with people, there's a growth in communication and a hunger for it on television. You see so many shows going, discussion shows, and you wonder, well, when they.
- [72:15]
Philosopher/Interviewee
First came out, what the hell are they doing?
- [72:17]
Actor/Interviewee
They're just sitting there talking.
- [72:19]
Philosopher/Interviewee
And gradually you came to realize that.
- [72:21]
Actor/Interviewee
There was a hunger for conversation, for exchange of ideas. And I think this is a really remarkable thing because Whereas it took 1500 years for Buddhism, I think, to come from India to Japan, it takes the twist 37 hours to get to Australia, maybe less. Whatever is weak. And so when new, worthwhile, dynamic ideas, conceptions come, there can be a very quick exchange of them and application of that knowledge. And I think that's. That's wonderful. It's also dangerous too, because it's with the television and the radio and whatnot. It's so easy to train, poison and discipline people's minds as they do in Red China. They have loudspeakers that blast from morning till night, make announcements from morning till night, rubbing and scrubbing this propaganda into their. The souls and the bones and the minds of these children.
- [73:35]
Interviewer
And don't forget social media.
- [73:37]
Actor/Interviewee
The Nazis did that. And it was very difficult. There was a. An article that I read which dealt with the denazification of emotionally disturbed children in Germany after the war. Because these children were brought up as Nazis, they were told to tell on their parents. And they became very neurotic and full of problems about that. And it's very hard to eradicate that. Even now there are people walking around who still are diseased from that malignant influence.
- [74:13]
Interviewer
Is there anything else you want to talk about?
- [74:17]
Actor/Interviewee
No. Except that I might point out that I've had so many microphones stuck in my face in the past three weeks since I've been on this 35,000 mile tour. I've often asked myself the question I find myself talking. What are you talking about? Why is the microphone stuck in your face? I know that if I was a dentist from Duluth that it might not be my face that the microphone was stuck in. And I find myself giving my opinions and. But always at the same time wondering why.
- [74:57]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Why are my opinions asked?
- [74:59]
Actor/Interviewee
And I wonder sometimes if not this very moment is not a manifestation of the kind of thing we were talking about. Why me and not you? Why me and not my secretary sitting across the room with a waiter? But I suppose you do. You do interview all kinds of people, don't you?
- [75:21]
Interviewer
I think anyone who's examining themselves probably have something interesting to share.
- [75:28]
Actor/Interviewee
In Gray's eulogy in a country church chart, he says, full many a flower is left to blush unseen. I recommend that book again that Gerald Sykes wrote called the Hidden Remnant, which deals with this, because we never know where we'll find that person. Certainly we won't find them categorically. I don't believe, as you do, that the artist is a man who necessarily is the articulator of wisdom or knowledge. I think you'll find it in the mason or the shoemaker or the farmer or maybe a Tahitian who can't even articulate it. You know, it would be interesting, I would think, sometime to get criminal.
- [76:13]
Interviewer
I think it would be really interesting to interview someone who's in prison.
- [76:18]
Actor/Interviewee
That's wonderful. Listen, at that point, I think that's a fitting close. I do want to say that a lot of strife and storm and wrong come my way because I am a saleable commodity and I get bought and sold all the time and it's rare that I can really sit down and give my point of view unedited, not invented, and to be judged for what I said as a result of saying it completely. And anyhow, I am very grateful to you for that opportunity because so often it is unpleasant to see yourself so rudely misrepresented and I thanks very much.
- [77:28]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Tetragrammatin is a podcast. Tetragrammaton is a website. Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge.
- [77:43]
Narrator/Announcer
What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammaton Counterculture Tetragrammatin Sacred Geometry Tetragrammatin the Avant Garde Tetragrammatin Generative Art Tetragrammatin the Tarot Tetragrammatin out of Print Music Tetragrammatin Biodynamics Tetragrammatin Graphic Design Tetragrammatin Mythology and Magic Tetragrammatin Obscure Film Tetragrammatin Beach Culture Tetragrammatinum Esoteric Lectures Tetragrammatin off the Grid Living Tetragrammatin Alt Spirituality Tetragrammatin the canon of Fine Objects Tetragrammatin Muscle Cars Tetragrammatin Ancient Wisdom for a new age upon entering, experience the artwork of the day. Take a breath and see where you are drawn.
- [78:43]
Philosopher/Interviewee
Tetragrammatin.com.