Audio Interview, Mike, 1974

  • MIKE: Well, I like to combine both my great loves, say,
  • the ability I guess I seem to have of pushing myself
  • and consistently moving and doing all the different things
  • I like to do.
  • Ride the ride, I keep on the move and order everything
  • and straighten everything out like that in the plant
  • like I'm doing now like that.
  • I do a lot more than I have to do there.
  • That's why I got to where I am so fast because I just
  • did it naturally.
  • You know?
  • INTERVIEWER 2: You mean when you first got the job,
  • you were doing more than what you had to do?
  • MIKE: Yeah, that's why I am where I am now.
  • I was three months on production line.
  • Then I joined the management and worked in the lab.
  • And I took their lab and I put it
  • in the best shape it was ever in.
  • It's no bullshit.
  • That's what I did.
  • Everything was at my fingertips.
  • So all I was doing all day was sitting there.
  • Four hours, I would just sit there in the chair.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: You mean before it was disordered,
  • and you put it in order so that you could just sit down.
  • MIKE: So I could just sit there like that.
  • And they really ate that up.
  • I just did it naturally.
  • And so they just put me in charge of all these people
  • to do the same thing.
  • And I know what's going to happen eventually
  • is that I'm going to be sitting there like four hours
  • a day again doing nothing.
  • And I really enjoy doing that.
  • And the prestige and everything that comes along with it.
  • And what I want to do is take that with my art
  • and do that with my art.
  • So I mean, instead of working with two separate things, put
  • the time in on the art and then, what, you've
  • got four hours to do that.
  • And then put the four hours to combine them both.
  • And have them move like that together,
  • like taking the urge to--
  • I can't put a name on it and put my finger
  • on exactly what it is that makes me do those, that thing.
  • I don't know if it's prestige.
  • I think it's got to go deeper than that though.
  • And that's got to be inside some kind of feeling.
  • I don't know.
  • I haven't pinpointed it yet.
  • I don't know if it's prestige.
  • Maybe it's just joy that people come to you
  • when they want something done.
  • They like something like that.
  • Or doing it myself because I know the better way.
  • I really enjoy that, I do.
  • And I like to combine those two with poetry and writing.
  • I think if I do that, I'm really going to be satisfied.
  • And that's why I like to get a (unintelligible).
  • See, there's one thing, there's another thing.
  • (Mike laughs)
  • I make a lot of dollars right now,
  • more than I can use right now.
  • And it's laying around doing nothing.
  • What I'd like to do in the future,
  • this is, you know, one of those--
  • I'd like to build a center.
  • Not a center, I don't know what you'd call it.
  • Just a gallery, an art gallery with a stage, with a stage
  • show for plays and things like that.
  • And with movies and everything like that for all these artists
  • who don't have a place to show their stuff.
  • Just like to bring it there for nothing and just have it there.
  • I'd like to get some land for my own house
  • and actually to live on it, but I'd
  • like to put shacks out in back so young writers
  • if they wanted to and have no money, they just come there
  • and live.
  • They won't be charged anything.
  • They just could come there and write their art, right?
  • Do their art.
  • And they wouldn't be under any pressure
  • like they can get drunk any time they wanted to
  • and have a good time.
  • And just do that.
  • You know?
  • See, if I got this need to work and make dollars,
  • I might as well do like I said, combine both of it
  • again and do that.
  • Because that would really give me a lot of pleasure.
  • INTERVIEWER 1: Make money writing rather than?
  • MIKE: Well, if I can't do it that way, at least
  • maybe I could help someone else who can do it that way.
  • Progress and not have all that shit
  • there to have to go through to make dollars to live.
  • They could just come there and do it.
  • Put out stuff like that.
  • And I'd really like to do that.
  • It would really make me feel good to know
  • all those people are out there creating
  • and I'm able to let them do that, cut the stress off.
  • I really I felt like I was under a lot of pressure, possibly.
  • Which isn't actually true because I was never
  • forced into working like that.
  • But I feel like since, I'd like to do that for a couple people
  • like that.
  • I like that.
  • Have the big thing, everybody come over
  • and a guy shows films to just people
  • because he wanted to make them like that.
  • Like what he gets.
  • It's really hard for artists to get serious, really serious
  • artists to show their work.
  • Who sees it?
  • Where do you go to be discussed, let's say.
  • But if something like that would happen,
  • I feel like maybe people would come and listen and look.
  • Especially if it was on a larger scale
  • than say the galleries in Buffalo are.
  • For a writer, where are you going to go?
  • Like who wants to know you if you don't have six books out?
  • (Mike laughs)
  • You could be saying a lot more than everybody else,
  • but what are you going to do?
  • It's really hard to show your work like that.
  • So I'd like to give someone, give people
  • that chance to do that.
  • And that would really make me feel good.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: Thanks (unintelligible).
  • I want to get back to (unintelligible) in Vincent
  • and stuff like that.
  • How you feel about trying to--
  • or how do you go about trying to get a relationship now?
  • I mean, you talked about before going into bars.
  • We were talking about how we go into bars
  • and try to say hello to someone, get a relationship going.
  • How do you feel that you go about it now?
  • Is it any different than it was really before?
  • MIKE: See, before I would come off as the image,
  • you know, as a loud, clown, asshole, the fool,
  • devil may care.
  • I'd come off like that.
  • And that would turn a lot of people off.
  • They think that's cool, but who wants to know this guy?
  • (Mike laughs)
  • Right?
  • I know who he is, that's him there,
  • but I don't want to know him really like that.
  • So I just try right now is just to,
  • if I feel like asking some woman something, I'll just ask her.
  • And then you pick up the stuff back and forth.
  • I haven't been able to put it in real practice yet.
  • I've had opportunity yet being that I'm
  • doing all these other things, yet to go out with new people
  • and try it out like that.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: What do you mean?
  • What do you want to try out again?
  • MIKE: I mean, let's say being more myself.
  • See I haven't gone out to places like--
  • we used to go to Gilligan's, it's Uncle Sam's now.
  • INTERVIEWER 1: I see.
  • MIKE: I haven't gone out to places like that
  • and see how I'll react.
  • If I'll fall back in the same trap or what.
  • So this is one thing I'd like to do, is just to go out there
  • and see how I react.
  • Because then that's the only way I will be able to measure it.
  • But I feel like I'm more myself than I ever was probably
  • in my whole life now.
  • And I don't feel like I'm totally there yet.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: Do you feel that even though-- what
  • we were talking about before, at the bar
  • you really set out to meet someone even though that you
  • are more yourself, that it might even
  • be more frustrating because now it's
  • like a different role or a different game
  • that you have to play.
  • MIKE: No.
  • Because you see before, I would have to go in there
  • and fool around.
  • And then you always find a friend, right,
  • who's got a friend who's got a friend.
  • And like I've said before, this is my friend Sally.
  • Holy fuck, you cocksucker.
  • [Mike laughs] No, I don't want to do that.
  • No.
  • I just say, "How you been?"
  • You know, "Hi."
  • Instead of sitting there--
  • just saying hi is a lot different than screaming out.
  • That's that asshole over there who's making all the noise,
  • wasn't it?
  • Yeah.
  • INTERVIEWER 1: Did you really say obnoxious things to people
  • that you just met?
  • MIKE: Oh yeah.
  • Me and Denny were really obnoxious. (Mike laughs)
  • It's Paul, you know, we were really
  • obnoxious towards everybody.
  • I don't know why.
  • We were afraid of all the people.
  • I don't know.
  • It's so strange though.
  • We were obnoxious, outward.
  • We just went out of our way to be nasty,
  • obnoxious, to old women and things like that.
  • Oh, it really tore them up.
  • And just things that you don't have to do just to like,
  • here I am.
  • Look at me, I'm over here in the line.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: Well, I remember-- but in high school
  • though, it was a lot of stuff was outside.
  • But in high school it was pretty chaotic.
  • MIKE: Yeah.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: And so how did you
  • feel about the relationships between--
  • I mean (unintelligible) it seemed
  • like no one tried to get too many relationships going
  • in school for some reason.
  • I'm just curious about why you didn't, what
  • were your reasons for not?
  • Because Jay and I or any of those
  • people really didn't go out with too many people
  • who were in our school.
  • MIKE: No.
  • Me neither.
  • You mean like with women or with men?
  • Or with the whole thing?
  • INTERVIEWER 2: Yeah, just what were your relationships?
  • MIKE: I think in high school, our group
  • was like neighborhood, first of all.
  • It was a neighborhood group.
  • The guys you hung around with in the neighborhood,
  • the guys you rode the bus home with, the guys
  • you snuck a smoke on the bus with and like that.
  • So those are the guys you hang around with.
  • And since you know these guys, like hung around with them,
  • naturally the peer group has their own ideas of what's what.
  • And everybody else is wrong.
  • And that's what our group was really like,
  • was really into that.
  • It was really nice too because when I got to know Denny,
  • we both came out together at one point into beginning to write.
  • You know?
  • We both came about it about the same time,
  • beginning to write like that.
  • So that made it really nice for me and Denny like that.
  • And I can remember in lunch that we had starving poets club.
  • And we'd write there in study hall,
  • we'd come to lunch like that.
  • And so we really got to be really close friends like that.
  • And then when we started hanging around and getting drunk
  • all the time and sniffing glue like that.
  • Like I said, we'd sit there at our lunch table.
  • Our big joke was to say it was the Richmond gang was like,
  • I could just see them.
  • They go out, ten guys in a car, buy a pack of beer
  • and all get drunk. (Mike laughs) Then
  • they'd go shoot pool, play pea-knuckle.
  • What jerks those guys are, man.
  • And that's when I would say-- we don't
  • want to associate with them and they don't hang around
  • on the street.
  • You come up to them, the first thing we'd do is act bizarre,
  • do something off the wall.
  • That's the way it was.
  • Scream or insult somebody.
  • We wanted to be there I guess at that time.
  • Then we had the big chorus in school.
  • We'd sing out, we'd knock out everybody like that.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: How did you feel, though,
  • when Gabriel and all those guys?
  • Those were like the hard dudes.
  • MIKE: The jocks?
  • INTERVIEWER 2: Yeah.
  • MIKE: We laughed at them.
  • Man, we couldn't--
  • INTERVIEWER 2: But, like, in a way,
  • they were the image that you were trying to put out,
  • but in a different way.
  • They just didn't come out in clothes.
  • Right?
  • MIKE: That's true, yeah.
  • Very true.
  • I don't know.
  • Well, we all had the body for sports at that time.
  • It was really nice.
  • I was a really good runner at that time.
  • And somehow for some reason, I don't know.
  • I just never got into the sports thing.
  • And it seemed like those-- say the jocks were into the sports
  • thing.
  • And since they were into it, it was even more of a thing
  • to stay out of it like that.
  • And I really enjoyed running at that time.
  • I really liked to run.
  • Then hanging around with everybody
  • and I started smoking and drinking.
  • And all of a sudden, why do that when you
  • can hang around and look cool?
  • Why put that work in like that?
  • So we didn't show it.
  • And plus, I had the feeling they didn't like us
  • because we went around maybe.
  • I don't know, maybe it was mutual fear.
  • When you come down to think of it,
  • they were afraid to get near us and we were also afraid
  • of going near them.
  • Now I think of it, I think that's
  • what it really must have been, something like that.
  • Weirdos, we were over there, look at them weirdos.
  • What a bunch of assholes.
  • And they were over probably doing the same thing,
  • saying look at those assholes there.
  • So it must have been some kind of mutual fear like that.
  • As far as women in our high school, I'd say my high school.
  • No one in our group had girlfriends in our high school.
  • Or not really.
  • Not say a boy and girlfriend were hand
  • in hand in the hall like that.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: There's only a few Jacobians or something.
  • MIKE: But that was in your group though.
  • With my friends, it was totally alien like that.
  • Mostly, for a great part like that.
  • I don't know why that happened like that.
  • We had other women outside of our school
  • who were in other high schools.
  • So I don't know why we didn't strike up or really get down
  • into talking outside of our groups like that.
  • Maybe it's because we were so much into ourselves,
  • into our images.
  • I think everybody has that.
  • I think we, our group had it like that.
  • Our neighborhood guys and Denny hanging around with us.
  • We were really into the--
  • we had it programmed, me and Tootsky.
  • He had big brother and big brother was Walden bums.
  • So we were going to be like that too because that's what we saw.
  • So that's what we wanted to be too.
  • And since anybody who wasn't there wasn't there, why would
  • you want to know them guys and clowns, assholes, whatever.
  • So yeah.
  • That's why I think a lot of things fell apart over there.
  • There were so many little groups.
  • Everybody had their own little group and was it.
  • Anybody coming into the group was an alien.
  • And the first thing you did to an alien
  • was cut the alien down one way or the other.
  • Insult him, beat him up, drive him out.
  • No idea why.
  • We might be wrong. (Mike laughs) And I could handle that.
  • Our group was really--
  • it was an interesting thing, an interesting experience
  • like that.
  • Because we were supposed to be all really
  • hard guys like that (pause) and hang around like that.
  • And most everybody-- there weren't really rough people
  • there.
  • In our group, we didn't seem tough.
  • We didn't seem bizarre or anything like that.
  • We were just doing what was natural.
  • But it wasn't natural, because it was all this put
  • on stuff like that.
  • I don't know why we never had interactions with the peer
  • groups like that.
  • INTERVIEWER 1: Why don't you talk about this group
  • that we've had here?
  • How do you feel about this group?
  • Like some of the exercises we went through.
  • Why don't you talk about how you felt when we had that hugging
  • situation between everybody?
  • Because I remember you had a long thing about that right
  • after we got done doing it.
  • MIKE: Well, after we had the--
  • what I wanted to do is--
  • I came into this group I still had a lot of these pressures
  • on me.
  • I didn't know were interacting on me.
  • I was falling away.
  • I may have reached this point that I
  • am at now in another year without the group.
  • Maybe even longer than that, or shorter, I can't say.
  • But this was like a slap in the face in school for me.
  • Especially in the first meeting when
  • Pete Sloan said, "I read the TA book,
  • I knew what everything meant."
  • And here Pete just explained it to everybody.
  • And Pete Sloan comes up and says,
  • "Mike acts out of his child a lot."
  • Boom!
  • I got slapped in the face.
  • I felt myself almost going red with embarrassment
  • that I actually was doing that.
  • And that's what it was continuously
  • for our first several meetings like that.
  • People keep showing me things that I was doing.
  • I keep getting slapped in the face like that
  • and feel really dumb for doing these things.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: Why don't you explain
  • what were the things that were being slapped in your face?
  • MIKE: Well, like I said that first meeting really shocked me
  • when people said Mike acts like coming out
  • of this child state a lot.
  • I knew what I was doing when I was doing that.
  • But I didn't realize, somehow I never
  • realized that I was coming off that way to other people.
  • When someone said that to me, this
  • was in the group seriously, and otherwise--
  • INTERVIEWER 2: These are the guys you hung around with.
  • They were forced to keep up the image
  • and they were telling you.
  • MIKE: These were like that.
  • And he was saying, look at what you're doing.
  • And then from there, I started really thinking
  • about that kind of stuff.
  • And I've come a long way.
  • And I know I've come a long way.
  • I'm the only one who can feel that, but I know.
  • It's one of those things you can't say,
  • I've come like two feet.
  • I know.
  • In a lot of ways I hadn't moved yet,
  • but some things have gone so far that it
  • would've taken another year, maybe two years, maybe never.
  • I could see myself going on, living the same way,
  • living the same half dream, like Annubis.
  • Not the total-- not with the black t-shirt
  • and the skull and that, but having that in the head.
  • And trying to live that thing out.
  • And I can see myself doing that.
  • And I'm glad.
  • That's one reason I'm really for this.
  • Because it did so much for me, just making me
  • see these things that I never saw before.
  • And with this group at the same time, I talked to that preacher
  • and he's turned me onto a lot of things.
  • He saying the same thing we're saying.
  • But he's saying it with different words.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: What do you think that we're saying?
  • Or think that we did say?
  • MIKE: Well, we're saying get to know yourself.
  • Just be yourself.
  • No matter what that is, be yourself, what all.
  • If you don't want to do something, don't do it.
  • If you want to do something, do it.
  • Be in harmony with everything like that.
  • What the preacher said is he started
  • talking about God to me.
  • And I'm getting this from him and faith and everything
  • like that.
  • And all he was saying was know yourself and be in harmony
  • with yourself.
  • To me, God is nature.
  • Tree is God.
  • And he's saying the same thing.
  • He was saying the same thing like that.
  • So all these things coming together
  • like that have helped me see what I actually am
  • and trying to put myself back on track of just being myself,
  • or trying to be myself as best as I can.
  • Just not let little silly things that
  • really aren't true-- things that aren't true,
  • believing them for the truth.
  • And not say, I think it's really bad
  • to have dirty books laying around the house.
  • That's filthy and garbage and shit like that.
  • And it really isn't filthy and garbage.
  • Everybody wants to know what that looks like.
  • Right?
  • So you're fourteen-years-old, you get the book out.
  • (Mike laughs) Yeah, yeah.
  • It's really a shame that people have to hide that kind of shit.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: Did you go through raw stages of really
  • being frustrated with things because you hadn't met--
  • or you were masturbating?
  • Are those things-- I mean--
  • MIKE: Yeah.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: --did your mom like really put a lot of guilt
  • on that?
  • MIKE: Yes.
  • The whole thing like that was, the whole sexual thing
  • was, it was alien.
  • You don't fuck women.
  • You don't fuck.
  • You don't masturbate.
  • You don't touch your cock.
  • You don't put your finger in your ass. (Mike laughs)
  • You don't do nothing like that.
  • That's unheard of.
  • So I had a lot of guilt feelings about that.
  • I remember one time abstaining for six months
  • because I felt it was a habit.
  • And it was a bad habit.
  • So I just abstained from any orgasm outside
  • of an occasional wet dream.
  • And I didn't touch it.
  • (Mike laughs) Had a wet dream last night.
  • Yeah, I'll remember this one for about three nights.
  • I can remember like, doing that.
  • And that's even more frustrating to have to not masturbate
  • when you want to, man.
  • And I said, I can't remember.
  • I finally said, "Oh, fuck it, man.
  • I must be crazy, but I don't give a shit."
  • (laughter)
  • It was just too much pressure.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: Right.
  • Right.
  • MIKE: Who cares, really?
  • And those things were just put in my head.
  • And they weren't true.
  • And it's so fucked up, the shitty job that she did.
  • And that I really have to say, she did a lousy job
  • as far as that goes.
  • But what I'm trying to do is find out now if I feel like--
  • I talk to her a lot now more where I never did before.
  • You know?
  • That's one thing that I've been able to do
  • more of that I can tell.
  • I'm able to talk more with people
  • about what really is instead of the how's the weather line
  • today.
  • What do you think of the weather line?
  • So really get down in there.
  • And I really enjoy that.
  • What I'm trying to do now is figure out why--
  • she had a reason for telling me these things like that.
  • I would like to know why, what made her think that--
  • apparently she must think sex is bad too.
  • You see, my mother and father, I was four-years-old
  • and my mother left my father with me.
  • Then I was thirteen or so when they lived together for nine
  • months and then he left again.
  • And all this time I had grandma and grandpa there.
  • And my aunt was consistently there all the time.
  • Somehow I get the feeling that looking over
  • my mother's sisters and brothers like that,
  • that somehow my grandmother must have drilled into them somehow
  • that that's bad.
  • Or is there something wrong with that if you enjoy sex.
  • That's all I can figure out, is it must
  • be something along that line.
  • Because all her sisters have fucked up relationships
  • with their husbands.
  • And it's true.
  • INTERVIEWER 1: It shows something.
  • MIKE: It shows something.
  • And I said, this ain't by mistake.
  • Something's gone there.
  • And it is not going to happen to me.
  • I'm not going to fall into the same trap.
  • So that's what I'm trying to figure out, is why.
  • And she's starting to open up a lot now.
  • When I talk to her now, she says, "Yeah, there's
  • a lot of things I wish I hadn't done."
  • But she hasn't yet come to say specific yet.
  • And when I feel she says, yeah.
  • It's like hard to think that your mother might have had sex
  • and not been married like that.
  • I'm waiting for something to come out.
  • Because I feel like eventually it will.
  • And it's really going to be a breakthrough for her.
  • I feel like she learns a lot through me like that,
  • just by being more open with it.
  • And I found out a lot of things.
  • Just by talking to her, I found out
  • that she saw me going through these changes
  • and abusing my body with alcohol and she never said anything.
  • She says, "Yeah, I was so worried and I was sick."
  • She actually said that she was sick seeing me come home
  • every night and falling all over the place.
  • And it really amazed me.
  • How could my mother care?
  • That's another thing, nobody cares about me.
  • I might as well not care about myself too.
  • In actuality she never said to me, I give a shit.
  • Why are you doing this?
  • Anything like that.
  • There was some big communication breakdown there.
  • It was just due to myself, totally.
  • Because she was always open there.
  • But I was the one who backed away for some reason.
  • I don't know.
  • INTERVIEWER 1: Well, you said before when you were real young
  • she put you in bad positions.
  • MIKE: Yeah, that's right.
  • She put me in bad positions there too.
  • She was willing to maybe try to help me out
  • of these bad positions, but I never wanted it.
  • It's like a running parallel.
  • Unconsciously, she would put me in these things
  • and she couldn't understand why I wouldn't come to her
  • and ask her these things.
  • I remember when we were talking just a little while ago,
  • she says "Yeah, I was I was really worried.
  • I was wondering what was going on every night."
  • Falling through the door and climbing up the stairs
  • and running down to the john, throwing up.
  • And out behind the garage, finding me in the yard.
  • And she was really worried about that.
  • But she never said anything.
  • I never knew.
  • And I never talked to her before.
  • Now it's coming around.
  • I'm ready just to tell everything, say everything
  • to her.
  • And I think she knows that.
  • But she hasn't come across yet with her own self,
  • and that's what I want to know about.
  • INTERVIEWER 1: (unintelligible) back, you
  • were starting to tell a lot about the group,
  • what the group did, how you felt about the group.
  • MIKE: Well, this is related to the group.
  • I'm able to do these things now.
  • INTERVIEWER 1: Yeah I knew that, but I
  • meant you were going to start getting
  • into specific times in the group.
  • MIKE: Like the first day, or when
  • the hugging thing happened?
  • INTERVIEWER 1: Right.
  • And a couple other of the other instances.
  • MIKE: Yeah.
  • Well, first the hugging thing that I tried,
  • really tried to be as loose and as close
  • as I could at that time.
  • I felt like I didn't want to come--
  • maybe I didn't want to come to the group.
  • I was afraid.
  • I think I was being confronted with too much of myself
  • at that time.
  • And I really was worried that maybe I shouldn't be here,
  • maybe I shouldn't come.
  • Maybe I'd skip out or something like that,
  • or find some reason not to come.
  • So I decided to myself since everybody's
  • pointing these things out to me and they're true,
  • and I was afraid of it because it was true,
  • that's why I had thoughts of not wanting to come anymore.
  • That I had to really get out there and put everything
  • I had into seeing what other people are actually
  • seeing of me.
  • So when we went around hugging that time,
  • I tried to hug as best as I knew how,
  • come in contact with the other people
  • and show them what I meant.
  • I don't know.
  • Came off with a shitty grin on my face most of the times
  • I went around in the circle.
  • INTERVIEWER 3: I guess most of people in the group knew you.
  • I don't know how you guys met each other or anything,
  • how long different people have known each other,
  • but I didn't know anybody.
  • And I thought you came across very sincere.
  • Sometimes to your friends, if you change,
  • they still expect you to be like you were.
  • MIKE: Yeah, that's a hassle.
  • That's really a hassle.
  • When I meet people I haven't seen for a while.
  • INTERVIEWER 3: But you seem like you really were trying
  • to give out with feelings.
  • MIKE: I hope it came off that way because I was really
  • trying that day.
  • INTERVIEWER 3: And in fact, I was very surprised when
  • people said the opposite thing.
  • They didn't think you were into it
  • and they thought it was put on or something.
  • MIKE: Yeah.
  • Say, if I would've gone out there the way
  • that would have been safe for me to go on out there,
  • I think it would have been safe.
  • It would be me to jokingly go out
  • there and fool around and laugh the whole thing off like that.
  • That would have been like my other self.
  • I don't want to say that.
  • My other self, what I thought I was, my image.
  • Old self?
  • I don't know.
  • Whatever word you want to use for it.
  • So that's what I felt. I really wanted
  • to get rid of some of this hang up.
  • And it's going along.
  • I mean I still get frustrated and tired.
  • But now when I get frustrated like that
  • and I feel mean and nasty, as soon as I realize
  • I got to laugh.
  • I said wow, do you see what you're really doing then?
  • You're becoming frustrated over something
  • that isn't frustrating, that you can do if you want to do it.
  • It's only you.
  • All right, so for instance, I was home one Sunday.
  • It was about two weeks ago.
  • Maybe three weeks ago, I don't know.
  • I was fooling around the yard.
  • And I said, Jesus Christ.
  • I ain't got no place to go, man.
  • Fuck.
  • I'm always laying around.
  • I feel like I'm chained here.
  • And then I realized, I said, I have two places to go today
  • if I want to go.
  • I'm not chained here.
  • I'm exiling myself from going out.
  • Then I started thinking.
  • I said, I don't really want to go to these two places.
  • I actually want to be here fooling around in the garden.
  • But that's the kind of things that went through my head.
  • Jesus Christ, I got no place to go.
  • I'm tied here in the house.
  • I'm tied here.
  • I'm tied to my home.
  • And I really wasn't.
  • And that's the little things like that I've been noticing
  • over the last few months.
  • There's little things like that that I tell myself long enough
  • and I start believing it.
  • And I found myself talking like that.
  • And saying Jesus Christ, I got no place to go.
  • And I said, got a thousand places to go if I wanted to.
  • I really wanted to be there that day.
  • And fool around with that.
  • I didn't get the chance to plant my sunflowers this year.
  • I got to do that.
  • Maybe this week.
  • But those are little things that the group's helped me do.
  • And those little things, a lot of little things
  • make one big thing.
  • And after I got over fearing the group--
  • we have it every day. (Mike laughs)
  • I was so pleased with all these things I was seeing.
  • Like I was waiting to get hit again.
  • A new thing.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: More wrenches.
  • MIKE: More wrenches thrown in the system.
  • More things that were unconsciously plaguing me,
  • brought to the surface.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: Let's talk about some of those things, because I
  • never really heard your side.
  • We'd always supposedly throw the wrenches in,
  • ask you about different things.
  • Remember when we brought up the one day?
  • MIKE: The marriage thing.
  • We were talking about being intense with say, two people.
  • Two different women.
  • Being intense with one and then when she was gone,
  • you could be intense with the other woman like that.
  • And you could see where that's all
  • that marriage is, is say the intensity between two people
  • with a piece of paper or something
  • along that line like that.
  • And it seemed to me that that's what marriage was,
  • was the two people together.
  • And you come along, but if what about this other woman?
  • And then I think that could be possible.
  • There goes my-- there comes the buildings go flying apart.
  • Everything was so nicely structured to go that way.
  • And it kind of shocks you that when
  • you come to say yeah, that's right,
  • that could happen that way.
  • See?
  • I don't know if I'm getting across the right way.
  • But like that.
  • The influx of really two ideas like real truth.
  • I don't know.
  • I guess I have pretty ordered--
  • I try to order things without really thinking about them.
  • Like I'll say, marriage and work and just religion
  • and everything like that.
  • I accepted-- and I do.
  • I know myself.
  • I realized that way long time ago,
  • when people say something to me, I believe them.
  • I don't question it.
  • So when someone says, buy this kind of wine
  • it gets you higher than everything else,
  • I believe that.
  • Even if I never even tried it or anything like this.
  • And I never questioned anything.
  • It just seemed meaningless to question because I believe them
  • like that.
  • And I can remember when I was a little boy,
  • my uncle told me that if a butterfly flies and hits you
  • between the eyes, you go blind.
  • If it hits you in the bridge of the nose like that.
  • And I believed that like for so long.
  • And then all of a sudden one day I said, shit.
  • (laughter)
  • It was just things like that that I believed.
  • INTERVIEWER 1: That's a good example.
  • MIKE: I found myself at times telling other people
  • that if a butterfly-- and I really
  • believed that if a butterfly hits
  • you right between the nose, you could go blind.
  • And I believed that for so long and things like that.
  • It was so orderly and I never thought about so many things.
  • Say, two lovers, two intense relationships like that.
  • It was like,
  • the brain is clicking away over there and I'm falling apart.
  • That can't be right.
  • I thought that was stable.
  • This is nice over here.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: That you would just
  • fall in love with one person.
  • MIKE: Yeah, and that would be it.
  • That's the way it is.
  • I never thought about there could be two people.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: Or more.
  • MIKE: Or more.
  • Maybe five people, ten people, whatever.
  • And all of a sudden someone says hey,
  • there goes the little bit that I was saving is gone.
  • And that's really nice too.
  • That way I feel--
  • if you never even thought about that, then even
  • it could go that way too with one person, one man one
  • woman, or whatever.
  • But if you never knew about the other thing,
  • or never thought about it, you could you
  • could end up being fucked up.
  • That's what I like a lot about this group too,
  • is people say different things.
  • Say, for that it gives you something to bounce or look
  • a different way.
  • INTERVIEWER 1: You have more alternatives.
  • MIKE: More alternatives.
  • You don't have to do it this way and you don't have to go crazy
  • doing it even if you don't want to.
  • You don't have to be-- like if you're at the office
  • and you're married and your wife's home, and your
  • at the office and you look at this woman
  • and you're falling in love with her and you know it,
  • you know you don't have to go crazy
  • saying your girlfriend is home.
  • Like an example you said, I can really
  • have a nice friend that (unintelligible) for her.
  • I remember you saying your friend said
  • the one woman down the hall could have a really
  • nice relationship with her.
  • But Linda back in Buffalo ain't going to like it like that,
  • so he didn't bother.
  • Things like that.
  • I don't know.
  • I'm looking for a word that I can't find.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: Words like be here now.
  • MIKE: Yeah.
  • Yeah, right.
  • Something to measure against, because you go
  • crazy believing all that shit.
  • I'm losing words.
  • Questions?
  • Answers?
  • I don't know.
  • I don't know.
  • INTERVIEWER 1: There's a lot of things
  • that the group brought up.
  • I was just thinking about what you were
  • saying about some other stuff.
  • If you can think of some stuff we did in the group,
  • and how do you feel about them now?
  • INTERVIEWER 2: Well, I remember you were really into--
  • I don't know, when I first came in you were really into TA.
  • And sometimes-- well, mostly Satch or I. Most of the time
  • I was bringing up political stuff
  • that a lot of people in the group
  • didn't want to get into it because it wasn't a concern.
  • We felt that it was a concern.
  • Like how do you feel about it now since we all
  • have gone through more talking.
  • MIKE: I'm going to say yeah, when Peter first
  • said that I was all for it.
  • Apparently I was right at the right time
  • to start thinking about all these things
  • and changing or taking on other views and stuff like that.
  • So when he first gave me TA it was
  • like this is what I was looking for, somehow to find out.
  • And I was frustrated, I had all these frustrations.
  • And I didn't know why, where they were coming from.
  • I figured, oh, I must be really--
  • I always felt like I--
  • I said, I must have an emotional problem along the line
  • some place that was causing me all this hassle.
  • And then when I seen this I said, wow.
  • I'm going to start doing this.
  • And this is going to really help me.
  • And it did.
  • But I felt I had to go to the initial stage of TA as religion
  • in order to get where I am here.
  • Because if I didn't do that, I would've just dropped out.
  • I'd be gone again, same way.
  • So I felt like after I got the hang of it
  • and started finding out, cutting out the child, the Annubis.
  • Then I remember distinctly Paul saying,
  • you're losing TA's religion.
  • Slapped in the face again.
  • I said yeah, I am.
  • And then I kind of like simmered down.
  • I'm getting away from the-- what was the question again?
  • INTERVIEWER 2: That was the question.
  • The question was just like the idea of--
  • when we first started the group it
  • was intended-- something about there was rule almost made
  • that we weren't going to talk about anything
  • political or anything philosophical
  • because it was an endless conversation.
  • So we agreed that was somewhat true
  • and we were just to stick with TA.
  • But it seemed like every time we started talking,
  • it would come up to where--
  • I don't know if I was pushing it or what.
  • It would come up to where I would say, well,
  • that's also because the rest of society is doing this.
  • It's not just you're doing it.
  • It's not just a TA thing where everyone
  • is like, say a thing on masturbation or something.
  • Everyone went through that stage to some extent.
  • It was like a social thing.
  • It wasn't just like your mother.
  • So then it started to get more and more when
  • we were talking about politics.
  • So I asked the question whether or not you felt--
  • if you agree with that more now or how do
  • you feel about politics and things with TA.
  • Or just like how that group transformed to that.
  • Or to a point where it is now.
  • Where do you think the group is now?
  • You know, sort of?
  • MIKE: I think it's relaxed.
  • Really relaxed atmosphere where you just come and talk.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: There's no boundaries.
  • MIKE: There's no boundaries.
  • Just you got frustrations, you just you can talk about it.
  • If you don't want to, you don't have to.
  • Just like anything, anything.
  • And seem to be that one hour can be really pretty open
  • and not be afraid of everything like that.
  • I'm still in no place in politics, from the first day.
  • I didn't have anything, want anything to do with them then
  • and I still don't want to get into it.
  • So it was nice to--
  • INTERVIEWER 1: You just want it to look like that.
  • MIKE: Yeah.
  • And the same thing with Satch's philosophical Nietzsche thing
  • like that.
  • Nihilistic thing doesn't excite me to read a philosopher
  • like that.
  • Doesn't excite a lot of people to read Charles Olson either.
  • So that's OK too.
  • I know right at the beginning like that though, I was--
  • I thought TA, ate TA, drank it.
  • I was at work, I'm OK, you're OK. (Mike laughs)
  • I'm OK working in the lab, you know.
  • But I needed that.
  • I needed that so much.
  • And like I said before, I said, Jesus Christ.
  • When I took basic psychology I'm reading
  • all this manic depressive and I said, oh, shit, I got it bad,
  • man, I'm a psychotic.
  • I'm all these things.
  • I might as well be satisfied being psychotic.
  • And now I realize that I wasn't none of that.
  • I wasn't even close to that.
  • I was just underneath the skin of reality or whatever.
  • I was just overwhelmed with a lot of nothing.
  • Like a lot of weight that really wasn't there.
  • That I wasn't really neurotic, or psychotic, or anything
  • like that, or manic depressive.
  • I was just like a regular guy with maybe,
  • with tensions like everybody else is going.
  • And they were just frustrating tensions.
  • Now that I know they're there, I can feel the pressure.
  • And it's just smooth like that.
  • It's more even.
  • I have trouble explaining.
  • Want me to write it down? (Mike laughs) You do it better.
  • It's just like-- it's just like waking up after sleep
  • or something like that.
  • You really weren't dead or anything like
  • that, you're just asleep.
  • You just wake up to the world again.
  • And I think that's--
  • that probably summed it up what I got out--
  • I just woke up to what actually was happening.
  • I wasn't really sick.
  • I was just-- all these things that I never
  • knew about were putting pressure on me.
  • That's what I got.
  • That's where I am.
  • Doing that, trying to knock off other tensions and things
  • like that.
  • I think a lot more now about things,
  • like I said, that I took for granted before like everybody
  • works, Everybody does this.
  • Like you got to starve to be an artist.
  • They always say that, you got to suffer for your art.
  • So I figured, I must be a good artist, I'm really suffering.
  • (Mike laughs) Shit like that.
  • When people say things to me like that,
  • I'll say it's a lot of shit.
  • When I used to say something, everybody
  • said that's a lot of shit.
  • I said, yeah OK.
  • When me and Denny talk, he's got his theory about evolution,
  • of continuous--
  • I don't know.
  • It's like every generation is a whole new species or something
  • like that.
  • I forget how it goes like that.
  • He just explained it to me like that.
  • I've been thinking a lot about that
  • and accepting it and taking parts of it
  • and incorporating it into myself.
  • That's what I really like to do, is
  • take little bits of what people talk about
  • and incorporate it into how it fits
  • nicely into what I'm doing.
  • And it's really nice then.
  • I just think of all these new ideas
  • like that and just flowing around dancing.
  • You're not wound up into anything.
  • It's easy to do that now because I'm not
  • being worried by all this garbage, like masturbation,
  • and sex, and pedestal women, and the unapproachable female,
  • the courtly love.
  • Oh, I love this woman so much right now.
  • I just wish I could go over and talk to her. (Mike laughs)
  • Well, I can't, I'm going to lose her.
  • Get away from that.
  • Don't have to think about that no more, just fly right--
  • INTERVIEWER 2: Now you feel you can just go over--
  • MIKE: Just go over.
  • Then find out that--
  • wow, I also don't think any more of the courtly woman.
  • So you go over and say, you stand away
  • from the woman twenty feet.
  • Say, boy she is beautiful like that.
  • I would like to go over and talk to her.
  • But you never do, so you got that big image floating
  • in the back of your head.
  • So this way you go over and she goes, "Hi, how are you?"
  • She goes-- (Mike laughs) I go, I sure am glad I did this, man.
  • I could be having dreams about this woman for two years.
  • (Mike laughs) It's just a big load off.
  • So that's a big release.
  • INTERVIEWER 1: You put that pretty well.
  • MIKE: (Mike laughs) So things like that happen
  • or have happened to me in the past like that.
  • It's just, Jesus.
  • Like every time, if I could only do this.
  • I don't know.
  • It's just nice to go over there and not have
  • to be under those pressures.
  • It just seems like I had an awful lot
  • of those little, little things just bugging me consistently.
  • I took them farther than they actually were.
  • I made the mountain of out of the mole hills that were wrong.
  • And so I don't want to do that no more.
  • I'm going to call my place where everything is.
  • The center, or what do you call it?
  • I'm going to call it ilium, the Greek word for try.
  • Ilium, it says here it's really nice right there.
  • I really like that.
  • We have no garbage over there.
  • Can't stand garbage.
  • I feel you can turn everything into a piece of art.
  • You can utilize everything like that.
  • If you can't use it for something,
  • you make art out of it.
  • I already learned to do that.
  • Everything I build.
  • One thing I like is I like to have a big workshop
  • someplace so I can produce large sculptures.
  • Really huge ones, like two hundred feet.
  • You know, what the inside of Canisius College, the square
  • looks like inside of there by any chance?
  • That's it.
  • Remember how our high school was?
  • That big square in the middle?
  • I don't know, familiar.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: Sort of, a court.
  • MIKE: A court.
  • It was surrounded by the building.
  • It's such a fantastic idea to do sculptures in that thing,
  • it would have been unreal.
  • It would have like taken about two years to do them all,
  • but I would really like to do that.
  • They probably would never give me--
  • I didn't ask anybody if I could do it.
  • They probably would tell me no anyways.
  • But I would really like to do that.
  • I guess I'm talking about myself,
  • I'm supposed to do what I want to do now.
  • The big progression.
  • I started a book called Cathari like last year.
  • And this was all that-- well, before I go to bed at night,
  • you get that half limbo state before you drop off.
  • And what I used to think about is the Cyrano de Bergerac love
  • affairs and the dying hero.
  • Things like that.
  • I was dying hero, always.
  • I was the anti-hero kind of thing like that.
  • So I started writing a book about that.
  • And then it got more lyric.
  • I have an awful hard time writing papers for school
  • because I write so much poetry, it comes out like poetry.
  • Sentence fragments in two words.
  • And so I have a hard time like that.
  • What I'm going to do now is I put it in all poetry,
  • take the prose that was stress prose a lot of it,
  • and write complete poetry and that now for that.
  • I've got a lot of things planned for that.
  • It's so funny, sometimes now when
  • I want to go to bed, those--
  • I call them power dreams.
  • Before I go to bed.
  • Because that's what they dealt with.
  • They dealt with accumulation and once you've
  • got everything, the thing that you really want you ain't got.
  • So you give up everything, you lose it all,
  • it crumbles around you.
  • And that's what they were like.
  • For instance, whoever was my latest fascination, in my mind,
  • I'd be writing through fourth.
  • This woman would get killed and I would get maimed,
  • but I would survive.
  • I would live for revenge.
  • The conquering hero and the whole thing like that.
  • And so this is what the book's about.
  • What the poems are going to be about.
  • It's like taking the whole thing and lyricizing it because it's
  • beautiful the way it came out.
  • It's really beautiful.
  • But I used to live that.
  • It's fucked up like that.
  • So that's what I'm doing now.
  • What's right now.
  • I'd like to give more readings too.
  • Probably will change.
  • So I had to give that one in class like that
  • and it really came off really nice.
  • I was so pleased with that.
  • INTERVIEWER 1: You read your own stuff?
  • MIKE: Yeah.
  • I was really pleased.
  • I anticipated the-- actually I anticipated I did good,
  • but I came off better than I thought it did
  • or I thought it would.
  • And I was really pleased really excited about that.
  • I was like, yay.
  • I'm really into my art thing.
  • It's like a thing that moves my life.
  • I create on paper with words.
  • I try, like spread the knowledge that I got from as far
  • as I've gone talking to other people who write too.
  • I've got my own peers like that.
  • I try to get them away from the moon and the sun
  • and start talking about themselves,
  • which is what art should be.
  • Freedom to do yourself, to be yourself,
  • on the paper like that.
  • And that's what I'm trying to get at.
  • Takes like a long time to capture that.
  • Takes time.
  • I went through all those years being someone else.
  • I can't expect to be able to write everything the way
  • it's supposed to be that fast.
  • That's what I'm striving for is to be able just
  • to put everything down without a lot of--
  • the same thing applies to my own living,
  • as to what should be on the paper.
  • In the poem it should be all me with none
  • of this other garbage on it.
  • Because that way it's easier for you
  • to pick up the simplicity of everything.
  • I'm not being specific.
  • I can tell by myself because I don't understand
  • what I'm trying to say.
  • Because I don't really know yet what
  • it's going to come to like that.
  • But to write about your own self like that is really hard,
  • to get the one feeling, that one time out.
  • Really difficult.
  • INTERVIEWER 2: To get the truth out?
  • MIKE: Yeah.
  • Truth and to get the-- like how you put down love in words
  • so someone else reads it and picks up
  • that exact same feeling?
  • That's the goal.
  • So I'd like to see more-- when I write something and read it,
  • or when I write it and someone reads it,
  • that they can pick up right out of those words and get that.
  • When you're reading along with the book
  • and you come to that line, you just go over that line again.
  • You just read it twice because it's
  • such a good line like that.
  • And I do that when I read people's works.
  • And that one section in the book, that one
  • poem is my favorite poem.
  • Like why is it your favorite poem?
  • Because you can draw right out of that poem
  • the energy like that.
  • And that's what I want to do, is have people take out my stuff
  • that energy, that emotion that I'm feeling right at that time.
  • I want people to pick it up out of there like that.
  • That's hard to do.
  • It's hard to just to be talking and be yourself like that,
  • much less write it and expect someone to pick it up
  • like that, that emotion.
  • It's hard to show emotion and try to pick it up
  • between two people like that.
  • Just live people.
  • You got a hold of the paper or something like that.
  • You try to pick it up.
  • That's hard to do.
  • So that's what I'm trying to do.
  • That's what I'd like to do.
  • That's what I'm working towards as far as that goes.
  • INTERVIEWER 1: It sounds good.
  • It sounds like you're happy and you've got some direction.
  • MIKE: Yeah.
  • (Mike laughs)
  • INTERVIEWER 1: That's really nice.
  • MIKE: There's a lot of things got to be changed.
  • And it's still under a lot of pressure.
  • I see a lot of them, the social thing of money
  • and all that shit.
  • But like I said, I feel like I'm going to put it
  • towards something that--
  • right now, I cannot just go to school and--
  • I tried.
  • When I was at school like that and not working like that,
  • I wasn't producing anything better.
  • I'm producing much better, quality work
  • now doing everything I do.
  • So I don't feel like I'm not going to work
  • and dropping out of school and everything and laying around.
  • It's not going to give me any more.
  • Here when I go out now, it's intense.
  • Everything is like--
  • I'm always moving like that.
  • So I'm come in--
  • (end of recording)