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)