Original subtitles

I cannot sleep. I cannot sleep.

What am I going to do? It's four.

Oh boy, what time do I have?

Just came back from London. It's a big mess.

My table is a big mess.

I am in a mess. My room is a mess.

I just moved to another place.

Look. It's all unpacked,

it's all shelves, it's all boxes.

Boxes. All my life is boxed.

I'm boxed myself into... I don't know where I am.

It's a mess. It's a mess.

I don't know what I'm going to do tonight.

I just cannot sleep. There is this jet lag.

This jet lag. This jet lag.

I don't know.

Noise outside.

There are no birds yet, birds are not singing.

There are some lights outside. Everybody's sleeping.

Everybody's sleeping.

Thursday, I break up.

- Here we are. - It sucks.

And you know, you walk on the street

and then you go home, your heart broken,

and you open the television, and what do you see?

Titanic...! I mean can there be anything worse than that.

It doesn't help.

I only like happy endings, actually.

But it's not true, because I like happy endings,

but if I don't cry then the movie is not good.

So crying is important. There should be some real drama.

But in real life I don't like drama. I like just happy endings.

And now I'm facing a real disaster.

- He left... - Why? So what happened?

The first... this is the first night of...

He left me. He is out of love. He wants to be independent.

I am overshadowing. I have too much energy.

I am just too much. Not just for him, for everybody.

Generally, I'm too much.

And I don't know how to be less.

Or maybe... I don't know.

Is this always the statement: more and more of less and less?

But I'd like so much to...

You know, my real dream... get me in the face, my real dream is

to sit in the wheelchair,

not wheelchair, rocking chair, wheelchair is different...

rocking chair, next to the fireplace, and doing, you know, needlework.

And the husband is coming home, and he's a miner, and he's sweating,

and I give him a white shirt and wash his face, a glass of milk.

And then he puts his hand on my stomach, and I'm pregnant.

And then he says... He just folds his hands gently.

And I look at his eyes and there is love.

And then I make the lunch and wash the floor.

And I clean the windows.

And all the bed sheets are ironed.

Real life. I can't do it.

That's it.

To elves and trolls! To elves and trolls!

Carolee...

don't you recognize me?

I am James.

I am your James... James Tenney.

Why didn't you ride me?

Why didn't you ride me?

I decided to move to Brooklyn, second time,

so I buy the Daily News.

There is an apartment in Greenpoint. Ah! So I go, I look.

I hate to waste time,

so I take it. I look. It's a good space.

Corner of Sutton Street and Meeker Avenue,

somewhere in Greenpoint, the Polish Republic.

And I'm so happy because it's a new building. Just built there.

And I was told, and I believe so,

there was never a building on that spot. Never.

I was the first - I was ecstatic!

I was the first person who lives here on this spot -

where only American Indians, maybe some Dutch, walked.

Really, believe me, I was ecstatic.

I was, you know... fresh ground.

Two years pass. I'm very happy.

Then it comes out that some 30 years ago

there was the biggest oil spill in American history.

And the oil...

the rate of all kinds of diseases in that area

is worse than in any other area.

And so OK, it's bad, but maybe it's OK.

All my friends who visit me say,

"There's somethings wrong with this place."

I say, "No, no, I'm the first on this spot in America.

Great!"

Then, the highway there.

Then I decide to move out, and I move out to where I am now.

Two, three months ago, Linda, a friend,

brings the New York Times

and there is a picture of the corner where my house was,

and her house, on Sutton.

Now there is another poison coming out:

it's the carpet cleaners' soap.

It's all poisoned.

And I was so happy: This is, you know, terrific.

It's poisoned. It's all poisoned ground.

And I'm happy I escaped it in time.

So you never know on this island.

It's all poisoned. The ground is all poisoned.

If it looks like lavender, maybe it is lavender.

This is definitely rosemary.

Ah, he was out, he just ran out.

He's playing games.

He thinks I have something.

...to eat for him. No, nothing for you.

Ah, the summers.

Ah, the summers.

I used to lie down on the ground

in the very thickness of the woods

and look up at the branches, thick green,

green branches surrounding me

and feeling the earth.

And the heat of the summer.

And the sun.

Green, green.

In the early summer, late spring,

fragile green, fragile green.

For hours, for hours I used to lie on the ground,

and just feel the...

...trees around me.

I was part of nature.

When I was...

ten, eleven,

twelve.

Even later when I used to come home, I used to go

into the woods and lie down on the soft moss

and look at the trees and listen,

deep in the very thickness of the woods of my childhood.

He wants something special.

Like a bee, or something.

See how close he will permit me... OK, OK, OK,

you're a good sport.

That was very good.

Hello, it's me.

A postcard from Donald Richie.

So what's your crisis?

My crisis?

Well, it's just... I feel like a Jewish person, lately.

It's like, how many temples would a Jew build

if he got stuck on an isolated island.

- Two. - Oh, you know that one?

- Yeah. - Exactly. Come on.

Well, one that's your temple, and one that you wouldn't set foot in.

Exactly.

What was that, I couldn't hear. One for...

One that you don't want to come into.

- Which is the real temple. - You refuse to come into.

- The other one you come into. - One is for the other people.

That's not a joke. It's a philosophical condition.

It is philosophical.

- So you feel this now? - I do.

- In what way? - Because I lose my identity.

But the Greek temple was only accessible to the priest.

True.

But you mean in your daily life you feel this?

Yeah, because, am I an artist, or am I a publisher?

You're an artist. I think you're an artist.

But artist is a very bad term.

Very bad. Publisher is very precise.

So generous of you.

What are you? Are you a painter, a sculptor? What are you?

I think the word "artist" should be forbidden.

It should be eliminated from the language.

I agree. You agree with that, Jonas?

Yes. With Raimund, I agree.

And you should not worry about it. You can do two, and three things.

Yeah, well you've done it.

Yes, I'm living proof that it can be done.

I don't know why you worry about it. What's this crisis?

And some of those conflicts are good.

I don't know, Jonas.

I know it's good. Conflicts are good.

- So you've gone through it? - Yeah, we all go through it.

You'll see.

You emerge and then you go,

and it's boring, no conflicts, no nothing.

Then suddenly you have problems and doubts and crisis.

And it's terrific.

So you have become more and more a publisher.

See, you have to be careful.

No, you had, Phong, you really had a very subtle balance:

between doing your stuff and...

That's where the crisis arises. That's where it arises.

Because I feel I haven't been able to create an equilibrium

between the two or three or four...

It's hard.

Do you need to create an equilibrium?

Some kind of balance, Jonas.

Balanced situations are boring.

Yeah, I know. But they start, Jonas, when you start thinking about it.

In the past you never thought about.

You did your stuff, you published the Rail.

From the moment you start thinking about it:

Should I do a little more painting,

and less publishing? -- it's already a problem.

- It's the mind. - The thinking about it sounds like...

...symptom. You know what you need to know already

by thinking about it.

If you didn't think about it, it wouldn't be a problem.

- I try not to. It's hard. - What do you mean?

I mean if you start to think about it, then

it's an indication that there is something that doesn't feel right.

No, no, there may be nothing.

Just one thinks, and there is no reason.

There is nothing...

Some of the thinking is totally useless.

It interferes with...

Just do what you love to do!

If you don't feel the urge to do what you want to do, it's fake anyhow.

Fake it? Fake it?

How's it going Mr. Mekas?

How are you?

It's been what, two years now, three years?

Yeah, let's continue.

...since we last danced. Oh, no, since that dance?

That was like five years ago.

- No, no that was not... - No, it was like three and a half?

Three? Time goes.

I try to add years to make it sound like it wasn't so long ago

that I was in such horrific condition.

And doing a lot of bad things. And Jonas would have his wine there.

And I had never seen a filmmaker -- he would like --

there would be magazines

and he would set the camera down on the edge of the magazine.

And every once in a while would go, with his wrist.

And then it would fall down, and he would laugh,

and then kind of pick it up and go.

It was really, really great.

And it was always on an edge, I noticed.

You always put it on an edge so it could get a little bit of a wobble.

It couldn't be that steady.

So, Jonas, we're going to get married.

She's going to be my wife. She's my teenage bride.

So, this is an important moment.

Why don't those people come in? Are those girls waiting?

What's the news?

I've got to tell you something pretty phenomenal.

She's pregnant, Jonas. She's going to have my baby, Jonas.

Can't you tell? She's six days pregnant.

Six hours.

That was great.

Six days pregnant.

I can't complain.

This is the new baby.

- This is incredible. - This is the newest Korine: Lefty.

Every step I have...

He has my whole life.

Did you hurt your leg? Someone told me you hurt your leg.

No! What do you mean? Who is slandering me?

- What's the name? - Lefty.

Lefty! You are OK, Lefty.

Lefty, say hi to Jonas.

Oh, she narrowed her eyes.

Well-documented...

Many, many thanks to Jean-Jacques Lebel,

and many, many thanks to Ben Vautier.

We now have a coffee break, or tea break.

Au revoir, Louis Garrel.

This girl was my girlfriend when I was seventeen.

She's an actress. She's a wonderful actress.

One day I was outside with my friends -- and I was like sixteen.

It was not really my group, you know, a mixed group.

People, like straight and a bit classic.

- It wasn't your gang. - And we saw a girl...

It wasn't really a gang, a gang like you.

So I saw a girl, right from the end of the street there, coming to us

like in the -- what's the name of the carnival in Rio?

Carnival.

A girl dressed like at the Carnival, in the streets of Paris.

With a big thing in the air, a red dress, like a frou-frou.

And all my friends said: Look at this stupid girl

walking around Paris like at the Carnival. And I say, yeah.

And that was my girlfriend, right?

That was her.

And I say, Don't laugh, that's my girlfriend.

Because at the beginning I didn't recognize her.

I said, She's stu-pid -- no, that's my girlfriend.

Est-ce que vous voulez un petit coup que Gerard vous offre?

Do you want anything else?

C'est tout.

Mon whisky c'est de la merde? Merci monsieur!

Fini.

- Ça sera pour une autre fois alors. - Merci Gerard, t'es trap gentil.

Because he wanted to offer us some drinks.

So he's angry because he thinks you don't like his whiskey.

No we like it. Oh...

Have a try first.

...if you can still drink it.

It's still drinkable, but maybe it's going.

Have you drunk this before?

- Yeah. - So you can compare.

...how it aged. I mean, it's very noble...

...kind of wine.

But I think it's getting tired, I think. Did you try?

Pass that other glass.

- Or I will drink from the bo-- - No, no, we have another glass.

Just a little bit in there.

So, folks.

To you, sir. To your cellar,

to your father, to your family, to your ancestors.

To those who still make this wine.

Rolling?

Marie Menken, Marie Menken.

A filmmaker, and a beautiful person.

A filmmaker and a person

that only now we are beginning to really know and appreciate,

what she was and what she did for cinema.

She was so humble and so much in the background,

and her films were so small,

lyrical, personal, unassuming,

almost invisible little poems,

that it took that long - that long --

to really begin to see and appreciate what she really did.

She was not taken too seriously.

Her influence, her style, her work with single frame,

and reality that was very casual --

there was nothing important in her films -- it's very casual.

Her house was open to everybody.

The same with her husband, Willard Maas,

who was equally open to...

I mean, Kenneth Anger stayed for months in their house,

and he admits the influence, direct and indirect.

Stan Brakhage, Norman McLaren,

many filmmakers passed through that house.

And when I saw myself her little film "Notebook" --

just like a notebook of little scenes from her life --

I was so taken by it.

Here was somebody who's also doing what I was trying to do,

and doing so well, doing so well.

Marie Menken. Marie Menken.

Making her little, lyrical poems.

Developing the form of a lyrical, very personal cinema.

The avant-garde film of the 60s became known

by some blockbusters like "Dog Star Man,"

or "The Flower Thief,"

or Kenneth Anger's "Scorpio Rising" --

very impressive, sort-of monumental works.

And she was making little films

that had nothing very important about them.

So at that time, they were not noticed.

There were some other filmmakers that are beginning to emerge --

like Piero Heliczer --

that had taken a more lyrical direction,

therefore somehow -- at that time --

the time passed them, or they passed the time,

and here they are now, now we are really beginning to see

Marie Menken's real contribution to cinema.

She was a lyrical soul.

Her ancestors -- her mother, I mean -- was Lithuanian.

She still remembered some Lithuanian songs from her childhood.

Lithuania in general is lyrical -- there are no big rivers,

no big mountains. Everything is small.

That's her background. And she used to still remember some songs.

And we sometimes used to sing some of them,

like this one...

I'm a little girl, like a little rose.

I'm like a little lily in a flower garden.

Luxembourg, Luxembourg.

To you.

To Marie. To Marie Menken.

To you Marie. And Willard too.

- ...like in this space. - It becomes alive.

Like in this space nothing ever evil happened. You know.

Nothing evil happened.

This was a shoe factory. Shoe factory this was. Made shoes.

I know. When I was looking for my loft in 1970,

there was a place on Broadway.

I think it was around 12th street.

And there was a beautiful loft,

and I felt like it was terrifying, and I didn't know why.

And I walked out, and there came a little boy from the other room,

and I said, "You know who lived here?"

He said, "Oh yeah, there was a German painter

- "who committed suicide last week." - Last week?

Yeah. Or two weeks ago, whatever. You could feel it.

You could feel it.

It's very choking for you.

You don't, you cannot breathe in such a space.

You look like you have two weapons, pointing at each other.

They're not weapons.

- Oh yes they are. - They're friends.

- No, no, they're weapons. - Tools.

The Indians believe if you take a photograph of them

it takes the soul away.

The only way I think that you could maybe take the soul away is by...

You take a picture and then you have a picture of that person

and you sort of keep looking and imagining.

That means, you are projecting already to that person

whatever thoughts you have.

If you have bad thoughts, you could affect...

- So the picture has some magic. - If you have a picture,

in a way you possess...

Yes, so it possesses something.

There is something. One could really make a case out of it.

But since we don't know what the soul is...

Yeah, that's something else.

It's not you, the soul, in your body;

it's your body in the soul, in a part of the soul, but...

But, you see, the soul is part of the body.

Like Giordano Bruno said...

No, no. The body is part of the soul.

Nobody can really control, affect your soul. But your body--

your mind, it can control your mind a little bit.

But Giordano Bruno said your soul dies with the body

only the spirit survives. I believe that.

Yeah, yeah, so now we are confused between spirit and soul.

The body is part of the soul, just a part of the soul.

There is no soul in the body.

If the body dies, this part is gone, but the soul is there.

Yeah, whatever.

You believe in eternal life anyhow.

You believe in eternal life, forever. You said life is forever.

No end. Life is forever. No end.

Only if you make something.

- Only one life, but no end. - I drink to that.

Yeah! It's like a river, like water, like an ocean. No end.

Like a creek.

Again, and again, again.

Because when the maggots eat you when you're buried...

- OK, what are we doing here? - It's just like elephant.

- Yes, yes. - Just like elephant.

- When you come close to an elephant. - Yes.

It's strange. If you just suspend reality a moment,

you really think you are touching elephant.

Yes, yes, it's amazing. This tree is amazing.

The color. The texture. The touch too? No, is this real?

This is real! Not made up.

Pretend tree.

It's everything you'd want to see in a tree.

But it's also like a horse. Like a horse's back leg muscle.

You know that? Just like the back leg of a horse.

It's that wonderful strong muscle.

You come behind and you don't know if it's going to kick you or something.

Exactly. This is like the neck of the horse.

And this is like the mane.

The mane of the horse that I used to hold onto

when I was usually standing on my head right here.

On the back of the horse?

Oh boy. Was the horse moving?

Yeah, riding home from the pasture.

It's the neck absolutely. Look. Just suspend...

Lisbon's a beautiful place, but suspend for a moment

and it's like, you are... it's the horse. It really is the neck

I am an old tree,

but I have been many things.

I have been a horse. I have been an elephant.

And the rest is Lisbon.

And I can see, and I can feel.

Some messages?

Here is a present for you.

He just sent us this message.

Good, good. Thank you, tree.

Maybe it's edible.

So that's Lisbon.

Now where should we go?

But now,

I would like to - oh this is like Hollywood --

I would like to - oh this is like Hollywood --

repeat.

To Emerson and P. Adams,

our friend P. Adams and Emerson.

The seats of the house are now open.

- To... yes to... - This is Jack Kerouac's evening.

- Yes, to Jack Kerouac. - For whom we drink this Fernet.

I don't think he drank that but...

- To Kerouac. - So now to Jack,

and to his friend Bill and Allen

and Gregory and all the other guys.

So in America as the sun goes down

and I sit on the old broken-down river pier

watching the long, long skies over New Jersey

and I sense all that raw land that rolls

in one unbelievable huge bulge over the West Coast.

And in Iowa the children must be crying

in the land where they let the children cry.

And don't you know that God is Pooh Bear.

- God is what? - Pooh Bear.

The evening star must be drooping

and shedding her sparkler dims over the prairie,

which is just before the coming of complete night

that cups the peaks and folds in the final shores,

and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody

besides the forlorn rags of growing old.

I think of Dean Moriarty,

I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found,

I think of Dean Moriarty. I think of Dean Moriarty.

- To you sir! - To Kerouac.

Crunch of the apple.

What else are you holding in there?

I should talk to an analyst and find out.

This July 4th, with Dalius,

we escaped the city

and went to Peekskill

to visit his brother Audrius.

I hadn't seen Audrius, maybe for two years.

We discovered that Audrius is not doing that well.

He's not really doing his work,

at least to my...

judgment of what artists should be doing.

He was there, but going through some kind of crisis,

of maybe boredom,

to be, to live in an artists' community.

Artists' community.

A crisis caused maybe by...

boredom.

It is not easy to be by oneself

and continue to work with the same intensity.

Van Gogh, I understand Van Gogh.

OK, Cézanne. He was there in his little...

country studio,

but he could go, not very far,

to Marseilles, to Aix-en-Provence.

Here is nothing.

Nothing.

Audrius took us in his car,

showed the town,

the miserable town of Peekskill.

Even the bar,

the only bar

that there was that Audrius said was OK,

a real bar,

was closed.

We could not even get a beer.

Yes, Peekskill.

The town of Peekskill.

Then, we said, instead let's go and see the river.

The nature. The nature.

At least there is nature.

Even when there are no people

there is nature.

So we went

to the Hudson River.

Yes,

to continue, to be by oneself

and continue with the same intensity,

that is

the artist's

challenge.

See you next July 4th,

just to check how you're doing.

Yes, to Amy!

- To Amy! - To Amy!

Who is not singing with middle-class voice,

but singing from

her deepest, lowest, mixed-up, complex,

lower depths.

Oh sing, keep singing, Amy. Keep singing.

Don't worry about, don't pay attention to whoever...

...whoever says whatever about you. Amy, we are with you!

Yes, we are with you.

One cannot sing like this if one is normal,

if one is normal middle class.

Normal people sing with middle-class voices.

You see, an artist,

in order to allow the muses to enter

into his or her body,

first all the fences, resistance,

nets,

radar systems

that prevent them to enter us

must be destroyed, melted, eliminated

by whatever means,

because

to allow the muses to do their work

is more important than our bodies.

- ...cause that was after you were sober.

Well, there was a woman named Barbara Dunn --

this is an advance,

because this is going to be in the reissued story, the reissued book

-- who was a columnist at Street News.

She had a senior column called "Elder but Betters."

And when I became Editor I decided to read everything

that went into the thing.

And she did a column about going off to the Second World War

and going to Europe and being some kind of candy striper thing.

And in the second paragraph she starts with,

"When I went off to my war," blah blah blah --

and I thought: She's buried the lead.

Let me call her up, because that should be the first line.

If you have a picture of an elderly woman

and the first line is "When I went off to my war,"

you're going to keep reading. Sol called her up,

and she doesn't give in.

She says: Well, come on up and we'll talk about it.

Now this woman,

she and her husband owned a Shelter Island Weekly paper

-- for years -- and then they sold it,

and her husband had drunk himself to death.

And she was, in fact, working up a good affair with the bottle,

because when I came up there she was on crutches,

because she had broken her hip in a fall.

And I walk there and I meet her

-- she lives in a high rise on the Upper West Side --

and there's a sideboard near the door

and on that are two half-gallon jugs of Stolichnaya.

- Of what? - Stolichnaya. Vodka.

She says: Would you like something from the bar?

I go - it's like four in the afternoon - oh, sure.

And we sat there and we got drunk.

And you know we had great conversation, like this.

And I said, boy, I'm going to love this editing thing, I like this gig.

And we became friends. Now flash forward.

Street News loses its office space.

I have the book deal, but I haven't really written much of it yet,

and I haven't gotten clean yet.

And so she says: Why don't you come stay with me?

You know you can run errands because I can't get around.

I won't charge you rent and you can work on your book.

So I say, OK. But it's an accident waiting to happen

because she's an alcoholic

and what an alcoholic wants is a drinking buddy.

And they want a drinking buddy who is going to be around

for the first four or five when it still looks like a party,

but not around later on when the ugly stuff happens.

And I'm perfect for that because after like six drinks

I want to go get my substance of choice.

And she would - it was an accident waiting to happen -

and she would give me what she called 'walking around' money,

which meant that after my drinks I'd go and see Flecko.

So this goes on for a while.

You know, about 3:30 she'd say,

"The sun's over the yardarm," and we'd start drinking.

And then I would say - to get my walking around money -

I'd say, " I guess I'll take a walk," and I'd disappear until the next day

and start all over again.

One day she sends me to the bank with her card,

to get money out of the bank -- and her PIN number.

And I go and I get money out of the bank. I go back.

And she gives me my 'walking around' money, and we have a few drinks.

I go to get something -- to the projects behind Lincoln Center --

and I end up buying two pieces of soap,

instead of the real thing, from some rip-off guy.

So I'm steaming mad, and I'm storming back down the street,

and I put my hand in the pocket -- and there's her card.

I forgot to give it to her.

So now I go, well look,

I have a little money coming in at the end of the week.

I'll take 20 -- 40 -- out

and I'll replace it before she even knows it.

So I take the 40 out, and I smoke that up.

And I take more out.

Then I go crash in Grand Central, in my spot in Grand Central.

I wake up in the morning and I feel guilty, so I have a...

This goes on for five, six, seven days,

after which I've taken a total of $5000 out of her account.

This was the final thing that made me go into treatment.

So I run into a guy named Irish -- who I call Irish --

the guy I smoked up the advance with.

And he actually returned the favor one night,

brought some stuff over and smoked,

which you never get from a crackhead.

There's no quid pro quo. You know it's me, me, me.

So that made him a little bit of a saint in my eyes.

So, I'm walking around one night

with her card and some stuff and I see him on 10th Avenue,

sitting on a stoop. It's a very quiet night.

And I go, "Hey buddy, we're going to party.

I got some stuff."

And he says, "Well I got some too. I've got some behind each ear."

He says, "But I feel so lousy about the way I got it

that I can't bring myself to smoke it."

And he goes on to tell me how he had gotten the money by going to this bar

and he met somebody who got gratification by him putting his fist

somewhere it wasn't intended to go, let's say.

And he's describing this and it totally bummed him out.

So we both decide: this is it, you know.

I go to him, "You think that's bad.

"I just committed grand larceny."

This is the first time I admitted it to myself, which is seven years.

And I'm like... You know, it was a very quiet night.

Nothing to keep us from really getting a good hard look at what we'd become.

So we decided the next morning we're going to go check in.

But, we said, since we have money and we have stuff, one last party.

The Last Supper.

So, we go to this cheap hotel.

In our mind there's an extravaganza.

We're going to have hookers. We're going to have people.

And all this stuff is going to happen.

None of that happened. It was just pure paranoia.

Soon as we get high, he would run over to the peephole on the door

and I would run over to the window and keep peeking out,

as if whatever is going to sneak up on us

wasn't going to take us by surprise.

We did this -- an entire night we paid for this fun.

And in the day we drag ourselves out, and I went in.

OK, so I go in.

A few months go by,

and there's two things that stick in my head that they say.

They say one thing: there's no coincidences - number one -

and that in order to get recovery

you have to make amends with everyone you've hurt.

And Barbara comes right to my mind,

because she trusted me, she was a friend.

And I not only betrayed her trust, I took all this money.

And I'm like aching to get it right.

Only I'm still thinking like a drug addict, I want to do it all in a week.

So I call her up and I tell her,

"Barbara, it was me. You know, I'm the one. I took..."

She says, "I know you took the money.

I contacted the police. They looked at the video."

I said, "Well, I'm a drug addict. But I'm not using now."

And I asked if I could meet her.

And I tell her this, "I'm a drug addict, you know."

And she's just staring at me.

I'm talking and she's just like staring in wonderment

at this transformation.

And so I tell her, "Look please, for me. I need this.

"Can I come by two or three days a week

and do whatever you need done?

It will make me feel better," you know. So she says OK.

So I'm coming by every few days.

Dan has a book launch near Columbia one night.

I'm coming in every day, coming in for...

out-patient treatment on a commuter card

that my mother had to pay for.

You know, it takes me as far as Fordham Road,

and then train in. It's the cheap way.

And I go out to this thing with Dan, at Columbia.

Then we have dinner. And I miss the last train out of Fordham.

And I'm trying not to get pissed off because,

as all fresh-in-from-the-cold junkies

think the world should now bend over and kiss their ass

and get out a velvet rope,

just because we decided not to destroy ourselves anymore

the whole world should be, you know, our oyster.

So I'm getting pissed. And I'm trying not to get pissed.

And I'm like: There are no coincidences.

Everything happens for a reason. There are no coinci--

What fucking reason could there...? And I start screaming and yelling.

And then I calm down and I say: Wait a minute.

I'll call Barbara. She'll put me up.

And I call her collect. It's two in the morning,

after two. She says: Come down.

I have to sneak on the subway.

I get to her apartment. She has two or three drinks.

She goes in her bedroom -- she's still staring at me.

She goes in her bedroom. She goes to sleep.

Next morning I get up, and I'm making coffee,

and I hear her from the bedroom.

She says, "Lee, could you come in here for a minute?"

And I go into her bedroom. She's sitting on the edge of her bed,

her skin hanging off her bones, eyes deep set.

I mean she looked... Her hair ragged.

And she says to me...

She says, "Lee, could you help get me into a detox?"

And I go: Do not let me fuck this up.

Because there it was on a platter.

Everything I needed. Everything she needed.

And somehow I did everything --

I know about crackheads, but I don't know about alcoholics.

Should she get a drink when she needs a drink?

And you can't just walk into one of these places. It's a whole process.

But somehow we did everything right, and we kept her going at it.

And she went in, and I apartment-sat for her

while she was away, because she had plants and all -- cats.

And then she came out and I went to meetings with her.

She stayed sober for the rest of her life.

In fact, she died in an AA meeting.

- In an AA meeting? - In an AA meeting.

There are no coincidences.

There's a reason I got stuck on that platform.

And she died like two weeks after

I was actually able to give her a check for the money.

But the money was the least of it.

It was an incredible, an incredible thing.

Barbara Dunn. May she rest in peace.

You see, it's a manifesto of fifty years of life...

It's not a show about my work. It's my work with my friends.

See it's a different concept for me.

And I feel that - and probably Jonas would agree with me --

my work, your work, doesn't consist only of doing what we do.

It consists also of continuing with our friends.

You know, what Jonas said in the movie

that we saw the other day: "Where are my friends?"

Well, these are my friends. All the people in the show -

I usually knew most of them,

except the ones in the 17th century,

but they were my friends too, even if I didn't know them.

They're part of my... I owe everything to them, you see.

So this is sort of saying thank you

to those people: poets, and painters, and others.

And Artaud, you see. I met Artaud only once.

My mother was taking me to the dentist,

and he was sitting at Les Deux Magots, and I was 11 years old.

And I saw this crazy man that looked like that.

And he was sitting at Les Deux Magots.

And my mother, she said, "Oh, come, come continue."

I said, "Why?"

and she said, "That's Artaud, don't speak to him."

So that's the only time I saw Artaud.

Why didn't your mother want you to...?

Because he was scary, man!

He was a scary guy. You know, a very scary guy.

Do you hear his voice, his extraordinary voice?

Do you hear him?

You hear the way he pronounces words?

You see, he's speaking to the cosmos.

He had no teeth, no teeth.

Difficult to pronounce words.

Extraordinary, no? It makes me...

He's talking about sperm.

It's something that the society, culture

-- difficult to translate.

Such a Tibetan shaman, reinventing language.

That's it. You see, this whole thing is an homage to him.

It's some French Radio music...

Jonas! Hello!

I wanted to tell you that your snow poem was great.

I thought it was the best thing of the night.

No, really. That ending, "Just like 1812." It was so beautiful.

But I wanted to add,

"Spring, Spring, do not come."

No, but the end, "1812." It was like... I loved it!

It was like seeing the film by Tarkovsky.

And the movie begins. Anyway it was quite beautiful.

And you look very handsome. Very glad to see you.

Oh, look! Wait, wait, wait...

Where's my camera?

Here, you have to give me the camera too.

Now I have...

It's my revenge.

I got it.

There, our revenge.

Pianta di Roma.

Wow, look at that.

Holy shit.

It's completely invented.

Wow. Look at how strange that perspective is.

- It's so skewed. - Completely contemporary.

This way. This way. That way. This is way before Cubism.

That reminds me of Lorenzetti, the Lorenzetti drawings.

You mean the Good and Bad Government frescoes?

Wow. Look at that.

Oh, yeah. That's a classic.

Books, books -- that's the last magic left.

Yep.

People looking at computer screens now.

It's flat. It's still. It's still prints, no?

It's incredible.

- Now people appreciate books more. - Well I hope so. I hope so.

Look how we're marveling over this book.

Before computers, it was just a book.

Maybe.

- This is all invented? - Oh yeah.

Yes, this is really odd.

Magnifique pont.

They were the French. They were first ones that did that.

First modern printing.

I have the Wilton-Ely book.

- What year's this book? - 1905.

All the originals were etchings, no?

- I have those. - They were all etchings.

I have some of the original etching images.

Of these?

From the 18th Century?

I also love that they have the white paper in between.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah.

Very elegant.

I love this noise.

You know, it was probably done

so that the printing didn't go through the page

- to interfere with the next one. - Could I see the front page?

- Where it says Piranesi. - Yes, sure.

They photographed the original etchings and made steel plates.

They're still printed from steel plates.

What was the transfer between the photograph and the steel plate?

What was that process?

It's a photographic process, I suppose. I mean it was...

Presents from Giuseppe.

And there's a message too.

"Vino Russo di Donate Rocco.

"prodotto e imbottigliato a Campagna,

"piccolo paese ove Giordano Bruno celebro' la sua prima messa."

Where he heard his first mass.

Undressing the bottle.

Salute.

There it is.

If I was a priest than this would mean a hundred years in purgatory.

- Because if you drop a drop - ...of the wine...

...the vin de messe, the wine for the rituals...

Because it's also blood.

Yeah. It's spilling the blood of Christ.

So, to Giuseppe

and to Giordano Bruno.

And to Donato who made this wine.

And Donato, to Donato who made this wine.

Beviamo.

That's what one calls wine.

Oh my God. This is...

For me, this is Napoli.

One day, we'll go to Giuseppe. And Napoli.

It's amazing.

- Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. - It's amazing.

Yes they would say this is out of tune and this is horrible.

No, but Jonas, there's a lot of tuning, those minus...

Yes, but those who are professionals...

- Oh, but they have flat ears. - This is like tuning as in a dream.

You listen to them, they get lost and then when they go down a third

they actually go down a fifth,

and they transpose and they're somewhere else,

and they don't care. They're in that music,

in that song. I listen to this all the time.

That's what happens.

The tune is relative, to their state.

They make a jump, but they jump too far

or jump not enough, but they don't care.

- They stick with it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You cannot sing this after training at a conservatory.

And you need the Neapolitan dialect. Listen!

This rhythm of the lower, of the words.

- That's pure Neapolitan. - Yes.

But you know, it's very similar to African.

- Yeah. Yeah. - No really.

In Africa they sing similar,

but a little bit different. Little bit different.

Very similar. Very similar. But a little bit different.

Maybe I should go to sleep.

If I can sleep. If I can sleep...

I should go to sleep.

But I'm thinking,

I'm thinking about those green, green, green spring trees.

Young trees. Very green. Very green.

Maybe in April. April.

Very, very green. I'm lying there,

on the ground, and looking up at the...

leaves. Green. So very fragile. Very fragile. Very fragile.

Very fragile leaves of green.

Green, all the trees.

And it's... it's...

I cannot describe it. I cannot describe it. The feeling.

The togetherness that I felt, like

I'm there with the trees, with those young...

trees. Spring. Green. Green.

Like lying there on the ground,

looking up at the leaves.

Up. And the sky, between, through the leaves.

It's so incredible.

I was part. Like I was part of it.

I was part of those trees, of those leaves, of the green,

greenness of the spring,

greenness of the trees. There on the ground.

So like something very real, very fresh, very fragile,

very green, very, very...

...lush, very sensual, very much...

I was part of nature.

Very much. And how can I return to it,

and be again like -- it's impossible.

That was the greatest, the most beautiful moment...

of my life.

Nature. Trees.

Green. Green. Fragile. So subtle. So subtle.

That green, the leaves.

It was so subtle. So real. So alive.

The flowers, the little flowers.

All those secret little places in the woods,

that only I knew.

Only I knew the path

through the woods. Secret.

It was my secret.

My secret.

Oh, yuck!

It's like a big rat. It's like a big rat.

We found one of those in my neighbor's toilet

a couple years ago in Brooklyn.

That's huge. Are they always this big?

Don't you recognize me?

You were the princess and I was the prince.

Disgusting.

Bye, bye. I have to run. I have to run now.

The night is my kingdom now. Bye bye.

When you really listen, especially the noise sounds,

the noise musicians.

It really works on your system, emotionally and on the body.

The way you receive it physically.

So look at this. This is all new, all this part.

I used to live there, in the house there, by the ocean.

- Where? - Just there, with the blue roof.

Just there?

So I did a little side trip so that you could see the sea.

Finally I found good garlic --

-- I think it will be very, very good -

-- at the farmer's market yesterday.

Yeah, see you can hear it. It's good.