For No Good Reason Page #4

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as though he's had a whole session

of talking to me, you know,

holding me like a bird and I'm

trying to bite my way out of it.

And that was

our relationship, actually.

It was ill-treatment, you

know, that he gave me.

Speak up, Edward, speak up.

Speak up! Talk to me!

He could be an

absolute son of a b*tch, you know,

and, um, left me

sometimes in a right state.

The basis of Ralph

and Hunter's friendship

was that they saw kindred

spirits in each other.

I think that the

difference was that

Hunter realized that Ralph

was crazier than him.

Ralph was willing

to go to extremes

that Hunter

was not willing to,

and you'd think Hunter would be

the one who was the, you know,

more outrageous

and reckless

and the one who would go out

on a limb on something.

But Ralph was the one

who'd actually go there.

I'm not talking

about physical safety.

But I'm talking about

sort of, you know,

mental, moral,

philosophical,

take a chance

with your own work.

I think

America is where

all that was going wrong in

the world was being nurtured.

Blast the hell out

of North Vietnam...

- Do you agree?

- Absolutely.

If anything,

before the election,

we're gonna bomb more,

believe me.

It seemed to me

they needed attacking.

It was something that

absolutely had to be done.

So it had fallen

to me to do this.

It was my duty

to change the world.

I'd always thought I wanted

to change the world.

Now was the moment.

Ralph was willing to

say anything about anybody.

I mean, his moral

sensibility was affronted

and he would

just say so,

he wouldn't stop.

And thus in

a certain sense insane,

willing to, you know, go to the

limits of what was appropriate,

beyond the limits of what was

appropriate and what was sanity,

and dangerous

in that way.

Because people have gotta know

whether or not their president's a crook.

Well, I'm not a crook.

I had found my voice and

I wasn't at all afraid anymore.

I was going to

use it as a weapon.

One continually

lives in hope

and that you

are coming along

as a sort of knight

in shining armor

and you're going

to do your best.

In a way, you're being

rather self-righteous.

But be proud of the fact that

you are attempting to put right

what really is wrong.

Since then Steadman

has gone back and forth,

contributing regularly to the

pages of Rolling Stone magazine,

recording some of the

significant political events

and personalities

of American life.

His output is prolific.

He even writes Rolling Stone's

occasional gardening column.

Yeah,

I wanted to write.

Oh, really?

And having Hunter

saying to me, "Don't write, Ralph.

"You'll bring shame on

your family." (DEPP LAUGHS

That spurred me on and I

thought, "No, bugger you."

She's my love

She's my life

It's really such a pity that

she's someone else's wife

She's my love...

Thank you for ringing.

Pm not here at the moment.

I'm busy writing a book and

I'll ring you later. Thanks.

I need a couple of drinks,

actually, to start on this, really do.

What is the time now,

by the way?

12:
00.

Right.

The task I set myself

was filled with such challenge

that I feared the very

touching of the wall.

At times I was overcome

with desperate fear

and dared not mar the

whiteness there before me.

And I began to paint upon the

wall itself on 6th June, 1505,

at the stroke

of the 13th hour.

At the moment of putting

the brush upon the wall,

the skies darkened and the

bells started to toll.

Leonardo DA

Vinci was a genius.

In fact,

Sigmund Freud said

he was the man who

woke up in the dark.

I thought, "Am I knowledgeable

enough to know anything

"about such a man

as Leonardo DA Vinci?"

There must be

loads of people around

who have done books

about Leonardo DA Vinci.

And I found there were

more than

most people have

ever been written about.

So how can I possibly write

a book that was different?

How many books have

you read about Leonardo?

I suppose I've

been through about 50,

and I'm none the wiser.

I don't know a damn thing.

About halfway through

I suddenly thought,

"What if I call myself

'I, Leonardo?"

And so I became Leonardo.

It was 16th

of December, 1982.

The angle for my book

on Leonardo DA Vinci.

I would write it

in the first person.

I would look

through his eyes.

Only I will know

what it felt like.

No experts can tell me.

This allows me

artistic license

and affords me the luxury

of telling my life story

without ail the doubt that accompanies

most biographies about me.

The reason I chose

Leonardo as a subject

was because of

something he said,

that genius was the

capacity for taking pains.

In a way I recognized

something of me in him,

that I was trying hard to be

something rather special.

And that's not

swanky-ing about it.

It's just trying

to do something

as definitively

as I possibly could

that served the purpose

it was intended to serve.

He was fascinated

by why things worked

and how interrelated

they all were.

Everything that he

designed and invented

were the result of thinking

about life itself.

I think the most significant

thing that Leonardo did,

that makes him

so special,

was that he came

out with something

that probably other

people had dreamed of,

and that was how to fly.

I devised

a simple flying harness

whereby myself, or someone who

might fit the harness willingly,

would soar out

from some eminence.

The parachute

invented by Leonardo

would have been, you know, a triangular...

Like a pyramid.

But then he came out with a cleverer

idea, which was the glider.

It flies,

but I don't.

You know, I learned a lot from him.

I learned a lot from...

This is how

I got an education.

I didn't have an education

before I started doing stuff.

And, you know, I mean,

I left school with zilch.

Yeah.

I went to

Abergele Grammar School.

The headmaster's name

was D.B. Jones.

Uh, he was such

a sweet, gentle man.

After D.B. Jones, uh, retired,

we got a new headmaster,

Dr. Hubert Hughes.

He took over and authority

became very important for him,

and caning boys.

My head is down because,

in a peculiar way,

I felt that school

was in some ways

a rather

authoritative process.

And that's when

I coined a phrase which was,

"Authority is

the mask of violence."

I can't stand bullies,

and there have

been so many of them

and they've been always

in positions of power.

I'm afraid I find that

frankly unforgivable.

The desire to shock is also a way

of getting back at authority.

That idea that,

"Righto, you owe me."

You scared the living

daylights out of me as a kid

with your awful way of dealing

with children and school.

I was trying to hurt the thing

that hurt me, if you like.

It's the key to opening the door

into my dark spirit inside...

Mmm-hmm.

...and out comes

the drawing that

some people call vicious

and all sorts of other names,

or perceptive even.

Sure.

It's like a filter

somewhere inside me

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