My Dinner with Andre Page #9

Really, not at all.

But the fact that nobody could say...

"Gee, what a shame about your mother"

or " How are you feeling?"

It was just as if nothing had happened.

They were all making these jokes and laughing.

I got quite crazy, as a matter of fact.

One of these people mentioned

a certain man whom I don't like very much...

...and I started screeching about how

he had just been found in the Bronx River...

...and his penis had dropped off from gonorrhea,

and all kinds of insane things.

And later, when I got home, I realized I'd just

been desperate to break through this ice.

Yeah.

I mean, do you realize, Wally, if you brought

that situation into a Tibetan home...

That'd be just so far out. I mean,

they wouldn't be able to understand it.

That would be simply...

simply so weird, Wally.

If four Tibetans came together,

and tragedy had just struck one of the ones...

...and they spent the whole evening going...

I mean,you know,

Tibetans would have looked at that...

...and would have thought that was

the most unimaginable behavior.

- But for us, that's common behavior.

- Mm-hmm.

I mean, really, the... The Africans would have

probably put their spears into all four of us...

'cause it would have driven them crazy.

They would have thought we were

dangerous animals or something like that.

- Right.

- I mean, that's absolutely abnormal behavior.

Is everything all right, gentlemen?

- Great.

- Yeah.

But those are

typical evenings for us.

I mean, we go to dinners and parties

like that all the time.

These evenings are really

like sort of sickly dreams...

...because people are talking in symbols.

Everyone is sort of floating through

this fog of symbols and unconscious feelings.

No one says what they're

really thinking about.

Then people will start making these jokes

that are really some sort of secret code.

Right. Well, what often happens

in some of these evenings...

...is that these really crazy little fantasies

will just start being played with, you know...

...and everyone will be talking at once

and sort of saying...

"Hey, wouldn't it be great if Frank Sinatra

and Mrs. Nixon and blah-blah-blah...

...were in such and such a situation?"

You know, always with famous people,

and always sort of grotesque.

Or people will be talking about

some horrible thing...

...like... Like, uh, the death of that girl

in the car with Ted Kennedy...

...and they'll just be

roaring with laughter.

I mean, it's really amazing.

It's just unbelievable.

That's the only way anything is expressed,

through these completely insane jokes.

I mean, I think that's why I never understand

what's going on at a party.

I'm always completely confused.

You know, uh, Debby once said,

after one of these New York evenings...

...she thought she'd traveled

a greater distance...

...just by journeying from her origins

in the suburbs of Chicago...

...to that New York evening...

...than her grandmother had traveled

in, uh, making her way...

...from the steppes of Russia

to the suburbs of Chicago.

I think that's right.

You know, it may... it may be, Wally,

that one of the reasons...

...that we don't know

what's going on...

...is that when we're there at a party,

we're all too busy performing.

Uh-huh.

That was one of the reasons

that, uh, Grotowski gave up the theater.

He just felt that people in their lives now

were performing so well...

...that performance in the theater

was sort of superfluous...

...and, in a way, obscene.

Huh.

Isn't it amazing

how often a doctor...

...will live up to our expectation

of how a doctor should look?

When you see a terrorist on television,

he looks just like a terrorist.

I mean, we live in a world

in which fathers...

...or single people, or artists...

...are all trying to live up

to someone's fantasy...

...of how a father, or a single person,

or an artist should look and behave.

They all act as if they know exactly how

they ought to conduct themselves...

...at every single moment...

...and they all seem totally self-confident.

Of course, privately people

are very mixed up about themselves.

Yeah.

They don't know what they should

be doing with their lives.

- They're reading all these self-help books.

- Oh, God!

I mean, those books are just so touching,

because they show...

...how desperately curious we all are

to know how all the others of us...

...are really getting on in life...

...even though, by performing

these roles all the time...

...we're just hiding the reality of ourselves

from everybody else.

I mean, we live in such

ludicrous ignorance of each other.

We usually don't know

the things we'd like to know...

...even about our supposedly

closest friends.

I mean... I mean, you know...

...suppose you're going through

some kind of hell in your own life.

Well, you would love to know if your friends

have experienced similar things.

But we just don't dare to ask each other.

No. It would be like asking

your friend to drop his role.

I mean, we just put no value at all

on perceiving reality.

I mean, on the contrary, this incredible

emphasis that we all place now...

...on our so-called careers...

...automatically makes perceiving reality

a very low priority...

...because if your life is organized around

trying to be successful in a career...

...well, it just doesn't matter what

you perceive or what you experience.

You can really sort of shut your mind off

for years ahead, in a way.

You can sort of

turn on the automatic pilot.

You know,just the way your mother's doctor

had on his automatic pilot...

...when he went in

and he looked at the arm...

...and he totally failed

to perceive anything else.

That's right. Our... Our minds are just

focused on these goals and plans...

...which in themselves

are not reality.

No. Goals and plans are not...

I mean, they're... They're fantasy.

They're part of a dream life.

I mean, you know, it always just

does seem so ridiculous, somehow...

...that everybody has to have

his little... His little goal in life.

I mean, it's so absurd, in a way, when you

consider that it doesn't matter which one it is.

Right. And because people's

concentration is on their goals...

...in their life

they just live each moment by habit.

Really, like the Norwegian telling

the same stories over and over again.

- Mm-hmm.

- Life becomes habitual.

And it is today.

I mean, very few things happen now

like that moment...

...when Marlon Brando sent the Indian woman

to accept the Oscar...

...and everything went haywire.

Things just very rarely

go haywire now.

And if you're just operating by habit...

...then you're not really living.

I mean, you know, in Sanskrit,

the root of the verb " to be"...

...is the same as " to grow"

or " to make grow. "

Huh.

- Do you know about Roc?

- Hmm?

Oh, well.

Roc was a wonderful man.

He was one of the founders

of Findhorn...

...and he was one of Scotland's...well,

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