Annotations for Speakers: Alice Walker

No, just water.

I'm coming from the Rosie O'Donnell show and followed by a really nice walk around Washington Square Park where I used to walk when I lived on that square. Yes, and I went and I looked at the building and I couldn't even remember walking in and out of the door. So strange.

Yes. I was living with my boyfriend who I later married in his dorm room in the NYU student housing which is right on the park and we looked out over the tree top so she was very nice.

We were probably passing each other all the time if you know it. I'm going to go wash my hands because I've been falling off. Do you know where the restroom is?

Okay, be right back.

She always says I forget. 69.

How old is your son?

Oh yeah.

Cheers.

We survived it all.

Yeah.

Oh my goodness.

Wow.

Really?

Wow. I bet that was a shock.

Oh, I imagine.

Yeah. The violence is not going to work. I mean, I don't care who's doing it. There's just no end to it. But that must have been such a shock because home is where you feel so safe.

Well, yeah, I know in my own life what suffering it causes. And in a way, it just isn't radical enough. Violence is not radical enough.

Well, actually, love is more radical than violence. And it's more subversive generally. And it's harder to do. And that's why people would rather have violence.

Much easier than actually coming to love somebody. Or just to be compassionate. It takes a lot more courage.

I adored him.

I adored him. I adored him. And I still do.

It's possible because he was a devil before I knew him. It was a lot harder to forgive my father, whom I knew, you know, in his devil-ness.

But with my grandfather. And that taught me that people do change. And they change radically. Because the man that used to shoot his gun at my grandmother and chase her through the cornfields was not the man I knew. The man I knew was very mellow, very thoughtful, very cornfields was not the man I knew. The man I knew was very mellow, very thoughtful, very loving of me, very happy to have me around, and very civil to her. So this was someone that I knew about almost as a... That earlier part, almost as a legend. And... that I knew about almost as a... That earlier part, almost as a legend. And…

Oh, yeah. Oh, I mean, yes. And they were told with such gusto, which was shocking to me. Even as a child. I mean, I couldn't really laugh, I have to say, because I loved my grandmother. And so in the telling of a story about her being chased by this wild man, who was an alcoholic, I didn't understand that either for many years. He was an alcoholic. And alcoholism had actually come into our family through our Irish line, the Irish, Scottish Irish drunkards, overseers. Which is another story about just how you get certain traits in your family. Anyway... But I loved her. She was a really sweet, long suffering, patient, good cooking woman. And so when people were laughing at her fear, I felt a chill. It was a real fear, obviously. Oh, absolutely. It was real. So I feel that I was born partly to heal that, to look at it and to see who they both were in essence. And I think who he was in essence, non-alcoholic and non-crazy and non-violent, was a basically thoughtful person. And a gentle person.

Yes.

He's a very good man. He's a very, very good person. So it's not really hard. And I think what's really hard is just that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with them anymore. And your life is calling you somewhere else. And that's pretty much what happened on top of just being really exhausted from being in the situation that we were in. It was too much. We should have known better. But we didn't. We were young and we thought that we could really... And we did. We changed Mississippi a lot. Especially my former husband and his colleagues. They saw that a lot of the desegregation, new laws were enforced. They represented people like... People who really reminded me so much of my parents and grandparents, really poor people, for the first time had someone to defend them. So it took its toll. But there's no blame. And that's what you...

It's because everybody gets really tired. And I have learned in my own life that...

Drunk.

Well, it was because he had no other outlet for this kind of anger. If he had been angry at the white people who were actually the basic oppressors, he would have been killed right away. And he knew that. And so his anger got twisted and it was the very extremely remarkable African American man who was able to see what that was, that you had to be very careful not to misdirect the anger. If you were angry at the abuse of the overseer, the boss, whoever he was, to find some other way to deal with it rather than hurting your family. This is a very difficult thing.

Oh yes, right. And some people handled it, you know, there were a few men who were known to be men who, no matter what, they never abused their family. Never. And they were of course really looked up to.

Never. What do you recommend?

Oh good, okay.

Okay, alright.

Oh, that sounds very good.

I think I want that.

Yeah.

I'll stop.

No, but I should stop.

Well, does this come with some kind of vegetables that you said?

Oh, yeah. Okay. If you have a small green salad, that would be good.

Iced tea would be good.

Yes.

Well, you know, it was sitting on my desk for a while, all except the last story. And I was not going to publish it. And I was in Hawaii, and I was talking to a friend, and she said, I'm really waiting for your next book. And I said, well, it's there on my desk. And she said, what? This was Mililani Trask. I don't know if you know any Hawaiian politics, but she is a very fierce defender of the rights of Hawaiian people. And it started with thinking about completing it and how to complete it and what the significance of it is, you know. And I saw that in writing the memoir about my marriage, the other stories seem to be growing out of it. They represent, in a way, the freedoms and the difficulties that I encounter after leaving that marriage, which have been such a cocoon in many ways.

The marriage was, because the man that I had married had been so, you know, just very protective and very present and very loyal in many ways, you know, just very dependable. And so after that marriage and after, for him it was impossible to maintain a friendship, which as an Aquarian, friendship is first. It comes before marriage even, you know. But anyway, so the stories I could see represented the freedom, but also some of the terrors, you know, of being outside of a marriage that had been very cocoon-like, at least in its early stages.

No, no, because I thought about doing that and then it didn't feel right. I wanted it to be just more the way it was.

Some of them are, but of course some of them aren't.

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And the little things that we do for each other when we love each other can have such healing. I mean, and you never really know sometimes where that's going to happen. I mean, who would think that the fact that someone liked the way you smelled when you had oiled yourself with olive oil, loved the way you looked shiny with olive oil, I mean, you know, how would you know that that would be such a healing thing, that you would suddenly feel seen, accepted, loved, natural, you know, that someone could see you and love you in your naturalness? And what an increase then in the degree of intimacy you would have with such a person. I mean, just that little thing, such a wonderful thing. So that was part of why I wanted to write these stories like this.

Later, in any case. It did, because you know, it came after, you mean the memoir, the little one?

Yeah, it came, yes, I think so, except for The Brotherhood of the Saved, that came absolutely last. Because I, by then, was ready to transform all of this into a story that was just fiction, just art, but with the spirits of my parents and my spirit in it, as we might have been had we done these things.

A big change?

Oh yeah. I mean, we tried everything, it was just so amazing. And then years later, you look back on that, and it's, you know, it was crazy. I mean, it was, but really good crazy. I mean, I don't mean, you know, it's a good thing to have done, because we were trying to see if we could do this, you know, this transformation that always had failed around us. We'd never seen anybody do that. We'd never known anybody who, you know, if you fell in love with someone's husband, and then you, you know, talked to the wife, and she said, well, maybe we can all work this out, and, you know, it's all very, you know. But then years later, they come back around, and they're older, and they realize that, you know, whatever they were working out with this man, they've done it, and now they're free. I mean, they're free, and they're going on to do something else. So one of them is, you know, going to listen to Guru Mai, and loves that life, the meditative life and the guru life. And the other one is telling about this young man who has appeared out of nowhere, and that she is having a wonderful time with, and it's a platonic relationship. I mean, you know, they just go on.

It was sitting there.

Oh, and then the other thought was that I'm not sure I want to keep writing. I think that I feel like this is the end of a 30-year cycle, and it's a really good time for me to think about what I want to do for the other 30 years.

Yes.

Yeah, and it's been quite a while. So I felt that part of this is to sort of complete that cycle, and it really does.

And then before that, it was the 68th, my first poetry.

So it is 30 years.

It's different a lot.

So I spend a lot of time now studying the Dharma, and I'm just really happy sitting contemplating. What is the thing inside now? What is the real internal imperative now? Because I don't want to be doing something that no longer really moves me, and I want to be sure that whatever is coming next is as essential as what I feel has gone before. I mean, everything that I have written in my life has felt really... I feel like I had no choice.

No choice, yeah. And I have to say, I like that. I like that feeling, and I don't want to enter another cycle of writing because I know the commitment it takes without feeling that. So I'm just going to see.

Well, what I was trying to convey... There's not this thing about channeling or no work, just sitting there. I mean, it all takes a lot of work. But what I was trying to convey was that, especially in The Color Purple, and to some degree in The Temple of My Familiar, I really fell into a kind of grace. I really felt I was in a kind of grace that permitted me to faithfully create what was really real about these people. And it felt like mediumship. It felt so... It just felt like they were there.

It's not like it's handed down, but it feels like my ancestors were just really happy. Just really happy and really there. And I woke with them and I slept with them. And I just felt like... You know, just this absolute feeling of being lucky in that connection, that being able to feel them. I actually felt like both their child and in some ways their servant, because I felt like I changed my life entirely in order to hear. I was living here in New York and I went there. I lived for a while in the country. So I could really hear them.

Yeah, I was in New York.

It was. I was so happy.

I think I was in New York. I was an editor at Ms. Magazine for a while. And I guess the unconscious was trying to work it out, because I had a dream in which I had bought a little tiny house in Park Slope. This was after I had left the big house with my former husband and I tried to live in a little apartment on Garfield Place. I bought a tiny little house. It was like 12 feet wide. It was a sliver of a house in Park Slope. And I was commuting back and forth. I had this dream in which I went down to the basement of my house. It's interesting because Jung had a dream like this, but mine is different of course. I went down to the basement of my house and discovered a door to a sub-basement, which I didn't know was there. And I went down there and it was just filled with people making things. And they were people I had never... I didn't know them. They all seemed to be South American. And they were all speaking Spanish. So I think that that particular dream eventually led to the Temple of my Familiar, where the people are Spanish-speaking and South American. But I think I knew that the deeper layer of my consciousness was trying very much to emerge. And then I started to hear snippets of dialogue between Shug and Albert, Shug and Sealy.

As characters. No, not members of my family and not characters. Spirits really of themselves.

Not yet, no. Just a way of speaking. A tone of voice, an attitude. And I realized that they didn't really get through here. I could hear little snippets, almost like a radio, where you just pass by and you hear a little slogan or something. But that in order to get it really clearly and whole, I would have to be somewhere else. So I moved.

Well, it started here, but then when I got there, that's when it really happened. Running through the fields, swimming, because they had all of the time, they had all of my attention. Absolutely. They really...

Well, it's about knowing when to serve the art, I guess, whether it's just a delusion or a creative act that you have. And I think the foundation of it was love. I loved my grandparents and I loved my parents. It just was heartbreaking to think that somehow they wouldn't survive. I mean, who they were, the way they sounded. They wouldn't survive in a form that was really thankful to them and loving of them and not interested in caricature.

I think so, yeah.

Yes, I did.

Yes. And I wrote it almost like dictation.

Well, inspired. I didn't feel possessed. I just felt far possessed by love, maybe. But I remember there was an article in the New York Times Magazine section after it was published. And they actually photographed some of the pages of my notebook. I just had a little spiral notebook. Because you can see that it is just exactly, you know, it's just exactly. And that goes back, though, to being in a family where I had to hide things. I mean, I couldn't, I had to keep a lot in my mind. I mean, I don't, you know, it feels magical, but it really, when I thought about it, it was from a habit of really letting things form in my mind.

More practical. Absolutely. Yeah.

These stories?

Well, vaguely, what is more true to say is that it's the, it's more like the spirit. I mean, I didn't point to real facts exactly, often. Maybe a few. Like, for instance, my grandmother did have two children who died before she married my grandfather. Now, this had been, you know, part of the story of their relationship. But because I loved her, I wanted her to have her own children, so I just created some for her. And because she never went anywhere, I sent her, you know, off to travel. And, I mean, it's, it was so wonderful.

I just gave them adventure and, you know, travel and clothes and money. And, you know, I just gave them everything I could give them.

She was sick. She liked the movie, though. She liked the movie.

Yeah. Very strongly. So they're connected in that way, and it's even more full-blown in The Temple of My Familiar because often I was writing about people that I, you know, had no experience with in the flesh. I mean, I'd read things. I visited countries.

I didn't tell. I've always resisted the belief that, you know, whatever it is that you do, you have to do it always. And also I just want the feeling of freedom, you know, so that if there is more writing, if there's another cycle, you know, that starts, or if there's even one more book, it'll feel like a gift, you know, to me. It'll feel like, you know, great, I'm still connected. And it won't feel like, you know, labor, which I'm not really into. I mean, I work hard, but I wanted to feel that, I wanted to be more than just writing a book. I wanted to mean that I'm connected to creation, basically.

And always, in a way, you know, kind of tottering around in surprise, you know.

I don't know how many people know this, but there's actually a real ecstatic side to writing when you really are in the current, you know, with the rest of creativity in the world. Even when it's really horrible, like writing about, writing possessing the secret of joy, which was very difficult, I was so happy that I was allowed to write it.

Can you imagine?And all that had gone into making it possible for me to see it, and to feel it, you know, and to be able to look at it without just running like, you know, a really very disturbed person that I was.

Yes, oh, everything else is very far down the line. Like fame, success, wide readership, all those factors.

When you met Langston Hughes, what was fame to me? It seemed too far away, even in content play.

I don't think I noticed. My family always say, Mom, you are so oblivious, you never notice anything.

Well, the telephone rang more, there was more mail.

You know, I had to move to a bigger house and all that. But, yeah, it's, you know, when you're writing it and it's going well, and you really hear the people and you know that they're alive, well, you know, it's kind of like giving birth.

Wow.

Right.

It's so organic when it's really working well.

Men and women artists.

Well, maybe somewhere there's a woman who's creating a table which will turn into a novel, I suppose.

You can write a sentence that does what it needs to do. And then you just, you know, go. I mean, it's like jazz. I mean, it's just like, you know, it just has a life.

Oh, who cares?

Right, yeah. Oh, and that's the joy. To create books that are just totally, you know, what they are. I mean, you know, they dictate everything. And, you know, I've tried to write a book that was used in Wednesday before. So I've probably thought about a week or two before I came over. I reread that piece in the Times Magazine some years ago by David Bradley. And I realized, I guess the date was 1984, he actually wrote it before the movie.

Could you picture what he would have written if he had seen the movie?

Well, as you know, I got really wrecked over the cold.

And answered, you know, but still he would have made so much more out of it.

Yeah. That's a subject.

Well, yeah, and it took a while to really get my legs back, you know.

Because my life had been so quiet and, you know, I would write these books and go out on tour and then I'd come home and that would be it. I mean, I'd be right back into my life. And with the movie, there was a period of much more intense scrutiny and I was aware of all of the controversy. And it's just, you know, you just feel like something is kind of yanking on you when you know that there are people out there sort of discussing something that you did with just you and the people that you're creating.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, I didn't like it at first because, among other things, it's like…

No, no, but it never is. And I really, you know, I'm at peace with that, actually. And I also continue to really love Steven because I think it took a lot of love on his part as well as courage to actually do it. And I really think that we did, all of us working together, you know, on something that for many of those people was completely foreign. I think we did a really good job. Oh, yum.

I don't want anything like that. Oh, this just looks great.

Really?

Oh.

Oh, years ago. However, people in my family watch it a lot. I think still. Every once in a while, anyway.

The movie does, yeah.

The one and only time it did.

Oh, what a good choice.

Well, some of it is because the man who wrote the screenplay would come and say, Oh, Alice, what about this? But no, it's not mine. I mean, I have my, the one that I publish is mine. And you know, I feel that because I was able to publish both the book and my own version of the screenplay, I feel better about the movie because I think for me, so much about life is about learning. It's lessons and things that you can learn from events. You can't control how they come out.

For a class on film, to use that film and the book and the screenplay, just to really show how these things work and how they can be changed.

Pardon?

Yeah.

Because, you know, I know some people have a problem with this but I was never, I didn't feel threatened by collaboration. I was excited by it. I thought that, it amused me to see how people, to see people's take on certain things. And I kind of knew we were creating something different. And I guess what I really was concerned about was that it keep all the heart and the spirit.

I'm still sorry that Mr. is not embraced at the end, that he's outside.

Oh.

Yeah.

He did a really fine thing there for me, Danny.

Yes. How was it?

Good.

Yes. And he's a very good person.

One day. I hope. Because I think it would be really good for people, especially the younger people, to see the civil rights movement and the people who made it from that personal point of view, and that real... I think what most people, when they think of the civil rights movement, it's all about external exterior actions. But what about all of us, really? What about the girls who were just coming to life at that time and understanding what was happening and what the possibility was for a different kind of life? What about the young men who were beaten up so badly or who were killed? What about their love relationships, their relationships with their parents? And when I was writing it, I was really very conscious of wanting to leave a record of the interior life.

Not just… Because I figured we'd all see enough bar hoses and dogs and police and Bull Connor. But we wouldn't see those little acts of heroism, like people literally standing up to Thompson's tank. There was a tank in Mississippi when we moved there. There was the mayor of the town, Mayor Thompson, bought a tank to use against us and he painted it white. And the people just basically faced it and he eventually had to do away with it.

Me? Did I feel it? Oh, yes. Absolutely. But you know what? It was preferable to feeling afraid in the North and not being able to go home, which is what happened to most of my siblings. They left. I was the last. That was the youngest. And the whole time I lived in Mississippi, my brothers, I have five brothers, one of them has recently died, they never came to see me. Too afraid, really. The terror, the absolute terror.

Their fear wasn't around that. I think that their fear was just, you know, as black men in Mississippi.

Yeah. I think that happens to many people. And you know, I think it's another kind of gift that sometimes when you're wounded or you have such incredible suffering, you know, your people are, you know, put in concentration camps, your people are lynched, your people are, you know, disappeared. You know, what do you do with it?

What do you do with it? You know, if you can't make art, what are you going to do?

Well, or you kill yourself or you, you know, you abuse people, you, you know.

Yeah. Yeah

But now I wonder why, I mean in his mind, I wonder why he felt he couldn't tell her. Shame?

And maybe a degree of disbelief still that it could have happened. I remember when I was, you know, going around talking about female genital mutilation, especially in London, where they had recently, they were trying to pass a law to stop it from happening in London. And I remember an African woman once saying to me that she was upset because I was working on this. She said because now every time somebody sees an African woman on the street, this is what they'll be thinking. And, you know, how embarrassing and how, and humiliating, and it is, you know. However, so I said to her, well, what is the alternative? You know, what is the alternative? And we just sat there, you know, with that between us because, you know, the alternative is that you do nothing and then every African woman you see, or so many that you see, will have been wounded as children and nobody will have said a thing about it and it'll just keep going on.

Maybe. Maybe, but I'm not sure because, you know, maybe what's being born is something that's not so interested in adversity. Or maybe what's being born is something that wants to just go and be with the adversity and not write about it. You know, just be the person who's there to hold somebody. I mean, that's important. And sometimes I think that's where writing is leading, which is fine. You know, just drop the pen and grab the person.

Laughter.

You know, they are. I mean, I realized I was reading in Chicago a couple of nights ago and I decided, you know, I was going to read from the new book and read some of the section from my young husband. And I was thinking, well, you know, I'm going to go back and read some love poems from Her Blue Body, Everything We Know to just show people, you know, to be able to talk about love, you know. And I went back and I realized that I had written many poems while I was actually in all those conditions I described later in the book, you know, in the memoir. And they were in poetry. You know, the depression. I mean, there's a poem that goes, your soul shines like the side of a fish. Come live in me again. Each day I walk along the edges of the tall rocks. Something like that. That was out of the deepest depression. I mean, it was just trying to live in that environment.

In Mississippi. Yeah, sorry.

So, yes, I mean, they, I was, and I was telling this audience that the poetry often comes first and it sends the signal. It's like a little flag that says, you know, this is a place that has, who knows what it has, but, you know, it's a place to be marked. And I was surprised to see how, you know, even when I thought I was, quote, just writing poetry, I was also marking these places that needed to be looked at more.

Hmm. Well, you know, you can't really do that. I mean, it's, I mean, I can't. Because of all of them, poetry is the most free. I mean, it just chooses its own time. And I just hope I'm there to get it. So sometimes, but you know, less, yes, less. That doesn't happen as much when I'm writing a novel. Because I'm really so present for what's happening in the novel, you know. Although sometimes the characters write poetry. See?

Right. It sneaks in because it's there.

It went so fast. Oh, she loved the Mae West quote.

And I said to her, well, you know, I love large women with attitude.

So she's at, here, here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, don't you love Mae West?

I do. I think she's great. And I love her especially for these one-liners, you know.

And anyway, I was saying to Rosie that, you know, it's so easy to get trapped in your reputation. And you have to really learn how to step out of it. And I said, for instance, you know, there are many people who have the reputation for always looking young. And then they clutch that. And by the time they're 90, they're still trying to look, you know, 30 or 20 or whatever. And it's just so obvious that it's a trap. It's a trap. And it makes you miss then all of the other stages, you know, which are just as amazing as the young stage, you know, really. The thing about the Mae West quote is I thought of it as kind of like a cultural signpost. And then also the reference to Mary Tyler Moore several times as you were watching Mary Tyler Moore's show.

I didn't love it the second time.

Oh yeah, no, I like Mary Tyler Moore. But, you know, that was all we had. That's it. There wasn't a lot of diversion in Mississippi.

I read them.

Oh God, everything. I mean, I guess my favorite writer of all time is Tolstoy. And I read him wherever I was, certainly in Mississippi. And it was there that I started really discovering and reading a lot of black writers. A lot of black writers, African American writers. When I was there I was reading, I discovered Their Eyes Were Watching God. And Kane by Jean Toomer. Kane, C-A-N-E, Kane. And, I don't know, we were big readers. Both of us.

Oh yeah, I mean I, when I was a, why? You'd have to ask Howard Zinn. When I was a student at Spelman, right after my freshman year I went to Russia. And I was so innocent I didn't really know hardly what was going on. So when I came back I took this course with Howard Zinn who was teaching Russian literature and language. Not that he spoke it really, but he had a few words and he very generously taught them to us. I don't know, I mean I used to think that Russian writers would just... I mean what they could do is just almost unbelievable. You know, I mean in creating worlds, societies, human anguish, passion. And Tolstoy is just a master. He's a master at all of this. So, you know, I was reading him very early, is my point, and loving him very early.

Yeah.

Well, I think the thing is I really fell in love with Tolstoy himself in the same way that I love my grandfather. They were so much alike. Which is again ironic because he was Count Tolstoy, my grandfather was a poor farmer. But in terms of how they grew, they're very similar. Tolstoy was really a rogue and a devil when he was young. And in fact, you know, one of the sadder things about him is that he raped some of the Serbs, the women who lived on basically his plantation. I mean, and he was just a dissolute, irresponsible, head of a person as a young man. And then he started seeing how it all goes, what life is. And he grew and grew and grew until he became this old man who didn't want to own anything, you know, didn't want to be married.

No, I'm not finished.

And died alone, trying to get away, you know.

Yeah, actually I see that though as, did you know that when people are dying they often try to run away? I mean that they often say, I gotta get out, and they try to go out.

They do.

I mean I've been kind of getting very interested in dying and death and how we can be as a society more, you know, human about it, really.

Human, you know, which is to say people shouldn't die by themselves unless they just insist, you know, that there should be a community. I mean I'm really getting more interested in hospice work and things like that. Anyway, so, I feel like his, you know, he had enough strength to leave home, get out there, and get on the railway station. And that that was actually part of his dying. He was trying to get out, he was trying to leave. It's lovely.

Anyway, I love him because he could see that he was the whole spectrum, you know. And he was able to write about the whole spectrum from the point of view of someone who had done some really despicable things. Maybe I just like rascals.

My father also.

I think so, yeah.

No television.

Yeah, but we didn't have much radio. I don't think we even had a radio for years and years. And no television, which was such a blessing.

Oh, I'm so glad. It's interesting though, you know, I was in the Amazon in May. I've been studying plant medicines.

The Amazon.

The Amazon, yeah, yeah. I have all bites everywhere.

I was studying plant medicines and entheogens. These are medicines that change your consciousness. It's like peyote. But this particular one is called ayahuasca. It's a plant that is a teaching plant, and it's been used by indigenous people in the Amazon for everything. I mean, they use it for psychological healing, for physical healing, for everything.

To study it.

You know, studying with a shaman who uses it is his work. What it does is it makes you have visions. So you have these incredible visions, and it's very much like being taught by a person. I mean, it's a remarkable, incredible, unbelievable transformation. Anyway, so my point is though that the people refer to this, the visions that you have, as the television of the jungle.

Isn't that great? I mean, it's true. I mean, there you sit, and even if your eyes are wide open, you only see your internal vision.

Oh, I can't. I can't. I mean, I will one day maybe, but I can't. It's partly because it's a... Well, you know, what I'm learning is that the indigenous take on everything is just so different from the Western thought. For instance, one of my favorite books is Black Elk Speaks, you know, that book. And in there, Black Elk talks about this vision that he had, you know, that everybody, they had a whole part of their culture revolved around people having visions and being guided by them. So he had this great vision, and it actually foretold, you know, the destruction of his people and all of that. But what I got from that was the other thing that he said, which is that when you are given a vision, and it's not great in terms of, you know, bigger than anybody else's, it's your great. I mean, it's like, you know, even if it's this big, it's a little bigger than, you know, so your little great vision. You have to act it out. You have to create it so that people can see it and use it. And that's how you keep it going. You can't keep it for yourself. So, I don't know the form that my vision needs to be shared.

They are. They are. Always. Yeah. Because they're so hard. They taste so horrible. They make you vomit so much.

You couldn't be recreational if you tried, believe me.

No. And I probably will never go again. It was a very difficult trip. But now I have so much empathy. I used to just really not have much feeling for the people who settle in the Amazon, you know, because they're usually poor people driven out of the cities and they farm. They cut down the forest and they make these little farms and they don't last. I mean, you just see mile after mile after mile after mile of desolation. And having been in the actual Amazon, in the forest, my heart is so moved by the thought of these people coming out of the cities being given, you know, let's say 20 acres of land to clear with a machete. And they have to try to, you know, grow bananas. Because it is just like, have you been in the rain forest? Oh, it's just like, whew. I mean, I was in it. And it's never quiet. It's never quiet. And at night the frogs are so loud, it's like you're living right by a train station.

I never thought of that.

What?

No. In a way, it feels so good to keep things for myself.

Oh.

You meditate?

We probably shouldn't talk about that because we're going to go a separate way, but it was in the point of interest of you.

Yes. Definitely.

Oh.

I'm looking at the...

I'm looking at the liveliness of your eyes. And I think it would do a lot. Because... I mean, you're obviously really alive anyway. But meditation sort of fuels that. It helps it to really, you know, stay steady. And it gives you a little time each day to duck out so you can recharge that. So I recommend it. Tell them Alice sent you.

No. No. Nothing does. And actually, I'm so interested in talking about meditation at every opportunity because you know, violence and drugs are both, in my opinion, really obsolete. I mean, they're just obsolete. I mean, they don't go anywhere. And they cost money and they cost...

I mean, they're just, you know... But meditation is totally just you and your breath. And unless people start charging you for breathing, you can always afford it. So I really... It's just such an amazing gift that we've gotten from India, basically, in a way. India and Asia.

No. Nobody.

No, I know I don't.

Do you?

Really?

Really?

Why?

What was the last?

Yeah.

Yeah, I understand.

I know.

I know I don't. No, no, no.

No, I think I...

I think I've hated people. I think I have. But, you see, I can't really remember who. I mean, it's... I just…

I know. I know. And I don't think it's going to work that well either.

Yeah. I mean, it's too deep. It really is too deep. I mean, but that's not to say the people can't, you know, evolve beyond their hatred.

Yeah. And I… I want them not to hate. Because... You know, when I saw that film, did you see that film about the... In South Africa, you know, about the tribunals? I mean, it's called Hard Days, Night into Day. It's about the... What do you call it?

Yeah, right. Okay. So I went to see this film because, you know, I felt like Tutu, Desmond Tutu, understood what he was talking about. And he had the spiritual maturity to pull it off himself.

But all those other people don't have that. And they haven't had the practice. You have to practice. You have to really practice. So I went to see this film and sure enough, you know, there are these people in all stages of grief, you know, pain and everything. And so, okay, so there are these people who kill people. And they've done awful things. They've, you know, beaten up people. They put, you know, black people in vans and naked and freezing and driven 700 miles until they die, you know, just from being beaten and being bounced up and down.

You know, just... There's a scene of the people who had shot and killed some people because they were inspired by Mississippi Burning, you know, the civil rights workers who were killed. They saw that movie. They decided they wanted to do that. However... They're pathetic. I mean, that's the answer. I mean, you know, I mean, I just can't hate people who just don't have a clue. There is no happiness in being that way, the way that they are. I mean, they will be miserable as long as they act like that. And I can't hate them. It's like seeing somebody who's just, I don't know, mangled physically. I couldn't hate them because they're mangled. And it's an emotional mangling.

Especially those... Especially. Also Mel, you know what? I know in this culture people think that this is the only lifetime we are here. I don't think so.

Well, it's your only lifetime as you.

I don't think we ever go anywhere.

What?

Who knows? I mean, I'm not saying I know a thing about what really happens, but I just think... Well, that line from Voltaire, you know, where he says that people always, you know, talk about how weird it would be if you come back more than once. It's pretty weird that you come here once.

So I think because we now understand about recycling, you know, like, this could be the tears of Mary, of Jesus' mother, you know. This could be her... This could be, as they say, Cleopatra's bathwater. Because it's all, you know…

But I just have this feeling that there is a kind of recycling that happens to everything, and that nothing really goes anywhere. So therefore, you know, people are working out different things, and, you know, I just... I don't know. I feel lighter, not carrying hatred.

Hmm?

Oh, yeah.

And I do.

Yeah. And I, you know, I never thought I'd reach this age. I mean, I thought I would be dead by 30, either from suicide or assassination or homicide or, you know, something. So, the last 26 years have felt like, you know, just a miracle.

No. None. Nobody knew anything about, you know, writers. I thought I might be a scientist or play the piano or something or sing.

To my dog. But I'm thinking about singing. Because you know what I think? I think that we should be singing more. I think that the way that people now feel that singing is all about making a CD.

No, singing has to be about singing. And I love Mexico. I go there a lot. One of the things I love is that people still sing. I mean, they're just walking along, you know, doing what they do. And every once in a while, somebody will just start singing. So, I'm thinking maybe I'll join a chorus or something, you know, and I'll sing.

In Berkeley.

Yeah. If I start singing, I mean... Yeah, who would care? I mean, you know, I could sing. I feel very at home there is what I'm saying. I'm just really very happy about that. Having lived in the South and New York, this is home now. Yes.

In Berkeley.

Yeah, she's moved there. I like having her near. So, where do you live? You still live in that house that was almost…

So, this is your neighborhood?

Really?

Great.

Good. Yeah. And when you go out to be in the country, where do you go?

Very, very important.

Good. Wonderful. Perfect.

Mendocino, which is...

Well, it's about three hours north of San Francisco. And I live up in the hills. And when I bought the land, there was just a falling down little shack, and I pulled it up on its foundation, and that became my studio. And then later I built a house. And I garden, and I grow lots of things to eat. And I'm never happier than when I'm there after about ten days. After ten days of seeing almost nobody, just me and my dog. It seems to me that I'm clearer, I mean, just really clearer in myself, and much more able to work on something, you know, than I am in any other location. And I also dream really well there. Do you dream well in Maine?

Good.

You know what, I have to confess, after fighting the laptop, I finally gave up.

Yes.

But you know what I also like? I like it that you can make the print bigger. Because, you know, now you really need to, you can make the print bigger and you can make it darker, so it's easier to read, and I really like that.

Move things around, yeah. I was really attached to those legal pads, though. That was another wonderful thing about my marriage, that my husband was a lawyer, he's still a lawyer, I mean, he's not my husband, but he's a lawyer. And he would give me those pads, and nice long ones.

Yes.

Yes. I finally got that. I was saying, why do I have all these big old beautiful houses? And I felt guilty. And because I felt guilty, I kept inviting people to live in various parts, and that didn't work too well. So, now I know. And so I put one of them on the market. You need a nice house in Mexico, I got the perfect house for you.

Really beautiful.

Well, for one thing, it meant she was seeing me for the first time. The real me. Not the really super good girl. Because I have always been so polite and respectful.

Youngest, yes. It was hard, I think, for my mother to ever, and because she wasn't an intellectual, it was hard for her to see that I was also subversive and rebellious. Because I could do it in such a way that she could miss it. You know what I mean? And I think on her deathbed, she got it. That all these years, she'd been dealing with someone who was who very much had her own mind, was loving of her and respectful, very much so, but not about to be led into any kind of backwardness. Out of that love. And by backwardness, I am referring to the love of the world. I am referring to her fundamentalism, which, you know, if I had continued to be the quote good girl that she thought she had, I would have, you know, gone, listened more to that message. I wasn't going to.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It means incorrigible. It's like you're going to actually live your life. Yes, mama. Exactly. You're going to have a nap later.

That's great because someone did tell me, you know, I never heard of Whoopi Goldberg and this friend of Robert's when I was with Robert said to him and to me, you know, that there's this wonderful woman at the Rose Theater, you should go and see her, you know, because he knew we were looking down and I loved her immediately. So, you know, he could very well have read this and thought, you know. At the same time, I'm not sure if it was before or after San Francisco, but she did do these various monologues at that point. I guess I just read the book at the same time.

So, much of my work has been about encountering what is absolutely taboo, not just wife beating and child molestation, but genital mutilation, interracial level, all of that. It's been very exciting to write about what hasn't been written and to understand that by doing that you are making a mirror for people. That's what you said. And I remember also a couple of years ago, I had an idea for a book called The Book of Life. It was a book that I wrote and I had a panel discussion with some women's theater group of women playwrights. And the question I raised to all the women was Suzanne Laurie Parks in Wendy, Washington, and others. I said, are there any subjects that are taboo for you as writers? Right.

And Suzanne Laurie spoke up right away. She said, any time that I hear that a subject is taboo, she said, that's what I want to write about. Yes. And I thought, in a sense, that's almost what you were saying.

Well, it's about liberation for me. It's about seeing an area in which people are not free and having such a strong instinct for freedom and wanting people to have it, that it's almost unbearable to know that somebody is not having at least the possibility.

And, for instance, did you know the first woman, black woman, the African woman in South Africa, who publicly declared that she had AIDS, was stoned to death by her community? See, I mean, so something like that, when you hear something like that, you think, my God, you cannot then let all the rest of the women in this country think that if they say they're sick, they're going to be stoned to death. You cannot. So immediately, that would, you know, however, I mean, I didn't have to because there are all these other people now who are just as shocked, just as upset, and in fact, you know, they re-educated the people in the community, and they've had a big education campaign in South Africa, and they now consider this woman, you know, a kind of hero because she did have the courage. I mean, she'd been infected by her husband. And then, you know, to gather her courage and say for the first AIDS Awareness Day they had, and to be stoned, I mean, isn't it just?

Maybe, but I don't know. I mean, you know, I feel, you know, it's just, it's just that, you know, I really do get it that I've been given something really precious, and I have to wait. I have to wait until I really know, you know, that it's time to use it. I can't just, and when it's clear that this is for me to do, then I, you know, I can act. And see, this is what meditation does for you. It makes you able to wait. Also, there's a danger, I suppose, in people wanting to use you. I think of that anecdote about, was it Ford? Which butcher used your picture? People try all kinds of things.

Well, the most painful one, actually, is just the people who want me to endorse books, I mean, and blurb things. And I do a lot of them because they are very, you know, necessary and important, but sometimes I feel it's just too much. I mean, I can't read all the books. I can't see all the films. I can't, you know, I can't respond to all the requests for, you know, whatever. And I actually had to change my assistant from a woman who was completely accommodating, tried to be, you know, at my expense, to one who was able to just say, well, no, she can't do that. Because, as you know, the need is great, I mean, you know, for the change that we need to have happen. And when people feel like you can help it, I mean, you know, and you can't blame them for wanting you to help, but there's just so much of me or you or, you know, whoever. But it's also meaningful to those writers, for example, that you would, you know, in the same way with Oprah when she does put a book on her program, it automatically changes lives.

I mean, you can't miss her. And her impact has been, I think, really incredibly positive and, you know, miraculous. I mean, here she is, this woman from Mississippi, and, you know, I'm just amazed.

This is. I go to, I do a Barnes and Noble reading tonight, and then I go to Boston, and then I go home for the weekend, and then I go up to Seattle and Portland, L.A., another weekend at home, and then I go to the south.

I don't know. I just got to wait until I get there and I feel how it feels, and then I'll know. Another thing meditation does, it makes you in the moment. You trust the moment.

Well, it's the only thing you have.

Oh, they have. Believe me. Doesn't matter.

I respond with whatever is in the moment for me, and sometimes they're shocked. And sometimes so am I.

Oh, God. My memory's not that good. But it's just that, um.

I don't think so. Not for me.

I'll have coffee.

Oh. Worst incident. Oh.

Oh. I can't really. I mean, there's so many, you know, that seem borderline. But not so much anymore.

I mean, I think when people would get up and, you know, try to tell me that I should not have made a movie of The Color Purple, or that I should not be involved in trying to stop FGM. But the funny thing is that, you know, when you feel like you're living your life as close to the way, you know, you have to, I mean, just because of your own spirit, and you answer out of that, it takes away the sting of the hostility. I mean, in other words, my point is always that, you know, I am just being. And this is what you get. And there's nothing I can do about it. And you're free to not like it.

Oh, good grief. Why? That's like saying, why don't you have another child? One is plenty. Really.

I have not had really good ones, generally. I mean, I feel like most of what they say is so superficial and boring, and it's not about what I'm writing about. And so often I have to say I don't read them. I mean, because it's as if they're writing about somebody else. When I have had good critics, I've enjoyed them. I mean, I remember there was a woman, Deborah McDowell, that I liked a lot, because she would, her criticism was very thoughtful. She sort of had a holistic view and knew some of the history. But you know, I feel the honest truth is that I don't think critics can help me. I really don't. I mean, I feel like I'm really doing the best I can do with what I see my job here to be. I mean, I really am. And I'm doing it in the way that, I have to say it this way, that my ancestors really like. And that they're tougher on me than critics are. Much.

You mean my Aunt Sally?

Whoever she is in this story. I don't mean that even, because she was alive when she said that. But I mean that I feel very much accountable to literal ancestors. I mean, people who have been dead for the hour long, they've been dead. And that to maintain the connection that I feel with them, you know, I have to maintain a certain level of, I don't know, commitment, fidelity, truth. And beside that, the criticism is just so sometimes beside the point, I mean, really.

Well, that's the worst I would say.

It's very hard. I mean, when I learned that there were people who actually read The Color Purple and thought I hated anybody.

Especially men, especially black women.

It was so difficult. I couldn't understand how they could feel that way. I really...

And also the implication of that was, you know, difficult because, and I've seen this lived out. I feel that because of that criticism, I have been cut off from a generation of young black men. And I think this is a tragedy because reading me could have helped them. And I know it. So it's very painful. You know, because they've been really taught and indoctrinated that, you know, I hate them and that's all there is to it. And why read somebody who hates you and da da da da da da. And so it's only been in the last, you know, I guess five or six years that that has really changed. And I'm getting a connection to, you know, young black men who read for themselves and think for themselves. And are not so swayed by the older men who are more threatened.

It is. Yeah. Also, I think because I've been really involved in the Mumia Abu Jamal case, been trying to get him out and, you know, so young black men who are politicized around that issue, you know, actually get to see me, you know, being active and understanding of that situation. And so it's helpful.

No, I was in the. I did something and then I went out to eat. So we missed it. Do you see it? Yes.

It was just brought to mind one moment in which something said about that that man who was his name was dragged to his death in Texas. The subject was brought up and Bush said with kind of a sort of a kind of a silly grin on his face. He said, well, he said, we're going to kill it. We're going to kill the three people who killed him. And big smile on his face like, you know, he's a madman.

What a response. You know, he killed somebody every two weeks. I mean, I was reading that somewhere.

But he would do it with a sort of like a we got him.

Yeah, I'm really I would like Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke to be on the you know, to be heard.

You know, I think it's just absurd that we get to listen to these two people as if they're the only people to listen to.

If Nader was actually on that debate, I mean, he would. I mean, he never has a chance, of course, but he was like, pick up.

Or a program. Exactly. And we're desperate for it. I mean, I mean, we deserve better. We deserve, you know, to hear all kinds of views. I mean, we're very varied as a country.

And I have to say, you know, I'm so I'm so moved by the fact that Nader just keeps going and he just keeps plugging away.

You know, and he makes us really see that. And that's really good.

All those people who really think we're living in a democracy.

I know.

You are so welcome.

That all the time. I do. I get it often. I'm so glad. I love to see.

But sometimes I feel I can tell the people who read my work because they seem a little freer. You know, they seem a little less burdened by, you know, the crap from. And I like that. I like that.

My son.

Did a telephone.

I guess what I mean is that many people are unable to face their identity, and especially as it changes, it's not fixed. It changes. And so you you're you're asked to continually sort of reassess what it is.

Well, a few of the things I know about myself is that I have a tri-racial. Tri-racial. Tri-racial. Black, white, Indian.

You know, I was raised as a Christian and, you know, now I love Buddhism and I love Earth religion.

No.

That would have made it quite right. Exactly. And I also love both women and men and trees.

So and that's always changing. I mean, it's always it's always getting more. It's always, you know, it's very fluid.

And I think one of the reasons I love Buddhism is because one of its primary observations is that there is no self.

I mean, you know, that is just so we're all made up. We think there's a self. But if we sit long enough, another thing that meditation helps you with, you see that, you know, what you think of as yourself is always changing. It's always, you know, it's here and then it's not here. So that's what I meant. You know, just that, you know, the way other people see you, the way they need to classify you. People unfortunately just get stuck there trying to pin down something that's really always moving.

Yes, hopefully.

Because I find with myself that I love I love watching myself change. I love seeing that there's all there's more here. There's a bigger room to move into. There's and I don't know about you, but, you know, your dreams often will tell you that you're about to move into a bigger area. You know, in your what you can hold psychically and in your consciousness because you will start to dream about houses. And you'll be in a house and suddenly you'll go to through a door and there'll be a couple of rooms you never knew you had in your house.

Has this ever happened to you?

You are the house. You are the house.

No, this is just this is just paying a lot of attention to your growth. And understanding how your dreams are totally about you know what's going on.

Yeah, it's true.

But houses is not just because you want to get rid of our deadbeat tenant who doesn't pay any rent.

But houses is not because you want to get rid of a deadbeat tenant who pays nothing or hardly anything in rent.

Oh yeah. I'm always reading something. You know what the most wonderful book is by my Dharma teacher Jack Kornfield. And it's called After the Ecstasy the Laundry. It's wonderful.

Oh yes. I've sent it before I would publish it of course.

He loved it. Poor thing. Oh I say that because you know he's just a dear person. It just ended. It just ended I say. That's all. Well you know it ended and then the friendship ended. And that's the hard part. And I think it was just too much on his part to maintain. I don't think he knew how. I don't think. I mean it didn't seem. You know when we were married his mother sat Shiva.

And it doesn't work well. You know I mean it just doesn't. I think for him. I mean he is he he thought that emotionally it would be better and probably less painful or whatever. But I think after 20 years there is a sense that we both have of loss. You know because there there's nobody else on earth. That we can talk to about certain things that happened during the time that we were together there. Nobody.

Well it was mixed. It was great for my writing because people understood what writing was. I loved you know my teachers. But it was extremely lonely. And I was you know probably the poorest student they'd ever had at the school. That was hard.

But you're saying I'm OK.

Really. What's it called.

Oh really.

So what did you think after three years.

Had no understanding of all at all. You know who he was and what he was what he wanted to write.

Wow.

Imagine being that mind and that spirit in a house. In a house that nobody knew. That nobody knew what they had.

No. Come to think of it. No.

Thanks a lot. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Well I will find that. I would like to read it. Because I found his work is very strange. Some of it is really wonderful and some of it I just am puzzled by. Some of it is puzzling. But also as I do point out in the book that almost all of it comes right out of his life.

There is a certain twist to it. Somebody like Tennessee Williams you know how it comes out of his life.

That is your material. Exactly. Right.

And it really is entrusted to you. I often marvel at the fact that I, coming from this little place in the countryside of Georgia, should actually end up at Sarah Lawrence as a place where I would start learning my craft. I mean how is that? Surely I am then expected by somebody who is all around me to do something with that. Not to honor this passage. Gosh. I don't think I would have made it.

Oh I think Sarah Lawrence encouraged me because when I got there people, you know as Spelman I would say I am a writer. I am writing poetry. You can publish in the poetry magazine. But nobody really got how it is a passion. It is a hard thing. And at Sarah Lawrence with Muriel Rukeyser and Jane Cooper and all those people, it was, oh you are a writer. Great. Well here is a pen. I mean whatever.

And they weren't afraid of my strangeness, whatever it was. I mean now that I am older I can see that when you encounter a young person who is somewhat strange, you know that there is a reason and that they are bringing whatever strange gift they are.

Well at Spelman I always felt I didn't fit at all anywhere. I mean I love poetry and books and music and I paid as much attention to Russian literature, Tolstoy for instance, as many of the other girls paid to make up and clothing and boys. So when I got to Sarah Lawrence I realized that everybody was already really what they were going to be. I mean they were just, the painters were painting, the writers were writing, the dancers were dancing, the singers were singing and nobody cared anything about makeup. Nobody wore any. Nobody cared very much about, I mean they had lovers but the lovers were not uppermost. The art was. And so to have teachers who accepted that and thought it was fine was so good for me.

And that's why in meditation when Muriel popped up I was really glad to see her. And I was glad to see that she was well. Because she and I, it's hard when you have nothing and people are helping you and if you have pride as well, which I always did, we would have battles.

So toward the end it wasn't as close as it had started out.

So it was great to see her and just to feel that that was completely healed.

After.

Well I've enjoyed this very much more than I thought I would.

Yeah, good.

Good to meet you.

Oh yeah, God, I was telling somebody how shortly after Martin Luther King was assassinated I went to interview Coretta. And first of all the machine, I thought it was working, I'm terrible with these things. And it had been running, running, running, and nothing was on it.

And then I asked her a question which I thought was really important and I still think is important. It was about him dancing. Because he had a reputation for being a really good dancer, Martin Luther King Jr.

And she was offended I think, you know. And I think she really misunderstood my interest. I wasn't trying to make him appear frivolous. I was wanting to share this life that he had.

And it wasn't all quote spirituality. It was spirit in the sense of fun. He had a really great sense of humor. And legend had it he was also a great dancer. And I really thought that was so lovely.

I know and boring and dull and can't move, you know.

I was just reading the review today of the book about Einstein. I was just reading the review today of the book about Einstein. It's called Einstein in Love. About Einstein and the various women.

It's a serious book.

Fantastic. What's the name of this book?

It's called Einstein in Love.

He was terrible to women too.

He ditched his first wife to marry his second cousin. Had many affairs along the way. And he would do it with children. You name her.

It's close to a rascal.

Yeah.