Beat Memior ( part 2) By Marc Olmsted

AMERICAN MUTANT SPAWNED

By Marc Olmsted

Costanzo Allione, Italian documentary filmmaker and future husband of meditation teacher Tsultrim Ewing (They met here for the first time), was shooting what became a great film on ’78 Naropa, Fried Shoes, Cooked Diamonds.  Beat translator Nanda Pivano came along.  She was the connection between Allione and Ginsberg, and had set up this meeting in Ginsberg’s apartment.  Allione was in Allen’s apartment with his crew catching the conversation of Burroughs, Timothy Leary and of course Ginsberg himself.  Part of the time, I was also running around with a Super 8 camera making what would become my short collage American Mutant.  Gregory came in with his 16mm camera and announced, “I’m gonna shoot everybody’s feet.”  And proceeded to do so.

The  film crew caught me over Burroughs’ shoulder.

The New Wave hip look came up again when this interesting queer had wrangled his way into Allen’s kitchen to hang with Leary.  The guy had a weird sort of glam look, not quite on the money with it – but he was clearly not a hippie even with Prince Valiant hair – maybe it was vague eye make-up or his clothes, but it was some different quality that was glitter queer like the New York Dolls (whom I didn’t even know about yet and were actually straight anyway).

“What do you think of Crowley’s Book of the Law?” he asked Leary.  “Not much,” Leary replied.  That was interesting, since Leary had said in his writing that he considered himself to be carrying on where Aleister Crowley left off, and the queer had just mentioned Crowley’s most important work.  It was fairly clear Leary felt no need to be consistent about anything.  Ginsberg made some reference to me being of the David Bowie generation, and Leary said, “He isn’t Bowie, this guy is Bowie,” pointing to the glam queer.  Well, he had that sorta right, and I duly noted it, even if Bowie had moved on to his Thin White Duke persona already – which was more like Burroughs’ Naropa secretary.  I wanted to be like Bowie or Burroughs’ secretary, if not this glam queer, but not some old hippie, definitely, not anymore.

As for Leary’s lack of consistency, Allen and I were talking with him and Allen made some reference to Leary’s claim that LSD could cure homosexuality.  Leary said, “Oh that was Ram Dass, not me.”  Apparently colleague Richard Alpert a.k.a. Ram Dass had once wall-papered a room with Playboy centerfolds and attempted to reprogram himself with a massive dose of LSD.  Remembering how astounded I was by porn when on mescaline at age 16 (vaginas like the mandibles of strange alien fauna), I could guess this hadn’t worked out.  After Leary left, both Ginsberg and I recalled that Leary had made such pronouncements in the past, particularly in a Playboy interview.  Ginsberg wondered if they’d done something to Leary’s brain at Folsom, since Eldridge Cleaver had also come out of there as a “Mooney,” a follower of Sun Myung-Moon, the self-proclaimed Chinese Christian Second Coming, and Cleaver later identified himself as a Republican.  During Leary’s Folsom stay, Tim started talking extensively about outer space travel, and in particular about alien contact, but dropped the alien bit very rapidly – a wise move, to be sure.  Dolphin scientist John Lily had completely discredited himself once he began about his alien chats on LSD.  Tim’s new slogan was SMI²LE, “Space Migration/Intelligence Squared/Life Extension.”  He was also saying “Stamp Out Death.”  Burroughs was actually intrigued, since he saw little hope for the planet.

I think it was this same conversation with Leary about the Book of the Law and homosexuality that included one of Leary’s typical quips that if Buddha was back today he’d be a molecular scientist or one of the Bee Gees.  He also referred to Ralph Nader as an ecological fascist, which really bugged Ginsberg.  “Now stop that!” he actually shouted, adding, “What does that mean, anyway?”  Leary quickly backed down and said it was his position to be provocateur, not necessarily believing what he said, just stirring things up.  A good gig if you can get it.

One morning I got up and saw Ginsberg and Leary both brushing their teeth in the bathroom mirror, both naked.  Leary was tall with a basketball gut.  He saw me and gave his characteristic conspirational wink.  Tell me life isn’t a dream.

I finally started to really physically crash from the Ritalin and profound lack of sleep that everyone seemed to run on partying at Naropa, with Allen at the head of the list.  I was upstairs lying in bed when Allen came up and said, “Burroughs and Leary are downstairs!” “That’s o.k., Allen.  I’m tired.” “You’re missing all the good parties,” he said.  “What’s the matter, you depressed?”  I WAS depressed, hated that he could see it.  It was one of those depressions where you know that what’s going around you would be the envy of many, but it wasn’t working for you.  I really just wanted a girl like in the movies.  That’s why they call it samsara, or as my dad’s favorite reference, “the vale of tears.”  Nobody gets what they want.  Poet Amelie Frank later saw me brooding on a couch in a scene from Fried Shoes and said, “the little pouter.”  Bingo.  By the way, my traveling companion Richard Modiano is in the movie throughout, way more than me, and he’s probably one of the least ambitious people I know.  More proof of Buddhism’s sensible irony in a brutal world.  Cue that Buddhist monk with the tennis racket drum we kept hearing all over the place.

So in my American Mutant film, Leary was a CIA government official (when I had asked him to be in the movie he was doubtful until I told he’d be playing the head of the CIA), Allen some sort of Tibetan Mutant King, and Burroughs had already shown the proper way to handle a .357 Magnum borrowed from student poet Richard Roth, drawing “the correct way, not the bullshit way they do it in James Bond.”  When I tried to direct Burroughs a little more closely, he said “I am not an actor.”  Apparently he changed his mind, given the number of roles he wound up playing on screen, though arguably they were just about as demanding as what he did for me.  Leary was even harder to direct – he kept looking in the camera and grinning idiotically.  “That was great, Tim, but ah…could you not look into the camera next time?”  Tim announced he always looked in the camera and smiled, it was a rule of his.  “Well, if it’s a rule…” I trailed off, obviously disgusted.  “Oh fuck it,” he said, and did it my way.  I think I may have spared the directors who later used him (as in Wes Craven’s Shocker, of all things – good movie, odd choice for Leary).

I tried to persuade Gregory Corso to take a part as a sci fi gangster.  I had a .45 replica bee bee gun for Gregory but when I talked to him he was very hungover, saying with disinterest “Guns are bad karma, man.”  I shrugged and his toddler son Max escorted me to the door, slamming it behind me while shouting “Get out!”

Leary came back from a meeting with Allen’s Tibetan lama, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, expecting to be recognized as some sort of colleague, it seemed.  Instead he was made to cool his heels in what he described as a dentist’s waiting room, and when he was finally allowed to see Trungpa, all the lama said was “Stay out of trouble.”  Seemed good advice to me.