V. Vale’s RE/Search Newsletter #150, May 2016: Charles Gatewood, Europe trip, Ann Magnuson

The thing is, it seems to be too “out there” for the people who want to finance commercial web series—at least it was too out there for the folks I met at Warner Brothers. But we intend to put out the pilot and see what kind of reaction we get. Hopefully, there will be someone with more adventurous tastes who wants to finance more!

I am really proud of the pilot we made and can’t wait for people to see it. However, I am finding that I have less patience with mediums that require funding. Even though I had a lot of fun making AMDPT and this new CD, it still required writing checks! But it was money well spent. AMDPT was the impetus to get me back in the studio and start recording, since the first song on the new CD was initially recorded for the web series. It’s a folksy psychedelic tune called (appropriately), “We’re All Mad.” (Yes, it was in the dream.) Anyway, I produced the CD very much on my own and it helped me find my original voice again—something I desperately needed to do after being in the acting profession! I got back to the Bongwater-style of storytelling that I think is my strong suit.

I want to keep recording, but must find lower-cost ways of doing it. I think I may focus on writing my early ’80s memoir and—taking a cue from Patti Smith—poetry. Putting pen to paper costs nothing! Speaking of which, I just saw Patti Smith do a very intimate, acoustic show with songs and readings at the Getty Auditorium in connection with the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit. So inspiring… just like she was back in the mid-1970s. I used to see her walking down St. Mark’s Place when I first moved to NYC, and I felt like I’d died and went to Rock ‘n’ Roll Heaven… which, in 1978, the East Village kind of was. I saw Jerry Nolan and Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls, and Richard Hell a lot, too. I broke out in a sweat every time I saw Richard Hell. So foxy!

ZB: Do you feel that working without a budget encourages more creativity and freedom for an artist? How does a person fund a project and keep their integrity and creativity intact?

AM: Working with absolutely no funding was my experience back in the day: there was NO money to be found in NYC during the bankrupt Seventies and well into the Eighties. No one I knew had money, until Jean-Michel Basquiat came back from Italy with hundred dollar bills pouring out of his paint-splattered designer suit. Then Keith (Haring) hit it big and the Reagan Eighties was off and running. That was a whole other ball of wax.

I always used any money I made from club work (some of the bigger clubs that appeared later paid well) and then from mainstream acting work to keep me solvent and finance my most-decidedly uncommercial creative ventures. Today there is such a focus on being a “brand,” but I think that is in direct conflict with the primal creative spirit that comes from somewhere deeper—a place the Surrealists certainly drew from—a subconscious primal state which can’t be accessed through a bank account. In fact, money tends to close off conduits to that well. It can certainly poison it.

ZB: I just finished an article that focuses on Jung, Surrealism, Spiritual Alchemy and Taoism, which all deal with archetypes, the subconscious and the dream state, so your new work is really fascinating to me—

AM: That’s exactly what interests me now, and what the Dream Puppet Theater and the Dream Girl album are all about: the subconscious and the Jungian investigation of it. That’s the territory I want to go deeper into, since I’m deep in it every night of my life!

ZB: Spiritual alchemy is how we can make ourselves “whole” through our subconscious. Have you ever practiced Hypnagogia? Jung and the Surrealists used to do this… kind of like lucid dreaming and meditation.

AM: I’d say I am more a practitioner of hypnopompia! Almost every morning I find myself in that in-between state of waking and dreaming. Sometime it’s not so pleasant, but it’s always interesting, and I can choose to prolong it or guide it. Usually, I just let the subconscious do what it wants. I have learned how to cut back on the nightmares—no documentaries about Nazis or other atrocities before bedtime, is one way!ZB: Will you talk about what some of the episodes are about?

AM: There are so many episodes written for AMDPT, but until we can pay for making them I hesitate to discuss them. Many involve The Cosmic Man. And each doll (or puppet) has their own adventures, their own kind of dreams, and their own separate relationships with The Cosmic Man. There are other “archetype” characters like the Mother Goddess and The Trickster, etc.

Ginger was very joyful in it. I do recall feeling very healed when I woke up… so Ginger Baker’s Cosmic Man powers were transformative in the extreme! That one in particular would be hard to recreate—I mean, you can never accurately recreate dreams. They use a language from another dimension, a language that can’t cross the interdimensional blood-brain barrier. It’s like trying to explain what the machine elves are! You can use the imagery and language of this dimension, but it doesn’t begin to convey the transcendental nature of the Other Side…

ZB: Will you explain how your dreams play such an important role in your art and performance?

AM: Well, it’s instant material. And it comes from the depths. And it’s often so freaky and sometimes so nutty and hilarious… it’s like they say: you can’t make this stuff up! I don’t always use them, but I write them all down, and they are there if I need them.

There is a Bongwater song about The Mystery Hole. Actually, most of the Bongwater stuff is about West Virginia. I wrote almost all the stories and poems that would later become lyrics to Bongwater songs there when I was on vacation from the East Village during the ’80s. The LP Too Much Sleep is nearly all West Virginia; the song “No Trespassing” and “Junior” are all West…, by gawd. And I actually had a “Psychedelic Sewing Room” when I was about twelve or thirteen.

ZB: Do you want to say anything about Bowie and Prince passing, and what they meant to you?

AM: I so regret never seeing Prince live. Thankfully, I did get to see James Brown at the Irving Plaza in 1981 or ’82—I got to give him flowers at the end of his show. He gave me a big bear hug and a kiss and covered me with his sweat—it was glorious! But Prince… gosh, why didn’t I make more of an effort? You always think people like that will be around for a while. A major loss for me.

All my personal David Bowie stories will be going into the memoir—well, maybe not all, but who knows? (Oh yes, there are some good ones!) His death was quite a psychic jolt, but I had heard for years that he was ill, so it wasn’t a complete surprise. And yet, his death hit those of us who are a certain age and sensibility the way the death of a parent affects you. That is no exaggeration. It was the death of our youth in a lot of ways—pretty heavy for the Peter Pan generation. I have to say I felt that years before, when I heard Mick Ronson had died. Certainly, these kinds of passings remind us acutely of our own mortality… and that time is tick, tick, ticking and then it just stops. That’s too freaky for our kinetic minds to handle. He still visits me in my dreams, though not as much as before. When it happens he looks a lot like an Alex Grey DMT painting! Bowie will forever be The Cosmic Man.

ZB: It’s as if Bowie seemed to use his art to explore his own inner realities as The Cosmic Man archetype, and we were just along for the ride—

AM: Yes, absolutely! Which is why he was one of several who defined what an artist can be… who defined what an artist is, for me. I’d like to put together an entire book of all my Bowie Dreams, especially if we can’t get the funding to make more episodes of AMDPT. But honestly, I’ve gotta give the Bowie material a rest. I did a few shows singing his songs, before he released The Next Day (and no one was doing his stuff), which culminated in this show I did at SFMOMA in 2011 about both Bowie and Jobriath subtitled The Rock Star as Shaman, Myth Matker and Ritual Sacrifice. It was to illustrate the ritualistic nature of idols, and how we have to back away from this, or it will kill us…and them.

That’s what I see theater (and, if we must) “performance art” as: a ritual cleansing; a form of individual and collective therapy… besides an excuse to get out of the house and have some laughs! We first celebrated Bowie as a God, then sacrificed him (whacking a piñata tricked out as Ziggy Stardust, which was enormous fun) to facilitate the resurrection of Jobriath, who could now metaphorically live again, through these surrogate rituals, and overcome the bullshit that destroyed his spirit! There was a lot more to it than that—it was a semi-religious experience. I did a baptism, gave communion to the crowd…gluten-free wafers, by the way—this was San Francisco, after all! The whole thing was a wild ritualistic hoe-down…

ZB: I agree that musicians take on the Cosmic Man or Anti-Hero archetype, who act as a catalyst for us in our attempts to understand each other and ourselves in the collective unconscious. Archetypes are the universal language for “the artist as storyteller,” which you talk about as a big part of your work.

AM: I love the archetypes—they explain everything! Have you seen the documentary The Way of The Dream? It was made by the son of Jungian writer Marion Woodman. He interviews Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz who was a close colleague of Jung himself. Von Franz does incredible dream analysis—there is an analysis of a Marilyn Monroe dream that will blow your mind! I’ve actually flirted with the idea of going to the Jung Institute and taking classes. I’d rather be a Jungian analyst than an actress at this point; a good thing to do in one’s old age—I can wear a caftan and heavy jewelry! Actually, like most people in this Business we call Show, my interest in theater and acting stems from a deeper interest in the psyche and a fascination with human behavior. But only a handful of actresses get to explore the full spectrum of character in movies and TV. Theater offers better choices, but I’d rather create my own.

ZB: I love how you said that in your portrayal of so many female archetypes through your art, it liberates you… and how in society, women tend to be confined to only a few. Will you explain why women are defined by these limiting archetypal roles in society?

AM: Women are absolutely imprisoned by just one or two archetypes. Guess which two? Especially actresses. That’s why you don’t see me act much anymore. Besides the fact that the profession is horrifically competitive and positively Sisyphean in terms of what little return there actually is for your time and investment. Really, except for a few roles that I can count on one hand, most have been as confining as the Spanx they made me wear! Usually I pursue it because I want to stay eligible for the SAG health insurance, where you have to earn a certain amount to be on the plan. But nobody wants to pay anyone anything anymore—in acting or any of the arts—so I’d rather focus on what I do have control of, and be a creative artist on my own terms. That doesn’t mean to say I’m not ready to learn my lines and show up! I just ain’t gonna sit around waiting for the phone to ring…

ZB: Do you see your art and performances as a kind of psychological tool for your own growth? Or as a kind of feminism and activism?

AM: Oh, yes—without a doubt. If I didn’t put on shows I would’ve died from god knows what. While others were getting hooked on heroin back in the day, performance was my drug. Plus, all these performances are a way to make sense out of a shit-ass crazy world! Not to mention the jumble of one’s own psyche. I can only hope anything I’ve done has helped someone else along the line. When I see a performer like Patti Smith or Diamanda Galas or a band like L7 who are on tour again, or gosh—so many people, too many to list—the very act of them being out there and doing it, is a political act. Call it “feminist” or “activist” or whatever, it’s the act of giving everything you got in the act of living life, and it’s all inspiring in that sense!

() $ Mon May 2, Gray Area/RML (Naut Humon) present…, 2665 Mission/23rd-22nd St. Touch Conference. grayarea.org/events/touch-conference

() $ Thur May 5, Castro Theatre: Jesse Moss’s Burt Reynolds movie: “The Bandit”   jessemoss.com (Thanks, Nick Moss!)

() FREE? Wed Nov 3-Sat Nov 12, 2016 Dada World Fair 2016 at City Lights Bookstore (Plan ahead to come to San Francisco!)4. OUR PAST LIFE: What We’ve Received, Liked, Experienced:

() The most Visually Beautiful Book of 2015! (Also, crammed full of ideas and philosophical provocations.) New JG Ballardiana Book! “DEEP ENDS 2015, Rick McGrath’s 300-page, copiously illustrated in COLOR & B&W, new anthology of criticism, history, interviews, etc., about J. G. Ballard, is now available on eBay…” (said David Pringle). Ana Barrado photos! Google to find? https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10153327380963167&id=6940778166
– https://www.facebook.com/theterminalpress

() Zines and other gifts received are listed in links below or the letters section when possible.

http://rhizome.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a1487b13ca8ed17d052f71f12&id=d6c3da961a&e=b7d5566c9d best, tony