ANDRE: Well, it's true, Wally. I mean, you know, following omens and so on is probably just a way of letting ourselves off the hook, so that we don't have to take individual responsibility for our own actions. I mean, giving yourself over to the unconscious can leave you vulnerable to all sorts of very frightening manipulation. And in all the work I was involved in there was always that danger. And there was always that question of tampering with people's lives. Because if I lead one of these workshops then I do become partly a doctor and partly a therapist and partly a priest, and I'm not a doctor or a therapist or a priest. And already some of these new monasteries or communities or whatever we've been talking about, are becoming institutionalized and I guess even in a way at times sort of fascistic. You know, there's a sort of self-satisfied, elitist paranoia that grows up, a feeling of "them" and "us" that is very unsettling.
But I mean, the thing is, Wally, I think it's the exaggerated worship of science that has led us into this situation. I mean, science has been held up to us as a magical force that would somehow solve everything, but quite the contrary, it's done quite the contrary, it's destroyed everything. So, that is what has really led, I think, to this very strong, deep reaction against science that we're seeing now. Just as the Nazi demons that were released in the thirties in Germany were probably a reaction against a certain oppressive kind of knowledge and culture and rational thinking. So, I agree that we're talking about something potentially very dangerous, but modern science has not been particularly less dangerous.
WALLY: Right. Well, I agree with you, I completely agree. [Pause.] You know, the truth is, I think I do know what really disturbs me about the work you've described, and I don't even know if I can express it. But somehow it seems that the whole point of the work that you did in those workshops, when you get right down to it and you ask: what was it really about; the whole point really, I think, was to enable the people in the workshops, including yourself, to somehow sort of strip away every scrap of purposefulness from certain selected moments. And the point of it was so that you would then all be able to experience somehow just pure being. In other words you were trying to discover what it would be like to live for certain moments without having any particular thing that you were supposed to be doing. And I think I just simply object to that. I mean, I just don't think I accept the idea that there should be moments in which you're not trying to do anything! I think it's our nature to do things, I think we should do things, I think that purposefulness is part of our ineradicable, basic human structure, and to say that we ought to be able to live without it is like saying that a tree ought to be able to live without branches or roots, but actually, without branches or roots it wouldn't be a tree. I mean, it would just be a log. You see what I'm saying?
ANDRE: Uh-hunh.
WALLY: I mean, in other words, if I'm sitting at home and I have nothing to do, well, I'd naturally reach for a book. I mean, what would be so great about just sitting there and doing nothing? It just seems absurd.
ANDRE: And if Debby is there?
WALLY: [Slight pause.] Well that's just the same thing. I mean...I mean, is there really such a thing as two people doing nothing but just being together? I mean, would they simply be "relating," to use the word we're always using? I mean, what would that mean? I mean...I mean, either we're gonna have a conversation, or we're going to carry out the garbage, or, we're gonna do something, separately or together. I mean, do you see what I'm saying? I mean, what does it mean to just simply sit there?
ANDRE: That makes you nervous.
WALLY: Hunh! Hunh! Why shouldn't it make me nervous!? It just seems ridiculous to me!
ANDRE: That's interesting, Wally. I mean, you know, you know, when I went to Ladakh in western Tibet and stayed on a farm for a month, well, there, you know, when people come over in the evening for tea, nobody says anything, unless there's something to say, but there almost never is, so they just sit there and drink their tea, and it doesn't seem to bother them. I mean, you see: the trouble, Wally, with always being active and doing things, is that I think it's quite possible to do all sorts of things and at the same time be completely dead inside. I mean, you're doing all these things, but are you doing them because you really feel an impulse to do them, or are you doing them mechanically, as we were saying before? Because I really do believe that if you're just living mechanically, then you have to change your life.
I mean, you know, when you're young, you go out on dates all the time, you go dancing or something, you're floating free, and then one day you suddenly find yourself in a relationship, and suddenly everything freezes. And this can be true in your work as well. I mean, of course if you're really alive inside, then of course there's no problem! I mean, if you're living with somebody in one little room and there's a life going on between you and the person you're living with, well then a whole adventure can be going on, right in that room. But there's always the danger that things can go dead; then I really do think you have to kind of become a hobo or something, you know, like Kerouac, and go out on the road. I really believe that. I mean, you know, it's not that wonderful to spend your life on the road, and my own overwhelming preference is to stay in that room if you can.
But you know, if you live with somebody for a long time, people are constantly saying: "Well! Of course it's not as great as it used to be, but that's only natural, the first blush of a romance goes, now that's the way it has to be." Now, I totally disagree with that. But I do think that you have to constantly ask yourself the question with total frankness: Is your marriage still a marriage? Is the sacramental element there? Just as you have to ask about the sacramental element in your work: is it still there? I mean, it's a very frightening thing, Wally, to have to suddenly realize that my God! I thought I was living my life, but in fact I haven't been a human being! I've been a performer! I haven't been living, I've been acting! I've acted the role of a father, I've acted the role of the husband, I've acted the role of the friend, I've acted the role of the writer, director, what have you. I've lived in the same room with this person but I haven't really seen them. I haven't really heard them. I haven't really been with them.
WALLY: Yeah, I know. Some people are just sometimes existing just side by side. I mean, the other person's face could just turn into a great wolf's face and it just wouldn't be noticed.
ANDRE: And it wouldn't be noticed, no. It wouldn't be noticed. I mean, when I was in Israel a little while ago? I mean, I have this picture of Chiquita that was taken when she--I always carry it with me--it was taken when she was about 26 or something and it's in summer and she's stretched out on a terrace in this sort of old-fashioned long skirt that's kind of pulled up and she's slim and sensual and beautiful and I've always looked at that picture and just thought about just how sexy she looks. And then last year in Israel, I looked at the picture? And I realized that that face in the picture was the saddest face in the world. That girl at that time was just lost, so sad and so alone. You know, I've been carrying this picture for years and not ever really seen what it is, you know, I just never really looked at the picture.
And then at a certain point I realized I had just gone for a good eighteen years unable to feel, except in the most extreme situations. I mean, to some extent I still had the ability to live in my work; that was why I was such a work junkie, that was why I felt every play I did was a matter of my life or my death. But in my real life, I was dead. I was a robot. You know, I didn't even allow myself to get angry, or annoyed. I mean, you know, today, Chiquita, Nicholas, Marina, all day long, as people do, they do things that annoy me and they say things that annoy me, and today I get annoyed; and they say "Why are you annoyed?" and I say "Because you're annoying!" you know.