My father shared the ethos of many of the beat writers and was a friend of Allen Ginsberg. Probably for 25 years of my father's life, He had been an itinerant piano player and so traveled the road with bands and that sort of thing.

We pride ourselves at Natrona - I mean, pride {ironically] - on developing a noncompetitive community. That's very important. The values that can come from that kind of meditative work combined with the creative work you do, combined with your activism, can come together.

Idea that all the beats are wildly liberal and progressive is ridiculous. You have people thinking for themselves and having certain affinities because of their upbringing and who their family are, their own people who were close to them who fought in these wars and so on. It's complicated. But they had that ability to continue the conversation.

If I smashed the traditions it was because I knew no traditions. I'm the girl with the unquenchable thirst.

What I'm after is that wakeful state through language that stays alive.

There are energies that reside in each phone and phoneme. And we can release them.

My father was a frustrated writer. I think he wanted to write the great American novel.