The dichotomies, the brokenness of the culture around things like the Vietnam war, and then a lot of it has to do with war and where we put our energy and money and attention. And the military industrial complex, which dominates our whole economy. Even with the vision of democracy in other places we know the dark side.
Anne WaldmanI think for me in terms of this kind of dichotomy you have to hold the sense of negative capability in your mind - which is Keats line about being able to hold two different ideas 'without any irritable reach after fact or reason.'
Anne WaldmanVarious random experiments, cut-ups, fold-ins, juxtapositions, timed writings of other kinds, the "objects assignment" which involves dream, adventure, ancestry. Writing outside, writing on moving vehicles. Looking at paintings in the grand museums of the world in a proscribed way.Little strategies to keep the lalita - play or dance - going. Sometimes it's lonely you know, just you and your own imagination.
Anne WaldmanHow can you work on letting your thoughts go and getting synchronized into the moment and questioning your wild imagination. But I say just think of all the great Japanese and Chinese poets and scholars who were also meditators.
Anne WaldmanI think of my father growing up in South Jersey, the son of second-generation German immigrant glassblowers. The opportunities for him of feeling that aspiration, that yearning, get out of the small town, connect to a larger world, get yourself to New York, wanting to play the piano at every opportunity, bonding with people who were on a similar path, ending up in Provincetown, which was kind of nexus for nonconformity, and artistic dropout reality.
Anne Waldman