I love what you say about appreciating the inhuman in humanity, and those "the horror, the horror" moments. Most of us can't do this. How do you think you came to this ability to appreciate "the horror" or the inhuman in humanity? Is it something you think was raised in you, or something you developed?
I think everyone is fascinated by "the horror, the horror" because it lives in all our hearts. Some people avoid it within themselves, some work to visit it every day, and many are somewhere in between. "Apocalypse Now" tells this very story: it's up the river to the heart of the self. How terrifying is it to be an entity that cannot totally know itself? Growing up in Berkeley led me to appreciate that there is something about the Other, and becoming the Other, no matter how anti-establishment that is, that is good. In "Apocalypse Now Redux," there's a great scene where the French woman and Captain Willard are in bed together. Her husband has died in the war. She tells Willard, as she had told her late husband, that there are two of him: one that kills and one that loves. Her "lost soldier" had replied: "I don't know whether I'm an animal or a god." She tells Willard, a man on a mission to kill Kurtz, he is both. But, she says, "All that matters is that you are alive. You are alive, Captain. That's the truth." I love that. We are all always living and dying, trying to love each other and attempting to kill each other, good and bad in one single being, heading for our meeting with The Man.
Is there anything you're working on now, or projects you'd like to see happen that you'd like to talk about?
Right now, I'm working on a book about Porn Valley. That's all I'm going to say about that. I am "porn again."
Published May 4, 2006.
