interviews – Frank Moore’s e-Salon /esalon/ Fri, 21 Apr 2023 05:40:11 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2 long interview /esalon/2010/11/long-interview/ /esalon/2010/11/long-interview/#respond Wed, 10 Nov 2010 02:55:00 +0000 /esalon/2010/11/10/long-interview/ (Steve Emanuel wrote:)

it’s always amusing how little people who weren’t there misunderstand the hippie daze…maybe it’s the urge to make slogans and ascribe labels to it all…the spontaneity and exploration that was the primary mover of the times may never exist again in that freshness and ecstatic psychedelic splendor…for some of us, those were seminal and life-altering experiences that set us on the wonderfully weird trips that have brought us thus far…it’s always good to hear that there’s still some who stay crazy…keep up the fight…love Steve

* * * * *

ah, Steve! One of the ways we can truly tell the true power /influence of the period is by how completely they try, if not to totally erase it from the collective memory, to discredit it, make fun of it, belittle it by revisionist history!

You and I have known each other since 1968. We have lived together off and on communally through the years. And recently we have played together in my band. That should give them an idea of the real deep power of the sixties!

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

]]> /esalon/2010/11/long-interview/feed/ 0 this is the rather long interview /esalon/2010/11/this-is-the-rather-long-interview/ /esalon/2010/11/this-is-the-rather-long-interview/#respond Mon, 08 Nov 2010 02:01:00 +0000 /esalon/2010/11/08/this-is-the-rather-long-interview/ I just did for the Russian magazine HOOLIGAN:

well, actually while reading the Art of Shaman I realized, that you have written it for the guys like me not to annoy you. I mean, it’s concrete and literal, solving most of future questions. so, hope you don’t mind if there could be some questions asked, that you consider to be answered back in 1990.

1. how do you manage writing those words right now? how you invented that typing machine?

I type on a computer with a head pointer. Recently I added a word prediction software which has cut my keystrokes by seventy percent.

But I thought of the head pointer when I was seventeen. But it took me a year to get THEM to try it. They wanted me to type with my fingers, the NORMAL ACCEPTABLE WAY! I never care about being “normal.” I am practical, going for what works. So when they finally tried my idea, I was typing within five minutes! They wished they didn’t try it because I started writing radical political stuff like a political column for the high school newspaper in which I blasted the Vietnam War… About a year before it became fashionable to do so. This didn’t fit their role for me as a poster child for the disabled! When they sat me down to tell me that, I said I thought the goal was to get equal rights for the disabled [and for everybody], and one of those rights was being political! So!

2. tell me about God – did Reed tell you, why we suffer? shell we all suffer? I mean, you case is not the ultimate in the deplorable list – you know it, at least you donot suffer pain all the time. and you can see, and you areabsolutely sane… why God made us suffer?

Funny in the mid- seventies, we set up a church. In this country, the tax agency decides what gets given the church status. They denied us because they said we didn’t believe in God [= a supreme being]. So we got free civil liberties lawyers and fought, using Reed as evidence. We said we saw the relationship among everybody and everything as the ultimate being, parts of which are within each one of us. We won!

Most suffering is man-made. It doesn’t have to exist. Suffering is different than struggling. Struggling is a part of life. It makes you strong and healthy. It changes things. Suffering doesn’t do these things. Risk, failure, getting “hurt” are all parts of growth. Suffering is added on to us to keep us down, in control.

Since you asked, this is from my book, CHEROTIC MAGIC:

Matter is symbol, is metaphor containing possibilities. These packets shape matter. These packets, in turn, are reshaped by each body or object they pass through. This is why we are affected by the stars, for example, (and the stars are affected by us)…and why we affect the Tarot cards or the I‑Ching coins we cast…why the physicists affect the subatomic particles they observe. This is the alchemical secret: by reshaping these inner packets, the material reality is reshaped.

These inner rivers of possibilities are two‑way on the linear level. This means the magical effects are always two‑way. The light of the sun warms us; but we affect the sun through the same channel. Again, we have entered the level of the dynamic web of relationships in which the individual does not exist. In place of the individual, there appear points of personal responsibility in a dance. It is not the sun that warms, nor is it us who are warmed. It is the dance of no dancers, the dance of relationships that warms, and that is warmed. Individualism hides this fundamental truth from most people.

These rivers of inner possibilities do not run only in a two‑way linear manner. They also travel nonlinearly. This creates a deep ocean under time‑space. In this ocean, there are nonlinear waves of possibility which pass through the points of personal responsibility which most people mistakenly see as individuality. When a wave passes through this, it is possible to personally amplify, mute, or change the wave. This makes the point of personal responsibility the moment of the universal creation. To accept this responsibility of the universal creation, we cannot step back from the ocean to claim the responsibility or judge.

We are then just water drops … individual water drops, not the ocean. To be in the moment of universal creation, in being the point of personal responsibility, we need to melt into being the ocean for all time, letting the dance happen through us, not thinking we are the dancers. In this point of personal responsibility, everything we do, think, and say is universally important, and not in the individually important sense.

Each center of the body is connected to many of the rivers of possibility. The nonlinear flow of the packets of possibilities within these rivers is chero. By transforming, transmuting, the packets of possibilities, it is actually possible to change matter, to change the material world. This alchemical fact is just the opening for the more important fact that reality is created, recreated every second by and within us.

We have said reality creation is a dance and that we are the dancers. But in truth, it is a dance without dancers. If we really take on personal responsibility for the dance, we surrender to the dance, give up individual “control,” give up individual linking with the results. By taking on the personal responsibility for the dance, we are the dance. We melt with the dance. We are only the dance. We admit these facts. It is not a question of becoming, but of remembering and admitting. It is a question of being, living, dancing lustfully, without controls or limits in responsibility. In the apprenticeship, this quality is called “extensic”. The extensic life dance is beyond morals or limits. It joyfully digs into the dance to the juicy black core.

We have talked about the principle of inter‑penetration, the spiritual fact that the universal existence is enclosed in everyone and in everything.

To start to grasp this, we have to remember that the cherotic rivers flowing within matter run in a great many directions, both linearly and nonlinearly, both inward and outward. This the web dance. The cherotic packets of possibilities, effectively changed within the person, are taken by these rivers throughout the entire web, affecting the entire web.

So you are never hopeless or without effect. You can always shift reality away from doubts, fears, and other mistaken creations. You can always transform, transmute yourself, situations and the universal currents into joyful dancing by extensic melting, which is the heart secret of using erour.

Kinds of transmuting and transforming of situations and of self is the real purpose of alchemical art. You are not the source of effect, the dance of the web is. You melt forever with the dance within personal responsibility. The effect is caused by the everlasting interplay, inner dance, of the whole web of all possibilities with one another, creating seven dimension waves. You must enjoy the dance for its own sake, not some goal as an end. There is not end to the dance. Since the dance is everlasting, the holding‑on to any guilt, any doubt, any fear is just creating these things in the whole web, for which you are personally responsible. If you let go of these limited frames, your personal responsibility for them will vanish; moreover, their reality force will fade to a certain degree in the web.

When you admit you are melted into the dance, that you are the dance, and that every act and nonact, no matter how “small,” is profound, then reality shifts. The focus shifts from what you do, what you appear to be like, what effect you are having…shifts to enjoying extensically life, claiming any and all responsible act or thought as your own no matter who does it.

Matter is a symbol containing within it packets of possibilities. Chero is the possibilities. The human body‑personality is a symbolic system containing possibilities. It is a symbol containing chero flowing nonlinearly through it, breathing through it. The human body‑personality is a point of creative multi‑universal responsibility because it contains self‑awareness. The “self” in this self‑awareness is not the individual ego, but the self of the web of ultimate reality of all possibilities. This self‑awareness is only beginning to evolve out from the web. This means the on‑going act of multi‑universal creation has just started. This creation depends on the self‑awareness which is flowing through each one of us.

Modern physics tells us that our universe is sitting on the razor’s edge between existence and non‑existence, leaning slightly on the side of existence. The self‑awareness is the slight edge of existence. It is creating existence. This creating is radiating both linearly and nonlinearly from the point of responsibility which is contained within each of us.

Our point of entry into this on‑going dance of magical creation is our body‑personality in everyday living, everyday relating.

We think our body is contained, enclosed, limited within our skin. In reality, the skin is not the borderline marking the difference between inside and outside, marking off what the individual (or any other object) is. As we have seen, there is an energy field of thoughts, emotions, and other psychic material. This field usually comes out a quarter of an inch from the skin. This field is as much a part of the body as anything within the skin. The skin is the eighth center of the body, the center of relating, of touch, of melting. It is the center which connects the first and the seventh centers together, creating a circle out of the horizontal linear order.

The skin is not a fence of individualistic ego. Instead, it is the connecting organ of the body, our body. This body does not end at the skin. This body, our body, extends both outward and inward throughout the multi‑dimensional, multi‑universal existence which is being created by self‑awareness. What we normally think of as our body is in reality only a small part of our body. It is only a symbol of personal responsibility which lives within us creating. We are now entering the secret of inter‑penetration.

When we look at our body within the physical world, we can easily become aware of physical trails. At least they at first appear to be trails we leave just as the snail leaves a shining trail as it travels along the sidewalk. After we begin to recognize the existence of such trails, we begin to quickly see more and more of these trails. Body smells, dead skin falling or rubbing off the body, fingerprints, sweat, shit and piss are just some of the most obvious of these trails. There are many hundreds of these trails, mostly unknown to modern man. Each of these trails has volumes of information and possibilities about us and about our connection to the web of existence. In fact, each of our trails contains us. The scientist can clone a body copy from a single cell. A cat can read the emotional state of another animal by the smell of the piss left hours before. Everything leaves these traces of its existence in the reality. Our homes are filled with these traces of ours, which is why our homes have feelings of us, smells of us.

These trails are really meltings between our body and rest of the web of ultimate reality. These meltings are the breathing of chero, the blood veins of chero running both linearly and nonlinearly throughout the entire reality web. This implies that the whole web of ultimate reality is one living organism which extends beyond time and space. What is usually thought of as the individual’s ego/personality/being is a connection in relationships of responsibility, of creation, and of change.

When reality is seen in this way, what looked like trails of individuals left behind within space and time become channels of cherotic breath and cherotic blood of possibilities. These channels are physical, although not necessarily material. We have just listed some of the more obvious material trails. But thoughts are physical trails too. These thought trails, these melting webbings, are made of many, many different kinds of conducting materials, such as chemical, electrical, vibrational, and many materials that we have not yet either discovered or connected to thought. Thought is focused in the sixth body center, that of wisdom.

Most people think that the thoughts in their heads are their own, coming from their own being…exceptions being strange occurrences of visions, possessions, and other “psychic” events. But thoughts are not our own. They are nonlinear veins of cherotic possibilities running through us. Here I am just using thought as an example of how the webbings work. What is contained is a nonlinear wave of cherotic possibility which has been affected by every mind body it has passed through. When the thought first enters your mind body, it is not your thought. It is in the air. You will always and forever make so‑called mistakes. Will always and forever have contractions. These are a part of the magical process that is life. These could be seen as sufferings, hurts, pains. But as parts of the magical life process, the heavy negativity slips away from them, and they become a rugged mountain path to be lustfully, extensically traveled. Any guilt or pity detours us from the compassionate and passionate life.

The true trusting person trusts life and extensically acts from that trust. He does not ask for proofs of worthiness of trust, no trials or tests for earning of trust. He trusts because that opens the door to all possibilities. When you trust into life, you are fully trusting yourself. When you freely trust others, you open the total freedom for both yourself and others. When the student in apprenticeship lets his trust for the teacher slip, what he is really doing is not trusting himself, not trusting his ability, his courage, his humor. Understand, the teacher is a projection of the student’s soul into the field of objectivity. The student and the teacher are melting halves of a whole which we will call “deep love” or “erour love”. When the student thinks of himself as just a student, just a disciple ‑‑ as if there could be any greater calling ‑‑ he has lost sight of his trust in not only the teacher and himself, but also in life. This is a common detour into fragile fragmentation, fatal only if the student stays too long in this quicksand pool, or returns to it too often.

The function of the shamans is to take in life‑denials from the universe, transform them into life‑affirmations, then project these life‑affirmations into the web of ultimate reality by actively living these life‑affirmations. This is what being responsible really means. This is real magic, real alchemy, real creativity. It is the cherotic breath. It is the dance without dancers. We as shamans admit that we are not individualistic egos or sources. Instead, we admit we are points of responsibility. This admitting creates a zone around us. Within this zone, life‑affirmations are created out of the life‑denials which have entered the zone. These now life‑affirmations then either combine with older life‑affirmations, creating more richly complex life‑affirming realities, or are projected outward from the zone to be a part of the decaying, rubbing dance with life‑denials. This is very similar to the process of the green plants transforming carbon dioxide into oxygen.

This process is without end. This endless process is magical life. The person who is waiting, wishing, for the end of life‑denials does not understand what life and magic are. At best, she can only put up with life, making do with an unsatisfactory situation. She usually gets overwhelmed and becomes wrapped up in layers of life‑denials which create more life‑denials.

The basic secret of magic is to like life, to love life, to throw yourself into life so completely, so extensically that you lose yourself as a source in the individualistic sense. You become a point in a wave. In this deep love of life, life‑denials are seen as what they really are. They are the building‑blocks of life‑affirmations. The process of transformation of life‑denials into life‑affirmations cannot be done in the Maya of the isolation of individual self. This transformation can only occur within relationships outside of self, within the real whole body of the web. This is why the lusty giving up of self into deep love is so important in order for magic to happen. Awareness is tribal, not individual. To understand this, the student should see the web of reality as one body, one tribe, one organism that is creating itself always.

We will explore what deep love is very extensively in the following book because in deep love we have the very heart of magic. But it is useful to summarize the physical process of the dynamic interplay of reality in our body‑personality.

All chero, which is packets of possibilities, affects you and is affected by you as it passes through your body. These effects shape the waves of change. When light (photons) enters your eye, when sound vibrations hit your eardrum, when air enters your body, they are changed by your body. They are then reflected back both outward and inward into the web of reality. This is also true of thoughts and emotions which are different forms of packets of possibilities.

If you look for sources of these waves, either within yourself or in others, you will be missing the true reality…you will be spinning your wheels. But if you realize that you are a part of a nonlinear system of living change, of universal creation, you will begin to grasp how to be a shaman. By doing what is right in any and all situations, it releases a creative change, not within you, but rather in the relationship between you and a magical other.

This is the root of the student‑teacher relationship. When we talk about doing the right thing, about being responsible, we are not talking about what is considered moral or comfortable in the normal social frame of reality. Such morals are a system of checks that keep most people inside this social frame. The function of the shaman takes us far outside the social frame. So the right thing in the normal social frame may look and/or feel immoral, may look/feel impossible or overwhelming. This can be overcome by admitting you are connected on every level to the web of ultimate reality, connected by personal relationships to the people around (in the apprenticeship, to the teacher and other students). In this way, you are not limited to ego‑power, but are linked to the unlimited force of the web. By projecting the creative change outside yourself within the context of the magical other, you will not be sidetracked by thinking you are the source, that you are doing something. This melts you into erour, into the dance of no dancers, into the magical realm of poetry.

Poetry is a metaphor that explodes normal reality by using things within that normal reality, using normal things, such as words, in non‑normal or super‑normal ways. The apprenticeship is living poetry. The key is the erour love/trust. Erour love/trust is extensic love/trust which has no subject. It is a love/trust of life, of yourself, of the teacher, or others, all in one. This is an act of will and faith. This is the deep love/trust that admits to joy and unity.

3. your posititon is really anti-human on my point of view. I mean, most of people involved in 60ies – they where absolutely anthropocentric in their view – like the cult of body, living in the wild – the position of human perfectness per se. Do you agree, if you do – do you think it could be the reason of decay of the “movement” of 60ies?

Mmmmmm, I don’t really understand what you are saying /asking here. I think I am very human! I think the sixties wasn’t anthropocentric at all. A lot of people were searching for something better, how to live together in a more humane and healthy and spiritual ways. And often we did just that. There is a myth being actively promoted that the sixties were an embarrassing failure. This myth [false myth, a big lie] is a part of the culture war, an attempt to drain the power out of the sixties so that people will not try it again. We stopped the war. We set the civil rights struggle in motion, which set up the women, gay, disabled movements. We started thinking about the environment. The general vibe of the sixties was taking care of one another, of experimental living. Failure is a part of experimenting. But we set up alternative schools, free stores, underground newspapers, free medical clinics, programs to feed people, etc. These were so successful that the government set out to destroy them by any means necessary, including murder [of course all undercover]. So the sixties didn’t “decay.” It was murdered. But most of my friends from back then and the “leaders” of the times who I have interviewed are still working on change!

4. well – now I have a unique chance to speak with the real father of a psychedelic Family from 70ies! I mean, that was the time of Families – Source family, Process family, even Manson family. what can you say about the phenomena? who are the people, that joined you back in 70ies and the ones, who join you now? what means – living in a Family? I’m almost touching the legendary time now!

Well, I have been living communally since 1969. I am still in contact, in relationship, with a lot of them going back to then. Humans are mammals, coming from packs through small tribes. Before two hundred years ago, people had strong extended families. The “nuclear” family is a very recent development, causing isolation, limited possibilities. So the tribal body just seems more practical to me, if the people are committed to one another. This is especially true with raising children. You have people you can depend on.

Here is a poem about it:

tribal performance

by

frank moore

copyrighted, september 30, 1992

i am not interested in

climbing up

onto the alter of the stage,

in hiding behind the invisible fourth wall.

i am not interested in

dividing myself

from the people,

from the magic,

from the tribal community.

i am not interested in

hiding

behind masks

or characters.

i am not interested in

doing monologs,

standing alone

and isolated

under the spotlight…

not interested in

being a cultural commentary.

not interested in

being a lone artist,

suffering,

alone,

traveling around the land,

chasing fame…

or at least recognition……

embittered

that art doesn’t pay.

i am not interested in

fucking you

the audience.

i am not interested in

just putting my cock

into your body.

i want much more than sex.

i want to put my whole body

into your body…

i want to take

your whole body

into my body.

i want

our naked skin

to melt together

in touch…

our skin

melted

into an organ of tribal body…

an organ of connection……..

an organ that brings everything within.

i want

to erase

the false role

of skin

as the dividing line

that separates

you from me,

the outside from within,

the above from the below.

i want us to be

in a tribal body,

in the state of community.

i want us to be

cozy,

wrapped up into one another’s bodies

as parts of one body….

rocking together.

i am not talking

symbolically or abstractly.

i am not talking

flashes or peak experiences.

i am not talking

about fractions of a second,

or seconds,

or minutes.

i am talking about

hours and days

within this tribal body

within the magical reality of performance.

i’m talking about

physical reality that

makes us sweat,

makes us be turned-on…

a reality that

we can touch and rub…

a reality of

human laughter

and heavy sobs of true feeling…

a reality

which sticks onto our bodies,

our naked tribal body…

and gets carried out

of the ritual space

into “the real world,”

“real life,”

infecting

that outer world

with the virus of

new alternatives and new possibilities.

but this tribal performance…

this calling up of tribal body,

tribal experience,

tribal reality…

is much more possible

when the “performance”

comes out of a tribal life….

when the tribal reality

is not limited

to the performance reality.

life on the road

for an artist

is lonely,

isolating.

this tends to

infect

both the artist

and the art.

and the fact of the matter is,

performance is

a full time occupation

for a single body…

and in cold practical reality,

this occupation does not pay the artist…

the artist has to be willing

to pay the art

for the privilege of doing it.

this has always been true.

this will not change.

this places the artist

who lives in only one body

in an almost impossible situation…

a situation

that is only made liveable by either

magic or compromise

(and compromise

is death

to both the art

and the artists).

but the artist

who lives and creates

within a tribal body,

a tribal community,

can perform

many different tasks

at once both

in the art

and in the mundane world.

the tribal body

can go to work

to get money,

do the art’s office work,

make the flier,

book tickets…..

all at the same time.

this is also true

for inside the ritual of art.

and besides,

the tribal body

has much more fun on the road…

and that fun

(joy)

infects

the art.

i have a dream for the 90’s….

that we will see

artist bands,

clans,

carnivals,

circuses…..

all self-contained

tribal communities…

roaming the country

doing art rituals.

yes,

i have a dream…

the night of the tribal bodies!

_

5. so you have chosen sex as your life weapon, not drugs, music, or violence – like the others did. how it happened you came to this? what do you think of sex culture of 60-70ies? don’t you think they all lost the war for sex? what was the evolution of your sex performance – coming to the eroplay.

Well, I think I lay out the evolution of Eroplay in ART OF A SHAMAN. And I use everything in changing things… Music, art, dance, and maybe even drugs [Somala]. I don’t do sex performance. I use sex, like everything else, in performance. As the times got more repressive, my performances have gotten more explicit in response. I have discovered different erotically magical states, each with different effects.

CHERO is the physical life energy. I created the word “chero” by combining “chi” and “eros”.

EROUR is vulnerable strength.

EROPLAY is intense nonlinear physical touching, rubbing, licking, exploring for physical pleasure for its own sake. Eroplay is foreplay which is released from the linear goals of reaching genital orgasm.

TANSEX is another state of physical trance play. As in eroplay, there is no genital intercourse. However there maybe orgasms in tansex. But the orgasm in tansex has not the linear goal peak quality it has in sex.

PANTAN combines various kinds of orgasm [explosions of energy] with ontonse [a regular implosion of energy] within an intensely small/intimate nonlinear play. These explosions and implosions feed off one other, creating a sustainable state of enjoyable pleasure. The sustainable state of pantan can become the context of your whole life. Pantan is the state of turn-on, aroused enjoyment of life and of being together. Within pantan creativity, inspiration, a sense of awe and newness, etc. always are at work.

TANPAN may include intercourse, but for magical purposes.

I may use each of these states within a performance.

But I have to say that describing the sixties as a sex culture is again a part of the false myth that drains you of the possibility of getting to the roots of the sixties. True, I think “free love“ was a failed experiment. But this is too simplistic a statement, needing paragraphs of explanations. Also failed experiments are where successful experiments come from.

Moreover, calling the sixties a sex culture is like calling my performances sex performances. It keeps everybody from deep complexity!

6. you are one of the rare american artists, whose art was considered offensive by a government office. tell me more about that case. What are the ranks of offensiveness to the public, you can trace for your art? did you have more problems with law?

I answered most of this in THE COMBINE PLOT which I emailed you. I never try to be offensive. But I am willing to deal with any reaction.

The only time the cops raided my performance was a poetry reading… No nudity, no eroticism! In fact I hadn’t started to read! Go figure it!

7. tell me about your president campaign – some stories right from the horse mouth!

See the archives at http://frankmooreforpresident08.blogspot.com/ !

8. couple of words about your future projects and the ones ongoing. and the final project of selling tickets for your death show – that’s a triumph of antihumanism.

Well, how about two words? STAY TUNED!

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

* * * * *

(Erika wrote:)

Great interview! Really fun to read

]]> /esalon/2010/11/this-is-the-rather-long-interview/feed/ 0 art is working when it gets outside of the fragile zones of acceptable /esalon/2010/05/art-is-working-when-it-gets-outside-of-the-fragile-zones-of-acceptable/ /esalon/2010/05/art-is-working-when-it-gets-outside-of-the-fragile-zones-of-acceptable/#respond Thu, 27 May 2010 00:44:00 +0000 /esalon/2010/05/27/art-is-working-when-it-gets-outside-of-the-fragile-zones-of-acceptable/ Hey Frank. I loved what you had to say about people having the “right” to not be offended and to have their comfort zones forcibly protected. I was wondering if you knew of a brilliant author named Phillip Pullman who’s been under attack lately for saying pretty much the same thing.

My lover Tyr and I are huge fans of Phillip Pullman. He’s an atheist who believes that organized religion has caused immeasurable levels of bigotry, conformity, and violence in the world. He is also the author of the young-adult trilogy His Dark Materials, which include The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass. The books encourage children to THINK. At that age I remember a deep appreciation for the respect for children’s brains that came through in the writing, when many people have the unconscious or conscious belief that children are inferior, less intelligent beings. These books are some of the most sensual, enlightening, wonder-inspiring books I’d ever read, and I enjoy reading them even more than I did as a child.

Recently he wrote a new book called The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ. He’s been under attack lately from a lot of people who say that this new book and its title are offensive to Christians. Some have demanded that he publicly apologize for “offending people”. Here is a wonderful 2-minute clip on what he had to say about that. It’s very close to what you said about people having the “right” to not be offended ‘and to have their “comfort zones” be respected, honored, and forcibly protected,’ and I literally cheered to watch it.

http://www.thinkatheist.com/video/philip-pullman-answers-a

PS, who’s Paul Krassner? That name sounds incredibly familiar, a person I may have been exposed to in the last couple of days in some way.

* * * * *

that is a great clip /quote, Katie! I will play it on my Berkeley community public access cable show. One of the functions of art is to go outside of the margins of the NORMAL /ACCEPTABLE to explore and question and expand, breaking down the old boxes. All of this threatens and offends those who are invested in the RIGHT /COMFORTABLE way.

Also the big lie is we are weak, fragile, so we need to be careful, need to protect ourselves, to always be just dipping our toes in the water instead of going all the way, instead of living with irresistible abandon. The truth is being careful is what creates fragility. Getting dirty, tasty, going all the way gives you a freedom and a healthy immune system!

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krassner for the overview of Paul Krassner. Basically he’s one of the Counter culture’s mothers… And one of my heroes since high school when I got into trouble for getting THE REALIST, his no-bars satire zine. And check http://www.eroplay.com/krassner.html which is my interview with him I did in the mid- nineties.

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

]]> /esalon/2010/05/art-is-working-when-it-gets-outside-of-the-fragile-zones-of-acceptable/feed/ 0 Re: Interview /esalon/2009/09/re-interview/ /esalon/2009/09/re-interview/#respond Sun, 06 Sep 2009 09:21:00 +0000 /esalon/2009/09/06/re-interview/ Buenos Aires

Queridos Frank & Sheri

I finished studying the transcript of the interview. Thanks again to Jen for the extensive work. It was very interesting to read about this corner, this tribe of the grand Poly-Nation. Fascinating how different humans can approach the same question so variedly.

I’d greatly enjoy visiting you and have my proper Swiss side be irritated by your fluid flexibility. But that will have to wait till the financing is approved. For now I can only afford to meet with people that are in places I travel to anyway (Argentina, Switzerland & New York). Unlike the brave step of Sheri & Jessica to just go forward into things, we won’t be starting to film till the whole project is financed.

Meanwhile I’m trying to knit together as tightly as possible on a virtual level the network that will create this film. I am in the process of discovering what there is out there that can be played with to build the mosaic of this film. Therefore, I have a bunch of somewhat technical questions for the two of you:

Frank:

Who is the commune in Massachusetts where you were “channeling” Reed?
What is their stand on the question of Monogamy? Might they be a worthy point to visit for the film?

Are you still in contact with Suzie Block? Could you connect me to her? Do you have a copy of the tape of your stunt on her show?

In what video format were your performances filmed? What year was the first one filmed?

Are you in contact with Annie Sprinkle? Could you connect me to her?

Are you still in contact with One Taste? Could you connect me to them?

There are a lot of things that are foreign to me… being a foreigner… Balazzo; Noisefest; Kimo; Cherry; Leprechauns. Could you enlighten me?

Did you ever make an edited piece out of the “Erotic Play” materials?

Do you think your neighbors (70s / christian) would be willing to give us a short interview about what they think about you? That could be a sweet moment.

Sheri:

“Jessica – my director/co-creator – is looking for the interview as we speak (she’s in possession of them at this time).”

Great, on what format were they shot?

“Once I get them, I’ll let you know and if you want them sent somewhere, let me know.”

It would be very nice to get a copy. For now the quality doesn’t matter, just so I see how the interview feels on the visual level. Could you send it to my New York address below?

Do you remember what year the interview happened?

Do you have the whole interview as on the transcript or did you turn your camera off at some point?

Did you ever put together a mix of their performances?

You say in the interview that you did a bunch of other interviews. Could any of them also be interesting for our film, with other words, were any of them with other people that live in a constellation that goes beyond 2?

Did you ever do the animation you had planned?

“Glad that the interview’s ripples are seeing new oceans ;)”

Let’s hope I’m more fortunate in getting the financing together. So far it looks good. We got the strongest Swiss producer behind the project. But as you know, filmmaking is a tricky tiger to ride, you can be thrown off at any point of the ride….

Thanks for the link. I haven’t had the time yet to watch it. What do you know about Joy Davidson?

From the Heart

Tomi

* * * * *
well, Tomi, the dust has settled after weeks of multiple shows and I survived! So I can now answer your questions…

the Massachusetts commune was THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE SPIRIT. They don’t exist anymore, except as an email list. Most of them were /are reactionary victims of life who thought /think I was /am a carnal devil… Which is ironic because when I was living there, i was still a virgin for most of the time I was there… But I cuddled/played with people on my bed… Hence carnal! There I had my first complete sexual encounters and got married [mainly to nail down the commitment]. The official rule on sex in the community was only in long term relationship. of course there was stretching that policy! [especially among the core group, which I was not in.] I left with my wife because we wanted to focus on our personal relationship and that was beginning to run into conflict with certain commune’s factions.

Btw, I was never comfortable with the concept of marriage which is connected to ownership. But “getting married ” is a way to define the commitment of the relationship.

when I lived there, 250 people lived there. About two years after I left I went back. I was there for about a hour. I was with two people of my tribal relationship which was then four. When I got on the community email list more than 30 years later, that was apparently still a big scandal for them… How I showed up with two women! Most people are just curious about how such a group relationship works. But the community members on the email list were extremely negative and hostile… Even though apparently there was another triad that came out of the community.

by the “stunt,” do you mean the music jam we did at Suzy’s? Both Suzy and we videod it. Suzy was my vice presidential candidate when I ran for president. Btw, here is one of the planks of my platform:

Government should leave marriage to churches. Instead, any two or more adults who have been living together for at least 2 years should be able to register as a “family.”

well, the first performances that were videod on reel to reel were our Fantasy Costume Parades and free concerts in 1977. but these tapes were stolen. Starting with THE OUTRAGEOUS BEAUTY REVUE, videos of most of my
phases are available. See http://www.eroplay.com/intimatetheater/intimate.html and http://www.eroplay.com/Cave/shaman.html#PerformAnchor. My feature videos are up at :http//www.eroplay.com/feisto/index.html.

Yes, I did used the Erotic Play footage! In fact I made two videos from it… I believe in recycling! Erotic Play turned out to be a documentary of the process of filming it. The Nude Cave is an abstract erotic video which I created the music for.

Annie and Suzy, this is Tomi!

For One Taste, I suggest you google them. I am not on good terms with them. But you should interview them.

as for our neighbor Betty, I suggest you wait until you are actually ready to interview her.

All of those strange words are names of clubs… Except for LEPRECHAUN [little green Irish people] which I used in the title of a saint Patrick day gig. and NOISEFEST is a festival of noise music in sacramento.

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

]]> /esalon/2009/09/re-interview/feed/ 0 Re: an interview from the past! (Harley Spiller) II /esalon/2009/08/re-an-interview-from-the-past-harley-spiller-ii/ /esalon/2009/08/re-an-interview-from-the-past-harley-spiller-ii/#respond Tue, 25 Aug 2009 05:45:00 +0000 /esalon/2009/08/25/re-an-interview-from-the-past-harley-spiller-ii/ FYI – We have a November 1987 copy of Velvet magazine in our file on “Intimate Cave” with lots of pictures and a story of the event.

Harley aka Inspector Collector!

* * * * *

great, Harley! Could you xerox, scan, or whatever they do now and send it to me?

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

* * * * *

Hi Frank,
Our student intern Grace should by now have emailed you scans of your Velvet appearance from the FF basement – if not let me know. and that gives me an idea for the name of a band – Velvet Underground – heh heee haaa Harley

Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.

* * * * *
thanks again, Harley… And thank Grace for me.

Funny. I will interview the author of the big book on the Velvet Underground. The publisher of rock and roll biographies has started sending luver copies of his books! Don’t tell him I have not read a book in at least fifteen years!

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

]]> /esalon/2009/08/re-an-interview-from-the-past-harley-spiller-ii/feed/ 0 Re: from penny arcade VIII /esalon/2009/08/re-from-penny-arcade-viii/ /esalon/2009/08/re-from-penny-arcade-viii/#respond Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:08:00 +0000 /esalon/2009/08/20/re-from-penny-arcade-viii/ Buenos Aires

Querido Frank

Oh, while I was dancing frivolously away… some fairies were typing and typing till their fingers hurt.

“Jen just finished transcribing the interview! A big job!”

Thank you very much Jen.

“Sheri Falco Interviewing Frank, Linda, Mikee and Erika”

Can you tell me how these 4 are related or will I find that out through the interview?

Looking forward to the big read.

Besos

Tomi

STREIFFSCHUSS FILMS AG

Tomi Streiff

* * * * *
well, we here are six living in two houses on the same block… Living in a tribal relationship /body. Also there is Erika who now lives in another apartment [she was in the interview]. Linda, Mikee and I live in the Purple House with two cats. Alexi, Corey and Jen live in the Blue House ruled by a
cat!

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

]]> /esalon/2009/08/re-from-penny-arcade-viii/feed/ 0 Re: from penny arcade VII /esalon/2009/08/re-from-penny-arcade-vii/ /esalon/2009/08/re-from-penny-arcade-vii/#respond Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:00:00 +0000 /esalon/2009/08/20/re-from-penny-arcade-vii/ Buenos Aires

Querido Frank

Sorry for my belated response. It doesn’t mean at all that I’m not thrilled by all the bridges I see getting built in such short amount of time. It just means yesterday I got lost dancing through the night of Buenos Aires with drag queens, most of them a head taller then me (well at least while wearing their glamourous platforms…), and hardcore piercing performers…What a crowd… It was 7 am by the time I trotted homewards through the rain… It often reminds me here of New York in the 70/80. Well, but without the same freshness. Something that has already been lived & loved somewhere else on the planet unfortunately can’t be relived with the same intensity somewhere else. It’s only once new to our planet… But enough of the chattering away… back on track…

Thanks a lot for the introduction to Sheri.

“I am having it transcribed to send to him. Tomi, that is happening.”

It will be great to read it once it makes it down to Argentina.

“But I can see Jen still typing!”

And who is Jen?

“Sheri’s footage should be much more what you would use than ours.”

From a technical side I’m curious to hear how many minutes / hours of material Sheri taped on what video format. And what year the interview was held? And if there is any edited version yet?

“Sheri, this is Tomi. Tomi, this is Sheri!”

Thanks for the match making. I look forward to hearing from her, and hopefully meeting her too someday soon.

>From the Heart

Tomi

STREIFFSCHUSS FILMS AG

Tomi Streiff

* * * * *

the interview was around three hours. I think we did it three years ago.

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

]]> /esalon/2009/08/re-from-penny-arcade-vii/feed/ 0 Re: from penny arcade VI /esalon/2009/08/re-from-penny-arcade-vi/ /esalon/2009/08/re-from-penny-arcade-vi/#respond Thu, 20 Aug 2009 05:31:00 +0000 /esalon/2009/08/20/re-from-penny-arcade-vi/ Buenos Aires

Queridos Frank & Sheri

“i will contact tom and see how i can be of service.”

Merci!

“glad to see that the universal telephone line is in tact”

And it reaches all the way down to Argentina. And that all for a
Penny…!

De corazón

Tomi

STREIFFSCHUSS FILMS AG

Tomi Streiff

* * * * *

ah, the universal underground network!

Sheri, what have you been up to?

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

]]> /esalon/2009/08/re-from-penny-arcade-vi/feed/ 0 Re: from penny arcade (Sheri Falco’s interview) /esalon/2009/08/re-from-penny-arcade-sheri-falcos-interview/ /esalon/2009/08/re-from-penny-arcade-sheri-falcos-interview/#respond Thu, 20 Aug 2009 05:12:00 +0000 /esalon/2009/08/20/re-from-penny-arcade-sheri-falcos-interview/ hi, gang! Jen just finished transcribing the interview! A big job! Ah, the advantages of the tribal body! Here it is:

Sheri Falco Interviewing Frank, Linda, Mikee and Erika for Film on Sex and Spirituality

(Jessica is the cameraman)

Sheri: I’m gonna just ask some general questions and then more specific questions, and if you could, after I ask the question could you also repeat the question at the beginning of your answer, that’d be great. So we can capture that. So, I’m just curious. I know that you found a church and that you guys have been together for 30 years (Linda and Frank), you’ve been together for 15 years (with Mikee), and you’ve (Erika) been with this group since about 5 years ago. I’m curious what it is you guys are up to. What does your house represent? How would you describe your relationship as a group?

Linda: Well, for me it’s about… would you like some general stuff? Yes, we did start a church and it was 1978. We won approval from the government, tax exempt. We were turned down and we got the ACLU to represent us, and a number of us went to DC and had a real fancy law office represent us. The reason we were turned down was that the woman said that we didn’t believe in god. So what the attorney’s looked through the various writings and things that Frank had written and saw that in fact they would interpret our god as something that exists in each person. So, yes we do believe in god, but it’s everybody has god in them and that’s the focus.

Frank: Everyone should start a church.

Linda: It’s really worked out because, well for example, all of the work that we do is under the auspices of the church so it’s a way for us to stay clean of it personally, like money wise and everything. So all the art belongs to the church, all the performances are presented by the church, the money that’s made from anything goes to the church. The church can just support itself and we’re independent of all that.

Sheri: How big is the church?

Linda: How many people? It varies. At this point it would be the four of us and Corey and Alexi. What our relationship is about, it’s about relationship. It’s like about focus on relationship as opposed to focusing on other aspects of life, and seeing that everything else falls into place if you stay really focused on your relationship and meeting each other’s needs. Being present in the relationship. That everything else will fall into place.

Frank: Intimacy.

Linda: Intimacy is an important part of that.

Sheri: What do you mean by that?

Linda: Well intimate is like deep, so it’s not like “I’m there for you”. You know, it’s like real, really real. It’s not like you I’m there for you and then I have to go off and walk through the forest so I feel good. It’s like I’ve got to get everything that I need from this relationship, and that’s at the deepest most intimate level. You know what that is. People need things to feel good and I think a lot of times people go, you know, I’ll go swimming or I’ll go walk through the forest or I’ll meditate or something. For us, all of that has to be real and vital in our relationship.

Sheri: What do you mean?

Frank: One body.

Linda: And that’s like really real. You experience it as such. Like we talk about it as one body. We are one body and that, in fact, that’s the experience of it. Like the surrender to the relationship, surrender to what we are as one thing. You have the experience of being one body. I think a lot of people would agree in physics and things like that, quantum physics and stuff like that they talk about the skin as a false border and stuff like that. Our thing is like actually living that. Like that’s true. It’s accurate and one can live and experience life from that place.

Frank: Which freaks people out. Sex.

Linda: People that are in the sex business, over the years because of the nudity and the eroticism in the art that we do, for example, if we tour and we would ask the person that is producing the show if they could line up some local people to be part of the performance because we can’t afford to lug people with us, they would typically get strippers and people in the art thing, and they would typically freak out. People would say to us actually, if you wanted me to have sex with you I’d have no problem, but this intimate thing just freaks me out.

Sheri: So what do you do in your performances that conjured up intimacy in these types of situations? Like you treat your performers as part of the one body so they become engulfed in the…

Linda: The performances manifest/create a space so that people have the experience of being one body. It’s like in their head, I mean it might not even be talked about in that way, but they actually have the experience of that. The idea being then that that infects them in some way so that when they go off into their life, Frank often talks about it as planting seeds that explode afterward.

Frank: Time bombs.

Linda: And time has shown that that’s true, from the responses we get.

Sheri: So are there rules around your sexual expression with each other? Like for example is it polyamourous, bisexual, or does it stick to some more gender specific or orientation specific?

Frank: It is one relationship. Not a bunch of individual relationships. And it is not based on one is not enough.

Linda: It’s not coming from a place of one is not enough, like for example, with Frank and I it wasn’t coming from a place of our relationship isn’t enough so we need Mikee, or the three of us, our relationship isn’t enough so we need Erika. It’s not coming from a place of lack.

Sheri: Where’s it coming from?

Linda: Abundance. Fullness.

Frank: We want to live with Mikee. We want to live with Erika. Not “I don’t get something from you, so I need Erika.”

Sheri: And how is it for you Erika, coming into a situation where there’s a 25 year history? Were you feeling a part of that oneness immediately or feeing insecure about that? What’s it been like?

Erika: It’s like melting, so it’s just like melting into everything, and just following, and fairly smooth.

Sheri: Did you have to reshape your mind in terms of trying to understand, like you thought your life would look one way, or a relationship would look one way but then it’s ended up some other way. Was there a process that you had to go through to embrace that, or was it rather easy?

Erika: Yeah, if you went way back to the beginning, but mostly it’s about trusting a feeling so it was always about that really. It was trusting a feeling, and yes there would be things that would come up in your head that might tell you otherwise, but it was really just trusting a feeling that things felt good and so trusting that and many other ways of doing things didn’t work, didn’t feel good, so it was really following that.

Frank: Great questions.

Sheri: I’m curious how you arrived at your spiritual belief system. Did you two (Frank and Linda) arrive at this together or did one lead the other and were there specific events that caused it?

Linda: Well, what happened with me was that, I think I was 21 when I met Frank. So I had gotten to a point where I was real clear about what didn’t work, and so I pretty much just stopped doing what didn’t work. I quit my spirituality thing and got a regular job at a travel agency. I had a sense that there was something there that would feel like what I wanted.

Sheri: There was something where?

Linda: Out there in the world. But I couldn’t nail down what it was. It felt like it had to do with community and intimacy, but I didn’t have any models for it. I didn’t see anything that fit what felt, so I really was just in a holding pattern. And then Frank wheeled into the travel agency in his power chair, and I’m thinking “Oh my god! I hope this guy doesn’t come up to me”, and he comes right up to me, and I have to lean over the counter to read his board and I would always wear these big blousy things with no bra, so he could see down my dress. So he says “You’d be great in this play I’m doing.” Right away it’s like… there was no play. But he was willing to create one. But really what happened was the minute I made eye contact with him and started talking to him, I saw Frank. All of a sudden the wheelchair and everything else wasn’t there and right away talking to him I had a sense that this had to do with what I was waiting for, and if I didn’t follow it then I was full of shit. This is what I had been thinking I want. It’s not the way I thought it was going to look but you know. So I got together. He said, “My wife will call you.” And his wife called me that night. I went to their apartment. He was in a four way relationship with 2 kids, and they had a two bedroom apartment and one of the bedrooms was Frank’s studio. He pulled out his binders of his writings and it was all about the stuff we had already started talking about with you about relationship. What I got from it was the gap that I experienced between spirituality and the mundane wasn’t there, it all got filled. I realized that was part of what I was missing. I was a very spiritual person but it always seemed too spacey, like here we are and I wanted it to come down, but I didn’t have it all clear in my head. I read Frank’s stuff and thought he’s got it all figured out. I quit my job in a week or two and started working with Frank.

Sheri: Working in what way?

Linda: I’d been living in Berkeley for a year and he had just moved to the bay area, and was trying to get stuff going. I had been trained to do this kind of growth thing. This was in the 70’s.

Frank: I was doing a workshop.

Linda: But he wasn’t having any luck getting people together for the workshop.

Sheri: What was the workshop about?

Frank: Intimacy. I ripped off …

Linda: He had read a book by Richard Schechner about the work that he had done in the 60’s, environmental theater, where there was no audience space and performance space, everybody was in a room together and you didn’t know who the performers were and who the audience was. What happened in the book was…

Frank: They did a play about a commune and the audience thought they were a commune and wanted to join the commune. That freaked out the performance group.

Linda: So Frank thought what if you did that with the intention of creating community, like it wasn’t just a performance.

Frank: Because I had been living communally for years.

Linda: So that was what the workshop would have been about, and the training that I had was for this more hip thing that was happening at the time, the Fisher-Hoffman process. So he said well, what if we took that and kind of put what my focus is onto that and flyer for that. Maybe that would be a way to get people. So that was the first thing we did was we would get together and go through the whole Fisher-Hoffman process and work it to have the focus of the workshop that Frank was doing, and then put posters up.

Frank: It did not work.

Linda: It didn’t work, but we did get one guy who answered the flyer. And we had this free space. This room that Frank had managed to get for free.

Frank: In a Baptist Seminary.

Linda: But no workshop to use, so we get this one guy and the guy sits there for a couple of hours reading Frank’s board and he’s talking and asking Frank a bunch of questions. At the end of it he said, I’m not really interested in your workshop, but would you consider meeting with me like this on a weekly basis and I would pay you. Frank said “Sure!” because he’s flexible. He always says he’s flexible. So it turned out this guy was a psychic teacher, and a very popular psychic teacher like in Marin County, and had a lot of students. So he goes to his students and says “I have a new teacher, and this is my teacher.” So then all of his students wanted to meet his teacher. All of a sudden Frank’s got 30, 40, 50 people that want to meet with him on a weekly basis and pay him. So Frank was working full time, like 8 to 10 hour days meeting with people. Out of that came a core group, a workshop, over a period of 5 or 6 years.

Sheri: And you guys would be exploring intimacy and that whole fiction of separation of bodies and one spirit?

Linda: Yeah, and at the time, Frank often talks about just going with what’s happening, at the time a lot of people were into a growth movement thing. He was meeting with people and he would say that he’d made a bad guru because he wants to get close.

Frank: Personal.

Linda: He would say that in order to have that close personal relationship with you, I end up having to deal with the other relationships in your life because if you’re not being true in those relationships it will impact our relationship. So it ended up being kind of relationship counseling of a sort for a number of years.

(end of disc 1)

Linda: Through his life that had a more radical slant on things that would give him books to read so he read a lot of books, and watched.

Frank: But after I had the pointer, I thought I was ugly and…

Linda: No one would want to be with him and he was a burden. That was the way he thought about himself.

Frank: Not no one. I had friends.

Linda: You had friends but no one would want to be in an intimate relationship with you.

Frank: So I was still watching. Until I figured out 1) that is not being responsible.

Linda: To look at things like that was not being responsible.

Frank: 2) That is not the reality I want. It should not be like that. Not just for me but for everybody. So I had to live how…

Linda: How you wanted your life to be.

Frank: One part of that was quit thinking I am ugly. So I faked it. Did not tell anybody but… then people started…

Linda: People started saying “Wow, you look different. What happened?” He thought “Whoa! It’s working!” And then at some point he said he forgot he was faking it.

Sheri: That’s awesome. So where to you guys feel you’re going in terms of a group and a movement since you’ve been doing this for…

Frank: Why going?

Sheri: Just being and continuing exploring.

Frank: I never plan.

Linda: Right. You truly are really really flexible, so we always just follow. If you look like just in terms of the art stuff alone, one minute we’re doing all the poetry stuff, the next minute we’re doing rock and roll shows, the next minute we’re doing ritual performances in alternative spaces. It’s just kind of whatever is there to do we just move into that and do it that way.

Frank: Luver.

Linda: Like Luver. We’re doing a lot of Luver for the last 6 or 7 years and that was just Frank met a guy on the internet.

Frank: Who…

Linda: Had just read Annie Sprinkle’s book who had listed Frank as one of her teachers. And then Frank found his website and emailed him and he said “Oh my god, I’m just reading about you in Annie Sprinkle’s book!” Turns out he was involved in an internet radio station. This was 7 years ago when it was just starting, and Frank said I’ve always had a fantasy about being a dj. He said I can get you a show. So that’s how Luver really started because Frank got a Sunday night show there which is The Shaman’s Den, and in less than a year, much less than a year, there were a lot of problems with the management.

Frank: They wanted me because…

Linda: Well, Frank had been investigated by Jesse Helms in the early 90’s as an obscene artist. So they knew Frank as this free speech person. They said we’re about free speech and we want you with us, but it turned out they meant by free speech is like you could curse. But they had a lot of things you couldn’t do. And Frank in his way always manages to hone in on those things so it was like, he would talk about things like the djs would say “I don’t think anybody’s listening. I’m going to stop doing my show if I don’t get an email in 5 minutes.” So Frank would say on his show, he would talk about, and he would say #1) I don’t think that’s true that no one’s listening, and #2) even if no one’s listening and someone does tune in and there’s nothing on, they’ll never come back. Well management would come into the chat room and say “You can’t talk about company policy on the air.” So Frank would have me read that. So it just kept going on, and then they started talking about that they needed to sell out, and they needed to get corporate sponsorship. As Frank says the management had wet dreams about quitting their day jobs and having secretaries. Frank would say “Well, how much to do you need? Because if you got every dj to chip in, would that cover it?” They wouldn’t tell us the amount. Turned out it was $99. But it turned into this whole wellspring of people freaking out, because Frank kept saying you don’t have to sell out, you don’t have to do it. What do we need to keep it going at the level where we have complete freedom? It just pushed everybody’s button and we were getting mega hate emails from people. “Why don’t you start your own station if you know so much!”, which was like the last thing we wanted to do. We were doing a kazillion things, we didn’t want to start a radio station. But at a certain point we thought well maybe we should just do that. So Mikee learned in a week how to do an internet radio station so that we never missed a week of Frank’s show, and the intention was we would do Frank’s show on Sunday nights. We had a dj in Japan that would do his show before us. So Luver’s first show was live from Tokyo. But then it just evolved into this 24 hour things and 7 years later that’s a lot of what we do. It’s about creating community. There are a lot of aspects to it that we’ve just kind of gone with i

Sheri: So I’m curious , you mentioned intimacy and I know that’s a word that we’ve all kind of heard before, but I’m curious if you can define it. I don’t know if that’s possible or not. How would you define your meaning of intimacy?

Frank: Intimacy is being together deeply on every level for life. Which freaks most people in the sex world out.

Sheri: Why the sex world specifically?

Frank: Because you would think sex and intimacy would go together.

Linda: So it’s not that it only or mostly freaks people from the sex world out, or are you saying that possibly there’s more in the sex world than the general population? Would you say that?

Frank: Yes.

Linda: Well, I don’t know exactly what you’re saying. I think that possibly one aspect of it is that it’s how people think about themselves. Our experience has been that if we are with somebody that thinks that they’re really open and has no limits, and then they’re put in a situation where they feel uncomfortable, and feel limits, that it’s about more than just the limits that they’re feeling. It’s about the way they think of who they are and that’s more threatening.

Frank: Like we did a workshop at basically a new age sex cult.

Linda: And that was recently in San Francisco. We did a workshop series there. On the surface it appeared that we were a perfect match because they were about using sex as a vehicle for… you don’t think it was even that. They were just into sex. But it was a new age thing so there was yoga and all this other stuff. So you would kind of think there was a spiritual element to it. But what happened was through the course of the workshop there were core people from their group that attended all the workshops and were profoundly affected by them, and it seemed to really freak out the power structure and they really wanted to get rid of us as fast as they could.

Sheri: That’s kind of interesting, if you don’t mind going into that, because in some ways that’s a little bit of what I was curious about in this group is if there’s a power structure in terms of who makes the decisions and how the relationship gets formed. Like how to you guys all live together as one body and live your individual lives and come together as a group and relate at the different levels that the relationships may exit. I’m clearly imposing my own limitations but… like on a day to day basis.

Frank: Good questions. Power is over rated.

Linda: Again, it’s like, my experience of Erika moving in, for example, is like for me it’s about surrender because you get used to, even without trying to, there’s a certain dynamic of the three of us and you get used to it. And there’s a certain level of comfort in that, and then having somebody else come in requires a more, it brings to the fore the need for surrender and trust. So I didn’t feel at all as if I was in a position of power because it was all about constantly having to surrender and be open and trust that I wasn’t going to lose anything. I’m not going to lose anything that I have with Mikee and Frank even though there were times that it felt like that. So it was about surrendering to what we were as the four of us. On the other side of that then you see that there wasn’t anything to lose and everything just becomes more of what it already was.

Frank: Basically we follow each other.

Sheri: (to Erika) So you’re crying right? Are you crying?

Linda: She always cries. She’s the crier.

Sheri: Why were you crying just then?

Erika: Well, I just feel us or something. I just feel the tenderness and it’s a good thing.

Frank: At her sessions…

Erika: We would always joke that they would go through a box of Kleenex. We thought we were going to have to start charging her for the Kleenex. This is mild.

Frank: At least a box.

Linda: Have to empty the trash all the time.

Sheri: So what was your upbringing before? What was your spiritual upbringing? How were you raised in terms of a belief system?

Erika: Nothing very structured, though the string of everything from the beginning, performance was always a part of my life and I was always very interested in shamanism, so that’s probably what initially brought me. But you can’t separate any of that because I think that my deepest longing was in relationship or wanted to know how to be in a relationship that felt good and was working, because I certainly wasn’t having those experiences. All those things were in my upbringing.

Sheri: How do you define a relationship working? What does that mean?

Erika: Well, what we are is very different from what I experienced before, so I’d say what’s working is the level of intimacy or just being there for each all the time, 100% of the time. Feeling full all the time, feeling like life is full and certainly a much greater level of enjoyment that I never knew was possible. It’s about meeting each other’s needs all the time, but you don’t even think about it that way because it’s not even about exchange or anything because it’s just one body working together on a very practical day to day. Everything across the board in my life works now and it certainly didn’t before. I couldn’t keep a job. Just everything. If you just focus on our relationship and the intimacy, then everything else works.

Sheri: Again, I apologize for these limiting questions, but like jealousy and independent relationships with people outside sort of as lovers. Where does that come in?

Frank: By the way, I have never seen an open relationship that really works.

Sheri: You’ve never seen an open relationship that really works? Except for this one? Or including this one?

Linda: I think he’s not including what we are in that category of open relationship.

Sheri: So you’re polyamourous but exclusive, or…

Linda: We don’t even think in those terms because any of those terms have stuff about them. It’s so immediate. Who we are is who we are. We’re not like this or that, I’m not gay, I’m not bi. It’s not about that. It’s about us.

Sheri: So you guys are with each other. To your point that you’ve never seen an open relationship that works, because that’s just like a loose floating thing versus a focus on the relationship.

Frank: They juggle.

Linda: Open relationships are about juggling.

Frank: Not being enough. So that don’t feel good, but when the person don’t feel good, he or she thinks that means he/she is jealous.

Sheri: The person doesn’t feel that they think they’re jealous?

Linda: Because Frank is saying the open thing is coming from a place of not being enough. And so that basic premise is what doesn’t feel good, but the person interprets that not feeling good as “I’m jealous”.

Sheri: As opposed to what you guys are creating. Individually you wouldn’t be enough, right? It requires a relationship, like you alone aren’t enough?

Frank: I was enough. I am not with Linda because I wasn’t enough. But I need Linda.

Sheri: I’m curious how the world interacts with you.

Linda: Generally we have really positive experiences. That’s why we always say you watch things on the news and it’s all about bad stuff, and yet our life immediately is really positive. We meet people feel good because we feel good and so the people we have contact with feel good.

Frank: Like how do you feel?

Sheri: Really comfortable and natural.

Frank: And people feel…

Linda: What we are.

Frank: And is not that spirituality?

Sheri: Sharing the moment and feeling?

Linda: I think he’s saying the fact that people then feel what we are, that’s what spirituality is really.

Sheri: Like an experience beyond the body. It’s just sharing the feeling. How would you define your belief around spirituality like as you did with intimacy? If you can define it in a tangible sense.

Frank: Good questions.

Jessica: I feel like we’ve gotten a good idea of the background and sort of how you come together. The most poignant things I hear you saying are the way that you describe the philosophy behind it. Not so much what you’ve done and where you’ve been and your relationships as things you’ve done but more so the way of being around that. And something that I’m particularly fascinated by is I have a woman that I love, that is my primary partner, and yet I’m still driven to explore other people and to share intimacy with other people and I can’t seem to work that out in my relationship to have the freedom to continue to love her with everything I have yet continue to grow through my relationship to other people.

Frank: Is she enough?

Jessica: I always tell her that she’s not enough. That’s been something I’ve said and as soon as you said it tonight I thought whoa. So she is enough! And something you said, you’re enough, she’s enough and any exploration and relationship I have outside of her just brings more.

Frank: Why outside?

Sheri: You’re separating them, you’re not one relationship. You’re considering it as an independent thing.

Jessica: I guess I’m just considering that she’s not directly involved in it but of course she’s influencing the relationship.

Sheri: But you’re separating her physical form from your physical form.

Mikee: If something’s enough, you don’t need more.

Frank: So everything is taken into that relationship. Absorbed into that relationship. So no juggling. No “you are not enough. I will be back, trust me.”

Linda: This is what’s not. None of that.

Sheri: So what happens in that situation if there’s no separation, there’s no one relationship and then going off to something else, but as you experience something else you’re with your relationship, it is you. You are the relationship, the 4 of you, the 3 of you, the 2 of you. So how does that work if there’s just different levels of attraction or chemistry or connection?

Frank: No. What is attraction? Like Linda could not…

Linda: Oh, well, Mikee was working with Frank and he was this like really yuppie dude, tight ass guy, fancy hair cut one side long, really tight.

Frank: Turn the camera on Mikee.

Linda: Turn the camera on Mikee so people can see him because he sure don’t look like that now. He was the lead singer for the band that went on to become Counting Crow, on a fast track to fame, and I could not stand being in the same room with him because he just weirded me out. He was so tight, so I’d walk him out to the studio and run back to the house. But that’s not what it was about because…

Frank: Where is the being attracted?

Sheri: I’m obviously applying certain filters, but I’m just trying to understand.

Linda: The thing is, getting close and being deep and intimate with somebody is a turn on, and it’s not about, I know what you mean by attraction, but it’s not about that. It’s when you’re with somebody that’s giving you everything they got it’s sexy, it’s a turn on, it goes beyond a surface kind of idea of what attraction is.

Frank: I even think attraction is an alarm bell.

Linda: Just the whole concept of being attracted to someone is an alarm bell. It certainly limits.

Frank: It is pictures, not the person.

Sheri: I get it. You guys are all the concepts of transcending limitations of the society and the messages and the rules to go towards this bigger thing called living as one and inviting people to accept and embrace that. So what is it like to live as one within yourself and with the people you experience life with? It seems like a constant challenge to be able to do that in this society, unless you’ve transcended it.

Frank: Which is what spirituality is, and really what making love is.

Sheri: Is what?

Linda: Well, you were saying that it would be challenging to live as one body. It’s transcending all the things that are out there about society. It’s transcending and it’s living from this one body place. And Frank said that that living from this one body place is really what spirituality and making love is.

Frank: Which they don’t want us to know.

Sheri: But then, do you draw lines? So there’s four, you four have created this organism, but then I imagine this spiritual belief would mean that every person you encounter…

Linda: Well obviously Erika wouldn’t be here if we drew lines, or Mikee wouldn’t have been here. We don’t draw lines but it’s when someone…

Frank: Who is willing.

Sheri: So when someone’s willing, you’re considered a student or an intern or studying with is kind of on the website how… So if someone is attracted to this phenomenon, they would approach the four of you and sort of…?

Frank: Not in a goal of…

Linda: The thing is it’s the frame as we said shifts, so the way Erika came into us is a poster about a workshop about playing, and then Frank talks about working with him in the frame of shamanism. There are a lot of people that come through and work with Frank in various capacities and through the public performances and intensives and workshops and all the various ways. Of all the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that have come through, there are four of us that are living together. So when Frank says willing, it’s like there are different levels that people get involved I guess, I don’t know how to put it.

Frank: In fact, she moved.

Linda: Yeah, like Erika worked with Frank for several years, and then when she finished her Masters degree, she moved up to Washington state with the intension of living up there.

Erika: I worked with Frank for about a year, 9 months or something, and then I graduated from graduate school and then I left to go be around biological family because that’s where I thought home was or something, some notion in my head.

Linda: And then there was that thing that you said right before you moved.

Erika: The last night that I met with Frank before I was going to move, I remember it very clearly. I was riding my bicycle home and I just had this feeling in my whole body of Frank or whatever it was, this is what I’ve been looking for my whole life, this feeling of home or fullness or satisfied.

Linda: You said something like you realized Frank was completely there for you or something like that.

Erika: In the beginning it was a lot about feeling seen. I feel completely seen and I was always in this thing about people not being there for me, that was my story. So Frank was completely there for me, and at that point I still separated it somehow. Well, that’s that and then I go off. And in the course of a year of being away everything went to crap.

Linda: You did an intensive, but that was the deal. Frank suggested she come every 6 months as an intensive. People come from out of town to do week or 2 week intensives. To do that so she would continue to have contact with the work that she was doing with Frank. So you did that 6 months.

Erika: Right. Got in a relationship. As soon as I got back from the intensive that relationship just completely fell apart and it was like I got to the point of desperation where I can’t do this anymore. Basically it was these relationships that don’t work and I can’t have something end again. I’m not doing this anymore. I really began to see how miserable I was only just as miserable as I’d been the whole time, it’s just that I couldn’t stand it anymore. Through being with Frank I knew I had the experience in my body of knowing that there was some other way to do it, and I ended up coming back after one year because this was home and this is where I wanted to be.

Sheri: So if you were going to describe shamanism, because you’ve made references to that and I think that in some way that’s a key central aspect of your spiritual belief.

Linda: Direct experience of reality. That’s the one line thing. Frank always says shamanism is the direct experience of reality.

Sheri: What does that mean?

Linda: I can feel it from our life because most of the time there’s a lot of stuff so you don’t really generally out in the world have a direct experience of reality. Because the direct experience of reality is real, things are real, you know, it’s there, it’s still. So it’s like living from that place.

Sheri: And that’s a shamanistic way to live?

Linda: It’s just like shamanism is just one way to talk about it.

Sheri: Being present is another way.

Erika: Well, it’s all about the intimacy and being together, because all that smoke and soap or any kind of pictures that come into your head that are not direct experiences of reality, if you just focus on being together and the intimacy, that stuff just, that’s what saves you from all that crap all the time, is melting into each other.

Frank: Mikee read…

Linda: Right, so Mikee’s the lead singer to this band, pre-Counting Crows, but they’re on a fast track to success. Bill Graham’s their manager and they’re ready for the big record deal and all this stuff, and meanwhile Mikee didn’t go into it for the fame but he said you just get onto this track and that’s what it’s all about. This woman that was working with Frank at the time was someone who would go to their shows all the time, so she got together with Mikee after a show and she “well what do you do?”, “well, I work with Frank”, and she showed him Frank’s writing and he said the floor just fell out from under him, because it was like “Yeah!” So he came, actually he came to a performance. So here he is Mr. Slick dude in this yuppie band, and he comes to a performance at this record store, this store front record store in downtown Berkeley. So Frank’s sitting there nude singing and he has all these nude body painted dancers dancing around with the window wide open so people are standing on the sidewalk watching. Frank’s singing, we’re all dancing and singing and stuff, and Mikee’s sitting there like this (mouth hanging open). He had never seen anything like it before. Why are we telling that story? Just because, yeah.

Frank: He worked in an office.

Linda: He was a graphic designer so he worked in this graphic design office in San Francisco on Union St. So he starts working with Frank and Frank says you need to have the day off on the day that you, you have to work a half day on the day you have a session with me which was like a radical thing to do but because Mikee’s working with Frank he goes in and he says that. No problem

Frank: Don’t dress…

Linda: So Frank says, don’t dress different when you go to work, just dress the way you always dress. Also what appeared to be a radical thing. He did it no problem. Everybody else changed their dress. Everybody else started taking a half day off. It just totally changed the whole office was.

Frank: Finally…

Linda: Oh, his boss ended up leaving the business to work with a shaman and gave the business to us!

Sheri: That’s changing from the inside there.

Frank: Yes.

Sheri: That’s funny!

Frank: That is how life works.

Sheri: So do you consider yourself a medium? Like a spiritual medium?

Frank: What is a spiritual medium?

Sheri: I guess one who’s in communion with the spirit and then manifests those or shares that thought, like is a bit more sensitive of messages from a spiritual place.

Frank: Any good artist is that. But Reed…

Linda: Frank did channel Reed. This was in the 70’s he lived at a community which, funny enough, he’s just getting back into contact with the commune in Massachusetts which was 300 people in this commune. They had land, they had businesses, they had a rock and roll band. Everybody was into channeling, and so everybody would channel and Frank would say but you’re not paying attention to the worldly plane because you’re so busy channeling. No one wanted to talk to him about that.

Frank: Everyday life…

Linda: Everyday life was totally being neglected because everyone was just totally focused on channeling. Well, nobody would listen to Frank when he said that so he started channeling Reed who said the exact same thing Frank said and all of a sudden everybody wanted to hear about it then. Then they’re listening, then they want to do what Reed is saying.

Sheri: You have a little strategy going on there Frank.

Linda: Reed wrote a whole book.

Frank: I am flexible.

Sheri: Whatever works right?

Frank: That is basically what is shamanism, what ever works.

Sheri: Cool. (to Jessica) Do you have any more questions?

Jessica: I do. Because there’s the one missing for me is we’ve talked about how you experience spirituality through intimacy, through relatedness. Do you also experience spirituality through sex, like on a physical level?

Frank: Yes. Sex is a part of life. But what most people call sex is just one aspect of what sex is.

(end of disc 2)

Linda: Well, let’s see, the thing about sex being part of life, that’s the part that comes into my head, because every part of our life is so rich and full and it seems like when you say people experience sex as one thing, it’s kind of this isolated thing. Like in some ways it’s kind of special, or different, you expect some needs to be filled through sex that is not different from most other aspects of life, or stuff along those lines. Whereas with us I feel sex really is just part of life, but that’s not to make it less than, that’s just to make everything more than. So that kind of intensity, or going for some kind of feeling of intimacy through sex, I feel in a sustained way all the time, so it’s not just sex.

Frank: Like we did a performance in Los Angeles at Suzie’s.

Linda: Oh, at Suzie Blocks last time? Felt like it really shook things up. Suzie Block is a doctor of philosophy but she has a weekly show that is about sex where she takes call ins and she’ll talk to people about sex concerns and their sex life, and she’ll often have people from the sex industry, although not only that, but there’s a lot of nudity and eroticism, close-ups of jerking off, talking about orgasm. All the graphic stuff about sex, and then we were scheduled to be on the show and then to be the after hours event, performance or something, and it took the form of Frank’s Cherotic All-Star Band which is where Frank invites different people to be in the band, there’s no rehearsal, it’s always a different group of people. It’s a free form jam music thing with basically Erika Frank and I always as the nude erotic dancers and singers, but there are other people who are involved as they are available. And then you have all these musicians playing and everything. It seemed to make people pretty uncomfortable there, and there was like sex going on everywhere, and the camera going inside and all this kind of stuff.

Frank: In the other room…

Linda: Right, so there was the room, the show had ended but there was all this kind of sex play going on in one room and we were performing in the other room. It seemed like the people there felt more comfortable in the sex room than they did in the room where we were doing what we were doing. It seemed like it made people, and I think it was the intimacy thing.

Sheri: So just to further Jessica’s questions around sort of manifestation of sex in your relationship as a group or as a collective. You kind of expressed that part of the reason you think people have sex is to feel this close intimacy but that’s an other experience, like it’s this time out that people create to have a closeness and sometimes through the fun of sex that happens but then they live the rest of their lives or relationships separate from that. You kind of create that intimate closeness that people get through sex in your everyday experience.

Frank: They think sex is a way to get to intimacy, but sex is an expression of intimacy, so if intimacy is not present in the relationship, sex isn’t going to create it. But people don’t know that. That they even think sex is intimacy. Like we are getting deep. Most interviews don’t even know that there is this depth so they…

Linda: They are satisfied to stay at a less deep place.

Frank: The same with intimacy.

Jessica: Because I have the sensation right now that we’re barely scratching the surface.

Frank: Exactly.

Jessica: Come on Frank, give me the juice!

Frank: Well, I am available. It takes time, but ask more questions.

Sheri: So I’m just going to be… you can stop me if I’m out of line, but I just think, and again I’m sorry for the crudeness, I’m just trying to grasp an understanding for the viewers. They’re getting this exposure to this concept about your spiritual belief system and then there’s this base curiosity. So literally everybody has sex together? You have sex with all of you? You have sex in the traditional orgasm occurs kind of a way and that’s all part of your expression of each other?

Frank: And etc.

Linda: All of that and etc.

Sheri: What’s the etc?

Frank: I am available.

Sheri: When you say things like that, that’s a flirtatious kind of a gesture right?

Linda: The and etc?

Sheri: The “I’m available”.

Linda: I think he means in terms of…

Frank: I am available.

Linda: He’s available to work with you in some capacity. I think the form has limits. The interview form has limits, and the one on one work that Frank does with people, we have found to be the way that he can go deepest with people, more so than when we do group things, more so than workshops, public performances. He always says that one on one work is the core, that everything else comes out of that. So it seems like yeah but, you know there’s a certain, there’s the stuff that feels like the juicy stuff is that stuff that you can’t like, how do you, you can only get so much from this and then the rest of it is going deeper.

Frank: And they will not see most of this in the film. That is just the nature of this. You can show a performance over what you use of this interview.

Sheri: Oh, mix in some of your performances as well. Yeah, that would be awesome.

Frank: That would give people more, but just a fraction. So, I am available.

Sheri: Thank you guys very much for your rawness and your authenticity. You create such a beautiful intimate space.

Linda: It was fun.

Sheri: Thanks for welcoming us into your home and experiencing your life.

Linda: It was good.

Frank: It was deep.

Linda: Yeah, really, because it felt like the feeling of what we’re about was there. I think that really translates. That people that watch it will get that beyond what we say.

Sheri: Definitely.

Frank: You can look at…

Linda: There’s a lot of performance video on the website and find something that you would want to use and we can get it to you.

Sheri: You can get a digital version of it?

Linda: Well, we can put it onto a dvd.

Sheri: That would be wonderful. That’s a great idea too to have you guys talking and then mixing in some of the performance. That would be beautiful.

Linda: Like we don’t have One Taste on there do we? Because that’s, what do we have on the website?

Mikee: We have the UCB Series.

Linda: Oh, the UCB Series.

Sheri: You think the UCB Series is a good one?

Linda: Well in terms of, like, a lot of what’s up there is band stuff, The Cherotic All-Stars which is like the form of, I mean it’s good, it’s really good.

Sheri: In terms of like capturing in physical form some of the…

Mikee: There’s a variety of stuff.

Linda: But if you want variety too, the UCB Series is more of a performance art type thing.

Mikee: Exploring of Possibilities of Passion, I think that’s what that series was called.

Linda: Yeah, couldn’t you just do a search on the page for UC Berkeley?

Sheri: Oh, that’s what you mean by UCB.

Linda: It was a series we did at UC Berkeley.

Frank: But Erika was …

Mikee: Not in that.

Linda: Oh, Erika was not in the UCB series. Right. The One Taste stuff but I don’t, it’s not like…

Mikee: And there’s the 2 things from L.A.

Linda: Oh, the Balazzo gig and the last Los Angeles gig. Erika’s in both of those.

Mikee: Noisefest.

Linda: And the Noisefest. Balazzo, Noisefest, and the last Los Angeles tour.

Frank: Kimo’s.

Linda: Are there Kimo’s that you were in Erika? There were but I don’t know which ones.

Erika: Maybe only one.

Mikee: The last one at the Cherry she had that robe on.

Linda: Yeah, so Kimo’s is no… was there one Kimo’s?

Mikee: Yeah, there was. The one with Xtian.

Linda: Which one was that though?

Mikee: I don’t remember which one it is.

Linda: We could look it up when we get in the house and tell you which one.

Erika: I think it was after the leprechauns.

Mikee: Probably the Mutant Mother Lovers. The one with Jerome. It was the Mother’s Day one.

Linda: So the one that’s Mutant Mother Lovers. That’s part of the title of the gig. So that’s the one to go for ‘cause Erika’s in that.

Sheri: Ok. We’ll have to check that out.

Frank: Balazzo.

Linda: Yeah, the Balazzo one is a good one. Should Mikee turn the camera off? He wants to know. He dare not do it. Should he turn it off? Wait till the last minute. There’s a lot of breakdown to do.

Frank: But you can just leave it running.

Linda: We’ll run the tape down.

Sheri: Are you trying to get the juice out of this breakdown?

Linda: You betcha! We always found the best stuff happens when the camera goes off. We never turn the camera off.

Frank: We did Erotic Play.

Linda: In the early 80’s Frank had this idea of making a documentary about people being beautiful as themselves rather than as a Playboy or some external picture of what beauty is. So he said I’m gonna go out and see if people will let us videotape them. I said Frank you’re not going to get anybody to do this. We’d come home with bags of phone numbers. So for like a year and a half, two years, we were full time videoing people, 2 hours at a shot. It would be Frank and I, the camera and the person, and we had these trucks of costumes. And Frank would say just have fun and play. That’s where he told me never turn the camera off, and that’s where we found you just keep the camera running because the good stuff happened.

Sheri: Off camera, or whatever.

Frank: People did amazing things.

Linda: Yeah, it really blew our minds. It turned into so much more than what our intention was. It turned into really the documentary of that. People would cry, they would just start crying. Why are you crying? Because the way I feel here is the feeling that I wish life could be but it isn’t, and it makes me remember that that’s what I wish life could be. And what is it? Just a feeling of being vulnerable really, of feeling safe enough that they could just be vulnerable and play, and not be protected. And that’s all it is, the form is just trying on costumes. That’s all it was.

Frank: They played with me.

Linda: Yeah, sometimes we would have a mat there and Frank would lay on the mat and they would play. We had gestures, this bag of gestures that Frank had created from a Desmond Morris book about common gestures that people do. He typed them up and we cut them into slips of paper and put it in a bag. So I’d pull out a gesture and you do the gesture with a person. We videotaped that.

Sheri: So you guys have been making art for a long time.

Linda: Yeah.

Sheri: It’s part of the core expression of all of it?

Linda: I guess. I don’t know if I’d call it the core but it certainly we’ve always done it.

Frank: Fun.

Linda: It’s fun.

Sheri: It’s a fun way to being able to interact with people. It creates like immediate intimacy in a way that you otherwise would take so long to get to.

Linda: Exactly! It’s like Luver and the Shaman’s Den show on Sundays. We have incredible people coming over here every Sunday night that will just sit down with us, and it’s like if we said “Do you want to come over and talk?”

Sheri: Yeah, there’d be like no reason to.

Linda: Do you want to be on my live internet show that will go on public access, you know. And then they’ll just sit down and everything is possible. You can talk to them.

Sheri: That’s what I’ve been experiencing just with this process. It’s like, especially the subject matter. It gets you to have these opportunities to have these conversations with people. Even whether it ends up being on camera or in the film or not, it’s more just the journey of having the conversations with people on an everyday basis. It’s a far more immediate access to intimacy than talking about movies or whatever else, the weather.

Frank: What we did here.

Linda: Right now.

Frank: Opens things up, even if…

Linda: You never use the footage. Just the act of it.

Sheri: Yeah, totally.

Frank: That is shamanism.

Jessica: You have the best laugh Frank. I love that.

Sheri: It takes a lot, it just takes a lot to be able to transcend all this stuff all the time. I don’t know, you guys really pulled it off, but…

Frank: Like what?

Sheri: Just like the rules around the limitations you place around what relationships should be, like what life should look like, like not constantly buying in, it’s like constantly trusting your own sense of intuition or spiritual direction and not second guessing it. Just really melting into is and fully living from that place. Because you know, I’ve have moments where I melt into it and then my brain kicks in and I’m like stop, stop, bad, bad, thing, thing, this, that, that, box, box. You know? So It’s just like to constantly live in that space, it’s an ideal space to live in but it’s very challenging for me anyway. I guess you guys pulled it off.

Frank: In the air.

Linda: We call it “in the air”. There’s stuff in the air. And then there are really times when we feel the stuff in the air. You know? And so it’s like what do you do? Well, say that. I’m really feeling stuff. But then what is it about? It’s just like kind of, it’s really us is what makes it doable. Because we have us. So no matter what’s going on we always have us. So then that’s the anchor. That’s the thing you hold onto that makes the stuff that’s in the air not, makes it go away.

Sheri: Did you ever think about not having us? Have there been times where like you or you or you have just said I’m outta here, this shit’s too much, it’s not what I want.

Frank: I am not stupid.

Linda: Yeah, really. It would seem pretty dumb to do that. I mean what is there?

Sheri: Didn’t it happen even earlier on? Like you for 15 years, like the first year, or you 5 years, the first year you weren’t like I’m out.

Mikee: Probably like one time I think I did it, but it was just for show really. It was like acting out something.

Linda: My experience of it was that it was harder at the beginning. And the harder was about me feeling like I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it. It was just like this is really hard. But I would always think, ok so let’s say I don’t do this. Then what do I do. I didn’t feel like I had any options. Frank calls that desperation. That desperation is a good thing. Cause that was me, I was like what are my options, so I guess I’m gonna have to do it, goddamnit.

Frank: Practical. This works. That doesn’t. Hence…

Linda: Yeah, that was my experience of having no other options because it was like this was the thing that works.

Sheri: (to Mikee) So did you leave your corporate environment? I guess they gave you the company so it became your company?

Mikee: Yeah, well she gave me the clients. Chevron and so on.

Linda: Chevron bought this house.

Sheri: Oh yeah?

Mikee: That was really the only one that was left at that point but it was a big job.

Sheri: So in those situations would you be like this is my partners. I’m trying to figure out the practical reality of what you call yourselves.

Linda: Oh, how do we identify? Family, we call each other family. Erika has some interesting conversations because as we said she works at this retirement home. It’s like a major large retirement home and she’s the director of enrichment. She’s like one of the big guys, she’s got like a staff person, and is very out in the open about what her situation is when it comes up, and so she just had a conversation with somebody and they kept asking questions and Erika kept answering, and they were just like…

Erika: She was blown away. She was like all I wanted to know was if you were married or not, that’s all you had to say. But she was blown away by it in a good way. She was like wow! You told me a lot! She was uncomfortable or something saying oh you don’t have to tell me. I’m like no, no, no. I slow all down, getting ready for a birthday dinner, taking my time. But she wanted to try to…

Sheri: Understand it.

Erika: You know, people say “So is that your husband?”

Linda: “Which one’s your husband?”

Sheri: Is anyone legally married?

Linda: No.

Frank: Like your boss…

Erika: My boss. Well, he’s never tried to put it in boxes. We had a very good conversation. He’s about my age. What else do we say about him? Justin in general.

Linda: Well through his family he became the head of this large retirement home because his father owns the company. So he’s Erika’s age and he’s running this place.

Frank: We are taping all this.

Linda: Right.

Sheri: Well, it’s your tape though.

Linda: We play our tapes indiscriminately.

Erika: We were stuck in a car together for a while and he was asking me questions about our life. He really wanted to know who owns what house, kind of like understanding how things work. And he was really like “Oh, that makes a lot of sense. I can see how that would really work. Everybody should live that way.” He got the feeling of it.

Frank: Everyday people get it.

Linda: Like our neighbors for example.

Frank: Betty.

Linda: We have neighbors in the apartment, Betty and Joe. They’re in their 70’s , they’re Christian, always going to church and everything, they just love us, our life. She calls us all the time and says she loves us.

Erika: They watch performances.

Linda: She’s always giving me jewelry, and so I’ve taken to wearing her jewelry as my costume because we don’t wear costumes, so I’ll just have Betty’s jewelry on. And now Erika wears Betty’s jewelry, and they always want to watch the tapes. And so they watch all the tapes. “Oh those pearls looked so good on you! I’ll have to give you some more.”

Sheri: That’s awesome. So it’s the same kind of theory you applied with the job. Take the half day off, let the guy know when you’re going to work, do the thing and then the world adapts.

Frank: Mikee did not tell…

Linda: His boss about the vacation thing.

Mikee: The tours, yeah.

Linda: One of the things Frank said is you’ve got to be right up front with your boss and say when we tour you’re going need to take time off work, because at the time we were doing a fair amount of touring performance art stuff, and Mikee didn’t tell her. So then a tour time comes up and that’s when we all find out he didn’t say anything to his boss about it. Bad boy.

Mikee: Worked out. No problem.

Linda: Yeah, it worked out because it was not a problem which was Frank’s point from the beginning. Just tell her and it will be ok. Where do you guys go next?

Sheri: Home because we’re both Florida coast and we just flew in today.

Linda: Oh, you just flew in today?

Jessica: I was in San Diego.

Linda: Oh wow, and then you’re just going back to Florida?

Sheri: We’ve got about 4 or 5 interviews lined up for tomorrow and on Sunday we go back.

Linda: Wowee. That’s pretty intense.

Sheri: I know.

Linda: Is that the way it’s been?

Sheri: Well, we’ve done some in Miami and then we’ve done some in New York. New York was a little bit more relaxed. I don’t know why we did it exactly so intensely this particular weekend. I think it’ll be fine.

Frank: How along are you?

Sheri: Well, we’ve done maybe 3 or 4 interviews thus far, so the plan is to get the next batch tomorrow and some more in Miami and then start to do some experts. And we want to do a little trailer and then there’s an event in NY called the IFP where you shop a work-in-progress documentary that may be picked up for distribution, so we’re hoping to get maybe a 5 or 10 minute trailer by the end of May or something like that so that we can submit it for that. So then in September we can shop it around to try and get a distributor. It’s just in the very early phases really. It’s just starting to happen, and then we got a music designer, and we’re going to mix in the animation, so that’s why your performances make perfect sense because that’s consistent with kind of what we’re doing in general. We’re going to be mixing some spoken work interviews with a lot of visuals and sort of animation and multi-media. See where it goes. So we’re not at ground zero. I’d say we’re at ground 2.

Linda: So it’s you two? You two are the ones that are doing all this.

Sheri: Yeah. It’s fun. It’s definitely the most exciting thing going on for sure. You know, feeling like you’re creating something. Feeling like the idea comes to you and then you just kind of put it out there and then see who responds, and then see where it evolves, and then see how it takes on a life of its own. You know that creative process.

Linda: Yeah.

Sheri: So it feels very much in that vein which is very exciting.

Linda: This is the first documentary you’ve ever made?

Sheri: Yeah. She’s worked on a lot actually.

Jessica: That’s why I was brought in. I’ve been making documentaries for 9 years so that’s really what my passion is, and I own and operation a video production company out of Miami. But mostly stuff that I do nowadays is commercial and corporate or music video, that kind of thing which can be really creative and really fun, but I love the story telling of documentaries. Just like something really raw about it.

Linda: Really fun.

Sheri: Yeah, you had fun?

Linda: Oh yeah! It was really fun!

Sheri: Me too!

Frank: One of the best interviews.

Linda: Yeah, because you were, even like the way you were sitting on the chair, you were just kind of back and you were all spread out.

Sheri: It’s really comfortable! You guys create a real comfortable space.

Linda: But like a lot of times the interviewer will get kind of like this, especially as they get into it they’re like this (tight). But you’re kind of like, you didn’t feel a lot of pressure to come with the next question or anything. You were just hanging out and would just look at us, and that allowed it to be something. I don’t know what you came in with but you certainly were just here with us so it made it feel nourishing and good.

Jessica: That’s been my favorite part of the project. Like I have no preconceived notions about what story we’re telling. So I come in and I’m just open to receive, and that’s just how it occurs for me, like truly listen.

Sheri: Which is part of the impetus too. Like who knows how it all plays out. It’s been an attractive journey just to kind of, and in the journey trying to see the lessons and the jewels from each experience. And we’ve also done, have you ever heard of landmark forum and stuff like that?

Linda: No.

Sheri: It’s just like some educational listen. So we’ve both been a part of that kind of a training, so it’s very much like…

Linda: Oh I guess we read it. You showed it to me on a website or that’s how I know it? How do I know it?

Sheri: It’s been around for years.

Mikee: One of the people from the..

Frank: Carol.

Linda: The person you’ve just been emailing. She was involved in that.

Jessica: It’s derived from EST. You’ve heard of EST?

Linda: Ah, don’t get us talking about EST.

Sheri: Not now because we’re on camera. It’s late. It’s 6am in my world. So it’s like a listen. It’s a way to be with people.

Frank: He…

Linda: Werner hired Frank back in the 70’s to take his personal staff and do an all day workshop with them because it was the year of integrity. Our personal experience with his staff and our attempts to arrange meetings with him and Frank which they had decided they wanted to do was anything but integrity.

Sheri: Oh shit.

Linda: And so when Frank confronted him with that he said “well how about I hire you?” And what he did was he said to his staff “I’m not making you do it, but I think it would be a really good thing.” So the whole staff signed on for this 12 hour all day workshop with Frank. At the time we taped everything like we do now, but it was audio tape because it was before everyone had video cameras. He said you can tape it but I have to have final ok on the use of the tape. Well, during the workshop, everybody except the lowliest person on the staff, the guy that’s the handyman dude, the mechanic dude, everybody else pretty much just admitted that they go along with this integrity thing but they sure don’t live it except for him. And he genuinely, you know Frank created these series of situations so it wasn’t them just them saying it, they were kind of put on the spot and it was revealed. Werner destroyed the tapes. Wouldn’t let them out.

Jessica: Wow. They just did a documentary on Werner which I don’t know really anything about him. EST was so in the past and they’re really refined it.

Linda: So is he still involved in the other stuff?

Sheri: No, I think he had to leave the country.

Linda: Oh, he had to leave the country?

Sheri: For tax evasion or something.

Jessica: So they actually started a new company.

Sheri: Yeah, I think the integrity pieces of his financials were questionable.

Linda: So the landmark thing comes from the whole.

Sheri: It’s got its origin but it’s decades later, like 3 decades later, living in the present versus the legacy of the intensity around that.

Jessica: And it’s powerful stuff. It’s really good.

Linda: So you both did that.

Jessica: Yeah. I’ve been doing it for years.

Sheri: Yeah, I’ve been doing it for years as well.

Linda: Wow.

Frank: I am available.

Linda: Final words.

Jessica: But are you flexible Frank?

Frank: I am very flexible.

Sheri: Don’t question the man’s flexibility now, especially since the camera’s going off. Don’t even speak to Frank anymore. He doesn’t have any use for us now that the camera’s off.

Linda: So we’ll start making trips in?

Sheri: Are you guys having dinner now?

Linda: Yes.

Sheri: You’re like a late night family.

Linda: We’re all nighters.

Sheri: Oh really!

Linda: This is an early dinner for us.

Sheri: Get outta here. What time did you wake up?

Linda: Well let’s see. Frank got up today at 5:30pm.

Sheri: Oh, you’re like vampire hours.

Linda: Yeah, kind of. We start working around 10-11pm. Well, not Erika. Theoretically Erika goes to bed at 1am but often that doesn’t happen, but she gets up for work everyday at 8:30am.

Jessica: I’m an early bird.

Linda: Alright so we’ll start then. You’re carrying everything in at one time huh? You can carry all your stuff?

Sheri: I can.

Linda: Yeah, ok.

Sheri: It was really nice to meet you. Thank you Frank. Thank you so much.

Jessica: Thanks Frank.

Linda: Pleasure.

]]> /esalon/2009/08/re-from-penny-arcade-sheri-falcos-interview/feed/ 0 Re: from penny arcade IV /esalon/2009/08/re-from-penny-arcade-iv/ /esalon/2009/08/re-from-penny-arcade-iv/#respond Thu, 20 Aug 2009 05:02:00 +0000 /esalon/2009/08/20/re-from-penny-arcade-iv/ (Sheri Falco wrote:)

thanks. as life would have it, i was just thinking about our interview with u and ur family this week. i will contact tom and see how i can be of service. hope u are well. the idea that got me thinking of our interview was me recalling ur phrase… i am flexible. glad to see that the universal telephone line is in tact

* * * * *

it’s always in tact! Hey, we covered a lot in that interview!

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

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