the PARIS REVIEW
Amusing Myself: An Interview with Bob Neuwirth, by Gary Lippman, Oct. 6 2014
Down the decades, Neuwirth, now seventy-five, has made the scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Berkeley, Paris, Nashville, Santa Monica, and Austin, stopping in at the fabled festivals of Newport, Monterey, and Woodstock and associating along the way with Janis Joplin, Lou Reed, the Coen Brothers, Brice Marden, T Bone Burnett, Joan Baez, Shel Silverstein, Elvis Costello, Sam Shepard, Kris Kristofferson, Larry Poons, The Band, and The Band’s former front man, Bob Dylan. In Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan recalled the decades when he and Neuwirth were especially close: “Like Kerouac had immortalized Neal Cassady in On the Road, somebody should have immortalized Neuwirth ... If ever there was a renaissance man leaping in and out of things, he would have to be it.”
For someone on the receiving end of such high praise from the famous, though, Neuwirth has a rather low view of fame itself. “Being famous is a full-time job,” he told me over lunch recently in the West Village. “You can get more done being anonymous. I know how people can get famous, but they have to want to do that ... It has to tickle the G-spot of their minds, because being anonymous is so much more powerful. You can get so much more done if you’re not worried about fame and fortune. You can get a lot done.

Me, I don’t give a shit. I’m just there to do what I do—for me. If anyone else gets enjoyment out of it, great, but I’m really trying to amuse myself. I was trying to think of something to do onstage, and I was driving past Will Rogers Ranch and I thought, You know, you can have an act by having a non-act …”

end interview.

J Swan: It must come down finally to this: all we name and discuss is nonsense and much chatter about nothing. What is real cannot be captured in a thought. When I cease thinking, I know.

When I cease thinking, I know.

All power is in knowledge after all. With that power at hand I proceed. Without it, I am a blathering fool.

And yet, people, not swans, insist upon treating their writings and speech as the ultimate knowledge and so long as that continues to be the road taken we shall get the same results we have always gotten. All praise to the author! To the copyright owner go the spoils! (blame)

All golden language worthy of a genius points only; does not claim to be the thing to be studied. It is much like this: the wise person tells us to “know thyself” so we proud-fully canonize the words by placing them in libraries and take great pride in our heritage and we never even look to see what it is we are. What fools!