Q. Throughout this weird, tragic story that came out of Carnegie Mellon and Seattle the FBI has abandoned its tradition role as antagonist of the Left and defender of Conservative, even fascist society in America in favor of incitement of foreign crooked terrorism, endorsing 911 and Peter Gabriel. Whatever became of that traditional role and why did they take up with lunatic rock stars?
A. It's a reasonable and important question. Someone who really has some experience and courage from the FBI should answer that question. I assume part of it is that they don't want to admit that Reagan estranged them from American culture and the result was a royal flip out in Our Commonwealth when they tried to understand what was happening and failed.
Which is a caveat emptor. Before I try answering I want to admit I don't know. When Lew Lapham saw the letters, my deafness, the title of my father's book he should have immediately understood what had happened and moved to protect me, get me to safety and let me tell my side. He didn't and my life was destroyed, but more important over the long haul is that there was this creepy uprising by the Gay community led by those who started AIDS.
I will now try to answer.
It seems to me what happened is that Reagan was eyeing the leadership of the rock industry, their egoism, their facetious, deceitful indulgence, coupled to this bizarro idealism and thought, this is absolutely fabulous. They are criminal. They are out of touch with reality. They think they know everything. They dabble in mysticism. They dress up like Medicine Men. What fun this will be and he allowed Robert Fripp to convince him, my oh, my yes, you are as wise as they come, and divined himself into the inner sanctum, thinking the while, jump down hold pee pee, what a wise man I am, I have been recognized, I have arrived top sacredly to the inner sanctum, which in reality was just a ruthless, cold, ugly, tawdry, callow, mean-spirited place conjured by the deviant and criminally insane in America, not so much the FBI but Reagan.
Penis Gabriel rubbed his hands and spoke authoritatively of the psychological value of a common enemy, little Jimmy pimmy whimmy dimmy, deaf white suck.
Q. How did Seattle get involved and so effectively invade Pittsburgh, hijack the situation and turn it into a nationwide Jimi Hendrix Jonestown this way?
A. I suspect through devious old James Child. Child mentioned Seattle to me. He loved to grow his hair a little long and act very sentimental about the Left, their idealism, the challenge presented. He...I don't really know how to explain Jim. He was this caring type who saw the whole thing as leading in the end to fighting. He loved to box. He was a huge, big man. He I am sure is the one who got on the horn, as Riback would say, and laughed whose this pussy out of touch who just slept with a the black man's wife diddling homies with carrots framing Roger Rabbit who cudda saved John Lennon man? And Seattle Art Museum, who may well have come to Pittsburgh in 1974 with Warhol and hired some people for the play on Karl Knowledge, just lying in wait, screeched, Whaaaaaaaaaaaat? More or less on cue and come a runnin' nah man hands off we are the sanctity, infinite unto von high.
And Penis Gabriel again, let's play a game. We'll help the guilty for ideological sway of the truly, truly weird. No one will ever say weirder than thou again, which they always hated.
Q. Why did King Crimson betray Jimmy Crary?
A. That's at the root of the problem, but that at least I can answer pretty simple: what they perceived as ethnic and status gains. Reagan was an outsider who wanted to be an outsider. Fripp was an outsider who wanted to be an insider. Jimmy loved King Crimson. It wasn't obsession, it was tenacious love for something. Leslie Katz was a Valedictorian Jewess. For that sort of status symbol Fripp would tell any lie, hurt anyone. Jimmy was highly and righteously expendable to his military religious aspiration which became increasingly inflated, dangerous, Oliver Northish and megalomaniacal as he insinuated his creepy pipsqueakness into Warner Brothers and was detected by the genuine brutality of Oliver Stone, whose mind is like Eno's. Faced with poets he was like, call the Hells Angels, man, myuh.
Pittsburgh has a folk aspect that one can actually love. Its pace is not ruthless. Time passes there romantically when you just live there a long time. You can love the place. It's special as they like to say. In the 80's however they really picked up the cynicism and played it for all it was worth loud and clear and I think they distrusted the intellgience that it was the mirror image of Germany and that Reagan was deluding them. It was something they espoused because they had this sneaking suspicion that to challenge it would mean actually and truly standing up to the maniacs who had chewed up the East End during the 70's. They didn't want to have to engage that problem, ever, so they started developing South Side. Many of them very secretly admired me when I launched a war of words at Reagan and talked. The fascism was something they espoused but didn't in their heart actually believe was what they heard me saying it was. Ringo gave them assurances, too.
When King Crimson actually assassinated Jimmy Crary, actually, forever, starting this long tragedy slide of criminal hostility and terroristic violence towards me, a gulp when through Allegheny County. Up until then they had in their hearts wondered if maybe just maybe there wasn't a thread of sincerity between the world we had in Pittsburgh and that sappy idealism that came out of the musical scene in the 60's, something that can only be made sense of through love. Nope. Fripp just assassinated Jimmy. Gulp.
Q. Why?
A. There's no answer, but a role was played by the allure of Midori Goto as an item of military pimp rather than cultural idea from the naive fantasy level that I think has to exist when you think creatively as a poet. The possibility of a dream, a utopian dream in musical society is sincerity, and its very anti-fascist, so Jimmy's tenacious hold on his place as a naive idealist, despite the catastrophic letter bomb sent me that Seattle still can't comprehend for what it was, and see Jimmy intelligently, rather than as a hate object, was a hardwon vantage point. The noble idiot would have been the proper response if Robert Fripp were not a tragic character.
But with the Machiavellian hostilities coming out of Carnegie Mellon for being found out, the Reagan sycophancy of The McCartney Estate, the plastic reality in vogue at the FBI, these spoiled and brilliant backrippers from England came along with Skrewdriver, bullies from Michauck, and tore up the town, overly precious sprites with their Amnesty International tricorders doing drug testing, and of course, in the case of Midori, there was the wry private joke of being insiders to Hitler's revenge and all the mixed loyalty that entails.
Warhol chimed, why I had just the think for the kids, a Hidden Hun from East End to outhigherness twee Jimmy in the nature of reality. The Gays looked at the scroll, and echoed, damn right you do, nevermind what all was really happening. Warner Brothers said, that's ours. We'll make the movie. A sideshow to this, not very important if the men I'd written to had been the worthy individuals I'd taken them for, who might have advised me how to go about tactfully finding a way to print the letter safely, is that I was hesistant to run the letter about my childhood directly in Pitt News, so Gabriel, Lapham and Posvar read it before anyone else saw the details. Instead of realizing how horribly in jeopardy I was, British labor immediately saw the potential for blackmail. So did Jesse Jackson, especially after the Alpana set up.
Q. You were suspicious and the full impact of what they'd done was withheld from you, yet you made a very memorable protest.
A. It's important to understand that the fact that those who wrote the letters had grabbed them and were setting to use them was not in fact hidden from me. Tom O'Connor who set up the Kelly School had me going to a sly looking office and copying architecture plans on an architecture plans copy machine on the corner near Joop Offerman on the street Mariam Lucarelli lives on, and the man would look at me maliciously and with a great impression while I wondered what was going on and planned to find out. Even though the joke was on me I also knew that it wasn't. The joke didn't exist. Something very, very serious and deadly was happening. So I put name in the newspaper and made clear, when or if I find out what's going on you're going to hear from me.
Eno of course saw this situation, knew I wanted out and want the information to reach the public and he clucked, not so fast.
Q. So the FBI teamed up with the rock and roll industry?
A. More like rock and roll teamed up with Reagan and the FBI isn't anything more than their handmaiden to begin with. Its important to remember that the maliciousness and evil of Pink Floyd is anything but concealable, hardly to the mind of Nancy Reagan and her understudies. They saw them for what they were and said, well good.