Linda Rosenkrantz - Talk

VINCENT: But isn’t that flirting with the psychotic? Isn’t it like a psychotic interlude? I’m scared, Emmy.

EMILY: Of course, it induces a false psychosis, that’s what the drug is all about. But the term psychotic means a flight from reality, and the reality, as I just said, is based upon what we all define it to be. If we took those limitations away, a psychotic would just be someone on another level.

VINCENT: Why don’t we take them away?

EMILY: Why don’t we? Because we have to function within orders, within laws, within rules of society, whatever it is people say we have to function in. You know that as well as I do.

VINCENT: You’re brilliant, Emmy. But look at the sand. You know , when you walk over there it’s not a canyon.

EMILY: Why isn’t it? Because I know all about sand, I’ve walked on it since I was a child, I know you can walk on it and you’re not going to sink. But if you never have walked on sand before….

VINCENT: So you’re saying you have to go back to the innocence of not knowing.

EMILY: Back to a total innocence of not knowing.

VINCENT: And if you were on LSD and you walked over to that sand, you might feel you were sinking?

EMILY: I could feel that the sand might be a grave beginning to open.

VINCENT: In other words, you don’t really believe that there are objective limits.

EMILY: No, I don’t believe that we, who are all sane, know all there is to know about that sand. I think that if we took LSD right now, we’d know something else about it. The thing is, if we were babies, we couldn’t say what we felt about it; we’d just have a certain kind of feeling about the sensation. We couldn’t articulate it, right?

VINCENT: Yah.

EMILY: And it wouldn’t be the same for both of us. Maybe for me it would be dirt or shit and for you it would be some kind of cream like your mother used or hair or what it feels like to touch your clothes. Whatever these things are, they wouldn’t become sand right away, with a word.

VINCENT: Look, I understand that under LSD, I might experience this coffee cup in huge, monumental fashion; I just wonder if there isn’t a reality outside that. I mean I can make this into a thousand bigger or different qualities, but after all it is porcelain, it is four inches in diameter, and it can hold maybe half a pint of liquid. Aren’t those limits that exist outside any potential it has in our psyche?

EMILY: Yes, but those limits are absolutely infinitesimal.

VINCENT: What do you mean?

EMILY: That the possibilities are infinite, whereas the limitations are infinitesimal; that this is porcelain, that it weighs half a pound, that it holds half a pint, these qualities, confronting the possibilities of it, are minute. They’re nothing to what it could possibly be. You know that Marsha, for example, would never take LSD.

VINCENT: I know she wouldn’t.

EMILY: She’s terrified of all drugs. She needs her controls, she can’t give them up. Of course she will someday.

VINCENT: You think she’ll take LSD?

EMILY: No, I think someday she’ll surrender, she’ll love.

MARSHA: Okay, Sidney Greenstreet or Peter Lorre?

EMILY: Sidney Greenstreet.

MARSHA: Joe DiMaggio or Arthur Miller?

EMILY: Joe DiMaggio, he went to the funeral.

MARSHA: He arranged the whole thing. Jack Kennedy or—

EMILY: What about me?

MARSHA: Wait a second, you’ll have your turn, you’ll be asking me. Jack Kennedy or Fidel Castro?

EMILY: That’s very close. When you first said it, I didn’t think so, but it’s really very close.

MARSHA: Neither did I when I first said it.

EMILY: I think Fidel.

MARSHA: Fidel Castrated.

EMILY: Jack Ruby or Lee Oswald?

MARSHA: Lee Harvey.

EMILY: George Washington or Abraham Lincoln?

MARSHA: Are you kidding? George Washington with his teeth coming out every night and the wig coming off?

EMILY: Lyndon B. Johnson or Harry S. Truman?

MARSHA: Harry Truman.

EMILY: Barry Goldwater or Larry Rivers?

MARSHA: Barry or Larry? Larry.

EMILY: Bob Dylan or Bob Rauschenberg?

MARSHA: Rauschenberg. They have sort of the same face, in a way.

EMILY: Henry Geldzahler or Andy Warhol?

MARSHA: Henry Geldzahler. You?

EMILY: Henry, he’s sweet.

MARSHA: Sweet little porky, porky-pie.

EMILY: Robert Mitchum or Robert Creeley? You’d get more out of the experience with Creeley.

MARSHA: Yeah, but Robert Mitchum’s not stupid. I heard him on the radio. Wally Cox or Henry Geldzahler?

EMILY: I think I’d rather sleep with Henry than anyone. Henry’s a winner.

MARSHA: I got one. Sam Snead or Harry Truman?

EMILY: Well one’s a swinger.

MARSHA: So’s Harry, he shoots in the sixties.

EMILY: Harry Truman.

MARSHA: Ava Gardner or Eva Gabor?

EMILY: Ava Gardner. Eva Gabor or Zsa Zsa?

MARSHA: I think they’re the same person. John Lindsay or Bill Buckley?

EMILY: John Lindsay. You can’t help being influenced by ideology.

MARSHA: Vittorio DiSica or Vittorio Gassman?

EMILY: Gassman as he is in Italy, not here.

MARSHA: Allen Ginsberg or Gregory Corso?

EMILY: Allen.

MARSHA: Sonny Liston or Glenn Gould?

EMILY: Sonny Liston.

MARSHA: Hoagy Carmichael or Stokely Carmichael?

EMILY: Black power. Allen Funt or Bert Parks?

MARSHA: Allen Funt. He’s sort of cute, in his voyeuristic way. Harold Rosenberg or Clem Greenberg?

EMILY: Clem Greenberg.

MARSHA: Roy Lichtenstein or Claes Oldenburg?

EMILY: Roy. Paul Thek or Beni Montresor?

MARSHA: Beni.

EMILY: Really? Not me.

MARSHA: Susan Sontag or Marisol?

EMILY: Susan Sontag. Marisol would be too passive. Hubert Humphrey or Lyndon B. Johnson?

MARSHA: Hubert.

EMILY: Either way. H.H. either way or Lyndon B. either way. Okay, I got a great one. U Thant or the guy who plays Charlie Chan in the movies?

MARSHA: U. Morey Amsterdam or—

EMILY: Who?

MARSHA: Morey Amsterdam.

EMILY: Never heard of him. Bill de Kooning or Claes Oldenburg?

MARSHA: De Kooning. Oldenburg or — we need some new blood. Let’s think of some serious people. Marlon Brando or Paul Newman?

EMILY: Paulie. Miles Davis or Ornette Coleman?

MARSHA: Miles. Menotti or that guy Gino from last night?

EMILY: Menotti.

MARSHA: Yves St. Laurent or Leo?

EMILY: Steinberg?

MARSHA: No, Leo Castelli.

EMILY: Who was the first one?

MARSHA: I don’t remember. Who was it?

EMILY: Yves St. Laurent. Then it’s Leo Castelli, definitely. Paul Newman or Henry Geldzahler?

MARSHA: Henry! Yay!

EMILY: Zeke Sutherland or Michael Christy?

MARSHA: Are you serious? You know we can’t use people we’re involved with in real life.

EMILY: Right. Who aren’t we involved with? Bette Davis or Betty Grable?

MARSHA: I’m involved with Bette Davis, I think she looks like me. Norman Mailer or Philip Roth?

EMILY: I’ve never met Philip Roth.

MARSHA: It’s an interesting choice.

EMILY: Yeah. I’ve never met Philip Roth, but I think it would probably be Mailer.

MARSHA: It would. Jonas Mekas or Gregory Markopolous?

EMILY: Gregory Markopolous. He might make me a superstar.

MARSHA: John Chamberlain or Ivan Karp?

EMILY: John Chamberlain.

MARSHA: Edward Albee or Henry Geldzahler?

EMILY: Henry! Yay!

MARSHA: Hey, I got a whole new thing, the Beatles, Dionne Warwick, Leslie Gore, Gore Vidal, the whole rock n’ roll contingent.

EMILY: Okay, Ringo or Paul?

MARSHA: Paulie. Dionne Warwick or Leslie Gore?

EMILY: Dionne Warwick. Gore Vidal or McGeorge Bundy?