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Joanne Kyger cuke page


11/06/99--A letter from Andrew Main in response to cuke interview with Joanne Kyger. [in which he tells of his teen history with Joanne Kyger etc and which culminates with an impressive list of errata from the Kyger interview. Thank you thank you Andrew. As you can see, these interviews are not really edited. I go through them very quickly before I put them on (Rich Speel and some others have helped me too). I'm going to make these changes now. And I've got to get him to do this for the whole thing!--DC]

Enjoyed the interview with Joanne Kyger, which also brought up memories and associations. When Joanne was studying philosophy at UC Santa Barbara in the 1950s my father was also there, on a belated GI Bill; they became good friends, which is how I met Joanne, who occasionally watched my siblings and me (teenagers) for my parents. When I met Joanne again twenty years later, she said yeah, she and my father used to hang around together and talk about Wittgenstein; I know next to nothing about this famous 20th century philosopher, except he was a household word when I was growing up, and I gather he went about as fur as they could go with Western philosophy, as Joanne remarks.

Also why I remember Gary Snyder sitting at our kitchen table one evening; when I met Gary again in the 1970s he said it was at a party at our house where he "decided to marry Joanne." "I don't remember that," I said. "You were in bed," he said. Guess I was--and busy with my own tragicomic teenage concerns.

I remember vaguely that my parents went to hear Alan Watts one time, came back not very impressed. In the spring of 1974 when my father was in hospital in Berkeley, preparing to die, I told him the story of Hyakujo and the Fox, which Baker-roshi had told at Alan's memorial service the previous fall. My father thought that was pretty good.

My parents made a trip to the Bay Area some time in the late 1950s; I remember them describing how they'd visited some guy who lived in a little hut on a hillside, and had no furniture but sat on the floor! That was Gary at Marin-an, I guess. And I remember when Joanne went to Japan to marry Gary, so I overheard. Then about 1960 my mother took the three of us (me, sister & brother) on a trip to San Francisco; I believe we visited East-West House (memory a little vague after 40 years); I think it must have made some kind of subliminal impression, in later years other San Francisco communes where I lived always felt so familiar.

I don't know what you may intend to do with this interview, but while reading it I made some notes of spelling corrections &c you may be interested in. If you like I can make a copy of the text with these corrections included; or you can look them up yourself and change them if you wish. Anyway, list is below.

Thanks again, David, for bringing up these memories.

Andrew

---------------------------------------------------- Buchanan (street), not Bucannen

Giafu Feng, not Jafu: A Chinese Taoist master and teacher who spent a lot of time at Esalen, did (with Jane English) translations of the Tao Te Ching (Daode Jing) and Chuang tsu (Zhuangzi) which have become classics; now deceased.

Siskiyous (mountains?), not Siskews

McCandless, Ruth, I believe, not McCandles

infighting is one word (not in fighting)

Burt it would be, not Bert Watson (Burton Watson, translator of oriental texts)

It’s Irmgard Schloegl (not Schleigle), of "The Zen Teaching of Rinzai" (Shambhala, 1976)

Is it not SoHo (South of Houston) in New York (not Soho, which is London)?

accouterments (not accrutramonts/accruitraments)

Rainier (not Raneir) Ale

bonsai, miniature trees (not bonzai--confused with banzai, "10,000 years")

I believe the transmission is Inka, not Inca (South American Indigenous empire/emperor)

Wittgenstein (not Victenstein) Heidegger (not Heideger) Wienpahl (not Weinpaul)

I believe it's Miura (not Muira)

Beatles, not Beetles

Ruth Fuller's daughter Elenor - Eleanor?

Episcopalian, not Episcopalean

I think it's Osel Tenzin, not Tensing

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