Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - UNEXPECTED CONVERSATION: Orson Welles

Episode Date: January 18, 2025

 In this episode, Rick connects with writer, director, and actor Orson Welles. His work spanning the worlds of radio, television, film, and theatre, Welles is widely regarded as “the ultimate auteur.”

Tetragrammaton Prop is a stage term, it's an abbreviation of the expression stage property. Give me an example. Anything that you may see up on a stage besides the actor and the scenery is likely to be a prop. For example, your ex-girl is a prop and the Romeo's vial of poison, the telephone and dial-in for murder, they're all props. I see. And they're props in real life. And we're self-conscious. We put our hands to our neckties and our cigarette,

all that sort of thing. In other words, a prop is just what it means in the dictionary. It's something to prop ourselves with. It's a crutch, something to lean on. I remember the first night I was ever in Hollywood, I was speaking. After dinner speaking, I'd been introduced as a great after dinner speaker.

I don't know quite why, because I'm not. But I had been, and this is a great Hollywood dinner. Every star I'd ever seen in my life, I was tremendously impressed. There they all were, and a lot of other grand people besides, Maharajahs and all kinds of title folk and I'd been called upon. Of course being very frightened and very eager to please, I started a funny story which I'd heard that day and I'd gone on for a while when it dawned on me that I'd forgotten how it ended. I continued with the story.

I hoped that somehow I'd find an ending, somehow be able to invent one, and the people were all looking very eagerly, waiting for the finish, because they knew that although the story was very boring, it must be boring for a purpose. Obviously, it was boring because the end was going to be so tremendously amusing that they often looked at me eagerly, and I continued and continued, and I thought, how in heaven's name can I get out of this thing? So what did you do?

I could pretend to faint or drop dead or rush out and yell fire. I continued to invent comical finishes that elicited no titters whatsoever, quietly and secretly praying to myself to heaven. And then my prayer was granted. Ever since then, I've been a great believer in the efficacy of prayer because just as I'd given up hope, just as I was wondering how I could get out of this situation,

the walls started to shake. The chandelier fell down from the ceiling onto the table. The people jumped out of the table. This was California, remember? Wow. It was an earthquake. Unbelievable. I was saved.

My Hollywood career was saved by an earthquake. Tell me about doing theater in Europe. First night audiences are always an experience. In this theater, I faced the very first first night audience of all in Dublin. That grand capital of eloquence and violent opinion where where audiences enjoy a delight in the privilege of free speech and you can sometimes hear as much dialogue from the gallery as from the stage itself. Where first nights often end in literal riot and actors have been

known to seek police protection from the public they're trying to entertain. Well here I am in Dublin on that very first of all my first nights Now there's a reason for this lofty calm It's the bliss of ignorance Like a baby on a trapeze or a drunk taking the crest to run on the seat of his trousers I was happy because I didn't know any better For underneath all that makeup is a brash young amateur who hasn't seen his 16th birthday, and there's no assurance like that of the utter greenhorn. Nobody, least of all an aspiring actor,

is scared of being hurt until he's fallen on his face. You've all seen Donald Duck and Pluto the Pup in the Disney cartoons when they run off the edge of a roof or off the ledge of a cliff, run quite a distance, then they happen to glance down when they realize where they are, there's nothing under them. They fall. So you don't know what to fear yet.

Well, a beginner is rather like that. He goes tripping merrily out into space, no technique or no knowledge or anything of that kind, treading air as a swimmer treads water, and then he suddenly realizes where he is. In a theater full of people. And he realizes what that means. Then the happy dream changes to a nightmare.

A terrible truth has just dawned on me. That an audience is not so much a compliment to an actor's ego as a challenge to his capacities. Yeah. Well, I've just received my first challenge. This was Ireland, remember, where audiences take a sort of professional pride in unpredictability. It wasn't until many years later, in fact only recently, that the police had to be called out to protect me from the wrath of an Irish audience.

But that's another story Maybe I'll tell that some other time But I had already received by that very first night of all a pretty good Intimation of what was in store for me in the future. I Remember the line that I had just spoken Never forget that line as long as I live. Pretty girl had just left the stage, Betty Chancellor, Dennis Johnson's wife.

And I was supposed to look after in my characterization as the wicked old Archduke, watch her go letterlessly and chortle, and say, a bride fit for Solomon. He had a thousand wives, did he not? Now just at this moment when I said that line, he had a thousand wives, did he not? A voice, somewhere in the audience,

about the fifth row of the stalls spoke up. I said he had a thousand wives, did he not? And the voice said, That's a dirty black Protestant loy. Wow. Well, I've given that remark a good deal of serious thought. As a matter of fact, I've been brooding over it for about 20 years and I still haven't thought of an adequate reply. How could you? And anyway, that moment, the sound of that voice, was my first experience of feeling like somebody unfortunate in Disney. That's when it was born in upon me with frightful force that as an actor I wasn't so much skating on thin ice as walking in thin air.

When I realized where I was, I started to fall. When I realized where I was, I started to fall. That's a long time ago. I've been falling ever since. Wow. And speaking of falling, it was actually a fall that saved me in Act Five. I was supposed to dive apoplexy in Act Five. Actually, I was half-dead from fright.

I was supposed to draw my sword, shout wildly, ring the bells and fire all the cannons, and then slump lifelessly into my throne. But I had just made the terrible discovery that an audience is not necessarily a group of friendly well-wishers. An audience can be a pit full of ravening lions, and besides, there was the commentator in the fifth row. So I pulled at the sword and discovered that was the commentator in the fifth row. So I pulled at the sword and discovered that it was stuck in the scabbard. Well, of course it was stuck in the scabbard. It was opening night. That always happens. There's a little invisible man who goes backstage on every opening night and glues the swords into all the scabbards

and short circuits the telephones and jams a few doors. That's purely routine. As I say, I was a beginner. I didn't know about the invisible little man. So I pulled at the sword and pulled and pulled. And after a while discovered that I was left with nothing but my death speech. So in a voice which reverted to the warble of a boy soprano, I cried shrilly,

ring the cannons and fire all the bells. The effect of this was stupendous. And before anyone out front could volunteer another comment, and in a mood of suicide, I flung myself head first down the whole flight of stairs. Wow. Made as it was in the full muscular flower of my boyhood, that was quite some dive.

It was the only thing I could think of at the moment. I didn't care whether it killed me or not. It almost did. But also it brought down the house. Yeah. Because the Dubliners, besides being very keen critics, are also generous. And I don't suppose that anything like that backflip had been seen on the shores of the Liffey before. Mm-hmm. Here was an actor who could fall on his head and really make you believe it. In all the long, striving years since my debut,

I've never received such an ovation. That's an amazing story. Did you always want to be an actor? You see, I'd come to Ireland not to act, but to be a painter. I'd always wanted to be a painter. In the spring of that year, I'd come to Ireland not to act but to be a painter. I'd always wanted to be a painter. In the spring of that year, I'd arrived, bought the Don Quijote cart, traveled about Connemara, and found myself in Dublin in the autumn of that year without what are technically referred to as financial resources.

I had a few shillings, but I blew those on a good dinner and a ticket to the theater. The theater was the gate. And on the stage, I recognized in a minor part a young fellow that I'd known in the west of Ireland for a while. He's a folklorist. I went backstage to say hello to him and he introduced me to the directors Edwards and McLiaimore and I heard myself introducing myself to them as a noted actor from the Broadway stage. Why'd you tell him that? Now what had possessed me, I don't know why I told that what, but the idea of earning my living as an actor was so preposterous that it seemed to me probably that the preposterous story was the only possible way of proposing it. I see. It was a very good part. I had intimated that I was willing to stay on in Ireland for a short season if sufficiently interesting roles could be found.

The first interesting role was the Archduke, and that's how I started, as I say, in the theater. It was an easy start. I must confess to you that nothing's been easy since then. Do you think it was beginner's luck, or do you think it was something else? Every year I learn how much I've yet to learn. But on that first night of all, I made an important discovery. I learned that an audience can be a very fierce creature. It can turn suddenly dangerous.

That fierceness is generally in defense of the fragile miracle, which is expected every evening in the theater. The audience defends that miracle. The artist presides over it. Nobody performs that miracle. Everybody contributes to it. And above all, it must not be treated lightly. Respect in the presence of that miracle is a part of the normal respect of the professional

for his job. And I learned that job and learned to love the theater. Respect naturally followed. Did you have a strong idea going in of what to do as an actor? When I started playing in a play, it was like playing a game. I didn't care whether I won or not. Now, of course, I do care very much and I often find myself on the losing side of things, but I wouldn't trade my love for the theater,

for all the hits on Broadway and the West End. And I'm not proud of my start. I'm not proud of having begun in the theater as an adventurer. And I'm most sincerely grateful to the angry gentleman in the fifth row who raised his voice in the darkness of that Dublin theater and made me the precious gift of stage fright. It was the beginning of respect.

Very shortly thereafter, as I told you, I threw myself on my head. It seemed the only thing I could do, falling on my head, is probably what made me an actor. Yes. Certainly it's what made me a professional. Do you find that changing your appearance helps to find the character you're playing? In most of the films that I appear in, I put on a false nose, usually as large as I can find. And right at the start of my career as an actor, I was playing in a play called Mugu of the Desert, which was in blank verse.

I was playing the role of Kossrois, King of the Persians. And he had an enormous nose, like one of those Persian miniatures that you see. I put it on, began here and ended there, beard and so on. And in the second act I had to come out with a young lady, a very pretty young lady, and a gentleman ended there, beard and so on. And in the second act, I had to come out with a young lady, very pretty young lady, and a gentleman had to attempt to assassinate me. Another gentleman, Mogu, the title role,

whipped the dagger out of the would-be assassin's hand. On the opening night, the first night of this play, instead of whipping the dagger out of the assassin's hand, he whipped the nose off my face. And I was revealed as you see me now yeah and of course I was very embarrassed didn't look very Persian so I put my hand in front of my face I had a long love scene to play with the young lady in blank first with your hand over your nose you can imagine how well that went down on the first night in Dublin.

You were as beautiful as in the desert. I don't know what all finally I had to say a line at the end of the scene at climactic point. I had to say to Magoo, had you not brought me into the temple at the time you did Lord Magoo, I might have lost my throne. And instead of which I said, had you not brought me into the temple at the time you did, Lord Bagu, I might have lost my nose. Ha ha ha ha. At which point everybody burst into derisive laughter, and the curtain slowly fell.

That, of course, is a first night that I'll never forget. How were the reviews in your early days? For us, a critic at a first night is rather like a fairy godmother at a christening. From our point of view, it would be so much nicer if the critics would only come on last night, and they could exercise their undoubted flair for funeral orations. I remember one first night in Boston, it was, Henry V. We were doing a show on a revolving stage that was a turntable, a show on a revolving stage. That is a turntable, big circular stage of the turns.

And when it came the great moment of the charge, I see you stand like greyhounds at the slips and so on. I had devised a plan which involved real bows and real arrows. Really? This was folly on my part as it later turned out but I had a large target made of cork just in the wings and 40 of the English soldiery played by Harvard men, students from the University of Harvard, this was

in Boston, 40 of these stalwart fellows were to shoot their arrows into the wings into the cork target. However, the revolving stage started to turn a little bit too soon. Oh, no. There I was saying, Cry God for Harry England and St. George, and as I said it, the turntable slowly moved so that instead of looking off stage left, we were looking straight into the audience, and 40 bows and arrows were pointed right into the theater. And I thought to myself, as I came to the tag, well, they're university fellows.

They're not going to just shoot into the audience. And so with a certain amount of confidence, I launched into the great line, cry God for Harry England and St. George. It was a tremendous roar. And I noticed with horror that the roar was from the audience because indeed they had shot the arrows into the audience. Wow.

Forty of them. We even scored a direct hit on the Dean of Critics. What are the odds? I thought of the story because of what sometimes can happen to a critic on a first night. Critics really ought to be more careful. They'd like to dedicate a little story about a critic and a show of ours. It's a murder story. About a critic who didn't like our shows. Name was Percy Hammond. Poor fellow, dead now. So I told you some murder story. The play was Macbeth, which was laid in a West Indian island suggestive of Haiti

at the time of the Black Emperor Jean Christophe. Well sounds like a great idea. It worked surprisingly well, because the actors were very good and changing the blasted heath to the fetid jungle wasn't as ridiculous as you might think, because the actors were very good and changing the blasted heath to the fetid jungle wasn't as ridiculous as you might think, because there was all that vitality on the stage and the actors were so good and of course above all the witches translated terribly well into witch doctors, voodoo witch doctors, and these witch doctors were specially imported from Africa because the governments in the West Indies took the view

That there was no such thing as voodoo So we had to go all the way to the Gold Coast and import a troop and they were quite a troop Yeah, headed by a fellow whose name was acid data Daffodil did they speak English? The only other member of the coven who had any English Was a dwarf with gold teeth by the name of Jasbo. At least we called him Jasbo up in Harlem. I don't know what his African name was.

He had a diamond in each one of those gold teeth. He was quite a character. Fairly terrifying. The other members of the troop not only spoke no English, but didn't seem to want to speak at all. They confined their communications to drumming. It sounds like an incredible production. I suppose that the entire history of Shakespeare in the theater has never been a request on the first day of rehearsal for 12 live goats. Part of the cast. We said, what?

And Asa Dada said, goats. Black goats. For make devil drums. How did you find the goats in New York City? Well, we couldn't just go out and look for 12 live goats. We had to requisition them. This being a government project, we had to file the requisitions in triplicate. You can imagine what went on in Washington.

We heard about that. But the goats were finally provided. The sacrificial knives were sharpened. And the accompaniment of wild shrieks from the voodoo priests, the poor beasts were sacrificed. You can imagine the effect it had in the community of Harlem when the whole Lafayette Theater was reeking suggestively

with the odor of blood. Wow. Finally the drums were ready and the drumming began. The legend grew backstage and indeed all over the community of Harlem that to touch the drums was to die. Wow, did anyone touch the drums? Indeed one poor stagehand did touch a drum and did fall from a high place and break his neck and

after that Asadatta and his rhythm boys were treated with a little respect. And then we opened with Macbeth and the drummers were fine and the voodoo sequences, that is the witch scenes, went very well indeed. And everybody seemed to like the show. Critics were very kind to us except for Mr. Percy Hammond, who was a very good critic. Did Percy review the show? I don't want to speak disrespectfully of the dead, but he did write a notice in which he said that Negroes should never be allowed to play anything except Negro subjects, which

went down, of course, very badly up in Harlem and was taken to be an unfair attack on the Negro race. And at the height of discussion on the subject, I was approached by Jasbo, who said to me, this critic bad man. And I said, yes, he's a bad man. You want we make beriberi on this bad man? Did you know what he meant? All this dialogue is very much like the native Berers in Tarzan and so on.

I apologize for it, but it's really what went on. I said, yes, go right ahead and make all the very, very want to. They said, we start drums now. I said, you go ahead and start the drums, just be ready for the show tonight. They said, drums begin now. He die 23 hours from now. Wow. Drumming began. Fine. Show went on. I went home, woke up next morning, proceeded along ordinary course of work, and bought the afternoon paper to discover that Mr. Percy Hammond, for unknown causes, had dropped dead in his apartment.

Wow. So you got to see a voodoo ritual carried out successfully in real time in New York City. I know this story is a little hard to believe, but it is circumstantially true. And I thought it might be interesting for some of our critics to hear what can happen. So you're putting critics on notice. Well, this is another voodoo witch doctor. It's a Brazilian.

I ran into him in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro, a few years ago. I'll tell you the story before I do, I want to assure you that I don't advocate voodoo. I don't even believe in it. That last story about the critic willy he died we all do die and i'm sure that percy hammond who had a wonderful sense of humor would like to know that

story of his passing has been woven into a broadway legend it's hard for you to say you don't believe in voodoo after that story what happened in rio in the case of brazil we were down there making a documentary film, partly for the government but mostly for Hollywood Studio. This was at the time of the Good Neighbor Policy. And it was my task to make a large technicolor documentary on the subject of the carnival.

So we took up the whole question of samba and the Samba orchestra. And when I'd nearly finished the film, it occurred to me that the origins of Samba lay in Voodoo ceremonies, particularly in Shangu, which are practiced up in the favelas, those strange native settlements on the mountains, which are right in the midst of the city of Rio. And so I arranged with a good deal of difficulty to film a Voodoo ceremony. How did you manage that? We had protracted conversations with the head of the group and an advance payment was arranged for. He came to my office in Rio to discuss it and it was my unhappy lot to have to tell him that the filming was off,

because I had just received word from Hollywood that the president of the film studio had been removed. That sort of thing happens not only in South American governments, but also in film studios had been rather abruptly removed. A new president was in his place, and the entire project was off. There was no more money to spend on voodoo ceremonies. Oh no. And the witch doctor assured me that this was deeply offensive,

and that he and his group took it very badly. And I said I was most sorry about it myself, and I did want to finish the film, and I did hope he understood. Ah, but he said we have spent money. We have bought entirely new costumes. And I said, well, I'm awfully sorry, but there just isn't any money from Hollywood to pay you.

And I don't know how I can explain to this new administration that the voodoo ceremony must continue. Certainly not in the time already agreed on. And I was called away to the telephone again. And had a long conversation on the phone, begging and pleading to be allowed to finish this picture, which we rather liked. The material was very interesting

and I thought it would be a good thing to finish since so much effort had gone into it. And I was pleading my cause for some time, praying that we would be able to. And I came back to the office and found that on my desk in a script of the film was a long steel needle. Wow.

It had been driven entirely through the script. And to the needle was attached a length of red wool. This was the mark of the voodoo. So the film was cursed. The end of that story is that... it was the end of the film. We were never allowed to finish it. There are more things in heaven and earth... that are racial than I dreamed of in our philosophy. Yes.

Before stage, you got your start in radio, didn't you? I was, for many years, radio commentator in America. During that time, of course, I had occasion to speak on a great variety of subjects. Of all those subjects, one of the most interesting stories, one that sticks most interesting stories, one that sticks most vividly in my memory, had to do with a Negro soldier. The boy had seen service in the South Pacific. He was on his way home. Home was in one of the

southern states. He was on a bus on the way to Lille. He asked the bus driver to let him off. The bus driver refused abusively. That was an argument. At the end of which a policeman was called in who dragged the boy out of the bus, took him behind a building and beat him viciously. And when he was unconscious, poured gin over him, put him in jail, charged him with drunkenness and assault.

When the boy regained consciousness, he discovered that he was blind. Oh my God. The policeman had literally beaten out his eyes. Now, of course that sort of policeman is the exception. That sort of policeman is a criminal in uniform. It's a terrible story. I had the satisfaction of being instrumental in

bringing that particular policeman to justice. The case was brought to my attention and I brought it to the attention of the radio public and we did finally manage to locate this man and to bring him into a court of law. But there is another sort of police abuse. I think we all suffer more or less. And we suffer at the hands of good policemen. Decent policemen. Policemen doing their duty.

What do you mean? These are all the little petty annoyances. Don't seem very important, but add up to an invasion of our privacy and an assault against our dignities human beings. I'm brought in mind all this because just now I've had my passport renewed. That made me think of all the forms and police questionnaires we have to fill out. The government bureaucracy is crazy making. One of the unpleasant things about your passport,

getting a new one, of course, is that you have to have a new picture, which you invariably look older, and sometimes a little worse than older. That's the idea. I wonder why it is that so many of us tend to look like criminals in a police lineup when we have our picture taken for a passport.

It's true. Why do you think that is? I suppose it's the unconscious foreknowledge of the scrutinator, which our likeness will be subjected that gives us that hanged-dog, guilty look. What's the purpose of all this paperwork? really Theoretically, of course a passport is supposed to be issued for our protection But on how many frontiers and how many countries I've handed over my passport with all the emotions of a Apprentice forger trying to fub off a five-pound note on the Bank of England guilty conscience I suppose but Well, it's there's something about being ticketed and numbered.

It gives the man the feeling of being a piece of baggage or a convict. It does seem over time our freedom is continually more and more challenged. I can't help thinking wistfully of our father's day when the world hadn't grown so small that one could move about in it without being watched so closely. Nowadays, of course, we're treated like demented or delinquent children, and the eyes are always on us.

On Father's Day, of course, there weren't any passports. The only countries that required an entry visa were Montenegro and Russia. Here I am in the hands of the police. This is an illustration of a story. It happened to me in a country that I think had better be nameless. There's enough trouble in the world as it is. First of all, I'd better explain that I carry, or at least carried, what Mr. Roosevelt once described when I showed it to him as the cheapest diplomatic

passport in the world. In an American passport, I don't know whether it's true in an English one or not, but in an American one, on the front page, there's a place that says, in case of death or accident, please notify. And then you usually put the name of some near and dear one. In my case, I put, in case of death or accident, please notify Franklin D. Roosevelt, Washington, D.C. He was president at that time.

But at the time of this story, when I was stopped by the police, Mr. Roosevelt had died, Mr. Truman was president, and an election was coming up in which Truman was running against Dewey. Now, I made the mistake that a great many of my fellow countrymen did. I imagined that Mr. Dewey was going to win.

And because I wasn't very fond of Mr. Dewey, I had written in my passport, in case of accident, please notify Thomas Dewey White House, Washington, D.C., my thought being that the least I could do to devil Mr. Dewey would be to arrive in a coffin some morning and it was therefore that passport which I handed to the police at 11 o'clock one wintry night in the mountains when they jumped out in the road in this country which as I say let it be nameless and withdrawn guns demanded what it was that I had in my baggage. Were they border guards or customs police? There wasn't any frontier.

There couldn't be any question of customs. So I asked them cheerfully and by way of conversation whether this was a raid on dope smugglers or black marketeers or whatever. They didn't feel like joking. They said, it is not for you to converse with the police. Open your bag. And I said, well, I'm afraid to because the bag will blow up. for you to converse with the police, open your bag."

And I said, well, I'm afraid to because the bag will blow up. And they asked me what I meant by that, and I explained that I had an atom bomb, a small one in the bag, so wired to the catch that if you open the bag, there would be a dreadful explosion. Why? I said that I was going to La Scala, I didn't like the opera and I was angry at the management, I was going to make an outrage and that was what I had in my bag. I said you mustn't joke with the police. Argument went on some

time, very unpleasant, got to be about two in the morning. One of those long drawn-out practical jokes that you regret. It's amazing that you kept it up that long. And finally they got around to looking at my passport. I was of course grateful, most grateful that they did, because when they saw the name Thomas Dewey, they said, oh, excuse us, Mr. Dewey, please continue. Wow, that's great. And I don't know quite what that story illustrates, except that it shows that passport does have its purpose.

I don't want you to think from the story that I'm an anarchist. I'm against the police on principle, or that I believe in fighting them by practical jokes, much less by lawlessness, just the contrary. Wow, you've had an incredible life on the road. Now, I know I was wrong to make all that trouble for those police in the mountains of that nameless country. But you see, I do a lot of traveling. I've been traveling all my life, as a matter of fact. I was born in America, but raised partly in China and Sent about the world good bit before the war and great deal during it and even more afterwards I have an office in one country and a studio and another the last film for example. It's made in four countries so I have a good deal of experience in crossing borders and coping with

with the coppers all over the world. And it is true you know that we're invited in the travel posters to be tourists and once we attempt it we do discover, I'm afraid, that we're guilty until proven innocent. That's a terrible feeling. That being so, I think a word or two about red tapism and bureaucracy, particularly as it applies to freedom of movement, might be in order. Sure, that's true of all of us. Think of all those forms we have to fill out, for example. You know what I mean by police forms. We get them in hotels and in frontiers in every country all over the world. We're asked,

state your your sex, male or female, for example. Well, obviously I'm a male, I'm a man. Why should I have to answer that? State your race and religion in block letters. Why? Well, why should I have to confide my religion to the police? Frankly, I don't think anybody's race is anybody's business.

I'm willing to admit that policemen has a difficult job, a very hard job, but it's the essence of our society that the policeman's job should be hard. He's there to protect, protect the free citizen, not to chase criminals, that's an incidental part of his job. Free citizen is always more of a nuisance to the policeman than the criminal. He knows what to do about the criminal. I know it's very nice to look out of our window

in our comfortable home and see the policeman there protecting our home. We should be grateful for the policeman, but I think we should be grateful too for the laws which protect us against the policeman. Which laws do you mean? There are those laws, you know, and they're quite different than the police regulations.

But the regulations do pile up. Forms keep coming in. We keep being asked to state our grandmother's father's name in block letters and to say whether we propose to overthrow the government in triplicate Y and all that sort of thing. Why do you think there's so much red tape? You see, the bureaucrat, I'm including the bureaucrat with the police, as part of one great big monstrous thing, the bureaucrat is really like a blackmailer. You can never pay him off. The more you give him, the more he'll demand.

If you fill in one form, he'll give you ten. Now what are we going to do about it? Obviously, if we go on giving in to this thing, will you say, just a minute, you say, for example, why shouldn't we give in to it? Why should we make trouble for the policeman? Well, the truth is, why should the policeman make trouble for us? Why should he ask these things that are stated quite clearly in our passport?

Our passport tells us everything that the policeman doesn't need to know. Why should we make trouble? Well, we don't because we don't want to get into trouble with the police. We're told that we should cooperate with the authorities. I'm not an anarchist. I don't want to overthrow the rule of law. On the contrary, I want to bring the policemen to law. You mean government overreach. Obviously, individual effort won't do any good. There's nothing an individual can do about protecting the individual in society. I'd like it very much if somebody would make a great big international organization

for the protection of the individual. That way there could be officers at every frontier. And whenever we are presented with something unpleasant and we want to fill one of these idiotic questionnaires, we could say, oh no, I'm sorry, it's against the rules of our organization to fill out that questionnaire. Oh, and they say, oh, but it's the regulations we say. Very well. See our lawyer, because if there were enough of us, our dues would pay for the best lawyers

in all the countries of the world. We could bring to court these invasions against our privacy and test them under law. Would be nice to have that sort of organization. Less rules would be great. It would be nice to have that sort of card. I see the card as fitting into the passport, a little larger than the passport, with a border around it, in bright colors, so that it will catch the eye of the police and they know what they're dealing with.

The card itself should look rather like a union card, I should think, a card of an automobile club. And since its purpose is to impress and control officialdom, well obviously it should be as official looking as possible, with a lot of seals and things like that on it. And it might read something as follows. This is to certify that the bearer is a member of the human race. All relevant information is to be found in his passport. And except when there is good reason for suspecting him of some crime, he will refuse to submit to police interrogation on the grounds that any such interrogation is an intolerable nuisance,

and life being as short as it is a waste of time. Any infringement on his privacy or interference with his liberty, any assault, however petty, against his dignity as a human being, will be rigorously prosecuted by the undersigned ISPIAO. What is the ISPIAO? That would be the International Association for the Protection of the Individual Against Officialdom. If any such outfit is ever organized, you can put me down as a charter member. Music Tetragrammaton is a podcast. Tetragrammaton is a website. Tetragrammaton is a whole world of knowledge.

What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammaton? Counterculture? Tetragrammaton. Sacred geometry? Tetragrammaton. The avant-garde? Tetragrammaton. Generative art? Tetragrammaton. The tarot? Tetragrammaton. Out-of-print music? Tetragrammaton. Tetragramatin. Generative art. Tetragramatin. The tarot. Tetragramatin. Out of print music. Tetragramatin. Biodynamics. Tetragramatin.

Graphic design. Tetragramatin. Mythology and magic. Tetragramatin. Obscure film. Tetragramatin. Beach culture. Tetragramatin. Esoteric lectures. Tetragramatin. Off the grid living. Tetragramatin. Alt. Spirituality. Tetrachametic lectures. Tetragrammatin. Off-the-grid living. Tetragrammatin. Alt.

Spirituality. Tetragrammatin. The canon of fine objects. Tetragrammatin. Muscle cars. Tetragrammatin. Ancient wisdom for a new age. Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day.

Take a breath and see where you are drawn.