Fahey: That's another thing Leary said; he said, he thinks that anyone writing a novel these days should have it half videoed.

Kesey: Yeah. In fact, I'm taking Cuckoo's Nest and reading Cuckoo's Nest into a video camera, just sitting there--

Fahey: Fantastic.

Kesey: Viking wanted me to do a recording for an audio book. But when you're actually raising your face up and looking into the camera, as opposed to just having a microphone, you have a lot more presence. This is the new edition, this ability to have your face pop out of the screen. 'Cause a good storyteller uses his face a lot, uses his eyes.

Fahey: Let's go back to the very early Sixties, to Perry Lane.

Kesey: OK, let's do [laughs].

Fahey: I've always been curious whether you had a sense of being the role model, the leader . . . history has kind of pronounced you the Father of the Counterculture. I was wondering if you thought of yourself as that back then, or if that's been something generously awarded to you.

Kesey: Oh, no. I don't even think of myself as that now.

Fahey: But back, then. Back in those heady times of the Bus trip and Neal Cassady . . . did you have a sense?

Kesey: I really did have a sense that what we were doing was important, historically important, in a way that still hasn't been understood or recognized. [pause] The Sixties aren't over; they won't be over until the Fat Lady gets high.

You think of the stuff that came out of the Sixties: the environmental movement, the feminist movement, the power of the civil rights movement; but most of all, it's the psychedelic movement that attempted to actually go in and change the consciousness of the people, either back to something more pure and honest, or forward to something never before realized, knowing that the places we were in, the status quo, was a dead-end--a dead-end spiritually and, as we are finding out, a dead-end economically.

That stuff that happened in the Sixties, all of us who were part of it . . . you can tell when you break new ground. If you're a farmer, you can tell that this sod has never been broken before, the plow is laying open great, purple earth and something comes out of it and you can smell it. When you're a writer, when I was working on Sometimes a Great Notion, I could tell I was breaking now ground; there's an energy that comes out, that's probably not unlike the energy that comes out of nuclear fission--It wasn't just me. It was not anybody. It wasn't rock and roll; it wasn't art; it wasn't cinema or dance.

Something was happening at that time, and it was a wave that some of us were able to surf on. And none of us started the wave; I don't think there's any way you could start the wave. The wave is still going.

After this recent tour across the country, I've run into people who I haven't seen the likes of for twenty years: really interested in something new, not just interested in sound-bites. There's a new seriousness, especially amongst college kids; they know that all of these simple old homilies really are not important.

I've been telling everyone that I'm mainly interested in warriors. Tim [Leary] is a warrior. Most of the people I run into are interested in being warriors. When they read Tim Leary, or when they go to see a movie by, let's say, Gus Van Sant, or when they go to a Dead concert, they're doing it not just to be entertained; they're doing it because they want to become better warriors. And we've had a real crackerjack bunch of warriors.

I mean, Allen Ginsberg is a tremendous warrior as time goes by. He's a warrior first and a poet second. There was a time when he forsook being a great poet, the future of poetry, and became a warrior. He uses his poetry to be a warrior. And that's the same way I feel about my writing: I'm much more interested in helping warriors know more about their task than I am in just trying to titillate them with stories.

Fahey: Did you ever meet Robert Hunter when you were in the Veteran's Hospital experiments?

Kesey: You mean the Dead's--

Fahey: The Dead's lyricist. Was he in there at the same time you were?

Kesey: Uhhm . . . yeah. I don't remember meeting him [fades] . . . he and Garcia didn't live far from us. There was a place called the Chateau; Hunter, I think, at that time roomed with Phil Lesh. And Garcia was at the same place. Oh, yeah. I've known Hunter for a long time.

Fahey: He's written some tremendous poetry.

Kesey: Yeah, he has. He was up here for our Field Trip last Fall. You know, everybody thinks Garcia wrote those songs; it was Hunter. Hunter doesn't perform or sing much, but he got out here and sung, and he couldn't remember the words to "Ripple," so all the audience had to help him out [laughs]. All those great dance songs; he's written so many. He's not as good as Dylan, but he's right up there.

I saw Garcia night before last down at Oakland. I emceed that show [audible smile]. It's like every ten years, all these people have to get together to check each other out and see what we're doing. 'Cause we don't see enough of each other; we're spread too thin. It's really good to get back together with Hunter; especially when you get [the Dead's second lyricist, John] Barlow. You get to talk about stuff that you've forgotten. That's why it's good to see Leary.