"intellectual firepower"

Excerpt from An Unpublished Interview by Liza Rage

Commissioned by Head Magazine, California, but killed because they didn't like the references to Mao....hmm....

 

 

 

Liza Rage: You recently published a collection of your plays, "The Breaking Manager." In the introduction, Richard Nash claims, "Hicks, by writing plays, is, in a conventional sense, foregoing his ethical duty to change the world; in effect renouncing the revolution." How would you respond to this comment?

SH: I don't know where he gets off making that distinction, because he's using a very outdated kind of approach to politics versus art. And even the most radical people I know, like you mentioned earlier, Revolution Books. The party that runs that bookstore, they're some of the most far left people that I know. So far they're not even left sometimes. Anyway, even they wouldn't make a distinction between writing plays as necessarily apolitical or not activist because the Maoists know that art is integral to the revolution. And that you've got to use art to spread the message. And Mao Tse-Tung said the most beautiful things about art making. He said, 'we have to make art in the language of the people.' And what is a good play but exactly that.

 

 

Liza Rage: The photo on the back cover shows you gesturing to what looks like a dead rat on the pavement. What does this represent?

SH: It's me as a New York City super, you know I did a lot of years as a super, I killed a lot of rats. I killed about twenty rats. I've got a tattoo on my right deltoid of the Owl of Minerva in flight with a dead rat in its claws. That's why I told you at dinner about how symbolic it was when I saw that snake with the rat in the desert, on the Suicide Diaries trip. I thought it was a very specific sign for me. I looked down in the desert of Texas on a break from driving, and almost right in front of me, a big rattlesnake slides by fast with a rat still squirming in its jaws, still writhing, still writing its last will and testament. In that, I saw political and spiritual symbols, a big metaphor from God there, I felt blessed by that sight of the rat dying. It has to do with objective right and wrong, whether or not you believe in a form of objectivity.

Liza Rage: You've put a lot of your personal life into your writing. Would you relate this to the sense of discomfort often felt by your audience when they actually see your plays?

SH: Yes, especially if my mother's in the audience.

Liza Rage: Richie Unterberger wrote the following statement about Crass: "Unlike most bands delivering rebellious diatribes, they actually lived out the uncompromising politics of their songs." References to Crass constantly come up in discussions of White Collar Crime. Do you find them relevant?

SH: I think it's a relevant comparison, sure. They also put out their own records, I'm putting out my own record with White Collar Crime and Soft Skull. But you know, I just don't feel conscious of making a choice to live out the things I believe in. This happens to be what I'm doing. Some people think it's extraordinary, I don't think it's all that extraordinary, I think everybody should act in a way that they find virtuous and their whole life should be working for something good. And of course the problem is in capitalism, we're given these shitty jobs that don't allow us to fulfill our full potential. And that's the crime of capitalism, that the human soul is crushed by it. And I guess anybody that's achieved doing what they actually want to do, like Crass or Ian MacKaye or Henry Rollins, then they fell like this is the way that everyone should be. I'm not doing something that's all that extraordinary, I'm not actually all that extraordinary, I'm just doing what I think is the most natural thing in the world. Which is not putting up with, having a higher standard and a much more sensitive bullshit meter, yes, but other than that, no real extraordinary talents. I mean, yes you're expressive, yes you have rhythm, you can carry a tune, but what is it really? Nothing is really making me all that different from a lot of other people. I see people and I see so many commonalities, I see genius everywhere. This is what Whitman was saying! He saw it everywhere. He saw the march of hunters, old men in sailboats…. I was reading Whitman to my twelve year old cousin Courtney last night. It was so beautiful! Her eyes were just so wide, I made it come alive for her. I said, the President is there in the White House for you, and it's not you who are here for him. The sum of all known reverence I add up in you. You have heard that our union is grand and that our Constitution is grand. And I am not here to say that they are not grand and good, for they are. But all the sum of all their known value is in you. And you've heard that the religions of the world are grand and the Bible is grand, and I am not here to say that they are not grand. For they are. I am just this day as much in love with them as you. But all of their light comes from you.

Whitman was from here, down the road in Melville, I've been to his birthplace.

Liza Rage: Is there a certain point that you can remember where you decided that you, personally, were going to do something?

SH: Have I done anything? I feel that I've failed in so many things that I've actually done. I mean Soft Skull has yet to turn a profit. It's been a big cash drain. I'm sure some of the investors are wondering when they're going to get any of their money back. We've skirted bankruptcy twice now I think. We have come so close, your nose so close to the pavement. I haven't really done anything yet. But I've got some plans.

Liza Rage: But something happened, however many years ago, where you told yourself, 'I am going to do something about this.' Which motivated what you're trying to do now.

SH: Ahhh, seventh grade. I saw The Day After, on television, the movie about nuclear war, what a nuclear war would look like. And it scared the shit out of me. Literally, and I couldn't sleep. I was petrified. And my worldview changed. And suddenly Ronald Reagan was not the friendly guy I was raised to believe. Although my dad was anti-Reagan, my dad was always a Democrat. But my mom was a big Reagan type, former sixties progressive. I also got recruited to be Mondale in a Reagan-Mondale debate in seventh grade. And that also taught me how to argue. So from seventh grade I was forced to participate in this political debate, forced to play the role of Mondale. And it was a huge political education. After that I was a Mondalite. I was for Mondale in '84, that goes back to 1984. Then I saw Dukakis get slaughtered. I couldn't fucking believe it. Now I understand why, I studied Atwater's biography. Atwater was the Rove in that election and Atwater was a better Rove. Rove has yet to accomplish as much. Actually no, I think Rove actually pulled off a miracle in Campaign 2000. Nobody thought he was gonna be able to do it. Maybe he made a pact with the devil. Or with big business, who have better lawyers.

Liza Rage: There has been a division between those who would like to physically attempt to overthrow the corporate system and those who would like to work to change it. Has your stance on this changed during your years of activism?

SH: A big picture question. Because God, if you are going to participate in capitalism you are walking a tightrope over how much of this political system do you believe in that you're participating in? Selling out is when you no longer have enough soul to be your own man amidst the capitalist orgy, to walk your own path and not give in to the lust for riches and power. There's the temptation, again, the Devil and the Christ. I'll tell you this, there's been times when I've found myself infatuated with capitalism. And I don't usually talk about this, but there are things about capitalism that I've come to defend in arguments. And it's gotten me kicked out of ISO. But I think it's also made me a better leftist to have gone through that. To have understood capitalism by participating in it. I feel that's the best way a socialist can go through and create something better and more egalitarian beyond this. It's just a temporary post-Cold War conservative backlash that tells you that the market is everything, capitalism is the only way, there is no alternative to corporate globalization. This is just temporary. Like Lou Reed says, 'aww, come on babe, it's just a temporary thing.' Socialism is gonna come back in a big way in the next hundred years. Especially after September 11th. The whole Bush-Rove thing is obsolete. People are seeing the way they manage information, they way they manage truth, the way they govern. It's like, are you joking? We didn't vote for you in the first place, there's no way you're getting reelected in four! You guys are fucking dropping the ball! The same thing happened with his father in '92, his popularity rating was about 92% at Gulf War timebut but didn't see him getting reelected a couple years later, did you?

Liza Rage: What about people who physically want to overthrow, who think it is possible to overthrow the government by force, versus the people that want to get into the system and work to change it?

SH: Well, I think the former people are right, and the latter people are wrong. You can't reform the system. Look at John McCain. You can't be a ruling class politician that says, 'we need campaign finance reform' and get anywhere in this country. That guy went up against the big money establishment, as a Republican, and he didn't get anywhere. So, if the 1999- 2000 campaigns are any clue, the system will not reform itself. So therefore we need militant working class force, we need organization and focus, we need discipline, and we need to go to war. Our kind of war.

Liza Rage: Can you see bringing these two attitudes together?

SH: You're talking about reform versus revolution and I've been in both camps. I sometimes have experimented with the idea that capitalism would reform itself and stop being such a bastard's game. But I haven't seen it in my own lifetime and I don't think I'll see it in the rest of my lifetime.

Liza Rage: If someone is going to, say, break windows at a McDonalds, who is really hurt besides the guy making minimum wage who has to stay and clean it up?

SH: That's an easy question. The guy that has to clean it up has to work there anyway. And I think the guy that cleans it up, it's in his interest to have witnessed this experience. Because if somebody actually had the balls [or the estrogen] to break a window, and put their own ass on the line legally, I say more power to them. You're taking a strike against a huge amount of money, it's nothing to them in terms of expenses. What you're doing is sending a shock wave of fear deep into the heart of capitalism.

What's more, there's this whole debate about how "violence" includes the destruction of property. This is only true if you put property at the same level of value as human life. Property is not alive, it is a dead thing, it is symbolic of all the workers in the past who gave their lives to produce for the system. To get Biblical and prophetic again for a second, look at what Christ did to private property in the temple. He made himself a whip out of a rod and leather string and fucked shit up! He chased the money changers out of the temple by smashing their tables and their booths. Now ask that question again, who do you think is more of a savior, more of a prophet, more of a risk-taking revolutionary spirit, more of a Christ-like presence here? The protestor smashing the window of the McDonald's, or the cop/McDonald's Manager/President that vilifies this person?

Liza Rage: Do you think property destruction during demonstrations is the most productive use of anarchist anger?

SH: Yes. That and reading Marx.

Liza Rage: So what do you think about those Gap store displays, where they now have those dummies in there wearing little T-shirts with the anarchist sign on them?

SH: That always pops up. It pops up, and then it goes away. It's like punk rock getting co-opted by major labels. It happens, and then we're back to the scene in a couple years, in the recession. We're back in the garage. So the anarchy symbol is a sexy symbol. There's something inherently anarchist in the American culture, maybe it's where the Republican party really gets its soul, like a vampire. They have this kind of like "Fuck you, I will not be like everyone else, I am my own man. I am an uncommon man." That's part of the Republican credo, "I do not wish to be a common man, I wish to be an uncommon man." Lee Atwater had that on his grave. It's kind of like this Merle Haggard, ballsy, kind of American individualism. There's something very rebellious about the American spirit, let's just put it that way. The left can use that and the right can use that.

 

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