Crazy-Wisdom-Yogin Chogyam Trungpa prodded Allen Ginsberg with “Why don’t you do like the great poets do, like Milarepa, trust your own mind, weave your poetry out of the air instead of writing it down?”
“Why do you think the director changed the symbolism in the play?” our English teacher asked after we saw a touring production of T. S. Elliot’s THE MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL which had five knights/murderers instead of four. Each student gave what s/he thought an intelligent answer.
When I said, “He is either the producer or the director’s boyfriend,” the class rioted.
“You have the wrong attitude. If you leave this school today you will starve to death in two weeks,” said the principal.
This was in mid winter in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
Thinking I had a friend in Toronto i came here.
I didn’t have a friend here.
I arrived friendless, homeless and with just enough money to buy a beer. Drinking age was 21. I wasn’t.
“Drink your beer and talk with me,” said an older man when the police walked in.
“You are new in town. Do you have a place to stay?” he said when they left.”
“That man you went home with is a very bad person. You should not be seen with him. I will help you find a job,” a fellow said the next night.
“There is a bed in the basement,” he said when we got to his place.
“Turn around,” he said when I reached the bottom of the stairs.
I looked up. In his hand was a hammer.
He said, “Give me what I want or I will kill you.”
The next night the man I met the first night said, “Had I warned you, would you have believed me?”
“Not yesterday but from now on, yes,” I replied.
He helped me get a job.
A few years ago I read in Joseph Campbell’s THE POWER OF MYTH that when a young man puts his foot on the path of the hero the first person he meets helps him while the second does him harm.
“What were you doing in MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL?” I asked the young man who had played the 5th knight/murderer when chance brought us together. He said, “I was the director’s boyfriend.”
Gordon Bowness wrote, “Reg Hartt talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and…”
I do.
All art at its best is one person talking.
Most talk through other media because they lack the courage to do it in the flesh.
Most look for safe places to present their work.
Emo Phillips sent me a post card on which he wrote, “I honestly believe you are the greatest teacher I know for only you preach the evil of teaching. Well, not only you. David Mamet in his book TRUE AND FALSE confirms everything you have been saying all along.” 
“The educational process prepares those with second-rate intellects to thrive in a bureaucratic environment. Obedience, rote memorization, and neatness are enshrined as intellectual achievements…Like the belief of the terminally ill in medicine the belief of the legitimately frightened in the educational process is a comforting lie.”—David Mamet, TRUE AND FALSE.
“Most teachers say you should go to school to get your degree to have something to fall back on. Aside from being a huge lie, that also creates a very high level of mediocrity, because nobody who really believes that is going to take the leap of faith required to be a serious artist. Stay out of school.”–Ellis Marsalis to his sons Branford, Delfeayo and Wynton.
Most look for safe places to present their work, live their lives.
Not the avant garde.
We are on the front lines where people get killed.
The single most unsafe place I know of to present my work is in my home.
Stay out of school.–Reg Hartt