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- "Uni,"
by Bobby Beausoleil, courtesy of Clair Obscur Gallery
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- After gaining insight into the
60's occult scene of which Anger was one of the ringleaders,
I went on to pick up the more journalistically mainstream Joan
Didion's essay book, "The White Album," another tome
that delves into the psyche of the late 60's. I call this period,
'the bridge era,' and in one way or other believe that we are
at this very moment experiencing another 'bridge era.' Just as
the 60's kids came out of the product-reverent and superficial
50's, my generation has come out of the label-conscious, shallow
80's. The 60's activists, like The Weathermen, fought their battles
violently and radically.
-
- Today's generation uses information
technology and propaganda as its alternative fuel for revolution.
Some cases in point are political pranksters "The Yes Men,"
and the anti-globalization magazine Ad Busters. Both generations
have been forced to endure a war on foreign soil that many feel
is 'the wrong war.' Both wars have been marked by massive protests.
In both cases, the protests were ignored by the government. In
some ways, I feel that today's America stands on the brink of
another "1969." So I have become fascinated with this
cornerstone year, its 'bridge era,' and the paths of its counterculture
kingpins.
- About the same time that I was
starting to delve more in-depth into this subject, I was approached,
at an art opening at the Clair Obscur Gallery in Los Angeles, by the
gallery's director. The creative space--in the middle of a rundown
neighborhood near LACC, which is fast becoming an edgy arts neighborhood-has
begun to build a reputation for hosting fairly controversial
shows. I met the gallery director at a party for "Legs,"
a book that a fetish photographer friend of mine, Dave Naz had
just released.
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- Clair Obscur's next show was
to focus on rare images of Sharon Tate-including both a personal
photo shoot by Polanski, as well as some gruesome police photos
taken at the site of the murders. It was next show opening on
March 5, explained the gallery director that he was interested
in me covering. It would center on 21 paintings by Beausoleil
from prison. I agreed, and he arranged for me to take the collect
call from Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in Pendleton,
Ore. on Thursday, February 10, 2005, at the gallery. Beausoleil
had been transferred there under the Interstate Compact Agreement
after an early leg in San Quentin State Prison in Calif. The
story had piqued the interest of my editor at Salon, who agreed
to run it as a dispassionate Q&A.
- Prior to our phone interview,
I thought a lot about my subject; first as a person, then as
a counterculture figure; lastly as a murderer. Born in the upper-middle-class
suburb of Santa Barbara, Calif. on November 6, 1947, Robert Kenneth
Beausoleil spent part of his early teenhood in juvenile hall
and reform school. It was during his time in the latter at Los
Prietos Boys Camp, a reform school in Santa Barbara--he told
writer Michael Moynihan in the book "Apocalypse Culture
II"-that he expressed his artistic ability, with the encouragement
of his peers, by drawing pictures of nude women.
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- Flowing with the nomadic rock
n' roll zeitgeist, he eventually made his way up to the Bay Area
in his late teens and became entrenched in the legendary San
Francisco underground music scene. He even ended up doing some
odd vocals on Frank Zappa's first album with the Mothers of Invention,
"Freakout!" (1966), as one of the people chanting on,
"Help, I'm a rock" and 'Who are the Brain Police?"
- Most noteworthy among his forays
was a stint on rhythm guitar with The Grassroots, which would
evolve into Arthur Lee's seminal psychedelic band Love. Apparently,
Lee (who also did time in prison, for illegal possession and
use of a firearm) later moved to Laurel Canyon-hub of the bohemian
counterculture scene in the late 60's and early 70's. From the
general local hearsay at the water cooler known as the Laurel
Canyon Country Store, it seemed as though Beausoleil may have
lived with him there (à-la "Kato" Kaelin), at
the top of the canyon on Mulhulland Drive.
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- As an arts and style writer,
most of my topics-albeit 'cutting edge'-had never so literally
connected to that expression, as with fresh-faced knife-wielding
assassin, Beausoleil. Most of my subjects have pushed the envelope
in that they have challenged social perceptions through their
creative work. I have written about bio-artists that use genetic
material in their pieces, as well as performance artists that
show up in public spaces impromptu dressed as medics. I have
also written about fluffy things like the Playboy Bunny reunion,
and the moustache trend. I associate more with being a writer
who is personally interested in creative people, than with being
a fair and balanced journalist. But the moment I wrote my first
article for the Los Angeles Times, I mysteriously ceased being
labeled a writer, and had the serious and limiting title 'journalist,'
imposed upon me.
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- And actually, as I am writing
this one week after Hunter S. Thompson's death by suicide, I
feel the need to be one of those in my generation willing to
carry his torch. I don't believe that the concept fair and balanced
really exists in journalism-not in these times when the expression
has been reduced to being the slogan for an ultra-conservative
news network. I would rather be honest with myself and embrace
my biases. I decided that I was not going to ask Beausoleil to
recount that night when he committed murder. I wanted to approach
him in the same way I had approached all my other subjects. Through
my words, he would be an artist first, a human being second and
(again) a murderer last.
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- I poured over the Moynihan interview.
It not only recounted Beausoleil's life story but his sexual
life in prison. The tales of attempted rape scratched the surface-touched
upon something society is perversely fascinated with, but the
least interesting part of his story, in my opinion. I was drawn
to Beausoleil's attempt to describe an intimacy with himself
and in the sacred act of experiencing sexual sensations of the
Tantric variety. He spoke of connecting his sexuality to his
drawings-creating, in my mind, an act of lovemaking for the posthuman
age. As a product of the objectifying 80's and its concomitant
angry, divisive sexuality, I was intrigued by what sounded like
a pure synergy with the many parts of the self. It seemed that,
despite his personal monsters and his loathsome environment,
he had found a way to tap into the very precept of intimacy (something
I had feared via feelings of sickly-sweet revulsion from the
moment I came of age).
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- Subjectively speaking I was
fascinated by Beausoleil's rather adolescent erotic artwork from
the 80's. The work depicted his, "pagan sensibilities,"
in the form of delicate, small-breasted nymphets (as Humbert
Humbert called them in Vladimir Nabakov's Lolita). They were
fairies juxtaposed alongside fetishistically isolated phalluses.
"[They] play off the Aphrodite/ heroine's archetype,"
Beausoleil divulged. One, "Cupid in Trouble," seemed
to be a tongue-in-cheek jab at himself, using his own nickname.
It shows a 'goddess' who has been pierced by Cupid's arrow, taking
the mischief-maker over her knee for a paddling. Again, that
Yin-Yang sensation befell me, and I became enchanted, even a
bit obsessed by the drawings. At once adolescent and adult, they
resonated with my own sexuality.
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- "Art became a replacement
for making love with a woman," he told me. In 1982, he married
his wife Barbara, who had contacted him after having seen him
on a television interview for a Sacramento, Calif. news station.
After exchanging letters, "We met in mid-1981. She came
to visit and asked me to marry her. We've been married 23 years."
When I heard Beausoleil speak tenderly of her interest in goddess
literature, after having seen a photo of her on her web site,
I was sure that he had succumb to the archetype prescribed to
him by his rough environment-the understanding, unconditionally
loving mother goddess.
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- The early part of the couple's
marriage included the privilege of conjugal visits, but according
to Beausoleil, "That ended about 12 years ago when they
made some changes in California." He explained that the
couple shared a spiritual union; that it was impossible to have
a traditional marriage under the circumstances. He said that
theirs was a bond beyond traditional description, but that he
was also 'close' to quite a few other women on the outside. The
alternative-to place his focus on his daily surroundings-was,
it goes without saying, unthinkable.
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3 OF 3
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- Copyright © 2005
Shana Ting Lipton
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