Blasting on the street corner

In the last few years of his life UG continued his lifelong habit of getting in a car and going for long rides. Since he didn't drive after he left America in the late 1950s, he depended on willing friends to take him around. These drives often lasted for hours, sometimes for days! The most arduous and ridiculous drive was one in 2005, which started in Gstaad and eventually went through Germany, Holland, Belgium, France and back to Switzerland! It lasted for 4 days and involved 3 cars and about 15 people. We all thought it was going to be for a few hours, have a coffee somewhere, then return. Nobody had packed a thing; not a change of clothes, a toothbrush, or a razor! At the end, it seemed that the only reason we had gone on this insane tour was to find out that it could be done.

It was experiences like these which convinced me that I could just not understand UG. He was unhelpful when you pressed him for answers about why, when, and where. He almost seemed to not really know. During these odd journeys, after many hours of sitting in a car, we would find ourselves sitting in a rest-stop cafe for a short break. UG would never eat much and often took along his own simple food. He did have a little coffee with whipped cream to, "keep company with you guys", and then he watched with bemusement as we drank coffee and ate cake, relieved by the chance to get out of the damn cars.

In the middle of the "high tea" as he jokingly called it, he could suddenly start speaking in his 'other voice'. He would use the subject matter close at hand: what someone was eating, who paid the bill, what awful foods we had chosen, what the exchange rate for the dollar was (always sinking, to UG's delight). He could instantly speak with such an astonishing power and clarity and authority. We would all be completely mesmerized and stunned, forgetting all about how or why we had ended up in a little town in Italy, or Switzerland or France.

UG didn't require any special place, schedule or audience. Since the days shortly after his 'calamity' in 1967, when he decided to say what he had to say, he was like an erupting volcano, spewing out rocks and boulders and fiery, smoking lava. It was the most fascinating thing to make your way as close as you could stand and watch this tremendous creation. And of course, when it got so hot that you were in danger of getting burned, you ran away as fast as you could. There were a few who crept up to the edge of the crater, but I never knew anyone who jumped in.

Many years ago after one of these driving tours around the San Francisco area, I was standing on a streetcorner with UG, Mahesh Bhatt and Bob Carr. We were in the famous North Beach area on Columbus Avenue, a busy street. After wandering around the nearby financial district and Union Square shopping area, we stopped in front of a topless nightclub. Amid the noise of cars and the crowded sidewalks, UG suddenly barked at Mahesh, "You don't understand anything! What I am saying runs counter to what everyone has said, thought or experienced in the whole history of mankind! And you have no way of understanding me at all. You might as well go into this bar here and look at the naked girls and go to these restaurants and eat huge piles of food. That's all you are doing, eating and fucking! And I am going to keep on saying these things for the rest of my life. I don't care who says what. If they kill me for saying these things what does it matter to me? This here (pointing at himself) cannot be controlled and it expresses exactly what it is. It doesn't matter if we are standing on the streetcorner. If it doesn't operate here, it doesn't operate anywhere!"