Date: 24/05/23
Location: Ruigoord. Fiery Tongues Festival. Amsterdam
Attendees: Babeth Mondini-Vanloo (interviewee), Ana Collins (interviewer).
Ana: Good Afternoon Babeth. How did you first meet Ira Cohen and what were your impressions of him?
Babeth: I was studying in New York and already knew about the Beat poets, of course. Then I moved to San Francisco and lived in North Beach, right around the corner from the City Lights Books. I was very involved with all the poets and the punk scene in San Francisco. I also got my Masters there. I was using poetry and music in my movies.
So I already knew about Ira and I was very much friends with other people in the Beat movement, mostly with Michael McClure. Then I had the position of making a music television series on Dutch television, I actually flew back and forth once a month from San Francisco to Amsterdam for one week and became involved with the One World Poetry Festival. We were programming the One World Poetry Festival. The director of it was a guy called Benn Posset and I became the music programmer for that festival.
But because of my connections with the whole poetry scene through Lawrence Ferlinghetti, I had met many of the poets such as Gregory Corso, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Philip Lamantia– very special people like Ginsberg and McClure, who were not just poets but also involved in the visual arts. So when I was programming for One World Poetry Festival here [Amsterdam], I still lived in San Francisco. I think I met Ira first in New York, then saw him again here, in Amsterdam, in 1977-1978 and he stayed with me for a while in my house. I had, at that time, a place which is now an old peopleʼs home, but was then a very large studio because I was working on the television music programs. He was basically like a wandering Jew.
Ana: A mendicant Sadhu.
Babeth: A Jewish poet, very funny. I think [it was] mostly the humor, we really hit it off very much through humor and also through… He liked things like punk and I was always working– making no distinction between high and low– and he knew very well who my teacher Joseph Beuys was– the German artist. He could understand that if I was filming in the daytime at the Guggenheim museum, then in the evening [it was] with the Slits, a female punk band from London. To some people that looks very strange but Ira immediately understood that.
Ana: From the sublime to the ridiculous, sacred and profane all intertwined.
Babeth: Also he knew that I had met Judith Malina and Julian Beck [founders of The Living Theater] and of course his friend was Petra [Vogt].
Ana: His great love from The Living Theater.
Babeth: They also went to Kathmandu. I also started to travel there with my interest in Buddhism, so there were lots of connections like that. I think the third connection was a mutual friend named Gerard Malanga. I had met Andy Warhol in Germany through Joseph Beuys and then, when I started to study in New York in January 1974, I already would go to the Factory. That’s where I actually met Gerard Malanga. Later on, at the end of the seventies, I found out that he and Ira were really good friends. They befriended each other. I also made some small movies with Gerard.
So there were many connections and mainly the interdisciplinary thing. As an artist we were both made– in Dutch we say, “made from the same wood” which means that for both of us there was no separation between art and life. Art never stops. You donʼt know what a weekend is. Your life is your art and vice versa. So that was the connection with Ira.
Ana: I understand that Angus MacLise was a big musical inspiration for Ira and also collaborated on productions like Thunderbolt Pagoda. Did you know Angus MacLise?
Babeth: Yes, but only marginally; I never had a real connection with him. I met him once through a music festival in New York City. I wouldn’t call myself a connoisseur or a friend of Angus, but I did know about Iraʼs fascination for Angus. I also got to hear a lot of the music through him. Later on then, I very much befriended Meredith Monk, the composer from New York. She had connections with another musician who knew Angus.
I also lived in New York in the ‘90s. I had a loft that was around the corner from Lamonte Young. Louise Landes-Levi also knows who Lamonte Young is. Lamonte Young was somebody who I had already seen as a young student in Germany because my neighbor– when I was studying with Beuys– my neighbor was a very well-known composer in Germany called Karlheinz Stockhausen and his wife Mary Bauermeister was my very dear friend and neighbor.
John Cage came to his house. We are talking about the end of the ‘60s. Very early. So there I met John Cage and Nam June Paik and Joe Jones but also Lamonte Young. That was the type of music that was promoted at that time by that composer in New York.
At that time there was really, really good programming on WDR radio, programming about this type of music, starting with these guys that I mentioned, through to Philip Glass. So this was a music scene that was really important at that time and Angus was friends with all of them. But the main fascination with which I came to know Angus was through Ira. Ira was always talking about Angus and he would let me listen to his music and of course I saw the film Thunderbolt Pagoda.
Ana: So Ira, although he had a great feeling for music, he didn’t play any instruments wasn’t a vocalist himself?
Babeth: No, but he would uninvitedly and make his voice be known. He wouldn’t sing but he would proclaim, I would say.
Ana: Spoken word poetry to accompany music.
Babeth: He would make his voice very loud and act like he was a singer.
Ana: Projecting!
Babeth: Exactly. I never saw him play an instrument but the music was really very much a part of his life.
Ana: When I was watching your film earlier, Jules Deelder: Dead-Alive in which Ira appears with the masks, I was reflecting on how masks and mirrors were both recurring motifs in Iraʼs work. He also seemed to identify with flowers, with himself as a bloom. I was thinking about how the masks we chose to wear are often more telling about what weʼre trying to hide. I understand Ira was quite fascinated by the concept of being a Yogi, a Naga Baba or Guru. During part of his time in India, at the Kumbh mela, was [spent] researching the nature of Naga babas, studying how to obtain visionary powers. I was wondering in some of his relationships, if he was choosing the mask of the Guru in someway.
Babeth: He never talked to me about being a Guru and I donʼt think he wanted to project like a Guru. Maybe he knew he couldn’t do that with me because I knew so many real Tibetan lamas. Of course, our mutual friend John [Giorno] in New York was also a student of my same teacher, my Tibetan teacher. I would very frequently go to the bunker where John was living and of course, at that time, so did Laurie Anderson. In any case, Ira knew that I had this very strong connection to Buddhism.
Ana: A very serious connection.
Babeth: A very serious connection, also as a practitioner. So he would never act to me like a Guru. I also think that– to me– he didn’t project like a Jewish magician. But when I said before [he was] the wandering Jew, I meant he was traveling all the time and showing up at unexpected places– like myself– as in the Far East, like Nepal and India. Knowing that I had studied with Joseph Beuys, he was very eager to show me his Mylar pictures. I knew Petra. I knew Judith Malina and I had seen her and Julian Beck perform and the Living Theatre.
Ana: So you were very familiar with the Living Theatre milieu.
Babeth: Yes, Ira was very keen to show me their work and we talked about that. What the Mylar pictures mainly did– because in Buddhism the mirror is a very important tool for self-reflection but also as a manifestation of creation in an elemental form. It was always interesting to talk about his photographs in that way. It was something we could share together because he knew Iʼm a real practitioner of Buddhism.
Ana: He didn’t pull a Guru number on you?
Babeth: No, no. But you know, people pull all kinds of numbers on everything. If he would do it with me, he would always do it as a joke.
Ana: With irony, sending himself up. So he was staying with you. At what point did your relationship develop?
Babeth: We never had a sexual relationship, thatʼs quite important to know. He stayed at my house quite frequently. He was very fond of me and I was very fond of him. We were very close. I know there are pictures where it looks like we were lovers but we never were. There was a meeting of the spirits of some kind– from the moment I met him. We talked earlier about how women are more– not in the shadow side but neglected as a force– but Ira knew that wasn’t true. He had very much a sensibility of uplifting women.
Ana: Empowering the divine feminine.
Babeth: Exactly, empowering. So I think that was interesting because at that time I was living mostly in California, which is a whole other thing than living in New York and on the East Coast.
Ana: Another world?
Babeth: Yeah, totally. I got much more involved in the punk movement than Ira, but still he understood it. For example, I remember very well that Laurie Anderson was quite favorable of it, but when Kathy Acker came along, another female poet who was I would say was punk, that Ira understood very much. But of course he didn’t have that sensibility. We didn’t share that.
Ana: But he appreciated and understood the reasons it resonated for you?
Babeth: I think he saw the same things that were happening in performance art– which I was very much a part of– were really complementary to poetry performance. Of course, that had elements that most of those Beat poets had.
Ana: Yes, this rather multidisciplinary and rhythmic approach?
Babeth: Also very much the sensibility, you know, when Brion Gysin made the installation piece for…
Ana: The Dreamachine?
Babeth: The Dreamachine, exactly! That was already another thing lifted out of– it wasn’t the hippy realm anymore.
Ana: It was futurist?
Babeth: Yeah, utilizing parts of performance and of course the Cut-Up technique that Gysin and Burroughs developed. Those were interesting conversations to have with Ira about what that really meant. Just like I would have those conversations with Louise [Landes-Levi]. Ira was at the time also someone who understood there are overlaps between performance art and the kind of sensibility of Gysin and Burroughs. I think that was an interesting convergence.
Then he came up with this idea to do the bandaged poet series. Strangely enough, I donʼt think he ever made a death mask of Simon Vinkenoog, which I find unusual, besides Jules I think. Of course, he made one of me because Iʼm the only one who is not a poet in that series. So it ended up that in Holland he only did a death mask of Jules Deelder. I think he knew that I was always making film projects on television with Jules. He asked me who would be the Dutch poet for the bandaged poet series and, because it was so much linked to performance poetry, I suggested that he do Jules Deelder and I also suggested that I could film it. Ira was always trying to make me film things! He was always fascinated that I was there with my Bolex camera and was very happy if I would come along and document it, which I did. That is the film you saw today [Jules Deelder: Dead-Alive].
Ana: That was mostly made in 1978 -1979?
Babeth: Yes, ’78 and ’79. Ira never got to see this version that you saw today. He saw a version that I had shot on 16mm negative. I had made a positive print from that which I projected it with a live music track, not the same track you heard today. They were projected together on 16mm, next to each other, the negative and the positive. I always liked that juxtaposition, working in contrast with the two images which reflected each other.
Ana: It creates a dialogue between the two?
Babeth: So thatʼs the only thing that Ira saw, not a finished edited version, not the one that you saw today, because I made that really when Jules died. When Jules was about to die, I started to work on that.
Ana: Could you tell me more about your collaborations with Ira, as you said he was often asking you to film things, film happenings?
Babeth: Well, I actually never did film him in a public situation. You know I filmed everything at that time; I was always with a camera. So I filmed a lot in his home in New York, I made several things. I filmed something with him and Gerard Malanga together, I remember, but that wasn’t a public performance. I would accompany him. For example, we went to Brussels together, where we both performed. Me with film and he with poetry. We would travel together but I never filmed him in a spoken word performance.
Ana: In your film that we saw today [Jules Deelder: Dead-Alive], did you direct him in it?
Babeth: Yeah, but that was low key. His main presence in the film is because the whole bandaged poet thing was his idea.
Ana: So it was a cinematic homage to his concept in some ways?
Babeth: Also what I liked so much about him, and my other favorite artists, is there is no separation between real life and the work, the art. So being together, even with other people, is already part of the creative process. For example, traveling with him to Brussels for him to perform, the whole trip there, being together and creating.
I believe that art, but also life itself, is an energy source and people that you click with, that you become soul mates with, that even the minds meld together you. You can stimulate their performance, activate it by being there. He used to do that with me and I used to do that with him. His energy could fill a room.
We had many mutual friends. We would hang out with Simon Vinkenoog and with Jules. He would sometimes tease me in the sense of… Well, he loved my films on Joseph Beuys and he would always say why am I not making a film like that with him but that was…teasing.
Also in the friendship that developed, he would send me stuff from on the road. He would send me poems and drawings. We would always stay in touch. I loved going to his house, to his apartment in New York, talking about his parents and how it is to grow up with deaf mute parents.
Ana: I think that must have impacted his consciousness hugely.
Babeth: Hugely. I loved talking about that. I find it so fascinating talking about energy fields between people. Something I learned through Joseph Beuys was that sound travels through us. Sometimes we donʼt realize, but sound travels from here to the next room. That cannot happen with images. So to have a relationship with another, especially for him as a poet, goes through language and sound waves. I was fascinated by that.
We would always joke. He would ask me, “What are the magic tricks that you learned from your Buddhist teachers?” It would start like that. I would say always argue, “Itʼs not magic, itʼs real.” But the question remains how can they pass through a wall.
Ana: Levitating incredibly heavy objects through cosmic sound vibration, teleportation or becoming invisible.
Babeth: I was fascinated to learn when we had this conversation– that sound waves are actually so direct that they can travel through us and resonate in our bodies– and you [Ira] have parents to whom that doesn’t happen. As a poet, how was that? That he wouldn’t have that relationship with his parents as he would with us.
So it wouldn’t happen that his parents could contact him through the walls with sound waves. They couldn’t. Where as we always have that; our parents call us from somewhere and we hear them. Just being in the presence of another person, be it your parents, and having a communication system that is mainly visual and not audible. Especially if you develop as a poet.
Ana: He was of course able to speak sign language?
Babeth: Not with me of course, but he was capable of doing it. I donʼt much about how much he might use it with people other than his parents.
Ana: It is interesting also in terms of theatre. I know Ira worked with the Living Theatre who took much inspiration from Antonin Artaud, the Theater of Cruelty, mime, the silent art, expressive gesture as a device in theatre. To be adept in non-verbal communication is also very useful when traveling.
Babeth: Exactly. Another thing I was reflecting on when we were talking about masks and Ira. To me this is not at all connected to gurudom but it is connected to exactly what you just said, to Artaud, not just the mimes, but also this whole tradition of artists who were working with masks. Already in the Bauhaus there was a lot of mask use, Oscar Schlemmer for example.
Of course Cocteau and the French artist who went to Mexico and visited Frida Kahlo. Andre Breton! To have these conversations with Ira was interesting. There was a whole group of artists working with masks. They weren’t referring only to death masks but really to the artistic tradition of masks.
Ana: Yes, the Dadaists used masks a lot. Also symbolizing Transformation, like Shamanic indigenous cultures using masks in rituals. Esoteric mysteries to represent or invoke supernatural beings, ancestors, shape shifting.
Babeth: Another topic of conversation we had was why is it, for example, that people react to the films Thunderbolt Pagoda and Kings with Straw Mats as if they are a phenomena of strangeness? There is only a small amount of people who go beyond the freakish sensationalism of it.
For Ira it was much more than that. It has much more to do with training and discipline. I found it interesting to ask him why he thought people who came to watch that film didn’t think of it as a ritual but mainly regard it as a bizarre phenomenon.
Ana: Like a Freak Show at the circus. As the Sadhus are twisting their genitalia with weights and holding their arms in the air for years. Performing tapas, austerities.
Babeth: In many peoples’ heads it is useless to do that.
Ana: But the sadhus believe they obtain mystical siddhi, yogic powers.
Babeth: So Ira of course had that connection, but many people who watched those films did not. People were having another response to his photographs– a more close emotional connection. They would recognize the beauty and craftsmanship much easier than with the film, I believe.
Ana: The elegance in his framing of compositions.
Babeth: He had such a great eye. Of course the relationship with the people he photographed.
Ana: The personal connection, the dialogue he had with his subjects.
Babeth: I think that creates a different photographic regard for the rituals, than in the movies, than in Pagoda and Straw Mats. I wished that for him the response had been different but it is still hard. Audiences donʼt always see it that way.
Ana: You must have had many deep conversations with Ira. Did you also spend time together in Kathmandu?
Babeth: Not much. I was there in a later period. When we were together in Amsterdam, he would often talk about how it was when he was there with Petra. I think I only saw Ira once in Kathmandu but I was never in India with him. John Giorno would also come to Kathmandu a lot, studying the Nyingma tradition, so I would see him. He would stay at the Vaskar hotel and I would go to see him there. He would never come to me!
Ira of course would stay at my house, Burroughs too stayed at my house in Amsterdam, because I had that big studio. Those people would stay in my house and Gregory was writing. He almost died in my house. He just fell asleep with a joint in his hand and started a fire. My son was two years old, he came and screamed at me.
I thought what is he screaming about? But there was Gregory passed out on a mattress that was burning, with the joint in his hand that had set it on fire, and a needle in his leg. But I was so scared because I loved him as a poet and I really didn’t want him to die in my house. I didn’t want him to die period. I had to pull that mattress out from under him, slide him onto the comfy floor, but I had to throw it out the window so the whole house didn’t burn down! I had this two year old kid and I was alone with Gregory like that and it was really a nightmare.