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Mekas:
The Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo had a special celebrationI don't remember the occasionand they commissioned new works in the fields of music, dance, and film, and maybe some other arts. Film was included at Gerald O'Grady's request; he was the adviser there. I was invited to make a film and given ten months to work on it. I used the material that was easiest for me to put together. The gallery helped to make a print and paid the expenses. The version I screened in Buffalo had sound on tape; it was also slightly shorter than the present version. Later I decided to finish the film and to include some other material.
MacDonald:
For me the strongest reel of the four has always been the first. Several sections from that reel are distributed separately.
Mekas:
Yes,
Cassis, Notes on the Circus, Report from Millbrook,
and
Hare Krishna,
all filmed in 1966.
MacDonald:
It led me to wonder whether you edited it reel by reel or . . .
Mekas:
I worked on the thing as a whole. I put those particular parts into distribution, however, before the rest was finished and before the invitation from Buffalo. Eventually I think I will pull them out of distribution, except for
Cassis
which is different from the version you see in
Walden
and
Report from Millbrook,
which is also different.
MacDonald:
When did you become familiar with Thoreau's
Walden
?
Mekas:
It's one of the books that Peter Beard is obsessed with. During the shooting of
Hallelujah the Hills
he gave me a copy, and when I was editing
Walden,
I always had it around. For a long time I thought that that was the first time I read it. But recently, while retyping my early diaries from 1948, I discovered that I was reading
Walden
then, in German.
MacDonald:
It's sometimes thought of as a book about country living, but Thoreau was living just outside of town. In that sense your use of Central Park as your "Walden Pond" strikes me as particularly appropriate.
Mekas:
Not only Central Park. To me Walden exists throughout the city. You can reduce the city to your own very small world that others may never see. The usual reaction after seeing
Walden
is a question: "Is this New York?" Their New York is ugly buildings and depressing, morbid blocks of concrete and glass. That is not my New York. In my New York there is a lot of nature.
Walden
is made up of bits of memories of what I wanted to see. I eliminated what I didn't want to see.
MacDonald:
Is New York the first big city you've spent a lot of time in?
Mekas:
Yes, the first big
modern
city. All other cities I had been in before coming herecities like Hamburg or Frankfurt or Kasselhad been destroyed in the war. There wasn't very much of the city left.