Yo-Yo Boing!

— I have an urge to smoke. Who is to say whose urges are more important. Everybody has urges.

— What is the difference between an urge and a craving?

— You look for differences where there are no differences. But I will grant you — grant you a difference. An urge is an urge I must act on. If I crave something it doesn’t mean I feel the urgency. Although usually they’re a couple. I have the urge when I have the craving. Cravings and urges belong to hungry minds. Or hungry bodies, and they can create habits, or vices. And they can liberate human beings, give them joy, and produce music. If urges and cravings are not satisfied at the exact moment, they can become longings, and longings can last an eternity, or disappear rapidly, depending on the persistence and perseverance of the passion they can disappear, retract, and resurge, or repeat, and you can recognize the reappearance of the same longing that craves and the urge that like an inspiring comet is: now or never. And if you don’t get it now, forget about it, it’s now or never, now or never, impatience, because the urgency exists in the urge of the instant that dies — you know for certainty that that urge has a deadline, a limit, and if you don’t take advantage of the instant when you know it must be — like inspiration — it carries a vision and a passion and a moment — now or never — and it’s never again — again — in the same way — and you know it can repeat but never again the same — and these elements, contrary to popular opinion, carry the urges farther up in their immediacy, the attack must be done right away, no time to lose in talking about it, it is now or never, now or never.

— We are living in an era where genius does not exist. If we talk about talent, we think of the talented Michael Jackson, or Elvis Presley, or The Beatles. Ask a man in the streets who he thinks is talented. Michael Jackson, he’ll say, he’s talented.

— Nobody would say Michael Jackson. They’d say Pavarotti or Domingo.

— What talent does Michael Jackson have?

— Nobody mentioned Michael Jackson.

–¡Qué voz tiene!

— No tiene voz

— Tiene voz

–¿Qué voz tiene?

— Ninguna, but he’s great.

— What is grrrreat. I hear that word so much

— Want a hamburger?

— Yeah, great.

— Let’s go to a film.

— Great idea.

— He’s charismatic. Mesmerizing. Hypnotic.

— He’s great.

— I like him. I do. I really do.

— He’s a power house like Madonna.

— But he’s no Nijinsky. Not even Nureyev. Who is he? That’s the talent we recognize today. Forty years ago Picasso and Neruda were the Greta Garbos of painting and poetry.

— They had star quality like Warhol.

— He was not an artist. He was a businessman like Madonna. Madonna is a thermometer. That’s what she does — measure the fever of society. A thermometer is not a work of art, but a very useful instrument.

— Your opinions have no bearing, no substance at all. Andy Warhol was one of the most influential, multitalented artists of our day.

— Artaud was a man of multiple talents.

— Too many.

— I adore Artaud, but he does not have a work like Rimbaud. Of course, I could say that Baudelaire was much more intelligent than Rimbaud, but I prefer Rimbaud’s poetry.

— You cannot measure IQ through poetry.

— What about essays and translations? He did Edgar Allen Poe, you know. Even Verlaine is more intelligent than Rimbaud. But I still prefer Rimbaud. Funny, we don’t think of Shakespeare as an intelligent man — we know him as genius. He never wrote on Chaucer or translated Boccaccio. We know Cervantes was a brilliant man. I have my doubts about Goya. Although all of them were men of passion.

— There is no competition. Genius is genius. Period. I have spoken. They can all exist together with plenty of room for the Jacksons and the Madonnas and the McDonalds and the Burger Kings and the Pizza Huts.

— Which is better: Chinese, Italian, or French food?

— Why do you always have to compare?

— Which is more universal? Spaghetti, pizza, fried rice, chow mien, even tacos and tortillas more than quiche. There’s not a universal French dish with mass appeal.

— I agree, the Chinese and the Italians reach the most people around the world. Like Jackson, but that doesn’t make him better than everyone else. Talent is so universal, it is common. After all, we are all dogs — Russian dogs, Cuban dogs or American dogs. We all bark. That’s what we have in common. And we should admit that all we can do is bark. I bark now, you later, why do you bark, how do you bark, what made you bark — cat, murder, rape, bone. How do we distinguish one barking from another barking if we are all barking, and we all like to bark, and none of us realizes that all we can do is bark — and none of us hears which is more potent or more piercing than the others. We all think we are special in our barking.