Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Salon.com People | Warren Zevon:

At this point, Zevon notices that I'm carrying a book about suicide with me. I tell Zevon I once interviewed the woman who wrote it. "She claims only maniac depressives kill themselves," I say, and then tell Zevon, "I've always believed if things got really bad -- if my shit ever got really fucked up -- I'd kill myself rather than go to a concentration camp or something."

"Do you?" he asks me, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah," I answer. I polish off a scone.

"I think that's a mistake," Zevon says.

"Why?"

"We don't know enough shit." He says that and the Japanese flute starts really wailing away like the soundtrack to an Akira Kurosawa movie. "We don't know enough to make any decisions. I wouldn't set myself up to make those decisions."

"My wife is into the Eastern shit," I say, pointing at the air as if the flute music was visible.

"And she doesn't agree with you, does she?" Zevon says.

"No," I answer. "The karma of it --"

"No," he says quickly. "It's not just the karma. The Tao says, 'Old men like being old and young men like being young. And good is good, and bad is good too.' As my father used to say in his late 80s, 'It's all good.' But I don't get depressed. I don't know." He raises his teacup. "I'm insane. I'm fucked up. I have problems. But I don't get depressed and I don't get bored."