A Conversation with Joan Baez (continued)

JB: And that's kind of how it got started, when my sister was ill and dying, and I thought, who's going to give me--enlighten me the most? And out of all the stuff I'd read, I liked his writings the most. And so lo and behold--I mean, Marin County is the epicenter for those people.

PM: Right.

JB: So I found him, and we've become friends. And that's where I did my first two weeks of Vipassana retreat, during Mimi's illness, and it was a huge help.

PM: Wow. I've lived all over that San Geromino Valley, and that is just a beautiful, warm place.

JB: Yes, it is.

PM: And I was a huge fan of Mimi's, too. I mean--

JB: Yeah.

PM: --that was very sad. [Mimi Fariña died of cancer in the summer of 2001.] That whole Bread and Roses thing was such an amazing movement, and still is.

JB: Yeah, it's still going.

PM: So maybe you'd share with us any recent or current books that you've been exploring?

JB: What have I been exploring? Oh, yeah, sure. Dude, Where's My Country? [by Michael Moore]

PM: Ah.

JB: What can I say?

PM: [laughs]

JB: He does such a brilliant job of it. It's very, very funny. He has his facts straight. But I think in the end what gets me, or really draws me to him and his work, is that I think he's genuinely compassionate, and he genuinely cares about, say, the kids who are getting killed in Iraq on both sides. And it hurts him that the government is behaving so ferociously. It hurts him--

PM: Yeah.

JB: --that they can get away with it. They're a bunch of really cowardly businessmen, and they're running the show.

PM: Yeah. It's gotten down to levels of insanity that are even hard to comprehend in the Republican sense of the word.

JB: I mean, it's the only other time I've heard "martial law" mentioned by anybody but me, because I worked with Amnesty for so long--

PM: Right.

JB: --and the fears for this country because of the way they're arresting people. And then I saw Michael Moore had mentioned something about that--obviously it's not out of the question if we keep going like this. And I think he's--you know, there are hard pills to swallow, but I think I would rather swallow it from him than from a lot of other people.

PM: I heard that. You're a person, obviously, to whom many things have mattered enough to get passionately involved and raise a ruckus--

JB: [laughs]

PM: --or otherwise bring attention to the issue.

JB: Uh-huh.

PM: What matters most in this way at the moment?

JB: Well, it's funny. I guess there's a new context for me, and it's from reading Derrick Jensen's books. He has a book called The Culture of Make Believe. Basically he's saying exactly what Michael Moore said: "This is a fictitious government that's running a fictitious war. We have a fictitious president." The Culture of Make Believe is saying, too, that we're all pretending that we're living in a sustainable world. We're using it all up. We kill indigenous people and we kill forests full of trees. You know, it's a very good possibility we're just going to do ourselves in. And, you know, he doesn't give any answers of what to do about it. But when I read that, I didn't feel depressed, I felt relieved, because it puts one in a new context. Okay, if I'm on this plane and it's going down, what am I going to do, rather than pretending that it's up there flying happily along?

PM: Yeah.

JB: I mean, there may be a way to get it back up. If we're really going down, how do we behave? Do we jump and let everybody else--do we grab the first parachute, or do we try to tend to people? And then my guess would be that if everybody in the plane had instincts that were good and decent, the plane would have the best chance of staying aloft.

PM: I just heard today that Kris Kristofferson's new record is a complete anti-war record.

JB: It is. And it was produced by Alan Abraham, who did three of my CDs. He is a wonderful guy. I mean, and Kris is--he's been always like that, where I think he's just, you know, he's just had it up to the teeth, so he just said everything he wanted to say. And the album is doing pretty well, I hear.

PM: It's amazing. Yeah, I'm trying like hell to get an interview with him. What an amazing guy he is.

JB: Yes, he is.

PM: And you, you've accomplished so much throughout your life. What would you like to do that you've not yet even attempted?  continue

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