アービング・ステットナー
画家・詩人・ストローカー編集者

アービング・ステットナーの水彩画は音楽のような美しさに満ちあふれ、アメリカのみならず、日本・フランスでも数多くの個展が催されている。アービング・ステットナーと交流の深かった作家ヘンリー・ミラー曰く「誰が何といおうと、彼はピカソやブラックよりずっと興味深い」

ニューヨーク、ブルックリン生まれのアービング・ステットナー。作家であり詩人でもあると共に、ストローカーという前衛的なリトルマガジンの編集も行っている。1974年に初版を発行した当初より、この雑誌にはヘンリー・ミラーが死ぬまでの２年半、寄稿し続けていた。また、前回紹介したトミー・トランティーノをはじめポール・ボウルズ、ジャック・ケルアック等カウンターカルチャー世代のアーティストたちも多く寄稿していた。

さまざまな国を拠点として創作活動を続け、現在はペンシルバニア州のダラスで家族と共に暮らしている。

Irving Stettner
artist, writer, poet, editor

The work of IRVING STETTNER, filled with the joy of life and a lyrical beauty, appears in many private collections throughout the world, including that of French art critic Stani Chaine, Mrs.Kirk Douglas and the late Henry Miller who said of Stettner's watercolors: ''You are far more interesting than a Braque or Picasso, believe me!''

Brooklyn-born, internationally known, Irving Stettner has particularly captured the imagination of the French and the Japanese who have shown his work frequently, and praised it widely in reviews.A former expatriate, who lived many years in France, Stettner has also traveled the world and spent time in Eastern Europe, Morocco, the Far East and Mexico.He now resides in Dallas, a small town in the Pocono Mountains.
A writer and poet as well, Stettner is the editor of Stroker, an avant-garde Poem-Prose-Art review which has appeared since 1974: it has the distinction of being the only magazaine in America which Henry Miller contributed to the last two-and -a half years of his life.

Interview text( English )

Tommy Trantino

Tommy Trantino is the extraordinary prison born artist whose literary career began after he was convicted of murder in 1964.

Born in 1938 in Brooklyn NY, he spent youth in insecure and uneasy mind.In 1974 his first book 'Lock the Lock' was publised.Filled with joking, crying, shouting at experience, fighting throught to the truths of his own life.All were done while on death row.Now he was released in 2002.

The director of this short film asked him more about himself at his house on 25th February, 2003.

REIKO (RE) : Could you tell me about your poem 'Lock The Lock'? I also want to know the meaning of the title.

TOMMY (TO) : OK.It's a play on words.I like to juggle words.If you take the　key and put it in the lock and you turn it, you lock the lock.The　door cannot open.I converted this symbol into a poem to my wife.(We are no longer together.) At the time, it was a way I chose to express my love and my commitment to her and to our life together.This poem therefore also contains many sexual symbols and allusions.For example, 'Roll down your socks' means get undressed -- let's go to bed and make love.'Get off your rocks' means I will give you great orgasms.'My burning cock' means you have deeply aroused me and my fiery passion is hot and I want to make love with you.The last words of the poem 'lock the lock im comin' im comin home' also contains a major element of my passion.It means, during intercourse, let us be focused in the moment only on each other and our love making.'I'm comin'means I am ejaculating.It's also a passionate cry for Freedom.The poem was a very personal communication.I wanted my love life to smile
and feel good.Because I was in prison, we could not have sex.Nevertheless, we had a great passion for each other.Im coming home to you and I will be coming with you--wait for me.Lock The Lock.Home is where life begins.The poem also contains elements of my political views.Much of what Iexpress is tongue in cheek and is meant to be ironic.I say 'lock the lock', but what i am really saying is: don't lock
the lock.Open it! Open these prison doors!.Let me come -- HOME! Let us live in peace -- free.

RE: I see.

TO: To me it's about reality.Looking at reality.What is reality?　Whatever we think it is, it is.To me it is a journey into our inner world which is interconnected and interactive with the outer world.If we put on masks and close ourselves off to experiencing reality as it is, we will never be able to discover what is inside or outside ourselves.Some time ago I wrote a short poem about looking deeply:

the door to reality is always open
step to it
step through it
discover
there is really no door there
We erect these doors -- barriers to the real world -- ourselves.Will we know reality or not? Look deeply.Stay focused.There are no doors -- you will see.

RE: What is the name of the USA publisher of 'Lock The Lock'? How did this come about?

TO: The publisher's name is Knopf.I was in the Death House during the beginning of the Civil Rights struggle and the protest against the Vietnam war.There was a mass demonstration taking place in the city of Chicago at the Democratic convention.The Democratic party was in Chicago to choose its candidate to run for president.Political activists felt the Democratic party was caving in.Abby Hoffman, who was one of the leaders of the mass protest movement going on in the U.S.and all around the world at this point in history, was arrested by the police for his political activities and disrupting the convention.The lawyer representing Abby Hoffman was also representing me.During the trial of the 'Chicago 7', in which Abby was one of the main targets of the government, I wrote a letter to my lawyer.RE: What kind of letter did you write to him?

TO: He said it was too literary and creative for his academic and logical mind.The lawyer shared my letters with many people.They had come from all around the country to help the legal defense team in this big and very complex trial against the government's illegal actions.Abby read my letter, and in true YIPPIE fashion, he folded it into the shape of an airplane, then sailed it into the air, and it floated all around the jam-packed and heavily guarded courtroom.The Authorities considered this very disrespectful and arrested my letter! The judge chastised Abby for his paper airplane spectacle.Sailing a letter from a man who was on death row waitingfor the state to kill him was Abby's way of showing his revolutionary spirit and his disregard for the government's inhuman hypocritical system of justice.It was actually a symbol of peace.Peace plane.No bombs, just poetry in motion!
In any event, a person who was in Chicago to help the defense team, worked for a New York publishing company.When this person read some of my letters she said, "This man has talent.He must be published!" And so, Reiko, that is how I eventually found my way from prison and to the eyes of the public.It was by chance that I came to be published (even though we really know that in reality there are no coincidences, don't we?) And Abby Hoffman became a very good friend of mine.Abby is person who introduced my work to John Lennon, Kurt Vonnegut, Woody Allen, Joyce Carol Oates, Allen Ginsberg, Rollo May and many others, too numerous to mention.(Henry Miller, who I met through my wonderful old friend Irving　Stettner,joined in the fun and, as you know, became one of my biggest and most ardent　supporters and a strong advocate for my freedom.

RE: I like the end of THE LORE OF THE LAMB in this book.This is an episode when you were 6 years old.You had to go to the toilet during the classroom.But your teacher said, NO.So you shit in your pants.You wrote like this:
'i was about six years old at the time and yes i guess that even then i knew without cerebration that if one obeys and follows orders and adheres to all the rules and regulations of the lore of the lamb one is going to shit in one's pants and one's mother is going to have to clean up afterwards'
I think what you say here has universal meaning and really says something to me.

TO: Yes.What I say is not meant to be interpreted literally.That is why some people don't understand me my art.Orders are masks forced onto our existence from our earliest childhood until the day we die.That is why it so difficult to see through these masks or to remove them.Too many masks stuck to too many faces.As time passes, the masks become a strait-jacket on our ability to create and live.These masks imprison our spirit.In time, we become what we surrender to.Or as Lucretius put it, "we do all that force forces us to do".In my early days, my mind became a black box of heavy lead.My life was locked up in it.Everything I saw, thought, felt and did took place in the gloom and doom of that black box.My mind and my spirit were in darkness.I believed Kafka's famous quote: "The world order is　based on a lie." Nothing and no one mattered, least of all me.Life was a meaningless,absurd bad joke.I was untrue to myself and to the world, which is why I could not discover who I was or what reality is.It was a big reason why I becamed a criminal.I didn't know what I was doing.I wore masks and I pretended I knew what I was doing, but I really didn't know anything because I felt so helpless, hopeless, locked in the prison of a meaningless existence in this our one and only life -- and I didn't know how to get out.Everything just got worse and worse until, I finally exploded and both i and the black box went up in smoke.

RE: I would like to know the irony of the section, 'The letter to the prison Chief' asking him for permission to have an American flag and a recording of Kate Smith singing, 'The Star Spangled Banner'.

TO: This too has to do with THE LORE OF THE LAMB.I had become very political when they had me in the Death House.Solitary confinment 24 hours a day.No light in the cell.No table.No chair.Nothing in there.But we were able to get books and newspapers.I read every day by the light of a 60W light bulb hanging from the tier outside my cell.This is how I learned about the revolution that was in the air outside the walls of the Death House.This was the time of the powerful civil rights movement and the movement against the Vietnam war.The government said, just like George Bush is saying now, 'If you are not with us, you're against us".And "if you are against us, you will be punished." I think this is stupid and cowardly and uncivilized patriotism.They want us to follow orders.Orders must be obeyed -- or else!
Isn't that what Hitler and the Nazis used to tell their people and the world?
I no longer will shit in my pants or allow my mother to clean up the mess.I mean, I am against doing anything bad or wrong.In the Death House, I learned to stand up against illegal authority and to fight against oppression, to fight for justice and peace, but only in non-violent ways.I began this journey in solitary confinement, when they were doing all they could to kill me in the Death House.I was making fun of them.The PATRIOTS (the TRUE BELIEVERS, as Eric Hoffer deemed them) all waved American flags and wore patriotic badges.If you opposed the war, you were called unpatriotic and a Communist -- you were Evil and had to be eliminated.So what I did was ask these illegal and immoral　Authorities if I too could wave their great symbol, a big American flag.I told them I would display it proudly -- just as they did, and just like every good American has to! It was meant ironically.I wanted to use humor to express my opposition to their hypocritical beliefs and practices.Humor helps us to overcome suffering and pain.It can bring the sun and light the darkness.May they see it now!

RE: I saw the new musical on Broadway in NY the day before yesterday.It was very patriotic.It is like what the government is doing now in USA.

TO: If you don't wave a flag, if you are not patriotic, the right wing government and its camp-followers accuse you of being against them and that you then support their enemies.Thats how they manipulate people and make them afraid to express opposition to any another point of view except their own.But people are starting to tear off their masks and can now see what is going on.We see many demonstrations taking place against war all over the world.People love peace and they are learning that all borders should be open to everybody.NO MORE WALLS! Wherever you are people must fight to be free.

RE: I would like to know what your 8 years on death row in solitary confinment was like.

TO: Everything in the DH was dark damp dismaland totally surreal for the 8 years I was on death row, just like my life and past history that led me there.The first day there something I have never found the words to express happenened to me.A powerful spirtual force removed the black box and the darkness in my mind and the heavy load of pain and suffering I had been carrying around with me all my life disappeared.I cannot explain it any better than that.Simply put, I had a spiritual awakening from which I have been blessed ever since.All I knew was that I had lived in darkness all my life.My past, which was like a leaden black veil of darkness imprisoning and crushing me was now gone.I vowed in the birth of this new light that I would never use drugs or alcohol again, and that never againwould I ever use violence in any way.I vowed to help people, not hurt them.I had no idea how I would do this.These vows spilled from my heart and soul to the heavens above, without thought or understanding of what I was saying or what it would mean.I was conscious, aware, focused in the here and now.The electric chair was 100 feet away from my cell.I didnt know that I was going to be in prison for the next 38 continuous years or what would happen to me or what I would make happen..It is now almost 40 years since I made those vows and had my spiritualawakening.To this day, no matter what has happened,I have kept all my vows.I had never read a book in my life until the DH.I learned to read.I began to write.And draw.And paint.Art to me was life.Anyway i chose to express myself was art.Art is light.The teachings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King became the air I breathed.I internalized the spirit of the outside world.Then, I stopped talking for a very long time.i began to listen to the hearts of the other men who were in Death House with me.Not only listening, but hearing them and their pain, different cultures and views of the world.I no longer judged or found fault with anyone.That included even the cops and the other authorities of the prison -- and out of it.I discovered that I truly love people and that all life is sacred and precious.I wanted to find ways of expressing that.I started to express my politics & my social action.For example there were Muslims in the DH.They could not eat pork, and all meals contained some sort of pork.I stood at my bars and shouted out to all the other condemned men: 'Listen.We have brothers in here who can't eat pork.Let us give them those things that are not pork, so they may eat and not be degraded and starved.The DH officers, even those who were very hostile and prejudiced, miraculously helped us by passing the food we wished to share with the Muslims for us.So they contributed too.We all grew from the experience.Barriers that existed came down.People are really good at heart.Lead by example.Give people a chance and they will do good.Lead by example.Practice.Talk does not cook rice.More practice.I was beginning to learn the ways of talking with people, understanding them.I learned how to struggle for freedom without violence.This is a great teaching.Lead by example.
All of the expressions of our life, no matter what form they take, is the art of life and the life of art.Live by the light of love and the spirit of creation and you will always create more life.This is what I did and how I lived in the DH.It is the way I have lived since that time forward.This is The Way.No matter how badly we might be treated, do not leave The Way.Do not go backwards.Live with love in this your one and only life.Live by example.

"LOCK THE LOCK" cover and photo.

from "LOCK THE LOCK" and "Stroker"