gdead.berkeley.edu/gdead.berkeley.edu.tar/gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/Trist.06.x.90

Text File | 1996-02-05 | 14KB | 286 lines

From [e-mail] Fri Feb  2 21:17:25 1996
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 11:50:22 -0800
From: David Gans <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>

THE WATER OF LIFE: A GRATEFUL DEAD FOLKTALE has just been reissued in paper-
back by Hulogos'i.  it's available from GDM, too...


This interview isf rom a live broadcast on KPFA in June of 1990, when the
original hardcover edition came out.


David Gans: With me in the studio is Alan Trist, who's down from Oregon with
a new book that he's written called The Water of Life: A Tale of the Grateful
Dead.

Alan, your involvement with the Grateful Dead goes back a long way. Your
knowledge of the term "grateful dead" goes back even further. What can you
tell us about this? This is more than just a little children's book, here.

Alan Trist:  Well, yes, the "grateful dead" term goes back perhaps two
thousand years. That's the earliest literary reference to it we have. So when
the band chose that name in the '60s, they were choosing a very old myth to
call themselves by. That's lived with them all along, and I think people have
been aware that there is that mythic connection in their name. My purpose in
writing this book was to bring that out and make people aware of it.

Gans:  What can you tell us about this story and what it represents to modern
times?

Trist:  The Grateful Dead theme, which you find connected with many hero
tales that have been told to us by storytellers of many generations, is what
folklorists call a "helper" motif. The grateful dead man is somebody who
helps the hero on his journey, his quest, which will take many forms. In this
particular story, "The Water of Life," the hero has to obtain this substance
and with it cure his father, the king, who as in all old stories is as-
sociated with the land and the health of the land. So the king and the land
are sick, and the hero will cure it by finding the water of life. He's helped
by the grateful dead man, and that is where that theme comes in, to achieve
this quest.

Gans:  The "grateful dead man" - there's an actual corpse involved here,
right?

Trist:  Yes, there is. Perhaps I could read a section here where the hero
meets the grateful dead man in various guises. He first meets him, in fact,
as a talking fox who is a shape-change of the grateful dead man:

"The next day, the prince continued on his journey. At noon, he came to a
place where three roads crossed. There, he spied a dark bundle hidden in the
grass.  As he drew near, he saw it was a man wrapped in a cloak. The man was
dead, the cloak a shroud to cover his head. The prince wondered why this
corpse was tossed beside the road, abandoned, unburied, and prey to vultures.
Then he saw a note pinned to the shroud, which he unfastened and read. 'This
man died a debtor.  For that, his mortal remains are left by the wayside, for
none can afford to bury him.' The prince thought to himself, 'A poor debtor.
Though his arm outstretched his reach, I will see his body buried for the
sake of his memory.'

"He asked at an inn how much it might cost to ransom the body of the dead
man.  He paid the price of the man's debts, which were many, nearly emptying
his purse, and returned to claim the body. At the crossroads he met an old
woman who said, 'This man owed me for his lodging.' So the prince paid her,
too, with his last three coins. And then indeed his purse was empty. The old
crone blessed him and departed.

"He buried the cause of his bankruptcy there and then, by the crossroads, in
the shade of a great yew tree. It is said that a dead man's bones can speak
through the roots of this tree, that the wind bears his words in the whisper-
ing of its leaves and carries them away.

"The prince set out once again. Immediately, as he entered the forest, he met
a stranger who was sitting on a stump, almost invisible in the dappled
shadows of evening. He was dressed as a harlequin, and from his belt there
hung an assortment of objects, the uses for which were not at all obvious.
The stranger hailed the prince and said, 'If you are traveling through the
forest, may I join you? The way ahead is dark.'

"'Certainly you may,' said the prince. 'But since night is upon us, let us
quickly make a fire and prepare camp.'

"They found a great oak tree whose branches were so wide, a hundred people
could sleep dry underneath, and here they made camp. The roots of this tree
jutted out like armchairs and, nestled in their mossy enclosure, the stranger
produced an apple from his bag. Carefully, he cut it exactly in half, and
gave one piece to the prince, and the other he bit into heartily, saying, 'My
name is Jack of All Trades. Let us be companions for the journey. Tell me,
what adventure takes you into the wild mountains where there are dangerous
ravines and vultures which circle overhead?'

"The prince, accepting his half of the apple, said, 'I seek the water of life
for my dying father, the king. And I must find it, no matter the danger.'

"When the prince had recounted his recent adventures, Jack said, 'If you
wish, I will go with you and be your companion. I am a minstrel bound for the
court of the very ogre who guards the water of life. I will help you in your
quest. But first, since I know you are a fair man, you must promise to reward
me with half of whatever fortune comes your way.

"The prince agreed to this bargain at once, and in the morning, they set off
together to find the ogre's castle."

Now, that section from the book describes the deal that the grateful dead man
and the hero strike up. And the rest of the story concerns the achieving of
the quest, the way in which the grateful dead man Q who, of course, we learn
is Jack of All Trades Q helps him to achieve this.

Gans:  This is a very moral story.

Trist:  As all fairy tales and folk stories are, of course.

Gans:  It reminds me of Joseph Campbell's discussions of the hero's journey.
This is a very archetypal trip going on here. This is told in sort of
medieval terms and in that kind of setting, but it seems very relevant to
right now. In fact, I felt a lot of resonances with what Deadheads go through
on their road trips, this very summer.

Trist:  Well, I call the story a book for "children of all ages," as I think
folk stories have been passed down to us in that way, as fairy tales, and
that's how they come into our culture at this time. They do hold those
morals, and at various points you'll find lists of those sort of attributes
and qualities which have always been embedded as significant. We find them so
today as well. As Joseph Campbell has pointed out, it is those aspects which
make them very relevant for us today.

Gans:  Modern times don't really support this sort of morality, and yet in
this story we find that sacrifice and kindness are rewarded again and again.
In fact the modern viewer listens to this story and hears this guy encounter-
ing a corpse at the side of the road, and for no apparent reason, and for no
self-interest whatsoever, settles the guy's debts and sees that he gets a
fair burial.  That's a kind impulse, but it seems anachronistic somehow.

Trist:  It may seem so, but you will find it everywhere. You only have to go
on the road with the Grateful Dead and there you'll find it. You'll find the
Deadheads helping each other in exactly the kind of ways that this story
talks about. There's at one point a list of qualities you must give of your-
self when no one asks. That is a quality which I didn't dream up out of the
blue, but one you find in stories that are thousands of years old, or at
least hundreds, and I think that is a quality you will find if you look
around today, particularly in those circles that I just mentioned.

Gans:  I also tend not to think that it's a coincidence that two brothers
drove off and rather thoughtlessly passed that grateful dead man and met un-
timely fates. And it was the third, the crippled brother, who succeeded in
the quest and ended up bailing everybody out. That brought to mind Bob Weir's
favorite phrase, 'misfit power.'

Trist:  Indeed, I don't know whether that ratio of two to one is significant
or not [laughs], but we do find that they occur in triplets a lot. The first
two, indeed, they didn't succeed. They failed in the quest because they
didn't have the right qualities of righteousness to begin with. The third
brother, who was the youngest, he was a hunchback, he was weak of eye, he had
a lot of things going against him, on the physical plane, so to speak. But
one thing he did have going for him was a pure heart and good intention.
That's what carried him through.

Gans:  I don't want to give away the ending, but he does end up walking
upright by the end of the book, right?

Trist:  Indeed, and again it is the fox, who is a magical shape change of the
grateful dead, who achieves that straightening out of his back with a loud
crack.

% % %

Gans:  Maybe you can tell us if there's a place called Fennario - and if so,
where and what?

Trist:  Well, David, I was able to find the answer the question to that ques-
tion. If you're a songwriter and you need a word, you might refer to Alan
Lomax's Song Archivist, and there he suggests that "Fennario" is a perfect
place name, if you need a generic name for an indeterminate place, because it
has four syllables: Fen-na-ri-o. If you a need a three-syllable place name,
you might use "Fidio." So Fennario is a place in the imagination. The syl-
labic imagination, perhaps.

Gans:  I was hoping there was some history to it....

Trist:  [Laughs] You were hoping it was a real place that had a lot attached
to it. Well, I think you can attach those things to it yourself. It's a very
evocative name.

% % %

Gans:  Your history with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead goes back quite a
ways, to before they were playing electric instruments.

Trist:  Before they were a band. In fact, in '60 and '61 Jerry and Hunter
spent a lot of time in Kepler's bookstore and a number of cafes in Palo Alto
and Menlo Park, and that's where I first met them. That was a period of folk
music for Jerry and Bob.

Gans:  Also, I see by your outfit that you're not from around here,
originally. How did you happen to end up on the west coast of the United
States, hanging out with those freaks?

Trist:  I happened to spend a year in California in 1960-'61, from England,
in between leaving school and going to Cambridge University. That's where I
met those freaks, and some eight, nine years later, I came back to California
and hooked up with them again.

Gans:  And you worked with the Grateful Dead. I remember when I first started
hanging around the Grateful Dead office, you were involved in the publishing
and other management matters.

Trist:  Yes, from 1970 when I started working for their publishing company,
Ice Nine Publishing Company, until 1983. I was involved in the songs,
publishing the songbooks.

Gans:  Now there's another question you might be able clear up. What was the
origin of the name Ice Nine Publishing?

Trist:  That comes from a Kurt Vonnegut novel. Ice nine is a substance, or a
form of water, which once released has the capability of causing all water in
the world to turn to permanent ice, which is an interesting situation.

Gans:  Do you have any idea what the reason was that they chose that image
for the publishing of Grateful Dead music?

Trist:  I think that's a very poetical image, and the answer is in the poetry
of it. You have to feel what that means to yourself. [Laughs] Okay, I'll
scoot around that one.

% % %

Gans:  Reading that story I get the idea that probably it would pay off to be
generous and kind to strangers, and a lot of other of what are known now as
"traditional family values." Can you talk about that?

Trist:  There are several sets of these which occur in the book, but as far
as a relationship between our hero and Jack Of All Trades, they center around
the deal that they make together. Let me read the culmination of their
relationship, and perhaps that will answer the question. Of course, the hero
has achieved the quest, he's got the water of life, he's brought it back,
he's healed the king with it, he's even won the princess with true love
during the course of this adventure:

"After a while, the land was fully restored to health. Then Jack said to the
prince, 'A minstrel's life is to be ever upon his way. So I have come to bid
you farewell, and claim my half of the bargain.

"'You shall have it,' said the prince. 'But to live up to the bargain, I must
cut the princess in two. To avoid so dreadful a division, I beg you to accept
my entire kingdom, instead of the half of it.'

"Whereupon Jack said, 'Have no fear for the wholeness of Kate, for in fact,
you have already paid me fully. I am the spirit of he whom you buried at the
crossroads. I am grateful for your kind act, which frees me to return to the
netherworld in peace. There I will have no use for a kingdom, or even half of
one. You have been honest, generous with your friendship, and you owe me
nothing.'

"The prince was too astonished to say anything in response to this revela-
tion, but when the king heard of it, he said to the grateful dead man, 'This
is a wonder that shall be proclaimed to the ends of the earth! You have
helped my son succeed in fetching the water of life, and thereby the bounty
of the land is restored, and the animals once more bear their young. As a
reward, you may choose anything in my kingdom to take with you on your jour-
ney to the netherworld.'

"And Jack chose the lute and magic arrows, food and drink for the journey,
and departed, but not without a wink at the beggar who was sit-ting in his
usual place by the gates of the city."


Gans:  I want to ask you about these fabulous illustrations. There's a very
classic feel to them, that has sort of a modern, almost cinematic point of
view in a lot of them, too.

Trist:  Jim Carpenter is a friend of mine in Eugene, Oregon, and he is a very
brilliant artist. We were going for a sort of generic, turn-of-the-century
children's illustrated book-feel, so you find these illustrations done in pen
and ink, and they have that feel to them. I wish you could all see them out
there.

Gans:  This is available through Grateful Dead Merchandising, right?

Trist:  It is indeed, and it's available through Hulogos'i Publishers in
Eugene, Oregon; the address is P.O. Box 1188, Eugene, OR 97440.

Gans:  And Grateful Dead Merchandising's 800 number is 1-800-CAL-DEAD.