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David: Live for the moment philosophy?
Robert: Well, you know I deal in abstraction and fantasy, but I know what reality is. I've been in jail before. I've been in fights. I've had my life threatened. I've been in hospitals a bunch of times. I've seen people die. I've had a lot of people die before me.
David: You've had a lot of really intense life experiences, and this is reflected in your work.
Robert: I'm just an old guy in tract home over in the Valley. My house looks just like everyone else's house.
David: Yeah, you know, I was really surprised at that. (laughter ) I think I was expecting a polished chrome house, with a giant nude woman on the roof wrapped in a huge taco shell. Why did you choose to live here?
Robert: I got the house at a good price years ago. I used to live over in Hollywood, right in the eye of the vortex, man-- taking drugs, and lots of parties in the Sixties. I was glad to get the hell out of there.
David: So what are you working on these days?
Robert: Well, I'm starting my next book-- Views from a Twisted Libido.
David: Is there a theme to the new series?
Robert: I'm getting a little more psychological material. That might interest you. Did you read my Zombie Mystery Paintings ?
David: Yup, you bet, savored it from cover to cover.
Robert: You should have enjoyed that.
David: I loved it. I thought it was brilliant.
Robert: Every painting was looked at in three directions.
David: Unless one reads the three titles and descriptions, they'll miss a lot of it. Zombie Mytery Paintings is one of my favorite books.
Robert: Those were really rough paintings-- a lot of gratuitous sex and violence. The reason they were so rough was because I had to compete with punk rock artists in LA and After Hours clubs in the early Eighties. So, the original idea I had for presenting this material was that I was going to have two psychiatrists interview me, and give their opinion on each painting. What I was going to do was this. In the first paragraph I would state the painting verbatim the way you look at it. Then the second paragraph would be from the very liberal gestalt psychiatrist. And then my third paragraph would be a behaviorist psychiatrist, like from the marine core, a very pragmatic idiot finder. So, I got in touch with a bunch of psychiatrists, and I had them go through a couple of pictures and give me their take on it. But everyone I talked to kept justifying everything. They just wouldn't cut me down. I couldn't get anyone to attack me. So I just wrote the whole thing myself.
David: You wanted them to say something like "this is obviously the product of a disturbed and diseased mind. As you can see there are several varieties of psychopathology evident here."
Robert: Yeah (laughter ), yeah, right. Someone ought to take me and put me in the presence of my mother and have me describe this thing of how I treat women. (laughter )
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