But all of a sudden I realized that he knew also, just like I knew. And that everybody in the bookstore knew, and that they were all hiding it! They all had the consciousness, it was like a great unconscious that was running between all of use that everybody was completely conscious, but that the fixed expressions that people have, the habitual expressions, the manners, the mode of talk, are all masks hiding this consciousness. But almost at that moment it seemed that it would be too terrible if we communicated to each other on a level of total consciousness and awareness each of the other—that it would be too terrible, it would be the end of the bookstore, it would be the end of civ- … not civilization, but in other words the position that everybody was in was ridiculous, everybody running around peddling books to each other. Here in the universe! Passing money over the counter, wrapping books in bags and guarding the door, you know, stealing books, and the people sitting up making accountings on the upper floor there, and people worrying about their exams walking through the bookstore, and all the millions of thoughts that people had – you know, that I’m worrying about – whether I’m going to get laid or whether anybody loves them, about their mothers dying of cancer or, you know, the complete death awareness that everybody has continuously with them all the time – suddenly revealed to me at once in the faces of the people, and they all looked like horrible grotesque masks, grotesque because hiding the knowledge from each other. Having a habitual conduct and forms to prescribe, forms to fulfill. Roles to play. But the main insight I had at the time was that everybody knew. Everybody knew completely everything. Knew completely everything in the terms I was talking about.
Excerpted from the interview ‘On the Blake Experience’ appearing in On the Poetry of Allen Ginsburg, edited by Lewis Hyde. Published by the University of Michigan, 1984.