The performer with a capital P is a person of action. He is not someone who plays someone else. He is an agent, a priest, a warrior: he stands outside aesthetic genres.

The ritual is a performance, a completed action, an act. The degenerate ritual is a show.

I am not trying to discover something new, but something forgotten, something so old that all distinctions between aesthetic genres are no longer useful.

The performer is a state of being. A knower, of whom we can speak with reference to Castaneda's novels, provided we have a sense of romanticism.

I prefer to think of Pierre de Combos, or even of that Don Juan described by Nietzsche: a rebel for whom knowledge is a duty; even if others do not condemn him, he feels like a changeling, an outsider.

In Indian tradition, they speak of the Vratias (the rebel hordes). He resists simply by seeking understanding.

He can only understand after he does it. Knowledge is a matter of doing.