There's really no way to convey to someone who wasn't there the sort of surreally heady stream-of-consciousness that emanated from the mouth of David Milch as he discussed his upcoming HBO series "John From Cincinnati" Friday at TV press tour. It really was a little unfair of HBO to uncork this on a group of beleaguered TV critics, who had already been subjected to a week's worth of mind-numbing press conferences and were already questioning the nature of reality, to challenge and bewilder them with Milch's questioning the nature of reality so poetically bafflingly so late in the day, so late in the week.

So, here are the choicest bits. The questions have been excised because as Milch himself might agree, questions don't matter; only answers do.

DAVID MILCH: This is a project which, I suppose, started to gestate six or seven years ago, and I guess two years ago Kem (Nunn, executive producer) and I began to collaborate on "Deadwood" and HBO, specifically Carolyn (Strauss, director of HBO original programming), suggested that we might adapt some of the materials that I had been working on in another context in collaboration with Kem and engage the venue of surfing. Is that a sufficiently opaque and tedious presentation?

What Kem and I were interested in engaging were themes having to do with the borders and margins of things -- political, geographical and spiritual as well. And I suppose you could say that -- I would hope that "NYPD Blue" isn't perceived -- it may be perceived initially as a police drama, but I think it sort of reached beyond those borders and certainly "Deadwood" aspired to do that. And I think you'll find that surfing is kind of the door that you walk through, but there's a whole world on the other side.

They are mystical components. In terms of the what's going on of things, that's sort of an unfolding question. And that, I suppose, elliptically was what I had referenced in my previous response that we wanted to examine how things go back-and-forth. I think that one man's mystical is another man's day-to-day. As Luis Guzman, the wonderful character actor, remarked, "If you do that where I'm from, we build you a shrine." In other words, no one thinks that -- so how people deal with the abrupt entrance into their lives of what might be explained or discounted is sort of the subject matter of the material.

I guess that's what I was trying to say in this answer that to my mind reality is a shifting and elusive condition. It redefines itself constantly. The actors find one of my most endearing qualities, my insistence after they have located and beautifully conveyed the state of mind or spirit of a character: I'll say, "Can you try and suggest simultaneously the exact opposite" and then I duck.

And which is to say that, when I was saying that this is a story that takes place on the margins of things, the attempt to identify the coordinates of reality is itself a kind of problematic and conditional effort. It's changing all the time. What constitutes -- where are we when we sleep? What is our sense of reality at that moment? It's, you know, science now suggests to us that what has been perceived as matter for a long time is, in fact, energy. That what looks solid, in fact, is constituted in waves, that Einstein's beautiful mathematical equations which depict the nature of reality don't apply at certain levels. And I think that's true as well about what constitutes the natural and the supernatural. You know, it depends on what foxhole you're in.

William James -- and several of the actors have attempted to take their lives in the aftermath of my protracted speaking about William James -- William James said something to the -- among other things -- "If this life be not a real fight, then it's merely a private theatrical from which one may withdraw at will, but it feels like a real fight -- as if there were something wild in the universe which we with all of our idealities and faithfulnesses are called upon to redeem." And it has seemed both to -- I don't know how many of you are familiar with Mr. Nunn's novels, but as opposed to a rank imposter, he's an extraordinary surfer and an extraordinary novelist. And there is a continuity between the themes which his novels raise and what this series tries to examine, and to the extent that we were saying before that reality can sometimes be a little problematic and so on and there are now -- I know I heard several of you discussing string theory in the corridors earlier.

And the idea being, string theory postulating that the idea of four dimensions, which are agreed upon, is very conditional and that more than likely the only thing that accounts for the variances in the universe between Einstein's ideas and what we actually see is that there are unseen dimensions. And that's sort of the predicate of string theory, of Stephen Hawking and so on.

And what William James speculated was that there are what he called the lawless intrusions. He was fascinated by psychic phenomenon, and what James suggested was that whatever originated the universe, the Big Bang was a chaotic energy, which is now tending toward order. And that for the most part, we can account through certain theorems with all of the phenomena of our experience, but that there are certain abrupt and lawless inexplicable intrusions through essentially what would be described as tears in the fabric of the dimensions we perceive -- John From Cincinnati.

I think surfing -- the first thing to say is I don't have the vaguest idea about surfing in terms of lived experience. But by the same token, I didn't live in "Deadwood" in 1876 either. And what one tries to proceed by analogy in that regard. You know, I'm from Buffalo, New York. There's a wonderful parochialism freedom that kind of a -- from a rust belt, not huge cities, you know. And Freud wrote an essay called the "Narcissism of Perceived Difference." And there's a certain narcissism of perceived difference that pertains in the surfing world too, which is if you don't surf, impossible to understand. And we used to say that from Buffalo -- if you're not from Buffalo -- I mean, I guess you're American.

But you don't really get it. You don't get it. And you say, like, "Well, he's from Rochester."

"What can he know?" As time goes on, you come to realize what seemed to be chasms of difference which cannot be bridged turn out not even to exist. So in terms of surfing, you know, I was talking about this research project in pharmacology into which I was dragooned at the age of --

(Laughter.)

The freon aspect began when I was eight, and then I was transferred over to the alcohol project --

(Laughter.)

-- and then subsequently to narcotics. And in all of that research -- to the extent that there was a coherent intention, it was to ride a wave, which one could generate on one's own terms, that the self was suppressed and the sense of -- I used to -- nitrous oxide. I was involved in the subsidiary project involving nitrous oxide.

And the great thing with nitrous oxide, I was getting teeth filled before I even had teeth.

And the great thing about nitrous oxide is when it hits, you say, everyone is right where they're supposed to be and we're all moving together.

Surfers experience a oneness, a felt sense of oneness, when they're doing it right, I am told. All kidding aside, a decent humility demands, even if you're writing about Rochester and you're from Buffalo, that you pay attention to people from Rochester. And I hope that I've been respectful in -- I feel that it's important to experience even vicariously through the acts of imagination of others and communication and so on what goes on. But the fundamental point is that what you're looking to experience on the wave, the question then becomes, can you live there? Is that a human condition which is tenable? And so having walked through the door, whether it's junk or surf, the subsequent question becomes how much humanity is it possible to fulfill in that condition? And that's the tension Bruce's character is living into, who plays the great surfer of his generation, who circumstance has now forced to encounter what it's like to be a great surfer who can't surf the way he used to. Each of the characters -- Grayson Fletcher, who is in terms of the lineage the inheritor of the great bloodlines of surfing in America and portrays such a character as well on the show is, you know, when you're -- forgive me for going on like this -- but when you're a kid, when you go through puberty, if I remember correctly, there is a sudden sense that you possess the energy of the universe. I think when you surf, you have that sense no matter how old you are.

But the thing is that as you get older you begin to realize that what you felt when you were 13 years old, which we used to express, is I'm going all night. But you can't do it anymore; you can't live there as a permanent condition. And what does that mean?

One of things to the extent that theme then engages with another theme which has to do how we are encouraged by our technology to believe that the disciplines of our biology no longer control us. And that's the character sort of portrayed by Luke Perry who vitalizes those themes. Those are the odd mixtures of the kind of tensions that this story portrays.

QUESTION: How is it different from going in to meet David Milch as opposed to Aaron Spelling or John Cassavettes or someone like that?

BRUCE GREENWOOD: Well, I think you probably witnessed the difference in the last 20 minutes.

Wow, you made it all the way through that? Amazing. Go give yourself a cookie.

Interestingly enough, the producers of "According to Jim" explain their series in the exact same way.