Jeff Riggenbach
Reason magazine has a 1977 interview with Timothy Leary. It was carried out by Jeff Riggenbach, a libertarian who was interested in some of the same revisionist historians that interested Robert Anton Wilson (see this earlier post.)
This is from the period when Leary was claiming that Bob Dylan is a pernicious influence on the nation's youth, and it's interesting to see how Leary responds when Riggenbach presses him:
LEARY: Well, sure that's a metaphor. And anytime I use a metaphor, it's a risky operation. Metaphors are like forward passes. Anytime I say anything in terms of symbols I expect I'm wrong half the time, or wait long enough and I'll be right, or if you're right now you'll be wrong or left tomorrow—maybe left. So I won't defend that metaphor. But it got you thinking.
REASON: It certainly did.
LEARY: And I see ideas not as heavy, static concepts, but as electric charges and if someone can prove me wrong I'm the first one to be delighted because that means some signal I sent out got whacked back and jolted me. That's what I want you to do.
Here is my Riggenbach obituary.
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