As I wrote recently, I recently read the 10th anniversary edition of John Higgs' The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds. I guess it counts as a re-read, although the edition I read has thousands of words of footnotes, as John comments on the book in hindsight.
The footnotes make an unusual book even more unusual. As I read it, I noticed some synchronicities with my own life -- for example, Reykjavik, Iceland, figures in the book as a place where the band Echo and the Bunnymen played a concert, and the book is largely about Illuminatus! I recently worked on an Illuminatus-related project with Spookah, who lives in Reykjavik.
And then I came across John's footnote on page 78: "One of the consequences of writing this book is that I am regularly contacted by people who have read it and then been plagued by a storm of synchronicities of their own." This gave me the odd feeling that John was talking to me, as in the incident (mentioned in the book) when RAW is watching "Harvey" on TV and a character suddenly talks to "Mr. Wilson."
I wrote to Spookah to ask if he is an Echo and the Bunnyman fan (I was going to freak out if he said, "Yes, it's my favorite band. Why?"). Spookah has read the book twice, too, and his reply was interessting:
Yes, I have indeed read the book, twice now. The second time around was a couple of years ago, as I grabbed a copy of the tenth anniversary edition signed by John Higgs.
I like his footnotes, I find it interesting to see him thinking out loud, reflecting on his own writing.
Actually, this book originally came to me in what I see as a pretty synchronistic way. I was at the time backpacking around the planet, and had been reading Illuminatus! for the first time while in Hawaii and New Zealand. Then I arrived in Bali, and found a copy of John's book in a second hand bookstore. I picked it up because, browsing it, I saw that RAW was often coming up in it.
John's book really provided me with a most welcome context for Illuminatus, and these two together got me started on all things RAW and Discordianism.
I think John Higgs does an excellent job at presenting RAW's ideas in a fun and clear way to people who might not be familiar with it.
I don't know if I would call myself a 'fan' of Echo & the Bunnymen, but I certainly think they were one the best British rock bands of the 80s, and albums such as Heaven Up Here or Ocean Rain are some of my favorites of that decade. Crocodiles and Porcupine are very good as well.
(the photograph on the cover art of Porcupine is at a waterfall in Iceland that is now amongst the most visited places in the country, it's called Gullfoss)
John Higgs remarks,
Most of the time when people tell me of their synchronicities, they lose something in the telling. What they find meaningfull is pretty personal and hence their stories often sound more like coincidences than anything more. But there is an exception to that - which is the stories that involve rabbits. They often sound far weirder. I think I included in those footnotes the story of a woman who was reading the stuff in the book about Pookahs while her daughter played in the garden - only to come inside and tell her mum she had been playing with a giant invisible rabbit. That freaked her out!
Also, John promises his new book will be announced soon.
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