A bit of musical blogging

Robert Anton Wilson, a jazz buff, was a fan of the Modern Jazz Quartet and saw the band live in the 1950s, when jazz in the U.S. arguably reached an artistic peak. From left: Percy Heath (double bass), Connie Kay (drums), Milt Jackson (vibes) and John Lewis (piano). (Public domain photo). 

Prop Anon on Twitter: "First time #RobertAntonWilson smoked weed was during the intermission of ModeRn Jazz Quarter show back in the Fiddies in NYC

"The Xylophone never sounded so good."

Eric Wagner also discusses this in An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson. In fact, Eric has a separate entry on the Modern Jazz Quartet in the book's Lexicon section. (I keep a Kindle copy of the book on my smartphone so I can refer to it easily. I'll probably do the same thing when Prop's book comes out.)

Does anyone know if RAW saw any of the 1950s incarnations of Miles Davis' band? 

Wikipedia has a nice entry on the Modern Jazz Quartet. 

Bonus music bit: Nice photo of the MC5 on Twitter, a band mentioned in Illuminatus!

A bit from Cosmic Trigger

 

"I was weeding in the garden and a movement in the adjoining cornfield caught my eye. I looked over that way and saw a man with warty green skin and pointy ears, dancing."

~ Robert Anton Wilson, "Cosmic Trigger"

Illustration posted on Twitter by Dr. Richard Waterloo. 

Antero Alli meets RAW

In an audio file, about 17 minutes long, Antero Alli describes what it was like to meet Robert Anton Wilson in 1979 in Berkeley, California, and come under RAW's influence.

Hat tip, Prop Anon on Twitter. 

Prop Anon, on the new biography, on the F23 podcast

 

The F23 podcast interviews Prop Anon/Gabriel Kennedy, and I thought it was an interesting listen. The podcast focuses on Prop's upcoming biography of Robert Anton Wilson (due out in November). Topics covered include Illuminatus!, Chapel Perilous, UFOs, synchronicities, Prop's research into Luna Wilson's murderer and the difficulties Prop ran into as he worked for years on the book. I  am convinced we will all learn a lot about Robert Anton Wilson when the book comes out. 

'No Self, No Problem' discussion continues

The online discussion at RAW Semantics over the two No Self, No Problem books by Chris Niebauer. continues, even through the original post went up several weeks ago. I read the first book in the series last week (it was a quick read), put up a comment, and Brian replied.

I thought the book was an enjoyable discussion of Buddhism from the standpoint of neuroscience, with a particular focus on the discussion of "no self." As Brian mentions in his post, the book mentions Korzybski and talks about "belief systems." Most of it seemed like conventional neuropsychology, although Rupert Sheldrake pops up later in the book. 

It's also still not too late to post comments at this blog about Robert Shea's All Things Are Lights.  Thanks to Neil Rest and Rarebit Fiend for their comments. Neil provided some of the inspiration for Simon Moon, see my interview of him. 

Antero Alli releases video

 Announcement from Antero Alli, still busy releasing new material while dealing with cancer: "The June 11th Ritual Talk in Portland - on how I discovered and developed the specific methods of the Paratheatre medium I initiated in 1977 - is now on YouTube as a free view."

The latest from Bobby Campbell

Bobby Campbell was recently revealed as a distant relative of Mark Twain, and as you might expect after getting that news, you'll find he has been prolific and creative. His Summer 2023 newsletter announces a number of projects, many involving comics. There is also a timely reminder that Maybe Day 2023 is coming up on July 23. I knew some of this from following Bobby on Twitter, but it's nice to have it all in one place. 

Hilaritas podcast with Mariana Pinzón

 The latest Hilaritas Press podcast, released today, features Mariana Pinzón.

"In this episode, Mike Gathers chats with Mariana Pinzon on ChaoSurfing the eight circuits of consciousness with color magick."

Official website here. 

John Higgs on AI, and the new edition of the KLF book

John Higgs has issued his latest newsletter, and it includes an essay discussing AI, and how to tell the difference between work that is "authentic" and work that is "genuine."

"When it comes to identifying the genuine in AI, you need to look for the original creative impulse," John suggests. 

There's also a reminder  about the new 10th anniversary edition of The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds.

About the book, I wrote back in 2012:

"It's strange to say that a book about a British pop group is one of the best short introductions to the work of Robert Anton Wilson, but it's also true. JMR Higgs' KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money discusses the group but puts it in the context of the band's biggest influence, the Illuminatus! trilogy and Robert Anton Wilson.

"So it's a pop biography that has lucid explanations of reality tunnels, model agnosticism and Discordian philosophy. I also learned about the history of Ken Campbell's stage production of Illuminatus!"

That's from my intro to my interview with John about the book. 

And about the new edition, John writes, "This will include 13,000 words of footnotes, in which I look back at the book a decade after writing it and try and make some sense of it." The book comes out July 20, following the link to the newsletter to preorder.

Above is a limited edition shirt issued in conjunction with the new edition. It's being issued in a limited edition of 100 shirts, so if you want one, act fast. 

RAW on "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'

 

Cover of the first U.S. edition of Twain's classic novel. 

[A couple of days ago, I had a blog post which quoted RAW as saying Mark Twain was one of his favorite writers; I complained that I couldn't find much discussion by RAW about Twain. Bobby Campbell, Prop Anon and Eric Wagner all responded. Bobby's comment was the longest, and I want to reproduce it here. The Management.]

A bit of RAW's affection for Twain came out during a discussion I had with him about similarities I found between "The Earth will Shake" & "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" during the Quantum Psychology class.

"No writer ever knows consciously all the influences on his work
but I did know the influence of Portrait of the Artist
on Earth Will Shake

& two others you didn't mention:
Huckleberry Finn by Twain and
Intruder in the Dust by Faulkner

Replace religious bigotry with racism
and you'll see the Mississippi/Napoli parallels"
And then after I confirmed I saw the parallels after re-reading Huckleberry Finn:

"Huck Finn decides that even if hell exists,
he'd rather go there than send Jim back to slavery

the most moving scene in American literature to me;
I can't even write this brief summary of it without tears coming

Siggy makes a similar choice
but I'm not as good a writer as Twain"

Someone on my Dad's side of the family recently did a big expansive genealogy and it turns out I'm very vaguely related to Mark Twain. His 3x grand parents are my 7x grand parents.

I don't put any stock in distant relations like that though, I mean we have 32 3x grand parents, 64 4x grand parents, etc etc, past a certain point everyone might as well be related to everyone else :)))

Tom again: There's an outfit called Standard Ebooks that tries to do definitive editions of public domain books; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the seven Mark Twain ebooks the organization has produced so far. The books are various formats, including the standard ePub format which Amazon's Kindle finally now supports. There are a number of good ebook readers for smart phones; I use Read Era  for my ePub books. 

RAW: You can't read everything

Cormac McCarthy in 1973 (public domain photo)

For the past few weeks, I've been reading many obituaries/articles about Martin Amis and Cormac McCarthy, two prominent literary novelists who recently died. I'm pretty well read with Amis -- I've missed quite a few, but I've also read many of his books, including I think all of the ones that are highly regarded. I have read nothing by McCarthy.

Even if you read a lot -- I read dozens of books a year -- there will always be articles that make you think you aren't well read. After I read Bobby's and Prop's comments to my Mark Twain post, 

There's a place in Prop's 2003 interview that addresses the idea of "Oh, no, I'm not well read after all, I haven't read Cormac McCarthy."

Prop: Have you read Charles Bukowski? What are your impressions of Charles Bukowski both as a poet and a writer?

Wilson: No I have not read Charles Bukowski.

Prop: Never came across any of his books?

Wilson: No. I have lived 71 years, in which there are 365 days in each year, and only 24 hours in each day. My areas of ignorance are absolutely staggering. And I’m more and more aware of that, because my knowledge of most of the subjects I’ve written about is either five years or twenty years out of date now. So, if I ever did another lecture tour, I’d have to spend a month before the tour doing research on-line to try to figure out what is scientific matter that is still accepted.

Prop's interview by the way is quite interesting and you should take a look if you've never read it. And I admit, I've never read Bukowski either. 

Buy a book, watch Robin Ince

"It's Independent Bookshop Week! Buy ANY book from Bookshop.org this week and you'll be invited to a live online event with the original Bibliomaniac and all round brilliant supporter of indie bookshops, @robinince. Find out more."

Mark Twain at age 31. 

From the New Libertarian notes interview: 

CRNLA: What are your favorite novels, movies, TV shows and music?

RAW: The novels would be, I suppose, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, The Magus by Fowles, The Roots of Heaven by Gary, Don Quixote and anything by Mark Twain. Movies: Intolerance, Broken Blossoms and everything else by David Mark Griffith, Citizen Kane, The Trial, King Kong, 2001. TV: Star Trek and Mary Hartman. Music: Beethoven's Ninth and his late quartets, Bach, Bizet, Carl Orff, Vivaldi, the less popular and more experimental stuff by Stravinsky.

Emphasis mine.

I read a lot of Mark Twain in my youth, including novels and short stories (Letters from the Earth made a big impression on me in my youth.) There is so much about Twain that can be talked about -- his iconoclastic views on religion, his satire, his humor, his important place in American letters. But I can't remember RAW talking about him, even though this interview suggests he read a lot of Twain, too. And it seems to me I don't see much discussion of Twain anywhere. Is there a discussion of Twain in a RAW interview somewhere that I've missed?