A web site called TVtropes.com has some notes on ILLUMINATUS! Thanks to Andrew Crawshaw for spotting this and calling it to my attention.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Talking with Steve "Fly Agaric 23" Pratt
Few, if any, people have been more energetic in setting up Internet sites to promote the works and though of Robert Anton Wilson than Steve "Fly Agaric 23" Pratt, a resident of Amsterdam is plays drums, is a DJ and works in various other art forms. And he isn't exactly slowing down: As I write these words, a brand new site, RAW360, is poised to launch.
I have been wanting to interview Mr. Pratt for a long time, so the following is one more item crossed off my "to do" list.
This interview concentrates on Steve's interest in Robert Anton Wilson. For an archive of his performances with Garaj Mahal and others, go here. His new is called DOCTOR MARSHMALLOW CUBICLE and a sample of the band's music is here. A comic of Pratt meeting RAW is here. Mr. Pratt's book, World Piss, may be purchased here. The photo below of Mr. Pratt and Mr. Wilson was taken in 2002.
Steve, could you tell my readers just a little bit about yourself?
Greetings dear readers, i am 99% sure my name is Steven Pratt and that i was born in Wordsley, England in the year 1976. I currently reside in Amsterdam and spend most my time these days reading, drumming, spinning records, blogging and petting cats.
How did you become interested in Robert Anton Wilson?
Due to my early sporting career as a swimmer i missed out on many intellectual pursuits, discovering the wonders of literature, philosophy and science after my official education, thanks to RAW for the most part. I first encountered RAW through his book Cosmic Trigger II that i traced back through 3 people, starting with my girlfriend at that time, to a guy in Wolverhampton called Jonah who got turned onto RAW in the 80's, possibly via Bill Drummond and The KLF. After 5 years of reading RAW throughout the late 1990's i viewed him as THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT WRITER AND THINKER SINCE SOCRATES.
I have just one Web site devoted to RAW, but you have more than I can keep up with. Could you list them for me, please? Is there a "portal" site that links to them all?
Thanks TOM, from the guy who keeps up the most consistant and comprehensive RAW related blog in cyberspace. I do not yet have a single hub for my RAW related output, but you can get an RSS feed at my wikispaces account, linked below. RAW influences every blog i keep, but the explicitly RAW sites I prune are as follows:
tsogblogsphere
A tale of the tribe
Ettt (email to the tribe)
Only Maybe
Wikispaces.flyagaric
Soundcloud
Fuckbook
Myspace (ghost town)
Q. I was struck by the fact that in the tribute program for RAW you did earlier this year with John Sinclair, you used music that RAW enjoyed. Did you ever talk to RAW about jazz, or about music?
A. Yes, during the interviews RAW kindly granted me I asked him about the music he liked, and I talked a little about my own musical projects. He surprised me with a quote that he was unable to source on the spot, but which i recently read in the introduction to FUG YOU by Ed Sanders. (which i highly recommend, especially due to the high quality surrealist poetry) ("When the mode of the music changes the walls of the city shake.--Tuli Kupferberg adapted (and considerably improved) from Damon of Athens, ca. 460 B.C" from the opening page of FUG YOU: An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, The Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side.--Ed Sanders. ).
Eric Wagner has correlated extensive research into RAWs affection for the music of Beethoven and Bach in particular that will be explored on his upcoming class at the Maybelogic Academy. RAW certainly liked orchestral music and Jazz. I would estimate jazz of the 'cool' period. RAW seemed to me to simply enjoy relaxing music. Yet, further more i feel that Jazz as a music form, and free jazz and the avant garde forms have an affinity with RAW's hologramic prose on some level.
I have been wanting to interview Mr. Pratt for a long time, so the following is one more item crossed off my "to do" list.
This interview concentrates on Steve's interest in Robert Anton Wilson. For an archive of his performances with Garaj Mahal and others, go here. His new is called DOCTOR MARSHMALLOW CUBICLE and a sample of the band's music is here. A comic of Pratt meeting RAW is here. Mr. Pratt's book, World Piss, may be purchased here. The photo below of Mr. Pratt and Mr. Wilson was taken in 2002.
Steve, could you tell my readers just a little bit about yourself?
Greetings dear readers, i am 99% sure my name is Steven Pratt and that i was born in Wordsley, England in the year 1976. I currently reside in Amsterdam and spend most my time these days reading, drumming, spinning records, blogging and petting cats.
How did you become interested in Robert Anton Wilson?
Due to my early sporting career as a swimmer i missed out on many intellectual pursuits, discovering the wonders of literature, philosophy and science after my official education, thanks to RAW for the most part. I first encountered RAW through his book Cosmic Trigger II that i traced back through 3 people, starting with my girlfriend at that time, to a guy in Wolverhampton called Jonah who got turned onto RAW in the 80's, possibly via Bill Drummond and The KLF. After 5 years of reading RAW throughout the late 1990's i viewed him as THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT WRITER AND THINKER SINCE SOCRATES.
I have just one Web site devoted to RAW, but you have more than I can keep up with. Could you list them for me, please? Is there a "portal" site that links to them all?
Thanks TOM, from the guy who keeps up the most consistant and comprehensive RAW related blog in cyberspace. I do not yet have a single hub for my RAW related output, but you can get an RSS feed at my wikispaces account, linked below. RAW influences every blog i keep, but the explicitly RAW sites I prune are as follows:
tsogblogsphere
A tale of the tribe
Ettt (email to the tribe)
Only Maybe
Wikispaces.flyagaric
Soundcloud
Fuckbook
Myspace (ghost town)
Q. I was struck by the fact that in the tribute program for RAW you did earlier this year with John Sinclair, you used music that RAW enjoyed. Did you ever talk to RAW about jazz, or about music?
A. Yes, during the interviews RAW kindly granted me I asked him about the music he liked, and I talked a little about my own musical projects. He surprised me with a quote that he was unable to source on the spot, but which i recently read in the introduction to FUG YOU by Ed Sanders. (which i highly recommend, especially due to the high quality surrealist poetry) ("When the mode of the music changes the walls of the city shake.--Tuli Kupferberg adapted (and considerably improved) from Damon of Athens, ca. 460 B.C" from the opening page of FUG YOU: An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, The Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side.--Ed Sanders. ).
Eric Wagner has correlated extensive research into RAWs affection for the music of Beethoven and Bach in particular that will be explored on his upcoming class at the Maybelogic Academy. RAW certainly liked orchestral music and Jazz. I would estimate jazz of the 'cool' period. RAW seemed to me to simply enjoy relaxing music. Yet, further more i feel that Jazz as a music form, and free jazz and the avant garde forms have an affinity with RAW's hologramic prose on some level.
Maybe i can take this opportunity to tantalize RAW heads to a new RAW website/museum which has been in progress for over 12 months alongside aerosol graffiti legend and digital design master CHU. /
Although the new RAW panorama site is accesible through conventional web brousers, lap tops and home computers, it takes advantage of the newer IOS systems and incorporates giroscopic intelligence and augmented reality features. Combined with the large array of multimedia content and support from the RAW estate, Matt Black of Ninjatune and deepleaf productions, it presents a state of the art project, dedicated to the life works and panoramic perceptions of RAW. I look forward to sharing more news about the launch of this new site very soon.
Q. Well, then, what can we expect when RAW360 launches?
Alike many other virtual technologies RAW360 remains difficult to describe. At first glance it might look to some people like a first person shooter game due to the sensation of exploring, zooming in and out, and interacting with the hotspots: responsive areas containing multi media surprises, audio, video, image, text. Unlike a first person shooter game you are actually inside a RAW museum/library discovering and uncovering exhibits. We are looking to expand and continue developing RAW360.net into next year as new content and partners get on board. Please contact me by email if you wish to recieve updates and/or have anything you wish to share. Bob@raw360.net
Q. I looked up Wordsley, your hometown. You grew up very close to Birmingham, a big music city. You weren't far from Wales, with all of the history and myth that entails. England is not a very big country, so by definition you could easily travel to Stonehenge, the Saxon Shore, Hadrian's Wall, etc. etc. It sounds wonderful to me, but I understand you envy people who grew up in the United States, as I did. What is it about the U.S. that fascinates you?
What fascinates me about the U.S very generally is what i have come to view as the anarchist libertarian tradition that reaches right back to 1776, and beyond that, if you begin to view Native American Indian tribalism exhibiting basic anarchist libertarian principles. I feel very lucky to have met and to have studied with some of the great American's that most fascinate me: RAW, John Sinclair, John C. Lilly, Jack Sarfatti, Paul Krassner, R.U Sirius, Mark Pesce and a host of literally hundreds of boundary dissolving artists, musicians, poets and generally libertarian optimists. I might also substitute the term 'anarchist libertarian' with '1960's U.S consciousness movement' as describing why the above characters embody my fascination with Unistat.
Q. How did it come about that you traveled to the U.S. and actually met RAW late in his life?
Thats a question i have spent a lot of time thinking about. In the most basic sense I contacted the Prophets Conference now called 'The Great Rethinking' i think, and ordered a ticket for the Sante Fe, New Mexico, event held 14th-17th April 2000, with some help from Birmingham reggae band UB40. But RAW fell ill shortly before the event and cancelled his appearence. RAW falling ill was the twist of fate that led to me meeting him in person since the Prophets took pity on my pilgimage from the UK to hear RAW speak, and so offered me a golden ticket: would i like to be RAW's caregiver at the December conference in Palm Springs, they asked me by email one day. Yes, yes, I say yes. I said. Nearly two years later i simply travelled to his home, rang his doorbell and asked to come in and interview him, he obliged and this led to the most memorable day of my life, some of which is captured in my interview published in the Maybe Logic Quarterly magazine. RAW proved himself to me that day as the cheerful, generous and intellectual giant i suspected. I regret to say that the audio from this interview has been lost during my recent movements.
On another level it came about that I traveled to the U.S to meet RAW due to Carl Jung's dream about Liverpool. At least i deduct that RAW came into my orbit in the UK by way of the KLF, the Illuminatus! stage performance, Ken Campbell's Science Fiction Theatre of Dream Language and Pun, and so Carl Jung's dream which influenced both the name of the theatre, and the contents of the production: Wilson and Shea's Illuminatus! This syncro net is explored in Cosmic Trigger 1, on page 223.
Q. Why did you decide to live in Amsterdam?
Well i thought that might be obvious, it's the quality weed and the blow jobs. I mean it's the holographic principle of Dutch Nobel Prized physicist Gerard T'Hooft, and the tessellated genius of M.C Escher, the relative cultural diversity and fabled Dutch tolerence, the unpredicatable weather and the...waffles. I decided to live here due to landing a job that could fascilitate that dream, and enable me to continue my studies. I shot weed in a coffeeshop and recently graced the New York Times on page 9 in an article about the proposed new restrictions on foreigners freedoms in Amsterdam.
Behind the bar at Amsterdam’s 420 Cafe last month, Steven Pratt showed marijuana products to customers from Romania. (Original New York Times caption. Photo credit: Michel de Groot for the International Herald Tribune)
Why have you spoken up to defend Wikileaks? Do you see it as an antidote to government militarism and secrecy?
Yes, the antidote, or at least a working alternative medicine for the sick and dying centralized processes that seems to cripple information flow. The corporate militarism and a Pyramid structured secrecy policy of most business practice seems to be failing humanity. I have spoken up, or thrown down written support to defend Wikileaks for a few reasons, the first is that Wikileaks ruined some of my favourite conspiracy theories by providing new data sets by which to deduce 'what the hell is going on'. In particular in the dark recesses of international finance capitalism, the revolving doors and oily lubricants employed by governments, surveillance industry companies and spook agencies, for example. To repeat a familiar cliche' i think that RAW would have supported Wikileaks and continued to cheer the open source revolution and principles that aspire to scientific journalism. RAW, like Buckminster Fuller, identified with decentralization principles, and so Wikileaks, to my mind, seems a watershed moment for a working example of decentralized principle, a methodology in action. And in resonance with some of Giordano Bruno’s ideas, and McLuhan’s and Bucky Fuller’s.
Secondly, i support Wikileaks due to its whole new style of communication and furthermore propose that in some sense Wikileaks may constitute a new tale of the tribe for the 21st century: a new global epic including history; or a collection of multi-media snapshots into the recent past that detail who said what and when and where, plus data fields of once secret messages between Governments, spooks and Global Corps., and, all this information decoded from a once encrypted scrambled up secret Joyce like nat-language, and juxtaposed into a higher order of meaning. I sincerely hope that one day some bright and brave soul might set a Wikileaks glossing of 'the tale of the tribe' to verse, so we might have something to stand with the Cantos of Ezra Pound, and/or Joyce's Wake: a modern verse epic including history, something to make you leap up for joy and laugh your ass off, and something that make the soul soar with compassion for tragic suffering.
Why did you get interested in Amanita Muscaria, and why do you use it in your DJ name?
Like most things in retrospect there remains a complex of origins, and the more i think about it the more i surprise myself. For example, in response to the name a) i used to be a competitive Butterfly swimmer, 2) i gained the nickname ‘fly by night’ at an RnB club I once worked at, and 3) when i discovered RAW's Cosmic Trigger chapter titled Dope and Divinity, I had a Joyce-like Epiphany. (as i write this, a marching band marched by outside my front door, 3.00 P.M, 23/6/12) I read Andrija Puharich, R. Gordon Wasson, John Allegro and Robert Graves as a direct result of this chapter, and 4) when I discovered that Amanita Muscaria was the 24th entry in the index to Cosmic Trigger, Fly Agaric 23 was born out into the world. However, my academic pursuits lay dormant under gestation for the most part until I travelled to the U.S and found some of the others. In particular, RAW himself and the gang of brilliant critters orbiting the Maybe Logic Academy who together helped kick me into writing more sincerely, regular forum and blog postings, and shed loads of quality esoteric reading materials. I was swimming through thousands upon thousands of RAW resources and sources.
Besides my private RÁW related studies i have been performing, producing and DJ'ing music for 20 years, and until my fly agaric 23 epiphany occurred around 1995 I did not have an artist name, if that’s what you call it? so ever since that moment I developed Fly Agaric 23 as a meme spore that i hoped might connect and grow alongside the gazillions of bits flying around cyberspace. I also like the Amanita Muscaria glossing of Christmas and the possible psychedelic shamanic revolution someday usurping Jesus Christ, Coca Cola and the Queen's Xmas speech. I only tried Amanita Muscaria once at a very low dose, and the results were mildly sensational but not really my cup of tea, but the experience did lead to a creative burst of energy and interest in shamanic drumming.
I might also take this opportunity of my first ever interview (thanks again TOM) to address some theories about Amanita Muscaria and its probable use among early hominids and in mythological symbolism, and use Maybe Logic to disperse any creepy messiah complex clinging to any Jesuspect Stereotype such as Fly Agaric 23. The book: Ploughing the clouds: The search for Irish Soma by Peter Lamborn Wilson remains my favourite text on the subject, due to his anarchist-poetic glossing of the data field, and his critical thinking and prize picked specimens. To me PLW manages to apply Maybe Logic to the question of SOMA without identifying any particular species of plant or drug, but instead detailing how SOMA contains a complex of origins and symbolic similarities across cultures from African and Vedic India, to Irish Celtic hyperborean.
What are your favorite Robert Anton Wilson books? What is your favorite book to recommend to a RAW newbie?
I have a particular affinity for Coincidance, which is probably one of RAW's more difficult books and which opens with a riot of Joyce scholarship, moving through a series of Jazz Haiku's, Bell and Bohm Quantum Physics, Synchronicity pieces, a fantastic interview with Sean Mcbride (Nobel Prize and Lenin Peace prize), prose Cut-Up's and more Joycean Taoist Magick. All in all In all, I view Coincidance as an explicit example of RAW's Holographic prose style, or Hermetic style, or his Hologrammic Prose.
I would recommend Cosmic Trigger I as a first book for a RAW newbie, followed by 'Reality is what you can get away with', a surrealist screen play and, good for a Boobie, followed by Everything is under Control' his encyclopaedia of Conspiracy happenings, perfect for a Doobie.
Although the new RAW panorama site is accesible through conventional web brousers, lap tops and home computers, it takes advantage of the newer IOS systems and incorporates giroscopic intelligence and augmented reality features. Combined with the large array of multimedia content and support from the RAW estate, Matt Black of Ninjatune and deepleaf productions, it presents a state of the art project, dedicated to the life works and panoramic perceptions of RAW. I look forward to sharing more news about the launch of this new site very soon.
Q. Well, then, what can we expect when RAW360 launches?
Alike many other virtual technologies RAW360 remains difficult to describe. At first glance it might look to some people like a first person shooter game due to the sensation of exploring, zooming in and out, and interacting with the hotspots: responsive areas containing multi media surprises, audio, video, image, text. Unlike a first person shooter game you are actually inside a RAW museum/library discovering and uncovering exhibits. We are looking to expand and continue developing RAW360.net into next year as new content and partners get on board. Please contact me by email if you wish to recieve updates and/or have anything you wish to share. Bob@raw360.net
Q. I looked up Wordsley, your hometown. You grew up very close to Birmingham, a big music city. You weren't far from Wales, with all of the history and myth that entails. England is not a very big country, so by definition you could easily travel to Stonehenge, the Saxon Shore, Hadrian's Wall, etc. etc. It sounds wonderful to me, but I understand you envy people who grew up in the United States, as I did. What is it about the U.S. that fascinates you?
What fascinates me about the U.S very generally is what i have come to view as the anarchist libertarian tradition that reaches right back to 1776, and beyond that, if you begin to view Native American Indian tribalism exhibiting basic anarchist libertarian principles. I feel very lucky to have met and to have studied with some of the great American's that most fascinate me: RAW, John Sinclair, John C. Lilly, Jack Sarfatti, Paul Krassner, R.U Sirius, Mark Pesce and a host of literally hundreds of boundary dissolving artists, musicians, poets and generally libertarian optimists. I might also substitute the term 'anarchist libertarian' with '1960's U.S consciousness movement' as describing why the above characters embody my fascination with Unistat.
Q. How did it come about that you traveled to the U.S. and actually met RAW late in his life?
Thats a question i have spent a lot of time thinking about. In the most basic sense I contacted the Prophets Conference now called 'The Great Rethinking' i think, and ordered a ticket for the Sante Fe, New Mexico, event held 14th-17th April 2000, with some help from Birmingham reggae band UB40. But RAW fell ill shortly before the event and cancelled his appearence. RAW falling ill was the twist of fate that led to me meeting him in person since the Prophets took pity on my pilgimage from the UK to hear RAW speak, and so offered me a golden ticket: would i like to be RAW's caregiver at the December conference in Palm Springs, they asked me by email one day. Yes, yes, I say yes. I said. Nearly two years later i simply travelled to his home, rang his doorbell and asked to come in and interview him, he obliged and this led to the most memorable day of my life, some of which is captured in my interview published in the Maybe Logic Quarterly magazine. RAW proved himself to me that day as the cheerful, generous and intellectual giant i suspected. I regret to say that the audio from this interview has been lost during my recent movements.
On another level it came about that I traveled to the U.S to meet RAW due to Carl Jung's dream about Liverpool. At least i deduct that RAW came into my orbit in the UK by way of the KLF, the Illuminatus! stage performance, Ken Campbell's Science Fiction Theatre of Dream Language and Pun, and so Carl Jung's dream which influenced both the name of the theatre, and the contents of the production: Wilson and Shea's Illuminatus! This syncro net is explored in Cosmic Trigger 1, on page 223.
Q. Why did you decide to live in Amsterdam?
Well i thought that might be obvious, it's the quality weed and the blow jobs. I mean it's the holographic principle of Dutch Nobel Prized physicist Gerard T'Hooft, and the tessellated genius of M.C Escher, the relative cultural diversity and fabled Dutch tolerence, the unpredicatable weather and the...waffles. I decided to live here due to landing a job that could fascilitate that dream, and enable me to continue my studies. I shot weed in a coffeeshop and recently graced the New York Times on page 9 in an article about the proposed new restrictions on foreigners freedoms in Amsterdam.
Behind the bar at Amsterdam’s 420 Cafe last month, Steven Pratt showed marijuana products to customers from Romania. (Original New York Times caption. Photo credit: Michel de Groot for the International Herald Tribune)
Why have you spoken up to defend Wikileaks? Do you see it as an antidote to government militarism and secrecy?
Yes, the antidote, or at least a working alternative medicine for the sick and dying centralized processes that seems to cripple information flow. The corporate militarism and a Pyramid structured secrecy policy of most business practice seems to be failing humanity. I have spoken up, or thrown down written support to defend Wikileaks for a few reasons, the first is that Wikileaks ruined some of my favourite conspiracy theories by providing new data sets by which to deduce 'what the hell is going on'. In particular in the dark recesses of international finance capitalism, the revolving doors and oily lubricants employed by governments, surveillance industry companies and spook agencies, for example. To repeat a familiar cliche' i think that RAW would have supported Wikileaks and continued to cheer the open source revolution and principles that aspire to scientific journalism. RAW, like Buckminster Fuller, identified with decentralization principles, and so Wikileaks, to my mind, seems a watershed moment for a working example of decentralized principle, a methodology in action. And in resonance with some of Giordano Bruno’s ideas, and McLuhan’s and Bucky Fuller’s.
Secondly, i support Wikileaks due to its whole new style of communication and furthermore propose that in some sense Wikileaks may constitute a new tale of the tribe for the 21st century: a new global epic including history; or a collection of multi-media snapshots into the recent past that detail who said what and when and where, plus data fields of once secret messages between Governments, spooks and Global Corps., and, all this information decoded from a once encrypted scrambled up secret Joyce like nat-language, and juxtaposed into a higher order of meaning. I sincerely hope that one day some bright and brave soul might set a Wikileaks glossing of 'the tale of the tribe' to verse, so we might have something to stand with the Cantos of Ezra Pound, and/or Joyce's Wake: a modern verse epic including history, something to make you leap up for joy and laugh your ass off, and something that make the soul soar with compassion for tragic suffering.
Why did you get interested in Amanita Muscaria, and why do you use it in your DJ name?
Like most things in retrospect there remains a complex of origins, and the more i think about it the more i surprise myself. For example, in response to the name a) i used to be a competitive Butterfly swimmer, 2) i gained the nickname ‘fly by night’ at an RnB club I once worked at, and 3) when i discovered RAW's Cosmic Trigger chapter titled Dope and Divinity, I had a Joyce-like Epiphany. (as i write this, a marching band marched by outside my front door, 3.00 P.M, 23/6/12) I read Andrija Puharich, R. Gordon Wasson, John Allegro and Robert Graves as a direct result of this chapter, and 4) when I discovered that Amanita Muscaria was the 24th entry in the index to Cosmic Trigger, Fly Agaric 23 was born out into the world. However, my academic pursuits lay dormant under gestation for the most part until I travelled to the U.S and found some of the others. In particular, RAW himself and the gang of brilliant critters orbiting the Maybe Logic Academy who together helped kick me into writing more sincerely, regular forum and blog postings, and shed loads of quality esoteric reading materials. I was swimming through thousands upon thousands of RAW resources and sources.
Besides my private RÁW related studies i have been performing, producing and DJ'ing music for 20 years, and until my fly agaric 23 epiphany occurred around 1995 I did not have an artist name, if that’s what you call it? so ever since that moment I developed Fly Agaric 23 as a meme spore that i hoped might connect and grow alongside the gazillions of bits flying around cyberspace. I also like the Amanita Muscaria glossing of Christmas and the possible psychedelic shamanic revolution someday usurping Jesus Christ, Coca Cola and the Queen's Xmas speech. I only tried Amanita Muscaria once at a very low dose, and the results were mildly sensational but not really my cup of tea, but the experience did lead to a creative burst of energy and interest in shamanic drumming.
I might also take this opportunity of my first ever interview (thanks again TOM) to address some theories about Amanita Muscaria and its probable use among early hominids and in mythological symbolism, and use Maybe Logic to disperse any creepy messiah complex clinging to any Jesuspect Stereotype such as Fly Agaric 23. The book: Ploughing the clouds: The search for Irish Soma by Peter Lamborn Wilson remains my favourite text on the subject, due to his anarchist-poetic glossing of the data field, and his critical thinking and prize picked specimens. To me PLW manages to apply Maybe Logic to the question of SOMA without identifying any particular species of plant or drug, but instead detailing how SOMA contains a complex of origins and symbolic similarities across cultures from African and Vedic India, to Irish Celtic hyperborean.
What are your favorite Robert Anton Wilson books? What is your favorite book to recommend to a RAW newbie?
I have a particular affinity for Coincidance, which is probably one of RAW's more difficult books and which opens with a riot of Joyce scholarship, moving through a series of Jazz Haiku's, Bell and Bohm Quantum Physics, Synchronicity pieces, a fantastic interview with Sean Mcbride (Nobel Prize and Lenin Peace prize), prose Cut-Up's and more Joycean Taoist Magick. All in all In all, I view Coincidance as an explicit example of RAW's Holographic prose style, or Hermetic style, or his Hologrammic Prose.
I would recommend Cosmic Trigger I as a first book for a RAW newbie, followed by 'Reality is what you can get away with', a surrealist screen play and, good for a Boobie, followed by Everything is under Control' his encyclopaedia of Conspiracy happenings, perfect for a Doobie.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Michael Johnson on fakery and symbolism
Over at Overweening Generalist, Michael Johnson has an essay on fakery and symbolism and politics. An excerpt from a Robert Anton Wilson interview is deployed to good effect.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Assorted links
Michael Chabon on Finnegans Wake.
The LIBOR scandal reminds Paul Gallagher at Dangerous Minds of the Illuminati.
Michael Johnson thinks Robert Anton Wilson may have influenced Ray Kurzweil's ideas on the singularity.
Former FBI agent says she saw angels at the Flight 93 crash site.
Vatican accuses media of imitating The Da Vinci Code in coverage of the latest scandal. The media are trying to imitate Robert Anton Wilson, of course.
The LIBOR scandal reminds Paul Gallagher at Dangerous Minds of the Illuminati.
Michael Johnson thinks Robert Anton Wilson may have influenced Ray Kurzweil's ideas on the singularity.
Former FBI agent says she saw angels at the Flight 93 crash site.
Vatican accuses media of imitating The Da Vinci Code in coverage of the latest scandal. The media are trying to imitate Robert Anton Wilson, of course.
Monday, July 9, 2012
Discussion: Chapter 3, Quantum Psychology
I really enjoyed reading Chapter 3 of Quantum Psychology, but here I run into a problem I brought up a couple of days ago: I don't really know how to do the exercizes that seem to have been created for people physically together in the same room.
Eric Wagner avers that all of the exercizes can be done on the Internet. I am very sorry to disappoint Eric, who after all suggested this format and likely knows much more about RAW's philosophy than I do, but I am not smart enough to figure out how to do that and will in the end have to do the best I can.
So, begging everyone's pardon for those who disagree with me, I will jump to the third exercise and then add a question of my own, taken from the text:
(1) Oscar Wilde said, "All art is quite useless." Discuss.
(2) RAW, discussing Claude Shannon's famous equation for information content in a message, wrote, "Norbert Wiener once simplified the meaning of this equation by saying that great poetry contains more information than political speeches." Please post a short poem that you consider great (or a short passage from a great poem) and say something about its information content.
Eric Wagner avers that all of the exercizes can be done on the Internet. I am very sorry to disappoint Eric, who after all suggested this format and likely knows much more about RAW's philosophy than I do, but I am not smart enough to figure out how to do that and will in the end have to do the best I can.
So, begging everyone's pardon for those who disagree with me, I will jump to the third exercise and then add a question of my own, taken from the text:
(1) Oscar Wilde said, "All art is quite useless." Discuss.
(2) RAW, discussing Claude Shannon's famous equation for information content in a message, wrote, "Norbert Wiener once simplified the meaning of this equation by saying that great poetry contains more information than political speeches." Please post a short poem that you consider great (or a short passage from a great poem) and say something about its information content.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
More on James Joyce
One of my favorite writers at "New Yorker" magazine, Louis Menand, pens an interesting article on James Joyce. Like others I've read lately, Menand thinks the new Gordon Bowker biography of Joyce, while taking advantage of recent scholarship, is inferior to Richard Ellman's.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
A Sixth Century libertarian?
I have lately been immersing myself into sixth century Byzantine history, and I am currently reading The Secret History With Related Texts, by Prokopios (usually rendered in English as "Procopius") translated by a brilliant classics professor at The Ohio State University named Anthony Kaldellis. Pretty far afield from reading Robert Anton Wilson, or so I thought.
But it turns out that Prokopios had a tolerant attitude toward religion, and belief in general, that is strikingly modern, and also reminiscent of RAW.
You'll no doubt remember the famous quote from RAW encapsulating his philosophical attitude: "My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything."
This quotation is related not just to Wilson's personal philosophy, but to his libertarianism. If you can't be sure of being right about anything, you can hardly be justified in coercing everyone else to behave, or believe, as you would like them to do.
Now, compare that RAW quote with a passage from Prokopios' The Wars of Justinian that is translated by Kaldellis:
I think it is insanely stupid to investigate the nature of God and ask what sort it is. For I do not believe that human beings have a sufficiently exact understanding of merely human things, far less of anything that bears on the nature of God. Therefore, I will keep a safe silence about these things, with the sole intention of not allowing honored teachings to be disbelieved. For I would say nothing else about God than that he is entirely good and holds everything within his power. But let each say about these things whatever he thinks he knows, where he is a priest or a layman. (5.3.5-9).
Allowing everyone to express his own opinion is a pretty bold statement in favor of freedom of thought. I also like the statement about how it is impossible to understand "merely human things." This is an even more remarkable quote if you know enough Byzantine history to grasp the context. Prokopios' Wars was published during the reign of the Emperor Justinian, who envisioned the empire as a kind of totalitarian theocracy. He enthusiastically persecuted pagans, Neoplatonist philosophers, heretics, homosexuals and anyone else who failed to meet his definition of a model citizen of the Roman Empire. It was also Justinian who shut down the school of philosophers in Athens that had existed for centuries.
My description of Prokopios as a "Sixth Century libertarian" in the headline of this post probably seems like a stretch, but Kaldellis, contrasting the political views of Prokopios and Justinian, remarks in the preface of the book, "We have here an archetypical conflict between a classical conservative-liberal on the one hand and a revolutionary ideologue on the other." (For those unfamiliar with libertarian terminology, a "classical liberal" is a kind of moderate, limited government libertarian. The folks at the Cato Institute essentially are classical liberals.)
I've mentioned before that I'm a big fan of Robert Shea's historical novel All Things Are Lights, essential a kind of thematic prequel to ILLUMINATUS! The hero of the novel, Roland, is dragooned into King Louis' crusade against the Moslems in Egypt, although he secretly believes that all religions have about the same amount of truth and falsehood. This seemed like an anachronistically modern attitude when I read the book last year, but now I am not so sure.
Whether you buy my opinion that Prokopios was a kind of early libertarian, or at least an early civil libertarian, he was undoubtedly one of the first revisionist historians. His Wars of Justinian stuck mostly to the official line on Justinian's wars against the Persians, the Vandals and the Goths, but his Secret History (which could not be openly circulated when Prokopios was alive) offered a scathing, alternative view of Justinian and his tyranny.
But it turns out that Prokopios had a tolerant attitude toward religion, and belief in general, that is strikingly modern, and also reminiscent of RAW.
You'll no doubt remember the famous quote from RAW encapsulating his philosophical attitude: "My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything."
This quotation is related not just to Wilson's personal philosophy, but to his libertarianism. If you can't be sure of being right about anything, you can hardly be justified in coercing everyone else to behave, or believe, as you would like them to do.
Now, compare that RAW quote with a passage from Prokopios' The Wars of Justinian that is translated by Kaldellis:
I think it is insanely stupid to investigate the nature of God and ask what sort it is. For I do not believe that human beings have a sufficiently exact understanding of merely human things, far less of anything that bears on the nature of God. Therefore, I will keep a safe silence about these things, with the sole intention of not allowing honored teachings to be disbelieved. For I would say nothing else about God than that he is entirely good and holds everything within his power. But let each say about these things whatever he thinks he knows, where he is a priest or a layman. (5.3.5-9).
Allowing everyone to express his own opinion is a pretty bold statement in favor of freedom of thought. I also like the statement about how it is impossible to understand "merely human things." This is an even more remarkable quote if you know enough Byzantine history to grasp the context. Prokopios' Wars was published during the reign of the Emperor Justinian, who envisioned the empire as a kind of totalitarian theocracy. He enthusiastically persecuted pagans, Neoplatonist philosophers, heretics, homosexuals and anyone else who failed to meet his definition of a model citizen of the Roman Empire. It was also Justinian who shut down the school of philosophers in Athens that had existed for centuries.
My description of Prokopios as a "Sixth Century libertarian" in the headline of this post probably seems like a stretch, but Kaldellis, contrasting the political views of Prokopios and Justinian, remarks in the preface of the book, "We have here an archetypical conflict between a classical conservative-liberal on the one hand and a revolutionary ideologue on the other." (For those unfamiliar with libertarian terminology, a "classical liberal" is a kind of moderate, limited government libertarian. The folks at the Cato Institute essentially are classical liberals.)
I've mentioned before that I'm a big fan of Robert Shea's historical novel All Things Are Lights, essential a kind of thematic prequel to ILLUMINATUS! The hero of the novel, Roland, is dragooned into King Louis' crusade against the Moslems in Egypt, although he secretly believes that all religions have about the same amount of truth and falsehood. This seemed like an anachronistically modern attitude when I read the book last year, but now I am not so sure.
Whether you buy my opinion that Prokopios was a kind of early libertarian, or at least an early civil libertarian, he was undoubtedly one of the first revisionist historians. His Wars of Justinian stuck mostly to the official line on Justinian's wars against the Persians, the Vandals and the Goths, but his Secret History (which could not be openly circulated when Prokopios was alive) offered a scathing, alternative view of Justinian and his tyranny.
Friday, July 6, 2012
Andrew Crawshaw's ILLUMINATUS! bibliography
Andrew Crawshaw has done a series of postings on one of his blogs, Drafts, which seek to provide a bibliography of ILLUMINATUS! A very interesting effort.
One of Mr. Crawshaw's entries has a footnote referring to Ishmael Reed as "aka Robert Anton Wilson." Kidding, I think, but it inspired me to look up Reed's Mumbo Jumbo on Wikipedia, and it sounds like an amazing novel and very possibly an influence on ILLUMINATUS! I will have to hunt up a copy.
One of Mr. Crawshaw's entries has a footnote referring to Ishmael Reed as "aka Robert Anton Wilson." Kidding, I think, but it inspired me to look up Reed's Mumbo Jumbo on Wikipedia, and it sounds like an amazing novel and very possibly an influence on ILLUMINATUS! I will have to hunt up a copy.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Next chapter of Quantum Psychology
Monday is scheduled to take up Chapter 3 of the exercizes from Quantum Psychology. This chapter looks particularly difficult to adapt for an Internet discussion; does anyone have any suggestions? Should we just skip to question three?
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
RAW and pataphysics
Robert Anton Wilson mentioned pataphysics quite a few times in his writings. I admit to not really understanding pataphysics, but my ignorance was diluted when I read Michael Moorcook's review of a new biography of Alfred Jarry, its inventor. (Hat tip, John Merritt).
Here is a Maybe Quarterly article that explores the " 'pataphysical side of Robert Anton Wilson."
Here is a Maybe Quarterly article that explores the " 'pataphysical side of Robert Anton Wilson."
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Governor signs jury nullification law
The governor of New Hampshire has signed a new law that allows juries to weigh the law, as well as the facts, in deciding a case, a concept known as "jury nullification." Robert Anton Wilson was very interested in jury nullification and wrote about it -- for example, in Chaos and Beyond, an underrated book that has gone out of print.
Here is a good blog post by Tim Lynch that discusses the concept in general and the New Hampshire law in particular.
Thanks to John Merritt for calling this to my attention.
Here is a good blog post by Tim Lynch that discusses the concept in general and the New Hampshire law in particular.
Thanks to John Merritt for calling this to my attention.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Quantum Psychology, Chapter 2
This is the second of the weekly get-togethers to discuss chapters in Robert Anton Wilson's Quantum Psychology and to attempt to do the exercizes (as well as they can be done, in cyberspace, as opposed to actually getting together in a physical space.)
Exercize 1. Let each member of the group classify each of the following propositions as meaningful or meaningless:
A. I hauled the garbage out this morning.
B. God appeared to me this morning.
C. I saw a UFO this morning.
D. This table-top measures two feet by four feet.
E. Space becomes curved in the vicinity of heavy masses, such as stars.
F. Space does not become curved at all; light simply bends in the vicinity of heavy masses, such as stars.
G. Defendants are innocent until the jury pronounces them guilty.
H. The umpire's decision is binding.
I. "History is the march of God through the world." (Hegel).
J. In the act of conception, the male and the female each contribute 23 chromosomes.
K. The devil made me do it.
L. My unconscious made me do it.
M. Conditioned reflexes made me do it.
N. A church is the house of God.
O. Anybody who criticizes the government is a traitor.
P. Abraham Lincoln served as president between 1960 and 1968.
2. Where disagreements arise, attempt to avoid conflict (quarrel) and seek to understand why disagreements must arise in judging some of these propositions.
Please post your answers in the comments. We'll start on No. 1 first.
Exercize 1. Let each member of the group classify each of the following propositions as meaningful or meaningless:
A. I hauled the garbage out this morning.
B. God appeared to me this morning.
C. I saw a UFO this morning.
D. This table-top measures two feet by four feet.
E. Space becomes curved in the vicinity of heavy masses, such as stars.
F. Space does not become curved at all; light simply bends in the vicinity of heavy masses, such as stars.
G. Defendants are innocent until the jury pronounces them guilty.
H. The umpire's decision is binding.
I. "History is the march of God through the world." (Hegel).
J. In the act of conception, the male and the female each contribute 23 chromosomes.
K. The devil made me do it.
L. My unconscious made me do it.
M. Conditioned reflexes made me do it.
N. A church is the house of God.
O. Anybody who criticizes the government is a traitor.
P. Abraham Lincoln served as president between 1960 and 1968.
2. Where disagreements arise, attempt to avoid conflict (quarrel) and seek to understand why disagreements must arise in judging some of these propositions.
Please post your answers in the comments. We'll start on No. 1 first.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Robert Anton Wilson and William Burroughs
I am interested in a now-obscure poet named Charles Henri Ford. The other day, as I read a chronology of Ford's life, I noticed that he had known Brion Gysin and William Burroughs. Gysin came up with the "cut-up" technique for rearranging prose, which Burroughs popularized and which Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea used in ILLUMINATUS!, and Wilson in other works. William Burroughs appears as a character in ILLUMINATUS!, in a section describing the demonstrations during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Burroughs also is credited by Robert Anton Wilson as the first person to notice the 23 Enigma.
Ford was a surrealist poet and later a photographer, moviemaker and "collage poet" who hung on in Paris in the 1930s with the likes of Gertrude Stein and was later part of Andy Warhol's circle in the 1960s.
It occurred to me that a having a tie to William Burroughs was a feature that links a great deal of disparate avant-garde, so I asked RAW expert Eric Wagner, for his "Ask Eric" blog, about how close RAW was to William Burroughs. Eric answered my question and also describes his own interactions with William Burroughs ("I found him the most intimidating person I ever met.")
Eric also writes that William Burroughs told Eric he had read RAW and a science fiction writer named Philip Jose Farmer (both favorite writers of mine, as it happens.) Farmer once wrote a story called "The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod," which was a Tarzan story, written as if William Burroughs had written the Tarzan stories, rather than Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Ford was a surrealist poet and later a photographer, moviemaker and "collage poet" who hung on in Paris in the 1930s with the likes of Gertrude Stein and was later part of Andy Warhol's circle in the 1960s.
It occurred to me that a having a tie to William Burroughs was a feature that links a great deal of disparate avant-garde, so I asked RAW expert Eric Wagner, for his "Ask Eric" blog, about how close RAW was to William Burroughs. Eric answered my question and also describes his own interactions with William Burroughs ("I found him the most intimidating person I ever met.")
Eric also writes that William Burroughs told Eric he had read RAW and a science fiction writer named Philip Jose Farmer (both favorite writers of mine, as it happens.) Farmer once wrote a story called "The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod," which was a Tarzan story, written as if William Burroughs had written the Tarzan stories, rather than Edgar Rice Burroughs.
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