Erik Davis interviewed

Erik Davis

With this week's release of High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies (about Robert Anton Wilson, Philip K. Dick and Terence McKenna), Erik Davis is busy giving interviews and promoting the book. You can, for example, read his five question interview with the City Lights bookstore.  Here's one of them:

CL: What writers/artists/people do you find the most influential to the writing of this book and/or your writing in general?

ED: Robert Anton Wilson, William James, Lester Bangs, Bruno Latour, Terence McKenna, Hunter S. Thompson.

Follow Erik on Twitter for announcements of events, appearances on podcasts, etc.

When Burroughs met Dylan

Bob Dylan. Wikimedia Commons photo.

Boing Boing has an interesting post, "When William S. Burroughs met Bob Dylan," about a writer who Robert Anton Wilson admired (Burroughs, of course) and a singer-songwriter RAW unfairly dissed. 

The blog post is an excerpt from a new book by Casey Rae, William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock 'n' Roll.  The book claims that Burroughs' cut-up prose technique influenced Dylan's lyrics, and that the "Brother Bill" mentioned in the Dylan song "Tombstone Blues" is a reference to Burroughs.

Note: Netflix has begun airing a new movie, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, a fictionalized account of Dylan's 1970s tour airing on Netflix. Allen Ginsberg, a poet much admired by RAW, apparently is featured in the film.

New memes from Rasa

The Earth Will Shake reading group, Week Sixteen

Edmund Burke. "Everybody knows Edmund Burke's wife is a Catholic," page 328. 

This week, please read from page 317 ("Sigismundo Celine was blocked; the sonata was just not coming to the right conclusion.") to page 334 ("Sir John and Lady Babcock, he thought: We are now legally one person").

We are coming to the end of our reading group; two more episodes after today, and we will be finished. And then in a few weeks, Gregory Arnott will lead the reading group for The Widow's Son.

Page 319: Sigismundo's attempt to invent the automobile seems like an example of "steam engine time."

Mother Ursula has engaged in the sort of self-programming Robert Anton Wilson advocated:

"Mother Ursula meant the special kind of focus, the special concentration on God, which brought the healing power into her hands, for instance, and perhaps gave her other qualities that were not so spectacular but were equally unusual -- such as her unfailing good  humor and optimism in a world where most people were worried and anxious or full of anger at least half of their waking hours." Pages 321-322.

"Jesus had made a joke about that once, she explained, but theologians could not imagine that He had a sense of humor, so they took Him literally."

Is this a reference to Matthew 5:27 through 5:30? "27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell."

On page 324, Sir John Babcock expresses a tenet of RAW's philosophy:

"I do not know what to believe. I have read too much and traveled too far. Certitude belongs to those who have only lived in a place where everybody believes he same things."

An interview with Terence McKenna

Terence McKenna

I really need to get around to doing some serious reading of Terence McKenna. But in the meantime I read an interesting interview, "The Rollercoaster of Transcendence," that I found out about on Twitter the other day. 

His suggestion that psilocybin mushrooms were created by aliens is interesting although obviously speculative. But I was particularly struck by this question and answer, which in the epidemic of fentanyl and other terrible synthetic opiates seems prophetic:

Gyrus: As far as that concept of prosthesis goes, you’ve talked about machines and cultural artefacts as an extension of humanity, and you condemn laboratory-manufactured psychedelics to a large extent. Why would they not fall into the…

Terence: Well, I don’t condemn them out of some kind of purist “Plants are good, chemicals are bad”… No, I condemn them for very practical reasons. First of all, a white powder drug. You have no idea what it is. You can be fairly sure it was manufactured in an atmosphere of criminal syndicalism where the major goal was to make money. That’s not a very reassuring statement of drug purity and chemical attention to detail. And the other thing is, the vegetable psychedelics, we have our human data—five thousand years of mushroom use in Mexico, and so forth and so on. With a new drug, since it’s illegal to do research on it, we have no human data. And sometimes it takes a generation or two to see what the consequences of exposure to a compound are. So I don’t have an absolutist position against laboratory drugs, it’s simply that if we’re trying to get to a certain place—which is the dissolution of the ego, and the entry into psychedelic space—at this stage, the vegetable psychedelics are just simply more effective, better track record… they work.

Erik Davis 'High Weirdness' podcast

Erik Davis' new book, High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies, about Robert Anton Wilson and other visionary figures in the 1970s, will be released Tuesday. 

You can listen to an interview with Davis about the book on the Weird Studies podcast, available here and on the usual podcast apps. Note that episode four of the podcast also features Davis.

Timothy Leary update

About a couple of days ago, I brought up Eric Wagner's idea that we celebrate the Timothy Leary centennial next year by reading one of Leary's books. There have been seven responses so far.

Several seem to think The Game of Life (which also has Robert Anton Wilson contributions) would be fine, although there are also votes for Info-Psychology, What Does Wo-Man Want? and Flashbacks.

So what would you think if we did The Game of Life next year, and then tackled another Leary book if the first reading group went well?

Thursday links

Oakland decriminalizes magic mushrooms and peyote. Via just about every RAW fan on Twitter. This is a trend I did not see coming.

YouTube censorship goes awry.

Twenty things learned from TV. 

Congress races to address nonexistent fentanyl problem. 

I've written about the supposed dangers of touching fentanyl, too. Not that actually using it isn't terribly dangerous.

Read my authentic blog

My current favorite restaurant in Cleveland

Supergee has a blog post linking to an article in Mother Jones which asserts that calling "ethnic" restaurants "authentic" is racist and is linked to discriminatory behavior (i.e., French restaurants can charge high prices, but Chinese restaurants are supposed to be cheap.)

It's an interesting piece, and it makes me wonder what terms I should use to describe restaurants. My favorite Chinese restaurants are the ones in which the customers are mostly Asian, rather than mostly white. Should I just describe my favorite places that way?

Should we read a Leary book?

Eric Wagner posted a comment for a recent blog entry:

"10/22/2020 marks the Tim Leary centennial. Perhaps we could read something together to celebrate that."

Leary was born Oct. 22, 1920, as Eric remarks; he died in 1996.

Eric's suggestion that we should do a Leary reading next  year intrigues me. What should it be? I have a Kindle of The Game of Life, and Robert Anton Wilson contributed to it; would that be the obvious book to read, or is there a better suggestion?

The Earth Will Shake reading group, Week Fifteen

Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orléans (13 April 1747 – 6 November 1793), mentioned in The Earth Will Shake. See Wikipedia bio. 

This week, please read from page 293 ("From Sir John Babcock's journal: Back in Paris again ...") to page 317 ("But, damn it, why do I feel I've seen those violet Sicilian eyes somewhere before?")

Lots of zingers in this chapter:

"Our class does have a sense of union, and the lower orders are not allowed to hear about such things when one of us is involved," page 204.

"Everybody said Italians were the best lovers; but nobody, anywhere, in history or in legend, had ever said they made the best husbands," pages 301-302.

Lots of interesting discussions and allusions:

"a very private in-joke for fellow Masons," page 304. Sigismundo Celine's references to Masons anticipates Mozart and Beethoven.

The descriptions of the jokes and abrupt shifts in Celine's music reminds me of Dimitri Shostakovich, a composer I can't remember Wilson ever discussing. But Shostakovich got much of his style from Mahler. I know Wilson liked Mahler.

Page 309, "Tuscany and Parma are not Napoli," Father Ratti said. "I am willing to join in this effort, because only by such repeated attempts will we achieve our goals, but I am not optimistic." The whole discussion is a good description of social change; remember when gay marriage and marijuana legalization seemed hopeless?

I haven't even discussed the history of Freemasonry in this section; I don't know enough to add to what Wilson shares.

Sunday links

This blog post is later than usual, but I had to work this weekend and I was particularly busy.

New book: The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility by Robert Zubrin.  I intend to read it. Here is a review.

Illinois has legalized marijuana. The governor supports the bill and plans to sign it. This was done by the legislature, notable in that other legalizations have come through passage of state questions. Here is a FAQ.

A Frances Yates conference. 

Glenn Greenwald on Assange. 

Some views are always 'currently unfashionable'

Martin Wagner has another rediscovery to share with us: "The Strange Case of Dr. Timothy Leary," a review of Timothy Leary's Neurologic, by Robert Anton Wilson, published in 1974. The book being reviewed is apparently an exploration of Leary's seven circuit system, before it became an eight circuit system. Excerpt:

The way that Dr. Leary obtained his system—by self-experimentation employing both legal yoga and illegal chemicals—is still controversial. I personally feel that the first amendment was intended also to protect scientists and that as long as Dr. Leary experiments on himself, commits no crimes against persons or property, he should be allowed to continue and publish. Since this libertarian view is currently unfashionable, and space is limited, I will not pursue it, save to say that the writings of Jefferson, John Stuart Mill, and the late Justice Black among others seem to support this position in general.

However, even if Dr. Leary’s methods of research are in some sense a crime against the people, there can be no doubt at all that his ideas are constitutionally protected. Even a Supreme Court which conveniently defines erotica as non-speech in order to remove it from first amendment protection cannot decide whether or not Dr. Leary’s scientific-religious writings are non-speech. Ergo, the judge who sentenced him and refused to lower bail because he thought Dr. Leary’s published works were “dangerous,” violated the constitution. This and the illegal nature of the kidnapping of Dr. Leary last January are grounds enough to ensure his eventual release. Time, money, and public support are all his lawyers need to gain that result. The question is, How long must he sit in his cage before the inevitable reversal of his sentence?