RAW, in the TV credits

Just got a great tip from a nice gentleman named Joe Bloen.

The South Bank Show was/is a British TV arts show, featuring a very cool opening sequence which at one point, about 1 minute, twenty seconds in, lists various important artists and art movements. Watch the list of names such as "Vladimir Nabokov" and "Baryshnikov" closely, and you'll see "Robert Anton Wilson" appear as the last name.



Joe writes,

I enjoy your RAW blog and thought I would sent you this RAW fact I haven't seen put down anywhere else. In Britain, the leading arts programme shown on the commercial channels was called 'The South Bank Show' and this had a very distinctive title sequence. The titles for the 1990-91 season can be seen here (and he links to the video above):

scroll to 1'20" to see the sequence referred to.

It consists of a list of notable artists, art movements etc. as follows;
Turner
Tom Stoppard
Theatre
Charley Parker
Steven Spielberg
Evelyn Waugh
Baryshnikov
James Dean
Kurosawa
Leo Tolstoy
Constructivism
John Huston
Sophie Tucker
Abstraction
Elizabeth Beresford
Talking Heads
William S. Burroughs
Jessica Rabbit
Elizabeth Taylor
DADA DADA DADA DADA
Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Arnold Schoenberg
Roman Polanski
Vladimir Nabokov
George V. Higgins
Walter Elias Disney
Marlene Dietrich
Offset Lithography
Blind Willie Jonson

and the final, 30th (not 23rd alas) name
Robert Anton Wilson

I suspect a Discordian in the graphics department saw the chance to get RAW on the list and took it.

I did notice that the name "Robert Anton Wilson" seems to appear more briefly than the others, at least to me, almost as if it were slipped in. In the title credits for one of the Monty Python movies, the Holy Grail one I think, the open credits rather more obviously have things slipped in, and there's an announcement that the person responsible was "sacked"; I hope the RAW fan didn't get into trouble.

I would imagine Wilson would have been delighted by this; does anyone know if he ever saw it? Any of our British friends have more information?

Thanks, Joe!

A dream with RAW

Oz Fritz in one of the posts on his blog suggests keeping a record of synchronicities and dreams, a strategy I keep meaning to adopt, although I wish my dreams were more memorable. In the meantime, one of this blog's readers, Dan, wrote to me recently to tell me about his dream, and I thought I would (with permission) share it.

The reason I am sending you this message is because of a dream I had last night. Frankly, you do not know me, but I figured you would take an interest in it because of the various elements of Pope Bob's were buried within this dream. And the fact that I could communicate with you about this topic without sounding like a nut job, from one RAW scholar to another.

Basically, in this dream, I met Bob. And for some reason the only thing we talked about was from a paragraph or two in Prometheus Rising, in which he talks about how a new economic system will emerge that is completely different from capitalism and socialism. I don't know why, but that's what we talked about. I told him I really enjoyed those paragraphs and he asked if I really understood it, which at the time, didn't make me think at all, I just nodded and of course. I continued on with saying how when I first read it I thought I understood it, but then I reviewed it and firmly understood/believed it. He chuckled and told me that I was a "smart kid." The whole time this is taking place, we're wandering around a friend's house, looking for something. Let me also mention that this house, in waking, has been home to some unexplainable events. Anyway, whatever this MacGuffin was, was never revealed. I asked Bob if he could sign my copy of Illuminatus (I think) and he gladly obliged.

I generally think this dream was my psyche trying to jolt me into general agnosticism. The fact that RAW laughed when I told him I firmly believed it, makes me think that he was laughing at my firm belief in the topic rather than my intellect. And the fact we were looking around in a place for something that could never be found could support my theory. And the punchline being that whenever my friend and I talk about the strange crap that happens at her house, we both get extremely paranoid. So the fact that this dream took place in a place of occasional paranoia seems like something that would make RAW laugh.

Or Bob actually manifested in my dream to bring my reality tunnel back into a state of agnosticism.
Or it was nothing.

Footnote: Dan tells me he actually never met RAW.

Here is a blog post on waking life versus dreams. 

I've illustrated this post with an old "Manic Doodlings" cartoon from artist Steve Bellitt about meeting RAW after RAW's death; the link is here. 

Science fiction roundup

Arthur C. Clarke

"Ninety-seven percent of science fiction is adolescent rubbish, but good science fiction is the best (and only) literature of our times."
-- Robert Anton Wilson

(1) My interview with Ken Liu, translator of Liu Cixin's The Third-Body Problem, has posted.  The book reminded me of Arthur C. Clarke, and Liu discusses this and other matters.

(2) Tyler Cowen on Jo Walton's book about re-reading science fiction classics. To be honest, I wish I could read a book of Arthur Hlavaty's science fiction criticism instead.

(3) Michael Moorcock, the anti-Tolkien. Follow the link, but see the comments. Moorcock's description of Tolkien seems wildly inaccurate.

(4) Quotations from Arthur C. Clarke. I'm thinking of re-reading him when I finish my current Gene Wolfe binge.

Happy New Year, everyone

Cover of the new John Higgs book, which comes out in April 2015. 

Looking back on 2014, I would say the biggest news in the world of people interested in Robert Anton Wilson would be the production of the Cosmic Trigger play. In itself the play helped focus attention on Wilson, but it also produced many spinoff projects, such as the new John Higgs book and the new class that showed that Maybe Logic University is still breathing, after all.  Steve Pratt relaunched RAW360. There were probably other spinoffs I'm not thinking of. Congratulations to Daisy Eris Campbell for pulling it off.

Second place I would give to Adam Gorightly, who published two important books in 2014: Historia Discordia, which came out on May 23 and provided many important Discordian documents, including some quoted in Illuminatus!, and Caught in the Crossfire, a new book on Kerry Thornley and the JFK assassination investigation. Adam technically launched his Historia Discordia website in 2013, but published a huge amount of material on it in 2014. It's not just a quickie promo site for the book; it's an important source of information about Discordianism.

There were other developments in 2014. I began a series of posts on Illuminatus! in February, devoted to every 10 pages or so. Between my efforts and everyone who helped (including comments from many of you, a guest post by Oz Fritz and number of separate posts by Adam Gorightly), I believe we've uncovered quite a bit for future Illuminatus! scholars.  My sincere thanks to everyone who has taken part and posted a comment or two so far.

UPDATE: Jake Shannon points out that he published a book and formed Discordian Libertarians. Well, I did mention that there were other developments in 2014! Apologies to everyone I missed -- I had to work today and had limited time.

One bit of important non-news: 2014 was another quiet year for the Robert Anton Wilson estate, which did nothing to make his papers available or to make his work easier for readers to find.

I'll offer one prediction for 2015. John Higgs will be coming out with a major new book: The 20th Century, an Alternative History. If the book does well, as I hope and expect for one of my favorite authors, it should focus attention on John's backlist and draw more attention to Robert Anton Wilson.

Books read, 2014

Every year I do a listing of the books I read in the past year. Here is this year's list. I haven't bothered to distinguish between books I actually read, and books that I listened to as audiobooks (I have a long commute to work.) In some cases, I was actually re-reading a book. I've linked to blog posts and interviews I did with the authors.

1. Why American History Is Not What They Say, Jeff Riggenbach.
2. The Aviators, Winston Groom.
3. Pepper Pike, Les Roberts.
4. One Summer, America 1927, Bill Bryson.
5. The Odyssey, Homer, Fitzgerald translation.
6. Our Band Could Be Your Life, Michael Azerrad.
7. Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, Michael Azerrad.
8. Ulysses, James Joyce.
9. Ulysses, Hugh Kenner.
10. Forgotten Sacrifice: Arctic Convoys of World War II, Michael Walling.
11. Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn.
12. Ulysses and Us, Declan Kibert.
13. The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams, Lawrence Block.
14. Heads in Beds, Jacob Tomsky.
15. Orfeo, Richard Powers.
16. The Raphael Affair, Iain Pears.
17. A Few Good Men, Sarah Hoyt.
18. Liberty Defined, 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom, Ron Paul.
19. The Prankster and the Conspiracy, Adam Gorightly.
20. Brilliance, Marcus Sakey.
21. Taken At the Flood: The Roman Conquest of Greece, Robin Waterfield.
22. Justinian's Flea, William Rosen.
23. Nexus, Ramez Naam.
24. Outside In, Doug Cooper.
25. Cruz, Ramez Naam.
26. Top Secret America, Dana Priest and William Arkin.
27. The Break, Sean Gabb.
28. Dragnet Nation, Julia Angwin.
29. Archeology, Anthropology and Interstellar Communication, edited by Douglas A. Vakoch.
30. The Monk, M.G. Lewis.
31. Sons of Wichita, Daniel Schulman.
32. No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald.
33. Nothing to Envy, Barbara Demick.
34. Man on the Run, Tom Doyle.
35. Science Fiction: An Oral History, D. Scott Apel.
36. Historia Discordia, Adam Gorightly.
37. The Blood of Alexandria, Richard Blake.
38. Full Cleveland, Les Roberts.
39. The Crossing Places, Elly Griffiths.
40. Strange Wine, Harlan Ellison.
41. The Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan.
42. The Eye in the Pyramid, Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.
43. Rome's Gothic Wars, Michael Kulikowski.
44. Our Pet Queen, John Higgs.
45. Strange Attractor, Jake Shannon.
46. Today We Choose Faces, Roger Zelazny.
47. The Shadow Factory, James Bamford.
48. The River of No Return, Bee Ridgway.
49. Influx, Daniel Suarez.
50. The Innovators, Walter Isaacson.
51. Zero to One, Peter Thiel.
52. The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack.
53. The War to End All Wars, Russell Freedman.
54. National Security and Double Government, Michael J. Glennon.
55. Caught in the Crossfire, Adam Gorightly.
56. The Shadow of the Torturer, Gene Wolfe.
57. 2000 TC: Standing on the Verge of Getting It On, John Higgs.
58. Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer.
59. Mozart in the Jungle, Blair Tindall.
60. Dear Committee Members, Julie Schumacher.
61. The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin.
62. The Husband's Secret, Liane Moriarty.

Vote for your favorite censorious asshat!

Actually, the best thing about Popehat's "Censorious Asshat" competition is that it convinced me the First Amendment is still alive in this country, even if he found delicious examples of censorship (or attempted censorship).

Anyway, I've voted, and you have until 5 a.m. Pacific time Jan. 2. My "favorite," Bergen Community College, seems to be losing, but it wouldn't be the first time I've lost an election.

Via Arthur Hlavaty, who links to a lot of interesting stuff.

Week 45, Illuminatus online reading group

Motorcycle infantry of the 3rd SS Panzer Division on their way to Leningrad. 

(This week: "Lights flashed on suddenly," page 462, to page 473, "For the human race, on the other hand, that will be extinction. The end.")

In this section, the Illuminati plot to massacre the crowd at a rock music festival is revealed. And although the plot of the novel obviously is fantastic, it echoes real events in World War II.

While Lake Totenkopf apparently is fictional, there really were fanatical SS divisions in World War that were part of the German war machine — and one of them, the 3rd SS Panzer Division was named the Totenkopf.  ("Totenkopf" means "death's head.") The Wikipedia article describes the Nazi fanatics who made up the division and the war crimes they committed. They surrendered to American soldiers at war's end, but the Americans handed them over to the Russians, and many of the survivors died in Russian concentration camps. (Wikipedia explains helpfully that the panzer division, the apparent model for the "entire SS division" on page 472 of Illuminatus!, should not be confused with a separate SS organization which ran the Nazi death camps.) 

And here is a British newspaper article about the remains of many people being found at the bottom of a Swiss lake.

There are other grim echoes of real life in Illuminatus! Page 473 refers to the "old fear" of the Russians that "Germany will once again, with the help of the capitalist powers, rise up and attack Russia and slaughter Russians for the third time this century ... " The first time, of course, was World War I, and the defeat was so bad it resulted in the overthrow of the Czar and the eventual capture of power by Lenin, who appears as an unnamed character in Masks of the Illuminati.  And the second, as you know, was World War II, when the Russians suffered unimaginable slaughter. (Last summer was the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France by the western allies. An important event, to be sure, and I interviewed a war veteran, as did many journalists. But it was really the Russians who did the main job of defeating the Nazis, although I'd guess that only a minority of folks outside of Russia realize that.) During the days of the Cold War, one of the main armies of NATO was a big West German army assembled through conscription. 

A couple of other notes:

"to get stoned and watch late movies on television," page 463. Watching late movies on American TV gave Joe Malik a built-in mash up, with lots of commercials, a replication of the cut-up technique invented by Brion Gysin and popularized by William Burroughs and used in Illuminatus! The early Surrealists in France used to run in and out of movie theaters to obtain a similar effect, and the late Beatle John Lennon enjoyed switching from channel to channel as he watched TV.

"Otto Waterhouse must kill a white man." page 467. The assassination is ordered by Hagbard Celine, who thus winds up replicating the actions of his enemies (as Chas pointed out last time, in the comments.) Whether conscious or not, this is another echo of "the good war" — the Germans bombed cities but saw German cities largely destroyed in a more ruthless and deadly fashion, including Hamburg and  Dresden in World War II.  (No doubt many of you have read Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, which includes the Dresden massacre.) The Japanese committed atrocities, particularly in China; many Japanese cities were pretty much destroyed in firebomb raids, not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, it's also appropriate that Flanagan dies as a result of his own assassination raid.

"It was the service entrance," page 467. The Black Mass that takes place previously in the work was in an apartment on the 17th floor of 2323 Lake Shore Drive.

(Next week: Page 475, beginning of Book Four, Beamtenherrschaft, to page 489, "back to the world of maya!")

New graphic novel biography of Aleister Crowley

A new graphic novel, Aleister Crowley Wandering the Waste, by Martin Hayes and R.H. Stewart, tells the life story of occultist Aleister Crowley.  BleedingCool.com has a review by Hannah Means Shannon. Excerpt: " It was most definitely a challenge to create such a graphic novel, but the challenge was part of the appeal, and they had the kind support and enthusiasm of Richard Kaczynski, the author of the massive and authoritative biography of Crowley, Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley. He wrote the foreword to the graphic novel and says the creators did a 'masterful job' of using source material like photos from Crowley’s life that survive.

Via Bogus Magus at Only Maybe.

A bit of John Higgs: Alan Moore on art and magic

Glastonbury Tor, aka "The Isle of Avalon," mentioned briefly by John Higgs in his new book. 

Author John Higgs recently released a new book 2000 TC: Standing on the Verge of Getting It On as a private edition of 111 copies. It is a biography of the obscure British rock band T.C. Lethbridge, and an album the band recorded 20 years ago and has now finally released. (You can check out the band's music by following the link to John's blog post.)

Explaining the book, John writes, "The voice on the track Bou Saada is that of Brian Barritt. He makes an appearance in the book Cosmic Trigger, when Timothy Leary tells Robert Anton Wilson that he needs to talk to Brian if they are to both understand Aleister Crowley.

"Spending a few months writing a biography of a band who have yet to show their faces in public was not the most career-minded way to spend my time, but it had to be done. This is a story about people who've had some form of visionary or incomprehensible experience, and about how they can only move on and process what happened to them through a creative act. It is about the impact an uncompleted artistic project can have on a life. It also functions as a jigsaw piece, connecting the story in my Timothy Leary book to the one I tell in The KLF.

"So, yeah, it had to be written.

"No doubt it will be made more widely available at some point, in some format, in some way, should the band keep gigging and putting themselves about."

Note that the new book is "about" TC Lethbridge is the same sense that the KLF book is "about" the KLF, i.e. there's lots of other stuff, too.

I have permission from John to quote a little bit of the book, so here's a bit on page 21. The "Flint" in the passage is Flinton Chalk, a member of the band who has had an explicable encounter with a large rock not far the Glastonbury Tor, where Higgs and others scattered a portion of Timothy Leary's ashes. (If you follow the link, you'll see that the Glastonbury Tor is a hill in southern England with old ruins on it; it is a place associated with King Arthur, Celtic myth, the Holy Grail, etc. etc. I hope people in England appreciate the fact that they get to live their lives in the middle of a J.R.R. Tolkien novel.)

What was I saying before I was dragged away by living-near-Glastonbury-Tor envy? Oh yeah, the passage on pages 21-22,  where John discusses his interview with Alan Moore:

I was discussing Flint's story with the writer and magician Alan Moore and he made a couple of particularly insightful points. His first was that the use of the creative arts to process visionary or incomprehensible experience is, in his opinion, the very reason why art began in the first place. From this perspective, Flint was not trying to subvert the making of music into some form of personal therapy. He was using music for his original purpose.

Alan's second point is based on his insight that art and magic are functionally identical. The two words should be viewed as interchangeable, because they both describe the practice of producing intentional changes in the consciousness of others. For Alan magic, like art, occurs in the mind — even if the interplay between the mental and physical worlds can prove to be messier and more confusing that we might like.

Alan's point was that, in magic, a great deal of emphasis is based on bringing the working to a close, be that through a banishing spell or a closing ritual. This is considered important because the psychological energies raised during the work can be dangerous if they are not shut down and placed back in their box. If art and magic are synonymous, therefore, then an unfinished creative project can be as psychologically damaging as an unfinished magical ritual. 

A Chinese science fiction novel

Here is a paragraph from a science fiction novel I've been reading, The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, ably translated from the Chinese by Ken Liu:

An hour later, Wang arrived at the new planetarium and got out of the car. The bright lights of the city penetrated the translucent walls of the immense glass building and dimly revealed its internal structure. Wang thought that if the architect had intended to express the feeling about the universe, the design was a success: The more transparent something was, the more mysterious it seemed. The universe itself was transparent; as long as you were sufficiently sharp-eyed, you could see as far as you liked. But the farther you looked, the more mysterious it became.

The Three-Body Problem is one of the first science fiction novels translated from Chinese into English, if not the first. Cixin Liu is a bestselling writer in China. His novel, an unusual first contact story, reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke (an influence the author acknowledges) but is more political; the abuses of the Cultural Revolution are vividly depicted. I'm most of the way through the book and I really like it. (Arthur C. Clarke probably was my favorite science fiction writer when I was a teen.)

Stanislaw Lem was famous for years in Europe before his books began appearing in English, and the early translations were often poor; the Strugatsky brothers (a favorite of mine, unlike Lem) were important Russian science fiction writers long before their books started coming out in English. How many other good writers do Americans not know about, because we are separated by the barrier of language?

Christmas links

Robert Anton Wilson on the pagan origins of Christmas. 

Jesse Walker on "Puritans, pagans and Christmas." 

Merry Christmas from Eris, via Adam Gorightly.

Libertarians discuss Scrooge. 

Nativity scene above by DUCCIO di Buoninsegna(b. ca. 1255, Siena, d. 1319, Siena). From the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. "Although remaining faithful to Byzantine iconography, the Nativity scene pays greater attention to space, which is well distributed and amplified by the measured rhythm of the gestures. The narrative is enriched with descriptive details, combining facts drawn from Luke and from the apocryphal gospels, such as the two midwives bathing the Child (probably Salome and Zelomi) and the ox and the ass, while Joseph is portrayed in his usual thoughtful attitude, sitting outside the grotto."

A Robert Anton Wilson Christmas card

Merry Christmas and happy winter solstice to everyone who takes time to read this blog.

Adam Gorightly has just published Robert Anton Wilson's 1975 Christmas card.  As Adam remarks, it reflects RAW's strong interest at the time in space migration and life extension.

RAW's card is a bit short of images, so I've posted, above, the image in the Christmas greeting from the Libertarian Alliance. Byzantine, perhaps?

Also, Ayn Rand on Christmas. No really, not bad; check it out.

Adam Gorighty's links, and mine

Adam Gorightly, who lives in the Holy Land for Discordianism, California, at the Find the Others Festival in Liverpool last month. (Photo: this person, e.g. Adam Clark). 

Adam Gorightly has put up an Partners in Kaos section at Historia Discordia, with suggested links for folks who want to explore other Discordian sites. Thanks for the link and the kind words, Adam!

I have my own suggestions under "Sangha" and "Resources" at the right side of this page. One of my favorites, Groupname for Grapejuice, has a fine recent post on Hermetic Anarchism.