No Lonesome Dope after all!

M Holmes fofp at HOLYROOD.ED.AC.UK
Fri Nov 3 06:43:41 EST 2000


Nick Medford writes:

> In message <200011021630.QAA03040 at holyrood.ed.ac.uk>, M Holmes
> <fofp at HOLYROOD.ED.AC.UK> writes
> >
> >What's intriguing is that there do seem to be certain hallucinatory
> >images which are consistent across cultures and are even independent of
> >the means used to induce the state (priests used to whip themselves and
> >then wear hairshirts in order to make the wounds go septic; Jesus
> >starved himself; others avoided sleep - it just makes you so proud
> >science has made it as easy as taking a pill :-)
> >
> >Leary was probably onto something when he said that it indicated
> >something about basic neuronal wiring, but boy did he ever run with that
> >ball.
> >
> >
> >FoFP
>
> Don't know if you saw the recent BBC prog on prehistoric shamans: certain
> criss-cross patterns found in cave paintings are now thought (by some,
> probably not all, archaeologists) to be records of visual hallucinations
> experienced in shamanic trance states. Very similar hallucinatory patterns
> are reported by old folk who's visual cortex is degenerating. Of course this
> doesn't prove that the cave paintings represent hallucinations but it's an
> interesting idea.

I possibly have this on tape from when I was away. I'll have a look for it.

> Leary: agreed, he stretched a little inspiration an awfully long way.

I read a biography of his and had a strong feeling that he saw himself
with LSD as a version of Freud with cocaine. Apart from that there was a
strong element of the anti-authortarian irishman in his character. He
quite clearly liked to tweak the beak and I kind of admired that. His
own writing was extremely tedious stuff though. In the end, maybe Huxley
and Hollingshead were right: the peons couldn't be trusted with LSD.

> Speaking of Leary: I believe the Hawks met some of his 'people' while they
> were on a US tour in the 70s, at the time he was languishing in jail. I
> remember reading about a mad scheme to free him which would have
> involved a silver helicopter covered in strobes and speakers- to make the
> jailers think he was being carried off by a UFO, y'see.... obvious really, can't
> imagine why the plan wasn't enacted.

Amotivational syndrome through drug use? Certainly I can imagine this
"plan" being hatched in a stoned bull session. I've read it somewhere
too - maybe Chris Tait's book?

> Fairly sure I heard DB say something about Leary just after they played
> Orgone Accumulator in Brixton. However the Accumulator wasn't Leary's
> idea, it was the brainchild of Wilhelm Reich (as Nik Turner correctly
> announces at the start of Undisclosed Files), although Leary may well have
> been an admirer of Reich- there were many parallels between them. FWIW
> I think they were both eccentrics with fascinating but ultimately untenable
> ideas. Course that doesn't justify the way they (Reich especially) were
> persecuted.

Yup. Ironic to flee Nazi Germany to the Land of the Free and end up
dying in jail as a result of persecution by the Food and Drug
Administration over a box in which ghe collected energy to fight off UFO
attacks. For a "small government" country, the yanks sure seem to give
their eccentric elements an extremely hard time (see Ruby Ridge, Waco,
and the helicopter bombing of a house in Philadelphia for recent
examples). I'm only amazed that Ralph Nader hasn't been cut down by a
SWAT team and can only presume that even the BATF are scared of Jesse Ventura.

> Nick Medford

FoFP



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