I read something interesting today that is yet another “quantum physics” type of observation about yet another phenomenon of the ways in which thought and personality (not just individual, but cultural and social) impact “reality” as we know it. If you feel like having some brain fun, read on!!!

Geopsychics, def.: Characteristic phenomena that may be seen as an expression of the consciousness of a locale in its most unique stylistic and behavioral manifestations. The study of regional peculiarities; the ambience of local phenomena. The term first surfaced in New Orleans, where cultural anomalies are so autonomous and familiar that they frequently seem to possess a life of their own. The ritual observance of curious phenomena is a curious phenomenon peculiar to New Orleans. Hence the study of geophysics came about as a result of New Orleans geophysics.

Although urban and coastal in orgin, the concept may be readily applied to all other regions. Geophysics blends art and science through subjective and objective awareness. The subjective realm deals with phenomena that may be measured or recorded.

Throughout time most peoples have believed that all matter whether alive or inert is imbued with consciousness. Various architects, commercial designers, and Tantric Hindus and Buddhists among others believe that consciousness (hence behavior) can be conditioned by applied visual elements contained in an environment. The relationships that exist between consciousness and environment, and between subjective and objective phenomena, clearly constitute a circular process. The science of geophysics is concerned with the process itself. The art form of geophysics is concerned with the products of the process; the evidence of subjective consciousness within external regional reality.
Got all that? hehe….rock on Somerville!!! Rock on wherever you may find yourself! What can it look like and how can you make it look and be the way you want it to?
xoxoxoxoxo LV

KL: What is your musical background?

LV: I’ve been playing and singing and writing songs since getting my first guitar at age 12. I took guitar lessons early on, and played the coffee houses in my hippie youth. I’ve been performing in “rock bands” since graduating from art school and discovering punk rock. My first band was Children of Paradise; artsy punk, then went on to lead hard roots rockers, Witch Doctor, sang cabaret with collaborator Catherine Coleman in Les Chanteuse Sorcieres, and formed the notorious funk orchestra Crown Electric Company with my husband Wayne Viens in the mid-nineties. I got to do musical theater with Boston Rock Opera in the 90’s and 00’s including Sgt. Pepper, Jesus Christ Superstar, Abbey Road, Preservation, and Billion Dollar Babies vs. Aqualung and learned a lot about singing harmony and acting and performance from that amazing crew. I’ve been lucky enough to sing on a bunch of records with other artists too.

KL: What music do you listen to most often?

LV: I listen to a huge range, discovering new stuff all the time. The Bad Saints trade music constantly, turning each other on to great stuff. New and old tried and true faves include Alabama 3, Rolling Stones, Beastie Boys, Morphine, Chrissie Hynde, PJ Harvey, Dylan, Neil Young, Patti Smith, Jayhawks, Guns n’ Roses, White Stripes; newer faves are: Drive By Truckers, Gorillaz, Sufyan Stevens, Shuggie Otis, Cat Power, Flaming Lips, Low, Otis Taylor, Blackalicious, Portishead and a bunch of trip hop that my bandmates Dave Grogan and Ted Corrigan have turned me on to.

KL: Are you in other bands currently? If so, which ones - and do you consider any one of them your primary musical project?

LV: I consider Bad Saints my primary musical project, the one i devote the most time to and write for the most, but I also love the sweet and rocking side project I do with Emily Grogan, Asa Brebner, Billy Beard, and Cheryl Etu, called Angeline. Ted and I also want to do a side thing that’s more dance, groove, trance oriented, ‘cuz we got a lot of ideas. If I could sleep even less than I already do, I could get a lot more writing done.

KL: If you were in bands in the past, were there any that created for you a lifestyle (fame, freedom, drugs, debauchery, travel, etc.) that you particularly enjoyed? And if so, was this related more to the band, or that time of your life?

LV: All the rock and roll I’ve ever listened to, and all the music and singers I’ve ever listened to, from Mozart to Mick Jagger changed me forever and created the archetype of a life of passion and extreme, mind-opening experiences that I am still living today. I knew what I wanted to do the first time I ever heard a Rolling Stones song and watched my babysitter smoking pot and lounging with her cute boyfriend in the living room from the top of the stairs in my flannel nightie.

KL: How would you describe the style of music that you play with your specific instrument in Bad Saints?

LV: I like to think I add solid rhythm, and sometimes muscle and sometimes grace with my acoustic guitar playing in the band. And I try to deliver the songs I sing and their meanings with the most fierce and honest authenticity I can feel and convey on any given night. To me, it’s as important to get inside the songs and truly feel them around the kitchen table playing acoustic, as it is live. My job is to disappear and let the songs emerge from someplace more ancient and timeless than myself.

KL: How does your current lifestyle (marriage, children, home ownership, career, non-musical callings, etc.) effect your participation in this or other bands?

LV: It’s awesome to be a full on adult with all of the satisfactions and pleasures and responsibilities of parenting, partnerships, owning nice stuff etc. but it also can be a mind-fuck when inside you’re still that 20 year old wanting to play music seven nights a week, stay up all night, and have crazy adventures. But, that’s why I try to keep in mind my heros, who seem to be aging without compramising who they truly are, like Iggy Pop for example. Have a great time when playing, give it your all, and then go to bed early on the off nights, play with my kid, hike with my husband, see friends, and take a lot of vitamins.

KL: What space do you want music; making, composing or performing music, specifically, to occupy in your life in general?

LV: I would love to make music, and write (songs, essays, screenplays, all kinds of stuff), full time, and not have the classic day job syndrome, but whatever happens with the art/making money paradigm doesn’t change the real job i gotta do, which is to be the most authentic artist I can be, and to be of service on the planet in some infinitesimal way. And just as there has always been, there are thousands of poets and artists just like me plugging along in an office somewhere, but still dedicated to their creative life. “Writing on scraps of paper in between doing loads of wash” as Patti Smith has described.

KL: What are your hopes for Bad Saints?

LV: Make some good, original music. Make some people feel good, and hopeful about life. Make a few people feel like they can do anything, maybe even change the world.

KL: How long have you lived in Boston?

LV: I’ve lived in Boston since 1978.

KL: If you have a day job, what is it and does it satisfy you?

LV: Yes, an office job in the non-profit health industry, and it’s totally mellow and pays the bills.

KL: Do you have any significant callings or interests, other than music? If so, what are they and what role do they play in your life? Also, do they influence your music and if so how?

LV: I have a deep and abiding love for philosophy, spiritual inquiry, and the examination of life. I like to study everything from shamanism, chaos magick, quantum physics, social history etc, and connect the dots with contemporary culture, art, media, and politics. And it all comes out in the music for sure: in the lyrics, in the grooves, in the way that music is just another conversation we are having with each other about the meaning of life. As Terrance McKenna says, “asking questions without the consolation of answers”. That’s what’s interesting to me.

when death comes
like a hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
What is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
As a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
And I look upon time as no more than an idea,
And I consider eternity as another possibility,

And I think of each life as a flower, as common
As a field daisy, and as singular,

And each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
Tending, as all music does, toward silence,

And each body a lion of courage, and something
Precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world in my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
If I have made of my life something particular and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
Or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

m. oliver, from new and selected poems

prayer

wired for movement
in the hills of new mexico
on a jade mountain-top
at the end of the world
we are as still as deer.

city dwellers, tonight
the whispery wind is our radio;
the vista, our entertainment.

meat eaters, we wait for the grill to get hot,
prepare the steaks,
and scan the horizon for animals.

sight-seeing,
today at chimayo
i grieved at the hole of dirt
for the bones of the indians buried there
for the trouble with humans
for the dried blood of violent death
for the need to believe in miracles.

earlier, surrendering,
at the chapel of los ninos
i kneeled at the altar,
lit a white candle, and chanted a prayer
for the child i am desperate for.

Humbled, broken,
choking
on bitter, burning tears of apology
for having taken
so long
to be ready.

l. viens 1996

sunset

once, on an Indian summer day
in early November,
you chased a sunset for me,
all the way to Portsmouth;
through the newly naked woods,
gliding over the blacktop,
my eyes glued to the lavender sky.

We chased the great golden orb
As it sank elegantly,
Robed in a cape of brilliant orange – imperious!
But destined to fall non-the-less,
Descending reluctantly
Into the patient, sympathetic breast of the earth.

We drove for miles on that winding road;
Each turn revealing, or concealing
That huge heart of gold:
Now splintered by branches, now awash with purple clouds
But smoldering always;
Potent, untouchable, destined forever, even out of sight;
To burn.

And how could
The old ones know,
Be sure of their king’s return,
Pressed close in the long black night,
How could they know
That he would indeed
Greet them at dawn with his lazy light
And softly give shape
To their world?

Is that why the heart catches in the throat at sunset?
Grieves at the descent of that shimmering ball
In a way that one simply cannot afford to grieve each day
And yet does, for all that passes.

Knowing:
you can’t even try
To hang on
No, you can’t ever hold onto the sun,
Or anything.
Though your arms are stretched as wide as the horizon,
And your heart is cracked open deeper than you can imagine.

You can only love it’s great shaggy head as it falls,
Stroke it; soothe it;
Gaze through your tears at the last slivers of light until
They move inside,
Seep glinting
Into your very bones,
And all you know,
All you feel,
is trust.

l. viens 2005

hymn to beauty

do you come from
on high or out of the abyss,
o beauty? godless yet divine, your gaze
indifferently showers favor and shame,
and therefore some have likened you to wine.

your eyes reflect the sunset and the dawn;
you scatter perfumes like a windy night;
your kisses are a drug, your mouth the urn
dispensing fear to heroes, fervor to boys.

whether spawned by hell or sprung from
the stars,
fate like a spaniel follows at your heel;
you sow haphazard fortune and despair,
ruling all things, responsible for none.

you walk on corpse’s beauty, undismayed,
and horror coruscates among your gems;
murder, one of your dearest trinkets, throbs
on your shameless belly: make it dance!

dazzled, the dayfly flutters round your wick,
crackles, flares, and cries: I bless this torch!
the pining lover for his lady swoons
like a dying man adoring his own tomb.

who cares if you come from paradise or hell,
appalling beauty, artless and monstrous
scourge,
if only your eyes, your smile or your foot reveal
the infinite i love and have never known?

come from satan, come from god – who cares,
angel or siren, rhythm, fragrance, light,
provided you transform – o my one queen!
this hideous universe, this heavy hour?

- charles baudelaire

the woodpecker pecks but the hole does not appear

it’s hard to imagine how unremembered we all become,
how quickly all that we’ve done
is unremembered and unforgiven,
how quickly
bog lilies and yellow clover flashlight our footfalls,
how quickly and finally the landscape subsumes us,
and everything that we are becomes what we are not.

This is not new, the orange finch
And the yellow-and-dun finch
Picking the dry clay politely,
The grasses asleep in their green slips
Before the noon can roust them,
The sweet oblivion of the everyday
Like a warm waistcoat
Over the cold and endless body of memory.

Cloud-scarce Montana morning.
July, with its blue cheeks puffed out like a putto on an ancient map,
Huffing the wind down from the northeast corner of things,
Tweets on the evergreen stumps,
Swallows treading the air,
The ravens hawking from tree to tree, not you, not you,
Is all that the world allows, and all one could wish for.

- charles wright

on new terms

i’d like to begin again. Not touch my
own face, not tremble in the dark before
an intruder who never arrives. Not
apologize. Not scurry, not pace. Not
refuse to keep notes of what meant the most.
Not skirt my father’s ghost. Not abandon
Piano, or a book before the end.
Not count, count, count and wait, poised – the control,
The agony controlled – for the loss of
The one, having borne, I can’t be, won’t breathe
Without: the foregone conclusion, the pain
Not yet met, the preemptive mourning
Without which

Nothing left of me but smoke.

- deborah garrison

We are a family of loners the Viens clan, Ruby, Wayne, and I. Each of us loves humanity deeply, craves the stimulation of others, and loves to love; snuggle, kiss, share, connect. But if the wells of our internal resources are not replenished, the edgy beast in each of us emerges ferociously; snapping and biting, and sometimes cruel. It’s yet another paradox, in the pantheon of paradoxes that embody being a sentient animal, that we need and love others so much, and yet must face, own, and stand tall in our aloneness if we are to be healthy and productive human beings. When I gave birth to Ruby I saw it so clearly: I must surrender to her dependence on me, commit to nurturing her, give her everything, in order to build in her the skills she would need to be not a part of me, but to be whole in herself. I prayed that I was up to the task.

When Ruby was little those first years were about meeting her every need, keeping her close, safe, fed, warm, dry, and loved beyond measure. Current poet laureate Ted Kooser said of his childhood: “my mother shone on me like the sun”, and that is what Wayne and I wanted to do more than we wanted to do anything else in the world. Ruby was our miracle child! She was a gift that came from the universe after 6 years of trying to have a baby. I couldn’t do music while she was small, couldn’t really get lost in my internal consciousness deep enough to tap the wellsprings of my own creativity. I skirted along the surface, doing musical theater, working with people in the studio, and doing one-off projects like Alice Cooper vs. Jethro Tull and Led Zeppelin II with the BRO. But as Ruby grew, I could feel something burning and percolating within, an undeniable force: the need to be “back out” in the larger world as an artist again, to separate from family and track down my fellow outlaws. I began to hone and shape words and melodies into songs for the first time in years. I had thought I might stop doing music when I became a mother, especially because I had to have a fulltime job but I knew in my heart I couldn’t stop. Starting a band meant being gone nights, performing live meant being gone even more, and I didn’t know how I was going to do it. Somehow I would have to find the strength to leave this little person, not just occasionally, but again, and again, and again. The wrenching was unbearable. When Ruby cried “mama don’t go” I would stare into Wayne’s eyes above her heaving, teary, clinging little body, mouthing “help me! Help…me!” Out the door I would push, guitar slung over one shoulder, slamming the car door shut, sitting, head down, hands on the steering wheel, breathing deeply, releasing the guilt and the pain of many conflicted impulses. Then, popping a cassette into the tape deck, motor running, gunning it, head back, I was free, truly free inside and out. The exhilaration! The joy! It could be 1810 and I, the baddest gunslinger in the world heading out into the high plains. Alone. Alone at last with a job to do. Rock and roll can make you feel that way.

The idea of the solitary journey is ancient. Since the beginning of time we have walked it, and walked it alone. We meet a lot of beautiful and strange people and creatures along the way, and all are our teachers. We align ourselves with comrades, soul mates, children, families, and we are born into and make and find our tribes, but no one can make us get up each morning and face the day. Our work is our own and not a single other soul can make us do it. Yet we come together over and over again for sustenance and inspiration, for reminders of what is real, important, and profound. We make love, and we share meals, and we talk and we work side by side to make daily life rich and smooth and less burdensome. We mirror each other in our conversations, helping each other to “process” the infinite array of emotions and thoughts that accompany the sometimes horrific, mostly beautiful often-stunning moments that make up a life. There is an Irish saying: “the most beautiful music of all is the music of what happens”. Maybe all of art is our version of the “music of what happens” or the “music” of what we envision could happen.

Ruby is almost 7 years old now. Recently she asked me, very defiantly, with her hands on her hips: “MOM, do you HAVE to be in a band or do you WANT to be in a band?” Ahhhh, tough question my dear. I wish I knew the answer to what drives us inexorably from within. I have to believe and hope that the passion Ruby witnesses in her Dad and me for the creative life might inspire her to find her own passions and to dedicating herself to fulfilling them, whatever they may be. As it is now, her “imaginary life” is in full on, gorgeous display. She can play and read and draw by herself for hours, and clearly needs her time alone. But still, she struggles to find that balance between solitude and the comfort of others that we all grapple with. How much should we need, expect of others? How to learn to need less, and yet never shut the door? How much energy to give, and how much energy to preserve, in order to do the tasks at hand?

A couple of nights ago, I had snuggled her to sleep and the house was quiet and cozy. Wayne was out and I was “alone” in the house! The evening stretched ahead of me, seemingly endless. I was excited to listen to a recording of a live Bad Saints show from the night before. I could get lost in my thoughts, do a little writing, go inside on that inward “journey” towards the making or understanding of something new and full of promise. I got stoned and put the cd in my computer and lay down in the dark on the spare bed with the headphones on. The music was loud, and in my head I was gone, reliving the performance, examining notes, phrasings, remembering the reaction of the audience, hearing cool things about each band mates performance that never register live because of the “job” of “delivering” the songs. Lost in my own world, blissed out, probably singing out loud obliviously I was terrified to feel someone’s breath upon my face. I screamed and sat up. Ruby sat on the edge of the bed, startled by my reaction. “I just wanted to be with you mama,” she said, almost in tears. “Of course sweetie!” I said, “Let’s get you comfy”. Ruby lay back with her head on the pillows and I covered her with an old comforter. I lay back down in the opposite direction, our bodies stretched out next to each other’s. I put the headphones back on. Her little hand found mine, but just our fingertips were touching. I carried on listening but the moment for constructive creative observation had passed. Soon we were both fast asleep, blanketed in soft darkness, side by side, dreaming our solitary, collective, dreams.

Head high, face the wind

Linda

The Holy Now
There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time–or even knew selflessness or courage or literature–but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.

There is no less holiness at this time–as you are reading this–than there was the day the Red Sea parted, or that day in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as Ezekiel was a captive by the river Chebar, when the heavens opened and he saw visions of God. There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha’s bo tree. There is no whit less might in heaven or on earth than there was the day Jesus said “Maid, arise” to the centurion’s daughter, or the day Peter walked on water, or the night Mohammed flew to heaven on a horse. In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in a tree. In any instant you may avail yourself of the power to love your enemies; to accept failure, slander, or the grief of loss; or to endure torture.

Purity’s time is always now. Purity is no social phenomenon, a cultural thing whose time we have missed, whose generations are dead, so we can only buy Shaker furniture. “Each and every day the Divine Voice issues from Sinai,” says the Talmud. Of eternal fulfillment, Tillich said, “If it is not seen in the present, it cannot be seen at all.”

-Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

TERENCE MCKENNA VS. THE BLACK HOLE
Note: The following are some excerpts from interviews that I conducted with Terence McKenna in late October and early November last year, in preparation for a profile that will appear in the May issue of Wired. For obvious reasons, I have chosen selections concerning his feelings about death and dying. The October interview was conducted in San Francisco just a few days before Terence underwent a craniotomy, and he therefore spoke a bit more frankly about his condition than during November, when I spent a week with him and his wonderful girlfriend Christie Silness during his sort-of recovery in Hawaii.
The comments have been edited and are not chronological; I have included my questions only when necessary. Perhaps someday the full text of our talks will be made available. In Hawaii, we had an especially entertaining routine: during the day, I would ask him the professional interviewer questions, and in the evening, after he had napped, we would get thoroughly baked and ramble through the wilds of esoterica and bibliomania. The evening chats were recorded on DAT; they need serious editing, but there’s some mind-bending loops in there.

I first met Terence in the early 90s, and I feel blessed to have been able to spend some time getting to know him a little better during the last six months of his life. I found him kind, generous, and unpretentious, although he clearly had a potent dark side. He was even more brilliant and well-read than I had expected, with fistfuls of references at his command. But most remarkable for me was how he seemed to face his situation: with an admirable blend of humor, compassion, stoicism, and a willingness to stay open and awake in the midst of the big awful questions without trying to console yourself with answers. And that, for my money, is the ultimate lesson of the psychedelic path — not the Gaian mind, or the onrushing apocalypse, or those ridiculous elves, but a radical openness to ambiguity and the unknown.

At one point I asked him what advice he had for someone about to down 100 ml of potent ayahuasca alone in a rainforest. His words were spare, the utter opposite of the guru some made him out to be: “Pay attention. And keep breathing.” Words to live by, until you stop.
- Erik Davis

It was the first “hot” summer night in the city. Stoned off our asses, my friend CK and I cruised up Commonwealth Avenue on our way to the Paradise Lounge about 7:30 pm in my battered jeep cherokee. Windows down, White Stripes cranked, we slowed to a crawl as we approached the club and the throng gathered out front. We were “on the list”, but our plan was to have one of us jump out and “check in at the door” with the goal being of course to see if we could avoid standing in what appeared to be a mile long line (spoiled), thereby giving us time to park the car somewhere, further “amplify”, and maybe even grab a quick beer at the bar next to the club. No go - everybody in line was “on the list” too! And maddeningly, no one was going anywhere soon because there was some kind of power outage and the club was bringing in generators and dealing with potential disaster if the event, local music stars, the Dresden Dolls’ DVD film shoot, had to be cancelled and (god forbid) rescheduled. Disastrous because, once our minds de-fogged a bit and our eyes focused in on the visual array of performance artists, fans, freaks, photographers, videographers, devotees, archivists, media etc. milling about outside the club, the staggering amount of planning and passion and creativity and devotion that had gone into bringing the Dresden Dolls “vision” into manifestation THIS night, for THIS moment in time, to be recorded and documented for ALL POSTERITY, was…incredibly, heartbreakingly clear. What a sumptuous, delectable, curious feast for the eyes! What a stimulating, challenging, fascinating buffet for the brain! “What’s it all about??” “What, exactly, is happening here??” “What IS …ALL THIS??”…and finally, “holy fucking shit, I don’t know what it all means yet…but this is COOL!”.

The long wait turned out to be a funny blessing; there was a lot of time to “process” with other egghead types about the phenomenon we were witnessing. Maniacally busy creating my own new music, I had not seen the Dresden Dolls for years. But I had been savoring their rise to stardom through updates from friends and colleagues, and of course, from local media., savoring it and relishing it with the deep, slow, satisfaction one feels when true talent is matched with recognition, when something smart, profound, subversive, challenging and gorgeous is embraced by popular culture, and becomes beloved by many. It gives an aging rebel rocker like me hope when art/music as unique and original as what the Dolls create becomes “popular”. Indeed, the personal theater, the outrageous and unabashed self-expression that they encourage in people is exhilaratingly democratic. Looking at their fans, one can see what they as artists make clear: this belongs to you as much as to us! Take what we offer up and make of it what you will, or better yet, make your own! The ugly, the sacred, profane, the broken, the beautiful - we are all in it together! Punctuate it, take it out! Be it! Whatever you feel, whatever you see in your head, manifest it! And all of this visual/aural/intellectual stimulation swirled and combined to create a drama of archetypes on that stretch of dirty urban cement as old and familiar as any common fairy tale, as the myths that seem to live in our DNA. This human impulse to create theater, the ancient human need to be “seen” and witnessed for the unique individual life forms we each are, and to come together to share it, is absolutely unbridled in the fans and supporters of the Dresden Dolls (as local artist Scott Cahaly observed). And what a thing it is to behold! For there is glory in it! But there is also pathos in it. There is tremendous beauty, and perilous vanity. There is the opportunity at every turn for inspiration, and the insidious temptation of mockery. Complex, stunning…silly….I couldn’t take my eyes off the crowd! And all this, before a single note was played…

Inside the club, the circus continued. CK and I were mesmerized by a tiny china doll of a girl with raggedy ann hair who conducted a slow motion tea party with a real china doll at a tiny white table with chairs. And on and on. Performance artists performed. French girls in fishnets and stilettos offered up French kisses for free. Amanda and Brian came and went, being interviewed by Christopher Lyden, and joining others on stage for a series of short theater pieces. At last. The Dresden Dolls. Quivering, hushed, adoring anticipation. Then finally, them, just the two of them, Amanda and Brian, on the stage, behind their instruments, and the first, fiercely delicate notes of the music they were about to share, no, assault us with, no, incite us with, no, caress us with, no, inspire us with, no, shatter us with! No, batter, bang, beat, kiss, fuck us with! Until, by the end, it was all of these things and more: a musical experience of such vicarious, voracious intensity, that I felt as if I had just had the best, most loving, most brutal sex
imaginable, all night long…the kind of sex that heals because its aggression is mixed with tenderness, humor and grace, the kind of sex that surpasses fantasy because one is learning from the other, and transcends oneself at last…the kind of sex that is, can only be… a gift from the gods.

There is so much more I could say, especially about Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione. But I can’t, don’t want, to over-think it. To span the reach of the human heart, to release the self destructive impulses, to express our greatest anguishes, to make the grandest gestures, to weep and yet laugh in the face of loss, to lay bare our obsessions, to capture and caress what one could crush and destroy.. this is the job of great rock and roll and classical music alike. And this, in my humble, musically naive, intuitive opinion, is what the Dresden Dolls do, without peer.

Bed headed, delirious, changed forever, CK and I walked out of the Paradise holding hands. Lit our cigarettes. Smiled knowingly at each other. And headed home.

Feed the dream,

Linda Viens
Somerville, Massachusetts
www.cosmic-trigger.com

Cosmic Trigger was originally published by And/Or Press about ten years ago, and by Pocket Books shortly thereafter. Although some of my novels have sold far better, in two dimensions at least it is my most “successful” book in human terms.

Notes by Robert Anton Wilson

1. From the date of the first printing to the present, I have received more mail about Cosmic Trigger than about anything else I ever wrote, and most of this mail has been unusually intelligent and open-minded. For some reason, many readers of this book think they can write to me intimately and without fear, about subjects officially Taboo in our society. I have learned a great deal from the correspondence, and have met some wonderful new friends.

2. On lecture tours, I am always asked more questions about this book than about all my other works together.
This new edition presents an opportunity to answer the most frequent questions and to correct the most persistent misunderstandings.
It should be obvious to all intelligent readers (but curiously is not obvious to many) that my viewpoint in this book is one of agnosticism. The word “agnostic” appears explicitly in the prologue and the agnostic attitude is revealed again and again in the text, but many people still think I “believe” some of the metaphors and models employed here. I therefore want to make it even clearer than ever before that

I DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING

This remark was made, in these very words, by John Gribbin, physics editor of New Scientist magazine, in a BBC-TV debate with Malcolm Muggeridge, and it provoked incredulity o the part of most viewers. It seems to be a hangover of the medieval Catholic era that causes most people, even the educated, to think that everybody must “believe” something or other, that if one is not a theist, one must be a dogmatic atheist, and if one does not think Capitalism is perfect, one must believe fervently in Socialism, and if one does not have blind faith in X, one must alternatively have blind faith in not-X or the reverse of X.

My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended.

My attitude is identical to that of Dr. Gribbin and the majority of physicists today, and is known in physics as “the Copenhagen Interpretation,” because it was formulated in Copenhagen by Dr. Niels Bohr and his co-workers c. 1926-28. The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called “model agnosticism” and holds that any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and should not be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the slogan, “The map is not the territory.” Alan Watts, a talented exegete of Oriental philosophy, restated it more vividly as “The menu is not the meal.”

Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, “My current model” — or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel — “contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised.” In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.

Cosmic Trigger deals with a process of deliberately induced brain change through which I put myself in the years 1962-1976. This process is called “initiation” or “vision quest” in many traditional societies and can loosely be considered some dangerous variety of self-psychotherapy in modern terminology. I do not recommend it for everybody, and I think I obtained more good results than bad ones chiefly because I had been through two varieties of ordinary psychotherapy before I started my own adventures and because I had a good background in scientific philosophy and was not inclined to “believe” any astounding Revelations too literally.

Briefly, the main thing I learned in my experiments is that “reality” is always plural and mutable.

Since most of Cosmic Trigger is devoted to explaining and illustrating this, and since I still encounter people who have read all my writings on this subject and still do not understand what I am getting at, I will try again in this new Preface to explain it ONE MORE TIME, perhaps more clearly than before.

“Reality” is a word in the English language which happens to be (a) a noun and (b) singular. Thinking in the English language (and in cognate Indo-European languages) therefore subliminally programs us to conceptualize “reality” as one block-like entity, sort of like a huge New York skyscraper, in which every part is just another “room” within the same building. This linguistic program is so pervasive that most people cannot “think” outside it at all, and when one tries to offer a different perspective they imagine one is talking gibberish.
The notion that “reality” is a noun, a solid thing like a brick or a baseball bat, derives from the evolutionary fact that our nervous systems normally organize the dance of energy into such block-like “things,” probably as instant bio-survival cues. Such “things,” however, dissolve back into energy dances — processes or verbs — when the nervous system is synergized with certain drugs or transmuted by yogic or shamanic exercises or aided by scientific instruments.

In both mysticism and physics, there is general agreement that “things” are constructed by our nervous systems and that “realities” (plural) are better described as systems or bundles of energy functions.
So much for “reality” as a noun. The notion that “reality” is singular, like a hermetically sealed jar, does not jibe with current scientific findings which, in this century, suggest that “reality” may better be considered as flowing and meandering, like a river, or interacting, like a dance or evolving, like life itself.
Most philosophers have known, at least since around 500 B.C., that the world perceived by our senses is not “the real world” but a construct we create — our own private work of art. Modern science began with Galileo’s demonstration that color is not “in” objects but “in” the interaction of our senses with objects. Despite this philosophic and scientific knowledge of neurological relativity, which has been more clearly demonstrated with each major advance in instrumentation, we still, due to language, think that behind the flowing, meandering, inter-acting, evolving universe created by perception is one solid monolithic “reality” hard and crisply outlined as an iron bar.

Quantum physics has undermined that Platonic iron-bar “reality” by showing that it makes more sense scientifically to talk only of the inter-actions we actually experience (our operations in the laboratory) ; and perception psychology has undermined the Platonic “reality” by showing that assuming it exists leads to hopeless contradictions in explaining how we actually perceive that a hippopotamus is not a symphony orchestra.

The only “realities” (plural) that we actually experience and can talk meaningfully about are perceived realities, experienced realities, existential realities — realities involving ourselves as editors — and they are all relative to the observer, fluctuating, evolving, capable of being magnified and enriched, moving from low resolution to hi-fi, and do not fit together like the pieces of a jig-saw into one single Reality with a capital R. Rather, they cast illumination upon one another by contrast, like the paintings in a large museum, or the different symphonic styles of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Mahler.

Alan Watts may have said it best of all: “The universe is a giant Rorschach ink-blot.” Science finds one meaning in it in the 18th Century, another in the 19th, a third in the 20th; each artist finds unique meanings on other levels of abstraction; and each man and woman finds different meanings at different hours of the day, depending on the internal and external environments.
This book deals with what I have called induced brain change, which Dr. John Lilly more resoundingly calls “metaprogramming the human bio-computer.” In simple Basic English, as a psychologist and novelist, I set out to find how much rapid re-organization was possible in the brain functioning of one normal domesticated primate of average intelligence — the only one on whom I could ethically perform such risky research — myself.

Like most people who have historically attempted such “metaprogramming,” I soon found myself in metaphysical hot water. It became urgently obvious that my previous models and metaphors would not and could not account for what I was experiencing. I therefore had to create new models and metaphors as I went along. Since I was dealing with matters outside consensus reality-tunnels, some of my metaphors are rather extraordinary. That does not bother me, since I am at least as much an artist as a psychologist, but it does bother me when people take these metaphors too literally.

I beg you, gentle reader, to memorize the quote from Aleister Crowley at the beginning of Part One and repeat it to yourself if at any point you start thinking that I am bringing you the latest theological revelations from Cosmic Central.
What my experiments demonstrate — what all such experiments throughout history have demonstrated — is simply that our models of “reality” are very small and tidy, the universe of experience is huge and untidy, and no model can ever include all the huge untidiness perceived by uncensored consciousness.
I think, or hope, that my data also demonstrates that neurological model agnosticism — the application of the Copenhagen Interpretation beyond physics to consciousness itself — allows one to escape from certain limits of mechanical emotion and robot mentation that are inescapable as long as one remains within one dogmatic model or one imprinted reality tunnel.

Personally I also suspect, or guess, or intuit, that the more unconventional of my models here — the ones involving Higher Intelligence, such as the Cabalistic Holy Guardian Angel or the extraterrestrial from Sirius — are necessary working tools at certain stages of the metaprogramming process.
That is, whether such entities exist anywhere outside our own imaginations, some areas of brain functioning cannot be accessed without using these “keys” to open the locks. I do not insist on this; it is just my own opinion. Some people seem to get through this area of Chapel Perilous without such personalized “Guides.” I know of one chap who did it by imagining a super-computer in the future that was sending information backwards in time to his brain. More clever people may find even less “metaphysical” metaphors.

Ten years after the point at which this book ends, I do not care much about such speculations. Our lonely little selves can be “illuminated” or flooded with radical science-fiction style information and cosmic perspectives, and the source of this may be those extraterrestrials who seemed to be helping me at times, or the Secret Chiefs of Sufism, or the parapsychologists and/or computers of the 23rd Century beaming data backward in time, or it may just be the previously unactivated parts of our own brains. Despite the current reign of our New Inquisition, which attempts to halt research in this area, we will learn more about that as time passes. Meanwhile, agnosticism is both honest and becomingly modest….

In this connection, I am often asked about two books by other authors which are strangely resonant with Cosmic Trigger — namely VALIS by Philip K. Dick and The Sirian Experiment by Doris Lessing. VALIS is a novel which broadly hints that it is more than a novel — that it is an actual account of Phil Dick’s own experience with some form of “Higher Intelligence.” In fact, VALIS is only slightly fictionalized; the actual events on which it is based are recounted in a long interview Phil gave shortly before his death (see Philip K. Dick: The Last Testament, by Gregg Rickman.) The parallels with my own experience are numerous — but so are the differences. If the same source was beaming ideas to both Phil and me, the messages got our individual flavors mixed into them as we decoded the signals.

I met Phil Dick on two or three occasions and corresponded with him a bit. My impression was that he was worried that his experience was a temporary insanity and was trying to figure out if I was nutty, too. I’m not sure if he ever decided.

I interviewed Doris Lessing a few years ago for New Age magazine. She takes synchronicities very seriously, but was as agnostic as I am about the possibility that some of them are orchestrated by Sirians.

I heartily recommend all three volumes — VALIS, The Last Testament and The Sirian Experiments — to readers of this book. Unless you are locked into a very dogmatic reality-tunnel, you will have a few weird moments of wondering if Sirians are experimenting on us, and a few weird moments can be a liberating experience for those who aren’t scared to death by them.
What is more important than such extra-mundane speculation, I think, are practical and pragmatic questions about what one does with the results of brain change experience. It is quite easy, I have discovered by meeting many New Age people, to use the techniques in this book and go stone crazy with them. Paranoid and schizophrenic cases are quite common among those who experiment in this area. Less clinical, but socially even more nefarious, are the leagues of self-proclaimed gurus and their equally deluded disciples, who have discovered, as I did, that there are many realities (plural), but have picked out one favorite non-Occidental reality-tunnel, named it Ultimate Reality or True Reality, and established new fanaticisms, snobberies, dogmas and cults around these delusions.

There is a great deal of lyrical Utopianism in this book. I do not apologize for that, and do not regret it. The decade that has passed since the first edition has not altered my basic commitment to the game-rule that holds that an optimistic mind-set finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable.

Since we all create our habitual reality-tunnels, either consciously and intelligently or unconsciously and mechanically, I prefer to create for each hour the happiest, funniest, and most romantic reality-tunnel consistent with the signals my brain apprehends. I feel sorry for people who persistently organize experience into sad, dreary and hopeless reality tunnels, and try to show them how to break the bad habit, but I don’t feel any masochistic duty to share their misery.

This book does not claim that you “create your own reality” in the sense of total (but mysteriously unconscious) psychokinesis. If a car hits you and puts you in the hospital, I do not believe this is because you “really wanted” to be hit by a car, or that you “needed” to be hit by a car, as two popular New Age bromides have it. The theory of transactionaly psychology, which is the source of my favorite models and metaphors, merely says that, once you have been hit by a car, the meaning of the experience depends entirely on you and the results depend partly on you (and partly on your doctors). If it is medically possible for you to live — and sometimes even if the doctors think it is medically impossible — you ultimately decide whether to get out of the hospital in a hurry or to lie around suffering and complaining.

Most of the time, this kind of “decision” is unconscious and mechanical, but with the techniques described in this book, such decisions can become conscious and intelligent.

The last part of this book deals with the worst tragedy of my life. I want to say, without self-pity (a vice I despise) that my years on this planet have included many other terrible and punishing experiences, starting with two bouts of polio when I was a child and including dozens of other things I don’t want to complain about in public. When I write of creating a better and more optimistic reality-tunnel, of transcending ego-games, and of similar matters, it is not because I have lived in an ivory tower. It is because I have learned a few practical techniques for dealing with the brutal conditions on this primitive planet.

People at my lectures and seminars usually ask me if I am still optimistic about civilian space programs and life extension. I am more optimistic than ever. Despite the seemingly terminal case of rigidicus bureaucraticus at NASA, I have reason to believe certain European countries will soon jointly launch the kind of space migration effort advocated here; and Reagan’s SDI, for all its jingoism, means that more money will be spent on basic research than at any previous time in history.

On the life extension front, there have been several best-sellers on the subject since this book first appeared; there is interest even in the most intellectually backward part of U.S. society (namely, the Congress); and scientists in the longevity field whom I have met recently all cheerfully say they are getting more money for research than in the 70s. The breakthrough cannot be far away.
Finally as a matter of some entertainment value, not all the mail I have received about this book has been intelligent and thoughtful. I have received several quite nutty and unintentionally funny poison-pen letters from two groups of dogmatists — Fundamentalist Christians and Fundamentalist Materialists.
The Fundamentalist Christians have told me that I am a slave of Satan and should have the demons expelled with an exorcism. The Fundamentalist Materialists inform me that I am a liar, a charlatan, fraud and scoundrel. Aside from this minor difference, the letters are astoundingly similar. Both groups share in the same crusading zeal and the same total lack of humor, charity, and common human decency.

These intolerable cults have served to confirm me in my agnosticism by presenting further evidence to support my contention that when dogmas enter the brain, all intellectual activity ceases.