Saturday, August 31, 2019
Times Square’s Most Outrageous Sex Show, The Queen of Shock Rock, and The Svengali
Punk music. Adult films. Both were subversive art forms in New York in the 1970s. They challenged conventions, shocked audiences, and took artistic expression to another plane.
The 'mini Trump' who built a kingdom out of books
He wore a golden crown made from cardboard, appointed a horse as his prime minister and declared his hometown an independent country on April Fool's Day.
In many ways, Richard Booth was a classic British eccentric whose regular bouts of mischief and bluster could easily be dismissed as harmless follies that would never earn him much more than local notoriety.
Future Now: Interview with J.G. Ballard
Future Now: Interview with J.G. Ballard
short film produced for Swedish television (1986)
Friday, August 30, 2019
Orion Rigel Dommisse - Drink Yourself (To Death)
Orion Rigel Dommisse
Drink Yourself (To Death)
from the lp What I Want Is Sweet
Jeffrey Epstein’s “Suicide” Is A Baudrillardian Perfect Crime
Few cinematic sequences signify the dawn of postmodernism and all its attendant schizoid unknowability beneath its constructed surface veneer better than the final scene of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. In that scene, the audio tapping specialist Harry, portrayed with quiet and contemplative everyman rage by the great Gene Hackman, rips his apartment up with impotent furor trying to locate the wiretap that he knows is there. Note my word choice here: “knows.” Harry isn’t being paranoid, and even if he was, well: “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what is going on,” wrote William S. Burroughs. As a wiretapping expert, Harry has too deep an understanding to believe that he isn’t being surveilled. He knows he’s being watched, and seeing the film through Harry, we also know that he’s being watched, and we also know that we are being watched. But at the same time, we will never have any material proof that we are being watched.
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Gilles de Rais: The Occultist Who Killed Children
Practitioners of the occult have always had a curious connection
to sex and money. The fifteenth century French aristocrat named
Gilles de Rais was no exception. Originally considered a prominent
citizen, the military leader turned landowner and theater director’s
life ended at the end of a rope, condemned and executed for
committing some of the worst crimes ever committed on French soil.
Whether he was a real magician or an easily conned dupe is a matter
that historians have yet to settle.
Probably born in 1405 in his family’s modest castle, Gilles de
Rais appeared to have a privileged life in the making. As a boy he
developed an interest in religious art and learned to speak Latin
fluently. When his parents died at the age of ten, Rais was sent to live with
his maternal grandfather Jean de Craon. The elder man had plans to
increase his familial property and wealth by arranging for the young
Rais to marry a rich daughter of the aristocracy and thereby inherit
her wealth in the form of a dowry. Meanwhile, the student Rais
studied his passions, religion, ethics, and military strategy in
school. The upwardly-mobile grandfather eventually found success and
hitched his grandson to Catherine de Thouars of Brittany; she was an
heiress from the province of Poitou and Gilles de Rais’s
landholdings increased considerably.
Life took off for the prodigal young upstart. Catherine gave
birth to their only daughter and Rais became a courtier in the Duchy
of Brittany; he took sides with the House of Montfort in the Breton
War of Succession, a decision that resulted in him being granted
tracts of land as a gift for helping negotiate the release of an
imprisoned duke. Soon after, the 100 Years War between France and
England began. Gilles de Rais was appointed as a commanding officer
in the Royal Army and fought side by side with Joan of Arc. Whereas
Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for heresy after claiming to have
heard the voices of fairies who helped her lead the army to victory,
Gilles de Rais went home to his castle and took up the study of
religion once again. His own death penalty would come later.
In the 1430s, Rais spent a considerable sum of his fortune on
having his own church built which he called the Chapel Of the Holy
Innocents. Dressed in flamboyant robes of his own design, he used the
chapel to stage performances of a theatrical extravaganza that he
wrote called the Mystery Of the Siege of Orleans. The sprawling and
overblown performances had over 200 cast members, each wearing a
sparkling custom-made costume which was discarded after each play. A
new set of clothes for the actors was tailored each time a show was
given. Gilles de Rais also showed his appreciation for the actors by
not only paying them, but also by holding lavish banquets with piles
of gourmet food and endless casks of wine.
The performances and excessive revelries in decadence were a
financial black hole. Gilles de Rais began selling land to raise
enough money to continue the productions; soon he was near
bankruptcy. His family petitioned the government to end the plays but
legally there was nothing they could do. They turned to ecclesiastic
law for aid and the church agreed to condemn his theater as a sin.
The devoutly religious Rais was confronted with the possibility of
excommunication if he did not cease and desist on his spendings and
so the performances stopped.
Gilles de Rais was almost broke. He needed funds to continue the
lifestyle he craved. He sent word out across Europe that he wanted to
hire a magician or alchemist to help him bring back his fortune.
One day an Italian cleric from the Catholic church showed up at
the castle of Gilles de Rais. His name was Francois Prelati and he
claimed to be a practitioner of necromancy and the alchemical arts.
He had brought with him a manuscript on demonology and black magic.
After studying the grimoire, Rais agreed to help summon a demon named
Barron who could help him obtain the wealth he desired. Some say that
Prelati and Rais became lovers; sexual relations between the two were
preparations for the ceremonial magic that was soon to come. While
the two men became intimate with each other’s bodies, Prelati also
became intimate with Gilles de Rais’s castle, learning where the
hidden vaults for storing money and jewels were located.
Prelati drew up a contract for Rais to sign in blood in exchange
for wealth. One night, when the moon and the weather were right, the
two men brought it out to the woods. With swords and chalices, the
incantations began. While the demonic summoning increased in
intensity, an accomplice of Prelati sneaked out of Rais’ castle
with a bagful of gold. Meanwhile in the forest, no demon appeared.
The ceremony was declared a failure and Prelati said that something
else was required.
Months went by and more rituals were performed but nothing
supernatural ever came of it. One day Prelati finally said that the
one thing missing from the magical rites were the bones of a
sacrificed human child. It was at this time that peasant children
began to disappear. The next time they met in the woods at midnight,
Gilles de Rais produced a bag of small bones. The invocations were
resumed and as usual nothing happened.
Like the impoverished children, Prelati also disappeared. He was
said to have arrived back in Italy with a collection of coins and
gems. The Catholic church reinstated him in his old position as a
cleric.
The poor peasant children continued to vanish. When young boys
went to the village to beg for food, they often did not return. The
financial fortunes of Gilles de Rais also continued to dwindle.
Rais’s servant Poitou would lure naive boys to the castle with
promises of endless supplies of rich food and drink. Back in the
dining hall, Rais and Poitou would sit with the kidnapped kid while
he gorged himself on meats, fruits, and vegetables. They gave him
goblets of wine spiked with drugs and when the boy began to get
dopey, they took him off to a bedroom draped with red velvet curtains
and illuminated with black iron candelabras. The pair took turns
torturing the boy. Gilles de Rais then raped him. Poitou would chop
off the child’s head with an ax and the two took turns mutilating
the corpse and ripping out the internal organs. Poitou would then
burn the body in a fireplace and scatter the ashes in the nearby
woods. Official records of the time show that about 200 young boys
disappeared; most, if not all of them, were victims of Gilles de
Rais.
In 1440, the demon Barron had still not come but the court
officials did. The murders stopped when investigators detained
Rais’s two servants, Poitou and Henriet; they confessed quickly and
gave extensive details of what had gone on. Gilles de Rais was put on
trial in both secular and ecclesiastical courts. When threatened with
the possibility of torture, Rais confessed to everything and asked to
be pardoned for his sins. The church officials granted this request
most likely after some Catholic palms were greased. Rais’s only
defense was that he was tricked into committing the atrocities by the
manipulative and sadistic thief Prelati. The courts did not buy it;
Gilles de Rais was sentenced, along with his two servants, to be hung
and burned simultaneously.
Gilles de Rais’s last request was that he be executed before
Poitou and Henriet were put to death. The court granted the request.
They took him to the gallows, put the noose around his neck, and hung
him. While they were kindling the fire under his feet, four women
rushed up the platform, cut the body down, and hauled it away before
the flesh could burn. His body was later found buried in a grave; the
aristocrat Gilles de Rais had secretly made arrangements with his
sister to be given a Christian burial and entombed since Catholics
believed a cremated body would prevent a departed soul from being
given an eternal home in heaven. Criminals of the lower class could
not afford such luxuries. Poitou and Henriet, the two servants, were
subsequently hung and then burned at the stake, never to be given a
funeral or a grave.
Reference
Mackay, Charles. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness
of Crowds. Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1995
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
RIP Pedro Bell
Pedro Bell, whose wild, psychedelic album covers for Detroit cosmic funk band Funkadelic defined the influential group’s aesthetic, died Tuesday. He was 69.
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Monday, August 26, 2019
Nigerian Teenagers Are Making Slick Sci Fi Films With Their Smartphones
Someone should really snap up the rights for a movie about The Critics, a collective of self-taught teenage filmmakers from northwestern Nigeria.
Saturday, August 24, 2019
The Witch Trials - Humanoids From the Deep
The Witch Trials
Humanoids From the Deep
from the ep The Witch Trials
Book Review: Childhood"s End by Arthur C. Clarke
At the
beginning of Childhood’s End, two
scientists from the USA and the USSR look up at the sky and realize
their attempt to win the historical Space Race is futile. A giant
space craft has just descended to Earth and the two representatives
of their respective nations feel humbled by the realization that the
human race is not at the apex of all existence or the center of the
universe. So begins this classic novel by Arthur C. Clarke which
takes us up to the last days of the human race. While
the story itself is completely imaginary, it does force the reader to
consider what our place in the universe truly is.
The
extra-terrestrial invaders, subsequently referred to as the
Overlords, contact Stormgren,
the Secretary General of the United Nations in New York City. Through
the spokesman Karellen, Stormgren is given instructions on how to
steer the world towards an era of material prosperity and peace.
Warfare, poverty, racism,
and disease are eliminated and a kind of utopia is achieved. The
Overlords, however, never reveal themselves since their appearance
would frighten the masses of humanity.
An
interesting narrative technique gets established from the start. Most
of what happens at the beginning takes place in human society. The
Overlord Karellen makes brief appearances, mostly for the sake of
explaining to Stormgren what is going on. As the story continues,
the Overlords interact more and more with the humans though they
mostly remain in the background until the end of the novel. This
alternation of presence and
absence of the Overlords
creates a rhythmic framework in the narrative that results in a type
of depth that might not have been achieved without them lurking in
the background. Through this
framing device, a tension is built between the humans and the
overlords; the inavaders
establish from the start
that their intentions for making Earth a peaceful planet are
entirely benevolent but the audience is left with the question of
what their ultimate plans
actually are. One thing
becomes certain though; their control and manipulation of humanity is
minimal and they mostly just observe from their hiding places.
After
Karellen finally reveals himself to the world, a pivotal point in the
story comes at a party given by a game warden in Africa named Rupert.
He owns the world’s largest collection of books on parapsychology
and the Overlord Rashaverak is there to read all his books. Two key
events happen at this party. One is that Rupert’s step-brother, the
astrophysicist Jan Rodderick, decides he wants to become a stowaway
on an Overlord ship and travel to their planet. The other is that
Rashaverak learns that the unborn son of Jean Greggson will play an
important part in the later events of the story. These revelations
occur when the people at the party engage in a ouija board-type
séance; Jan learned the name of the star that the Overlord’s
planet revolves around and Rashaverak learns that the unborn child is
the one psychically transmitting the information to the people at the
party.
Some
readers have taken issue with Clarke for including this
parapsychology in the story. While
in reality, parapsychology may be the domain of frauds and
pseudo-scientists, the fact that this novel is a work of
science-fiction, with the emphasis on fiction, has
to be taken into account. Why would a work of the imagination have to
necessarily be based entirely on authentic science to begin with? The
psychic transmission of information plays a significant role in
moving the narrative forward since Rashaverak later meets with
Karellen to inform him of what he learned about Jean’s unborn son.
In the context of this fictional story, the element of telepathy
makes perfect sense, especially considering that the Overlords are
endowed with mental powers that are far superior to those of humans.
The
utopia created by the Overlords is boring for some people. In a
society without need or conflict, some people get restless. Thus Jean
and her disgruntled husband Greg move to an artists’ colony on an
island called New Athens. It is there where their children learn
their true purpose in the scheme of evolution and the intentions of
the Overlords is finally revealed. But their purpose is still
shrouded in mystery. The Overlords are carrying out orders given to
them by the Overmind, a being which they themselves
do not understand or comprehend. And
so the human race is merely serving a function for an unknown purpose
in an incomprehensible cosmos where nothing can ever be known with
true certainty.
Meanwhile,
Jan Rodderick is warmly received on the Overlords’ planet even
though he went there illegally. When they bring him back to Earth he
is the last man to ever exist.
Childhood’s
End is not a novel of action and
events. Most of what happens takes place in situations and the
significance of it all is explained in the course of conversations,
inner monologue, and narrative explication. Readers who want to see
monstrous aliens being blown to pieces with laser guns and UFOs
smashing up big cities will be disappointed. It is more of a
meditative and contemplative novel written
in a calm and somber tone.
The plot moves along like gentle waves on a calm beach. It is meant
to make us think about what our lives really mean, especially if we
are only a speck of dust without any real significance in the grand
scheme of everything. Does that mean all the religious beliefs in the
world are merely simple stories we tell to
make ourselves feel more important than we really are?
Are all the bluster and egotism of power and politics nothing more
than a waste of mental energy? Is there any sense in war if we all
die in the end anyways? Why do we think of children as being so
important? What does
evolution actually feel like?
Arthur
C. Clarke has written a work of fantasy that causes us to ask
realistic questions about life. So many other writers have done this
before. He has done this in a
way that elevates this science-fiction novel to the realm of true
art. Through effective use of imagery, narrative technique, and
philosophical enquiry,
Childhood’s End definitely
transcends its genre.
It
also opens up themes that get taken up again in 2001: A
Space Odyssey.
Clarke, Arthur C. Childhood's End. Ballantine Books, New York, 1953.
Friday, August 23, 2019
Meet the Mother-Son Duo Translating Astrophysics Into Blackfoot
Corey Gray and Sharon Yellowfly want to bring gravitational wave astronomy to speakers of the language.
The Leather Nun - Gimme Gimme Gimme
The Leather Nun
Gimme Gimme Gimme
from the lp The Leather Nun Plays Abba
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Matshikapeau: fart man, and saviour of the Innu
Farting has many fine traditions across the globe, from the queen’s royal “fart room” to the flatulence humor espoused by children across the globe. But to some cultures a fart is more than just a social yay or nay, for some a fart is the most powerful thing you can possibly imagine
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Book Review
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Weird hicks.
That is the subject of William Faulkner’s classic novel As I Lay
Dying. This Southern Gothic
novel provides shifting perspectives from all the members of the
Bundren family, their neighbors, and a few other people along the way
of this road trip story. While it is probably one of Faulkner’s
best novels, and certainly one of his most accessible, it may not be
one of the greatest books ever written as some critics and historians
have overstated. Still, it is a high point in American writing.
The
Bundrens live on a cotton farm in an imaginary region of Mississippi.
As the story opens, the son named Cash is building a coffin outside
the window of Addie, the mother, who is dying in her bed. The
toothless husband and father, Anse, is sitting on the porch,
typically allergic to work and self-absorbed, contemplating how much
better life would
be with teeth. The other family members are gradually introduced as
death creeps closer and closer to Addie. Darl is a thoughtful son who
makes everyone uncomfortable. Jewel was born to Addie after she had
an affair with another man. The youngest son, Vardaman, approaches
the house with a big fish he caught; he proceeds to kill it with an
ax so they can eat it for dinner. Dewey Dell is the mothering and
responsible daughter who tries to care for the whole family as their
matriarch dies. Predictably Addie
does die and at
the same time a severe rainstorm comes. The family embarks on a
journey to bring the corpse to the family burial plot in a nearby
town but first they have to cross a flooded river where all the
bridges were destroyed during the storm.
The
narrative is linear but it is told from the shifting first-person
perspectives of about twenty people involved in the story. The
altering narratives give the whole book a cinematic feel; as a new
person takes up the story in each chapter, the change functions like
shot transition in cinematography. If such these
are done effectively in a movie, the pacing of can take on different
characteristics and the shifts in narrative function the same way as
well in this novel. As I Lay Dying is
a very visual novel as well. But what really enhances the flow of the
story is the subjective thoughts that each narrator provides. The
reader gets some philosophical ruminations from Darl and Varnaman who
contemplate ontologically
about the nature of being (their
awkward logic reads like a hillbilly version of Heidegger and is even
a whole lot easier to understand than that old German fool);
Faulkner tries to show how uneducated people, while lacking the
intellectual vocabulary of academics, struggle with the same
philosophical issues that are discussed in the ivory towers of
college campuses. We learn that Anse
thinks little about anybody but himself. Cash comes across as a
fatalist who just accepts
whatever happens to him no
matter how rotten it is and Dewey Dell constantly frets over how to
take care of the whole family. Most importantly, we see the
perspectives of the neighbors and a couple other people who think the
Bundrens are a bunch of lunatics. By the end of the novel, you will
probably agree.
A
large portion of the novel described the family’s disastrous
crossing of the swollen river. Jewel ties his horse to the mule team
that is pulling their decrepit wagon with the coffin in the back. A
log flowing downstream overturns the wagon, the casket floats away,
and the mules drown. Of course, the river is symbolic and shows not
only the division between the Bundrens and the more modern people in
the town but also the point where the family, at least almost,
coalesces and coheres into a more integrated unit. They
almost congeal since Jewel, the black sheep of the family, emerges as
the most loyal and dedicated member while Darl, who always bickers
with Jewel, makes his exit in the later passages of the book. Jewel
stands out in this part, not only because he does the most to rescue
Cash, his tool box, and the wagon but also because he sacrifices his
beloved horse, a symbol of his distance from his family, by selling
it so they can buy a new team of mules. After the crossing of the
river, we also learn that most of the family members did not want to
make this journey for the sake of burying their mother. They had
ulterior motives and all pretended to be concerned about her so they
could get the things they really wanted in the town.
As I Lay
Dying gets more hilarious as it
goes along. The corpse inside the coffin begins to stink and attracts
unwanted attention from the people they pass along the way. A flock
of vultures continuously circle overhead, waiting for a chance to
feast on the corpse. The
family tries to heal Cash’s broken leg by pouring concrete over it.
A sleazy pharmacist convinces Dewey Dell he can abort her unwanted
fetus by having sex with her after giving her capsules filled with
talcum powder for ten dollars. Faulkner wrote a novel nicely seasoned
with gallows humor; if you do not laugh out loud at least a couple
times while reading it, you probably did not really get the book in
all its finer details.
Overall,
As I Lay Dying is a
great little novel and deserves to be regarded as a classic. Whether
it is one of the greatest books ever written might be a bit of an
exaggeration. By the end, it seemed a little rudimentary. The story
of the road trip takes place over eight days and thankfully Faulkner
did not try to describe the entire time they were traveling but some
of the time shifts are confusing and make it feel like something was
left out. It is also one of those books that needs to be read at
least twice in order to really get a good understanding of what
everything means. But it is a quick read and by the end of the second
time around, you will probably see what makes it great.
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. Vintage Books. New York, 1964.
Lupo the Butcher
Lupo the Butcher
animated short film by Marv Newland
International Rocketship Limited (1987)
Anijam
Anijam
animated short fil produced by Marv Newland
for International Rocketship Limited (1984)
Pink Komkommer
Pink Komkommer
short animated film directed by Marv Newland and Paul Driessen
for International Rocketship Limited (1991)
Monday, August 19, 2019
This country gave all its rivers their own legal rights
It’s part of a nascent “rights of nature” movement that’s inspiring many — but encountering problems when it comes to enforcement.
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Gong - Ooby Scooby Doomsday or the D Day Got the DDT Blues
Gong
Ooby Scooby Doomsday or the D Day Got the DDT Blues
from the lp Angels Egg
The 'Ax Man': New Orleans' Jazz-Loving Serial Killer
Pauline Bruno was terrified of the ax man. Like most residents of New Orleans, the 18-year-old had spent weeks reading the morbid newspaper accounts of his attacks. Each home invasion was remarkably similar: The assailant would use a chisel to pry out a door panel, unlock the entrance, and then find the master bedroom. Using an ax—one that usually belonged to his victims—he’d hack and swipe at couples who were sound asleep in the early morning hours. He would take nothing and leave only one clue behind: the bloodied hatchet, caked with gore and strands of hair.
Saturday, August 17, 2019
Book Review: The Process by Brion Gysin
Brion Gysin is
somewhat notable for being the inventor of the cut up method and the
dream machine and his close friendship with William S. Burroughs. It
is unfortunate that never got to be more well known as a writer. His
novel The Process is an
exhilarating reading experience that can make you wish his literary
output had been larger.
The
main character of The Process is
Ulys O. Hanson, a retired African-American history professor and
compulsive keef smoker who
sets out from Morocco to travel the slave trading routes in the
Sahara desert. Hanson, often called Hassan throughout the novel, sets
off into Algeria but gets stuck in the city of Tam. It
is there where he meets up with a secret society of musicians who put
members into trances and seizures that induce out-of-body
experiences. The Muslim police learn about his involvement with them
and revoke his visa, commanding him to remain captive in Tam. He
escapes and makes his way back to Tanj in Morocco to reacquaint
himself with Hamid, the Moroccan friend who initiated him into the
secret society’s rituals in the hill town of Jajouka.
Back
in Tanj, Ulys listens to a tape recording of Hamid telling his life
story. The friend, a wild and untamed boy, grew up to be a smuggler
and thief. The musicians of Jajouka initiate him into their rites by
having him dress as the bou jaloud, another name for the Pagan god
Pan. Hamid becomes possessed by the spirit of bou jaloud and leaves
Jajouka to work as a painter in the red light district where he uses
his “paintbrush” to “paint all the whores”. Later in the same
chapter, Hamid transforms
into a whale that seduces a prostitute named Tanj and wrecks all the
alleys and roads that lead to the central market before destroying
that too. Thus, Hamid embodies the creative and destructive aspects
of the phallus.
Thay
Himmer is the next character to record his story for Ulys. After
introducing himself in the Cafe de Paris, the famed Beat Generation
hangout, he gives Ulys an emerald stone and tells him that the
attempt to trap him in Tam was part pf a plot that gets explained
more and more as the novel goes on. Thay Himmer, in an attempt to
escape his white American identity, also got initiated into a secret
society called Hamadcha; they
initiated him during a pilgrimage where they beat him over the head
with a board, made him dance until his feet bled, and nailed him to
the wall
of a saint’s tomb in a cave. Himmer later learned to suppress his
orgasms, enabling him to have sex with his wife for several hours at
a time which in turn gave him magical powers. These powers were
strengthened when he received the emerald scarab from a teacher and
took a vow of silence. The connection between the scarab and language
is revealed near the end of the book.
Thay
Himmer’s wife, Mya, is a Canadian Native American billionaire who
receives a vision of ruling over the Sahara desert during a
psylocibin trip in which she foresees
her meeting with Ulys. Mya invests heavily in the psychotropic drug
industry and begins stockpiling human pituitary glands in a stainless
steel fortress built by
Chinese communists and
shaped like a star. It is
located in the town of Tam
which also happens to be a research center for the development of
nuclear bombs. Mya’s plan is to possess Ulys O. Hanson with the
Ghoul, a monstrous black spirit that rules as the king of the Sahara;
once Ulys is possessed she can control him and reign over Africa
first and then the entire world later.
If
this all sounds bewildering at this point, that is because it is. But
strangely, the narrative remains lucid throughout the whole book. It
is may be a little heavier than Robert Anton Wilson but not as
exasperating as Thomas Pynchon.
The Process works on
many levels at once; the story can be taken literally and
symbolically at the same time. There are veiled references to real
people like Francis X. Fard who embodies the ideals of the Nation of
Islam with the life story of Frantz Fanon; the practice of
Grammatology is an obvious reference to the Church of Scientology. If
you read carefully, many of the characters are written with similar
details, almost as if they are all the same people inhabiting
different bodies simultaneously. There are recurring themes and
images of slavery and servitude woven through the narrative
and these get balanced out by accounts of telepathy, dreams,
shifting planes of
consciousness, alternate realities, and out of body travel which
seem to embody the ideal of absolute freedom. There are so many
minute threads of details and re-occurring themes that it can be like
looking at a finely woven rug that spins
quickly in front of flickering lights, making you hallucinate as all
the colors and patterns emerge and merge into your soul. Like the
works of James Joyce, The Process turns
inwards on itself like a kaleidoscopic mirror that reflects back and
forth to infinity.
But
simply put, the whole book is about a
regular person, Ulys O.
Hanson, the man whose name is not Hassan; he smokes endless amounts
of keef while traveling in the Sahara because he wants to find
himself and become absolutely free.
And
who can not relate to that?
Gysin, Brion. The Process. Quarter Books, 1985.
Friday, August 16, 2019
A Sculpture That Was Censored From Japan’s Aichi Triennale Will Become a Centerpiece of a New Museum for Banned Art
The Spanish collector Taxto Benet plans to install the work in his forthcoming Freedom Museum.
Virgin Prunes: Sons and Devils
Virgin Prunes: Sons and Devils - A Live Retrospective 1981 - 1983
an Ikon VHS documentary (1986)
The VHS Atrocities of Psychic TV’s FIRST TRANSMISSION [NSFW]
Psychic TV was more than just an experimental band — they were but one facet of a metaphysical collective founded by Genesis, entitled “Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth,” which boasted a worldwide following and published their principles in a manifesto entitled THE GREY BOOK. Among the pages of this strange tract was an ad for FIRST TRANSMISSION — a multi-volume series of VHS tapes released in 1982.
Scientists discover new pain-sensing organ
Octopus-like Schwann cells that engulf nerves in skin can sense pain, experiments show
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
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