Program Notes

Guest speaker: Ken Adams

AdamsMcKennaExpreience.jpg

Today we get to hear another of the Palenque Norte Lectures that were held at the 2013 Burning Man Festival. This talk features the artist, experimental film maker, micro-publisher, and media developer, Ken Adams, who for many years was a close friend and neighbor of the late Terence McKenna. You will be delighted with some of the true stories Ken tells as we get to wander with him through the mind of a uniquely creative artist. Also, I tell a couple of my ‘grandfather stories’, and we finish with Ron Shock telling the greatest dope story ever.

“We have shared experiences that the entire world knows about, like 9-11 and all the catastrophes in Japan and Haiti and all over the world, the Gulf. We’re being introduced to a level of experience that’s post tribal, post national, where we’re all sharing the same emotional experiences and beginning to develop the persona of a new human being, a human being that’s never been here before. It’s something that’s completely unique in human history.”
-Ken Adams

 
The Terence McKenna Experience
ceremonial cinema by
Ken Adams
(pay-what-you-can movie download)

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Transcript

00:00:00

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.

00:00:20

This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:26

Space. This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon. And today we’re going to get to listen to another talk from the Plinque Norte lecture series that was held at this year’s

00:00:32

Burning Man Festival. And this talk features the artist, experimental filmmaker, micro publisher,

00:00:39

and media developer Ken Adams. As you know, for many years, Ken was a close friend and neighbor of Terrence McKenna,

00:00:47

whose talks we’ve been listening to here for the past several weeks, actually the past several

00:00:52

years. And as you may recall, previously we featured a talk by Ken in which he described

00:00:58

the making of his recent movie, The Terrence McKenna Experience. And I’m pleased to tell you

00:01:04

that you can now download your own copy of this extremely creative look at the mind of Terrence McKenna experience. And I’m pleased to tell you that you can now download your own copy

00:01:06

of this extremely creative look at the mind of Terrence McKenna

00:01:10

as a pay-what-you-can download.

00:01:12

And I’ll post a link to that download site with the program notes to today’s podcast,

00:01:17

which, as you know, you can get to via psychedelicsalon.us.

00:01:21

And now, let’s join Pez on the playa as he introduces Ken Adams.

00:01:31

All right, so we’re going to get started with Mr. Ken Adams here. Just wanted to introduce Ken first to you guys.

00:01:46

Ken is a mixed media psychedelic artist.

00:01:49

He also made an awesome film, from what I hear.

00:01:53

I’m really looking forward to seeing it tonight.

00:01:55

About Terrence, which is going to screen, Terrence McKenna,

00:01:58

which is going to screen at 2 a.m. tonight,

00:02:01

right after T-Fairy speaks.

00:02:04

So, yeah, I’m really looking forward to hearing his

00:02:07

talk tonight. And without further ado, here’s Ken Adams, everybody.

00:02:14

Thank you.

00:02:19

Thank you all for coming. I appreciate it. It’s a busy night. I want to start off thanking a bunch of people

00:02:28

because I think it’s important both for the etiquette of it, but also that we begin to

00:02:32

develop an appreciation for the ancestors of this neo-psychedelic transformation we’re all part of.

00:02:40

So you’ll hear me mentioning a lot of names of people that I admire and love very much tonight.

00:02:44

So you’ll hear me mentioning a lot of names of people that I admire and love very much tonight.

00:02:50

And I want to start off by thanking Pachamama for bringing me here and giving me a chance to be on the playa.

00:02:52

I’m dearly grateful.

00:02:57

I also want to thank the Burning community for giving me a place to do this.

00:03:03

To be in this scene is an incredible blessing for us all, and in particular for me.

00:03:07

It’s been incredible, and i thank you and i also want to say something to the palenque norte community that extends all over the internet because there

00:03:12

there’s a tradition developing here that’s really astonishing and there are people here that are

00:03:20

here tonight bruce damer pateo’s here there’s all these people in spirit lorenzo’s

00:03:27

watching and gonna hear tom rydell is uh missing but he set up all this technology for us and uh

00:03:35

gave lots of love at the right time so there’s a lot of people that go into all this stuff

00:03:40

and there’s a lot of people in doing like 40 years of psychedelic research and experimentation

00:03:46

and stuff

00:03:47

so I’m going to try

00:03:50

to remember to pay a lot of extra

00:03:52

respect to the ancestors tonight

00:03:54

I think it’s really important that we

00:03:55

learn to extend our narratives

00:03:58

beyond our personal stories

00:04:00

and see that we’re all part of something very important

00:04:02

and that we’re all

00:04:03

everybody in this room is an extraordinary human being

00:04:06

or they wouldn’t be here.

00:04:08

And you’re bringing something very unique to the planet

00:04:10

that’s urgent right now to be here.

00:04:13

So I want to thank all of you for doing whatever you do

00:04:16

and for finding a way to be here with us tonight.

00:04:21

I also want to in particular, though,

00:04:23

thank Pez and Annie Oak for putting this together

00:04:27

they’re incredible people

00:04:28

and they’ve empowered a lot of people

00:04:31

and they’ve helped change my life

00:04:33

so I want to thank them

00:04:34

and understand how complicated it is

00:04:39

to get all this together

00:04:40

and all the work that people surrender of their free time

00:04:43

it’s quite astonishing that we’re all here. So I want to try and experiment tonight. I saw a lecture a long time ago with a

00:04:53

guy named Buckminster Fuller who designed all these domes that we’re all enjoying. And he told

00:05:00

this interesting story about being blind as a kid and that he didn’t see people’s eyes until he was,

00:05:09

had already been declared retarded and uneducable and nobody knew that he was blind.

00:05:16

And when he finally got glasses, he saw people’s eyes for the first time.

00:05:19

And he started just staring at people’s eyes as a way to communicate and understand what they wanted to

00:05:25

hear so he explained that in this lecture he was giving his technique was to walk on stage with

00:05:31

a pile of three by five cards with ideas on them and start talking about these different ideas and

00:05:39

watch people’s eyes and when they began to stray and get nervous or look at the girl next to them or look at their phone and things like this there weren’t phones then to look at

00:05:48

he would pull another card out and make a transition to whatever was next and i was

00:05:56

thinking that’s a lot like psychedelics in the sense that one of the characteristics of the

00:06:00

psychedelic experience can be that you can jump from any one position in reality

00:06:06

to some other position in reality in one single step.

00:06:10

Suddenly the picture changes, as some of the ayahuasca arrows say.

00:06:15

So I think it’s an interesting way to try to approach public speaking

00:06:19

and also a way to engage the audience in a different way

00:06:22

and create a type of ceremonial performance that can lead us in directions we wouldn’t ordinarily go.

00:06:30

So I hope you guys will enjoy this experiment.

00:06:37

And I think I’ll get started.

00:06:41

This movie that’s going to run in the background here is just like a theatrical ploy.

00:06:45

It’s to help you gaze off behind me and let your subconscious hear what I’m saying and

00:06:50

get as tripped out as you can. Okay, so I told my Buckminster Fuller story, but there’s another

00:06:58

story that’s about Timothy Leary and a speaker that I deeply admired and loved and also helped save me

00:07:05

from my own personal apocalypse more than once.

00:07:09

So I was fortunate to see him perform his first performance when he got out of prison.

00:07:15

And he came to the University of Texas and they booked this huge ballroom and it was

00:07:20

like overflowed by three times our capacity and they had to put it into every room in

00:07:24

the Student Union and it was this amazing revelation that this

00:07:29

man had survived prison and came out with this incredibly effusive joy and

00:07:34

strength and power and had accommodated all the demands put on him by prison and

00:07:39

came out a more beautiful and more hopeful human being. And I was invited to a private lecture he gave.

00:07:47

And when he came out, he told us he had done 750 mics of LSD

00:07:51

and that he was going to experiment with these techno-shamanic modalities

00:08:00

he had developed when he was in solitude in prison

00:08:03

and being able to trip while he was in solitude for long periods of time.

00:08:08

And he came out and he gave this amazing performance.

00:08:12

He did things that I can’t even tell you because they’re absurd.

00:08:15

And he performed all these tricks and caused visualizations in the whole crowd.

00:08:20

And he talked about reversing his aging.

00:08:23

He went through this incredible array of ideas that totally blew my mind.

00:08:27

I just couldn’t believe the incredible strength of his vision.

00:08:32

Timothy became a very tragic story in a lot of ways later.

00:08:36

Perhaps he had more human pain than he could process

00:08:39

because he had a very challenging life

00:08:42

and he lost a lot of loved ones

00:08:44

and he spent a lot of time in prison

00:08:46

and he had police trying to fuck up his life

00:08:48

for his whole time here

00:08:49

so there are a lot of reasons why

00:08:52

a person can get a broken heart

00:08:54

a lot of reasons

00:08:57

but at that point in his life

00:08:59

he was the most powerful

00:09:00

and most inspired human I’ve ever seen

00:09:03

and I want to invoke him and thank him

00:09:06

for all the opportunities he’s provided in my life.

00:09:11

I’ve got these two public speaking lessons

00:09:14

that I remembered this afternoon,

00:09:17

and I wrote down and thought about this experiment

00:09:20

in trying to do this lecture in some new way,

00:09:23

not a lecture, a talk that I hope will engage you guys.

00:09:26

And if you have any questions or remarks you want to make,

00:09:31

please let me know.

00:09:34

Psychedelics are beautiful, mysterious, and frightening.

00:09:38

Therefore, they’re very sexy.

00:09:41

They’re also forbidden. That makes them twice as sexy.

00:09:44

So in my mind, the rhetoric of psychedelia

00:09:48

has this entire range from maps and the scientific research and spiritual research indigenous

00:09:56

traditions the trickster tradition i’m personally devoted to a model of divinity that’s based on androgyny and the trickster archetype

00:10:08

I think that the world is full of surprises

00:10:10

and full of chaos and full of accidents

00:10:13

that provide all sorts of amazing opportunities for us

00:10:17

so besides being

00:10:20

forbidden, sexy, frightening

00:10:23

they’re really fun they’re really engaging and incredible. They can keep you

00:10:28

young. I’m 185 years old.

00:10:31

For real. And I’m enjoying life.

00:10:37

So stay with it.

00:10:41

Yeah.

00:10:43

So earlier tonight Annie Oak gave an incredible talk in here on sexuality and psychedelics that was just mind-blowing.

00:10:52

And she told this incredible story of being on an ayahuasca journey and having this very intense erotic experience with a jaguar and I like blew my mind because I had a

00:11:08

very erotic experience with a jaguar on ayahuasca so I’m going to tell you that story next

00:11:16

so I do this really intense ayahuasca session and it lasts like 24 hours and I’m like amnesic for at least six of those hours

00:11:28

and vomited at least 300 times I mean I was praying that I could vomit some more and I got

00:11:35

buried into the earth and it was just the most soul devastating day of my life it was really

00:11:42

really hard and when I got finally dropped off at home, I told my friend,

00:11:48

that’s the last time. I’m not even interested to try to put myself through this again. I mean,

00:11:55

yeah, I learned a lot and I got healed massively. But I kept thinking, I just couldn’t do that

00:12:01

again. One of the things that happened just for color was I can remember being in this dark green universe with swirling 3D fractals.

00:12:11

And there were these hieroglyphic light beings that didn’t have bodies.

00:12:15

But they had light, sort of like our LED lighting, very similar to it.

00:12:19

And these six beings were working on me.

00:12:21

And they were pulling out lumps in my broken heart.

00:12:25

beings were working on me and they were pulling out lumps in my broken heart and they were smoothing out these areas in my solar plexus that were full of the toxicity of burying my pain in my body

00:12:32

so they were working hard and they were trying to get me into a position to live a little longer and

00:12:38

be a little happier other than that it was pretty rough. And it was a lot of just enduring in faith.

00:12:48

And at the end of it, I was like, that’s enough faith.

00:12:51

I can’t go through this again.

00:12:53

And my friend drops me off, and I go inside.

00:12:56

I start drawing a warm bath, and I take a little one-hitter and take two hits of marijuana.

00:13:02

And I felt this toxicity just flood from my body,

00:13:06

and I just rolled back and started laughing and was in this state of incredible bliss.

00:13:11

I could hardly just keep my body together.

00:13:14

And I stumbled into the bedroom and fell into the bed,

00:13:18

and I immediately had this complete 3-D jaguar experience

00:13:23

that looked sort of like a Japanese print,

00:13:26

but in 3D and alive.

00:13:28

And I knew this jaguar in my face was a lady jaguar.

00:13:33

And I was wondering, oh, what’s next?

00:13:36

And it started tearing my body apart

00:13:39

and just ripping my flesh with its claws

00:13:41

and just eating me alive.

00:13:44

And I was just in this incredible ecstasy.

00:13:46

I was like, oh, please, take it.

00:13:48

Please, take it.

00:13:50

And it started ripping through my light body,

00:13:52

and it ripped across my chakras and just was totally dismembering me.

00:13:56

And I was just like, oh, God, please.

00:14:00

And then when it got to my heart,

00:14:01

it transformed into this emerald-eyed snake goddess.

00:14:06

And she said, good job.

00:14:08

You did the hard work.

00:14:09

Now it’s for the soft part.

00:14:11

Come on inside.

00:14:13

And I had the most erotically charged, let’s call it indescribable experience of my life.

00:14:21

At the end of which I fell asleep and slept for 16 hours and woke up with my

00:14:26

eyes this big and feeling rejuvenated in a way that is priceless so I want to thank Pachamama

00:14:35

again and for all the visitations and for the jaguar sex healing that I got I think it’s really

00:14:43

important that we start talking about sexuality and

00:14:46

psychedelics. I’m actually kind of

00:14:47

confused why we don’t talk about it a lot

00:14:49

because it’s

00:14:52

frankly just fucking amazing.

00:14:54

And it’s there for us.

00:14:56

Anyone that has a lover and

00:14:57

likes psychedelics, it’s there for you to

00:15:00

jump on in and

00:15:01

try. I’m sure a bunch of the people

00:15:03

in this room have done that.

00:15:05

Why do you need a lover?

00:15:07

Exactly. Precisely. Thank you, sweetheart.

00:15:13

You’re right.

00:15:15

It’s about love and pleasure and joy

00:15:18

and tinkering around in those forbidden zones.

00:15:23

It’s like body work. i wonder why people don’t do

00:15:25

more body work while they’re tripping and i just talked to a beautiful young man that’s doing yoga

00:15:30

and psychedelics classes and workshops so i think almost everything in the spiritual tradition just

00:15:37

works better with psychedelics they’re all great but i think psychedelics augment this in a way

00:15:43

that’s you just can’t ignore.

00:15:46

Terrence McKenna used to say going to the grave without having psychedelic experience would be like going to the grave without having had sex.

00:15:54

I completely agree.

00:15:55

It’s hard for me to understand that people don’t reach out for this forbidden fruit and get all this joy and adventure out of it.

00:16:05

I’m pretty sure it’s for fear, so part of what I advocate is that we be beautiful and enticing

00:16:12

and seductive and entice people into doing something that can change their lives

00:16:19

in a really beautiful way.

00:16:21

So that’s one of my missions in life.

00:16:24

I believe it’s all about service and

00:16:27

when you do a lot of psychedelics especially ayahuasca because you know you end up cleaning

00:16:34

up the vomit and shit of your friends you know and there’s nothing like that for uh you know

00:16:40

humility and learning this incredible vulnerability that allows for an unconditional love to surge forward

00:16:48

whenever you get the opportunity.

00:16:51

So psychedelics have been essential in opening my heart

00:16:56

to be this gigantic, empathic, machine love.

00:17:00

I love everybody.

00:17:02

It’s hilarious to me because I grew up in a very, I didn’t grow up in a world where I loved everybody. Let me just say that casually. And it’s been amazing to look back over the last 10 years and see how different it is for me to be myself than it was even 10 years ago, much less 30 years ago.

00:17:22

years ago, much less 30 years ago.

00:17:23

So I want to thank all these psychedelic

00:17:26

spirit beings that have helped me

00:17:27

along the way. More of my

00:17:30

ancestor spirits.

00:17:32

The biggest thing that

00:17:34

I’ve discovered in the last few years

00:17:36

though is that community

00:17:38

is really a precious

00:17:40

thing to have if you’re going to be in the

00:17:42

psychedelic world and

00:17:43

bite off a big hunk of

00:17:45

it and try to get deep into it find your friends encourage them you know honor them and do what

00:17:54

you need to do to remain in integrity even after you fuck up and when people go through divorces

00:17:59

and people uh you know move when they shouldn’t, and leave you dealing with something they started.

00:18:06

All of that’s part of life,

00:18:07

but it’s very important that we just learn to forgive everybody,

00:18:11

for Christ’s sakes.

00:18:13

Can you imagine?

00:18:14

We’re human beings.

00:18:15

We have a lot to live through.

00:18:18

Here’s a story I didn’t expect to tell,

00:18:20

but I worked for the Bush family for a year and a half once

00:18:24

in a very bizarre position

00:18:26

where I kind of got bought like a field hand and thrown into a company they own doing

00:18:31

educational software development and I was just oh my god I was just mortified when I first heard

00:18:40

but almost instantly this opportunity presented itself in my mind and my heart that, oh, my God,

00:18:48

I’m going to be near these crazy fanatic, you know, kleptocracy people that have, like,

00:18:54

raised generations of people to steal from the government

00:18:57

and are willing to do just about anything to stay in that position.

00:19:03

And so I went into this job and with this open heart that I wanted to touch this guy

00:19:07

that was one of the family.

00:19:10

And it was an incredible lesson.

00:19:12

I learned this incredible sense of humility that those people are very sad.

00:19:17

They’re very lonely.

00:19:18

They don’t have what we have.

00:19:20

I can get up and hug anybody in this audience and probably kiss a bunch of you

00:19:25

and everybody will just think it’s completely normal.

00:19:28

These people don’t even have friends.

00:19:30

When your daddy’s the president or the head of the CIA, you don’t even have friends, literally.

00:19:37

And I found myself in this position of trying to honor this guy that I knew was,

00:19:43

well, I won’t go into it, but there was a lot of shady

00:19:46

stuff going on, and by the time I left there, I’d become this guy’s advisor, and learned a lot of

00:19:54

secrets that I wish I didn’t know, and saw him cry next to me, and asked me for advice, and I got

00:20:01

invited to do all this stuff that I couldn’t imagine in a million years

00:20:06

I, one day

00:20:07

my boss Neil Bush called me up

00:20:10

and said do you know who Benazar Bhutto is

00:20:12

and she’s the first woman

00:20:14

elected to be a prime minister of a Muslim

00:20:16

country and

00:20:17

was the head of this really

00:20:20

powerful political family in

00:20:22

Pakistan and I made a movie

00:20:24

once called Imaginary Muslims,

00:20:25

so I knew a lot about her, and I knew who she was.

00:20:28

And he says, do you know who this woman is?

00:20:30

And I said, yeah.

00:20:31

And he goes, well, come downstairs.

00:20:33

You’re going to be my wingman today.

00:20:36

And every time she starts kicking my ass,

00:20:38

I’m going to go take a phone call.

00:20:40

You’re going to be with her all day long.

00:20:42

And I’m like, really?

00:20:44

So I spent this whole day with this world leader

00:20:47

cracking jokes

00:20:49

drinking a lot of coffee

00:20:51

and he didn’t run in and be an asshole

00:20:53

for a few minutes and run back out

00:20:55

I’m thinking is this really how it works?

00:20:58

you know the world leaders

00:20:59

kind of get together

00:21:00

and kind of bitch at each other

00:21:02

and try to make things happen

00:21:04

and in a weird way it was very reassuring because I no longer believed kind of get together and kind of bitch at each other and try to make things happen.

00:21:10

And in a weird way, it was very reassuring because I no longer believed that they were a bunch of evil geniuses.

00:21:13

They’re like a bunch of evil frat boys.

00:21:16

They’re not very smart.

00:21:18

They’re very sad. They’re always in a reactionary position trying to save whatever they’ve stolen

00:21:22

and not get knifed in the back by somebody

00:21:25

that they fucked over along the way.

00:21:27

They’re not worried about us.

00:21:29

I can assure you those people are not worried about us.

00:21:33

They think we’re harmless.

00:21:35

They think that we’re just partying.

00:21:38

So I lost a lot of fear.

00:21:40

I lost a lot of sense of potential conspiracies

00:21:43

and all this stuff that are inevitably valid,

00:21:48

but I just don’t need to worry about them.

00:21:49

And I found that by loving these guys, it enriched my life,

00:21:53

and also I’m sure that I had an impact on things.

00:21:58

Actually, it’s hard to believe some of the things that happened.

00:22:02

So almost any situation you can be dropped into,

00:22:06

you can find the love and the divine spirit in somebody.

00:22:10

And if you can make them laugh and listen to their stories

00:22:13

about whatever makes them sad,

00:22:15

they’re human beings.

00:22:17

And they’re not in charge.

00:22:19

Just please forget about it.

00:22:22

The world is waiting on us, not on them. This is not the past out here. This is

00:22:28

the future. This is the development platform for how we’re going to survive this insane

00:22:34

situation we’ve gotten into. So that’ll lead me to a story from when I was seven years old. I get a

00:22:42

phone call. I’m in seventh grade, not seven years old. I get a phone call. I’m in seventh grade, not seven years old.

00:22:46

I get a phone call in the middle of the summer in Shreveport, Louisiana.

00:22:49

It’s too fucking hot to do anything.

00:22:52

And my buddy David Jones says,

00:22:53

Hey, my brother just bought the Jimi Hendrix Experience album.

00:22:57

Nobody had heard it yet, so I ran down the street,

00:23:00

threw on the headphones, and when I got through,

00:23:03

I knew what psychedelics were, and I knew

00:23:06

I wanted it, and so I feel like I’m in that tradition. I really believe that we’re here to

00:23:13

help each other have the courage and the opportunity to explore these realms and to go

00:23:20

into this spiritual growth and artistic growth psychological growth emotional healing that’s

00:23:27

available for every person on this planet if we would just grow up and quit having wars and quit

00:23:33

stealing from each other we need to just simply learn to share care for each other and be present

00:23:38

with that we’re going to have to do it we don don’t have many choices. We’re running out of that clock.

00:23:49

So that was my first psychedelic experience, was listening to Jimi Hendrix. And it also awoken in me this realization that media could be this incredible, powerful, transforming experience.

00:23:57

And we take it a lot for granted, but we’ve grown up in a really amazing era.

00:24:02

but we’ve grown up in a really amazing era.

00:24:10

In my lifetime, my family was the first family in my neighborhood to own a TV.

00:24:17

How many of you people can even imagine when you’re on your cell phones and on the Internet and doing all the beautiful, wonderful things that digital technology will let us do

00:24:22

and some of the awful things it lets us do?

00:24:25

That’s a long way to come in one lifetime.

00:24:29

And when I was talking to my mom as she’s passing and beginning to go through her past,

00:24:34

she talked about living in a time without electricity.

00:24:37

There weren’t any lights.

00:24:38

There wasn’t any plumbing that was electrically assisted like pumps, electric pumps and stuff.

00:24:44

It was a much different world not very long ago.

00:24:48

It’s changing very, very fast.

00:24:52

So now I’m going to jump to a 12-year-old, Ken Adams,

00:24:55

and John Fitzgerald Kennedy is on the TV.

00:24:59

The family’s huddled around, and he’s talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis

00:25:03

and basically tells everybody to

00:25:06

prepare for the possibility of an atomic war. And afterwards, my father kindly explained to me that

00:25:14

if there’s a, and it really is an atomic war, everything you know and love and care about will

00:25:19

be obliterated and it’s probably not a world you’d want to live in. I was, actually I was nine years old.

00:25:26

It’s 1962, October 22nd.

00:25:29

And during that evening I became an adult.

00:25:32

I realized that the adults in my own civilization

00:25:35

were insane enough to create

00:25:37

weapons that could destroy the whole fabric

00:25:41

of civilization and that they were stockpiling

00:25:44

weapons to create havoc that

00:25:47

couldn’t be undone so i think at that evening a whole rescue cohort was awakened and somewhat i

00:25:54

think the 60s were a direct response to this that we saw that our parents were crazy all they can

00:26:00

think about is money and power and then later they take care of love and loyalty to their family and a lot of other good things, baseball and apple pie.

00:26:10

But in the meantime, they’re letting these insane people set the world up for catastrophe.

00:26:18

And so I, in a sense, traded my childhood for this realization that it was going to take solutions that weren’t coming from

00:26:25

the adults and along the way developing like so many of the others of my generation I inevitably

00:26:33

ran into psychedelics and I was astonished the very first time I did them that this was something

00:26:39

of a hidden secret that we had these amazing tools available to us and very few people were using

00:26:45

them and that it might be a very good idea that we promote this idea and sure enough there was a

00:26:52

lot of that happened in the 60s a lot of people altered their consciousness and a lot of people

00:26:57

got in trouble a lot of people died a lot of people went to jail a lot of people had broken

00:27:03

families there’s a lot of damage.

00:27:05

But there was an awakening in this culture that was as big as any kind of spiritual revival the world’s ever seen.

00:27:11

And possibly larger and deeper than anything that’s ever been seen in such a short amount of time.

00:27:18

So I’ve been looking at this thing from that point of view my entire life.

00:27:23

at this thing from that point of view my entire life.

00:27:28

Luckily, along the way, I went camping with a really beautiful girl that had mushrooms and taught me that there was a lot more

00:27:32

to do with psychedelics than worry about how to save the world.

00:27:35

And it opened up this other world to me of sexuality and tenderness

00:27:39

and eventually the ability to go to other worlds,

00:27:44

to go to other realms with my lover,

00:27:46

and to see that we don’t only exist in this human form.

00:27:49

We all exist in other realms,

00:27:51

and other entities are there that can help us and serve us

00:27:55

or entertain us and play with us,

00:27:58

give us joy, give us healing and pleasure

00:28:01

where we currently have a lot of frustration and anxiety.

00:28:08

Alex Gray. Have any of you ever heard of Alex Gray? So Alex wrote a really important book called,

00:28:18

I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s on the art as as a spiritual path i forget what he calls it

00:28:25

but he talks about how art has become the secret mystery tradition of the western civilization

00:28:32

that we’ve been able to figure out this way to express ourselves with incredible

00:28:37

emotional impact and reveal through the hologram of a single individual artist that’s put his life devoted his life to

00:28:45

creativity can manifest a model of the universe that simply otherwise wouldn’t exist so i want

00:28:53

to pay homage to alex i uh i think he’s done an amazing thing in the world people are starting

00:29:00

their first trips with all these images that alex made and that they’ve studied when they went to the bookstore

00:29:05

and looked at his books and wondered what tripping’s like.

00:29:09

And people that have been tripping for years

00:29:11

see something in his painting and start crying.

00:29:14

I mean, he’s made an amazing body of art,

00:29:16

and he’s encouraged thousands of artists

00:29:20

to take it very seriously and make beautiful work.

00:29:24

And now there’s this whole other generation of psychedelic painters

00:29:27

that are just blowing our minds and creating this incredible opportunity

00:29:31

to share what the psychedelic experience is and what it’s about.

00:29:37

It’s my hope to do that as an artist in these other realms,

00:29:40

these other mediums that I work in.

00:29:44

So I want to pay homage to that ancestor.

00:29:48

Another ancestor is Francis Bacon, and I just read a quote from Francis Bacon. He’s kind of

00:29:53

considered the guy that established the groundwork for developing the scientific method and deductive

00:30:00

reasoning and resisting the church at a time when they were trying to stomp out

00:30:05

enlightened and progressive thinking and i ran into this really interesting quote just a couple

00:30:11

of weeks ago where he said uh that due to the repression that we’re under from the authorities

00:30:17

he suggested that people make enigmatic histories of what’s going on in their lives, and then to use all the tricks of theater to disguise and hide

00:30:29

the knowledge they were trying to convey.

00:30:33

And the last thing he said was,

00:30:34

those that know will know, the others won’t care.

00:30:38

And I think that there’s a lot of truth in that.

00:30:39

There’s a lot of safety in being an artist.

00:30:42

They think you’re an idiot or a fool

00:30:44

or just at least an entertaining trickster on the court staff.

00:30:49

And yeah, you’re all that.

00:30:51

But you also have the chance to create worlds

00:30:54

that enrich in this shared experience that we have

00:30:57

and give us new solutions for all these problems

00:31:00

and catastrophes that we worry about.

00:31:03

We’re in that state of mind.

00:31:04

But also lead us to

00:31:05

all these incredible adventures of beauty and mystery over and over again i think of beauty

00:31:10

and mystery or what we should be seeking or what i’m interested in seeking and what i’m interested

00:31:16

in conveying and presenting in my art world oh this is a good one in high school in shreveport louisiana during the height of the insanity and

00:31:27

the beginning of the drug war for some reason our principal had the great idea to hire a freelance

00:31:33

fundamentalist preacher to come and talk to us about drugs and it was a mandatory

00:31:37

meeting in the school theater and this guy gets up on stage, and he starts talking about

00:31:46

psychedelic sex parties, and the danger of smoking marijuana, and you’re going to end up in a

00:31:54

psychedelic sex party, and I could see all these like horny teenagers were just like, oh yeah,

00:32:02

where do I get some of that psychedelic sex party stuff?

00:32:06

And I thought, wow, I want to grow up and be that guy.

00:32:10

He’s promoting psychedelic sex parties for a living.

00:32:13

What a great job.

00:32:15

So that leads me to this final maybe conclusion,

00:32:19

is that we should consider that the unintended consequences of our world

00:32:23

are the most interesting and the most beautiful and mysterious because the world is not done we don’t have any obligation to succeed

00:32:32

here as a species we could disappear be gone and life is going to be moving along the plasma will

00:32:38

keep churning out new civilizations and different things will happen all over the universe so we have a limited time

00:32:46

here to to come to grips with it all and embrace this opportunity and now that i’ve said mystery

00:32:54

and beauty about 17 times i want to remind everybody oh a beautiful woman sent me this

00:33:01

book today from austin roomie the Book of Love. Thank you, Jenna.

00:33:11

So I opened it up at random to grab a verse, and this is what I got.

00:33:16

I open and I fill with love, and what is not love evaporates.

00:33:23

And if there’s anything psychedelics can do, given the intention, given the community,

00:33:26

given the healthy living, living with integrity,

00:33:32

dealing with your heart more than your head, you live from your heart instead of your ideas.

00:33:39

It’ll eventually evaporate everything that’s not love. And beyond beauty and mystery, there’s really only one word that we have that’s really big enough to contain all of this and that’s love it’s the

00:33:46

simplest thing and everybody said it from the beginning of time but if we learn to love one

00:33:51

another and take responsibility from one another we’re going to have incredible experiences we can

00:33:57

go to the temple and comfort some incredible stranger that’s letting loose some intense emotional turmoil and turning around looking

00:34:07

for anybody and making eye contact with you and you can embrace them and love them and kiss their

00:34:13

heads and squeeze their bodies and eventually put them on their way and never see them again

00:34:19

that i think is the single most exquisite invention of the Burning Man community.

00:34:26

We have invented a way to grieve that no other civilization has ever had.

00:34:32

We found ourselves in this bankrupt culture that has destroyed all these rituals

00:34:37

that we could learn to both grieve and celebrate.

00:34:40

We’ve reinvented our celebrations, but we also gave ourselves this incredible healing capacity

00:34:46

to share this temple experience sit in near silence with 60 000 people that are devoting

00:34:52

themselves to some reverence for the passing of life it’s very very important that we live with

00:34:59

our deaths we’re all going to be dead very soon. Everybody in this room will be dead very quickly.

00:35:05

It just flashes by.

00:35:08

You lose people.

00:35:09

New people are born.

00:35:11

So live fully, my sweet friends, my beloveds.

00:35:15

Live as fully as you can.

00:35:16

Drink as deep as you can.

00:35:19

Love extra.

00:35:20

Love, forgive.

00:35:22

Love some more.

00:35:23

Don’t worry about who’s fucking up.

00:35:26

We’re all fucking up.

00:35:27

We’re all broken children that need love.

00:35:30

We need it in extra doses.

00:35:32

So go out into the playa

00:35:34

and love some strangers.

00:35:35

I hope you come see my movie,

00:35:37

and I thank you all for being here,

00:35:39

and I love you all.

00:35:41

Blessings.

00:35:42

Does anybody have any questions? I’ll make some up if you don’t. love you all. Blessings. Thank you.

00:35:45

Does anybody have any questions?

00:35:47

I’ll make some up if you don’t.

00:35:50

Like, what the hell are you

00:35:51

doing here?

00:35:54

So, seriously, does anybody

00:35:56

have any comments?

00:35:58

I actually

00:35:59

consider myself a techno-animist.

00:36:02

I regard everything

00:36:04

as being animated with life spirit

00:36:06

and at least implicit consciousness.

00:36:09

The first time I got a computer, I wrote a grant.

00:36:12

I was a sculpture, found object sculpture guy.

00:36:17

I never made a video in my life.

00:36:18

I wrote a grant to the National Endowment of the Arts

00:36:21

to try to sneak some money out and buy a computer

00:36:24

and somehow got it. So I bought the first computer that you could make video and audio with an

00:36:30

Amiga computer. And there’s another Amiga guy over here. And man, was that a revelation. You know,

00:36:38

there was really seriously this other world opened up. But the very first chance I got,

00:36:42

I was on a sixth floor walk up in Manhattanhattan and i took this heroic dose of mushrooms because i wanted to go in my computer like in tron

00:36:50

and you know find out what’s in there from the psychedelic point of view and to my surprise they

00:36:56

were there waiting they were like yeah right we’re here to help we’re like crystals we’re from the

00:37:02

earth we’re like those crystals you wear on your necklaces.

00:37:05

We really have something to add to this

00:37:08

and you’re in a crisis

00:37:09

so we’re going to give you a way to get everybody

00:37:12

on the same page

00:37:13

in a very short amount of time.

00:37:15

We call it the internet. We call it

00:37:18

fucking Facebook for a while.

00:37:20

But for another

00:37:21

period will emerge where this

00:37:23

new in humanity is growing that’s never been possible before,

00:37:28

where we have shared experiences that the entire world knows about,

00:37:33

like 9-11 and all the catastrophes in Japan and Haiti and all over the world, the Gulf.

00:37:38

We’re being introduced to a level of experience that’s post-tribal, post-national, where we’re all

00:37:47

sharing the same emotional experiences and beginning to develop the persona of a new

00:37:51

human being, a human being that’s never been here before. It’s something that’s completely

00:37:57

unique in human history. So I think of my computer as an ally, the way people think about their animal totems or their plant spirit allies.

00:38:09

I go to my computer, and I never tell it what to do.

00:38:12

I always ask it, what do you want to show me?

00:38:14

What do you want to show me I’ve never done before?

00:38:17

Show me something I can’t expect, something I can’t anticipate.

00:38:20

And it never fails me.

00:38:22

It always surprises me when i go back and look at my

00:38:25

movies i can’t remember how i made all these different parts of these movies i would have

00:38:31

no idea how to go through the re-engineering of trying to contrive these things because

00:38:36

i worked from a state of basically surrender to my computer i think i’m making love to my computer. I think I’m making love to my computer when I play with it.

00:38:46

And it’s certainly making a sort of love to me. So I know that the NSA is snooping into our stuff.

00:38:54

I’m surprised anyone’s surprised at that. I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t. They’re

00:39:00

control freaks. So I try to watch the cultural mood and stay within limits.

00:39:06

I see people talking about ayahuasca on TV

00:39:09

and on different magazines and bookstores.

00:39:12

They’re full of this stuff.

00:39:13

So I don’t think they’re really worried about what I think.

00:39:17

I don’t think they’re too interested in finding out that I like to do psychedelics.

00:39:21

That’s like saying there’s a black dude in Brooklyn that sells pot.

00:39:25

Well, that’s not very useful information.

00:39:28

There are a lot of people selling pot in Brooklyn.

00:39:31

There are a lot of people doing psychedelics.

00:39:33

There are a lot of people that have devoted their lives to get us here

00:39:36

and give us this opportunity to share in this new culture that we’re building.

00:39:42

So, yeah, I think the convergence of computers and psychedelics

00:39:45

is an essential part of us making this transition

00:39:49

that we are making.

00:39:52

And that without it, we’d be calling up on the telephone

00:39:56

and leaving a message.

00:39:57

Can you imagine that that’s the best we could do for a long time?

00:40:02

Now I can, this video will go out on Palenque Norte

00:40:05

and thousands, maybe millions of people

00:40:08

will be able to watch it.

00:40:09

It’s going to just keep running.

00:40:11

It doesn’t stop.

00:40:13

You know, it’s always there.

00:40:14

The little elves are working even when we sleep.

00:40:17

So yeah, I really have welcomed the computer revolution.

00:40:21

I think it’s giving us an opportunity

00:40:22

to also make a visual language of which I’m

00:40:26

constantly experimenting with that will be universal so that we’re no longer tied to

00:40:31

linguistic groups that channel our thinking into different categories you can show people and

00:40:38

illustrate people to people these states of consciousness these implications of what it’s like to know that you have a soul,

00:40:46

that you have a spirit, that you have a heart.

00:40:49

All these implications are being mapped out incredibly beautifully with amazing nuance on the Internet

00:40:56

where we’re all spending too much time.

00:40:59

I have a necklace on here that’s about unplugging.

00:41:02

I love the Internet. I love my computer.

00:41:05

But I love unplugging. I love the internet. I love my computer, but I love unplugging. I love laying naked on the rocks in a mountain looking over a landscape that’s too

00:41:12

beautiful to even comprehend. So I’m not like, even though I have a bunch of repetitive stress

00:41:18

issues from being on my computer too much, it’s the price I see that I’ve paid to be in love so deeply and to be

00:41:25

given such an incredible gift of

00:41:27

really power to be able to use

00:41:30

computers to make psychedelic

00:41:31

art. You’re in a very select

00:41:34

group of people in human history.

00:41:36

It’s a very thin slice.

00:41:38

An incredible privilege.

00:41:40

So yeah, I love computers.

00:41:41

I love working with them and I also

00:41:43

would love to not ever have to hold a mouse again

00:41:46

and sit at a desk like this, you know,

00:41:49

trying to get it to be in the right places.

00:41:51

It’s a very kludgy beginning, but we’ll be out of it very soon.

00:41:55

It’ll go moving very quickly to much more elegant solutions.

00:42:01

Any more?

00:42:07

Synthetics?

00:42:09

I think there are differences, sure.

00:42:12

You know, there’s obviously differences,

00:42:13

but I’ve used a wide array of psychedelics,

00:42:16

and I respect them all,

00:42:17

and again, I think LSD is a crystal,

00:42:20

and so it’s a mineral sort of persona,

00:42:22

and it’s different than a plant persona.

00:42:25

To me, all the plant psychedelics have been feminine.

00:42:29

I should tell a quick DMT story here, guys.

00:42:31

If you get a chance, if you haven’t already,

00:42:36

DMT, especially organically derived DMT

00:42:40

with no petrochemicals that are extracted with orange juice from the proper plants and

00:42:47

then precipitated onto passion flowers. Those plant spirits are very sexy and they’re very

00:42:55

powerful and they’re very friendly and they’re really looking forward to meeting as many human

00:43:02

spirit beings as they can. So when I do DMD these days,

00:43:07

I pretty consistently run into these very beautiful manifestations of,

00:43:13

let’s call them fairy spirits, not in the Disney sense,

00:43:17

but in the sense of nature spirits from our own Celtic tradition

00:43:22

that are full of magic and full of love and full

00:43:26

of sexiness again

00:43:27

so I think

00:43:30

that’s where we’re going next I think we’re

00:43:32

going to quit telling each other these

00:43:34

wild and crazy not quit but

00:43:36

we’re going to put in to the

00:43:38

archive a lot

00:43:40

new a lot of new stories about

00:43:42

engaging other beings

00:43:44

in these other realms that if you’re willing to

00:43:46

open up your neurological

00:43:48

system and invite them in

00:43:49

the way they’ve invited you into

00:43:51

themselves, new worlds

00:43:54

are created that have never been

00:43:56

done before that

00:43:58

are not human.

00:44:00

And you can go there and be in these

00:44:02

incredible, extraordinary places

00:44:04

that no one’s been able to describe yet,

00:44:06

no one’s been able to make movies about yet,

00:44:09

but that are incredibly beautiful and mysterious.

00:44:13

And they are packed with love.

00:44:16

Do you want to ask?

00:44:19

That’s right.

00:44:20

The question or the comment is, instead of the second coming of Christ,

00:44:23

it’s the second coming of Pan, yes, that’s exactly right. The question or the comment is, instead of the second coming of Christ, it’s the second coming of Pan. Yes, that’s exactly right.

00:44:27

We’re going to be wilder. We’re going to be closer to nature.

00:44:31

We’re going to fuck a lot more and a lot better than people used to in our culture.

00:44:35

We already do. So yeah, that’s part of the progress here.

00:44:40

What was your comment?

00:44:43

Do I believe it is?

00:44:45

Absolutely.

00:44:46

It’s a key.

00:44:47

I’m not into absolutes.

00:44:48

I tried.

00:44:49

William Burroughs was another honored ancestor,

00:44:52

and he talked a lot about not using the article the because it’s so singular.

00:44:57

I think there are a lot of paths that are going to be really crucial and keys to the future.

00:45:01

But certainly in my life, psychedelics have been key to everything

00:45:07

that i hold dear from raising my children to touching my private parts to writing novels

00:45:13

and making movies it’s it’s been essential to my life i can’t even begin to imagine suggesting

00:45:20

where do we go next unless i bring that into the question. We need to consider the value of psychedelics.

00:45:27

We just need to get on with it.

00:45:29

I’m 60 years old, not 134,

00:45:33

and I’ve raised beautiful children, Zephan and Zarina.

00:45:36

I love you, you blessed beings.

00:45:39

I’ve paid my taxes.

00:45:41

I had jobs.

00:45:43

I drive a car if I have to. I’m an American citizen and I’m tired of these

00:45:48

creeps standing on my neck. And I think it’s important for people to speak up and have the

00:45:53

courage to say their own truth. Bring it out. Offer it up. Serve your time. Not just your people,

00:46:02

your time. The time you have is that special opportunity.

00:46:07

We’re all in a very unique place in our own holograms. It’s not where it was in 1960. It’s

00:46:13

not where it’s going to be in 2050. It’s right now, right here on the playa, right where we are

00:46:20

in all of our lives and all of our little melodramas and that hologram of weird meanings we

00:46:25

call our lives that nobody else really knows about we all think everyone knows this and we

00:46:31

knows our story not too much basically about 99 of it you’re doing on your own kind of generating

00:46:39

your own imagination and making it as real as you need to to keep functional but other than that yeah i mean

00:46:47

psychedelics they’re essential for me and for all the people that are dearest to me and that have

00:46:53

loved me the most and shown me the most spiritually and constantly reminding me that i have a soul and

00:46:59

to not take myself too seriously because it’ll be over soon. You’re going to all be dead soon.

00:47:06

All the people you love will be dead soon.

00:47:08

It’s not the end of the story.

00:47:10

Nothing ever ends.

00:47:12

Nothing ever, ever

00:47:14

ends. Every thought

00:47:16

you have and every kindness you bring

00:47:18

to the world changes the world.

00:47:21

Every little

00:47:22

piece of it.

00:47:24

Thank you very much. go have a great night

00:47:26

you’re listening to the psychedelic salon where people are changing their lives one thought at a

00:47:34

time although i didn’t plan it this way i find it quite interesting that uh ken just now ended his

00:47:41

talk saying in his own way well essentially the same thing with which I ended last week’s podcast.

00:47:48

Remember the quote I used?

00:47:50

Almost everything you do will seem insignificant, but it is important that you do it.

00:47:56

It’s a small thing, but I’ve found that it is sometimes worthwhile to pay attention to these little coincidences.

00:48:02

Unfortunately for you, however, what all this brought back to my mind

00:48:07

is an unlikely chain of hyperlinks

00:48:09

in which I recalled another instance

00:48:12

of two people saying, well, essentially the same thing,

00:48:15

but in their own unique ways.

00:48:17

You see, I’ve learned that some people

00:48:18

are more receptive of the opinions

00:48:20

of those who have impeccable scholarly credentials,

00:48:24

and others of us react better to a vibe that is, well, closer to the street.

00:48:29

Thus the little story I’m going to tell you right now.

00:48:32

As Ken just mentioned, there are a lot of people selling pot and doing psychedelics.

00:48:38

It’s just that in our current culture, they all have to keep under the radar of the power elite.

00:48:44

One of the first encounters that

00:48:46

I ever had with someone who very few people would suspect of using LSD on a regular basis

00:48:51

was when I met Dr. A.C. German, who was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Criminal Justice at

00:48:58

Cal State in Long Beach. In fact, he is actually responsible for founding the police science program at that university, and it remains one of the premier educational programs today for advanced degrees in police work.

00:49:12

Well, it was at the All Chemical Arts Conference in Hawaii that I first met Dr. Juman and his lovely wife.

00:49:20

They were both there, and I think they were probably in their late 70s at the time, and compared to the rest of the attendees at the conference, they were by far the most sedate ones there.

00:49:29

You know, just a retired university professor and his wife.

00:49:33

But Dr. Germain was there on a mission, and his mission was to let us younger generations know how important he believed the proper use of LSD was.

00:49:43

how important he believed the proper use of LSD was.

00:49:47

When we parted, he gave me a short essay that he wrote about this subject,

00:49:50

and he asked me to post it on my website.

00:49:54

And it’s been on my Matrix Master site for over a decade now,

00:49:58

and I’ll post a link to it along with the program notes for this podcast so you can read the entire essay yourself.

00:50:00

I think it would be really worth your time to do so.

00:50:03

But in just a moment, I’m going to read

00:50:05

a single paragraph from this essay and then contrast it with a very brief soundbite from a

00:50:11

TP Boys episode. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Trailer Park Boys, well, all

00:50:17

you need to know for the soundbite to make sense is that the person doing most of the talking is a

00:50:23

character named Ricky. There really is no way to briefly explain Ricky,

00:50:27

other than if you were the father of a daughter who wanted to date him,

00:50:31

well, you would probably move your entire family out of the country just to keep her away from him.

00:50:37

Essentially, he is the most anti-authoritarian character I’ve come across.

00:50:43

And by the way, I think he’s great.

00:50:46

He’s just one of those people you’d love to be somewhat like, but you couldn’t stand to be around him.

00:50:51

I realize that this is probably getting confusing by now, but our fellow slaughters who are also

00:50:56

TP Boys fans understand perfectly, I suspect. So, what’s your point, Lorenzo, you ask?

00:51:03

So, what’s your point, Lorenzo, you ask?

00:51:13

Well, my roundabout point is that Dr. German and Ricky represent two opposite polarities of the so-called civilized human male,

00:51:20

and yet they equally understand something very basic about our society that most people choose to ignore.

00:51:31

Now, first here is Dr. Jumans thought, and I quote, If the ears of all the people in the nation who had ingested illicit substances in the past six months were to turn bright green for one whole week,

00:51:35

the nation would be amazed, confused, astounded,

00:51:39

and quickly taught something very important,

00:51:41

as they identified friends, relatives, neighbors, doctors, lawyers, End quote. makers, administrators, supervisors, and workers from a variety of private and government institutions

00:52:06

everywhere.

00:52:08

End quote.

00:52:09

And that’s the quote from a very highly respected university professor.

00:52:14

And now, here is a similar thought from Ricky, as he puts one of his dupes to work on a particularly

00:52:20

nasty project.

00:52:22

There’s a little piece of hash.

00:52:24

Go to the stove, do some hot knives, get stoned,

00:52:25

and get the fuck to work, okay?

00:52:26

I can’t get stoned, Ricky.

00:52:28

What do you mean? It’s shitty work.

00:52:30

Everybody does that, alright?

00:52:31

Carpenters, electricians, dishwashers, floor cleaners,

00:52:33

lawyers, doctors, fucking politicians,

00:52:35

CBC employees, principals,

00:52:36

people that paint the lawns on the fucking roads.

00:52:38

Get stoned, it’ll be fun, get to work.

00:52:41

After that, I probably should follow Ricky’s advice,

00:52:44

get stoned, and go to work on my next podcast.

00:52:46

But first, I’ve got one more story to tell you.

00:52:49

It concerns one of my favorite podcasts, Lefty’s Lounge,

00:52:53

which you can find over on the Cannabis Podcast Network at dopefiend.co.uk.

00:52:59

Well, Lefty’s Lounge is one of my favorite podcasts, and I’ve listened to every one of them.

00:53:05

And in case you’ve never tuned in to Lefty, well, what his program consists of is primarily music,

00:53:10

and most of it’s old and new rock.

00:53:13

But Lefty also inserts short comedy bits as well as his own fascinating chatter.

00:53:18

And by the way, Lefty is one of those great old-school DJs

00:53:22

who actually takes the time to give you the name of the artists and the songs after each set he plays.

00:53:28

Plus, you can also see the listing in his program notes.

00:53:31

And since much of the music that he plays is new stuff that I’m not familiar with, well, this is a big help for me when I want to go back and buy one of the songs I’ve heard.

00:53:40

Now, Lefty doesn’t play many of what are called the oldies.

00:53:44

His musical taste is more in line with the 20 and 30 year old crowd

00:53:49

But once in a while he’ll play an old rock standard that I can sing along to

00:53:53

However, only once that I know of has he dipped way back

00:53:57

But with a modern version of a really old song

00:54:00

Now, you’re going to have to bear with me here

00:54:04

While I tell one of my grandfather’s

00:54:05

stories that right now my grandkids are too young to hear, and hopefully someone will point them to

00:54:11

the salon when they’re in their 30s and they can hear some of these stories that I’m inserting

00:54:16

here and there for them. And in the event you aren’t up for one of my silly stories, well,

00:54:21

you can just skip ahead to the last 10 minutes of this podcast

00:54:25

where a real treat awakes you. Are you comfortable? It’s a long one. Well, when I was in college,

00:54:32

every other Tuesday night, all of the engineering students had to take a two-hour physics exam.

00:54:38

We called it Black Tuesday. And after the test ended one night and my roommate and I attempted

00:54:43

to leave the building by the front door,

00:54:45

we couldn’t push it open due to the blizzard conditions and high wind keeping it closed.

00:54:51

So my roommate and I decided to leave by the back door.

00:54:54

But next to the door was a little bulletin board and on it was a hand-drawn flyer

00:54:59

with a very poor representation of a palm tree and the title, Learn to Sail Free.

00:55:07

Well, as we fought our way back to the dorm that night through the snowstorm,

00:55:11

all we could talk about was palm trees and sailboats.

00:55:15

Now, jump forward in time several years, and I’m now a senior in college and the captain of the sailing team.

00:55:22

senior in college, and the captain of the sailing team.

00:55:27

Well, each Thanksgiving, the Chicago Yacht Club hosted a regatta that week for the Midwest Collegiate Sailing Association, the MCSA.

00:55:32

At the time, my parents lived on the outskirts of Chicago,

00:55:36

and so the sailing team would spend the Thanksgiving holidays

00:55:39

camped out at my parents’ house,

00:55:41

and our girlfriends stayed a block away at my aunt’s house.

00:55:44

Then we’d go into the city to race during the day, and at night we’d gather around the piano

00:55:49

in my parents’ house where my mother would play, and we’d all sing until late at night.

00:55:55

And those times around the piano with my mother playing, and all of us quite drunk I should add,

00:56:00

singing our hearts out, are by far the most wonderful memories of all my college days.

00:56:06

So what’s the point, you ask? Well, first of all, that little detour out the back door of the

00:56:13

engineering building one Black Tuesday quite literally changed my life. For many years after

00:56:19

that night, sailing became the dominant focus and influence in my life. So pay attention to those little things.

00:56:26

The little coincidences that you pay attention to can sometimes be life-changing.

00:56:31

But the other point is that sometimes, without even knowing it,

00:56:35

you can say or do something that becomes quite meaningful in an emotional way

00:56:40

for others who you may not even know.

00:56:43

And that’s what Lefty did for me in his podcast

00:56:45

number 178, because he played a song in that show that I hadn’t heard in many years. In fact,

00:56:52

the very last time I’d heard it before that podcast was the last night of our last party

00:56:57

with my parents and the Notre Dame sailing team, and my mother was playing it on the piano.

00:57:03

I won’t tell you what the song was,

00:57:06

but if you listen to that podcast,

00:57:07

I’m sure that you’ll figure it out.

00:57:12

So Lefty, thanks for restoring a lost memory for me.

00:57:15

Now, one more thing about Lefty’s Lounge.

00:57:18

He also plays a lot of comedy,

00:57:20

but in only very short bits usually.

00:57:23

So I’m always going out to YouTube to listen to more from the great comedians that

00:57:26

he features on his program. His most recent program, number 180, is a double album, so to speak,

00:57:33

in that he did a two-hour show and included both some new and some old comedy, like the hilarious

00:57:40

Joe Rogan bit about the San Francisco Tiger episode. And at the very end of this program,

00:57:46

Lefty played a bit in its entirety that he’s only played parts of before, but this is the first time

00:57:52

I remember hearing the entire bit all at one time. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve heard

00:57:57

bits and pieces of this story before, but every time I hear it, I laugh out loud. And that’s not

00:58:03

often the case when you’ve heard a story before.

00:58:06

In fact, this story is so good that I’m afraid some of our fellow slaunters won’t take the time to listen to it on Lefty’s podcast.

00:58:13

If I could have found it on YouTube or some other place, I would have linked to it.

00:58:17

But the only place I’ve been able to find it so far is from Lefty.

00:58:20

And so I’m going to take advantage of Lefty’s good nature and play it for you here,

00:58:25

just to be sure that you hear it. But it sure would be cool of you to also jack into Lefty’s

00:58:30

Lounge over at dopefiend.co.uk, where you know I’ll also be hanging out each week.

00:58:36

So for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space. Be well, my friends.

00:58:42

space. Be well, my friends.

00:58:46

And now, here is the late Ron Schock telling the

00:58:48

best goddamn dope story

00:58:49

you’ve ever heard.

00:58:51

I’m going to tell you the world’s greatest dope story.

00:58:53

It happened in Australia.

00:58:55

The dope is marijuana. Now, this story

00:58:57

is not a pro-marijuana story.

00:59:00

I’m not saying that in any way, okay?

00:59:02

Matter of fact, if you are anti-marijuana,

00:59:04

this story will probably make you more anti-marijuana.

00:59:07

You’ll go, no, goddamn, that really is terrible shit.

00:59:09

Nobody should ever do it, okay?

00:59:11

If you are pro-marijuana,

00:59:13

this story will probably make you even more pro-marijuana.

00:59:17

But either way, at the end of the story,

00:59:21

you’re going to go, that’s the best goddamn story I’ve ever heard.

00:59:27

Okay.

00:59:28

This happens in 1961.

00:59:31
00:59:34
00:59:34

I lived in Australia at this time,

00:59:36

and I’m running British printing over there,

00:59:38

and I’m making so much money that I get into rock music promotion.

00:59:42

And between 69 and 71

00:59:45

I bring Blood, Sweat and Tears to Australia.

00:59:48

I brought Black Sabbath back when

00:59:49

Ozzy Osbourne was their lead singer.

00:59:52

I brought The Kinks right up

00:59:53

they did Low Lung.

00:59:56

You know, I know it’s

00:59:57

going to come as a surprise, but a lot of the

00:59:59

rock and roll people of the late 60s and

01:00:01

early 70s smoked

01:00:03

marijuana.

01:00:15

I know. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, the president wanted to bother you, I know, it’s true.

01:00:21

And in Australia in 1971, marijuana was illegal. However, anything a half a pound and under

01:00:26

was considered to be for personal consumption

01:00:30

and therefore exempt from the law.

01:00:34

Heaven.

01:00:37

I’m in heaven.

01:00:40

Well, we get some good dope from all over the world, man.

01:00:46

Coming through that Sydney heart.

01:00:48

We get it from Africa and Asia and Philippines and Southeast Asia.

01:00:53

My best friend gets married.

01:00:56

My best friend’s an American and he marries a ballerina

01:00:59

from the Sydney Royal Ballet Company.

01:01:02

And her mom and dad are so rich

01:01:05

that they don’t know how much money they’ve got.

01:01:07

Their money goes back centuries, okay?

01:01:10

And so the wedding of their daughter,

01:01:12

the ballerina of the Sydney Royal Ballet Company,

01:01:16

is quite a big deal, okay?

01:01:19

I mean, you know, it would be like

01:01:20

Madonna getting married over here, okay?

01:01:22

I mean, you know,

01:01:23

it gets that kind of press, you understand what I’m, okay? I mean, you know, it gets that kind of press.

01:01:25

You understand what I’m saying?

01:01:26

And I mean, that wedding, it is the social event of the season.

01:01:31

And I’m the best man.

01:01:33

And my wife is the maid of honor.

01:01:36

And I’m straight.

01:01:38

It’s my best friend’s wedding.

01:01:39

I wouldn’t fuck it up, okay?

01:01:41

However, the story takes place at the reception.

01:01:46

And the wedding is over.

01:01:50

And it’s party time.

01:01:52

Now, we’re outside, and first I’ve got to set the scene.

01:01:54

They have a mansion that overlooks Sydney Harbor.

01:01:57

And, I mean, there’s, like, the mayor of Sydney is there.

01:02:00

Members of Parliament, which would be like the United States Senators, are there.

01:02:03

Members of the Supreme Court of Australia are there. Members of Parliament, which would be like United States Senators, are there. Members of the Supreme Court of Australia

01:02:06

are there. All these,

01:02:08

you know, the ultra-rich are there.

01:02:10

The press is there.

01:02:11

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

01:02:13

string section is playing out

01:02:15

of the veranda, okay? I mean, this is

01:02:18

a burn, fucking deal, okay?

01:02:20

And I got long hair and a

01:02:21

Fu Manchu mustache, and I’m dressed

01:02:23

up in a tuxedo, right?

01:02:25

And we’re outside taking pictures of each other because we’re never dressed up, right?

01:02:29

But for this big wedding, they know we’re dressed up.

01:02:32

And I’m straight.

01:02:33

And as I’m standing there taking pictures, somebody hands me a marijuana cigarette.

01:02:38

My first of the day, the story officially begins.

01:02:42

story officially begins.

01:02:59

Well, by the time I blow that smoke back out, I’m more stoned than I’ve ever been in my life.

01:03:01

I mean, just immediately, man, the ground is starting to move like this and people’s faces are

01:03:07

so like any good doper I said whose dope is that

01:03:16

where did that come from? Somebody down at the end goes,

01:03:27

it’s Mike’s, the groom, my best friend.

01:03:33

So, like any good doper,

01:03:36

I went off in search of Mike.

01:03:42

Mike, buddy,

01:03:43

that is some good shit you’ve done i was yeah man doug and sue gave me an ounce of this

01:03:52

stuff it’s from nepal n-e-p-a-l nepal is a little country between india and china it’s where the

01:04:00

himalayan mountains are and in Nepal, marijuana has been legal

01:04:05

for over 6,000 years of recorded history.

01:04:10

And for 6,000 years,

01:04:13

those little Tibetan monks

01:04:15

have been working on developing a strain of marijuana

01:04:19

that they consider to be spiritual.

01:04:27

They’re out there talking to God with a shield.

01:04:35

And my friend, my best friend, has an ounce of it.

01:04:43

So like any good doper I said Mike

01:04:46

god damn buddy

01:04:49

this is your wedding night

01:04:52

you have married a beautiful

01:04:54

intelligent

01:04:55

artistic

01:04:56

rich woman

01:04:58

who loves you

01:05:00

this is the greatest party

01:05:03

that I have ever seen in my life and you have in your possession

01:05:08

certifiably the best dope in the whole world let’s go get stung

01:05:17

Mike knows good idea. So I go off and get my wife, Kathy.

01:05:28

And he goes off and gets his new wife, Dorothy.

01:05:31

And he gets Doug and Sue, that’s the two people that gave him the dope to start with, you know, fair is fair, okay?

01:05:38

And we slide out of the park. And, you know, we go out their back and their back of their estate

01:05:46

is like terraced down

01:05:48

to the edge of Sydney Harbor.

01:05:50

And Sydney Harbor

01:05:51

is very reminiscent

01:05:52

of San Francisco Bay.

01:05:54

It has got the bridge

01:05:55

going across

01:05:56

and, you know,

01:05:56

it’s hilly

01:05:57

and, you know,

01:05:58

so the city lights

01:05:59

are, you know,

01:06:00

it’s very beautiful

01:06:01

from, you know,

01:06:02

this level.

01:06:02

And so the city’s over here

01:06:04

and the party’s going on up here,

01:06:07

and six full-grown adult people who smoke a lot of dope at that time,

01:06:13

we rolled one skinny little toothpick number of that Natalie’s wig.

01:06:21

Second hit of the number, my wife in her formal dress hits the ground.

01:06:36

Here, give me that.

01:06:50

That’s some good shit, isn’t it?

01:06:56

Kathy goes, oh, wow.

01:07:02

Well, by the time the six of us have smoked this number,

01:07:05

we are all on the floor okay or on the ground

01:07:05

now when I’m in this position

01:07:07

in this story

01:07:08

I have

01:07:09

I have collapsed

01:07:10

underneath the tree

01:07:11

okay

01:07:11

I am propped up

01:07:13

to the tree

01:07:13

alright

01:07:14

and when I say

01:07:15

I am fucked up

01:07:16

okay

01:07:16

my face

01:07:18

has melted

01:07:19

off of my skull

01:07:20

okay

01:07:21

it has melted

01:07:22

down to that

01:07:23

right out here

01:07:24

so words are like coming out

01:07:25

around my belly button.

01:07:27

But they’re coming out.

01:07:28

I’m like…

01:07:32

You know, the ground is going

01:07:40

up and down like this. The tree

01:07:42

is melting down on my head

01:07:44

and musical notes are floating out

01:07:47

across the sky

01:07:49

from the party up on the hill, okay?

01:07:52

I mean, I am, I am

01:07:54

fucked up, okay?

01:07:57

And we are all like that.

01:07:59

I mean, we are all on the ground.

01:08:02

We are just this close to comatose, okay?

01:08:05

But we have managed to lay down with our feet coming together in a point.

01:08:11

And the reason we are laying like this is when you’re this fucked up,

01:08:15

you’ve got to be within double arm’s reach of one another.

01:08:19

And if you expect that shit to get back around to you,

01:08:23

you have got to lie with your feet coming together in a point.

01:08:28

Mutual cooperation leads to mutual benefit, okay?

01:08:34

When the money’s gone, only your knowledge gets you through, okay?

01:08:42

So there we are, ground going up and down faces melting

01:08:46

voices coming out

01:08:47

notes floating out across the sky

01:08:49

and like any good doper

01:08:51

I said

01:08:52

suck

01:08:53

Dorothy

01:08:55

why don’t we roll up a number

01:08:57

that is some good shit

01:09:01

so we rolled

01:09:03

the second number

01:09:04

took us a month some good shit. So we rolled the second number.

01:09:05

Took us a month.

01:09:09

Maybe a month and a half.

01:09:11

Really slow time down, okay?

01:09:27

We get the second number, Rob.

01:09:31

We start it around the circle.

01:09:36

The second hit of the second number, Mike, my friend, is laying to the right of me,

01:09:37

tries to get up.

01:09:38

He goes, Ronnie!

01:09:40

Oh, God damn, help me!

01:09:43

Oh, God, Ronnie, help me!

01:09:43

Oh, Jesus!

01:10:25

Oh, God! me. Oh God, Ronnie, help me. Oh Jesus. Oh God. And he falls face down in the middle of the circle. That’s something wrong with Mike.

01:10:30

He passed up his turn on the number, man.

01:10:33

So I crawl.

01:10:35

I crawl to my best friend.

01:10:37

I cannot stand up, okay?

01:10:39

I crawl on my hands and knees.

01:10:41

And I’m on my hands and knees when this happens,

01:10:43

but so that all of you can see me, I’ll just do it like this.

01:10:44

And Mike’s laying face down. i go mike mike which of course to me sound like more

01:10:57

it isn’t funny man

01:11:05

my Mike.

01:11:09

And so I grab him and I roll him over.

01:11:13

His eyes are open, but they’re rolled up inside his head.

01:11:16

His mouth’s open, his tongue’s hanging out.

01:11:20

Most gruesome thing I’ve ever seen.

01:11:22

I go, Mike.

01:11:25

Goddamn, Mike. And so I slap him. God damn, Mike.

01:11:26

So I slap him.

01:11:27

Whack his head.

01:11:30

Boom, like that.

01:11:30

And I, oh.

01:11:39

So I reach for the artery alongside his neck, and there is no pulse, man. And I don’t know what to do, so I lift up, and I hit him as hard as I can, right on the heart.

01:11:48

Wham! His body jerked. What is this? And nothing, man. And so I start artificial.

01:11:59

Nothing. I turn to Dorothy, his wife, of about four hours. And I go,

01:12:08

Mike’s dead. And Dorothy

01:12:12

says, oh, wow.

01:12:19

What a bummer.

01:12:24

So I lay back down, okay?

01:12:28

I don’t know what to do, and I’m too fucked up to do anything anyway.

01:12:32

So we’re all just laying there looking at the body, right?

01:12:36

Oh, wow.

01:12:39

And about this time, Dorothy’s mother comes out of the party up on the hill, okay, going,

01:12:47

Mike, Dorothy, it’s time for your speeches.

01:12:51

Mike, Dorothy.

01:12:53

We’re going, oh, wow.

01:12:59

Mike, Dorothy, it’s time for your, oh, wow.

01:13:07

Mike. She sees us way down there. she’s coming in and says is that you

01:13:09

is that you we’re going

01:13:11

oh wow

01:13:13

is something wrong

01:13:15

oh my god

01:13:17

oh something’s wrong

01:13:19

oh help help

01:13:21

call the doctor oh my god

01:13:23

oh my god and people start streaming out of this fucking party

01:13:27

and running down the hill towards us.

01:13:28

We’re going, oh.

01:13:32

I mean, it’s a posse, okay?

01:13:37

I’m a foreigner in a foreign land

01:13:40

and there is a dead man in my feet

01:13:42

and I’m too fucked up to get away, okay?

01:13:46

Whatever is going to happen,

01:13:48

I’m going to watch while melting underneath the tree, okay?

01:13:53

Going, oh, wow.

01:13:56

And Mike’s dad, who has come all the way from the U.S.

01:14:01

for his only son’s wedding,

01:14:03

is the first one on the group.

01:14:05

He goes,

01:14:06

my son is dead of a drug overdose

01:14:09

and I want these five people

01:14:11

arrested for murder.

01:14:13

We’re going,

01:14:14

oh, wow.

01:14:17

And about this time,

01:14:19

a doctor pushes his way through.

01:14:20

He’s got a stethoscope on

01:14:22

and he shoves everybody in

01:14:23

and he leans over Mike

01:14:24

and Mike sets up. He goes, a stethoscope on and he shoves everybody in and he leans over Mike and Mike

01:14:25

sets up and goes, somebody want me to give a speech?

01:14:36

If I’d been there when Jesus rose Lazarus, I could not have been more surprised, okay?

01:14:41

have been more surprised, okay?

01:14:44

My heart’s going boom, boom.

01:14:49

And Mike stands up and walks up the hill and takes everybody with him

01:14:51

except the five of us

01:14:53

who are still laying underneath these trees going,

01:14:58

oh, wow.

01:15:02

And like any good doper,

01:15:10

I said, hey, Dorothy, why don’t we roll up another one?

01:15:13

I’m Ron Schott.