Oh and thanks for the comments on the radioman persona. I like your reading, of course it flatters. While I have gotten lots of feedback on specific books and pieces I have written, I have very little sense of the overall persona vibe. But a question: why a war? Or rather, what is the war?
Hey Chris, sorry to drag my feet on a response, I wanted to read your wonderful trash 80 piece first and man oh man, it smokes! It also resonates, proving that we may indeed be weird cosmic twins. Catch this: the summer after sophomore year (the summer after I lived at Barrington), I did an independent study over the summer that consisted of me reading Gravitys Rainbow and writing about it. I was home working on the paper and had just finished a section when a high school pal, who unfortunately was kind of addled, swooped me up for some back in the day partying. We snorted crank and had a reasonably fine old time until his conspiracy theories about Janis Joplin proved tiresome and he dropped me at home around 2 am. Wired as fuck I wrote a short but sharp theoretical section of my paper, that mused about plot and death and rainbows. I finished the beast in the AM, and a month or two later my prof Charles Berger gave me his feedback. "But that middle section was amazing, you really need to develop the ideas you had there..." Hmmm...
I can also vibe with your appreciation for the lost arts of hip hop writing, for "Biggie Smalls, Nas, Snoop, Busta Rhymes, Rakim, Public Enemy, NWA, and nearly every recording artist who turned rap into a meaningful art form." That, with a few later exceptions, was the last rap I took really seriously, than was for a time kinda like Bob Dylan was for the boomers, prophetic weathermen as well as artists. I was musing on this from a different angle when I watched a doc on Freestyle that ran as part of Criterion Channel's Hip hop collection recently. There the contrast is between writing -- "a pen and a paper, a stereo, a tape of me and Eric B"—and jaw-dropping improvised rapping that beggars the mind (or mine anyway) with its ChatGPT-worthy speed and more-than-AI wit and pizzazz. Take that McLuhan!
"a spirit of cognitive liberty that lies halfway between spiritual illumination and the lulz." - This line made me laugh... I also spent some time around Barrington Hall in 85 (and 86 and 87 and 88 and 89) as I would follow the GD from the Greek, to Ventura, to Frost, Calexpo etc... Did you know Craig Fuller? I think he lived in Barrington at the time, long red hair, purveyor of mind altering experiences, dead head. I was backstage during that Ventura run. It was also my very first experience with DMT, which is as I am sure you know, sort of an initiation of sorts into the realm of fantastic non-sense. Magic tricks where the trick is never known but the awe is always present. Anyhow, interesting to see how aspects of our history may have had us crossing paths at one point or another. Thanks for the reflections.
Correction: my previous note misidentified the bong monitor, who was not local figure Berkeley Bob, but Steve, or occasionally, Uncle Steve. He deserved better, thank you.
Greetings from weird New York, where I recently reconnected with your writing, many years after being so inspired by it when we were peers/colleagues/fellow travelers, in the Spin, Village Voice, NYC head matrix.
I was looking through B.S. back issues and felt an electric charge when your "Barrington Chapel" entry revealed a space-time overlap between us that I now think I've suspect I've intuited somehow, and may inform my sense of kinship. I submit my own quick sketch of the drugs-words nexus the opened portal like for me that same year in Berkeley (https://open.substack.com/pub/norrisc/p/trash-80?r=779k5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web) before things got more serious as I drifted ever closer to Barrington Hall.
There are clearly several books' worth of material in that singular space and its alums, both the casualties and the positively transformed. Instead of filling space with all the sights, sounds, and personalities I encountered (the adorable cat Satan, the building-filling graffito "FUCK THE DEAD" (band dis or exhortation?), my friend Rob G who got hauled out of one wine dinner strapped face-down to a Cowell-bound gurney), and instead I'll let one piquant quote speak to its whole oblique reality.
This sutra comes from Berkeley Bob, an unhoused man who'd been assigned the house work shift Bong Monitor and who'd service the needy from his post in the stairwell, regularly dispensing bits of wisdom like the following. "It's a good idea," he said as he provided a hit. "To have a little food." Nods significantly. "Every once in a while." As measure of the place, this was valuable counsel.
Sidenote: Hearing you on podcasts and seeing you in print, I'm struck by how your public persona reminds me of a type in Hollywood platoon movies. The wise, slightly abstracted sniper? The circumspect munitions expert? The radioman? I don't know, just someone extremely adept in their field, a bit of an autodidact, who occupies his own space in the command structure, is a trusted source of intel and even wisdom, and a total mensch.
Do such comparisons flatter or annoy you?
Anyway, drop a line if you get a sec. I remain your fan.
This is odd. I remember going to Ventura with an Elena summer of 85, but it was with her boyfriend Nick, and they also had a bad trip where they decided they were brother and sister in another life, and I swear she was never the same since.
Thanks for sharing these memories and stories about being initiated into the Freakipedia. I remember Bill. He used to slip me records from Rasputin's. Sadly I don't think he kicked his habit. I was also at that Dead show in Ventura. Funny we didn't cross paths until New Mexico.
All praise the Bong Monitor regardless.
Oh and thanks for the comments on the radioman persona. I like your reading, of course it flatters. While I have gotten lots of feedback on specific books and pieces I have written, I have very little sense of the overall persona vibe. But a question: why a war? Or rather, what is the war?
Hey Chris, sorry to drag my feet on a response, I wanted to read your wonderful trash 80 piece first and man oh man, it smokes! It also resonates, proving that we may indeed be weird cosmic twins. Catch this: the summer after sophomore year (the summer after I lived at Barrington), I did an independent study over the summer that consisted of me reading Gravitys Rainbow and writing about it. I was home working on the paper and had just finished a section when a high school pal, who unfortunately was kind of addled, swooped me up for some back in the day partying. We snorted crank and had a reasonably fine old time until his conspiracy theories about Janis Joplin proved tiresome and he dropped me at home around 2 am. Wired as fuck I wrote a short but sharp theoretical section of my paper, that mused about plot and death and rainbows. I finished the beast in the AM, and a month or two later my prof Charles Berger gave me his feedback. "But that middle section was amazing, you really need to develop the ideas you had there..." Hmmm...
I can also vibe with your appreciation for the lost arts of hip hop writing, for "Biggie Smalls, Nas, Snoop, Busta Rhymes, Rakim, Public Enemy, NWA, and nearly every recording artist who turned rap into a meaningful art form." That, with a few later exceptions, was the last rap I took really seriously, than was for a time kinda like Bob Dylan was for the boomers, prophetic weathermen as well as artists. I was musing on this from a different angle when I watched a doc on Freestyle that ran as part of Criterion Channel's Hip hop collection recently. There the contrast is between writing -- "a pen and a paper, a stereo, a tape of me and Eric B"—and jaw-dropping improvised rapping that beggars the mind (or mine anyway) with its ChatGPT-worthy speed and more-than-AI wit and pizzazz. Take that McLuhan!
"a spirit of cognitive liberty that lies halfway between spiritual illumination and the lulz." - This line made me laugh... I also spent some time around Barrington Hall in 85 (and 86 and 87 and 88 and 89) as I would follow the GD from the Greek, to Ventura, to Frost, Calexpo etc... Did you know Craig Fuller? I think he lived in Barrington at the time, long red hair, purveyor of mind altering experiences, dead head. I was backstage during that Ventura run. It was also my very first experience with DMT, which is as I am sure you know, sort of an initiation of sorts into the realm of fantastic non-sense. Magic tricks where the trick is never known but the awe is always present. Anyhow, interesting to see how aspects of our history may have had us crossing paths at one point or another. Thanks for the reflections.
Correction: my previous note misidentified the bong monitor, who was not local figure Berkeley Bob, but Steve, or occasionally, Uncle Steve. He deserved better, thank you.
Erik!
Greetings from weird New York, where I recently reconnected with your writing, many years after being so inspired by it when we were peers/colleagues/fellow travelers, in the Spin, Village Voice, NYC head matrix.
I was looking through B.S. back issues and felt an electric charge when your "Barrington Chapel" entry revealed a space-time overlap between us that I now think I've suspect I've intuited somehow, and may inform my sense of kinship. I submit my own quick sketch of the drugs-words nexus the opened portal like for me that same year in Berkeley (https://open.substack.com/pub/norrisc/p/trash-80?r=779k5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web) before things got more serious as I drifted ever closer to Barrington Hall.
There are clearly several books' worth of material in that singular space and its alums, both the casualties and the positively transformed. Instead of filling space with all the sights, sounds, and personalities I encountered (the adorable cat Satan, the building-filling graffito "FUCK THE DEAD" (band dis or exhortation?), my friend Rob G who got hauled out of one wine dinner strapped face-down to a Cowell-bound gurney), and instead I'll let one piquant quote speak to its whole oblique reality.
This sutra comes from Berkeley Bob, an unhoused man who'd been assigned the house work shift Bong Monitor and who'd service the needy from his post in the stairwell, regularly dispensing bits of wisdom like the following. "It's a good idea," he said as he provided a hit. "To have a little food." Nods significantly. "Every once in a while." As measure of the place, this was valuable counsel.
Sidenote: Hearing you on podcasts and seeing you in print, I'm struck by how your public persona reminds me of a type in Hollywood platoon movies. The wise, slightly abstracted sniper? The circumspect munitions expert? The radioman? I don't know, just someone extremely adept in their field, a bit of an autodidact, who occupies his own space in the command structure, is a trusted source of intel and even wisdom, and a total mensch.
Do such comparisons flatter or annoy you?
Anyway, drop a line if you get a sec. I remain your fan.
This is odd. I remember going to Ventura with an Elena summer of 85, but it was with her boyfriend Nick, and they also had a bad trip where they decided they were brother and sister in another life, and I swear she was never the same since.
Thanks for sharing these memories and stories about being initiated into the Freakipedia. I remember Bill. He used to slip me records from Rasputin's. Sadly I don't think he kicked his habit. I was also at that Dead show in Ventura. Funny we didn't cross paths until New Mexico.