What a perfect way to spend a quiet Saturday morning reading this piece and chasing the cultural references through the web. I enjoyed your retrospective reflections on 90s subcultures and it's great to see you keep developing the same themes and ideas, like a beautiful polyphonic fugue that knows no end. Wish I could be there to navigate weirdness with you all in Berkeley.
Ido! Please come visit us in Berkeley! Every month we host the Chalice, a lovely and intelligent psychedelic salon that leans into humanities, poetry, humor, and the gods. I was happy to see your name in the NYT Psymposia piece, offering a calm account of a not calm situation. Peace out.
Thank you for this! It’s always great so spend time with your sentences. I’m always thrilled and surprised. The erudition and patience you bring is a real delight.
I only made it half or 3/4s through the Invisibles about ten years ago. I got sort of worn out by the King Mob character. I appreciate your reading. The emptiness you mark felt for me cheap. More accurately maybe it repelled me, as I often expect some sort of risk from the writer. Somehow the edge he employed felt paradoxically safe.
"The myth is now eviscerated, like a prop gun that goes Pop." Hi Erik. Sigh, all the pops. Thanks for this one. Yeah I've been listening to the audio Illuminatus for the first time, as one of my shields the past few months. I've always read the books, the last time decades ago. Wow I've never been more grateful for RAW. ✌️
Apropos of nothing (except for the fact that Blotter is an awesome addition to world of LSD literature), has anyone here read Thomas Hatsis's LSD: The Wonder Child? I came across Hatsis's work via Brian Muraresku, but only stumbled upon this one while tooling around the Inner Traditions catalog this week. Curious if it offers something different than the other LSD histories.
"high and mutant psychedelic subculture that stretches back through Hakim Bey, the Church of the Subgenius, Illuminatus!, the Merry Pranksters, and the Discordian Society. (I have a long argument about why “subculture” in the classic sense becomes impossible in subsequent decades, but that belongs elsewhere.)" - - anywhere in particular? i miss those dudes.
I just haven’t written up this particular argument, partly cause it’s pessimistic and sounds like a grumpy old fart complaining about “kids these days.” But for me non-simulated subculture requires physical engagement in particular spaces/zones/clubs/city streets where some sort of initiation/risk/mentorship/induction process happens through social contact and the transmission of signs and practices. “What we do is secret.” The Internet destroys all that, so unless there is a commitment to physical flesh-meets and interactive practices (Furries, for example, are obviously a real subculture) then I don’t buy it. Simulacral subcultures, really just fashion, when fashion was only part of the equation.
sure, i'll agree with that to a degree - but the Church of the Subgenius is the perfect counter-example. I never went to a devival or any kind of gathering; it was all mail order! In fact I never even mailed anything in. but I certainly felt devout. There was the feeling that there were Others out there. Other yeti. And it felt special. “What we know is secret.” What makes us laugh is secret? And yeah, now, no secrets anywhere. Or more to the point, any "secrets" I hear about are just dumb. The whole idea of secret knowledge has been spoiled by the modern deluge of misinformation.
This is a stealth tour de force: Began as a congenial intro to a cult figure I’d been curious about and ended up as the (I bet) definitive assessment of Morrison and the era that produced him(/us). Salaam.
Thanks man, always rings big when it comes from you. And it is very him/us. Good on us for continuing to smolder with that transmission. But how do you do these once a week on top of your other duties? I am in awe.
I have a currently half-baked notion called "McKenna Was Right," in which, from a certain perspective, all of Terence's wildest prognostications came true after all. Some of which just happened to take place within the pages of The Invisibles :)))
Perhaps one of the necessary characteristics of Truth is that it is half-baked. Novelty certainly is increasing, and with AI it increasingly feels we are being sucked forward to some human-transforming Event.
Greta piece! A couple years ago I was reading PKD, Burroughs, and The Invisibles at the same time, and resonances abound. Lord Fanny's initiation is my favorite issue.
One thing I didn’t mention is that I think Morrison did an excellent job with the non-European currents he represents, both Fanny’s Brazilian initiation and Jim Crow’s Vodun. Decades later these don’t read to me as simplistic exoticizing but as informed, playful, and intense.
Lovely piece! I'd forgotten about that Oppenheimer section - such a strange (I assume) chance overlap with Twin Peaks. Bit of a side note but I also recently watched gregg araki's Nowhere and Doom Generation for the first time. They really have that 90s-end of the world vibe, and fit the present moment like a glove...
Hey thanks for the refs! I never saw those Araki films and had forgotten about them. Time for a revisit! I also think something of the decade was summarized and condensed in Linklater’s 2001 Waking Life..
I think one of RAW's great gifts is the humor, as well as the human warmth that percolates through all the madness and halls of mirrors...
Thank you for the reminder of that which is The Invisibles.
What a perfect way to spend a quiet Saturday morning reading this piece and chasing the cultural references through the web. I enjoyed your retrospective reflections on 90s subcultures and it's great to see you keep developing the same themes and ideas, like a beautiful polyphonic fugue that knows no end. Wish I could be there to navigate weirdness with you all in Berkeley.
Ido! Please come visit us in Berkeley! Every month we host the Chalice, a lovely and intelligent psychedelic salon that leans into humanities, poetry, humor, and the gods. I was happy to see your name in the NYT Psymposia piece, offering a calm account of a not calm situation. Peace out.
Thank you for this! It’s always great so spend time with your sentences. I’m always thrilled and surprised. The erudition and patience you bring is a real delight.
I only made it half or 3/4s through the Invisibles about ten years ago. I got sort of worn out by the King Mob character. I appreciate your reading. The emptiness you mark felt for me cheap. More accurately maybe it repelled me, as I often expect some sort of risk from the writer. Somehow the edge he employed felt paradoxically safe.
Thanks again!
"The myth is now eviscerated, like a prop gun that goes Pop." Hi Erik. Sigh, all the pops. Thanks for this one. Yeah I've been listening to the audio Illuminatus for the first time, as one of my shields the past few months. I've always read the books, the last time decades ago. Wow I've never been more grateful for RAW. ✌️
Apropos of nothing (except for the fact that Blotter is an awesome addition to world of LSD literature), has anyone here read Thomas Hatsis's LSD: The Wonder Child? I came across Hatsis's work via Brian Muraresku, but only stumbled upon this one while tooling around the Inner Traditions catalog this week. Curious if it offers something different than the other LSD histories.
I am not familiar with that text. When is it from? David Black’s book is pretty fun for a more conspiratorial twist. Wisdom’s Maw is key as well.
"high and mutant psychedelic subculture that stretches back through Hakim Bey, the Church of the Subgenius, Illuminatus!, the Merry Pranksters, and the Discordian Society. (I have a long argument about why “subculture” in the classic sense becomes impossible in subsequent decades, but that belongs elsewhere.)" - - anywhere in particular? i miss those dudes.
I just haven’t written up this particular argument, partly cause it’s pessimistic and sounds like a grumpy old fart complaining about “kids these days.” But for me non-simulated subculture requires physical engagement in particular spaces/zones/clubs/city streets where some sort of initiation/risk/mentorship/induction process happens through social contact and the transmission of signs and practices. “What we do is secret.” The Internet destroys all that, so unless there is a commitment to physical flesh-meets and interactive practices (Furries, for example, are obviously a real subculture) then I don’t buy it. Simulacral subcultures, really just fashion, when fashion was only part of the equation.
sure, i'll agree with that to a degree - but the Church of the Subgenius is the perfect counter-example. I never went to a devival or any kind of gathering; it was all mail order! In fact I never even mailed anything in. but I certainly felt devout. There was the feeling that there were Others out there. Other yeti. And it felt special. “What we know is secret.” What makes us laugh is secret? And yeah, now, no secrets anywhere. Or more to the point, any "secrets" I hear about are just dumb. The whole idea of secret knowledge has been spoiled by the modern deluge of misinformation.
This is a stealth tour de force: Began as a congenial intro to a cult figure I’d been curious about and ended up as the (I bet) definitive assessment of Morrison and the era that produced him(/us). Salaam.
Thanks man, always rings big when it comes from you. And it is very him/us. Good on us for continuing to smolder with that transmission. But how do you do these once a week on top of your other duties? I am in awe.
So awesome! Thanks for this Erik!
I have a currently half-baked notion called "McKenna Was Right," in which, from a certain perspective, all of Terence's wildest prognostications came true after all. Some of which just happened to take place within the pages of The Invisibles :)))
Perhaps one of the necessary characteristics of Truth is that it is half-baked. Novelty certainly is increasing, and with AI it increasingly feels we are being sucked forward to some human-transforming Event.
Greta piece! A couple years ago I was reading PKD, Burroughs, and The Invisibles at the same time, and resonances abound. Lord Fanny's initiation is my favorite issue.
One thing I didn’t mention is that I think Morrison did an excellent job with the non-European currents he represents, both Fanny’s Brazilian initiation and Jim Crow’s Vodun. Decades later these don’t read to me as simplistic exoticizing but as informed, playful, and intense.
Lovely piece! I'd forgotten about that Oppenheimer section - such a strange (I assume) chance overlap with Twin Peaks. Bit of a side note but I also recently watched gregg araki's Nowhere and Doom Generation for the first time. They really have that 90s-end of the world vibe, and fit the present moment like a glove...
Hey thanks for the refs! I never saw those Araki films and had forgotten about them. Time for a revisit! I also think something of the decade was summarized and condensed in Linklater’s 2001 Waking Life..