Robert Anton Wilson & Steven 'fly' Pratt: A Serial Killer In The Whitehouse
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steve fly agaric 23
I FIRST MET DR. WILSON... (from September 2006)
Hi, I met BOB a number of times between 2000 and 2005 in the USA, and regret not being allowed back into the U.S due to VISA issues, to see him again before he passed on. While he was still with us I already started a piece of writing that started to describe his influence upon me and how that amplified since traveling to America to meet him and having a most excellent adventure.
The following is what I wrote in mid 2006 while living with my parents at their home near Stourbridge in the West Midlands of England. I thought it was about time I put this up, as its just sitting on my hard-drive gathering moss, enjoy, love, steve.
P.S I now have the audio recording I made from the Prophets conference I can share here.
Universe Contains a maybe monday by rawmemorial
I first met Dr. Wilson on the 17th December 2000 A.D at the Prophets Conference in Palm springs, California, only 4 days after Al Gore said ""This is America, and we put country before party." conceding to Bozo the clown in what might have been the most crooked election in U.S history, although the 2004 election may prove to even topple that. RAW opened his presentation titled "The Universe contains a maybe" with the line "George W. Bush is the president of the United States...maybe?" and continued to keep the audience smiling and in high spirits all throughout his epic, encyclopedic sit-down comedy cornucopia.
Six years on, and RAW seems as optimistic and cheerful as he ever was, perpetually glossing the world and its "other" with practical and scientific solutions, models, metaphors for our human condition. His alchemical unity of science and mysticism through the lenses of social psychology, humor and poetry illuminates, to me in (2006), the observation that language and the "other" places beyond language will provide us, the stewards of spaceship-earth, with new portals of discovery that can help nurture communication between different people's, nation's and species. His humble wisdom and teachings are an immortal kind of "Timespace capsule" as any bookshop or internet search will indicate his increasing presence throught the mediasphere, to not speak of his rather under acknowledged shadow as countercultural legend and outer head of the inter-galactic super Illuminati.
I would like to extend my gratitude to Dr. Robert Anton Wilson for his time and patience towards his merry tribes of interacting readers and processing patients everywhere. I will also take this opportunity to thank my family, friends and fellow poets for their critical support and optimistic humour that helped sustain me, as an independent artist within various challenging environments. -- I first met Dr. Robert Anton Wislon in Palm Springs California at the Prophets conference where i was fortunate to have been asked to provide assistance to Bob throughout the conference, we enjoyed dinner together and had a Manhattan or two together with Paul Krassner and his wife.
Later in different company we shared a fragrant bit of Marijuana - a recent cannabis-cup winning weed called Williams Wonder which transformed Bob into the image of Yoda before my eyes, wise, old and green. The wonderful weed was provided courtesy of Richard Metzger. Earlier that day i had offered Bob some Liberty Cap mushrooms i had carried some 6000 miles with me in my pants, Lovingly picked from the Wychbury hills in the West Midlands of England close to where i grew up, alas Bob turned down my offer but seemed to enjoy my wry smile and laughed with surprise when i produced the mushrooms.
AHA! At the Prophets Conference 2000 A.D in Palm Springs i had gave Bob a copy of a book called the Stargate Conspiracy by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince and he was reading it while at the conference and even talked a little of his initial impressions of the book. I gave this book to him because he was mentioned in the book and i felt an author should at the very least have a copy of any book they are mentioned in. Two and half years later i gave another text to Bob at his home in Santa Cruz, the book was "The Cosmic Serpent" by Jeremy Narby that i had with me and wanted to leave with Bob when i discovered he had not read it plus the fact that it had recently come up in an e-mail Bob received. Another 2 years later - September 2004, myself and over 50 other critters were exchanging blooks, essays, poetry, art and music with Bob during various courses he led at the new internet based Maybelogic Academy.
In San Francisco i saw Bob on four occasions, two at the learning annex San Francisco and one of these events i was an assistant in video taping the event for Soundphotosynthesis archive. I also worked upon some editing of this presentation afterwards but am unsure if the recording is finished and available at Soundphotosynthesis. Another in S.F event was called Pantheon conference 2001, held at the Renaissance hotel - i sent a Manhatten to his table as i knew what his favorite drink was.
On september 10th 2002 i travelled to Bob's home in Capitola and spent three or four hours that felt like several days in fascinating conversation with him. A partial textual transcription of the recording from this afternoon has been published in the online magazine (Maybelogic Quarterly Vernal Equinox 2006) co-created by members of the maybelogic academy. Considering that i turned up to Bob's house with no credentials, without flashing an I.D card, or waving a press pass or PHD.
I introduced myself as Fly Agaric on BOB's intercom and he simply asked me if i wanted to come up. He treated me with upmost respect and trusted me in his own personal home space, he allowed me to set up some recording equipment and fiddle with his electric plugs, drink cans of Guinness and smoke weed on his balcony. I mean... What a Giza! And to then continue to entertain me with his razor wit and encyclopedic trademark intelligence, me, a nobody from England, a young cosmic Schmuck with a passion to know more about what the hell is REALLY going on, and a lad who had found the living oracle and was now engaging with him, laughing a lot, feeling comfortable and having fun.
You might ask yourself how many other 72 year old celebrity writers, comedians and philosophers would tolerate such things, i mean imagine tracking down Dan Brown to his house, getting buzzed in and then only 20 minutes later drinking Guinness, smoking pot, eating Marijuana brownies and having a right good chin wag? More reasons to read Robert Anton Wilson, i discovered that day another secret of the Illuminati - be humble.
The next time i met Bob was at the launch of his first and only biographical Movie premiere in Santa Cruz on the auspicious date 23 July 2003 (30 full years after his first telepathic experiences with doggies from the double star system Sirius.) On this occasion i was also celebrating my own contributions to this movie project and the very generous title given to me by Deepleaf productions of "Associate Producer". I felt ecstatic! After the show i saw Bob briefly while getting into a jaguar and riding off into the Santa Cruz night like the final scene from the Usual suspects. This was the last time i saw Bob in the flesh, he had the physical attributes of a Chan Buddhist monk, an Irish Bard and a witch. He also looked to me like Xavier from the X-men in the year 2023 but with wild Einstein-white hair. Always well dressed in a dinner jacket and a ruffled enbroidered silk shirt, his Celtic spiral ring beaming off his large blue eyes, his speech slightly slurred due to a recent pair of teeth i believe, he must have wore out his last pair on that senator from Washington D.C? Yeah, i suppose Bob was like a grandad figure to me because of his age and appearance but also his influence upon this particular journey (all the way from New orleans) and my current life in America to some extent, having originally came to America to hear his presentation "The Universe contains a maybe" at the Santa fe Prophets conference, but he became Ill and could not make it.
This incident led to me being asked to help Bob at the next conference in Palm Springs - Dec 2000 A.D, and so it goes. My own journey into Chapel perilous had begun. Fortunately i was among kind family in the Bay area and got treated with much love and respect by the inhabitants, i was given food, lodging, access to the internet, gigs and the kind of trust and respect you might expect from close neighbors of fifteen years.
The Utopia i had only imagined was real, San Francisco, Oakland, California, with all the creative forces and cultural waltzing, i was living in a novel, and my friends reflected for me the kind of hero's and positive forces within classic stories and myths, tales - lending a helpful hand, asking you to come to the party, the show, the art opening. I began to feel and tune in the vibe, you know the VIBE, it seemed everybody was from somewhere else on the map, all around the world. I could feel the same kind of optimism and technological embrace and multicultural celebrations that i often get from reading RAW in some sense, although my gloss is skewed or maybe not skewed in a RAW fashion because i read him so damn much.
Steven James Pratt (September 2006)
PALM SPRINGS INTERVIEW WITH RAW 2000 A.D
My first interview with Dr. Wilson was captured on mini-disc recorder in his small hotel room at the Prophets Conference, Palm Springs 2000 A.D. I am in the process of writing out the days I spent with RAW at the Con. and it leads right up to this transcript of Dr. Wilson, who was tired and stoned from a full days activity but still turning my grunts and garbles into wonderful threads within his NET.
I hope to place my three interview-type interactions with RAW, along with some historic and geographical tales into a new book! At least i hope my naive tone can be attributed to smoking Amsterdam Cup winning weed that evening in Bob's hotel room, provided by Richard Metzger of disinfo - who paid us a fleeting visit. Any ideas on how to expand this into the tribal tales? Please forgive me for not sharing this interview earlier.
I Can't resist setting the scene a little here: Bob, sits on a small chair next to the bed smoking cigarettes frequently, the wise old Irish giant of counter-culture, right there in front of me! I as smoking like a chminey too, I was very high after smoking weed in a pipe with disinfolk.
Bob was wearing a cream shirt, the one with the hyperbolic pattern running down the front in large coral cream puffs and ridges, and some comfy looking brown slippers. He drank water often, and spoke very slowly to me as I bombarded the poor old man with questions about whatever subjective delusions I might have been carrying around that evening. After all, I was only 24 years young, 5000 miles from home and had approx 40 American Dollars to my name, but I was living out some kind of impossible Dream of unimaginable proportion.
I was sat on the floor of the small room about 4 feet from Bob, the mini-disc lay on the bed, in fact laying there for the duration of Richards visit but I paid the honour of not having it set to record for that fascinating conversation. I was as high as I had ever been before, higher, at the end of a 9 year day, a day on which I lost my job at the conference as Bob’s little helper, due to not getting him to the hall on time for his presentation due to hanging out with Paul Krassner and his wife over Manhattan’s and a crafty joint. I found it difficult to interupt them to hit the road to the show. I had a few notes scrawled in my notebook, sweaty palms and screwy vision, here's what was said, with a few minor edits and additional hyperlinks.
-Steve Fly
10/01/10
PALM SPRINGS. 17/12/00. By Steven James Pratt (Fly Agaric 23).
RAW: So your gonna do an interview now?
Fly: Well, a few questions.... erm, UFO's as fairies, and the UFO as a fairy tale?
RAW: I think Jacques Vallee was the first to suggest that in Passport to Magolia, and a lot of interesting links between UFO encounters and traditional fairy lore, there are also links with appearances of the BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary) and with the delusions of Dr. WilliamMinouse: one of the major researchers upon the Oxford English dictionary and he was confined to Broadmore Asylum for the mentally insane and he believed Irishmen were sneaking into his room and carrying him by Airplane to Cairo and forcing him to do unspeakable sex acts to Arab prostitutes; thats very similar to some of the UFO contact stories. The plane is sort of like a crude UFO, I am sure to the first people who saw it, it was a UFO to them. What the hell is that thing in the sky?
Fly: What about the pancakes? when those UFO's flew down and left some pancakes?
RAW: Oh, the Simonton cakes, yeah, Joseph Simonton from Wisconsin, i forget the name of the city, well S claimed that a UFO landed in his back yard and they asked him for some water which he gave them and they thanked him and gave him a plate full of pancakes, and he had the pancakes, so the only hallucinatory explanation is that he went into a trance, made the pancakes, forgot that he did it, hallucinated the UFO's and had a explanation for the pancakes. I find that a bit strange, but i find it even more strange that people would come across God knows how many light years of space to give pancakes to a guy in Wisconsin, it doesn't make sense no matter which way you look at it, and Allen Hynek was on the Airforce investigation team with Jacques Vallee and they both came to the conclusion that Simonton thought he was telling the truth, he had all the earmarks of sincerity, he was confused like anybody else, all you can say is thats what i think, thats what happened thats what i saw.
Fly: Were they edible?
Raw: Oh yeah, well, they took them back to Wright Paterson Airforce Base and analyzed them there and said they were created by somebody who was very health conscious, they contain wheat germ. (laughs)
Fly: If there was a Mushroom contained within the Fairy Tale, like recent query into Irish Soma by Hakim Bey, how would you see that archetype in other mysteries?
RAW: Well, the fairies are frequently seen on the mushrooms in traditional art and the mushroom they are most frequently seen under is the Psilocybin mushroom, and the word for psilocybin in Gaelic is Pookeen', which means little Fairy, little Elf or vegetation spirit; something like that, so there was definitely a link back in ancient times between the psilocybin mushroom and the experiences of fairy people or the gentry as the Irish call them - and of course Terence Mckenna and Gordon Wasson , John Allegro and several others have found evidence of a magic mushroom cult over most of Europe and even up into Russia and Siberia I believe, yeah, the siberians are into Amanita Muscaria.
Fly: Yeah, I read some Puharich stuff recently.
RAW: Yeah, he was one of the first to write about the importance of Amanita in religious history.
Fly: It seemed like a strange filter that came through, as you said about Uri's book earlier, it’s like a crazy fairground ride.
RAW: Which one, the book by Puharich or the one by Uri? I read the one by Puharich and i have not got around to reading the one by Uri. Yeah, Puharich's book is harder to believe than just about anything i have ever read on that subject, and though Puharich himself is a competent scientist and has patents on several inventions, but then again William Minor who i mentioned earlier who thought the Irish were forcing him to commit unspeakable sex acts; whatever that meant to the Victorians. He was a leading scholar of his time (RAW Laughs) I don't know, i don't mean to imply that Puharich is crazy, i just mean to imply that the human brain cant understand itself. The brain has so many potentials, i mean, is it genetics that gave Beethoven that magnificent musical talent or was it conditioning because his father was a music teacher? he hated his father who was a very brutal father you know, where did Orson Welles get that voice? weather you think that Orson Welles was the greatest actor of the 20th century or the greatest ham, weather you like it or don't like his style of acting, everybody has to admit he has the most musical voice within acting and can do remarkable things with it, is that work and work and training and training or did he just genetically inherit a voice like that. I don't know.
Fly: Today is Beethoven's Birthday.
RAW: Yeah, i lost track of that on my travels. On my email i usually put down who's birthday it is if i happen to know, but I'm not near my computer at present, thank God! (Raw Chuckles) the only thing that gets me away from the computer is hunger or the growing sense I'm about to get eye strain if i don't quit for a while.
Fly: Yeah, I am interested in Bates work that Aldous Huxley picked up on and wrote about in "The Art of seeing" the idea that glasses don't really heal seeing, for your eyes to get better, you have to take off your glasses and exorcise your eyes.
RAW: I've heard of Bates but i've never tried his system. My wife tried it and it seemed to keep her from wearing glasses for quite a long time but eventually she did need glasses, in her 50's. But she was first told she needed glasses in her 20's and she started doing the Bates exercises and she never bumped into anything and she drove a car well, and she read all the time, i don't know why i haven't gotten around to them? Oh, i know why because there's so many fucking things I am interested in i can't get into all of them so i have to put some on the back burner till i get the time. The trouble with been a generalist is that your always 5 to 20 years behind any subject you ever wrote a book about. Somebody asked me to write a paper on Bell's theorem, i went searching on the WEB to make sure there was nothing new on Bell's theorem that refuted everything i had written about it before and all i found is there's a new group of antiBell people who are still claiming there are defects in the experiments even though the experiments have got increasingly complex and subtle and so on. I think there's been six confirmations of Bell's theorem but they're still arguing, seems they just can't believe it.
Fly: Saul Paul talks about the ADE Graphs, the seven times seven group and the work of Eddington studied in the 1970's, like some emerging shape, and he uses the metaphor of the Kublai Khan story about an unbuilt pyramid, recalled by Cooleridge, and, it was like a dream that only came - half - to him, he was awoke up from his dream about something being built in the desert, he parables this half remembered dream to the emerging shapes of ADE groups that are coming through. Its nice to see colors and patterns emerging from science, spirals...
RAW: Yeah.
Fly: I've experienced something i call Coltrane Coincidence Control Conspiracy. Coltrane was kinda' opening portals to other worlds with his horn, described later tracks titles. I think he really did open channels and doors up at that time. There was a big surge from 1965 and his last 2 years on earth. Its interesting to me how you find music like this and then loose weeks and months, listening and getting mixed up in it.
RAW: Somebody said that "when the music changes the walls of the city shake". Every major change in music has paralleled cultural change.
Are you sure you turned down the thermostat, you didn't turn it up?
Fly: I think i put it on low, i'll check again.
Fly: In your book Cosmic Trigger, you wrote about possible drugs that were going to emerge in the year 2000. At least half of these things have come true, like Viagra for example...?
RAW: I don't know how many of them have become true, but a few of them have, and others look much more plausible now than they did when i wrote that, research is moving along all those lines, there's a lot of drugs around that supposed to increase intelligence but i haven't seen any serious scientific tests on them, but a lot of people are interested in that, if we don't have them already, we'll have them soon and i forget what else i predicted but well there are two corporations that are building Hotels in space, one in Japan and one in England, and by and large i think i was off by a few years, but i did spot the on coming trends.
Fly: Genesis P. Orridge and his works are something i have not had much contact with, but it seems to have a relation to a kind of TV consciousness, maybe one of the first folks making TV out to be a mega strong force, and should be kind of, avoided, you know, then if you find a tree then sit under that.
RAW: I don't avoid any new art form no matter how crude it looks originally its worth studying to find out, Im very much a TV fan, especially since the invention of the VCR, i can look at any movie i want just about, without any commercial interruptions. What a marvelous idea.
Fly: Yeah, Graffiti art, there's a movement in England called the Iconoclast Panzerism, started maybe around 1984, graffiti writers painting with letters and shapes and they started this movement and its now diversified into music too, like the Hip Hop label Big Dada records.
RAW: Yeah, DADA is making a come back in all sorts of forms, there were times i thought the latest American election must have been a DADA plot.
Fly: Have you favorite food that you enjoy? or that you like to cook.
RAW: If i had to pick one it would be Lobster. With shrimp and Crab tied in second place, Oysters in third. I seem to have a thing about shell fish, i don't know why.
Fly: Yeah, Terence put forward some ideas about the Octopus, it can communicate through changing its texture and its color, which might be another kind of evolutionary move?
RAW: Octopi are one of the many subjects i don't know much about.
Fly: Do you mind if i smoke a cigarette?
RAW: No, as a matter of fact i think I'll do the same.
FLY: I visited San Francisco for 2 months. And i was thinking generally about how India and Asia and Africa seem to meet there through internet.
RAW: Oh, yeah, i subscribe to a list serve called mobilize globally which keeps you informed about every-kind of protest going on allover the world. I think thats the best thing i found on internet so far. Its nice to know your not alone. (Laughs....) That why i was so happy that nobody got 52% of the vote, gee, i'm part of the majority for the first time in my life.
FLY: Yeah imagine, i was in Palm Springs for one day, i put the Television on, and it was the night that they made the election news broadcast, i sat there, my first day in America, watching the Ivory Tower. (Raw laughs) That was one of the images that i remember.
RAW: Yeah after the first half hour they were so confused that i got the impression that there was a possibility that they allowed the Florida supreme court to set up another count but it turns out the conditions under which they set it up, the Florida supreme court couldn't do it. Bwoy, what a bunch of sneaky bastards. (Laughs)
The funny thing is, there was a time when the supreme court was my favorite branch of the Government, thats when they still had Justice Black and Justice Brenan, and Justice Douglas and a few others like that.
Fly: Yeah, i think recently, Blueprints have recently been released for building Tesla's Earthquake machine, in paperback.
RAW: How big an earthquake does it make?
Fly: I dunno, i dunno if it works (RAW Laughs)
RAW: I am wondering how big the anti Inuguration protest is going to be in Washington, and with an Earthquake machine i thought gee, if they get their hands on that! (RAW LAUGHS)
Fly: I read “Prodigal Genius” and it interested me that the moment he first saw the machines in his Mind, he was reading Goethe, i think he was in some square?
RAW: Yeah, an unusual brain, he could not only see a machine before it was built but he could know the exact dimensions it had to be. The only thing comparable to that is those Chess masters who play 40 games blindfolded and win 43 of them. (Laughs)
Fly: I see a link between the 11th of the Sephiroth from the tree of life and the 11 dimensions of Super String theory, um, maybe thats a new model for vibrational information?
RAW: But there are 10 sephiroth. Oh, your including Da'at, and that's not a real sephiroth, that's a false sephiroth.
Fly: is that like the Pookah?
Raw: Yeah, i guess so yeah, but stay away from that one. (huh em)
Fly: My best expression for this is through playing drums and music. i recently did a recording project called “Super-string theory”, and we hope to use the strings of the violins and the other instruments with to try and teach the idea of science through music. A direct link...
RAW: I am tired, yeah, I'm tired.
RECORDING TERMINATED.
--Steven James Pratt (fly agaric 23)
Recorded on SONY mini-disc. approx 8-10.00 P.M. 17th December 2000. Palm Springs. Prophets Conference