Fly By Night 248: Do It

Astral Projective Verse: assignment 1. 1968

Astral Projective Verse: assignment 1

Introduction.

The following is a rough start to an example of what i am calling Astral Projective Verse, tongue in cheek, named to have fun. It starts with a shored dream fragment, and then leads into a kind of proposed group 'historical intersection point' where we could pitch our astral 'mental' tents? i did for a moment and here are the results...

best wishes,

--steve fly

(warning, check the length of this message, it might be longer than you expect, just saying x steve)

Dream Fragment: Morning of Saturday 18th January 2014:

The projective dream author found himself nealing down next to a body of water, either a lake or the ocean. However, the water was still more like a lake. Just below the surface were some rocks with bright green moss shimmering in the brown/azure water, trance like.  I reach with my arm into the lake to find a bunch of keys, instinctively i feel these are my keys. I reach down again to find more objects, but these are beyond description. I felt a sense of awe and wonder at my discovery, general accomplishment.

In retrospect tonight, Sunday 19th January, i have somewhat forced the lake to be the lake in Lincoln park, Chicago. On closer inspection, perhaps it was: Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Caldwell_Lily_Pool

Or perhaps its the fountain of the great lakes in Grant Park: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_of_the_Great_Lakes

1968 Intersection Point: Astral Projective Verse assignment 1

Following my own system of research, developed during my on-line class 'Email To The Tribe,' i picked 13 characters who were present on world during the 1968 Chicago convention, and who fit with the more general 'revolution in language' often associated with 'the tale of the tribe'.

Here, in 1968 we find an intersection point, or a synchrony-mesh, a furtive place-time to observe using the telescope/microscope of flexible insight and special techniques for conjuring the ambiance of the time-place under investigation. Focused imagination.

We have a phase array of versions of the events from some of the great minds of the 20th century, we have specific times and places and sensory poetic reflections on the happenings. I cannot suppose that all these characters were in earshot but to know they were present, in some capacity, opens the door to invoke them and their verse into our tale, to mix them into the giant cauldron bubbling away in Lincoln park.

Many reports of the events taking place in Lincoln park on Saturday 24th August, at 4.00 PM give a good picture of a specific event, the brief performance of the MC5. The band got its power from a generator belonging to a hotdog vendor.

Here, in the park, with the backdrop of 5000 hippies freaking out to the sonic innovations of the MC5 we project our characters, all gathered together in a fictional universe, not too far away from the one recorded by historians, and agreed upon by most people. An intersection point, a specific target for an astral projective verse experiment. (please see my previous post on APV).

To open up my shared imagination a little, lets imagine a mixed aroma of marijuana, onions, gasoline, on the wind. The crackle and fuzz of electrified guitars and microphone feedback, the dry thump and padded bop of distant drums, cymbals building up a series of factory like pings and pangs, the sound of wooden stix on metal. The hum of the generator, running at full capacity to power the music. The rambunctious yippies and cheers of 5000 hippies dancing and celebrating life. The distant sound of sirens and police whistles, the sound of horse hooves and more police whistles.

Here, Robert Anton Wilson, William S. Burroughs and John Sinclair and passing a joint of Acapulco gold, rolled like a torpedo by Ed Sanders. Ginsberg misses a round due to having a sunflower protruding from his mouth. Norman Mailer is shadow boxing with Abbie Hoffman, while Carl Oglesby and Terry Southern look on, wondering if Norman was going to really connect with Abbie. Wayne Kramer hits a 'space note' shortly followed by the rest of the band, all playing free-form in the tradition of Sun Ra and his Arkestra.

RAW is discussing Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli with Burroughs, who in response recalls a short tale of James Joyce and his fascination with Synchronicity and the fact that he inserted many of his own moment of synchronicity, or in his own terms you might say Epiphany. Raw respond with the story of Carl Jung and his dream of Liverpool, and it's lasting impact on his work afterwards, commenting how the fountain that he saw earlier at Grant Park, reminded him of Jung's dream. Burroughs then told RAW about his synchronicity surrounding the number 23, and retold his Captain Clark story.

Ed Sanders and Ginsberg launch into the actual poem called 'The tale of the tribe'. Ginsberg, who recently came back from visiting Ezra Pound in Italy, was channeling Ez, while Ed Sanders was channeling Charles Olson. Together they spontaneously presented the history of civilization, the birth and gestation of languages, arts, music, poetry, writing, conflict, war, oppression, civil disobedience up to 24th August 1968 in a terse, information rich prose, epic, and including history.

Slowly the group begin to pass the hay, with the music still playing in the background and the Chicago police and their whistles and bullhorns getting nearer, the gang begin to jam together, projecting their observations and innovations into the mix. You get the picture?

So this is my own imagination at work, bedding the truth in waking life, having a stab at a point in space-time, buried somewhat in the noise, but polished and presented here as a nodal cluster of innovative possibilities for further research, to mean have them activated by using some special method or other. Some of these methods will involves weeks and possibly months of consistent meditation.

My methods relating to my class email to the tribe: ETTT, for example, include creating a tally of attributes for each character: Texts, Teachings, Theos, Totems, Tailors. Next, i suggest creating an alphabet of magical objects associated with each character present in 1968. When a number of characters and their attributes have been created they can be fixed together in various geometrical patterns, based here upon some of the geometries of R. Buckminster Fuller. This was the model I followed for my novel Sixty (2011) and the Icosahedron and Dodecahedron in particular. The Pentagon/Pentagram and the Hexagon/Hexagram were also used. With some playful creativity one can create multiple sided objects that can function as a kind of dice, to be thrown. Hence, mixing ideas in a literal sense from the characters under investigation. This method should be used loosely in tandem with the improvisational and spontaneous imagination.

These obscure practices, when used in conjunction with some of those described by Orphiel in 'The Art of Astral Projection' and Charles Olson, in his essay: Projective verse, and when these are specifically designed to accommodate a certain intersection point in space-time, provide new tools and methods i recommend highly.

Projective after-thoughts

The Festival of life exhibits a turning of negative violence and state sponsored ignorance into a celebration of non-violent civil disobedience and the joining together, literally hand in hand, of great poets, musicians, writers, and thousands of illuminated seers of the future. Many bright sparks who quickly recognized the American hegemony of global trade, surveillance and banking chicanery or usury.

In 1968 the public display of police brutality reverberated around the world, and helped shape the trajectory of the growing counter-culture, alternative thinkers the new artist-activist-scholar-bards of 60’s America who went on to reshape the landscape of modern poetry, music and the art of peaceful powerful protest worldwide, IMHO.

Yes, so bringing it all into a certain radius, hundreds of future prophets of the information age, together in the same geographical location. A special intersection point, and good target for an experiment in astral projective verse. (which is a process under development, and experimentation as I write this)

--Steve 'fly' Agaric 23

January 19th, 2014.
edited March 3rd, 2014.

The Mohawk Club

Mohawk Artwork by CHU www.schudio.co.uk

 

The Mohawk Club

down
to gothamsterdam
city clouds curl
like hair parting
to reveal grey root
beneath

platinum breaking
through air
to reveal silver
moonlight
streaking down

solid rays bouncing

off the puddles
street amber
tiger lightning
shattered glass
outside

that stinky moon
eclipsed by rolling
marshmallows

snatching the eye
back

cracked street light
the car lamp &
reefer torch
burning the other
out

out in the night a red
streak of light
designates the
club: Mohawk

pot smoke blows
from tangled with jazz
steam seeping out
bop

skidoobie blam
from the doorway
a rocket launch site

wings flap n’ flutter
new squawrk

bop music lifting up
cityscape
up up town up
escape into air

buildings nearby
sway loose from their
footing notes

and rise up again
steamin’ with gargoyles
they break loose to the
beat away from the grey
concrete holds

sprouting feathers
bright green &

toucan yellow
big chief pink & gold

Mohawk
gracefully leaping off

into dark skies
blackened
looping like Monk

tiny pieces of the city
pulled away in the night

inside the club
it’s hip under hazy
lemon light
the honey-bop drips
juss’ keep on jumpin

leap frog kangaroos
peeps jiggin’ &
movin’ so hard
the floor boards
wriggle loose

bop bop

another
blam boom
doors & windows

poppin’ in their
frames musical
flames lap ears of
harlem cats

wreckin the joint

the wooden stage
an amplifier
be-bop battery power

surrounded by schmaze
of musical mojos

the club a
living moseum

exotic objects
resonate to music
the players play
talismans

a seemingly ad-hoc
collection of artefacts
from africa india asia
the Caribbean
the americas

& Indonesia
crammed into

one room covering every
inch of wall space

a pink mardi gras
Indian head dress
five pots of Robert Johnson
snake oil
perch on the shelf

several rusty
saxophones hooked
over water pipes
like docked space craft

a bunged-up
silver tuba
hunches behind the bar
a mirrored ice bucket

two trombones
hang from shark teeth
trumpets & clarinets
double as flower vases
on turntable tables

a native indian
shield-canvas
looms large
like jupiter behind
the stage

shells beads belts
& wires hang from
all quarters snaking the
room

original sheet music
portraits of jazz masters
handmade flyers hang
behind smoke tinted
glass in various

frames crooked &
dusty books
embroidered with shells
& reeds

guitar picks crocodile
teeth piano
keys ostrich feathers
& white buffalo hair

to the left a
double bass pulses
like a whale heart
spitting out notes
from its huge
bass-clef gut

swinging around a
spike-axis firmly rooted
into the ‘C’ flatted floor
a human ear
shaped instrument

a bulging be-bop
skyscraper
swaying to the up
tempo uptown music

the horse chestnut
upright has viper tooth
tuning fangs
atop its snake
head head head

a hybrid trap kit
sits centre stage
kick oil drum
snare
catch the beat

get hi
hat stand from old
gun barrels
hi-hat cymbals from turkey
crash china symbols
viper head sticks
& mohawk punk
brushes

to the right
of stage the turn
tables sit atop
a grand piano

the dj rig
includes a raven
headed diamond
tipped stylus

recycled confederate
gun surplus

a tomahawk mixer
dreams of vinyl
records nailed to walls

nicotine patches
where some were
pulled down
& played and never
returned

beside turntables
a small glockenspiel
silver bullet keys
split the eye in two

a microphone
stand of gun parts
mixed with
three tomahawks

some guitar strings
peppered with bright
feathers
& sea shells

the microphone

a shaved viper head
with a mohawk
its tail wiggling off
toward the sound
board

who or what is going
to take stage here
tonight in this
shrine to creativity

here underground
in gothamsterdam
just after 4:20
in the morning

--Steve Fly
08/13 Amsterdam,
Edited 13/12/13.

The tale of the 'high' tribe

The tale of the tribe

High Time and the Counter-cultural hall of fame.

"A ganachakra (Sanskrit: gaṇacakra, or 'gathering circle'; Tibetan: tshogs kyi 'khor lo) is also known as tsog, ganapuja, chakrapuja or ganachakrapuja. It is a generic term for various tantric assemblies or feasts, in which practitioners meet to chant mantra, enact mudra, make votive offerings and practice various tantric rituals as part of a sadhana, or spiritual practice. The ganachakra often comprises a sacramental meal and festivities such as dancing; the feast generally consisting of materials that were considered forbidden or taboo in medieval India, where the tantric movement arose. As a tantric practice, forms of ganachakra are practiced today in both Hinduism, Bön and Vajrayana Buddhism. --TSOG

I like the idea of the Counter-cultural Hall of Fame, as developed by High Times and Steven Hager, and I’m happy that the legendary characters from America’s exulted tradition of counter-cultural revolutionaries, artists, poets, musicians and humanitarian activists in the fullest sense of that term: revolutionary. High Times magazine seem to have developed a good selection process for the Hall Of Fame and the Celebrity Cup judges, besides all the weed, the poetry and scholar activism blooms.

In his essay - T.A.Z - from the book TSOG: The thing that ate the constitution. Robert Anton Wilson writes about being picked to be a celebrity judge for the High Times Cannabis Cup in 1999 and his experiences in Amsterdam. I read this essay again recently and found all sorts of cross links and descriptions of the Cannabis Cup and Amsterdam that I find irresistible to share.

1. T.A.Z or Temporary Autonomous Zone invokes Peter Lamorn Wilson, another brilliant bearded anarchist 'scholar activist philosopher' of the American tradition, who RAW often criss-crosses paths with when musing upon cultural revolution. Peter Lamborn Wilson’s TAZ seems to be used here as the title of Bob’s essay [see excerpt below] to help describe the unique red-light and coffeeshop Zones of Dutch tolerance here in Amsterdam, and some other parts of the Netherlands, and a generally intelligent and exemplary model.

2. William S. Burroughs was inducted into the High Times Hall of Fame in 1999, and RAW participated in the induction ceremony by reading parts from NOVA EXPRESS, a small clip of this event can be found on you tune in a video compiled based on the induction of the Beat generation into the High Times Countercultural Hall Of Fame. It was Burroughs who turned Wilson onto the 23 enigma' and Wilson compared WSB with James Joyce as the two greatest literary entities of the 20th century.

3. The name Simon Vinkenoog was familiar to me by way of Dr. Robert Anton Wilson, like so many things; who noted Simon’s work in his books, such as the tale of the Sage of Dalkey in his last published work – email to the Universe. When I arrived in Amsterdam Simon was active and a strong part of the Dutch resistance to Bullshit, mediocrity and Tsarist Occupation Government. Simon passed onwards into outer-hyperspace July 12th, 2009. Simon was recently featured upon John’s 10 show holiday extravaganza, and for me this fact makes yet another loop between American and European counter-cultural anthropology, bound together by John’s choice of musical artefacts, that continue to delight the air-waves.

4. The current editor in Chief of High Times and Grand Wizard of the Cannabis Cup – Steven Hager – wrote a book called ‘The Octopus Conspiracy’ that for me, brings together much of the work and playful confidence found in RAW’s occasional work with the High Times Magazine. This book helps one enter the process of engaging in counter-cultural information theory, in my humble opinion – the art of social historicism on the furtive cusp of Conspiracy Theory. I’m not going into the area of conspiracy research with this article, but instead I choose to honour research. This may also be translated as independent journalism - thinking for yourself and following your sense for truth and knowledge - no matter which rabbit hole your tricky senses may lead.

The following excerpt brings together James Joyce, Ezra Pound, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and John Sinclair into an Amsterdam synchro-mesh that seems a perfect example of RAW's hologramic prose' - in which every part contains the whole - here we have the Moderns, the Beats, the Post-Moderns, and, the sense of ambiguity that has haunted the 20th century, all in a paragraph that could equally be in resonance with "the tale of the tribe'.

Temporary Autonomous Zone, TSOG: The Thing That Ate The Constitution. by Robert Anton Wilson, [excerpt]

“John Sinclair started talking about his days with the MC-5, a great Rock group of the 1960’s. My brain did a quantum jump and reorganized the whole world. This was not the John Sinclair I once knew, who wrote a brilliant column for the Village Voice. No wonder he didn’t look like ‘himself’: he wasn’t ‘himself’ at all. He wa the other John Sinclair, from Detriot, who founded the White Panther Party and served a few years in prison for generously giving a joint to an undercover narc. (Under Michigan law at that time, giving somebody a good high for free was punished with the same imprisonment as selling it.) I had mixed up two different John Sinclair's. I felt relieved. Mixing all that fucking pot hadn’t fucked up my fucking brain after all. They led me to the stage. (Was it the same day or another day?) I was giving a speech, inducting William S. Burroughs into the Cannabis Hall of Fame. I told them reasons I consider Burroughs the greatest writer since Joyce, but they seemed restless, so I quoted them a bit of unpublished Burroughs:

“A coprophile named Scott
Who lived in Aldershot
Said, “I’m unbeatable-
My shit is eatable!
Perpetual motion I’ve got.

”I went into a flashback...... November 1968, at the Playboy Club in Chicago, having lunch with Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. We had been Demonstarting against the War all week, but now we were enjoying a pleasant meal, and Allen was telling us about his recent meeting with Crazy Uncle Ezra Pound in Rapollo. He had told Ez he considered the Cantos the greatest poem of the 20th Century, and Ez said, “But it is all vitiated by that stupid, suburban anti-semitism.”
“Suburban,” Burroughs repeated, considering the connotations of the word; I was more fascinated by “vitiated.”
I snapped back to Amsterdam. – Robert Anton Wilson, Temporary Autonomous Zone, TSOG: The Thing That Ate The Constitution.

"Thanks," Dillinger said modestly. "Actually, the Illuminati own the companies that put out most of the rock. We started Laughing Buddha Jesus Phallus to counterattack. We were ignoring that front until they got the MC-5 to cut a disc called 'Kick Out The Jams' just to taunt us with old, bitter memories. So we came back with our own releases, and the next thing I knew I was making bales of money from it. We've also fed information, through third parties, to Christian Crusade in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so they could expose some of what the Illuminati are doing in the rock field. You've seen the Christian Crusade publications—Rhythm, Riots and Revolution, and Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles, and so forth?" - Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, Illuminatus Trilogy, page 78.

“Robert Anton Wilson learns about the significance of the number 23 from William Burroughs:

William Burroughs introduced me to the 23 Enigma while I was still at Playboy. I had said, on first seeing the unpublished manuscript of Naked Lunch in 1956, This man is the greatest prose writer since James Joyce. (I am still rather proud of being the first to make that comparison) I did not meet Burroughs until 1966, and found Bill a more charming and ordinary individual than his books suggest - one had been prepared for a mad genius and found instead a rather prosaic, almost academic, quite gentlemanly genius. His story of the 23 mystery went like this... In the early 60s in Tangier, Burroughs knew a certain Captain Clark who ran a ferry from Tangier to Spain. One day, Clark said to Burroughs that hed been running the ferry 23 years without incident. That very day, the ferry sank, killing Clark and everybody on board. In the evening, Burroughs was thinking about this when he turned on the radio. The first newscast told about the crash of an Easter Airlines plane on the new York-Miami, and the flight was listed as Flight 23. Burroughs began keeping records of odd coincidences. To his astonishment, 23s appeared in many of them.

Sean Halligan tells distant cousin Peter that he has heard that expression somewhere before, in a dream he recalls. It was a dream reported by the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. He had written about the dream in his book Memories, Dreams and Reflections, strangely enough, on page 223: -- http://www.poee.org/living/GetPage.aspx?ID=180