Cultures do not spring forth fully formed. The process is arduous and slow, often arising from the ashes and remnants of various predecessor cultures. Yet … just how antecedent cultures are spawned and formed remains unclear. This is especially true of radical cultures, those that depart from the mainstream, and run counter to it.

How these countercultures are born ? how they develop ?why they succeed ? why they fail ? why certain tenets survive ? and why others whither and disappear: these are burning questions, civilization?s existence may very well depend upon the answers. To address these concerns, Ken Goffman (aka R.U. Sirius) and Dan Joy have written a unique and perceptive book, Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House, now available from Random House. At last we can begin to understand and assess how we have gotten where we are, where we may be going, and how we might even affect what comes next.

NeoFiles

A sample of Laffoley’s Art

On Valentine’s Day, 2004, I attended Paul Laffoley’s slide show at Melrose Light Space, a hip art gallery tucked away unobtrusively on the second floor of a Hollywood strip mall, the entire bottom floor of which was populated by abandoned store fronts. The slide show represented an overview of Laffoley’s idiosyncratic paintings stretching back well over thirty years. Each slide invariably triggered in Laffoley’s mind a fascinating five-minute long monologue about the unusual circumstances under which the painting was conceived and the metaphysical and/or scientific theories that inspired it. Eighty slides were included in the show. By the end of the evening, Laffoley had discussed only about half of them.

I was walking to his apartment, somewhat in denial of the fact that I was about to sit down with Robert Anton Wilson, philosopher/magician/cantankerous old codger, and conduct an interview with what felt like no prep time at all. Just a few notes scrawled into my notebook two hours earlier when I found out I got this interview. You see, originally I was in town only to see a documentary about him entitled Maybe Logic —which by the way was sharp as a motherf%!#king tack—but then I decided to go for the gusto and see if I could sit down with the man who was able to warp my mind like a K-hole when I read the Illuminatus! trilogy as a teenager. The reality of the situation was that I could only stay in town for as many nights as the International Youth Hostel of Santa Cruz would allow me sleep there, in this case, the nights allowed to sleep in a bed, only three. If I stayed longer than three nights, I’d be forced to pay inflated summer rates for a motel room or kick it with the hobos and homeless on the streets for a couple of nights. Or worst case scenario, I might sadly have to head back east with nothing but the impression that Santa Cruz is a strange, strange place.

From The Maybe Quarterly Vol.1 Iss.1

Daniel Pinchbeck was a sophisticated, skeptical, New York City hipster working with Open City, the widely respected avant-garde Arts and Literary Journal, and writing for New York Times Magazine, Wired, Village Voice and other publications.

Feeling that something was missing, he began to study shamanism and the magical plants used in rituals. On assignment, he went to Gabon, in West Africa, and took iboga, a long-lasting psychedelic rootbark, in an initiation ceremony. He visited a shaman in Oaxaca, the son of the famous shamaness Maria Sabina. He attended a conference on ?Visionary Entheobotany? in Palenque, Mexico and visited Burning Man. He went down to the Ecuadorian Amazon to visit the Secoya tribe and take ayahuasca, a visionary medicine.

He experienced a radical shift in perspective. The process is beautifully reported in his book, Breaking Open the Head, one of the most intriguing and well-written books about psychedelic experience in several decades. He is currently writing a regular column for Arthur magazine.

When Pinchbeck told me he was working on a book about ?2012? I decided to get his perspective into NeoFiles.

NeoFiles

Apocalyptic fantasy is the heritage it seems of everyone growing up in a monotheistic culture, and no one of us has avoided the stomach turning terror of wondering if the next turn around the corner might lead to disaster. We titillate our fears with movies like The Day After Tomorrow. Hal Lindsay made a fortune preying on that fear. History is full of ridiculous stories of whole communities standing outside awaiting the end of the world on the word of some deranged bookworm’s interpretation of holy scripture.

Newtopia Magazine

Some people say that William Burroughs was the greatest writer that ever lived. After all, here was a man who was a leader of “The Beat Generation”, a friend of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, a man whose novel “Naked Lunch” helped break literature out of its traditional forms and removed the final barriers of censorship in America. Of course, others say his writing is absolute nonsense, and if there was a man who represented all that was negative and destructive of his generation, it was Bill Burroughs.

See the illustrated version here.

Today is the 10th anniversary of Bill Hick’s death. For those that don’t know, Bill was a most excellent comedien who spoke the truth. Here’s a tribute site that someone on SA made. Go check it out and listen to some of the audio clips.

So, I’m writing this 10 page paper for my cultural anthropology class. I have until Frasier hall closes on Friday night to finish it, yet I’m only a few pages through. I’ll be up most of tonight working on it for sure. In the meantime, instead of me posting articles I like, I recommend you readers follow these links and be amazed:

Robert Hunter and Terrence McKenna discuss DMT through Letters to Each Other – 2 of my favorite people, one the lyricist for the Grateful Dead, the other a famed psychonaut!

EU States to Ban 2C-I, 2C-T-7, 2C-T-2, and TMA-2 within 3 Months – Well, It’s happened. The EU is banning this group of 2C analogues. Makes me sad…

Mr. Picassohead – Draw picasso like pictures with eaze. Very cool!

ISketch – Win, Lose, or Draw type game. Extremely dope!