Showing posts with label Robert Anton Wilson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Anton Wilson. Show all posts
Love and Hate and tolerance rants.
After studying the works of Robert Anton Wilson for over 20 years, i can't shake this general love for all humanity and the ongoing practice of tolerance and forgiveness, at the heart of his works. When his daughter was beaten to death, and they found the culprit, he and his wife did not call for the death penalty. Instead, they managed to find it within themselves to forgive, and even love the murderer. I wonder why forgiveness can make many people so angry? who continue to bang the drums of retribution?
I get the impression from social media, especially Facebook, that this angry mob have studied torture techniques, writing without missing a beat, of what they would 'do' to their enemies. Anything like a fair trial, or non-violent punishment is simply out of the question for them. Angry people full of hate want to get even and inflict an equal amount of suffering upon their enemies. The cycle of violence and retaliation continues. The work of RAW has been a countermeasure to this kind of certitude, and hate fueled ignorance. I sincerely wish more people would read his work, and have the courage to act upon it.
I do not expect an immediate change in the minds of the people that most matter to me, after this UK election tomorrow. These people are those i know who choose to vote conservative, and in particular those who lean to the right (and are not rich) rich to mean, say, own property worth over half a million quid! Of course, dude, the concept of rich is relative. r e l a t i v e. I have a few rich friends who i respect and admire, and who are not nasty or ignorant, i want to add.
Compared with most of the world, the poorest people in the UK are pretty well off. Yet, at the other end you have the billionaires, who it's easy for me to understand, may have an interest in voting for whoever is best for their business. Self interest is a natural human condition, i understand and i can respect you. Good luck. Yet, those few who seem to have a hatred for Corbyn and the left principles of social justice, human rights, national basic income etc, and who exhibit a hatred stronger than their love for the conservatives baffle me. A typical line i hear is 'they're all liars' and then...'I'll never vote for that...insert ad-hominem waffle...' about Corbyn. Like something straight off the front page of The Daily Mail, The Sun. You know what I'm talking about: tabloid news for the sad droid blues.
One common thread between both ends of this conservative voting, that i have noticed, is that both the rich and strategically smart, and the relatively poor and angry (my own binary division) become ignorant to what they don't 'like', or don't agree with. They tend to show a low tolerance for new information (neophobes) Don't get me wrong now, dear readers, cognitive bias, media bias, and the conceit of scholars are not limited to conservatives. This seems to me like one major truth for us all to face: we colour and make the world as we like it, editing out what we want (usually simply what we don't like) both consiously and subconsciously, way more than we often realize. 'we are all greater artists than we realize' as Nietzche said.
An explicit example of this bias or ignorance seems to me to occur in the conservative right-wing, the ugly argumentative methods (you couldn't really call it debate) act more in line with the concept of fillabusting, at the high-brow end, combined with some neuro-linguistic programming and a shit load of data-intelligence (a.k.a Cambridge Analytica) for good measure. A powerful mixture. Oh, and lets not forget the rude and violent trolling which many alt-right groups (high and low-brow) have perfected recently.
Yes, the left (and those perpendicular to the left/right axis) also do this, but, perhaps in the tradition of Paul Krassner, Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, Robert Anton Wilson, Steve Coogan and other social activists. Their taste and sense for wit, even at the worst of moments, remains funny as hell to me. I am biased of course.
--Steve Fly
08/06/2017
Amsterdam
Interview with Daisy Campbell and Michelle Olley on Resonance FM
Johny Brown interviews Daisy Campbell about Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus! and her new play, 'Cosmic Trigger,' which is currently running at the Cockpit Theatre.
Cosmic Trigger audio book
The story behind RAW’s Cosmic Trigger Audio Book
posted by Rasa
Ever since I heard Ken Campbell reading Part One of Illuminatus! in the 2007 Deepleaf Audio production, I had the idea in my head that I’d love to hear an audio book of Cosmic Trigger, and Prometheus Rising, and, well, most of Bob’s books. It took some years for Christina to sort out her dad’s legal affairs enough that we could create Hilaritas Press, start republishing mosbunall of Bob’s books, and then begin thinking of creative ways to further Bob’s works and ideas. In early 2014, Daisy Campbell began to pull together the resources and diverse energies needed to pull the Cosmic Trigger and create her stage adaptation. The RAW Trust was in full support, and already thinking of how the production could one day be staged in Santa Cruz. While Daisy realized her inspired interpretation of Cosmic Trigger, we were creating HIlaritas Press and publishing Cosmic Trigger as our first RAW title.
Oliver Senton, narrator for the audio book, played Robert Anton Wilson in Daisy Campbell’s “Cosmic Trigger – The Play”
Watching video clips of the production led me to write an email to Daisy in March of 2016, asking her thoughts on making Cosmic Trigger into an audio book. Her response was enthusiastic, and she immediately said, “The best possible man for the audio job would be Oliver Senton who played Bob in the play.”
Oliver was equally enthusiastic. Before he went into the recording studio to begin the project, he wrote to Christina,
“I have a strong faith that your father’s works are going to grow and grow in popularity and appreciation in the coming years, and that this re-framing of them you’re currently undertaking can only accentuate that. Rereading Cosmic Trigger Part I recently has only reminded me of how much brilliant thought and “feeling good” there is there. Truly, his was a mighty heart.”
Christina and I were ecstatic – we had an amazing book and a great actor to narrate – now we only had to make the thing. Easier imagined than done, but the RAW community has a lot of talent. I asked Steve “fly agaric 23” Pratt if he might be able to lend a hand. Oliver knew Steve as the drummer in Daisy’s stage production of Cosmic Trigger. I knew Steve, from back in early 2012 when he approached the Trust about his RAW360 virtual reality project. Steve lives in Amsterdam, doing a wide array of creative projects, and working a lot in the last years with poet/activist John Sinclair. I put Steve in touch with Oliver, and since I was more than 5000 miles away, and Oliver and Steve only had the English Channel to deal with, I took a back seat. That was a great decision. I’m taking the same tack in writing this blog post and letting Steve and Oliver take over . . .
Steve writes . . .
“Pull It!”
Finally the final secret of the Illuminati is out in the air, the Cosmic Trigger audio book project comes 40 years after the book was penned by RAW, and with luck will inspire new generations to come.
The project reflects a labour-of-love on behalf of all involved, from the studio recording itself, through the fine tooth-comb editing, and preparations for the audio book launch. To repeat a popular phrase in Cosmic Trigger circles, ‘heroic’ – defines the project perfectly.
RAW often suggested (in his Finnegans Wake writings) that reading a text aloud can unlock what were once dormant meanings in the text. Along lines sketched out by Marshall McLuhan, RAW also propagated signals inferring that the medium defines the message, and listening to speech impacts differently on the brain-body system than reading text silently in your head. The ear world and the eye world and the interacting processes of all the senses together, produce a holistic experience in time. This audio book can literally open up new dimensions, inner and outer.
Oliver Sentons’ reading stamina and continued ability to keep the listener engrossed in the comprehensive text is a delight to behold. Rasa and Christina have given hundreds of hours and incurred considerable expenses in producing this audio book. I dearly hope you help share and spread the word far and wide, and consider buying this one of a kind, 8 hour Robert Anton Wilson audio trip. With your help and support we can start work on the audio book for Cosmic Trigger Volume II: Down to Earth.
Special thanks to Mark Sampson, Simon Reeves, Oliver Senton, Tom and Della Pratt, Scott Groves and to Hagbard Celine for the ill artwork, all RAW heads worldwide, and those who are about to hear the book. Hoo fasa.
“Pull it!”
– Steve “fly agaric 23” Pratt, April 23, 2017
And from Oliver . . .
Birmingham, the city in England, has always held a half-formed shape in my memory: my sister went to university there thirty years ago, and since then I’ve only passed through briefly, just changing trains or spending a night or two in standardised hotels. Where better to dive deep into the stream of R.A.Wilson’s thoughts and words; to attempt to capture his elusive, charming, ever-morphing wit.
Steve Fly and Mark Sampson installed me safely inside the rock bunker which is Framework Studios, with fruit and water, and shortly we were off, engineer Simon and me, with just a mike and constellations of ideas. I’ve been carrying some of those words in my head for a while (I play RAW in Daisy Campbell’s theatre adaptation of the books), but tackling the whole thing was a whole new challenge.
How do you recite a graph? How do you describe an illustration? Above all, how do you capture for so many paragraphs that deep, rolling, barely modulating tone that Wilson had, which carried his bright intelligence so clearly to so many?
After a while, a long while, talking as somebody else for so long, it’s impossible to tell how ‘accurate’ you are (whatever that may mean); it becomes more like a meditation than a performance – you disappear down the channel between your brain and the studio’s digital memory and hope for the best when you see the light at the other end.
My thanks to the gentlemen for looking after me (and to Steve’s mum and dad for giving me a bed); my respect and gratitude to the man who provided the RAW material. Whatever you think as you listen: believe nothing.
– Oliver Senton, April 23, 2017
Listen to an excerpt . . .
excerpt: Multiple Realities chapter
Written by Robert Anton Wilson
Narrated by Oliver Senton
Narrated by Oliver Senton
Recorded and mastered by Simon Reeves at Framework Studios (September, 2016)
Edited by Simon Reeves and Steve “fly agaric 23” Pratt
Cover art by amoeba
Co-producers: Mark Sampson (Iron Man Records) & Steve “fly agaric 23” Pratt
Executive Producers: Richard Rasa & Christina Pearson
Edited by Simon Reeves and Steve “fly agaric 23” Pratt
Cover art by amoeba
Co-producers: Mark Sampson (Iron Man Records) & Steve “fly agaric 23” Pratt
Executive Producers: Richard Rasa & Christina Pearson
Special thanks to Mark Sampson for transport and logistics, and to Tom and Della at Broadmeadow for help with lodgings.
Cosmic Trigger NinjaJamm - Demo's
These 3 Cosmic Trigger themed, Ninjajamm packs are an example of what NinjaJamm can do, or what you can do with NinjaJamm. After carefully cutting up the samples, anybody with enough time on their hands, and will, can use the NinjaJamm framework to produce a unique tune pack. You can download the app free for both IOS and Android devices, here: www.ninjajamm.net
Special thanks to Tom Grashion for help programming the packs, and to Matt B, Alex, and Aneek at Ninjajamm.
--Steve Fly
Kick Out The Jamms - NinjaJamm Demo #1
Fly Raw - Ninjajamm Demo #1
Fly Walk -
NinjaJamm Demo #01
Kick Out The Jamms - Ninjajamm Demo #2
Special thanks to Tom Grashion for help programming the packs, and to Matt B, Alex, and Aneek at Ninjajamm.
--Steve Fly
Kick Out The Jamms - NinjaJamm Demo #1
Fly Raw - Ninjajamm Demo #1
Fly Walk -
NinjaJamm Demo #01
Kick Out The Jamms - Ninjajamm Demo #2
Toot and Come-Inn: Cannabis Seeds and Finnegans Wake, and dogs, you dig?
Toot and Come-Inn: Cannabis Seeds and Finnegans Wake, and dogs, you dig?
By Steve Fly Agaric 23. (Dedicated to Sirius, the dog)-- Is that answers? -- It am queery! -- The house was Toot and Come-Inn by the bridge called Tiltass, but are you solarly salemly sure, beyond the shatter of the canicular year? Nascitur ordo seculi numfit. -- Siriusly and selenely sure behind the shutter. Securius indicat umbris tellurem.
--James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, pages 512-513.
Back in 2002, when i asked Robert Anton Wilson by email ‘Can you give a list of items for our emergency survival suitcase please?” he replied:
RAW, like James Joyce and perhaps a rottweiler, rewards those who dig deeper. Do you dig? Beneath the surface lies a labyrinth, with seemingly infinite pathways, like the human mind, and like the cosmos. While processing a kind of special language, and the multiple entanglements at play, these writers help the reader acquire new, and enriched understanding. A fuller picture, contrasting, and with adjustable brightness, of both the work under investigation and the life of the mind of the authors.
This new found appreciation for all things, can be turned toward the self to produce reflections on the coherence patterns, and the incoherence patterns. Both mind-at-large, and the cosmos can be transformed, with luck into a holistic cooperative engine of creation: a fun house. Useful metaphors for this--turning onto a new perception and a perpetually refreshing appreciation for the interconnection of all things--are psychedelic drugs, and some forms of cannabis. Ideogrammic method, Pranayama, great art and stoned perception may share a similar neurological dog pound. It has been said before that Finnegans Wake produces the closest approximation of the LSD experience, in all literature. Once again this generally says to me: an increased perception of the inter-connectivity and entanglement of all things.
Each of the three items Bob mentioned will be considered here to exhibit useful purposes for the survival of all around the world humanity. I'm taking this six word answer, and digging around through the shell-mound of history. I think that his answer deserves closer scrutiny, to be looked like a joke and a serious practical solution to our predicament. Please excuse my bias. I don’t own a dog, or spend much time with them, however i'm always within a few feet of Finnegans Wake and some cannabis.
Cannabis Seeds: seedsmanchaps
Cannabis is a versatile plant, no i mean versatile, like over 50’000 uses and counting. Capable of supporting an entire planetary civilization, if we could just figure out the fucking sharing part of the equation. Hemp can be used for building materials (Hempcrete) textiles, food and drinks, essential oils, bio fuels, paper, plastics, the list runs on. The female cannabis sativa plant provides another long list of health benefits for both the body, and for the mind (a hidden bonus of the plant which has been known to humans and used for thousands of years, starting in ancient China around 2500 BCE.)
Seeds are relatively tiny and easy to transport, in a small hip sack, for example, you can carry seeds to sew a farm capable of supporting hundreds of people with both industrial hemp, and cannabis foods, and launching the equivalent of the entire Woodstock festival, into orbit on the buds. You can clone, and cross breed as you wish, and you can get off your botany and make cuttings too, exploiting the natural abundance of nature all around us: ‘the intelligence within the cherry stone’. These rather awesome conditions on planet-world make all the shit grow, and without claiming taxes, or ownership, or patent. I think that RAW is giving us a hint at a critical tool to help humanity get off the grid, by growing a self sustainable future, literally green, really high yielding, and full of fun, just like the books.
Finnegans Wake: [insert placeholder:-]
To start with my own thoughts on FW, i think that Europe, India, Asia, Africa, Indonesia and the Americas would benefit immensely from taking a leaf out of Joyce’s poetic, global congress. To mean, we will do well to practice searching for meaning, with sympathy, in the mega-haystack of over 70 different languages, every day, for the rest of our days on planet world. FW is a dry run for the future, a time-space when/where all your familiar maps and models melt away into the carpet, and all that you have left is metaphor. I think we would all benefit from an extra effort to try and understand the each other better. Consider, for one moment, if you can, what you are not, where you were not born, where you have not been. FW and cannabis seeds, in my experience help this exercise. As does writing itself. You, we, them, us all together on the sub, the spearhead glistening in the other hand of the narrative driver: the author, whoever she or he, or it be. And you, we, them, us, the tribe, we strive to nurture more sympathy, compassion for, other languages globally, and with dialects locally, so that cultures and people may become enriched, contrasting, brighter, nuanced, distinguished with all the stripes and shades of meaning, and all the threads of genetic biological matter and of narrative entangled anti-matter 'ideaspace' that makes up all-around-the-world humanity, and it's DNA code. The mother load.
FW could be RAWs most highly regarded single book, although he might say ‘beware the man of one book’ FW blasts the world of literature to pieces, and lets you put it back together again, and each time differently. An inexhaustible difference engine. A language or ‘natlanguage’ so powerful that it affected everything what came before it, or after. A real page turner. The mother load of performances by example: the the tale of the tribe. Holy sacrament, which the author has wiped his own butt all over. A densely packed hyper connected literary cosmos, providing endless entertainment and induces the sensation of an eternal present, for me, and a really trippy--infinite flux of being nowness. As you can tell, i think it really is a great book. I mean, it has all the best words! And some of the biggest words
The first published article by Dr. Wilson, in 1959 was titled ‘Joyce Tao’ and these two themes meandered through his life’s work, perhaps underpinning his rare skill for resolving opposites with wit and intellect. Taoism and Quantum Mechanics were both major influences on his thinking, today the fields of quantum entanglement, and quantum non-locality are all the rage, and i feel the progression for these fields will be something like the development of a broader, daring discipline, more like Taoism itself, in that it includes the human brain body mind nervous system. A presents new tools with which to navigate these reality labyrinths.
Rottweiler: Canicula
Some will recall the chapter in ‘Cosmic Trigger I: Final secret of the Illuminati’ where Bob quotes G.I Gurdjieff on Mr. G's typically cryptic writings about ‘burying the dog deeper’. Bob provides lots of evidence to suggest that the buried dog is 'Sirius’, buried to mean hidden. You dig? He goes on to suggest that the 'Silver star' of the Thelemic tradition may also refer to Sirius. All this comes after his famous July 23rd 1973 ritual, and subsequent contact with something weird, and something very interested in bringing Sirius his attention. Was it his own subconscious, E.T, a 6 foot Irish Rabbit? best read the book and make up your own mind. I think we can agree, with little doubt, that RAW implied that you may require a Rottweiler for personal security in the future, during a tsarist occupation, when you're busy tending to the plants or starseeding the Wake over the fence, to the neighbors.
I work with cannabis seeds, and i recently contributed to the third edition of the Waywords and Meansigns project: Finnegans Wake set to music) I do not own a dog. But i just found out that canicula is latin for ‘puppy’ or ‘canis major’ so the dog star might also be called the puppy star. “Canicula” appears in FW only 5 words away from “Siriusly”. Seriously. Now, i feel stoned.
I would also like to remind the reader of the meteoric impact that Dr Timothy Leary’s ‘Starseed transmissions’ had on RAW, and the line from chapter 69 of The Book Of Lies by Aleister Crowley
“The way to succeed, and the way to suck eggs”
—Steve Fly.
Evidence from the good book:
Evidence from the good book:
if yet not,
after) is a wake, livit or krikit, and on the bunk of our
breadwinning lies the cropse of our seedfather, a phrase which the
establisher of the world by law might pretinately write across
the chestfront of all manorwombanborn. —58
wherein he had gauged the use of raisin; ads aliments, das doles,
raps rustics, tams turmoil; sas seed enough for a semination but
sues skivvies on the sly; learned to speak from hand to mouth
till he could talk earish with his eyes shut—130
looking backwards to
unearly summers, from Rhoda Dundrums; is above the seedfruit
level and outside the leguminiferous zone; when older links lock
older hearts then he'll resemble she—135
just becups they won the egg and spoon there
so ovally provencial at Balldole. My Eilish assent he seed makes
his admiracion. 144
but without those selfsownseedlings which are a species of proof
that the largest individual can occur at or in an olivetion such as
East Conna Hillock— 160
The oakmulberryeke with
silktrick twomesh from Shop-Sowry, seedsmanchap.—221.
So see we so
as seed we sow. And their prunktqueen kilt her kirtles up and
set out. —250
Rutsch is for rutterman ramping his roe, seed three. Where
the muddies scrimm ball. Bimbim bimbim. And the maidies
scream all. Himhim himhim. —314
I advise you strongly, along quaith a copy of
the Seeds and Weeds Act when you have procured one for
your self—447
I revolucanized by my eructions: the hye and bye wayseeds I
scattered em, in my graben fields sew sowage I gathered em: in
Sheridan's Circle my wits repose, in black pitts of the pestered
Lenfant he is dummed. (Hearts of Oak, may ye root to piece! — 545.
Jeminy, what is the view which now takes up a second
position of discordance, tell it please? Mark! You notice it in that
rereway because the male entail partially eclipses the femecovert.
It is so called for its discord the meseedo.—564
The eversower of the seeds of light to the cowld owld sowls
that are in the domnatory of Defmut after the night of the
carrying of the word of Nuahs and the night of making Mehs to cuddle—4: 15 593
Look what I found! A lintil pea. And look at here!
This cara weeseed. Pretty mites, my sweetthings, was they
poorloves abandoned by wholawidey world? Neighboulotts for
newtown.— 625
Quoted from Finnegans Wake, James Joyce, 1939.
"About dogs I will write elsewhere; here I will say only that no matter how much mechanistic biology I read, no dog who ever lived as a guest in my house ever seemed like a machine to me. They all seemed like four-legged people.Every LSD voyager has his or her own unique reports to offer; here I offer only my own recollections of my own experiences, expressed in my own favorite metaphors.After my first LSD voyage, dogs not only seemed even less like machines than before, but so did bugs and trees and birds and the starry sky itself. After my 100th trip, even I seemed less like a machine.I have not embraced pantheism or even panpsychism as a philosophy; rather, I have given up on philosophies entirely. I live amid wonders, which I file under the law of general semantics which states that no map can ever show "all" the territory. In fact, I think we should ban the word "all" from ordinary speech and restrict it solely to pure mathematics.--Robert Anton Wilson, LSD, Dogs and Me.
http://rawilsonfans.org/joyce-and-tao/
https://www.amazon.de/Finnegans-Wordsworth-Classics-James-Joyce/dp/1840226617
https://www.amazon.de/Finnegans-Wordsworth-Classics-James-Joyce/dp/1840226617
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