Twitter account photo. Source.
Joanna Harcourt-Smith, Timothy Leary's companion for much of the 1970s, has died, according to a Saturday night Tweet from the Timothy Leary News and Views Twitter account. [UPDATE: Confirmation on Facebook has finally been posted.] A GoFundMe account had been launched to help her deal with a struggle against cancer.
As the Wikepedia bio relates, Harcourt-Smith had more many recent years run her Future Primitive podcast; it appears that the last one, "Heartmending," was released on August 23. Her book, Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary: My Psychedelic Love Story, was a memoir of her Leary days. Oz Fritz reviewed it on his blog, writing, "Anyone interested in learning, and more importantly gaining some experiential feeling for the bardo should read this true voyaging tale. Tripping the Bardo With Timothy Leary shines as a multifaceted diamond, a precious stone of multitudinous beauty and tragedy." Harcourt-Smith posted a comment thanking him for the review.
4 comments:
She also called me after that review to thank-me and to encourage me to keep writing. I think she may have found my number through you, Tom, if memory serves. I don't know much about her outside of her exploits with Leary, but that alone makes her a true hero in my book; giving up her cushy socialite life to help the fugitive Leary, her efforts contributed greatly to his early release from prison.
I got to know Joanna really just in the last couple of years. We were talking about a project for Hilaritas Press. That all fell apart as she became ill. Maybe something in the future will come out of it all. One sad thing is that the new RAW book Hilaritas Press is publishing, The Starseed Signals, has a fair amount about Joanna and Tim. It's too bad she never got to read that.
Sorry to hear this news. I enjoyed hearing her podcasts. She had some incredible stories.
I loved listening to Future Primitive. Her voice and approach to life and people soothed my soul. What a beautiful woman. Thank you Joanna and thank you Scott for introducing her to me and for sharing the listening time with me. It was so heart warming every time.
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