'Osiris is a black god!'

An illustration of Osiris from the Wikipedia article. The caption says, "Osiris was sometimes depicted with black skin, symbolizing the underworld deities and fertility of the Nile floodplain." Creative Commons illustration by Eternal Space. Source. 

One of the most mysterious sentences (at least to me) sentences in Illuminatus! is this one: "Anybody who wants to go to the trouble can find out, for instance, that the 'secret' of the Eleusinian Mysteries was the words whispered to the novice after he got the magic mushroom, 'Osiris is a black god!' "

In his latest Substack newsletter, Michael Johnson writes about the phrase, sharing his considerable research into Robert Anton Wilson's work. He convinces me that, at least in part, the phrase traces back to an Aleister Crowley passage. 

Jesse Walker's 'Absurdist Conspiracy Canon'

 

Jesse Walker has been making good use of the lists feature at his Letterboxd, listing his favorite movies, the best movies for various decades, "Acid Noir" movies and a Robert Altman ranking. Now he turns his attention to "The Absurdist Conspiracy Canon," a list that will interest Illuminatus! fans. 

One of his top-rated movies, The President's Analyst, was a favorite of mine when I was young. He also includes a filming  of Wilhelm Reich in Hell, although he has to admit he hasn't seen it yet. 

If Jessse is taking requests from the peanut gallery, I'd like to see a ranking for science fiction movies. 

'The Classical Style' reading group, week three

Portrait of Haydn by Ludwig Guttenbrunn

[If you tuned in late, this continues the new reading group for The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven by Charles Rosen. Previous posts one week ago and two weeks ago. Feel free to participate in the comments. -- The Management] 

I  INTRODUCTION 

 1. The Musical Language of the Late Eighteenth Century 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest villain blogger

When Tom Jackson lists me as “Special Guest Blogger,” it makes me think of the 1960’s Batman credit “Special Guest Villain,” especially since last week’s post mentioned the opera Die Fledermaus (“The Bat”). I remember a Batman episode where a German man called Batman “Der Fledermausman!” 

The medium seems part of the massage. I remember around 1981 reading an article by a guy who said his dad had spent his life traveling around Germany so he could hear all nine Beethoven symphonies. With the arrival of long-playing (LP) vinyl records, one could purchase all nine symphonies relatively inexpensively and listen to them repeatedly. With internet, one can listen to multiple versions of all nine symphonies for free on YouTube. In elementary school I had LP’s of about five Haydn symphonies and the Trumpet Concerto, so I got to know those pieces. In the CD era I got a two-CD set of six late Haydn symphonies which included one of the ones I had on LP (the Surprise Symphony). Now I have Spotify and I can pull up any Haydn symphony without the annoying ads on YouTube. 

This week I have listened to a bunch of the Op. 17, Op. 20, and Op. 33 string quartets by Haydn, six quartets in each opus. I had never heard the Op. 17 quartets before, so far as I recall. I had an LP of two of the Op. 20 quartets my roommate Jai had given me around 1980 or 1981, and a CD of the same LP on CD which my mom bought me around 1999. I have a CD of three of the Op. 33 quartets which my wife gave me in 1997. I found it interesting to listen to the four Op. 20 quartets and three Op. 33 quartets this week which I had never heard before as well as the quartets I had listened to for decades. 

Pg. 26 – In the key of C Major, C (I) serves as the tonic; F (IV) the subdominant; and G (V) the dominant, so G7 serves as the dominant seventh. A plagal cadence goes from IV to I, F to C in C Major. Some call this the “Amen Cadence” due its popularity in older Christian church music. In the eighteenth century the plagal cadence became less popular in favor of the dominant cadence, G to C in C Major. If you can play guitar or a keyboard instrument, you might play these cadences to hear the difference: F-C (“A-men”) and G-C. A ton of rock, jazz, blues, and country songs have dominant cadences. 

See you next Monday, same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel! 

RAW Semantics returns with new essay

The RAW Semantics blog returns with a new post, "Right Men, Natural Law & Platonic Free Markets – part 1." There's discussion of the concepts in both The New Inquisition and Natural Law. 

I have trouble sometimes finding a couple of sentences that will summarize an entire post, and indeed at one point Brian worries that "God, I hope that doesn’t get quoted out of context, making me sound like some weirdo Youtube influencer!"

But I will quote the paragraph that starts things off: "Robert Anton Wilson’s take on everyday hypnosis – that we drift from 'direct' experience into what we call the 'Real' World, a learned abstraction – emphasises the objectivity we attribute to this 'Platonically Real' realm. Thus we filter out what doesn’t conform to the abstraction as 'subjective', 'mere appearance', hallucination, illusion, dream, fiction, error, lies, etc."

Part Two is promised soon. 

As usual, Brian has some really good artwork with his piece, sample above. 

Joseph Matheny: The last interview?

 Billed as "the last interview I will do for at least a few years," Joseph Matheny appears above on the Why Files podcast. 

Here is the blurb:

"Joseph Matheny invented something in 1989 that nobody had a name for yet. He called it a story. The internet called it the first alternate reality game. The Navy called him to ask how he did it. He turned them down.

"Tonight he’s in the basement explaining how he built an early AI, game-mastered Robert Anton Wilson at Esalen, and why QAnon looks so familiar to him.

"Some things are better understood when you know how the trick works."

Mr. Matheny says, "Interviews have lost their appeal for me, and, frankly, you already have plenty of examples of me going on at length."

Meanwhile, free release of Ong's Hat: COMPLEAT continues as a podcast series details here. 

Joseph L. Flatley on 'The Occult Timothy Leary'

Joseph L. "Lenny" Flatley is an American journalist, author, podcaster, movie maker and private investigator who lives in Pittsburgh. He publishes the Failed State Update Substack newsletter. 

His new book, The Occult Timothy Leary: The Tarot, Magical States, and Post-Terrestrial Evolution, discusses Leary's Eight Circuit model and SMI2LE ideas and argues that Leary's system can be applied to tarot readings. It is available as a paperback and ebook from all of the usual online outlets, such as Barnes and Noble.  You can also check out his publisher's author page. 

Another book, New Age Grifter: The True Story of Gabriel of Urantia and his Cosmic Family was released by Feral House and his pieces have appeared in various publications, such as Please Kill Me, Postindustrial, The Verge, Pando, and CounterPunch.

I wanted to learn more about this interesting book, which I devoured quickly, so I requested an interview. It lasted for almost a half hour, and the bulk of it is transcribed here; I only deleted a few unnecessary bits, such as some kind remarks he made about my blog. 

RAWILLUMINATION: As somebody who reads a lot of books, there are certain books,  I hear about it or I see a description and I've just gotta read it. And your book was one of those. But as a writer who's trying to market your book, who do you see as your audience? Who were the "I have to have it" readers out there? Who do you think would run out and buy your book if they just happened to hear about it on a blog or somewhere on the Internet or from a friend or whatever? 

JOSEPH L. FLATLEY: You know, it's kind of a challenge writing a book about a historical figure, especially one that's been written about pretty extensively over decades at this point. I was very well aware as a reader, not only of Leary and Wilson and that whole cohort, but all the websites and newsletters and things over the years that have kind of kept the flame alive, so to speak. I was very aware that there is an audience for this book and also that I wanted to approach the topic differently, even down to the language of circuits and  the vocabulary that we kinda use in this field of endeavor. I see a lot of people kinda slipping into the same  language, the same descriptions. And, you know, Norman Mailer said that  -- because Norman Mailer is famous for kinda changing up his writing style with every book  -- when asked about it, he said that when you write in a different style or a different voice, you're attacking the subject matter from a different angle.

So I wanted at the word level, I wanted to approach the subject differently from all the other great books that have written about Tim and Robert Anton Wilson, precisely because I think people fall into these cliches of thought.  You talk about the circuits for 20 years, you stop thinking about it, you just kinda regurgitate what you're hearing. 

So my book is, it's both like a primer for new Leary readers, call it a "Timothy Leary for Dummies" type book. But also I think it's great for people who are already familiar with this stuff precisely because I took efforts to write a book in a different style or different angle than all the other ones. So anybody interested in the subject matter, obviously, but also there's this large untapped, and I barely touch upon it, I feel, but there's a large untapped populace of practicing occult occultists and ceremonial magicians who might be able to benefit from looking at the circuits from that angle. 

RAWILLUMINATION: Can you give me kind of a little short biography of yourself to kind of introduce yourself? I know you're a writer and I think I saw in your Substack you're a private investigator.  

FLATLEY: Yeah, I'm a investigative journalist and a private investigator. At least at my level being a PI,  it's not nearly as interesting as some might think it would be.

I make movies but my main focus is writing books. I've written several novellas and have had two nonfiction books published in the last few years, and I'm working on another one. 

Joseph L. Flatley (Linked in photo).

RAWILLUMINATION: Do you wanna say anything about where you live? 

FLATLEY: Oh yeah, I'm in Pittsburgh. Love Pittsburgh. I'm based here primarily because it's one of those places that the cost of living hasn't climbed so high yet that I can do these weird jobs like PI work and journalism and keep a roof over my head.  

RAWILLUMINATION: Well, we're kind of neighbors then, because I live in the Cleveland area. And, by coincidence, I have a friend who lives in West Virginia, not super far from Pittsburgh, and I've been planning to buy him a copy of your book, so that's awesome.

FLATLEY: That's interesting. Yeah, I actually grew up in Erie, so I know Cleveland pretty well. 

RAWILLUMINATION: And I've been to Erie, Pennsylvania, as you might guess.

Your dedication implies that you met Robert Anton Wilson and talked to him. Can you talk a little bit about that? [The dedication says, "For Robert Anton Wilson, who once told me he doesn't fear death. And for Antero Alli, who agreed with him."]

FLATLEY: I took the first Maybe Logic [Academy] class that he taught way back in, whenever that was, '98 or '97 and  one day we hadn't heard from him for I can't remember how long, but a notable period of time.

And then when he finally got back on, he said he had fallen in in his bedroom or his bathroom and couldn't get help and he sat there for like a day, and finally I think his daughter found him. And he told the class. "Guys, the good thing to come out of this is I realized that I don't fear death," and I always kinda kept that with me.

And then years later Antero Alli announced that he had cancer and that he wasn't gonna get treated and he was going to die too. And  we were emailing back and forth and I mentioned that, and he said, "Yeah, I don't think I fear death,  either."  And I was like, well, that's nice to know.

RAWILLUMINATION: That's a great anecdote. 

Did you ever meet Timothy Leary?

FLATLEY: No, no, that was just a little before my time. I've talked to Zach Leary quite a bit, but I never met Tim.

RAWILLUMINATION: It's funny how that works out. I met Robert Shea once, but I never met Robert Anton Wilson or even took a class from him. And now I wound up doing this blog.

Your book is dedicated to Wilson and to Antero Alli.  And I noticed you referenced The Starseed Signals quite a bit. Obviously that was a book that was not published until many years after Wilson's death. But do you see that as kind of a key book among Wilson's books?

FLATLEY: So that was a great gift really, that while I was writing this book that came out. Because if it wasn't for that -- I was doing a lot of time  tracking down old issues of  Green Egg and you know, all these  little magic newsletters that Wilson had contributed to as a freelancer. The Buckland Witchcraft Museum, I'm sure you're familiar with that in Cleveland, they have a collection of those in their archives. So I've talked to Steven [Intermill] quite a bit, the director, and  he was helping me out, but when The Starseed Signals came out, I was like, wow, it's all here. I can see why it wasn't published or why it wasn't going to be published by a major publisher unless there was some serious editing because it's very much a first draft.

But talk about a first draft of history. It's, you know, it's like really Wilson's man on the scene description of precisely him and Tim working through these ideas. And it was invaluable. 

RAWILLUMINATION: Kind of the way I would describe it is that in a sense it's sort of a first draft for Cosmic Trigger. But it has enough interesting material that  at least for a serious Wilson fan, it really kind of stands on its own. 

FLATLEY: Yeah. absolutely. You know it is a first draft in a lot of ways for Cosmic Trigger and also, for The Game of Life, Timothy Leary's book. 

There's kind of this question of why Leary stopped talking about magic so soon. I just really feel like he was always on the move. He was going so fast. He had 76 years on this planet, and in 1993, he's not gonna waste his time talking about what happened in 1973. So I totally understand, but I don't feel like any of it was disavowed. And that was the project of this book, kinda go through everything, everything I could get my hands on. See how Western esotericism as well as Eastern practices influenced Leary in the subtle ways that often didn't get pointed out just because Tim really didn't footnote it. He was putting that these fabulous ideas together. He wasn't really, I don't think, so concerned about a meticulous cataloging of where they came from.   

RAWILLUMINATION: The structure of your book, I thought was kind of interesting. I read every word from start to finish, but I kinda have the impression that chapters one through eight were meant to be read and that chapters 9 and 10 were really sort of like a reference section. Do you think it's a fair description of the book or do you want to modify that?

FLATLEY: I certainly think some people will use the book that way, which is totally understandable and totally valid. The way I was able to sell it was precisely because  Inner Traditions is an occult publisher. It's actually Destiny Books, an imprint of Inner Traditions. They're an occult publisher. Your readers are occultists. I know you've already done several Timothy Leary books, but this one's about tarot cards.

RAWILLUMINATION: The cover is credited to Adam Scott Miller. I don't know the artist, but it's kind of a witty cover with Timothy Leary as Aleister Crowley. Were you happy with the cover? 

FLATLEY: Yeah. You know, I'm really curious. I keep forgetting to ask my editor, but either that image or a very similar image was used in, I'm blanking on the name of the magazine, but John Higgs,  the author of I Have America Surrounded, before he wrote that biography of Leary, he had done a feature article about Leary and mysticism and Crowley and I know that that was the cover art for that going back, what, 20 years. And that was the magazine art.

So I don't know, it's the same guy that did the cover or if they got permission or what, but I think it's pretty clever. I really like it. 

RAWILLUMINATION: Yeah, I thought it was too. 

So are you a long time tarot reader and if so, how did your research for this book influence how you do readings? Did it influence you a great deal?

FLATLEY: I'm a long term tarot dabbler. I'm not gonna be able to sit down with nothing but a deck of cards and a burning question and be able to tell the thing,  tell what they're saying. But I can read a reference book. And partially I wanted to see if we examined the tarot cards, not in like the traditional A.E. Waite descriptions, but a Learian take. I wanted to see if it would still kind of give good, valid readings. And I have to say, it does. I think that what Leary discussed as far as the tarot goes doesn't replace anything, but it's a really good complement to anybody's tarot practice.

Leary always talked about the transaction, dimensionalizing to use that word, even though I don't really think that's a word. Dimensions of things like a single unit isn't very meaningful. But once you and I start talking and we can have an interaction, that's where you start to see the true nature of the individual. And that's how I approach tarot readings.

I do a kinda idiosyncratic method where I pull one Major Arcana card and I have a deck that I made myself that's like Leary's Trumps, because he added two tarot Trumps to the deck. So I  use that. I draw that and then I draw a Minor Arcana card. It's not like each card has a message, but what is the interaction between these two cards? What is that message?And  then also,  Brian Barritt taught John Higgs, how Tim read tarot cards and he had his own weird way of reading tarot cards.   He wrote about it in his book and I emailed him for some clarifications and then explained that in my book as well. 

 RAWILLUMINATION: John's really a great guy. He's very kind, the way he interacts with people and he seems like he's pretty busy since he's become  more of a major author, but he's always been nice to me.

FLATLEY:  Me too. I'm so grateful when people who have busy lives and are doing interesting things will take the time to talk to me. I reached out to quite a few people who knew Tim or had some expertise and a lot of people, I'm not naming names, I don't blame them, but a lot of people just, like, would not talk. I think it was like, 'I've been talking about Timothy Leary for 50 years. Leave me alone.'  But, you know,  who am I? Some guy they never heard of. But I am very grateful to the people who did talk to me. R. U. Sirius. Richard Metzger. Douglas Rushkoff.  Liz Elliott, Brian Barritt's partner. They're all in the book. I thank them all in the acknowledgments. It's been a real gift to be able to do this book and to be able to talk to so many cool people about a subject I'm so fascinated by. 

RAWILLUMINATION: I did a blog post on your Psychedelic Press interview, which I thought was quite interesting. And I  quoted a paragraph from that about the mission of the book.

You said Leary was very well educated and understood science, but his project wasn't scientific, even if it used the language of science. It was pseudoscience. "And I mean that the best possible way." Can you kinda clarify what you mean by "pseudoscience in the best possible way?"

FLATLEY: When you approach something using the scientific method, using the various tools of research in science that we've kind of developed over the years to come to theories that seem to answer some very big questions, that's science. When you take a bunch of drugs and  think and have great thoughts and write them down, even if you're a brilliant man like Leary, who is a systems thinker who's able to rigorously think through these ideas and put pen to paper and create a very fascinating world view out of it, one that holds up to scrutiny, you don't actually have proof of any of it, that's not science, it's just not. 

Tim writes very convincingly about humankind eventually not only getting off this planet, but going to the cosmic center, engaging in some sort of communion with the black hole there and becoming part of the cosmic consciousness. OK! What the hell's that? I mean, it's great, but  I don't think any of us are gonna be around to see that happen. I'm not entirely convinced that entering a black hole would be good for anybody. That's science, right? 

RAWILLUMINATION:  It seemed to be pretty clear to me that you probably read all the available Leary biographies or books about Leary that you could get your hands on. I've read some of them, but I'm probably not as up to speed as you are. Do you have a favorite Leary biography or a favorite book about Leary that you thought was especially good?

FLATLEY: You know, they all have their value. Like Robert Greenfield wrote the kinda the big standard tome that's  just called Timothy Leary: A Biography.  It's the size of a phone book. And Greenfield's one of these writers that it's like, I've read a few of his books and he doesn't seem to really like or appreciate anybody he's writing about.  And I know for a fact that Tim's family was pissed off by that book. And I understand why because you read it and  there's kind of impeccable research, but he always spins everything in the worst possible light. That was probably the most valuable book for me precisely because it had all the sources. 

But if somebody's hoping to get into Timothy Leary for the first time or just because they find him fascinating, that's probably not the best book. John Higgs' book, I Have America Surrounded, it's fast, it's fun. He's a great writer. He had some great access.

There's a journalist, John Bryan, Whatever Happened to Timothy Leary? This book came out, this is a amazing book. It came out in 1980. John Bryan was a journalist who ran an alternative press syndicate, underground press guy on the West Coast of the 70s and was like one of the big movers there. And he covered Tim in real time and he put out a book in 1980. Someone that was in there in the thick of it, it's really invaluable. But he also seemed to like misunderstand or dislike Leary. 

So they all have their virtues. I would definitely urge the reader to buy my book.  

RAWILLUMINATION: Well, it's actually quite a nice biography of Leary among its other virtues. You kind of covered the high points and kind of cover his evolution.

FLATLEY: It's easy to write something 30 years after somebody dies.  My point in delving into this was like, really,  what are the footprints? You know, what are the bread crumbs of Leary's occult interests? So when I read Flashbacks and he's recounting talking to his grandfather in the 1930s or whatever, I'm looking at that. I'm like, what's the esoteric angle? Is there an esoteric angle? And so I don't know if you would call what I wrote revisionism or just like following bread crumbs, but I strongly feel that he had an esoteric evolutionary perspective from the very beginning, even if he didn't realize it or didn't have the words for it. Because you know what 14 year old does?

RAWILLUMINATION: His explanation of how he was the reincarnation of Crowley is hilarious in your book. I love that particular anecdote.

I only have a couple more questions. I feel like I've gotten a lot out of you.  I kind of wondered if you had like an origin story, if you wanted to explain how you got interested in Leary or Wilson or the Eight  Circuit model in the first place, if there was a particular instance or a particular book that turned you on on.

FLATLEY: In 1989. I was like an eigth grader on computer bulletin board systems interacting with all these weirdos. This was like pre Internet and one of my friends was  bought Neuropolitique from Loompanics, the old underground publisher and book seller and he was like, You gotta read this. So I read the hell out of it and I was in the eighth grade. I didn't understand any of it, but I did have a sense like all the writing about the Eight Circuit model, which I don't think he even used that term, but you know about circuits and psychological,  different states of consciousness. It really resonated with me. I was like, I think this is how the world works, even at that early age. And I've always seen that is how the world works. So it's like it was either a privilege to discover that stuff  at such an early age or maybe it was a curse. I don't know. But it's been with me kind of my whole life.

RAWILLUMINATION: BBS is such a fascinating thing, kind of a really early decentralized Internet. I loved dialing into them exploring them  it's kind of a lost culture and I wonder how many people remember that anymore. 

FLATLEY:  Oh, I know At the time it seemed very annoying, but now looking back, there was so something so wonderful about all the things in our technology that made us stop and wait. Like, yeah, yeah. 

A lot of these BBS's were, it was like their home phone during the day, but you could call at night between like 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. or something. Not all of them had dedicated phone lines.   

Maybe Day celebration returns

 

Bobby Campbell, perennial Maybe Day organizer, has announced the plans for the July 23 celebration this year. As always, Bobby encourages everyone else to also have a project and/or organize an event, too.

Bobby will hold an art show for his art in Wilmington, Delaware, and he plans a 24-hour broadcast. He also invites everyone who does something to email him so he can publicize it. 

Here's what Bobby has to say:

"MAYBE DAY 2026 is our 7th annual celebration of the lives and ideas of Robert Anton Wilson and the spirit of Maybe Logic! This year we are continuing our incursion into real world spaces with a pop up bc art show (LOCAL) and adding a new twist to our maybe logical information distribution with an experimental 24 hour multimedia broadcast! (GLOBAL)

"And as always, in the spirit of Discordians sticking apart, do please feel free and encouraged to create Maybe Day happenings, whether online or offline, using your own ways and means. A decentralized and self-organizing Maybe Day would be just the thing to keep the lasagna flying onward and upward to ever greater glory.

"The idea is simple: Do something cool on July 23rd • Include other people • Enjoy the day!

"If you are planning a public event, and/or have a link/artwork you'd like to share, please feel free to send over the details, so we can feature it! Send Maybe Day celebrations to weirdoverse@gmail.com

"Also! Make sure to check out the brand new Maybe Day infinite scroll! We have accumulated an incredible bounty of novelties and curiosities over the years, a bottomless rabbit hole that cascades endlessly through idea space, mind your hats going in!" 

[See for yourself,  if you scroll down on the page, you can check out past celebrations.]

The Ginsberg centennial [UPDATED]

 

This is the music film for Bob Dylan's great song, "Subterranean Homesick Blues," from the great Bringing It All Back Home album (the one that has the cover of the young lady in red stretched out on the couch, behind Dylan). 

If you watch the video,  you probably will mostly focus on Dylan holding the cue cards, but the guy on the left, who can be seen gesturing and talking, and who walks across the scene with his cane at the end, is Allen Ginsberg, the famous poet.

As Eric Wagner has pointed out, today is Ginsberg's centennial, i.e. he was born on June 3, 1926.  

In his book Coincidance, Robert Anton Wilson writes about Ginsberg in the piece "The Poet As Defense Early Warning Radar System." RAW refers to Ginsberg as "our major living American poet."

Ginsberg has a long Wikipedia biography.  Here is the Allen Ginsberg Trust website.  You can also see the calendar of Ginsberg centennial events, one is tonight in New York City, but there's stuff all over the world. 

Ginsberg is best known for his poem "Howl," and (in the comments) Van Scott mentioned in yesterday's post reading in April Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems. 

UPDATE: Ed Sanders on Howl.  Link via Eric Wagner. 

What we read last month

 

What Mark Brown read (reads and re-reads):

The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen  5/8
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Leguin  5/10  
The Citadel of the Autarch by Gene Wolfe  5/22   
Reflections by Walter Benjamin   5/25   
The Book of Forbidden Words by Robert Anton Wilson  5/29   
Wyst: Alastor 1716 by Jack Vance 

Here's what I read (reads and re-reads)

The Infinite Mistress, D. Scott Apel
When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, Lawrence Block
Mary, Vladimir Nabokov
Ghost Town, Tom Perrotta
The Occult Timothy Leary: The Tarot, Magical States, and Post-Terrestrial Evolution, Joseph Flatley
Epicureanism, Tim O'Keefe 

As usual, everyone else is invited to report what they read in May in the comments. 

'The Classical Style' reading group, Week Two

 

Week 2: Preface to the First Edition, A New Preface, Acknowledgments, Bibliographic Note, Note on the Music Examples. 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. I laughed out loud on pg. xviii when Rosen wrote, “But we know that performers of weak moral principles did not observe all written repeats.”  

Some of you have expressed concerns about not understanding this text. I hope you will enjoy the book anyway. I don’t understand everything that Rosen writes, but I think I understand some of it, and I enjoy it immensely. It seems to me that playing the music provides the greatest tool for understanding it. I don’t play piano much anymore, and I never played that well. I feel lucky that I got to play Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven works while playing bass in student orchestras. However, I disagree with Rosen sometimes, and with other musicians who can actually play this music. We all experience the music in our own way.  

Listening to the music provides the second best way to experience and learn about this music. Hearing it live seems a wonderful tool, but listening to records or watching recordings also help us understand the music. Reading about it also helps. I remember hearing Andre Previn talk about the privilege of conducting music “that is greater than we are”. Now, spiritually, I don’t know if I fully agree with this, but I love the line from the Upanishads Bob Wilson quoted in Masks of the Illuminati, ”Remove infinity from it and infinity still remains.” I keep coming back to late Beethoven, week after week, year after year, decade after decade, and it keeps bringing new delights. 

This brings up the question of opera. Some people go to the opera regularly. James Joyce, Charles Rosen, and Stendhal went to opera regularly, and this experience seems central to understanding their works. I have not attended an opera in person since hearing Die Fledermaus in Vienna in 1985 from the highest, cheapest seats. (Or did I stand? I think I sat. Memory fails me.) Mozart’s great operas play a significant role in this book. I highly recommend Bergman’s film of The Magic Flute. Because of watching that film over and over again over the past 41 years, as well as listening to various recordings and getting to teach that film in various classes, I know that opera pretty well. In the mid-1980s I expressed my yearning to own more opera cd’s to a friend who kindly said they would pay for half of a three cd opera recording for me if I would pay the balance, so I got Solti’s recording of The Marriage of Figaro which I have listened to a ton over the decades. I feel familiar with the music of that opera, but I don’t understand the plot very well. I have started watching a YouTube recording of the opera, but I don’t have much appetite for watching opera on TV, alas. 

A Philip K. Dick prank

 The above is the back cover of a British reprint of Philip K. Dick's classic, Hugo-winning novel, The Man in the High Castle. There's an author photo on the back cover of a bearded author. Except it's not Dick -- it's Ted White, the science fiction editor, author and fan who recently died. 

White tells the story in The Amazing Editorials, a collection of the editorials White wrote while editor of Amazing, a science fiction magazine. I bought the book and began reading it after I heard of White's death.

White explains that in a 1965 visit to see Dick,  he showed Dick a photo of himself that made him look a little like Dick. Dick asked for a copy of the photo, explaining that as a joke, he wanted to send it to his agent to fulfill a request for an author photo for the British Penguin edition of High Castle. 

Both authors then forgot about the matter, but in 1966, White thought to bring it up, and Dick said that yes, the photo had been used, and he gave White a copy of the book.

There is other Dick material in White's book, including a plug for Confessions of a Crap Artist, the first publication of a mainstream Dick novel. It was published by David Hartwell, the famous science fiction editor who went on to edit some of Robert Anton Wilson's work.  (And if you follow that link, here is part two of that interview.)

Ansible Editions is the catchall name for all books published by David Langford; some are free as ebook downloads, some (like the Ted White book) cost money, at least some are available as paperbacks. The titles are worth a look if you are into fandom or science fiction. 

A 1985 article about Robert Shea

Robert Shea

[This article is copied from a reprint in Robert Shea's zine, "No Governor." If you look under "Robert Shea Resources" at the right side of this page, you will see links to PDF files of all of the issues, which have material from Shea, Robert Anton Wilson and others. If you get interested in Shea, please take a look at my Robert Shea book, if you had not heard about it yet. -- The Management.]

Robert Shea has the write stuff

The Glencoe News, Jan. 3, 1985

Reprinted in No Governor No. 7, March 1985

By VIRGINIA GERST

If Robert Shea gets bored while reading a novel, he puts down the book, and tries to figure out what  has gone wrong.

"Usually, nothing is happening in the story, or I don't like the main character because he's not taking charge the way he should," the author said recently.

For the 51-year-old Glencoe resident, literary analysis is more than an intellectual exercise. It is a means of ensuring that his own plots remain lively, that his own heroes seize control.

Since he sold his first story to Fantastic Universe magazine for $10 in 1958, Shea has earned at least a part of his living as a writer. A former editor at Playboy, he has been at it full time since 1978.

His first novel, "Illuminatus!," a three-volume science fiction tale he wrote with Robert Anton Wilson, was published in 1975, while "Shike," a historical work set in medieval Japan, appeared in 1981. Two other novels, both rooted in French history, are in various stages of completion.

All are produced in a small, cluttered office just off the kitchen of the two-story home he shares with his wife, Yvonne, a Chicago advertising agency executive, their 11-year-old son, Michael, and two family dogs.

The room is crammed with books, magazines and stacks of correspondence. A copy of "Dune" rests on a bookcase next to a volume titled "Zen," while the hum of his Apple IIe mingles with music from a cassette player on a shelf upon the wall.

"I can't say that every day I just rush to the word processor, but that's the ideal and it does happen sometime," he noted. "Other days, I have to cultivate habits."

Beginning at 9:30 a.m. today, and continuing for the following three Thursdays, Shea will help other writers cultivate professional habits when he appears as guest lecturer at the Off Campus Writers  Workshop in the Winnetka Community House, 620 Lincoln Ave. Admission to each three-hour session is $5, or $14 for the complete series.

Meetings, Shea said, will be devoted primarily to discussions of the participants' manuscripts ("Honest criticism -- I've heard they've got built-in baloney detectors," he said.)

The gregarious writer also will  spend time revealing "everything I know about magazine writing and writing historical  fiction."

In the latter category, he is sure to place a great deal of emphasis upon plot.

"Authors have got to realize that the main thing is to be a good storyteller," he said over coffee in his living room, filled with Victorian antiques and framed photographs of Shea family ancestors.

"Particularly when you're writing historical fiction, it's easy to get carried away showing off how much you know, dragging a thing in just because it is an amazing fact. But it can't get in the way of your story."

Accurate portrayal of fact is important in fiction, said the writer, who researches his novels  carefully, and plans a trip to France for his latest book, set in the Napoleonic period.

But accuracy is not always critical. Saul Bellow's "Henderson the Rain King," he pointed out, is set in an Africa that has nothing to do with the continent as it really is. "And nobody cares," he said. "It is such a wonderful piece of storytelling."

Shea takes best sellers very seriously. "They are fun to read, and that is the bottom line." And, while the long hours he has spent reading his way up and down best seller lists have not revealed any formulas for instant success, they have turned up some common characteristics among the published blockbusters.

"People are always in trouble and it is pretty bad trouble," he said. "Take 'The Thornbirds.' People suffer all the way through that."

The people, too, are crucial, particularly the hero, who had better act the part.

"Look at 'Shogun.' The main character is in a foreign land, he doesn't speak the language and everybody is hostile. In a situation like that, most people would lay down and die. But he doesn't. He is thinking all the time, about how to survive and prevail."

He has equally strong opinions about the villain.

"I want to like him as much as I like the hero," he said. "In real life, there really are no villains who set out to be villains. No one ever thinks they, themselves, are doing evil, and that is one of the truths I like to convey."

A graduate of Manhattan College, with a master of arts degree in English from Rutgers University, Shea has been reading and writing science fiction since he was a child growing up in New York City.

"I was the only kid in the neighborhood who read the stuff," he recalled.

He started selling stories, "at a penny a word," while in college, and met his "Illuminatus!" collaborator while at Playboy, where both were employed.

For their amusement, the men used to pass notes back and forth detailing the activities of the citizenry of an imaginary land of the future. One day, it occurred to them they might be on to something.

They were. The book, a combination of political satire, science fiction and fantasy, has developed what press releases call "a small, but highly intelligent cult following." Even better, when reissued as a single, very fat, volume in 1984, it earned a place on the trade paperback best seller list.

Shea planned his second novel to deal with a civil war in a faraway galaxy, but when his agent showed the five-page outline to a publisher, the publisher had other ideas.

"He said he liked the story, but that he couldn't bring out any more science fiction at that time," Shea recalled. "He said, 'How about moving it to Japan?' "

His wife recently had completed a course in Japanese  history, and Shea leafed through some of her books, coming upon an historic period that paralleled the one in his outline. The result, "Shike," (pronounced She-K), has sold well, both on this side of the Atlantic and in nine foreign countries.

He may have changed his idea to get  his story published, but he insisted he never would have done it had he not become fascinated witih feudal Japan. He counsels other writers to be equally intrigued by their subject matter.

"Many people see that romantic novels are selling, so they rush out and start writing romantic novels,"  he said. "But they're going to spend a year or maybe two or three on this work, and, if they are not interested in the subject, they are not going to be very happy."

If readers notice some elements of mysticism in his writing, it is no accident. Shea has been involved with mysticism ever since he read Ray Bradbury's "Zen and the Art of Writing," in Writer Magazine several years back. He now meditates 20 minutes a day, as a means of "getting close to whatever is out there, of trying to make contact with the ultimate reality.

"In his article, Bradbury implied that there was something about Zen that, if studied, could help people become more creative writers," he recalled. "So, like a lot of people, I got involved in mysticism thinking it would give me some practical benefit. But once you get into it, you lose that motivation. Writing becomes a way of getting closer to mysticism."

His basic goals, however, have not changed. He advises all writers to write as much as they can. Even if the work is not to be published, they should take pleasure in the process.

"I've never written for the literary critics, or to make a whole lot of money," he concluded. "I've always thought, 'Can I have fun writing this'?"

Robert Shea not only has fun, but he's managed to make a living at it as well.

An AI explains Robert Anton Wilson

 

I recently mentioned that the official Robert Anton Wilson website has obviously been updated and recommended checking it out if you haven't done so recently. 

Rasa has now sent me an AI analysis, above, of the official page. He explains,

"Ted Hand on Facebook suggested I do something with Google’s NotebookLM program, so I made this video. I basically just loaded in the URL for rawilson.com and asked Notebook to make a video…

"I’m not a fan of all AI stuff like this. Some I’ve seen was good. This one seems both interesting and weird."