Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Jeez, Steve, why didn't you just ask Don what the meaning of life is?
:)
  

    
That's was a follow-up question.
  

    
Oh sorry.  I forgot that, while interviewing a writer on the religion beat 
about drugs that are used in indigenous cultures to reveal the sacred 
behind the veil of mere appearances, I should keep my questions to, "So, 
ya think Leary was like really high when he said to 'turn on, tune in, and 
drop out'?"
  

    
I love it when someone with Don's background gets asked a question
like that, and he seems willing to elaborate.
  

    
these are great conversations, hope they continue
  

    
Hey, kids. HE'S BACK! And willing to evade any and all questions. 
  

    
1)  What might you now do differently in writing this book?

I would have spent more time fact-checking. I keep finding
embarrassing mistakes that really piss me off. (Actually, some fixes I
sent before publication were never made.) The worst one is I went brain
dead in one reference and quote Leary saying "Tune in. Turn on. Drop
out." (That mistake was passed on, unwittingly, in a NY Times
headline). Gotta "Turn on" first, obviously. That was one of a batch
that were supposed to be fixed by the second printing. Just saw the
third printing and none of my corrections have been made. I assume they
will in the paperback. They did change the dust jacket to say
"National Bestseller," so I guess I shouldn't complain...

2) I would also spend more time re-writing. I made a late decision to
to re-write the entire thing it as narrative non-fiction, meaning
present-time scenes instead of having people recalling things. I
"recreated" some dialog. Not sure that was a good idea. I could have
done a much better job, but ran out of time. I hate reading it now
because I keep finding sentences that I should have re-written. 
  

    
3)  What comes next for you?

I'm trying to resist the temptation to write a memoir about my years
covering God. I DO have a great title: 

MESSIAHS I HAVE KNOWN 

Leary is certainly one of them...

I got some funny stories about flying around on the pope's plane or
chasing sex crazed gurus (Da Free John) to private islands in Fiji. 

One problem is that I WILL have to figure out the meaning of life if I
have the balls to write a memoir. The first line will be "Writing a
memoir is a shameless act of self-indulgence, an admission that, yes,
ladies and gentleman, I DO believe that the world revolves around me." 
  

    
>I remember some drug-testing lab -- was it PharmChem, if you remember
them? -- stating that of all the thousands of samples of street
"mescaline" they'd tested over the years, *not a single one* was
authentic.  Inevitably, when I mention this, someone pipes up and says
"But I had a tab of chocolate mesc in the '70s that was real!"  When I
then point out that even pharmaceutically pure mescaline sulfate
requires
two double-oh size capsules full of fluffy white, needle-shaped
crystals 
to produce an effect, they're generally quiet after that.<
Amazingly enough, my informant's very first "experience", in Sept '71,
involved getting a large cap from a guy at the Ashby Ave Co-Op parking
lot in Berkeley (now Whole Foods), who said this was organic mescaline
(extracted from peyote, vs manufactured). Very interesting experience,
though my informant concluded later it couldn't be mescaline, as he
read that PharmChem report. In '93, he was to get 2 large caps from a
friend who knew the source and was sure this was mescaline. He took
them, and... it was very much like the experience of 22 years earlier
(and fitted with every description of the experience to the t). I guess
that in '71 he lucked upon an exception to the PharmChem rule.:-)  
  

    
I'll repeat mine from #159:

Acid was leaking out of Harvard into the inner circles of Washington?
  

    
I remember reading my dad's Popular Science and Popular Mechanics
magazines when I was a kid, and I remember there being an acid trip in
one of them, and sure enough, I tracked it down (thank you, Google).

December 1967. Wellknown geek mag decides to look into the LSD
phenomena at a late stage in the game. A "non-cop, non-hippie" report
features freelance (?) writer Robert Gannon actually dropping acid,
using Sandoz' research-strength product in a "controlled
environment"... meaning a mental hospital, with a nut-doctor by his
side. Set & setting less than optional in other words, but obviously
necessary as not to constitute a felony. The dosage of 170 micrograms
is reported as equalling much more in a "street" substance, and it
certainly is a wild ride being described. As far as acid trip reports
go, not bad at all, with some fun and touching aspects. Well worth
reading. Some background data is given. No pics. Article is 8 pp.
  

    
Back around 1970, the Chicago Seed ran a review of the new Sunshine 69 that
described the ride like a day at the track in a fine race car.  Smooth and
quick in the straightaways, hunkers down with you in the curves.

some fine inspired writing, says my informant.
  

    
"Coming this fall:  The NEW 1969 Pontiac Orange Sunshine!

This will take you on your wildest, most enjoyable trip--over and over
again!"
  

    
Wow, Robert Gannon - I'd forgotten about him.  He was sort of their
"I'll try anything" young Turk, as I recall.  Those were great years
for Popular Science.  I read them at my grandparents' house.
  

    
#185 I think some of that is covered in the book Acid Dreams.


  >fluffy white, needle-shaped crystals

With a slight bluish cast to them. Extremely distinctive crystals. Or so I 
have heard.
  

    
#159, #185 -- "Acid was leaking out of Harvard into the inner circles
of Washington?"

I get into this a bit on page 109-110 of "The Harvard Psychedelic
Club." Leary claimed that he supplied D.C. socialite Mary Pinchot Meyer
with LSD that she used to turn on JFK in the White House. Leary says
she told him after the assassination that "he was learning too much"
and that she was scared. From what I can tell, Meyer DID have an affair
with JFK, WAS given LSD by Leary and WAS the ex-wife of a
CIA-operative Cord Meyer, who knew Leary back in the 1950s. Meyer WAS
murdered in a D.C. park 11 months after the JFK assassination. Enough
to keep conspiracy theorists busy for decades. 
  

    
 
Early on, we were talking about the differences in the way Native
Americans use psychedelics. Here's an account on an experience I had
that I lifted from one of my earlier books, Following Our Bliss:
 
It was the summer of 1989 and Emerson Jackson, the president of the
Native American Church of North America, had invited me to participate
in a Saturday night peyote ritual not far from the Four Corners
Monument. Jackson had waived the church’s strict ban on outside
visitors because the U.S. Supreme Court was about to hear arguments in
a lawsuit involving two members of the Native American Church in
Oregon. They had been fired from their jobs at a drug treatment center
for participating in an all-night peyote ritual. Jackson wanted to show
my readers and me that these gatherings were not wild drug parties,
but serious religious ceremonies. I could only attend if I agreed to
take the peyote, and not to take notes. 
We met in a coffee shop in Shiprock and I followed his car as he
roared across the winding dirt roads of vast Navajo reservation. We
wound up outside a giant teepee erected earlier that day on a high
bluff in the southeast corner of Utah. It was just before sunset and
members of the tribal clan were still arriving in an assortment of  old
cars and new pick-up trucks. The ritual wouldn’t start for hours, but
the emotional, 11-hour ceremony was to be a unique, powerful experience
- a rare glimpse at the social, spiritual and psychedelic world of the
Native American Church's Half Moon Ceremony. 
These gatherings are usually held for a particular purpose - to pray
for a sick child or help a church member work through a life crisis.
Terrance Tom's family sponsored the Saturday night session to pray for
success in a new job that was taking Tom, his wife and his three young
children off the reservation and into the white man's world.
 There was only one problem. Emerson had neglected to tell Terrance
that he was bringing a reporter along with him. Some of the older
Indians were not happy with the peyote priest, and definitely not happy
to see me. They wanted to know who I was, what I was going to write,
and who was going to read it. There were a series of loud meetings,
mostly in Navajo, before Jackson finally convinced the family that the
upcoming Supreme Court case was important and people off the
reservation needed to have a better understanding of the peyote circle.
My story, he promised, would do that.
    Twenty of us sat on the ground in a circle inside the teepee. We
began the ceremony by rolling our own cigarettes in pieces of dried
corn husk, smoking the tobacco as a ritual act of purification, the way
Catholic priests use incense before Mass. Most of the night was spent
passing around a drum, gourd rattle and peyote staff while we drummed
and chanted guttural, fast-paced hymns. Periodically, a glass jar of
dried peyote was passed around the teepee, and we chased it down with
several swallows of the bitter peyote tea. 
Jackson sprinkled some water on a handful of powdered cactus and
molded the bitter potion into two balls about the size of strawberries.
"This is a sacrament," he said, handing the psychedelic mixture to
Tom.
 Everyone inside the teepee had already ingested two or three
tablespoons of dried peyote. Sometime after midnight, the Navajos'
peyote fans - kaleidoscopes of bright feathers and intricate beadwork -
took on a pulsing luminescence. American Indian chants, the gourd
rattles and the drum carried the congregation off to another reality.
Chief Peyote, the psychedelic cactus button that inspires these ancient
rites, was working its magic. 
Speaking a mixture of Navajo and English, Tom humbly confessed his
fears and insecurities about the coming move to Albuquerque. Tears
rolled down his checks and welled up in the eyes of friends and family
as they responded with encouragement and stream-of-consciousness
prayers of support. Tom's wife and three young children were there
throughout the night. Even the children, who slept on colorful Navajo
rugs through most of the ceremony, took small amounts of peyote.
Intense waves of emotion and empathy thunder through the teepee,
forging a powerful unity of twenty souls. 
Few foods on Earth taste as bad as peyote, which can easily turn the
stomach. You don’t leave the teepee to vomit. You do it right there
where you are sitting, in the dirt, and someone comes around and cleans
it up. I managed to keep the bitter mixture down, but still wanted get
out of the teepee. My mind was racing. I was torn between just letting
the peyote sweep me away and holding onto my reporter’s mind to
remember everything that was going on. Was I here for them, or for me?
Meanwhile, I was getting hostile looks from some of the old Indian
women, the ones who didn’t want me there. They would lower their peyote
fans and stare into my eyes with terrifying power.
Feeling claustrophobic, and a bit paranoid, I got up and left the
teepee. You were allowed to leave the sacred enclosure only briefly, to
urinate, but I once I got out into the night  I could not return. It
seemed impossible to leave the revelatory scene that awaited me
outside.  The stars were so brilliant and alive that they didn’t seem
to be above me, but surrounding me. Looking out from the bluff, I saw
another five or six other teepees glowing in the night across the vast
reservation. There was a kind of magnetic power pulling me into the
earth, so I laid down on the ground, flat on my back and just melted
into the dirt, staring up into the magnificent night. I don’t know if I
laid there for a minute or an hour until the face of one of the
younger Indian men suddenly popped into my field of vision. “You must
come back,” he said, turning toward the teepee. I didn’t want to go. I
felt so much more at peace outside the teepee and by myself. But this
was not for me. I was there to tell someone else’s story.
Back inside, I took my place and watched the Fire Man tend a small
fire in the middle of the teepee. There was an altar behind the fire -
a three-inch-high sand sculpture in the shape of a long crescent. Chief
Peyote - the bulbous cactus flower - sat atop the crescent of sand,
watching us all. With amazing artistry, the Fire Man sculpted embers
and ash into the glowing image of an eagle in flight. In the early
morning hours, as the peyote priest blew on a whistle made from the
bone of an eagle's wing, the eagle rose from the swept red dirt floor
and flew out the top of the teepee. Amazed by that vision,  I looked
back down into the faces of the Navajo. One of the old women, one of
the hostile ones with a dark and wrinkled face, sent me out a small
smile, like she’d seen the same thing.
In the end,  I understood why the family was hesitant about having an
outsider inside their teepee. This was not just a religious service. It
was also a session of family therapy conducted on psychedelic drugs.
It was Thanksgiving dinner, a drug party, a religious ritual and a
visit to the family therapist all rolled into one. 
 Back in San Francisco, I talked about the experience with Ralph
Metzner, who teaches at the California Institute for Integral Studies.
A veteran researcher of the psychedelic experience, Metzner was at
Harvard back in the early sixties with Timothy Leary and Richard
Alpert. He nodded knowingly when I told him what happened with the
Navajo.
“Native Americans regard the peyote ceremony as religious, medicinal
and psychotherapeutic. It's an integrated, holistic approach, and a
genuine religious experience,” he said. “The white man goes to church
and hears about God. The Indians go to the peyote circle and talk to
God.”   
  

    
Wow! What a terrific story, thanks so much, Don!!!
  

    
That was a fabulous story, thank you!


Just found in other parts of The WeLL.....Jerry Garcia interview where he
goes into more detail about pstchedelics.

http://www.relix.com/features/2010/04/20/q-a-with-jerry-garcia-portrait-of-an
-artist-as-a-tripper


Or the tiny url

http://tinyurl.com/y3d3xgr
  

    


>>>pstchedelics


Oops!   I guess that's eating  pistachios  while tripping!
  

    
Thanks for that link to the Jerry Garcia interview. Wish I had seen
that before. I mention Garcia's impressions of the Acid Tests in a
scene in the book, but based it on some of his comments in a film about
those happenings. That interview account is much more vivid. I keep
coming across great new source material. Maybe HarperCollins will let
me do some major revisions for the paperback. 
  

    
That would be excellent. I thought it interesting that the interviewer did 
all sorts of interviews for an upcoming (as yet unpublished) book about 
LSD!
  

    
Does anyone have any further questions for Don before we wind up?  This 
has been wonderful.
  

    
Yes, Thank you Don very much! I am enjoying the FB stuff too.
  

    
Thank you, Don!