Speaker 1: Something's going to happen. What's going to happen?
Speaker 2: I welcome to the Occult Rejects.
Speaker 3: This episode, we got a very very special guest, somebody
Speaker 3: that we're all excited about getting on. But before we
Speaker 3: introduce him, going to introduce the other rejects of joining us.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: First, we're going to start off.
Speaker 3: We've got the lovely Lisa could reject MADA scientists joining
Speaker 3: us today.
Speaker 2: How are you, Lisa? What is going on?
Speaker 1: I'm good?
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me on. I'm very very excited
Speaker 4: to talk to Gary today. I've read through a little
Speaker 4: bit of his excerpts and stuff like that. I've also
Speaker 4: watched some of his interviews that he's out over the years,
Speaker 4: So very excited to kind of hear what he has
Speaker 4: to say, you know, be in the discussion. So thank
Speaker 4: you for having me on with the fellow rechecks. And
Speaker 4: the only thing I'd like to plug is the whole
Speaker 4: Research Institute dot org check us out.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Thank you very much and I appreciate you making
Speaker 2: and we got Jin the Ninja. What is going on? Sir?
Speaker 5: Hey boss, thank you so much for inviting me on.
Speaker 5: I'm really excited for this. I listened to as you know,
Speaker 5: preparatory episode with Gary on the Mage as the Mage
Speaker 5: of the podcast, which was really fascinating and incredible interview.
Speaker 5: I've got also questions for him, obviously I'll save some
Speaker 5: of them, but so if you want to follow me,
Speaker 5: you can on Twitter at woucong Reborn, w uk O
Speaker 5: and g Reborn or.
Speaker 1: The show at Threshold Saints.
Speaker 5: Also for ig at Threshold Saints and for The Gray Lodge,
Speaker 5: which is the show that I co host with four
Speaker 5: other three other boys on Friday nights. You can follow
Speaker 5: us at The True Gray Lodge with a V not
Speaker 5: a you, the True Late Gray Lodge dot com, as
Speaker 5: well as our YouTube channel, The Great Lodge. So thank
Speaker 5: you guys so much and I'm really excited.
Speaker 3: Awesome, thank you very much for making it. And we
Speaker 3: got Robbie Marks himself. What is going on, sir?
Speaker 2: How are you? Oh? It might be.
Speaker 6: Muted, Yeah, basically, I've just been working on a piece
Speaker 6: of art all day for a local event. In regard
Speaker 6: to the whole rock and roll thing, Gary, I'm a
Speaker 6: big fan of you know, traditional everything. Leading up I
Speaker 6: do a lot of concert and festival posters for various
Speaker 6: bands and also you know, miscellaneous mom and pop shops.
Speaker 6: If anybody wants to check out my other stuff, you
Speaker 6: can go to my link tree which is r M
Speaker 6: A r X and that'll pull up all my links
Speaker 6: as far as my artwork, my podcast, The metamind Cast,
Speaker 6: and very much like you, I was very enthusiastic about
Speaker 6: this stuff, and as time has progressed, I've become much
Speaker 6: more interested in the historical aspect and the arcs and
Speaker 6: all the different things associated with it, as it's kind of,
Speaker 6: you know, fractalized through the whole. But yeah, thanks for
Speaker 6: having me on, Nick, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Of course, of course.
Speaker 3: And finally the guest himself again, we have a very
Speaker 3: special guest, Gary Lackman, who was an American writer and
Speaker 3: a musician. He was Blondie's original bassist and songwriter who
Speaker 3: went by Gary Valentine. We are having him on today
Speaker 3: to talk about a book that will be coming out
Speaker 3: called Touched by Presence From Blondie's Bowery and Rock and Roll.
Speaker 2: To Magic in the Occult.
Speaker 3: But I will say I highly suggest to go check
Speaker 3: out some of the stuff he's already done, already in
Speaker 3: a written form. He has a Dark Star Rising, which
Speaker 3: I think our listeners might be interested in because you know,
Speaker 3: I always loved showing Trump and the occult, so I
Speaker 3: think you guys would be very entertained by that. And
Speaker 3: he has done stuff on Crowley and you know, you
Speaker 3: guys talk about Crole and I talk about the Lima,
Speaker 3: So go check that out. But enough out of me, Gary,
Speaker 3: please introduce yourself and let everybody know what your deal
Speaker 3: is and plug anything that you'd like to plug.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, Hi, I'm Gary Lachman. I'm a Yank
Speaker 1: living in London. I've been living here for nearly thirty
Speaker 1: years now. And actually the book that Nick mentioned touched
Speaker 1: by the presence, It ends with my leaving Los Angeles
Speaker 1: at the end of nineteen ninety five and getting on
Speaker 1: a plane to arrive here in London in the beginning
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety six. In my second or third fourth
Speaker 1: kind of career. There was like two careers I started.
Speaker 1: I was in Musician Asians Ago, I played in Blondie
Speaker 1: and I had my own band for a while, and
Speaker 1: then I played with Icky Pop and all those people
Speaker 1: turn out in the book turned up in the book
Speaker 1: I'm plugging. This is what I'm plugging, and plugging in
Speaker 1: the books. I'm doing that right now. They're all in there,
Speaker 1: a bunch of other folk. But also I transitioned, as
Speaker 1: people say, from while I was playing rock to getting
Speaker 1: interested in magic and the occult and Crowley and all
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Yes, and I did write book
Speaker 1: about Crowley many years later. It's Alista Crowley, Magic, Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll in the what is it? The Wickedest Man
Speaker 1: in the World, And that came out about ten years ago.
Speaker 1: So but I've written quite a few other books as well.
Speaker 1: We'll get onto that. So, yeah, this is fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't been on this program before, so let's go
Speaker 1: for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I guess does anybody have a question before
Speaker 3: I start getting into it?
Speaker 5: O quick, I'll ask my question if you don't mind, neck,
Speaker 5: just because I think it starts a little bit before
Speaker 5: Gary starts his autobiography, is that I'm really fascinated, as
Speaker 5: Robbie mentioned, I'm also fascinated by the history of modern
Speaker 5: American magic and sort of its nexus points. And I
Speaker 5: think Gilbert's in LA was one of those places. And
Speaker 5: it's a place that you touched on in the in
Speaker 5: the aforementioned interview, And I'm just wondering if you could
Speaker 5: explain to people who are maybe unfamiliar with that history
Speaker 5: and like how important those kinds of places were in
Speaker 5: the Los Angeles scene.
Speaker 1: I think I would be interested to hear, and I
Speaker 1: think everyone else would also. Well. Gilberts was a great
Speaker 1: old bookshop on Holleyoo Boulevard east of Vine And I
Speaker 1: first found out about it probably the summer of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven or something like that, or late summer or
Speaker 1: early fall. I had moved out to LA with my
Speaker 1: girlfriend at the time, Lisa Jane Persky, who was an
Speaker 1: actress and photographer and writer. She was on the scene
Speaker 1: as well, and by this point had become quite interested
Speaker 1: in Crowley and Gilberts was one of these great places.
Speaker 1: It wasn't completely or solely a cult bookshop, but it
Speaker 1: had a very hefty collection and people like Kenneth Anger,
Speaker 1: you know, the avant garde Curley filmmaker, and he used
Speaker 1: to go there, and David Bowie went there, and Jimmy Page,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if it's that bookshop. There was
Speaker 1: another one I think was called Cherokee on Hollywood Boulevard
Speaker 1: that the guy who ran it have a story of
Speaker 1: and the anger, you know, stiffing him on a check
Speaker 1: or something like that for some you know, rare addition
Speaker 1: of some Croley item. But it was at that time
Speaker 1: in when I lived there then, so it would have
Speaker 1: been seventy seven to about eighty, and I was going
Speaker 1: back and forth between LA and New York. It's my
Speaker 1: own band, the No And yeah, there was just so
Speaker 1: many good bookshops there and Gilberts was one of them.
Speaker 1: And in my own experience, I used to go there
Speaker 1: quite a bit and one time and I this is
Speaker 1: how I got involved with this Crole group. Back then,
Speaker 1: it was the OTO, I mean, but they book This
Speaker 1: is well before the Internet, well before anything that we
Speaker 1: take for granted these days. But they had a physical
Speaker 1: bulletin board and there were people putting notices up on
Speaker 1: and I saw a notice for a Croley group something
Speaker 1: like that. So I thought, okay, well, I've been reading
Speaker 1: about this stuff for the past couple of years. I
Speaker 1: first got interested in nineteen seventy five in New York,
Speaker 1: living on the Bowery with Christein and Debbie Harry. I
Speaker 1: mentioned this crazy gay biker artist who was totally into
Speaker 1: Crowley but also into the Hill's Angels and all of
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And he used to do these
Speaker 1: impromptu tarot readings with the Crawley staff Taro deck, and
Speaker 1: he did these paintings based on the figures I modeled
Speaker 1: for one of them. I don't know whatever happened to it.
Speaker 1: And that's how I got interested and all this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. So I had been reading about it for
Speaker 1: a couple of years and I thought, Okay, let's see
Speaker 1: what happens. So I just answered them, and a couple
Speaker 1: of days later, there's a knock at my door and
Speaker 1: this very unprepossessing guy is standing out there and he's
Speaker 1: asking me if I'm ready to devote myself to achieving
Speaker 1: the knowledge and conversation of my holy Guardian Angel. And
Speaker 1: I had to think about that for a second, you know,
Speaker 1: because I was like standing outside Jehovah's witches. Well, this
Speaker 1: is exactly how I refer to it in the book.
Speaker 1: It says if somebody at Jehovah's witness said, are you ready?
Speaker 1: And I always wonder why do they want people to join?
Speaker 1: Because there's there's a certain number of them. I forget
Speaker 1: how many it is, there's an exact number it's going
Speaker 1: to be saying, so if you keep people joined, I know,
Speaker 1: people die, Okay, fine, but somebody's got to get pushed
Speaker 1: off the bench, right if they keep they keep kind
Speaker 1: of joining new people somebody, what do you keep? You know?
Speaker 1: So I know, I never knew why they kept.
Speaker 2: You know, we have two hundred thousand members that aren't
Speaker 2: being saved. What do we do? Oh?
Speaker 1: There there there you go. Well, I guess any case,
Speaker 1: So I thought, okay, let me think about this, and
Speaker 1: I said, well, you know, never the armchair magician. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go for it. So I I said, sure, why not?
Speaker 1: And then I signed. I still have the document somewhere
Speaker 1: among my files. And I took a magical name, which
Speaker 1: is Amorphati and a more Fati is Latin for love
Speaker 1: of fate. And that was actually the title of one
Speaker 1: of the songs I did in my band, the No
Speaker 1: and the band was called the No ken O W
Speaker 1: because my interest in narcissism and nosis and that kind
Speaker 1: of a you know, a cult knowledge or you know,
Speaker 1: immediate kind of direct knowledge, not not episteme, not not
Speaker 1: knowledge through the left brain as it were. And you know,
Speaker 1: so I just went for it and h got the robe,
Speaker 1: started doing practicing different you know I had already read
Speaker 1: magic and Theory and Practice on the Bowery amazing, and
Speaker 1: a bunch of other crowly stuff I'm rambling on. That's
Speaker 1: just somebody should answer.
Speaker 3: All right, well, since you brought up I guess like
Speaker 3: the robe and stuff. I mean I would assume, like,
Speaker 3: what was your all right when I used to practice
Speaker 3: my every day like I guess magical regimen, you know,
Speaker 3: I would get up and meditate, maybe sometimes do the
Speaker 3: l B r P, maybe even do the lesser banishing
Speaker 3: ritual of the Hextagram if I felt like it, and
Speaker 3: stuff like was that part of your like daily.
Speaker 1: Normal banishing virtually? I mean, no one thing drove but
Speaker 1: my girl from Lisa's crazy because you know, the adorations
Speaker 1: during the day.
Speaker 2: So the dawn oh rash, yeah, yeah, rash.
Speaker 1: Sunset at midnight, so all that stuff. It was like
Speaker 1: the I think the noon was the difficult one because
Speaker 1: we'd be out having breakfast. Oh okay, I'll breck back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I gotta go pray to I got to do this.
Speaker 1: And she's looking at me Jesus Christ. But okay, but
Speaker 1: you know that was that was tough. And the civet,
Speaker 1: you know, the Albert maline oil. At least that's what
Speaker 1: they told me.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: It was this civot was and it was like it burned,
Speaker 1: you know, you put it on. But all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. And that's you know that I had had
Speaker 1: the you know, the robe da Matria I picked, which
Speaker 1: you know, uh, divindatory practice I wanted to and that
Speaker 1: was in keeping with my Capricorn sign of the Earth,
Speaker 1: and apparently Curly at one point preferred it and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, and yeah, I did you know,
Speaker 1: the you know, the various different at the various.
Speaker 2: If you want to use them, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So I was, I was doing that and then it
Speaker 1: was kind of like weekly meetings. But the the thing
Speaker 1: that one thing that side, well two things put me off.
Speaker 1: And one of the guy that I got involved with it,
Speaker 1: he turned out to be a little you know, Curly himself,
Speaker 1: and he was, you know, kind of a nasty character.
Speaker 1: And I in an earlier memoir, New York Rocker, which
Speaker 1: I wrote about little more than twenty a bit more
Speaker 1: than twenty years ago, which is that's all the rock
Speaker 1: and roll stuff. This new one coming out in no
Speaker 1: memorical touch by the presence, and the title is a
Speaker 1: reference to a blondie soul and called called them always
Speaker 1: Touched by Your Presence Dear, which was a big hit
Speaker 1: in the UK and Europe, not in the States, but
Speaker 1: top ten UK Europe. It's in nineteen seventy eight, Long
Speaker 1: time ago, kids, but it's a song about the telepathic
Speaker 1: experiences and shared dream experiences Lisa and I were having
Speaker 1: at the time. So that was my first foray into
Speaker 1: any of this sort of stuff because I was living
Speaker 1: on the Bowery with Christen Derby, reading Proley, hanging out
Speaker 1: with this guy Benton, who's a remarkable character, and talking
Speaker 1: about magic and all this kind of stuff, and then
Speaker 1: I started having we started having these experiences and so
Speaker 1: on and so and so I wrote that song. So
Speaker 1: that's the reference to that. That's where the title of
Speaker 1: the book comes from. But in this earlier memoir, New
Speaker 1: York Rocker, it's all just the rock and roll stuff,
Speaker 1: and I go into detail about this character in La
Speaker 1: but he you know, he just turned out to be
Speaker 1: a little bad. That was the bad kind to do
Speaker 1: what you liked kind rather than to do without wilt kind,
Speaker 1: if you know what I mean. In any case, but
Speaker 1: I mean that was how so I just did that,
Speaker 1: and I got into it and all that kind of
Speaker 1: thing in practice. But after a while it became clear
Speaker 1: that this guy was kind of a free loader. And
Speaker 1: then after a while I just got Crowley. Is all
Speaker 1: roads lead to Crowley? I mean, so I just started
Speaker 1: to feel sort of claustrophobic about it because it seemed
Speaker 1: to be you know, and I became more I said,
Speaker 1: I started out interested in nineteen. By the time I'm
Speaker 1: in la I'm about twenty two. The book that really
Speaker 1: got me into what I'm doing now is a book
Speaker 1: by the British writer Colin Wilson, and it's just called
Speaker 1: The Occult, and it came out in seventy one. I
Speaker 1: read it in seventy five. I borrowed Tommy Ramone's copy
Speaker 1: The Drummer and then manager of the Ramones his cop
Speaker 1: I borrowed it. I mentioned that and the book I
Speaker 1: wrote about Crowley, and I say in that book that
Speaker 1: other Ramones, he's original Ramones. He was the only one
Speaker 1: who's still a lot And sadly he passed away after
Speaker 1: the after the book came out, it would have been
Speaker 1: about twenty fifteen, about ten years ago. But yeah, in
Speaker 1: that book, I go into like all the But that
Speaker 1: was the thing with Croley. I just got kind of
Speaker 1: the old roads led to him, and I became more
Speaker 1: interested in basically consciousness, you know, And I was more
Speaker 1: interested in the effects. I never got into wanting to
Speaker 1: contact you know, some you know, interdimensional being and talk
Speaker 1: to them, And I thought, why would they know anything
Speaker 1: more than I do? No, I just wondered, why would
Speaker 1: they know anything more than I? For their perspective, I'm
Speaker 1: an interdimensional being, I'm from some other play as well,
Speaker 1: maybe I know things la. So I was more interested
Speaker 1: in finding out about consciousness. And this is this is
Speaker 1: from reading Colin Wilson because at the time and I
Speaker 1: first read him, I didn't know that he had a
Speaker 1: previous career writing about existentialism, phenomenology and all this sort
Speaker 1: of thing. So we had this whole approach to the
Speaker 1: It wasn't the magic, let's wear the capes and do
Speaker 1: all the weird stuff, like, well, what's actually going on
Speaker 1: in consciousness? What are the potentials of consciousness? What does
Speaker 1: this tell us about that? And it was through reading
Speaker 1: that book that that took me on the beginning of
Speaker 1: that so it broke, you know, drifted away from Crowley
Speaker 1: because it just became kind of I just outgrew it
Speaker 1: and then I got interested in other things.
Speaker 2: Nice. Uh, something I did want to ask you.
Speaker 3: I hate to go back while It's just I don't
Speaker 3: have people on the show too often that actually admit
Speaker 3: to like being a thom might of practicing that stuff.
Speaker 3: So I just want to like nerd out a little
Speaker 3: bit and ask you some more stuff about that. You know,
Speaker 3: most people have on our and have.
Speaker 1: To remember this is nineteen seventy eight, so it's a
Speaker 1: while ago.
Speaker 3: No, you had mentioned something about a areta were you
Speaker 3: were you getting out instead of saying arita, you can
Speaker 3: actually say the letters like each.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean the reason that that just popped into my.
Speaker 2: Head, okay, right, because there was a different way.
Speaker 1: I mean, I did all the visualization sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and you know, we see the pentagram and all of
Speaker 1: that and when you you know, you know, and in
Speaker 1: the center stands the sixth rade star. I mean, I
Speaker 1: did all that sort of thing. But the one thing
Speaker 1: I should mention about getting involved with the OTO at
Speaker 1: that time. So I think Grady McMurtry initiated me. So
Speaker 1: I think he was at this initiation because he would
Speaker 1: have still been around it was I don't know for sure,
Speaker 1: and I'm never been in touch with anybody ever again,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to be. But I wondered because
Speaker 1: he this was seventy eight, he was still around. He
Speaker 1: had started it up again in the seventies. And what
Speaker 1: I remember it and I write about it in the book,
Speaker 1: is it took place. It's been in Orange County, somewhere
Speaker 1: outside of LA That's what I remember. And it must
Speaker 1: have been near I don't know. It must have been
Speaker 1: near a marino some kind. And it was around Christmas
Speaker 1: time because I remember boats going by. I could see
Speaker 1: out the window, boats going by, you know, little you know, uh,
Speaker 1: with lights on them saying for last Navi DoD. So
Speaker 1: I'm I have this memory of that happening, and I'm
Speaker 1: in this kind of tent where this probablistic ritual Crowley
Speaker 1: cablistic ritual. I forget exactly. There was a kind of
Speaker 1: tent that was put they had put up in the
Speaker 1: living room, so it looked like you know, Midnight on
Speaker 1: the Oasis or something like that. Oh, and and you're
Speaker 1: you're that's what I mean. I kind of like not
Speaker 1: not not like you know, a tent growing camping.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, The reason why, the reason why I'm saying.
Speaker 1: More something oriental or out in the desert kind of
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And this was like a sacred space.
Speaker 1: I guess where the initiation took place.
Speaker 2: Reason I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I was asked a few questions and it was I
Speaker 1: was actually, now what I think about. It reminded me
Speaker 1: when I grew up Catholic. It reminded me of like
Speaker 1: making my confirmation, because I remember, like the bishop asked
Speaker 1: me a question, Oh I had the answers to and
Speaker 1: so at this thing, they asked me some questions about
Speaker 1: cobble lot and I'm a diligent study and I you know,
Speaker 1: and somebody said, oh, he knows his stuff or something
Speaker 1: like that. So I thought, oh, gee, any case. And
Speaker 1: then the other thing I remember is that a kitten
Speaker 1: died that night and somehow and someone had said, ah,
Speaker 1: you know, one life ends as a another begins or
Speaker 1: something like that. That I mean that that that that
Speaker 1: that happened, and then I was in it and then
Speaker 1: sorted of doing the thing. And the other thing I
Speaker 1: remember is attending a Gnostic mass and uh in ingesting
Speaker 1: a communion wafer that had been spiked with menstrual blood.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well all the my uh Lisa asked me
Speaker 1: whose blood it was, and I said I did. But
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I'm I'm making light of it now,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean in any way to detegrate or
Speaker 1: you know, suspersions on or diminished you know, people that
Speaker 1: are into this and do this and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. But I I I have a kind of
Speaker 1: you know, fond but sort of Okay, I did that
Speaker 1: and time to move on, you know, memory of it.
Speaker 3: I know, I was just h yeah, I was just
Speaker 3: wondering about somebody. Did you some of your experience. Did
Speaker 3: you ever get into like the star Ruby at all?
Speaker 3: Was that like a ritual?
Speaker 1: That? This is ages Ago? I mean I I what
Speaker 1: I mostly did was read the books. I practice some
Speaker 1: rituals on my own. I remember fasting for a few
Speaker 1: days and strange life like that. But I specific kinds
Speaker 1: of things I can't say, you know right now remembering that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean again it's ages Ago.
Speaker 3: I thought it was interesting you said the tent and
Speaker 3: what I was trying to get at in av there's
Speaker 3: a tent in the room anyway, so I'm wondering if
Speaker 3: that's what you were talking about. There's a big tent
Speaker 3: in where you're taking the initiat, so I think maybe
Speaker 3: that's a tent you were talking about.
Speaker 1: So it's something something that I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks yeah, it's not like what you're saying now.
Speaker 1: I mean it came back to me I was writing
Speaker 1: about it. So, but I do. The thing that I
Speaker 1: think is funny is the felice I be Dodd going by,
Speaker 1: you know, I just remember, like that's a strong memory,
Speaker 1: Like I'm being initiated into this weird magical cult claims
Speaker 1: to go back to the you know, the Templars, but
Speaker 1: you know who doesn't you know.
Speaker 2: That the Rosa Cristians is always a good one to claim.
Speaker 1: And there you go.
Speaker 2: All right, does anybody else have questions?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was going to bring it. I've been into
Speaker 6: I was just talking with Nick about in regard to
Speaker 6: working to remember my dreams, and I have a dream journal,
Speaker 6: and you're talking about the shared dreams now I've had
Speaker 6: with my brother. We had some shared dreams at one
Speaker 6: point in my youth. And then I've also had cases
Speaker 6: where I've had like etheric entities coming and have teachings
Speaker 6: for me while I'm sleeping. Have you like I'm interested
Speaker 6: more in these these shared dreams that you're speaking of.
Speaker 6: If you're willing to open up about that.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean no, I wrote a song about it.
Speaker 1: It was a big hit and it paid my rent
Speaker 1: for quite a few years. But no, again, I don't
Speaker 1: remember exactly again that this this was. Let's see, I
Speaker 1: would have written the song in nineteen seventy seven and
Speaker 1: it was premiered in the UK tour because what had
Speaker 1: happened is the first Blondie North American tour. We would
Speaker 1: support act for Iggy Pop, and David Bowie was his
Speaker 1: keyboard player, but incognito. He wasn't announced, And this was
Speaker 1: well before well my phone was the internet, so it
Speaker 1: was actually, wow, man, did you hear the actual old
Speaker 1: fashion grapevine whatever? Nice? Yeah, yeah, it's Bowie. It's Bowie, man,
Speaker 1: it's Boie. Okay and okay. So and on this tour,
Speaker 1: whenever I wanted to call Lisa, she wanted to call me.
Speaker 1: We were at the phone. Each of us are at
Speaker 1: the phone, right, So had I called her and she
Speaker 1: picked it up, it would have been busy, yeah, because
Speaker 1: she was trying to call me, so that that happened.
Speaker 1: And again this is long before, so you had to
Speaker 1: be back before we were constrained by time and space.
Speaker 1: You had to be at a certain place at a
Speaker 1: certain time in order to do that. This is one
Speaker 1: of the things that we take for granted. But to me,
Speaker 1: this says something about our reality now we're not so
Speaker 1: constrained by time and space anymore. And just parenthetically, this
Speaker 1: was something that the Swiss German philosopher Jehan Gebster said
Speaker 1: was indicative of our time now, that our relationship with
Speaker 1: time would be radically different. And it is not in
Speaker 1: some weird, you know, Terrence McKenna's singularity kind of way,
Speaker 1: but in ordinary, stupid, boring ways, but in the sense
Speaker 1: like my kids, what you had to be weird what
Speaker 1: to get it and to watch something on television, So
Speaker 1: any case, parathetically, so nineteen seventy seven, I'm in Chicago,
Speaker 1: leases in wherever or someplace, and we were calling each
Speaker 1: other at the same time and then talking to each
Speaker 1: other where we realized we have similar dreams. So that's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's vague like that. I don't remember the
Speaker 1: exact dreams, but that was like the beginning. And then
Speaker 1: subsequent to that, I read a book called An Experiment
Speaker 1: with Time by a fellow co J. W. Dunn, who
Speaker 1: was an aeronautics engineer, and he was written in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties and he had discovered just by accident that
Speaker 1: he had dreamt bits and pieces of his own future
Speaker 1: ahead of time. And I read this is again. But
Speaker 1: I was in New York musician and I was indiscriminately
Speaker 1: reading all this stuff about the paranormal and magic and
Speaker 1: everything like that, and so I thought, Okay, I'll just
Speaker 1: start writing down my dream. So I did, and then
Speaker 1: boom it happened, right, And I've written a book about it.
Speaker 1: I wrote a book about this during the first COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen lockdown here in London in twenty twenty. It's called
Speaker 1: dreaming ahead of Time Experiences with precognitive dreams, Synchronicities and coincidence.
Speaker 1: And I just have been recording precognitive dreams since then,
Speaker 1: so forty plus years years. Wow. Yeah, And so it's
Speaker 1: like that and then very very powerful, kind of vivid,
Speaker 1: lucid dreams and things. But I haven't had any entities
Speaker 1: kind of thing. The one time I felt that I
Speaker 1: had some kind of thing like that was I was
Speaker 1: actually during a fever, and I remember feeling something was
Speaker 1: on my back and I had been reading about you know,
Speaker 1: the incubus or yeah, and I kind of said, look,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm interested in all this stuff, but my
Speaker 1: life's complicated already. I I don't really need this, and
Speaker 1: please can you guys go please go away? And it
Speaker 1: kind of did. So I was in a fever. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it could have been a weird, but I
Speaker 1: In that book, I also talk about hypnagogia, which is
Speaker 1: you know, very strange in between state, the limital state,
Speaker 1: and also sleep paralysis, which not so much in recent years,
Speaker 1: but I used to be quite prone to that, and
Speaker 1: that that's related to you know, abduction experiences and things
Speaker 1: of that sort. So I'm not I'm not reducing it
Speaker 1: to that, but I know that's related to and so
Speaker 1: that's kind of the area BIB. But I I've not
Speaker 1: had any kind of powerful dreams where I felt like
Speaker 1: there's an intelligence there it's more than mine. And that's
Speaker 1: how I feel about the synchronicities I've had like that.
Speaker 1: So I think there's a gradient, you know, there's the
Speaker 1: intelligence that I come encounter in my dreams, and then
Speaker 1: the ones that somehow arrange these synchronicities. It's the same,
Speaker 1: I would say, and the one again we're rambling on.
Speaker 1: But the other thing is like, you know the eaching.
Speaker 1: I've been using the EA ching for since nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: and if you know number four Mang beautiful folly, that's
Speaker 1: the one you get if you ask the same question twice.
Speaker 1: So how does a book I bought a secondhand bookshop
Speaker 1: in Santum Barbara in nineteen seventy eight, and these Chinese
Speaker 1: coins I got in Chinatown in Jula sometime, how does
Speaker 1: it know? I'm asking the same question twice because it says,
Speaker 1: you know, the first time you asked the oracle, it's okay,
Speaker 1: But if you importune a second time, it's basically you know,
Speaker 1: you got.
Speaker 6: Some strange time space algorithm that some sort of way
Speaker 6: precipitates into this well. And as far as that hit
Speaker 6: in the gogic state, in between waking and sleeping, I
Speaker 6: was reading the Spanish monks used to sit with a key,
Speaker 6: and as soon as they would drop off, that dropped
Speaker 6: the key, and that would wait so that they could
Speaker 6: have this etheric state where it would be prone to
Speaker 6: bring the visions you know.
Speaker 1: Well also, yeah, I mean there's a story about it
Speaker 1: was that Thomas Edison, the scientist or the inventor. He
Speaker 1: used to keep bull bearings in his hand and lean
Speaker 1: back in the chair and he would have a metal
Speaker 1: kind of plate below. He would drift off and then
Speaker 1: bang it would wake him up, and then the light
Speaker 1: bulb as it were. Yeah, yeah, I mean, oh, there's
Speaker 1: a whole you no, I mean that that's no, it's
Speaker 1: a remarkable I mean, and we go through it every day.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a hypnagogic when you go into sleep,
Speaker 1: and then if you want to split hairs, its hipping
Speaker 1: the pompic when you're coming back up. And if you
Speaker 1: want to explore this area, I suggest you concentrate on
Speaker 1: waking up a bit earlier in the day rather than
Speaker 1: trying to catch it as you fall asleep, because if
Speaker 1: you do that you usually initially just wind up with
Speaker 1: the bad night's sleep after you you know, you have
Speaker 1: to you have to work a lot to master it.
Speaker 1: But if you do the other one in the morning,
Speaker 1: if you can arrange to wake up a little earlier
Speaker 1: and then drift back. That's how those that's when I
Speaker 1: most I have the most sort of vivid and dreams
Speaker 1: that I remember the most is when I do that.
Speaker 1: So I generally wake up.
Speaker 6: Early then and then something that have a second second
Speaker 6: momentary sleep. Yeah, I found that as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, Carrie.
Speaker 4: Was this when you were having these dreams with Lisa,
Speaker 4: which is weird because my.
Speaker 1: Name is Lisa.
Speaker 4: That were you doing rush at the time? And I'm
Speaker 4: not trying to promote rush?
Speaker 1: Well what? Sorry?
Speaker 4: Sorry that when you were having these dreams with Lisa,
Speaker 4: were you also practicing rush?
Speaker 1: Practicing rush or leave rush rush? What?
Speaker 2: That was a prayer that you mentioned before you did
Speaker 2: four times a day?
Speaker 1: Oh you mean the oh, the adorations kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Yes, well I would have uh no, no,
Speaker 1: that was earlier. That was early that, I'm sorry, that
Speaker 1: was all. I was still living in New York, so
Speaker 1: I I I hadn't I hadn't joined, you know, and
Speaker 1: doing the thing. We just discovered that this was but
Speaker 1: I mean, she she she was interested in this stuff,
Speaker 1: and then because I was interested in it, you know,
Speaker 1: we were both reading this kind of thing. So and
Speaker 1: we were young and in love, which is one of
Speaker 1: the things that well, being in love. Being young helps too,
Speaker 1: I think you get older. I'm sorry, no, no, no, no. Oh.
Speaker 4: So the reason I say that is because there is
Speaker 4: a lot of hypothesis and theories that watching the sun
Speaker 4: during the morning, midday, night, and midnight allows for the
Speaker 4: ability to download the algorithm from the sun, you know,
Speaker 4: with the spectrum charging your pineal priming it as well
Speaker 4: to not only be aware of I guess, not only
Speaker 4: your surroundings or whatever, but also tap into that quantum
Speaker 4: ability to channel or to be in touch with people
Speaker 4: at a distance their feeling or thinking, as well as
Speaker 4: having very vivid dreams as well. And so that's why
Speaker 4: I was asking if that was also going on at
Speaker 4: the time. That was not that.
Speaker 1: No, no, I didn't know that, so thanks thanks to
Speaker 1: mentioning it. But no, I mean it was. That was
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that led me later on, you know,
Speaker 1: to to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, listen, did you want to ask anything about the
Speaker 2: Colin Wilson.
Speaker 4: I did. I had read Mind Parasites a while back
Speaker 4: and I was given it. I was given that book
Speaker 4: as a recommendation, and it was to me it was
Speaker 4: very transformative. I had never read Colin Wilson before I
Speaker 4: had never even thought of some of that type of
Speaker 4: I guess spin On. I mean the way that one,
Speaker 4: the way he writes was amazing. I had never read
Speaker 4: anybody like that. But the main thing was that how
Speaker 4: he kind of literalized like physical dysfunction as an actual
Speaker 4: like well parasite really, but actually like something that you
Speaker 4: can treat or something that you can potentially work through
Speaker 4: and maybe even evolve out of, like through discipline or
Speaker 4: anything like that, to enhance kind of like consciousness and
Speaker 4: stuff like that. And I'm I'm a biologist by trade,
Speaker 4: and so I deal with the diseases and everything. So
Speaker 4: this was like right up my alley. But to actually
Speaker 4: have that analogy, to speak to it through or at
Speaker 4: least give it more of a personification through that way,
Speaker 4: to me was was mind blowing for sure. And that
Speaker 4: you have had you spoke about Colin Wilson and how
Speaker 4: his book kind of was impactful to you, and I
Speaker 4: kind of wanted to ask you about that a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, mind power sites. That's a one of
Speaker 1: the ones I read after I'd read The Occult and
Speaker 1: I was living in Los Angeles, and actually an edition
Speaker 1: of It came out some years back when I wrote
Speaker 1: an introduction to it, and it's it's sort of a
Speaker 1: science fiction Lovecraftian novel, kind of more of a fable.
Speaker 1: I mean his novels are sort of fables. I mean
Speaker 1: he uses he uses he uses a lot of different
Speaker 1: genre for his philosophical purposes. So he uses science fiction
Speaker 1: or that fantasy or crime novels, things of that sort.
Speaker 1: And in this one he's trying to well you're saying
Speaker 1: he's literalizing or fictionalizing what he wrote about and earlier.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is I think he wrote
Speaker 1: this in nineteen sixty six, so this is before he
Speaker 1: was writing about the occult. So this is during his
Speaker 1: sort of existential phenomenological period. But his first book, The Outsider,
Speaker 1: came out in nineteen fifty six, and he was twenty four,
Speaker 1: and he had spent like the previous ten years learning
Speaker 1: how to write and keeping faith in the conviction of
Speaker 1: his genius. And then this very first book comes out
Speaker 1: and he was like he was overnight success. He was
Speaker 1: a bestseller and all this kind of stuff. Sadly, the
Speaker 1: British turned against him because they don't like people who
Speaker 1: are smart. But don't go to university, so it's his
Speaker 1: class kind of thing. But his first book, The Outsider,
Speaker 1: it's basically about these people who individuals, creative individuals who
Speaker 1: have a strong appetitor need for meaning and purpose and
Speaker 1: in the increasingly secular, comfort oriented I mean again, this
Speaker 1: is nineteen fifty, so it's you know, seventy years ago.
Speaker 1: Now you can't find it. You can't find so it's
Speaker 1: like basically kind of existential religious kind of questions. And
Speaker 1: he was considered like Britain's own homegrown interesstentialist, but he
Speaker 1: was he he was fascinating like people like say Nietzsche
Speaker 1: and van go and Strindberg and all these others who
Speaker 1: kind of blew up or went insane or died early.
Speaker 1: And he said they were these people had this kind
Speaker 1: of appetite for meaning and purpose, and they also had
Speaker 1: these visions of kind of you know, transformed of all
Speaker 1: his good you know, absolutely redemptive vision of meaning and
Speaker 1: purpose in the face of everything and all this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff in variety of ways. But why did they
Speaker 1: wind up either blowing up in some way, cracking smashing,
Speaker 1: you know, dying young, or you know, committing suicide of
Speaker 1: going insane. So he explores that question through the series
Speaker 1: of books that he called The Outside, and he applies
Speaker 1: I can't come into it in any depth, but he
Speaker 1: applies essential analysis to and but they're all page turners.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's existential. It's not. Sorry, who's like really
Speaker 1: tough to get through. It's like thick, you know, turgid stuff.
Speaker 1: But no, Wilson's Wilson's a writer. So it's it goes.
Speaker 1: But in in the novel The Mind Parasites he he he,
Speaker 1: he invents this notion of a kind of parasite that's
Speaker 1: actually it's not it's not it's not a micro parasite
Speaker 1: that gets into the body. It's actually in the psyche.
Speaker 1: It's we. We we exist in the physical realm, right,
Speaker 1: and we tend to think there's a little blob of
Speaker 1: consciousness in our heads, but actually that little blob is
Speaker 1: connected to a larger, objective psychic realm that's within us,
Speaker 1: and we're all a variety of different ways everything trying
Speaker 1: to explore that. Uh. And what he says is that, oh,
Speaker 1: for centuries, there's been a kind of mental parasite in
Speaker 1: the psychic realms, living, sucking life energy off from human beings.
Speaker 1: And then sometime in the nineteenth century, these these Titanic figures,
Speaker 1: these romantics, and then great, you know, powerful figures like
Speaker 1: Nietzsche and Strenberg and whatever. So the early ones could
Speaker 1: overcome them, Beethoven and Gerta. But then they got tougher
Speaker 1: and tougher, and then he said, the parasites realizing that
Speaker 1: humanity is learning its own strength and power, and then
Speaker 1: we won't be able to you know, suck a dry anymore.
Speaker 1: We have to get rid of these guys. And so
Speaker 1: he says, the mind parasites drove them all mad, you know,
Speaker 1: drove them crazy because they you know, they were getting
Speaker 1: too close to the secret. And so characters a spoiler
Speaker 1: character and actually it takes place well, it was written
Speaker 1: in sixty six, I think it takes place in I
Speaker 1: don't know, nineteen something or other. So it was the
Speaker 1: future when it was written. Now it's the past. But
Speaker 1: characters in the book learn about this and learn about
Speaker 1: them and learn methods to be able to overcome them.
Speaker 1: And there's a fantastic I'm going but there's a I
Speaker 1: think one of the most remarkable things Wilson did in
Speaker 1: this genre where he's using genre writing for philosophical means.
Speaker 1: Is that he has this incredible cosmic battle going on
Speaker 1: between this one character who's learned about the parasites and
Speaker 1: has developed he's learned about phenomenology, which is this philosophical
Speaker 1: methodology of understanding consciousness. It's tough to pronounce and it's
Speaker 1: even tougher to practice, but he's learned how to do this,
Speaker 1: and he's able to ward off the parasites, but it's
Speaker 1: all going on inside his head. So it's the most
Speaker 1: remarkable battle ever taking place. Is some guy's sitting in
Speaker 1: a chair and he's sweating because it's all well doing
Speaker 1: like that. So it's just incredible, and yeah, if you
Speaker 1: ever get a chance, it's really a great it's a
Speaker 1: great read. Unfortunately, one of his novels called The Space Vampires,
Speaker 1: written in late seventies, was turned into one of the
Speaker 1: worst films ever made called Life Force Toby Hooper effect eighties,
Speaker 1: and it's I mean, my joke about that film is
Speaker 1: that there are there are two good things in that movie,
Speaker 1: and the lead actress has both of them.
Speaker 5: I actually liked that movie. Sorry again, I do enjoy it.
Speaker 5: I think it's a great you know, it's it's weird.
Speaker 5: It's kind of like a o cult sci fi I
Speaker 5: think they did with it something. It's weird, and so
Speaker 5: it takes someone of a particular you know, it's not
Speaker 5: true keno, but perhaps there's something interesting in it.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I enjoyed this movie as a youngster as well,
Speaker 6: So that's uh.
Speaker 1: Well, Will Wilson has an interesting story because I don't know,
Speaker 1: if you know the novelist John fowls The Magas and
Speaker 1: the bench Liintendant's women, they knew each other. And if
Speaker 1: you ever the John Fowl's novel The Magas is one
Speaker 1: of these high literary works that came out during the
Speaker 1: mystic sixties when cultism and magic and all this was
Speaker 1: like my first book, turn Off Your Mind is all
Speaker 1: about how like the occult and magic saturated not only
Speaker 1: popular culture. But it's it's you know, it's fairly hot
Speaker 1: high mind at high literary hygrow and it's a very
Speaker 1: good novel. But the film is ridiculous with Michael Kaine
Speaker 1: and Anthony Lewen, it's like one of the worst films
Speaker 1: ever made. And John Fowl sent you know, Colin Wilson
Speaker 1: of Postcard saying, you know, if you ever think of
Speaker 1: seeing my film The makea Stone. It's one of the
Speaker 1: worst things ever made in that kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: then when Life Worst came out, Wilson wrote him back
Speaker 1: and said, you know, John, I've done you one better.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean again, I'm you know, it's a
Speaker 1: different kind of thing. It's a different I tell you
Speaker 1: one book I think should have been made of Wilson's
Speaker 1: is his first novel. It's called Ritual in the Dark
Speaker 1: and it came out in nineteen sixty and it's best
Speaker 1: characterized as Jack the Ripper meets the brothers Karamtsov in
Speaker 1: Duffel coded post war nineteen fifties London, and it's an
Speaker 1: early serial killer novel with existential intent. And I think
Speaker 1: that would make a great film, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: No one's approached it.
Speaker 4: So I guess I just drew parallels with my parasites
Speaker 4: and the blip on your new book. That is this
Speaker 4: lifelong pursuit of learning about consciousness and kind of trying
Speaker 4: to rise above. So that's kind of why I brought in.
Speaker 1: No No Do Please. Yeah, I know, he's he's been
Speaker 1: the most I said, it's it's a cliche, but actually
Speaker 1: reading that book if has changed my life. And then
Speaker 1: I went on the pilgrimage and met him. That's I
Speaker 1: talked about that in the book two in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: He's very well. He was very very warm, very very generous,
Speaker 1: very busy. I mean, I let me say eighty three.
Speaker 1: I was all of twenty seven, and I went on
Speaker 1: at the time what I subsequently called the mini Search
Speaker 1: of the Miraculous. And if you know the book In
Speaker 1: Search of the Miraculous, this is a book by Russian
Speaker 1: writer philosophy P. D Uspensky, and it was about his
Speaker 1: time under the tutelage of the enigmatic Armenian Greco esoteric
Speaker 1: teacher gi Gord Jeff. And after my time with the
Speaker 1: Crowley group, the next kind of group I got involved
Speaker 1: it was this Fourth Way Crowley excuse me for there
Speaker 1: I was a YOUNGI and Croley thelemic slip Fourth Way
Speaker 1: Gergy group. And part of this mini search to the
Speaker 1: miraculous I was I visited the chateau outside of Paris
Speaker 1: and Fontainebleau where Gerjev had his briefly had his Harmonious
Speaker 1: Institute for Thermonious Development of Man. But on one leg of
Speaker 1: this I was at I was into lay lines and
Speaker 1: things like that, so I was going to lots of
Speaker 1: like megalithic sites and I had the Ordinance Survey map
Speaker 1: and trying to find ley lines. But one of the
Speaker 1: things I did was making pilgrimage down to Cornwall, this
Speaker 1: tiny place called goren Haven, Wilson escaped to in the
Speaker 1: late fifties to escape the notoriety that he had as
Speaker 1: an angry man in fifties. And yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: only spent one night there, but we got through a
Speaker 1: couple of bottles and he explained to me his ideas
Speaker 1: about philminology and consciousness, and I got it that night.
Speaker 1: It was a little difficult to dredge it up the
Speaker 1: next morning, but right then I think I nailed it. No,
Speaker 1: he's very warm, and I mean a story about him
Speaker 1: is like estimates on the number of books that he had.
Speaker 1: It's somewhere between sixty and one hundred thousand. I mean,
Speaker 1: he just had enormous amount of books. And I after
Speaker 1: that visit, well, you know, lots of people visited him.
Speaker 1: So I say I became friends, but it wasn't particularly close,
Speaker 1: but I was someone who you know, they knew, and
Speaker 1: the family got to know me, and I got to
Speaker 1: know them and all that. I kept visiting him, and
Speaker 1: he died in twenty thirteen, and I subsequently wrote a
Speaker 1: book about him called On the Robot, The Life and
Speaker 1: Work of Colin Wilson. So yeah, he was enormous, enormous, influential.
Speaker 1: But I tell the story of the pilgrimage to his
Speaker 1: place in the book and all that. And one thing
Speaker 1: I do regret is in the late eighties, I worked
Speaker 1: at a at the time famous metaphysical bookshop in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles called the Bodi Tree, which doesn't exist anymore, but
Speaker 1: Shirley maclain, the actual Shirley McClain, put it on the
Speaker 1: map in the eighties because she had discovered her past
Speaker 1: life and aura and all that kind of stuff there.
Speaker 1: And Wilson was in town giving a lecture in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and he was staying at a travel launch or something,
Speaker 1: and I was house sitting for one of the owners
Speaker 1: of the Bodie Tree, and they had and they were Buddhists.
Speaker 1: They started out in aeronautics at Lockheed in the early
Speaker 1: seventies and they decided they wanted to do something meaningful
Speaker 1: in their lives that they opened up this this metaphysical bookshop,
Speaker 1: and it was it was a success. So this was
Speaker 1: been about I don't know eighty eight or something like that,
Speaker 1: maybe eighty nine. Wilson was in London, excuse me, I'm
Speaker 1: mixing it up in la giving a lecture, and I
Speaker 1: was house sitting for one of the owners. And they
Speaker 1: have this fantastic place in the Hollywood Hills and Laurel Canyon.
Speaker 1: I called it a zen castle. So I said, why
Speaker 1: don't you come and stay? So he and his wife
Speaker 1: Joy stayed with us. And one of the things I
Speaker 1: regret is that we got so slashed one night that
Speaker 1: the next day he was having lunch with Robert Anton
Speaker 1: Wilson and he invited me along, but I was so
Speaker 1: hungover I couldn't go. So I absolutely regret that. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is amazing.
Speaker 4: You actually met the people we.
Speaker 1: Talked about some of them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it almost seems like with some of the
Speaker 4: biographies that she's the list of biographies that you've written
Speaker 4: about the same there's like this theme, and please correct
Speaker 4: me if I'm wrong, like this biological resonance of sorts
Speaker 4: in that like a thread that runs throughout all of
Speaker 4: the people that you speak of or the people that
Speaker 4: you wrote about, and then as well as some of
Speaker 4: the interviews that I've listened to of you. Is that
Speaker 4: something that that you were I guess like a topic
Speaker 4: that you are interested.
Speaker 1: In or I'm not quite sure what you mean exactly.
Speaker 4: Almost like there's this kind of connection to like in
Speaker 4: like the the intellect itself to a metaphysical and it's
Speaker 4: like this thread that that runs between everybody. That's almost
Speaker 4: like this pursuit of transient trus transients that that it's
Speaker 4: this pursuit of higher, higher intellectualism mixed in with a
Speaker 4: metaphysic cool, but also kind of developing a personal relationship
Speaker 4: with it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, I'm I'm I'm I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: interested in all these things, not well, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: interested in them because they're fascinating, and I'm also interested because, well,
Speaker 1: what can I get out of it? You know, I
Speaker 1: mean for myself my own development. That's what I mean.
Speaker 1: With Wilson, I.
Speaker 3: Just was.
Speaker 1: His idea struck me as the ones I could apply
Speaker 1: myself to most profitably over time, and then it was
Speaker 1: through reading his books. I mean, one of the theme
Speaker 1: in Touched by the Presence is that I mean one
Speaker 1: of the things. Okay, I used to be. It starts
Speaker 1: out I'm often asked how I went from being a
Speaker 1: rock star to writing the sort of books I do. Well,
Speaker 1: let me tell you, And so there it is. It
Speaker 1: starts when I'm five years old learning how to read
Speaker 1: comic books. We're learning to read through comic books. And
Speaker 1: then it ends when I'm getting on the plane at
Speaker 1: Lax to come here, and in between I'm reading Her
Speaker 1: and Hesse and I'm doing this and I'm going there,
Speaker 1: and I'm I have an academic career during the early
Speaker 1: PC days and I didn't want to deconstruct anything, and
Speaker 1: so it's all. And then ten years after playing in
Speaker 1: Blondie and my own band and iggy Pop and you know,
Speaker 1: getting this a story where I'm kicked out of David
Speaker 1: Bowie's loft in Manhattan sometime nineteen eighty because he tells
Speaker 1: this ridiculous story. Excuse me, yes, yes, he told this
Speaker 1: ridiculous story catch my drift about Colin Wilson heading a
Speaker 1: coven in Cornwall, and I in all innocence and just
Speaker 1: sitting there and a friend of mine says, oh yeah, Gary,
Speaker 1: he reads Colin Wilson, what do you think, I said, well, actually,
Speaker 1: as far as I know, that's not the case. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: he does. And he goes on and on about this
Speaker 1: and I'm not realizing that I'm causing a scene, and
Speaker 1: you know, you know, you know, and I'm giving this
Speaker 1: is the stuff that people should wait if you want
Speaker 1: to know what happens next. Folks know, but I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what happens next. What happens next is, uh, Bowie
Speaker 1: has these two female bodyguards, and I think it's the
Speaker 1: last and if it's never Diamonds Off, I think it's
Speaker 1: time forever. I think the penultimate Sean Connery Bond film.
Speaker 1: Again I'm dating myself, and like, there are these two
Speaker 1: kind of female assassins named Thumper and Bambi. So his
Speaker 1: Bowie's bodyguards are like these. And they come up to
Speaker 1: me and they say, David's tired. We think it's time
Speaker 1: you leave. And I said, okay, sorry to me, but
Speaker 1: it just he was just And subsequently I realized what
Speaker 1: had happened is he he was reading he was read what.
Speaker 1: Wilson has a book called Mysteries and it's a follow
Speaker 1: up to the Occult and it's it's came out in
Speaker 1: the late seventies, but it's still a great read. It's
Speaker 1: basically a compendium of all everything that was going on
Speaker 1: at the time, but the paranormal everything. But he does
Speaker 1: tell a story about not him, but someone else in
Speaker 1: Cornwall who was telling a story about a witch going
Speaker 1: around and like making like which he signs on the
Speaker 1: you know, the front doors of people's cottages. But that
Speaker 1: was a story that Wilson was telling about somebody else
Speaker 1: in this book, but in his exalted state, Major Tom
Speaker 1: had had had mixed it up, uh and if any case,
Speaker 1: So that's you know, that was kind of the thing.
Speaker 1: So I had these you know, run ins in that
Speaker 1: with with that with Wilson. But I know, but I
Speaker 1: got to know him, you know, very well, I uh said.
Speaker 1: I wrote a book about him. I reviewed many of
Speaker 1: his books for when they came out here in London,
Speaker 1: visited in Cornwall quite a few times, and know the family.
Speaker 1: And just recently this year there was a there's a
Speaker 1: columnist and international conference that's been going on in the
Speaker 1: past few years and I saw his sons there. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we're trying to keep his legacy going. And actually the
Speaker 1: book I wrote about him went out of print, but
Speaker 1: my current publishers and traditions they're going to reissue it.
Speaker 3: Oh So, going back to your book, I know you
Speaker 3: kind of left off like a little bit about Gerjeff.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you wanted to get into that
Speaker 3: or maybe go forward a little bit more, because I
Speaker 3: think you also get into like, besides Gurjeff, you also
Speaker 3: get into like armatic Golden Dawn style stuff as well.
Speaker 1: Right, well, I mean that was that was part of
Speaker 1: the crowthy thing. Okay Dawn stuff. No, I got involved
Speaker 1: in the Fourth Way, the Fourth Way Gurjef Society, which
Speaker 1: is the real thing. There were quite quite a few
Speaker 1: sort of bogus groups out there, or at least they
Speaker 1: used to be so. But this would have been about
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one in New York first off, and I
Speaker 1: had been reading about this stuff again, reading Colin Wilson
Speaker 1: and other other people about it, and he spoke highly
Speaker 1: of it out of all the kind of gurus and
Speaker 1: teachings and things of that sort that he had written
Speaker 1: about in the Occult and other books. He has a
Speaker 1: long section on Crowley and Yates and the Golden Dawn
Speaker 1: and Leovatsky and you know, it's still if you ever
Speaker 1: find it, you know, it's still a great read. It's
Speaker 1: just called the Ocult. It's still a great read. But
Speaker 1: he had a good section on Gurjev and Uspensky in
Speaker 1: the Fourth Way, and I always liked Duspensky's early stuff.
Speaker 1: He has a book called Turchier Organum, which means the
Speaker 1: Third organ of Thought, and something he wrote in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth centuries in Russia, and it was all about
Speaker 1: like higher space, higher dimensions, like sort of like chaos theory,
Speaker 1: or I guess entanglement now is kind of like the craze,
Speaker 1: and so this was like, you know, the time is
Speaker 1: the fourth dimension, then five, fifth, sixth, seventh dimension, and
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff and a variety of different
Speaker 1: ideas about consciousness and so on. Then another book called
Speaker 1: New Model of the Universe, which is a great again
Speaker 1: collection of different essays on dreams and hypnotism and at
Speaker 1: the superman and the variety of other things. So I
Speaker 1: liked reading all that stuff. And then I actually again,
Speaker 1: as I had in La I had moved back to
Speaker 1: New York at this point, and I had came across
Speaker 1: a notice for a lecture about you know, the Courage
Speaker 1: of Fourth wait at the Barberzan Hotel. So I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll go. And actually the lecture I went to. The
Speaker 1: people doing it are one of these bogus groups. But
Speaker 1: I and I had mentioned that I had gone to
Speaker 1: a friend of mine with whom I had discussed this
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff in my interest in you know, a
Speaker 1: variety of different spiritual and esoteric ideas. And he said, yes,
Speaker 1: well they're not the real thing. If you really interested,
Speaker 1: I've been involved, you know, for a while. And oh,
Speaker 1: he hadn't mentioned to me, and he was kind of
Speaker 1: like he was checking me out, you know kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And so then he said, if you're really interested, here
Speaker 1: this is a phone number. Call it and I'll I'll
Speaker 1: I've mentioned you to my the group leader, and I'll
Speaker 1: tell him that I told you, and he expects you
Speaker 1: to call. So I did, and this again I had
Speaker 1: this is I my own I left Blondie, my own Bami.
Speaker 1: We had failed to nail a record deal, and I
Speaker 1: was kind of in between in New York and trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what to do and all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. And but I met this fellow and his
Speaker 1: name is Paul Raynard, and he was an artist, and
Speaker 1: he was also one of the principal instructors of what's
Speaker 1: notice the Gerchef movements, which are these very very intricate
Speaker 1: and strange and difficult sorts of dances. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've it was a film of Gurdjeff's book Meeting
Speaker 1: with Remarkable Men, that came out in the late seventies.
Speaker 1: It's done by Peter Brook. If you know Peter Brook,
Speaker 1: he did the mahab Haka. There's different versions of that,
Speaker 1: like an eight hour version and a sixteen hour version,
Speaker 1: so it's very serious filmmaker and he tends to use
Speaker 1: non professional actors in it. But in this film Meetings
Speaker 1: with the Markable Man, he does use one professional actor,
Speaker 1: the late Terrence Stamp who just passed away. But there's
Speaker 1: a fantastic scene. If you know the Gurjeff story, like
Speaker 1: Madame Vatsky, he went to the east and different you
Speaker 1: know lands in search of hidden knowledge. For him, it
Speaker 1: was more Central Asia, you know, it wasn't wasn't Indian Tibet.
Speaker 1: It was like Central Asia. And among other things, he
Speaker 1: tells the story of finding this hidden monastery, the Stomong
Speaker 1: Brotherhood and this is where he learns these very intricate
Speaker 1: and very very difficult and complex sort of dance. I
Speaker 1: mean they're not you say they're dances, but they're they're
Speaker 1: much more like kind of weird movements. Again, the thing is,
Speaker 1: if you know the old that sort of thing, rub
Speaker 1: your tommy, impat your head, it's like that to the
Speaker 1: tenth pour something. But in this film there are some
Speaker 1: scenes of these things, so I think they're on YouTube.
Speaker 1: You can find it on YouTube, and they're just remarkable
Speaker 1: to see. And so the fellow I met was one
Speaker 1: of the teachers of these things, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: but this time, I you know, I a song of
Speaker 1: my was a hit song, top ten, I got a
Speaker 1: gold record. I played around. I are you know whatever?
Speaker 1: I told David Bowie you didn't know what he was
Speaker 1: talking about, and you know whatever. But this is the
Speaker 1: first This guy was the most solid present person I'd
Speaker 1: come upon. He was he was just there. He didn't
Speaker 1: have to do anything, He just was sitting there and
Speaker 1: I just felt what And he said, he said the
Speaker 1: simplest thing, why do you want to get involved in this?
Speaker 1: And it was like, ooh, that is a tough one.
Speaker 1: Why do I am. I just curious that I had
Speaker 1: been in this Crowley thing and it was I and
Speaker 1: I fumbled and I just, you know, lamely said I
Speaker 1: want to wake up, and said, well that will take
Speaker 1: some time. Uh, And then you know, here's here's the meeting.
Speaker 1: Go there. And so I started going to these things
Speaker 1: and it was very, very different than the Crowley.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It was saying, sit in these meetings and we've been
Speaker 1: given an exercise, and you'd go and nobody would talk.
Speaker 1: We'd sit in silence sometimes until somebody actually had a
Speaker 1: serious question about something. So it wasn't about and again
Speaker 1: I can't go into any great I mean I talked
Speaker 1: about in the book, but it was sort of like that.
Speaker 1: But on the whole, if you know the gurge of idea,
Speaker 1: it's this notion that we're mechanical or asleep, which doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like much these days because we tend to you know,
Speaker 1: we've heard it all very different New Age kind of ways,
Speaker 1: talking about similar sorts of things, mindfulness and so on
Speaker 1: and so on. But when he first came across to
Speaker 1: the West in the nineteen twenties, and by the way,
Speaker 1: I've written biography of Uspensky and I've also written a
Speaker 1: biography of hill named Morris Nicol, who was of Gusbensky's students,
Speaker 1: who originally started out as Jung's British lieutenant here in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties and the New Jump Ship and became
Speaker 1: a follower of grigory from Duspensky. So I've written in
Speaker 1: the background, that's my background in it. But it's this
Speaker 1: whole idea that we're mechanical, you know, we're just stimulus response,
Speaker 1: you know, machines, which pretty much straightforward behaviorism and pretty
Speaker 1: much straightforward you know, clinical psychology that we've been teaching
Speaker 1: in the academies at the time. But he said, there's
Speaker 1: a way not to be a machine, and so we had,
Speaker 1: you know, a whole technique of doing this. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that struck me, and again it's it's
Speaker 1: this about consciousness itself. We hate this notion what they
Speaker 1: call self remembering. And I've actually just been finished and
Speaker 1: just working on a book about the old the whole
Speaker 1: idea that we forget that we exist. We we if he,
Speaker 1: if he, of course I exist, but most of the
Speaker 1: time we actually don't. You know, we know the fact
Speaker 1: that we exist, but we don't know the reality that
Speaker 1: we exist. And this is something you can even find
Speaker 1: in you know, existential philosophy, like and Heidiger talks about
Speaker 1: zion but guess and height, you know, forgetfulness of being,
Speaker 1: and this is something and both Gurjeff and Heideger they
Speaker 1: both hit on this, say like, the one sure fire
Speaker 1: method of reawakening to being would be to have a
Speaker 1: vivid grasp of your own death. You know, So this
Speaker 1: this vivid grass of your own finitude that one day
Speaker 1: you're not going to be here. We all know that,
Speaker 1: we know that factually, but we don't know it experientially then,
Speaker 1: you know, and when we do grasp it generally, you know,
Speaker 1: strikes us pretty hard. All that. So any case, this
Speaker 1: was sort of the thing I was. I was getting
Speaker 1: into this, and I was doing, you know, very different
Speaker 1: exercises going to these meetings. But on the lights side,
Speaker 1: one of the things I did experience in this is
Speaker 1: the Gurd Jeff uh Gerjeff's birthday is generally celebrated on
Speaker 1: the thirteenth of January, and I was invited to a
Speaker 1: celebration uh in a mansion in upstate New York. And
Speaker 1: I the person who had got me in I met
Speaker 1: with him and some others. We all got in the car,
Speaker 1: didn't know the other people, and we drove and it
Speaker 1: was and we got there. And if you again, if
Speaker 1: you're familiar with the Gerd Jeff kind of uh millieu,
Speaker 1: there's what they call the toast to the idiots. And
Speaker 1: one of the things Gerd Jeff did was he used
Speaker 1: to get people to knock back several, you know, very
Speaker 1: strong shots of vodka, and the idiot, I mean, we
Speaker 1: tend to think of idiot meaning somebody who's stupid. Idiot
Speaker 1: actually means unique, like an idiosyncratic or idiosyncrasy. It's unique
Speaker 1: to you. So if you look just the etymology of
Speaker 1: it goes back to it just means unique. But an
Speaker 1: idiot now means, well, you know whatever, somebody who is stupid.
Speaker 1: But Gerjeff would say, there are different kinds of idiots.
Speaker 1: And after you had a few of these shots of
Speaker 1: the vodkas and you toast to the round idiot, you know,
Speaker 1: to the square idiot, whatever it might be, your particular
Speaker 1: kind of idiot would come come out and he would
Speaker 1: see you and he would and he would and this
Speaker 1: was well after I mean, he taught one thing to
Speaker 1: U Spensky, and U Spensky turns it into a kind
Speaker 1: of system, you know, kind of intellectual sort of system.
Speaker 1: But Gergie was more the shaman Maha. He just had
Speaker 1: the stuff and just to be around him. And what
Speaker 1: he used to doing is last days in this tiny
Speaker 1: flat he had in Paris. But he would cram as
Speaker 1: many people as he could possibly into the dining room,
Speaker 1: fifty people around a tiny little table where he prepared
Speaker 1: this sumptuous, fantastic meal. And by the way, ger Jeff
Speaker 1: Crowley and Young World good cooks. So someone should do
Speaker 1: a cookbook of those guys. And while you were eating
Speaker 1: all these meals and knocking back this vodka, he would
Speaker 1: sort of see you and point out who you were
Speaker 1: and all that kind of thing. So any case, that's
Speaker 1: the background to that. So I'm taking to this mansion
Speaker 1: up in upstate New York Gurjef celebration. We knocked back
Speaker 1: quite a few, you know, shots of vodka, and then
Speaker 1: we're told that we're going to be treated to a
Speaker 1: special performance performance of Gilgamesh and fine, and who do
Speaker 1: I see getting up on the stage. It's the comedian
Speaker 1: actor Bill Murray Oh from Saturday Night Live. And see
Speaker 1: he's up there, and I hadn't had anything to eat,
Speaker 1: but I had like three or four these fuckers, And
Speaker 1: every time he said, ank you do, I couldn't stop laughing.
Speaker 1: And but no, if you remember the film Groundhog Day,
Speaker 1: it's the eternal recurrence, It's the one day. But it's
Speaker 1: not not so much in the work. But Uspensky is
Speaker 1: one of Huspensky's pet ideas was this notion of rather
Speaker 1: than reincarnation, there's what he calls the eternal wheel, the
Speaker 1: eternal recurrence. You when you die, you were born again
Speaker 1: into the same life and what you know throughout life,
Speaker 1: there are opportunities for us to wake up and realize,
Speaker 1: you know, where we are and to make different decisions
Speaker 1: and all that. So that that was kind of But
Speaker 1: also an early an earlier film that Bill Memory was
Speaker 1: in was a remake of The Razor's Edge. That's the
Speaker 1: Somerset mone There was a film in the forties with
Speaker 1: Tyrone Power, and it's about somebody as like as a
Speaker 1: socialite who goes through the harr of World War One
Speaker 1: and then comes back and he realizes he can't he
Speaker 1: can't live the shallow life anymore, and he must go,
Speaker 1: you know, in search of the Truth. And it's supposally
Speaker 1: be based on Christopher Isherwood, who was the English novel
Speaker 1: who eventually got into Vedanta and things like that, but
Speaker 1: Bill Murray did a version of that as well. So
Speaker 1: and I knew people in Hollywood when when because I
Speaker 1: knew people in the acting world, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them are really into that kind of stuff because the
Speaker 1: Gerzia version of it, not the Uspensey, but the Gersia
Speaker 1: version does a lot of role playing and psychodrama and
Speaker 1: things of that sort. And that was one of the
Speaker 1: things that Spency couldn't deal with. It's just was too
Speaker 1: kind of crazy for him, and he wanted to like,
Speaker 1: it's a system, you know, you do it like that.
Speaker 3: I like that story with you said World War one
Speaker 3: and then came back, and it reminds me of I think.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: The first Islamic alchemist has a story like that where
Speaker 3: I think he was a prince that went really yeah,
Speaker 3: and then afterwards he was like, oh, I give this
Speaker 3: ship up, and he sort of getting into alchemy and
Speaker 3: you know in the occult and stuff that's wanted to
Speaker 3: hear like you know, somebody else kind of like having.
Speaker 2: The same story.
Speaker 3: I can see that stuff making you change your you
Speaker 3: maybe change your ways, or making you look at the
Speaker 3: world differently. Sure, yeah, was there anything else on the
Speaker 3: book that you wanted to get into it?
Speaker 2: Again? Like I understand you also want people.
Speaker 1: It's just it's well, I mean, I could get all
Speaker 1: profound uh and say it's a book about how becoming
Speaker 1: who you are. I would say it's, Uh, that's Nietzsche
Speaker 1: says that become who you are. Young's psychology of individuation
Speaker 1: is about that, yeah, or Abram Maslow's psychology of self
Speaker 1: actualization is about that. So I talked about in the book.
Speaker 1: I mean that's what it is. I mean, that's I mean,
Speaker 1: I've been kind of you know, keeping the funny stories
Speaker 1: do here, but I mean, what happened. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: the truth. There's a story behind writing the book. And
Speaker 1: I say in the in the acknowledgments in the back
Speaker 1: that I wrote this book, you know, to stay sane basically.
Speaker 1: You know, whether it's achieved that or not, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But I was going through a very very difficult time
Speaker 1: in my life, and I'm going to details about it,
Speaker 1: but there was a time and this was let's see.
Speaker 1: I think I started reading writing at twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: I think. And oddly enough, I said the book, the
Speaker 1: book ends with my leaving Los Angeles in coming here, okay,
Speaker 1: And that was the beginning of January nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: So at the beginning of January twenty twenty three, when
Speaker 1: I was going through this very very difficult time in
Speaker 1: my life, there's a place here in London called the
Speaker 1: British Library, which was a fantastic resource if you have
Speaker 1: a researcher. Everything published in the UK, there's a copy
Speaker 1: of it there in tons of other stuff as well,
Speaker 1: and you can bring your laptop and sit and get
Speaker 1: a desk and you can work there. So living conditions
Speaker 1: where I was living meant that I was spending quite
Speaker 1: a lot of time in this place, and and I
Speaker 1: didn't have any work. I just finished this book I
Speaker 1: was saying about this, Uh, this follower of Uspensky called
Speaker 1: Morris Nickel, who started out as a YOUNGI and then
Speaker 1: he became Musbensky and gerd chef and all that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. So I just finished the book about him,
Speaker 1: and he didn't have any work. And I'm the kind
Speaker 1: of guy if I don't have work. It's you know,
Speaker 1: I always say I need a break, and when I
Speaker 1: don't have work, I go out of my mind. Uh
Speaker 1: so I and and there you go, there you go,
Speaker 1: and and I'm I can't stay at home. So I
Speaker 1: just found myself in the library and I was just
Speaker 1: reading stuff, and I said, I'm spared to do something.
Speaker 1: And I think it just just an effort to assert
Speaker 1: my existential being, my actual being in presence on here
Speaker 1: on the planet. Because where what was happening I can't
Speaker 1: go into detail, but what was happening was such that
Speaker 1: I was feeling like, my god, this is this, This
Speaker 1: can't be happening to me. Just cannot be the case.
Speaker 1: So I have the mind parasites coming on me. So
Speaker 1: I had to fight them off. And so I sat
Speaker 1: down and said, just started, just just start writing. Just
Speaker 1: sit down and start writing. So I sat down, I said,
Speaker 1: I wrote, I am here. Yeah. Oh, on my sudden,
Speaker 1: I actually have a copy, and I wrote, yeah. I'm
Speaker 1: often asked how it went from being a rock star parentheses,
Speaker 1: although I never was a star, more of a satellite
Speaker 1: and one with an eccentric orbit, to a writer on
Speaker 1: esotericism and the history of consciousness. This memoir is an
Speaker 1: attempt to answer that question. So January twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: the January twenty twenty four, I answered that question beautiful.
Speaker 1: Can I even have it? Yeah, I even have British
Speaker 1: Library January twenty twenty three. January twenty twenty four completed
Speaker 1: on the twenty eighth end of our of my relocation
Speaker 1: to London. So the book ends at my leaving La
Speaker 1: to come here. And I finished writing the book on
Speaker 1: the twentieth anniversary of my coming here, and it'll soon
Speaker 1: be the thirtieth later this year and knock on wood.
Speaker 1: So it had this kind of oraboric kind of thing,
Speaker 1: you know, the circle returning on itself in some way
Speaker 1: which I hadn't planned, but it just came out that way.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, it's all the stuff about, you know,
Speaker 1: growing up reading comic books. And I think I can
Speaker 1: trace my interest in all this kind of stuff back
Speaker 1: to when I was about five years old and there
Speaker 1: was a comic strip in Adventure Comics DC Comics called
Speaker 1: the Legion of Superheroes. I'm sure there's whatever now movies
Speaker 1: about them now. I don't know if they were teenage
Speaker 1: teenagers with superpowers from different planets and the future and
Speaker 1: just weird stuff, and super Boy got involved with them.
Speaker 1: Remain ones. There was Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, and Cosmic Boy.
Speaker 1: So I'm five years old. Lightning Lad makes sense, he
Speaker 1: shot Lightning bulls. Saturn Saturn Girl quite gets she had
Speaker 1: mental psychic powers, but there was a neat Saturn you know,
Speaker 1: on her, on her bosom, you know, with the rings
Speaker 1: and all that kind of thing. Cosmic Boy he had
Speaker 1: like pink, white and black kind of costume and that
Speaker 1: I don't know, if you know the British expression chav.
Speaker 1: That it was kind of like chav colors, like pink
Speaker 1: and black, real chav colors, and that he he had
Speaker 1: magnetic powers, And I thought, why don't they call them
Speaker 1: magnetic boy? What's what's cosmic got to do with it?
Speaker 1: What does cosmic mean? So that's my sisters? I don't know,
Speaker 1: yess my mother she didn't know. I didn't bother ask
Speaker 1: my father. So I thought, ever since then, I've been
Speaker 1: trying to figure that one out? So what does cosmic mean?
Speaker 1: So it all started all started back then. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so this comics influenced me. Then I got into Lovecraft
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff and the Conan you know,
Speaker 1: the rubberty Howard Conan stories. And I was a victim
Speaker 1: of all the all that paperback reissue of the pulp
Speaker 1: stuff from the thirties and the forties. And then a
Speaker 1: hippie girl about nineteen seventy when I was fourteen, whom
Speaker 1: I had a crush on. I can still remember the
Speaker 1: smell of the pe Julia oil she wore. She handed
Speaker 1: me a copy of hermann Hesse's novel, said Arthur, the
Speaker 1: Bantam paperback. It was all blue and there was like
Speaker 1: a stature of the Buddha on it, and that was
Speaker 1: like the first serious, you know, literature I read. And
Speaker 1: then that was at the beginning of my journey to
Speaker 1: the East and all that, and I became a hess,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the victims the many many early
Speaker 1: teens and in America then and yeah, so that was like, well,
Speaker 1: that's just that's drifted, that's who we went. And then
Speaker 1: read the Beats and all that kind of stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: found myself living in New York at eighteen, starving writing
Speaker 1: really bad poetry. Not purposely writing bad poetry, but subsequently
Speaker 1: I realized it was and this is before I joined
Speaker 1: blondie was I was living. I was sharing a storefront
Speaker 1: on East tenth Street between First Avenue and Avenue A.
Speaker 1: And if you know New York in nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: seventy five, you didn't go It's Alphabet City. Now it's
Speaker 1: like it's overpriced. You can't afford the cappuccinos.
Speaker 2: Oh that was the hood back in the day, Alphabet City.
Speaker 1: Yeah, back then you didn't got you just did not
Speaker 1: go there. Yeah, you look tougher than I did. But
Speaker 1: you know, But and the guy who was living it
Speaker 1: was like a weird I tell these stories. This guy,
Speaker 1: he's the weirdest guy where I grew up in Bay,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. But then when we were sharing this place together,
Speaker 1: he became a born again Jesus freak and drove his
Speaker 1: witness and he wanted to start a rock band and
Speaker 1: go to Israel and join the Kibbitz because the end
Speaker 1: of the world was coming. That doesn't add up, Like
Speaker 1: why do you want to start a band at the
Speaker 1: end of the world's coming? And why an a kipp it?
Speaker 1: Are you gonna play and ship like this? He stuff
Speaker 1: like that, And this guy was gradually going off his
Speaker 1: nut and Clem Burke the Lake. Clem Burke, who just
Speaker 1: passed away earlier this year, one of the greatest drummers ever,
Speaker 1: whom I knew from high school. We went to high
Speaker 1: school together in Bayo, New Jersey, and he had only
Speaker 1: just joined Blondie because they kept losing musicians. They kept
Speaker 1: losing the drummer, the bass player, stuff like that. He
Speaker 1: had only just joined. And the first gig he did
Speaker 1: at CBGB, you know, the famous club where everybody came
Speaker 1: out of the bass player quit and I was I
Speaker 1: was not a musician. I was allowed to hang out
Speaker 1: with the musicians in New Jersey. I could kind of
Speaker 1: sort of almost maybe you know, play Johnny B. I
Speaker 1: didn't get up to good, but you know, you know
Speaker 1: so kind of kind of play. But that was what
Speaker 1: you needed, you know. And in this place I was
Speaker 1: living in the storefront and he's tent that there really was.
Speaker 1: There was a broken down, upright piano for almost every
Speaker 1: key was wrong. But I somehow learned how to, you know,
Speaker 1: write songs on this and Clem said, come come in audition.
Speaker 1: So I went and auditioned. What I remember is playing
Speaker 1: the Stone song lived with me for like forever. I
Speaker 1: kind of I could figure that one out. And then
Speaker 1: the end they said, that's it. What happened after that
Speaker 1: is that my roommate who he saw what was happening.
Speaker 1: So I was playing in them and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, and he said, look it's it's either the
Speaker 1: kibbitz or out, so he kicked me out. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I was. I was on the street for a while,
Speaker 1: I was sleeping in the studio, and then Debbie Harry
Speaker 1: finally took me in. So she had a tiny one
Speaker 1: bedroom flat in little Italy on Thompson Street and you
Speaker 1: know where like there was an Italian social club below
Speaker 1: and the Massachue ladies are sitting outside, you know, smoking
Speaker 1: cigarettes and drinking their espressos. And I'm you know, she's
Speaker 1: already living there with Christine and her three cats, and
Speaker 1: all the all the guitars, the amps and stuff is
Speaker 1: in there, and then now the bass players there. So
Speaker 1: we crushed it. So from living in that tiny place,
Speaker 1: then we moved into this loft space on the Bowery
Speaker 1: and then my my life of magic began there. Sorry,
Speaker 1: that was that's half of those there. That's great, thank you.
Speaker 1: That isn't me.
Speaker 2: That's an awesome story. Thank you very much.
Speaker 4: It's almost sorry I'm going to interject. It's almost like
Speaker 4: you had to you had to play for blinding in
Speaker 4: order to be placed in the actual space, in the
Speaker 4: actual space and time of these people to hand you
Speaker 4: a book, to hand you an information, to invite you
Speaker 4: to a party, to plant a seed in your brain.
Speaker 4: And then too.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that's why I see it now. I
Speaker 1: mean's idea. You know, your actions in the future can
Speaker 1: regime your past, so everything up to the air could
Speaker 1: be just it's a big, big mistake. It's all horrible.
Speaker 1: Then oh you do some things. Oh yeah, it's all
Speaker 1: added up to that. So that's well, we all have
Speaker 1: that opportunity somewhere in life to kind of regime. And
Speaker 1: that's like you know, you turn. That's how chemical you turnub,
Speaker 1: That's what I was going to say.
Speaker 6: It's very alchemical in the sense that you have to
Speaker 6: u have this bottoming out basically to have the tabula
Speaker 6: rasa to be able to create the new thing that
Speaker 6: is becoming.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah yeah. And I think as an paras
Speaker 1: house is to kay is the mother of great things.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 6: And I think every artist in essence as you're working
Speaker 6: through these creative processes. You have to have these bottom
Speaker 6: times where you know you're able to have a larger
Speaker 6: perspective to be able to move into and make something grow.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, Yeah, yeah, that's true. True.
Speaker 2: Yeah very well, sir, well, thank you very much again.
Speaker 1: Gary.
Speaker 3: It's awesome show, tons of stuff, great stories. I definitely
Speaker 3: love to get you back on again, even to talk
Speaker 3: about when your older books. Is there anything that you
Speaker 3: would like to plug again, if you want to plug
Speaker 3: the book or anything.
Speaker 1: If you want to check me out. I've got a website.
Speaker 1: It's I think it's Gary dash Lockman dot com. But
Speaker 1: I think if you just, you know, put my name,
Speaker 1: I'm so famous. If you just put my name in Google,
Speaker 1: it'll take you right to it. And there's actually lots
Speaker 1: of stuff up on YouTube videos and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And let's see. I'm trying to think what's coming up.
Speaker 1: I will be in December for the Philosophical Research Society
Speaker 1: and if you know them in LA. This was started
Speaker 1: by Manly P.
Speaker 3: Hall.
Speaker 1: He was one of the great occult and hermitic encyclopedia
Speaker 1: of the early twentieth century. Elvis Presley was one of
Speaker 1: his readers.
Speaker 2: Uh, and.
Speaker 1: They there's a wonderful building that's in the Lost Peelss
Speaker 1: area of LA and it's a weird Mayan Deco thing
Speaker 1: that was like, uh, it's fantastic building. But they they
Speaker 1: do online things and I'll be I'll be I'll be
Speaker 1: giving a talk about the book for them in December
Speaker 1: and all that. So I'll post that up on my
Speaker 1: website and I post stuff up on on YouTube and
Speaker 1: you know whatever it's called now Twister whatever it is
Speaker 1: now these days and stuff like that. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean god, I just have to say, it is so
Speaker 1: strange being over here seeing what's happening. Uh, over here
Speaker 1: sat side, it's it's it's my god. It's like it's
Speaker 1: I can't It's like a bad dystopian movie. That's, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is like really happening, you know, So
Speaker 1: keep the faith, you know.
Speaker 6: That we're being sign opped.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, Well, I'll agree, I definitely like in one
Speaker 3: of your books, I definitely think there's been a lot
Speaker 3: of magic and occultism involves this.
Speaker 1: Well. I mean again, I don't want to I didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean I kind of I say I saw this
Speaker 1: coming in Dark Star Arising magic compower in the age
Speaker 1: of Trump, just in the sense that if you know
Speaker 1: anything about him, you knew that this was. It's just
Speaker 1: incredible and all the kind of I mean, wait for
Speaker 1: the torchlight, you know, processions. I mean what I saw
Speaker 1: on the news here of that funeral service, you know,
Speaker 1: for the fellow Charlie.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: It just it's just it's in any case, you can't
Speaker 1: it just seems so stupidly cliched textbook exactly the same thing.
Speaker 1: And even Stephen Miller he looks like Gerbel's and he's
Speaker 1: he's he's plagiarizing. And you think, I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 1: they'll be after me after saying this. I know, I
Speaker 1: mean I just think, you know, it just seems it
Speaker 1: just seems how stupid, how obviously stupid. Can it gets
Speaker 1: to ask.
Speaker 6: The terminology, the colors they're using, the every it's yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well he's a showman. That Trump is a showman. And
Speaker 1: this is one of the things I say in the book,
Speaker 1: where again there's the power positive thinking, that's the one
Speaker 1: magical side of him that Norman Vincent Peel, you know,
Speaker 1: focus on it, forget about the facts. But it's also
Speaker 1: the glamour. It's also the show. It's also the biggest
Speaker 1: spectacle kind of thing, and that's you know, he did
Speaker 1: you know, beauty pageants and all that kind of crap,
Speaker 1: and and I mean that's that's part of the magical
Speaker 1: side of it. It's glamor, you know, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's definitely that kind of thing. And it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's gone. I don't know, you know.
Speaker 6: And then when you let the vampire in your house,
Speaker 6: it's another story.
Speaker 1: I have to get him out, I'll tell you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good way to put it. Yeah, I like
Speaker 1: that's true. So sad. And it's like I did, It's like,
Speaker 1: are they waiting for him to keel over? So that
Speaker 1: you know, the the reason he was after the cat
Speaker 1: Ladies is he's a cat person. You just look at him.
Speaker 1: He's like that old movie cat People. You look at
Speaker 1: his eyes, he looks like a cat person. I mean,
Speaker 1: I really, I really think so that's why he was
Speaker 1: after the cat ladies because they would have they would
Speaker 1: they would have noticed, they would have found him out.
Speaker 2: So sorry, all right, uh but yes, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Gary, Like I said, I'd probably like to have you
Speaker 3: on in the future to talk about that one very
Speaker 3: interesting stuff real quick before you wrap it up, I'll
Speaker 3: let the other rejects quickly plug themselves again or whatever
Speaker 3: they like to Lisa you call reject man scientist or what.
Speaker 2: Is going on?
Speaker 4: Thank you Nick for having me on asking me on.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Jerry for sharing your book with
Speaker 4: us and sharing all of those little anecdotal stories as
Speaker 4: well as kind of entertaining some of our questions. I
Speaker 4: the only thing I would like to plug is your
Speaker 4: cool research institute dot org where some of the other
Speaker 4: rejects have contributed to content on it. And check us
Speaker 4: out there and Gary again, thank you fellow rejects. Amazing
Speaker 4: to also have a discussion with you guys.
Speaker 2: Thank you awesome, thank you, and I appreciate you joining us.
Speaker 2: And mister Jin the ninja over here.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, Boss, appreciate it. And thank you
Speaker 5: of course, Gary. That's an honor to be on a
Speaker 5: roundtable with you. Thank you for letting me fielding my questions,
Speaker 5: and of course the other rejects. If you want to
Speaker 5: check me out at Wukong Reborn, w uk O and
Speaker 5: g Reborn on nex Twitter or at Threshold Saints as
Speaker 5: well as on ig at Threshold Saints and if you're
Speaker 5: interested in The Gray Lodge, which is a speculative gnostic
Speaker 5: group Meta Magicians for a new and you can check
Speaker 5: us out at the True gray Lodge dot com. But
Speaker 5: True is with a V, not a you. So thank
Speaker 5: you guys so much, appreciate it and have a great
Speaker 5: uh you know, evening. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: Jen.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you joining us man as always, and Robbie Marks.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I would like to say thank you to such
Speaker 6: a great crew. It's always good to come and talk
Speaker 6: with all you and Gary, I really appreciate your time
Speaker 6: and coming on and sharing the stories. As far as myself,
Speaker 6: if you'd like to check out, I'm gonna encourage you
Speaker 6: if you want to just you know, go view some artwork.
Speaker 6: Go check out my link tree r M A r
Speaker 6: X and that has my website, my Etsy, my Instagram
Speaker 6: is where you're going to get most of my art.
Speaker 6: Twitters where I talk most of my weirdness. But then
Speaker 6: uh yeah, you know, I just encourage you to go
Speaker 6: look and check out and let it play with your eyes.
Speaker 6: So and that's about it. Thanks for everything, and Nick,
Speaker 6: thanks for having me on for sure.
Speaker 2: Of course, Robbie, I'm glad you could make it.
Speaker 3: And again Gary, thank you very much for coming on,
Speaker 3: and the other rejectually appreciate you making the time and
Speaker 3: jumping on. And that that's the end of another recall rejects,
Speaker 3: and until the next one, everybody be well later