Thanks for reading! I had a sense that your views have softened a bit since the Trip review: I wish most writers had your combination of skepticism and openness. And good point re the man in black - this accords with my reading of the historical situation as well.
I also think your writing has done a lot to make me more appreciative of the finger! I’m increasingly skeptical that any of us really know what we are pointing at, so perhaps the role of good art is not so much to point us in a certain direction, but to allow us to maintain Camus’s confrontation désespérée entre l'interrogation humaine et le silence du monde.
Interesting thoughts! I haven't admittedly done much with psychedelics-occasional cannabis use, which I find pleasant but not inspiring the way so many others do, is about the limit of it. I think that sort of thing can be helpful for receiving art but is useless or even harmful if you're trying to create it. I can't even write buzzed myself, nevermind high.
Thank you! Individual variation makes it really difficult to generalise from one’s own experience (good, bad or meh). That’s why I’m no evangelist. I think many of my fellow psychonauts need to take the problem of self-deception more seriously and be open to the possibility that the squares are right! And yet, I am still fascinated by what these experiences tell us about how little we understand about the human mind.
Excellent, thoughtful as always! In my current post-critical state, I'm less dogmatic about these things than I was when I wrote the Lin review over two years ago, though I confess the Kubrick and Herzog statements do chime with how I tend to see things.
I very much appreciate your point about separating the claim that psychedelics have personal benefits (therapeutic, etc.) from the claim that they have artistic benefits. And, as I've said, I haven't taken psychedelics myself and have found marijuana, which I don't use much, mostly good for helping with insomnia, whereas I write wide-awake on caffeine (not amphetamines, however).
I'm still thinking about whether or not art is a finger pointing at the moon and that one should therefore seek the moon. I'm probably too Catholic, i.e., too immanentist, for that. In this life, we get the finger, so to speak. Maybe we get the moon in the next life, if there is one.
If I may, I meant the man in black in MA as a partial recantation of the conspiracy-theory view of counterculture, since Simon Magnus writes pretty much everything without the drug—my idea being that the CIA is always late to a party already in progress. A person in black shows up in Part Four with a new proposal for Simon Magnus, but no spoilers...
Thanks for reading! I had a sense that your views have softened a bit since the Trip review: I wish most writers had your combination of skepticism and openness. And good point re the man in black - this accords with my reading of the historical situation as well.
I also think your writing has done a lot to make me more appreciative of the finger! I’m increasingly skeptical that any of us really know what we are pointing at, so perhaps the role of good art is not so much to point us in a certain direction, but to allow us to maintain Camus’s confrontation désespérée entre l'interrogation humaine et le silence du monde.
Interesting thoughts! I haven't admittedly done much with psychedelics-occasional cannabis use, which I find pleasant but not inspiring the way so many others do, is about the limit of it. I think that sort of thing can be helpful for receiving art but is useless or even harmful if you're trying to create it. I can't even write buzzed myself, nevermind high.
Thank you! Individual variation makes it really difficult to generalise from one’s own experience (good, bad or meh). That’s why I’m no evangelist. I think many of my fellow psychonauts need to take the problem of self-deception more seriously and be open to the possibility that the squares are right! And yet, I am still fascinated by what these experiences tell us about how little we understand about the human mind.
Excellent, thoughtful as always! In my current post-critical state, I'm less dogmatic about these things than I was when I wrote the Lin review over two years ago, though I confess the Kubrick and Herzog statements do chime with how I tend to see things.
I very much appreciate your point about separating the claim that psychedelics have personal benefits (therapeutic, etc.) from the claim that they have artistic benefits. And, as I've said, I haven't taken psychedelics myself and have found marijuana, which I don't use much, mostly good for helping with insomnia, whereas I write wide-awake on caffeine (not amphetamines, however).
I'm still thinking about whether or not art is a finger pointing at the moon and that one should therefore seek the moon. I'm probably too Catholic, i.e., too immanentist, for that. In this life, we get the finger, so to speak. Maybe we get the moon in the next life, if there is one.
If I may, I meant the man in black in MA as a partial recantation of the conspiracy-theory view of counterculture, since Simon Magnus writes pretty much everything without the drug—my idea being that the CIA is always late to a party already in progress. A person in black shows up in Part Four with a new proposal for Simon Magnus, but no spoilers...