essayist, novelist, absurdist philosopher, futurist... maverick genius, political activist, visionary, prophet, discordian, existentalist prober of imagination, anto-fundamentalist.... profoundity leaps in his works, just when I think i'm getting what he's told me, he leads me on to another thread.
Born in Brooklyn , Wilson was many things, his books ended up in many a hipsters library, the counterculture embraced him, some however could not seperate fact or fiction.
His 'Illuminatis' trilogy - Eye of the Pyramid, Golden Apple, and Leviathon incorporated elments from the cult literature of the time: borrowing elements of Colin Wilson, Philip K Dick, Flann O' Brien, Carlos Castenada, Timothy Leary and Kurt Vonnegut in a mix that bordered on the academic to the downright hilarious, like some philosopher writing on some heavy duty drugs.
He did prodigiously consume and was an advocate for the taking of all sort of drugs, and became a strong opponent of what he called " the war on some drugs." Initially though had started using cannabis as a way to alleviate the misfortunes of Post-polio syndrome. He worked with psychedelic guru Timothy Leary on two books Neuropolitics ( 1978) and The Game of Life (1979) and began to become a serious practitioner of stoned sensations. Writing under the influence , he said he wrote the first draft of each book "straight, the second stoned, then straight, then stoned, and so on , until i'm absolutely delighted with every sentence, Or until irate editors start reminding me about deadlines, whichever comes first."
A prodigious talent, he went on to write numerous books, and became linked with the Church of the Sub-Genius, the Association for Consciousness Exploration and E.Prime. He taught me to never trust anything that I read, but along with Burroughs I keep returning. Even though in life and in his books the sentiment is one of anti-religion, their is to me a semi mythical,mysticism to his work, but then drugs are known for taken us to the furthest reaches of human consciousness, and a lot of us who take these sacrements , have a rebellious nature already, and even before taking anything illicit we were questioning, reason and all forms of authority. But Robert Anton Wilson pushed all possibities, becoming a master crafter of disinfomation, conspiracy theories and twinkling pages full of suspect devices.
Other works were the Schroedinger's Cat trilogy (80-81) Prometheus Rising (1983) and William Reich in Hell (1987)
By the time he departed this planet, he had found himself many devotees and with his grey hair and long white goatee had taken on the air of a taoist sage, prophet or sorceror. He had also manged to upset a considerable amount of people, he'd stopped paying his taxes and was in considerable debt, a strong advocate of freedom in its many forms, his political and social credos were ones of questioning, EVERYTHING, so their were quite a few enemies out there. Some say the C.I.A killed him , others that he is very much alive, theories grow. What he definitely did teach was that " the universe contains a maybe." So he might be hovering around somehere, illuminating an argument with some cunning laughter.
The following fim Maybe Logic is a fascinating , hilarious and mind-bending journey in his mult-dimensional life, spanning 35 years and the best of 100 hours of footage, thorughly tweaked, tansmuted and regenerated. It feature Tom Robbins, R U Sirius, Ivan Stang, Paul Krassner, Valerie Corral and Douglas Rushkoff.
The soundtrack includes music by the Boards of canada, Animals on Wheels, Tarentel, Funki Porcini, Amon Tobin and the Cinematic Orchestra and others.
However all the above I may have just simply made up, who knows for definite.
"There are periods of history when the visions of mad men and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common sense interpretaton of data available to the so called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already."
" There is no governer anywhere, you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. We are all absolutely free. If everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of death, even. All existing Society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses, Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists."
- Robert Anton Wilson
MAYBE LOGIC:
The Lives & Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson
No comments:
Post a Comment