Entheogenic Knowledge Part 2

I had been now to counselor Tina. I had offered up my friend as a gesture of goodwill. I was now waiting for the acid to be 'scored.' We were all waiting for that. Some waited with more foreknowledge of what might transpire than others. At last, at an evening visit to the Tennants', Laird brought forth from his fridge a little film canister of blotter. The perforated paper sheet, a one inch square in all, was printed with little blue dragons.
    "Have a look. It's blue dragon."
I peer, not touching. Touching is bad. According to Van Dyke, that's how the chemist that created this stuff discovered its potency.
    "When are we going to...put one of these in our mouths?"
    "I was thinking we'd drop this weekend."
    "That might work. I'll have to check my schedule."

How to describe an acid trip? It's likely that if you've never done it, you might find the words I use fantastic. Or boring. Laird always said that outsiders thought it was a sedative. "People on acid sit around doing nothing."

In my files, which I'm sifting through trying to gear up for this barrage of words, the most instructive set of documents is a collection of sheets of paper. There are six sheets. Four pages are high quality drawing paper, slightly yellowed now. Two sheets are 10 stave music manuscript paper, with three ring binder perforations factory punched. These pages contain both images and text (words, numerals and symbols) mixed together, in wax crayon and ball-point pen. There is no dating or numbering, so only memory will allow an ordering of these sheets. These are documents created by a mind unhinged. This is my handwriting, and these are the notes I took on my first "acid trip."

As I have described, there was much talk leading up to my first trip, but I did little research. The experience itself prompted me to take up the many books that decode these experiences for the mystified, the first-order seeker. Up front, words about acid meant something other than they did after the fact. Ahead of it, I had no idea what Jimi Hendrix was asking when he asked "are you experienced?" On the other side, I had a fair notion and the answer was "yes." Can I bring it to life for the 'acid virgin?' Unlikely, but I'm going to do my best to entertain every reader with clear narrative (or imagist poetry).

We gathered at the Tennants' on a weekend. I was already unstuck in time, so I can't give a specific date. It was, I think, based on evidence I have in archive, in the Spring of 1976. There was a plan. The people present were Xenia, Laird, Lucy, and Rodney. There were, including me, five of us. The plan was to drop the blotter, listen to our chosen musical selections, and to write, draw, or sculpt. We had crayons, paper, and plenty of pot for the reentry phase. We "did the deed" sitting in the Tennants' warmly lit living room on the collection they had of canvas chairs and beanbags. We washed our blotters down with wine. I recall a passage in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" where Stevenson writes about the period of waiting for a 'draught' to take effect. What now? I didn't get much time to think it over. Street drug dosing is tricky, and I might have gotten a whopping dose. An alternative theory, adhered to by my friends, is that I was particularly susceptible to psychedelics. I stared down at my jeans, and found myself one with the fibers that made up the fabric. In trying to sort out this peculiarity, I became engaged on a molecular level. Right away, the linguistic challenge assaults. The primary challenge, epistemology and ontology notwithstanding, is to make the reader (or listener) picture it. Picture this: my mind, with eyesight in tow, became a microscope, and then, in the blink of an eye, an electron microscope. What do we see when we zoom in past the atomic level? We get the experience of music as taste and smell. We get the experience of art making laid bare. A piece of paper was put in my lap. This is sheet of paper number one. It's blank, but it's missing a corner. I think I ate the paper, thinking it Christ's body, broken for me. It tasted like manna from heaven, which at the time, was a slice of pizza from Charlie's. Then came a big box of Binney-Smith Crayola crayons. With my vision zooming in on these, I spied a red hued crayon that suited my purpose of the moment. I made the transition from microscope to creative artist without difficulty, because if you think about it, that's what we do all the time. On the stereo was my choice, the Bach "St. Mathew's Passion." Had I had any idea what acid would do to my psyche, I would have gone for lighter fare. As it was, I add to the literature on the topic that LSD-25 is the best music appreciation drug on the planet. It is "I get it!" in a bottle. Pick some up at your pharmacist today!

My first creative act on blotter acid was to pull from the cardboard cubbyholes that we all know so well from childhood (thanks be to Binney-Smith) a red Crayola crayon. Its virgin tip seemed to wiggle in my gaze, and I instantly understood that I was writing with blood. Thus, my second sheet of paper moves to the next step in the creative process, the one that directly follows having actually ingested a sample of the medium. I took that red (or whatever variable of that hue it was) crayon and made a gash of line on my page that would have sunk the Titanic. (Always an obsession, but not of direct relevance here.) Having mustered the courage to besmirch the blank page, I was now an artist. The line I made divided the sheet, defining the space, positioning it in time and space. Looking at the page now, it does this still. Any other observer will see just a jagged red line. Over the period of time that I actually made drawings and poetry during acid trips, my work in this odd genre improved. This is my current impression after having reviewed the output stone cold sober. There is, however, a characteristic that all of this material shares with that first line drawn with a Binney-Smith blood stick: the lines are minimalist. The drawings suggest more than they actually depict. There is a tendency towards a rather effeminate curvature. My sympathy with the feminine is clear and deep. All of this is description of the artifacts and not the heart of the matter.

The essence of my acid experience was the revolution that was happening in my cognition. In particular, perceiving the cosmos and my relation to it positioned me within it. This may not seem like much. For an artist, it is everything. No history of an experience with psychedelics can capture all of it: things that happen in the blink of an eye can send one on journeys that last for years. How much time have you got? Having made my mark, I took up another fresh sheet and started in on that old grade school assignment of making a drawing to music. The Bach had gotten on to a stately ritornello aria. The pulse was steady, stately, and the ictus of the continuo and bass created, in the room where I sat, a compelling tempus perfectum integor valor. I was bathed, in my expanded consciousness by a celestial light. Light and sound had become one. My synesthesia made the filling of the page with runic symbols a mad dash. How to set it all down, how to respond in kind?

Calbraith Hunter, Acid Art, ex. 3

With the blue crayon, I wrote the number 48 in my best pen hand. It signifies the divine in humanity, the ratio of initiation, the spiritual man uniting himself to the divine power. Beneath this numeral, which is centered on the page, with the same crayon in hand, I wrote the number ten four times. For Pythagoras, 10 was the symbol of the universe and the sum of human knowledge. Mankind is the tenth entity that will join in the celestial chorus, replacing the obstreperous angels. The commandments given to Moses are ten in number. The symbols themselves represent the firing or quiescence of a neuron; the state of yes, and the state of no. (On/off.) Now, I change crayons. I choose brown, and begin a new line, trying to capture the magnitude of my awareness. I again write the number ten. I have ten fingers, and ten toes. I am made in the image of the living God. God exists because I have seen him in the molecules made up of racing atoms in the fabric of my jeans. I dare not look down. I choose another crayon, enjoying my role as scribe. I chose the silver crayon and write  the letter s. I pick up the gold crayon and write the letter g. I circle the sg with gold. Above and below the letters but inside the circle I take the red crayon, the blood of the lamb, and write the number 8. The resulting rune represents heaven and earth and my role in it as creator of things having aesthetic meaning. My meaning is the only meaning that matters, since I am making it up as I go along. I literally come to the understanding that the cosmos exists because I am creating it in my mind. To signify my central nature, the position of importance my thoughts occupy in my reality, I write, in blue crayon the letter b. (That's b for Bach, and the pitch b flat.) I pick out green and finish the line with the number ten again. There are ten things that I must tell of!

Calbraith Hunter, Acid Art, ex. 4

Calbraith Hunter, Acid Art, ex. 5

One of these is the meaning of art, so with the green crayon still in hand, I draw a double teardrop, the rough shape of a woman's ass partially covered by the sheets. The undertow of the music pulls me back in. In the margin, warming to my new role as pedant and didact, I write with the blue crayon balancing my 'b' (for balance) with the sentence "balance your material colors" I can still write in English despite the babel in my mind, and I provide my document with its own rubric. Punctuation has fallen by the wayside, but I get my point across with word placement. I have done all of this in thirty seconds. Have I, in fact, achieved a balance of color? I take the green crayon and write across the bottom of the sheet in time with the music:  + 1 + 2 + 3 (included is the inverted three, the letter E) and both are in parenthesis)  + 4 + ON. I am one with Bach. I am a musician. I feel the pulse, and I express it. There is also pitch. I switch to the 10 stave music paper. Instead of music, though, I write "Paper Quinlan" with a crescendo mark under the word "Quinlan." (A word of explanation: Karen Anne Quinlan - March 29th, 1955 - June 11th, 1985- had been much in the news in 1976 when she was removed from her respirator. News of her survival in a persistent vegetative state had preceded the acid trip, and we had had much discussion of her possible mentality, apropos of Ryle and the neurophysiology.) I then finish the music paper with a few notes (an ascending line) and I am thinking as a musician, without the ability to render my thinking on the page. I am past the peak, apparently. (Or perhaps I have reversed the order of the sheets.) A second sheet of music paper is a clear response to the Bach. I write an ascending series of crotchets that form the 'm' in the word many. What it looks like now is: ANY PAges, MAN on then blüt nur du liebst HE+ (Bleed on, dear heart, the 8th number in the 'Passion,' misspelled in my ignorance.) There is a final sheet, back to the drawing paper, that features a gumby-like figure, a sort of homunculus. This sheet is also covered with fairly competent ball point writing about the fly ball governor. I'll get to that.

Calbraith Hunter, Acid Art, ex. 6

Meanwhile, as I drew to the tune of Bloody Bach with Binney-Smith weapons of Mass destruction, Xenia, who was straight, but swimming in crazies with what must have been a wicked contact high, was sculpting a face on the refrigerator door with purple Play-Doh. Duh. I was unaware of this until I became ambulatory. By the time I made it out to the kitchen, the sculpture had become intense. It was a perfectly modeled head, and it morphed as I observed her process. There was very little spoken language as we all marveled at the shifts in the model. There may have been some telepathy. A bit of a poke here, some flattening there, and Beethoven turned into Mara Monetti. It stayed one way for only a moment. The faces came and went as the course of human history played out. At length, as Botticelli gave way to Bernhardt, I would have wished Xenia to linger longer over her choices. Tennant was working his way about the individual creative acts, making sure that everyone was smoothly sailing and not freaking out. He payed a certain amount of attention to me, but he was more interested in Xenia's sculpture. The face on the fridge door seemed to hold him in thrall. In the beanbag chairs and cloth covered spider frames, the heads of Rodney and Lucy bobbed to the music as they worked on their drawings. Having tarried in the kitchen long enough, I eyed the door to the hallway and the outside world with a sudden longing for the night air. I had just re-learned to walk and wanted to stretch my legs. Lucy heard me try the lock. She was beside me in an augenblick, issuing orders in pigeon English.
    "Ixnay outside."
I ignored her and continued my attempt to figure out the lock. It was a diabolical mechanism, the exemplar of fascist restraint, one of the items in a clear lineage from the medieval torture chamber.
    "Laird! He's trying to escape!"
A distant and curiously distracted voice, with Laird Tennant's tone wrapped in unusual languor, wafted down the short hall from the kitchen.
    "OK by me. Just go with him and make sure he doesn't jump off the roof."
She shot me a look that might have killed me, but I was in the un-killable zone. I've described Lucy as slight of frame. She now seemed ferocious in her role as Mother, preventing me from exercising free will. The team of the two Tennants was unbreakable, and they knew the ropes as trip guides. Nobody was going to fall off the deck into the sea on their watch. But speaking to an acid crazed music student like a Mother Superior addressing an idiot without language or sense had a curious effect on my expanded psyche. I had "seen God" in the molecules of my jeans, an infinite and complex clockwork that pulsed in time to the music that still played from down the hall. Bach and God were One, or at least on the same page. God did not so much 'speak' to me as reinforce my essence. I understood the cosmos, and it was benign. I was here to do the work I was here to do, and I could no longer be restrained or condescended to. I had been granted confidence by the Wizard of Ooze. Now I encountered the other side of the coin, represented by human incomprehension and repression. I knew the secret that unlocked the lock. I looked at Lucy Tennant and smiled. She smiled back, turning from ogre to fair damsel.

In her gentlest, kindest voice, she asked:
    "I'll open the door if you'll tell me who you are."
    "I'm the son of the morning star."
    "You're nuts."
I looked at her again as her form wavered. The light from inside me beamed, or so I imagined. I willed her back from flickering demon to angel of mercy. It worked. She stabilized before me, and I knew I should answer her question. Who was I?
    "I am an emissary sent from the muse to provoke your envy."
This was a good line and it made Lucy blink. She was tripping also. Who knows what vistas she had seen, or how I appeared before her now? Tectonic plates were shifting underfoot. It might have been that she put that answer in my head telepathically.
    "I cannot envy your muse without some proof. Go get some papers. I'll be here, minding the door."
    With a flick of her wrist she sent me down the hall.

Back in the living and listening room, the Bach had ended. Rodney rose and picked up a Linda Ronstadt album that had just been added to the Tennants' stash. I saw the angel's face flash by on the album cover on the way to the turntable. Her name was given top billing, but the title beneath was instructive: "Heart Like a Wheel." Rod put side two on the platter facing up. In a moment, the sound of the Everly Brothers' hit "When Will I Be Loved" filled the room. If Bach had been cosmic, Linda was pelvic. Also, since the text was in English, her recording of this anthem of defiance in the face of cruelty, with its plea for the solace of affection, sex, and - oh, the hook - "love" rocked my world and re-clocked my mission. What had I come in here to get? I stood listening to Linda with the intensity I'd formerly given to Bach. When the song ended, the pause between tracks led directly to "Weed, Whites and Wine." I sat down in the canvas chair, directly on top of my six sheets of paper.

From the kitchen, Tennant yelled,
    "Good choice."
He'd suffered Bach gladly, but this song in particular was a summation of his marching orders. I had been willing to keep on moving, but instead forgot all about that and folded up into the timbre of Linda's voice. It went through me just like a breeze. (Car's song.) It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand at rapt attention. It made me forget all about Lucy Tennant and her request for a show of documents. I had my papers under my ass.

Readers who know their Ronstadt will know that Hank Williams immortal masterpiece "I Can't Help It If I'm Still In Love With You" follows "Willing." The very first line rendered me jellied. I had passed her on the street just today! How did anyone know? It was the workings of the cosmos again. My heart had indeed fallen at her feet. (Bleed on, dear heart.) I couldn't help it, but I was still (hopelessly, madly, and infinitely, sadly, wickedly, gladly, eternally, badly) in love with her. Weeping over the lost love on acid is (or can be) cathartic. The sobs come up from my solar plexus. The tears, sulfuric acid on my cheeks.  As I sat crying, Lucy entered the room (three songs in - she'd stopped by in the kitchen to check on the progress of the Madonna). She'd been down this road before with me. They all had. This was the cataclysm they'd feared with me on acid. Lucy saw what I was up to and sat down on the floor in front of me, taking my hand. This was the Tina position, and I felt a rush of calm followed by that peculiar sensation that is hand holding (or any other sort of personal contact) on acid. If it were not for the muscular difficulties, acid would be a great aphrodisiac. Lucy's touch simply merged with mine and we disappeared into each other. It was enough of a shock to send me into stable flight out in the starry night where I had been falling, eyes closed.

I survived Hank Williams, but the night was young. Eventually, the personality I'd had before reassembled itself in a slightly different way. Eventually, Lucy and I returned from the brink (though we'd be back later) and I gathered my drawings and was able to open the door and go out into the hallway. I got no farther than the old Otis elevator with the fly ball governor. There was, I could now see, the central mechanism that governed the cosmos. In the little things, the mysterious workings of the deities manifest themselves. Beside my homunculus in crayon, I drew a diagram of the governor in ball-point.  In cursive at the top of the page I made notes on my findings and musings. I can flesh them out. The fly ball governor represented mechanical advantage. As the shaft attempted to rotate faster, the balls flew out centrifugally. This action was limited by the tension of the springs that held the balls in orbit. The farther out the balls went the more tension was applied to the regulator plate. It was mechanical homeostasis. I equated this action to the dissonance and resolution in the contrapuntal species and in harmonic progressions. Tension provides the useful motive force. The art I would make would rely on the engine of the cosmos and I would thus be acknowledging the religious experience I'd just had. The psychedelic experience was the pivot point for my artistic life. It took a while longer for me to work the lessons into my emotional life. I had a very emotional psyche to dip into for material. I had endless imagination to draw on. I had to learn to put it to good use, do good work, and be a good and gracious person. In the meanwhile, I made plenty of messes of things.

The sun came up no matter what we called it. In the debriefing over coffee and pot, I learned that I had a genius for tripping. It was said that I got off more than anybody else, maybe more than anybody they'd ever seen. It was alleged that they'd had a hard time keeping me inside. (I rather thought that I'd had a hard time keeping them outside.) When asked whether I had any notes that I wanted to share, I answered that I was going to write to Binney-Smith and inform them that their crayons did not have enough blood in them. In the documents I have from this time, this trip, there are no drafts of such a letter. I meant it as a joke. There are, to my surprise, quite a few love letters to Linda Ronstadt. At last the moment came when I did emerge into a new day. I had been changed for the better. I now understood what Tennant and Van Dyke had been talking about. Now I had to read all the books, to try my hand at acquiring street drugs, and to learn to fly solo.

What would Vonnegut say? I say hoo boy.