Alex Grey’s paintings can be described as a blend of sacred, visionary art and psychedelic art.
He is best known for his paintings of glowing anatomical human bodies, images that “x-ray” the multiple layers of reality. His art is a complex integration of body, mind, and spirit.
Origin of Language – Alex Grey
Albert Hoffman, LSD – Alex Grey
Union of Human and Divine Consciousness – Alex Grey
George Carlin talks about a point in his comedy career where he was directing his message to the wrong people. The close minded and uptight war generation didn’t want to hear him, but the children of the 60s embraced his declarations of peace, love, and change.
Hallucinogens are value changers, so is marijuana. Like it or not, it changes your values.
It opens up your windows, doors of perceptions was what Aldous Huxley called them.
You see things differently and I suddenly was able to see my place and realize I was in the wrong place.
In this scene from American: The Bill Hicks Story, Bill Hicks’ friends David Johndrow and Kevin Booth describe a mushroom trip where the three buddies encountered peace, love, and interdimensional beings.
You never see a positive drug story on the news. They always have the same LSD story. You’ve all seen it:
“Today a young man on acid … thought he could fly … jumped out of a building … what a tragedy!” What a dick. He’s an idiot. If he thought he could fly, why didn’t he take off from the ground first? Check it out? You don’t see geese lined up to catch elevators to fly south; they fly from the fucking ground. He’s an idiot. He’s dead. Good! We lost a moron? Fucking celebrate. There’s one less moron in the world.
Wouldn’t you like to see a positive LSD story on the news?
To base your decision on information rather than scare tactics and superstition?
Perhaps? Wouldn’t that be interesting? Just for once?
“Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration – that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There’s no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we’re the imagination of ourselves.”
Futurist Jason Silva provides examples of psychedelics being used as tools for problem solving and creativity during a discussion at the Festival Of Dangerous Ideas – Sydney Opera House, 2012.
Psychedelics Resets Your Operating System
That quote from Tom Robbins where I said that “We need to pull ourselves out of context in order to gawk in amazement at the wonders of the world.”, he was talking about psychedelics, but I think it applies to everything we in our lives.
He says, “It’s not that psychedelics manufacture wonderment or that they can automatically make us more imaginative beings, but what psychedelics does is pull us so radically out of comfort zones, they decondition our thinking, they thrust us out of everything we thought we knew about the world in order to see things as if for the first time and form new synaptic connections.
Cannabis Expands the Mind’s Network
Marijuana induced a state of hyper priming. It expanded their “associative net” so that they were able to make more far reaching connections among things and ideas. Perhaps that’s because it dissolved usual separateness, categorizations, and other compartmentalized ways in which we store information. If that’s not reason enough for cannabis to be used as a tool, at least for creative people, I don’t know what is.
In celebration of the greatest athletic achievement by a man on a psychedelic journey, No Mas and artist James Blagden proudly present the animated tale of Dock Ellis’ legendary LSD no-hitter. Of the 263 no-hitters ever thrown in the Big Leagues, we can only guess how many were aided by steroids, but we can say without question that only one was ever thrown on acid.
A year before the great Dock Ellis died, radio producers Donnell Alexander and Neille Ilel, had recorded an interview with Ellis in which the former Pirate right hander gave a moment by moment account of June 12, 1970, the day he no-hit the San Diego Padres.
We got to Woodstock at eleven in the morning. We’d heard it was a disaster area. They flew us in on a helicopter. We hung around with Jerry Garcia and we found out that we didn’t have to go on until eight at night. They told us just to cool out and take it easy. One thing led to another. I wanted to take some mescaline. Just at the point that I was peaking, this guy came over and said, “Look, if you don’t go on right now, you guys are not going to play.” I went out there and I saw this ocean as far as I could see. An ocean of flesh and hair and teeth and hands. I just played. I prayed that the Lord would keep me in tune and in time. I had played loaded before, but not to that big of a crowd. Because it was like plugging into a whole bunch of hearts — and all those people at the same time. But we managed. It was incredible. I’ll never forget the way the music sounded, bouncing up against a field of bodies. For the band as a whole, it was great.”
Reason TV’s Zach Weissmueller Interview with Jason Silva
Biological and Technological Convergence
When the internet does is it connects all of our minds together. And we sort of transcend the limitations of time and distance, so now we move into a post geographical world where we can come together and self organize, and have unexpected relevancy, and serendipity based on shared passions, not bounded by the skin bag. Amber Case, the Cyborg Anthropologist says that every time we make a telephone call, we’re actually creating a techno social wormhole. It’s technological mediated telepathy. Andy Clarke (Natural Born Cyborgs) says “We should stop thinking of the mental apparatus as bound by the skin bag because the reality is the mental apparatus is dance between brains, their environment, their technology, and their tools.” The extended mind thesis talks about how our iphone is not just a tool but its actually outsourcing our cognition, storing parts of our memories. Just like we have a neocortex, the iphone is part of the extended man.
Psychedelics and Technology
It’s interesting to draw the analogy between psychedelics and computers. Timothy Leary used to say you take psychedelics to get rid of your mental filters, to get rid of your preconceptions, to expand your sphere of possibility, to unbound…to free your mind. When he saw the potential of the computers and the internet, he came out in the 90s as a techno optimist and said the computers are the LSDs of the 90s. A lot of the engineers who invented the personal computer and the microprocessor, they were all tripping when they had those realizations of extending the mind with technology.
Hilarious rednecks, grizzly bears, the homeless, and a LSD inspired comic book artist are just some of the focus subjects in our list of the top offbeat documentaries.
8. Overnight (2003)
Overnight traces the meteoric rise and fall of aspiring filmmaker Troy Duffy, a former bartender who turns out to be one of the most misguided and obnoxious human beings on the planet. After fucking up a movie deal and alienating just about all his friends and family, Duffy somehow managed to go on to direct an awesome cult flick called The Boondock Saints. The last shot of Duffy talking to himself as he wanders aimlessly outside a bar is truly disturbing.
Sample Dialogue: “As for my film career? Get used to it, cause it ain’t goin’ anywhere. Period.”
Overnight Trailer
7. Monster Road (2004)
“I go for the lowest common denominator. Just get some stuff in front of the camera and get some action out of it. Get the most I can out of those figures before they wear out . . .” Monster Road explores the fascinating life and work of underground clay animation artist, Bruce Bickford, who collaborated with the late, great Frank Zappa on a number of projects such as the 1979 movie, Baby Snakes. This ain’t Gumby and Pokey, folks. Some of Bickford’s clay animation works are truly disturbing! Monster Road also introduces us to Bickford’s equally eccentric father, George, a retired aerospace engineer who is suffering from the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Sample Dialogue: “Isn’t it remarkable? This little planet we’re on . . . Is this the headquarters for something?”
Monster Road Trailer
6. Grizzly Man (2005)
“I will die for these animals, I will die for these animals, I will die for these animals . . .” Legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog returns to his favorite theme, obsession, as he traces the story of Timothy Treadwell, an amateur naturalist who spent 13 summers among wild brown bears at Katmai National Park in Alaska. Treadwell and his girlfriend were tragically killed by one of the bears during the fall of 2003. This is an extraordinary, funny, and haunting documentary full of astounding footage and some great introspective narration.
Sample Dialogue: “And what haunts me, is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food. But for Timothy Treadwell, this bear was a friend, a savior.”
The Grizzly Man Trailer
5. Burden of Dreams (1982)
Les Blank’s riveting documentary focuses on the utter chaos surrounding the filming of Werner Herzog’s epic, Fitzcarraldo in the jungles of South America. Whether having to replace his entire cast, attempting to drag a 320-ton steamer over a small mountain or trying to deal with totally insane actor Klaus Kinski, Herzog reveals an unwavering obsession to finish his film.
Sample Dialogue:“Without dreams we would be cows in a field and I don’t want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project.”
Burden of Dreams Trailer
4. American Movie (1999)
American Movie documents the life of Mark Borchardt, an obsessed filmmaker who lives about as far away from Hollywood as you could possibly get – Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Borchardt’s main goal in life is to finish a full-length horror film titled Northwestern. It’s obvious that this guy’s entire film career is based on the opening scenes of Night of the Living Dead. Mark’s determined to live out his version of the American dream. He’s also a deadbeat dad with three kids out of wedlock.
To fund his masterpiece, Mark runs up credit cards, borrows from friends and relatives, and works a series of menial jobs – from delivering newspapers to vacuuming a mausoleum. His creditors are after him and so is the IRS. He doesn’t give a shit. So he drops Northwestern and focuses on a shorter film called Coven, “a psychological thriller portraying an alcoholic writer’s descent into the demonic abyss of a self-support group.” He figures if he can sell 3,000 “units” of the flick at $14.95 apiece he can raise enough money to finish his dream project. The final scene of American Movie is very revealing. It shows some of Mark’s old silent black-and-white film clips from the early ’80s – the same friends racing around madly, drinking beer and raising hell. Nothing has really changed
Sample Dialogue: “Is that what you wanna do with your life? Suck down peppermint schnapps and try to call Morocco at two in the morning? That’s senseless! But that’s what happens, man.”
American Movie Trailer
3. Crumb (1994)
As Crumb opens, Robert Crumb, complete with his trademark cheap suit, thick glasses and porkpie hat, sits cross-legged on the floor, listening pensively to a scratchy blues record from his extensive and rare 78-rpm album collection. We soon learn that “bizarre” and “dysfunctional” don’t even come close to describing Crumb’s family. A bleak childhood led Crumb and his two brothers to escape into a fantasy world of comic books. Crumb admits that he was attracted to Bug Bunny as a child and later became fixated on Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. His first sexual memory is of hanging out in his mother’s closet and humping a pair of her cowboy boots, while singing “Jesus loves me, yes I know . . .”
Needless to say, he didn’t get a single date during high school. It was during the late ’60s that Crumb created his most popular work such as Keep on Truckin’ (which caused him “nothing but headaches”), Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat, which was made into a cartoon that “embarrassed me for the rest of my life,” he reveals. He finally got revenge on Fritz in a later comic by having a female ostrich stab him in the head with an icepick. Crumb’s LSD-inspired comics during the ’60s truly captured the seamy side of America’s subconscious.
Sample Dialogue: “My father was a rigid, gung-ho type who had a hard-ass attitude to life . . . All three of his sons ended up to be wimpy, nerdy weirdos. He wanted at least one of us to end up as a Marine. He always wore a fixed smile, which I later learned was a sign of deep depression.”
Crumb Trailer
2. The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia (2009)
From Johnny Knoxvilleand Dickhouse Productions, The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia is basically a real Trailer Park Boys documentary. It’s genuinely hilarious if you take a step back and observe its truly absurd characters. For example, it features someone who has huffed so much gas he can tell, by scent, the difference in the grades now. Apparently he’s been told by doctors he has a hole in his brain and “I’ve got a brain cell that don’t work, I don’t know which one but that’s what they tell me.”
It’s like watching a car wreck. The people in this family are wild human beings. Lots of sadness, violence and drug abuse revolve around this family, and they mask a lot of their sadness by rolling with the flow, and living up to their legendary name. It’s an interesting look at a type of people most in this country don’t get to experience firsthand.
Sample Dialogue: “You know what my daddy used to say? He used to say, ‘When you get too old to cut the mustard, lick the jar.’ I don’t know what he meant by that.”
The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia Trailer
1. Dark Days (2000)
Near Penn Station, next to the Amtrak tracks, the homeless have been living for years. Marc Singer goes underground to live with them, and films this “family.” A dozen or so men and one woman talk about their lives: horrors of childhood, jail time, losing children, being coke-heads. They scavenge, they’ve built themselves sturdy one-room shacks; they have pets, cook, chat, argue, give each other haircuts. A bucket is their toilet. Leaky overhead pipes are a source of water for showers. They live in virtual darkness. During the filming, Amtrak gives a 30-day eviction notice.
The “characters” in the film all told their individual stories but none of them tried to make any excuses for things they’ve done in the past to get them where they were which is what ultimately makes you sympathize with them. The documentary is beautifully shot on black and white film which was impressive considering the lighting issues inside the tunnel. DJ Shadow, a trip hop DJ provided the score which really added to the mood of the narrative.
Sample Dialogue: “What they should do is leave us down here, that’s what they should do. Leave us down here until they get housing and when they get housing they ship us out. But not just take us out of here. I mean we’re all down here by ourselves, my friend. Like a family alright, you gonna break up the whole family. It’s not worth it, it’s not fair to us”
