“COMMAND PERFORMANCE”
The Arthur Magazine Email Bulletin
No. 0077
May 27, 02007
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editor at arthurmag doot com
Hey there fellow planetarians,
1. ARTHUR RETURNS TO THE LAND OF THE LIVING IN JULY
Good news! Arthur Magazine will resume publication in July. Subscribe now and get a free CD. Info:
http://www.arthurmag.com/subscribe/index.php
2. OH HAPPY DAY — IRA COHEN & ANGUS MACLISE’S “THE INVASION OF THUNDERBOLT PAGODA” DVD FINALLY AVAILABLE AGAIN
The reprint of last year’s hit is finally ready, made possible by Arthur Magazine in collaboration with The Ira Cohen Akashic Project and Saturnalia Media Rites of the Dreamweapon. Sorry for taking so long. Here’s the jacket copy:
THE INVASION OF THUNDERBOLT PAGODA
from Ira Cohen & Angus Maclise (1968)
The only psychedelic film ever made
First ever director authorized DVD
Color corrected, 16mm film transfer
16 page booklet of poetry & photos
Over 60 minutes of special features
Slide shows of mylar photography
Brain damage … a third eye bullet!
Soundtracks by Angus Maclise
Sunburned Hand of the Man
Acid Mothers Temple & Mahasiddhi
Director’s commentary interview
Playable in all regions & interzones
“Combines kabuki & Dr. Strange
in the mystical realm
an alchemical journey
by an arcane master . . .”
–Julian Beck, The Living Theatre
Now available at Family and Amoeba in Los Angeles. Or, order directly from Arthur at http://www.arthurmag.com/store/dvds.php
Watch a preview at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOWWhPzkwL8
Next up in the Ira Cohen Akashic Project DVD series: The Living Theatre! More info soon…
3. PROGRESS IN THOUGHT CONTROL
From the May 27, 2007 Los Angeles Times:
“The amount spent on the ‘alternative out-of-home media’ advertising category, which includes digital screens in stores, movie theaters and elevators (but not roadside billboards), grew 27% in 2006 to $1.69 billion, according to PQ Media Research.
“Everyone is saying this is the next frontier,’ said George Wishart, global managing director of Nielsen In-Store, which began measuring the audience for these sorts of ads earlier this month.
“Last year, Dean Dunlap, now the associate media director for DGWB, bought time on screens in several Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf stores for Southern California Land Rover dealers.
“We felt that it was another way to get people to think about Land Rover as they start their day,” he said.
Younger Americans are quicker to embrace ad-filled digital screens in public places, said Stuart Fischoff, professor emeritus of media psychology at Cal State L.A. They’re accustomed to having digital music players, PDAs and cellphones at their fingertips, and they “don’t want to be alone with their thoughts.”
4. CAN WE GET TWO AMENS
New black-and-white BOMP! t-shirt has a quote from the late, great Greg Shaw on the back: “We are trying to preserve the best of alternative music culture from the creeping mediocrity that always seeks to envelop it.”
Available from the Bomp! store
Along those lines: In the spirit of sharing and psychedelic outreach, Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has made his first mixtape podcast for Arthur. It’s 30 minutes of “hideously rare” gems and mellow voiceover, made with love. Download it here:
http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/audio/?dir=&download=PCW22007.mp3
Or stream it here:
http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/?p=1818
5. IDEAS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES
Adam Curtis is the deeply brilliant English filmmaker/philosopher whose BBC television series “The Power of Nightmares” about the intertwined, mutually supporting histories of American neo-conservativism and militant Islam has still not aired on American television. (Its first two hours have been distributed as part of Wholphin, though, and you can watch it online via youtube or googlevideo.)
“The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom,” his new series about how a radical economic theory of human behavior has directly worsened our lives, is unlikely to be broadcast here either. But some people are keeping it available online.
Check out Episode 1 of “The Trap” at googlevideo.
6. REGARDING PLANT-HUMAN INTERACTION…
This just in via author and Arthur contributor Erik Davis. Benny Shanon, author of “Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience” (Oxford University Press, 2002), is Professor of Psychology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and holder of the Mandel Chair in Cognitive Psychology and Education. He will be speaking this November at “METAGEUM ’07 –EXPLORING THE MEGALITHIC MIND,” an interdisciplinary international conference in Malta. This is how he describes the current direction of his research:
“I sincerely believe that the origin of religion (and perhaps art as well) is tied to altered states of mind, which in many places involves the use of psychoactive plants. While my expertise is with Amazonian ayahuasca, I actually have researched this issue also in conjunction with my own land, and concerning the origins of the Hebrew (before Jewish, that is) religion. There are also similar narratives about religions in India, classical Greece and the early steps of Christianity into Europe.
“My own story in these matters runs (in an abstract sketch) as follows: The ayahuasca potion works only when two plants are combined – using only the plant that contains DMT (the principal psychoative ingredient) won’t do as the human body has enzymes that immediately counter it; the second plant is necessary to counter the natural inhibition. How people discovered this is, obviously, a great riddle. Obviously, in the semi-arid landscape of the Holy Land the plants of the Amazonian rainforest are not to be found, but it turns out (my own discovery) that here in the Mideast there are two botanically distinct but chemically analogous plants. After looking through all sorts of botanical, ethnographical and old textual data I’ve come to the hypothesis (admittedly speculative, but I seriously believe in it) that the Hebraic religion too originated in the use of psychotropic plants…”
Dr. Shanon’s paper on this subject will be published in March, 2008 in the first issue of the new English journal, “Time & Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture.”
7. HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY
From “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic” by Chalmers Johnson (Metropolitan, 2007):
“Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist, and his colleague at Harvard Linda Bilmes have tried to put together an estimate of the real costs of the Iraq war. They calculate that it will cost about $2 trillion. This figure is several orders of magnitude larger than what the Bush administration publicly acknowledges…
“I believe that to maintain our empire abroad requires resources and commitments that will inevitably undercut our domestic democracy and in the end produce a military dictatorship or its civilian equivalent. The founders of our nation understood this well and tried to create a form of government–a republic–that would prevent this from occurring. But the combination of huge standing armies, almost continuous wars, military Keynesianism, and ruinous military expenses have destroyed our republican structure in favor of an imperial presidency. We are on the cusp of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire. Once a nation is started down that path, the dynamics that apply to all empires come into play–isolation, overstretch, the uniting of forces opposed to imperialism, and bankruptcy.”
“It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there”
Bob Dylan said that,
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