No Lonesome Dope after all!

[Michael Blackman]

> Speaking of Leary: I believe the Hawks met some of his 'people' while they
were on a US tour in the 70s, at the time he was languishing in jail. I
remember reading about a mad scheme to free him which would have


My wife wrote to Tim Leary when he was in jail and he wrote a really nice
letter back to her.  (she still has it) Sounds like a really interesting
character.

( I say 'sounds' in the present tense because I don't believe in the
finality of
'Death' - )


----- Original Message -----
From: Nick Medford <nick at HERMIT0.DEMON.CO.UK>
To: <BOC-L at LISTSERV.SPC.EDU>
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2000 6:23 AM
Subject: Re: No Lonesome Dope after all!


> In message <200011021630.QAA03040 at holyrood.ed.ac.uk>, M Holmes
> <fofp at HOLYROOD.ED.AC.UK> writes
> >
> >What's intriguing is that there do seem to be certain hallucinatory
> >images which are consistent across cultures and are even independent of
> >the means used to induce the state (priests used to whip themselves and
> >then wear hairshirts in order to make the wounds go septic; Jesus
> >starved himself; others avoided sleep - it just makes you so proud
> >science has made it as easy as taking a pill :-)
> >
> >Leary was probably onto something when he said that it indicated
> >something about basic neuronal wiring, but boy did he ever run with that
> >ball.
> >
> >
> >FoFP
>
> Don't know if you saw the recent BBC prog on prehistoric shamans: certain
> criss-cross patterns found in cave paintings are now thought (by some,
> probably not all, archaeologists) to be records of visual hallucinations
> experienced in shamanic trance states. Very similar hallucinatory patterns
> are reported by old folk who's visual cortex is degenerating. Of course
this
> doesn't prove that the cave paintings represent hallucinations but it's an
> interesting idea.
>
> Leary: agreed, he stretched a little inspiration an awfully long way.
>
> Speaking of Leary: I believe the Hawks met some of his 'people' while they
> were on a US tour in the 70s, at the time he was languishing in jail. I
> remember reading about a mad scheme to free him which would have
> involved a silver helicopter covered in strobes and speakers- to make the
> jailers think he was being carried off by a UFO, y'see.... obvious really,
can't
> imagine why the plan wasn't enacted. Anyway the music emanating from
> the speakers was to be none other than Hawkwind. Think this story was in
> the "Do Not Panic" book which I sadly lost after lending it to the wrong
> person (i.e. someone I never saw again).
>
> Fairly sure I heard DB say something about Leary just after they played
> Orgone Accumulator in Brixton. However the Accumulator wasn't Leary's
> idea, it was the brainchild of Wilhelm Reich (as Nik Turner correctly
> announces at the start of Undisclosed Files), although Leary may well have
> been an admirer of Reich- there were many parallels between them. FWIW
> I think they were both eccentrics with fascinating but ultimately
untenable
> ideas. Course that doesn't justify the way they (Reich especially) were
> persecuted.
> --
> Nick Medford