"We leaf through Bryan's drug sketchbook."

"The drawings are beautiful and compelling."

"That's lighter fluid," he says. "I used metallic crayons to give it that lighter fluid feeling. That's computer duster. If you don't do it right, it can freeze and shatter your teeth. That's crystal meth. That painting's probably the seventh or eighth on the same piece of paper, because I kept doing it over and over again. I couldn't stop. That's marijuana…"

If you don't do it right, it can freeze and shatter your teeth. Holy lord.

Anyway... here are the drawings, self-portraits done on drugs.

For comparison: Here's a series of portraits done in the course of a U.S. government experiment with LSD (back in the 1950s). 85 minutes into it, the artist was all "'I can see you clearly, so clearly. This... you... it's all ... I'm having a little trouble controlling this pencil. It seems to want to keep going.

I got to that last link via "3 Myths And 8 True Stories About LSD." Apparently, "The US Government Gave Artists LSD To See How It Would Affect Their Work."

"My daughter has repeatedly brought home books from the school library that I have a problem with. I'm a feminist and I'm anti-censorship. I'm lost."

So wrote a woman at Ask Metafilter:

Yesterday, for the THIRD time, LittleTaff brought home a fairy tale... this time Rapunzel. Objectified women with little or no agency, basing marriage decisions on the appearance or wealth of the men, and WITCHES!!!!

After the second version of the Little Mermaid came home, I had a phone interview with the head and told her that I wasn't happy about the way women were portrayed, that I could see some historical merit in the books, but thought they were more appropriate for older children... but also that the Disney version of the Little Mermaid had no literary nor historical merit and did the school need some fundraising for books. (I'm on the fundraising committee. )

We were just talking about the Disney "Little Mermaid" yesterday, specifically the song "Part of Your World" — remember the singing "dads" — and my son John emailed me a link to his Ask Metafilter answer to that worried woman:

Really, [the Disney "Little Mermaid"] has no merit? Listen again to the song "Part of your World." Do you not hear the feminist themes in that song — about "bright young women . . . ready to stand?" What could be more feminist than a young woman expressing her interest in scientific discovery — "what's a fire, and why does it burn?" (The lyrics are fresh in my mind since I sang it in karaoke the other day along with a female friend.) I'm sure there's a great feminist critique of the movie to be made. But do you really want to prevent your daughter from seeing anything that could potentially be the subject of such a critique?

You seem to assume that you've seen all the truth that exists to be seen in your world, and educating your daughter is just about transmitting these truths to her. On the contrary, it matters relatively little whether your child shares your views. What matters more is equipping your child to deal with the world in her own individual way.

So I say, let your daughter be exposed to all of this. I'll bet she can handle it. Focus on talking to her about it instead of trying to create the perfect parental filter (considering that the filter is never going to last anyway). You might even learn something from her in the process.

You can probably tell I didn't filter my children's reading/watching. And I can't remember my own parents ever saying one thing about my choices — even my choice to watch just about anything that was ever on television (when they themselves rarely watched television). (My parents spent nearly every evening sitting around talking to each other. Not reading and talking. Just talking!)

Speaking of controlling your children, I was just listening to one of my favorite old Lovin' Spoonful songs "Younger Generation" (video and lyrics at the link):

Why must every generation,
Think their folks are square?
And no matter where their heads are,
They know mom's ain't there....

Listening to it now, I'm not sure whether it's a sincere expression of a desire to let children range free — "I must be permissive... all my deepest worries must be his cartoons" — or making fun of hippie-style parents who don't know where to draw the line:

Hey, Pop, my girlfriend's only three,
She's got her own videophone,
And she's taking LSD,
And now that we're best friends,
She wants to give a bit to me,
But what's the matter, daddy,
How come you're turning green?
Can it be that you can't live up to your dreams?

Crazy dreams! (And yet, today the little girl does have her own videophone.)

Paraprosdokian.

"I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long."

That's a Mitch Hedburg joke, and an example of paraprosdokian, "a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part." It's usually done for comic effect, but not always and not in the example that got me reading about paraprosdokian, "He ain't heavy, he's my brother."

"He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother," is the title of a song, which you probably know from the Hollies' 1969 recording. (The phrase itself seems to go back much further, perhaps to 1884.) I looked up "He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother" because I couldn't remember who recorded it. (I was thinking The Moody Blues, for some reason.) And the subject came up because, over at the Isthmus forum, they're talking about what's happened to the notorious Wisconsin protester Segway Jeremy. There were reports that he was on his deathbed, and then some confusing contradictions, and somebody linked to this inane montage — "nice tribute" — which uses "He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother" as the audio track.

It's mostly lefties over there in The Forum, though Meade likes to prod them with questions and jokes (which they either don't get or pretend not to get). Meade is skeptical of the beatification of Jeremy.

Trying to figure out what Moody Blues song I had confused with "He Ain't Heavy... He's My Brother," Meade came up with "Legend of a Mind" — which most people probably think is titled "Timothy Leary's Dead," that being the familiar lyric. Timothy Leary was not dead at the time, but there seems to be some LSD-influenced connection between getting high and being dead, as noted in this morning's post about The Beatles' "She Said She Said."

And now Meade's done a "Legend of a Mind" parody about the mystery of Segway Jeremy.

"He told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life."

"He said there were things about him that people who had not tried psychedelics — even people who knew him well, including his wife — could never understand."

"It's not a protest without Ben."

Thinking about Ben Masel, the Madison activist who died yesterday, I looked back at his old comments on this blog. The first one, in July 2006, was on a post about the hallucinogenic drug psilocybin. Ben said:

Advice for the 1st time user of psilocybin or other psychedelics...

Go to the woods with one or more folks you like and trust. Ideally, deep enough into the National Forest that no-one will care if you take your clothes off.

At least one of the group should not consume. Only this individual should carry a cell phone.

Start with 1/4 of the suggested dose, wait to see your reaction, then, if favorable, take the rest.

Just because your first trip was wonderful, do not repeat the experience inmmediately. Space by at least a month.

I found another drug-related one. (Drug legalization was a big issue for Ben.) I'd blogged about accepting Ben's invitation to join the Facebook group "I'm proud to say that LSD-25 has contributed positively to my life," and he said:

Kudos on the courage to accept the invite. As yet, none of the "A list' lefty bloggers I simultaneously invited have signed on.

That's some high-level, drug-related kudos. Note, as I noted then, that you don't have to have taken LSD to have benefited from it. I loved the psychedelic music and art and many aspects of the hippie culture that had something to do with LSD.

Then there were the more clearly political things. In February 2007, I was saying what I thought about presidential candidates hiring bloggers, and Ben said: "I'm not hiring any house bloggers for my 2012 Senate campaign, as I prefer to be lambasted for my own scurillous posts." He really would have run too.

In August 2008, I put up a photograph of the Wisconsin Capitol rotunda and commented on its visual beauty. Ben commented:

Besides the look, there's the acoustics. The building went up just before electric amplification, and there's patterns on the floor directing speakers to the sweet spots.

I once heckled a Tommy speech, much louder than he was with amplification. Whoever placed the now permanently installed speakers had no idea.

Those acoustics played a huge part in the protests that took place in the rotunda this year. When I saw Ben a few weeks ago, he was extolling those magnificent acoustics, which make free speech in the rotunda uniquely valuable. It's not enough to say there's somewhere else where you can protest. This is the place. (Tommy, of course, is Tommy Thompson.)

March 19, 2007, I blogged a couple long, funny videos by Uncle Jimbo, who was covering some Madison anti-war rally, and Ben said: "I'll accept jimbo's piece as goodnatured fun, and appreciate he gave me the last word, but making the same wisecrack about me twice shows a deficiency of creativity."

Here: I've pinpointed the wisecrack:



Risking a deficiency of creativity, let me repeat that wisecrack, once more, with feeling: "It's not a protest without Ben."

***

Yesterday, we were talking about Ben, and chickelit said:

Masel was convicted in 1976, of assault, for spitting on U.S. Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson.

I think one had to live in Madison then to appreciate how outrageous that was even then.

And Harry Phartz said:

I did live in Madison then and pardon me for telling this great story one more time, but...

Masel got arrested for the famous spittle deposition on Scoop Jackson and managed to get released on bail fast enough that on primary Tuesday he was out and on the streets making noise. I was walking to class along Lake Street that morning, ready to turn up the Library Mall to the campus when I see on the NE corner of Lake and State, Ben Masel in a sandwich board sign urging people to write him in as candidate for President. He was right there in front of what was then Rennebohm's Drugstore as I passed and he exorted the passersby "A vote for me is a spit on all candidates!"

"Think I'll just DROP OUT/I'll go to Frisco/Buy a wig & sleep/On Owsley's floor."

"... I'm completely stoned/I'm hippy & I'm trippy/I'm a gypsy on my own...."

That Mothers of Invention lyric springs to mind because... Owsley died!

The renegade grandson of a former governor of Kentucky, [Owsley “Bear”] Stanley helped lay the foundation for the psychedelic era by producing more than a million doses of LSD at his labs in San Francisco’s Bay Area....

“I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for... What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society. Only my society and the one making the laws are different.”

I was a good member of society. Only my society and the one making the laws are different. Ah... that's so... deep.

"Is it all one?" "It would be all one if you weren't here."

A "normal" woman — tests have verified that she's psychologically normal — submits to a scientific study of LSD, in 1956:



I'm fascinated by how completely stereotypically hippie her expression becomes and by the odd situation of talking to a scientist while having a transcendent experience.

How LSD made Jerry Hall a model.

An excerpt from her autobiography that I'm highlighting instead of all the junk about Mick Jagger:

The idea of being a model started when I was invited to a party. A boy gave me LSD without telling me what it was. I locked myself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out, not knowing what was happening to me.

All I remember is looking in the mirror and thinking: ‘You’re really beautiful. You should be a model.’

She was 16 and 6 feet tall. I can't believe it took LSD to give her the idea of becoming a model. She was 6 feet tall! But anyway... I do believe that, given LSD and a mirror, she had a fine time staring at herself and reveling in her beauty. I don't quite believe that the idea of monetizing the beauty arrived psychedelically.

Oh, I can't resist dragging Mick into this blog post. I just love this sentence: "One evening in New York, I found myself sitting between Mick and Warren Beatty at a dinner party." I just found myself... Yeah, how does stuff like that happen?La la la... there you are, minding your own business, and suddenly — hey, here I am sitting between Mick Jagger and Warren Beatty!

Mick had told me he took LSD every day for a year in the Sixties. He also admitted he was smoking heroin. I was disgusted.

LSD every day, eh? Is that even possible? Did he stare in the mirror and decide he was gorgeous? Imagine yourself as Mick Jagger on LSD and staring into the mirror: What is that experience like? Feel free to answer that question via Photoshop.

This is good too: "He wasn’t nearly as rich as people thought... We bought homes in New York, London, Paris and Mustique...."

"You may be amazed at the lack of finger-wagging or reminders that acid was illegal and perhaps bad for you."

The Nation is surprised that the NYT had nothing but fun with the old story of Dock Ellis pitching a no-hitter while tripping on LSD.

If it seems almost routine to throw a no-hitter now, then consider one that was not.

Forty years ago, Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates raised the degree of difficulty to new, well, heights. He threw a no-hitter with Richard M. Nixon calling balls and strikes and Jimi Hendrix, wielding a Fender Stratocaster instead of a Louisville Slugger, digging in at home plate.

Or at least that is what he thought while pitching under the influence of LSD.

Who knows what really happened, but it's Ellis's own voice that's the soundtrack of this animation by James Blagden:



And here's the Robin Williams interpretation:

On the Tumbling Rock Trail...

... I was wearing dark glasses with yellowish lenses. On the way back, I took the glasses off and suddenly all that gray-looking quartzite rock popped into technicolor. All that purple and rose with tinges of lichen green!









What a crazy thing! Taking those sunglasses off was like dropping acid.

These pictures — all done with an iPhone — were taken at Devil's Lake.

"I know enough about a lot of things to be interesting, but I’m not interested enough in any one thing to be boring."

"I’m like everybody’s next-door neighbor, only a little bit smarter."

That sounds like something a blogger might say, but it was Art Linkletter, speaking in 1965, back when he was one of the most familiar faces on television. He died yesterday at the age of 97.

I remember watching him when I was a kid. He had kids on his show.



Being a kid, I was very interested in... how do I get on that show?

Later, young people my age turned against him. It had to do with this:

In 1969 Mr. Linkletter’s daughter Diane leapt to her death from her sixth-story apartment. Her father said that LSD had contributed to her death, and although an autopsy showed no signs of the drug in her body, the personal tragedy became a national event, suggesting to many Americans that drugs and the counterculture were making inroads even into seemingly model families like the Linkletters.

Mr. Linkletter, rather than retreating from the attention, became a crusader against drug use and an adviser to President Richard M. Nixon on drug policy...

Oh, how we callow youths mocked the poor man who, having lost his daughter, wanted to spoil our good times. LSD became associated with the urge to leap from windows and rooftops — an idea that many took seriously but many others — e.g., everyone I knew — thought was hilarious. Some of us seem to remember a National Lampoon illustration picturing the daughter at her window gazing at a hallucination of Art Linkletter floating in the air and beckoning to her.  I hope we won't go to hell for laughing at things like that.

Meanwhile, in heaven, there's "gold and diamonds." That's from the first kid interview in the YouTube clip above. Art asks little Roger Wong — a kid who wants to be a doctor — what heaven is like, and the kid says "gold and diamonds." Art suggests that, as a doctor, the boy will "keep people from going to heaven," which the boy takes the wrong way and denies. Art has to rephrase it: "I mean, you're just going to delay them a little, aren't you?"

Strangely, the same joke — that saving lives is only delaying death — appears in the current issue of The Onion. Humor is a funny thing. Sometimes cornball and hip merge, like that, and sometimes they are so thoroughly different — as with that beckoning hallucination — that it drives a sharp wedge between us.

The Mumbai terrorists, pumped up on steroids and cocaine.

"This explains why they managed to battle the commandos for over 50 hours with no food or sleep."

They also, apparently, took LSD, and it's hard to see how that could have helped.

"I'm proud to say that LSD-25 has contributed positively to my life."

It's a Facebook group:

Given the recent death of Dr. Albert Hofmann, we feel compelled to let it be known that we feel blessed that LSD has been a part of our lives.

We may use it for one or more purposes, including spiritual / introspective exploration, recreation, healing, psychotherapy, group bonding, or some combination of these.

Some of us may never have even ingested this sacred material, but we nonetheless recognize its positive influence on a wide array of cultural phenomena, including not only the obvious elements such as music, art, poetry, prose, dance, religious studies, adademic [sic] pursuit, etc., but also on modern science, information technology (UNIX / Linux would likely not exist without LSD), physiological psychology, and micro/molecular biology.

Haven't you at least benefited from the music... and the posters?

We believe that this compound is one of the truly magnificient [sic] discoveries of the 20th century and that it has only just begun to be realized as a path to the future of humankind.

Fix the spelling, man. It's freaking me out.

"The function of the brain is to reduce all the available information and lock us into a limited experience of the world. LSD frees us from this restriction and opens us to a much larger experience." - Stanislav Grof

"“There are two major products that came out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.” - Jeremy Anderson

"I think that in human evolution it has never been more necessary to have this substance LSD. It is a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be." - Dr. Albert Hoffman

"LSD burst over the dreary domain of the constipated bourgeoisie like the angelic herald of a new psychedelic millennium. We have never been the same since, nor will we ever be, for LSD demonstrated, even to skeptics, that the mansions of heaven and gardens of paradise lie within each and all of us." - Terence McKenna

"The LSD experience usually changes forever the worldview and basic life-orientation of all who experience it." - Ralph Metzner

IN THE COMMENTS: Ben Masel writes:

Kudos on the courage to accept the invite. As yet, none of the "A list' lefty bloggers I simultaneously invited have signed on.

Spelling fixed, seems I've been made an admin.

Yeah, well, the A-list lefty bloggers are pussies. But you have framed the description so that joining is not a confession of drug use — or even to say that the benefits, overall, to society, outweigh the harm. I could perceive, even without the aid of mind-expanding drugs, that anyone could join this group.

The scientist who discovered LSD.

Turns 100.

"It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature," [Albert Hofmann] said, listing to the right in a green armchair that looked out over frost-dusted fields and snow-laced trees. A glass pitcher held a bouquet of roses on the coffee table before him. "In the big cities, there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are products of humans," he said. "The bigger the town, the less they see and understand nature." And, yes, he said, LSD, which he calls his "problem child," could help reconnect people to the universe.

But no, he doesn't want you and me to have access to the substance for our private experiences with the universe:

But Mr. Hofmann ... is frustrated by the worldwide prohibition that has pushed it underground. "It was used very successfully for 10 years in psychoanalysis," he said, adding that the drug was hijacked by the youth movement of the 1960's and then demonized by the establishment that the movement opposed. He said LSD could be dangerous and called its distribution by Timothy Leary and others "a crime.

"It should be a controlled substance with the same status as morphine," he said.

How would that work? Would a psychotherapist have to sit by your side, trying to use your melted mental state to manipulate your mind away from your problems? Or could a soul with a disconnect from nature get a prescription to take home, with instructions to construct a suitable environment of roses, Mozart, and incense (to use the elements of Hofmann's own LSD experiment, described in the article)?

The LSD-inspired Beatles theme park that might have been.

The Jane and Michael Stern review Bob Spitz's new book "The Beatles." They like it a lot. I've picked out this detail to get some conversation going:

Spitz leads readers on a dizzying ride through the 1960's, taking in the band's musical and financial high points, way-out mystical adventuring, struggles over the Yoko Ono issue and what he calls their "course of reckless hedonism." That course included John's making a deal with LSD-maker Stanley Owsley to pay for a lifetime supply of the hallucinogen. On one occasion, under its influence, they all went to the Aegean Sea to purchase a cluster of islands where they planned to build four houses connected by tunnels, with the land between the homes filled with meditation posts, painting and recording studios, a go-cart track, and a landing strip. When the acid wore off, they got bored and abandoned the idea . . . but bought the islands anyway.

What a nice theme park that would be today if only they'd followed through! What drug-influenced notion did you abandon when you straightened out that you now think would have been quite cool?