Small Molecules in Chemical Space: we don’t know the half of it…

~ David Biddle ~ 1 Comment
 www.catenane.net/home/naturepaper2009december.html

Growing up in the 1960s, I watched my mother take handfuls of Thorazine, phenobarbital, and God knows what else, every morning after her first cup of coffee. She’d already been through electro-shock treatment and spent time in psychiatric facilities. Later in life they got her on the old psycho-salt diet treating her mental illness with lithium. The funny thing here is that near her death several years ago we talked about how they’d never diagnosed what was wrong with her definitively. Was she schizophrenic? Bi-Polar? Manic? Dissociative? Something else? She said sometimes it seemed like the drugs were what caused her illness after her first breakdown in the early ’60s.

The medicines my mom took kept her functional more or less for most of her adult life. She was once a brilliant sociologist with feisty political energy and a penchant for picking fights with people about women’s rights and taking care of the poor. By the time she was in her late 60s, though, the drugs she’d been taking pretty much destroyed her ability to interact with others. She spent the last decade of her life shut in a studio apartment in Section 8 housing watching NBC television shows and smoking three packs of cigarettes a day.

I wish there’d been a better way. I wish the pharmacological world of the near future could have been there for her in the early 1960s when the shit hit the fan in her world. She was a great and funny woman. But she had to deal with psychological and emotional imbalances that at times were devastating and other times just stultifying and limiting.

fMRI
We now have the ability to move with purpose on so many fronts of the human mind. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allows neuroscientists and psychologists to map the human mind by tracking blood oxygen flows in the brain. Developments continue in this field allowing scientists to refine imaging in both time and space so that they can understand how the brain reacts to various drugs — both current and experimental.

In essence, as fMRI technology progresses, it appears that we have for the first time in history diagnostic and research tools that allow scientists to map the mind in all sorts of different states. In theory, as technology continues to develop, this mapping capacity should refine to highly defined levels of both time and space.

As noted in a post earlier this week, research is already being done using fMRI as a tool to understand religious and psychedelic drug effects on the brain.

What’s a novemdecillion?
David Jay Brown published an interesting report on advances in psycho-pharmaceutical drugs a few weeks ago that I found very encouraging. His article is called “Psychedelic Medicines of the Future,” with the sub-title “more undiscovered drugs than stars in the sky.” The link to this piece by Brown can be found at the end of this entry. As always, he provides important insights on the interface between science and mind.

Brown references a paper written by chemists for the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) journal Chemical Neuroscience reporting that “scientists have synthesized barely one tenth of 1 percent of the potential drugs that could be made.” The emphasis by the authors of the paper is on “small molecule” medicines that can essentially cross cell walls. These small molecules can now be engineered by advanced computer applications. Our ability to manipulate chemical structures is diving deeper and deeper into the microscopic world of chemistry and the combinatorial capacity to literally manufacture new molecules.

According to a press release from the ACS journal, the paper estimates that the actual number of these so-called “small molecules” could be “1 novemdecillion (that’s 1 with 60 zeroes), 1 million billion billion billion billion billion billion, which is more than some estimates of the number of stars in the universe.” That’s a very big number — more than some estimates of the number of stars in the universe!

The paper’s authors, Jean-Louis Reymond and Mahendra Awale, write in their abstract that “Small molecule drugs exert their action by binding to specific molecular constituents of the cell such as to modulate biochemical processes in a disease modifying manner. The magnitude and specificity of binding depends on the complementarity between the drug molecule and its target in terms of shape, polarity, and chemical functionality.” Small molecules aren’t that new. They are, in fact, typical of most medicines. What’s new, though, is the vista of opportunity. We like to think that science has a handle on pretty much everything (us non-scientists think this, anyway). However, a novemdecillion is kind of a big number. We have barely begun to scratch the surface.

When you couple the research advances that fMRI technologies offer with these future “small molecules,” it’s clear that psychologists and psychiatrists should now be thinking very big in solving the problem of mental illness. Perhaps they would have been able to use computerized imaging to clearly characterize my mother’s illness, while a pharmaceutical company could have engineered the correct recipe to truly compensate for that illness.

Take this all one step further. As a culture we have an extreme prejudice against performance enhancing drugs in today’s sports world. But over the next 50 years it’s very likely chemists are going to invent nano-tech type amplifiers that increase, for example, auditory perception for musicians. Or, perhaps, we’ll have special memory retention drugs for learning situations.

As Brown writes in his piece: “Perhaps even drugs that improve extrasensory perception, psychic abilities, or facilitate mystical experiences or spiritual transformations, could all be developed with more specificity and efficacy over time.” Do we draw a line with this stuff? Do we put on our “old-school” blinders and say if it’s not natural then it’s not good? Curing cancer and mental illness are one thing, but what about turning up the notch of human potential? What if we could engineer ESP drugs or boost precognitive perception?

R&D, Baby!
All of these developments point to the need for increased investment in psycho-pharmaceutical research and development. New technologies and computer applications will certainly come out of the private sector. But public R&D is also going to be essential if we’re really going to boost the potential of the human mind. Reymond and Awale point to a novemdecillion new drugs to deal with all human health. What portion of that new chemistry actually involves the domain of the mind is anyone’s guess. After a century of emphasis by the medical establishment on keeping people alive, the benefits of more focus on the mind is all too obvious.

Just as scientists and psychologists need to have vision, it is time for the rest of us to have vision as well and to pay attention to the full potential of human beings. The implications are profound. If we shut ourselves off from this, if we limit our full understanding of the power of science to enhance the mind and the nervous system, don’t we defeat the purpose of being human?

My biggest challenge growing up was watching my mom struggle. But the challenge wasn’t just her struggle with mental illness, it was her inability to envision getting better. It’s understandable. In those days medical science was all about telling her she had to cope with her illness, that it was inevitable. But they couldn’t even really tell her what her illness was.

Things are changing now. We’ve cracked DNA codes, we understand the Genome. We’re learning how to chart the mind, and we can synthesize drugs and chemicals like never before. It’s no longer about coping, it seems to me. It’s about using our creativity, and thinking into the future — envisioning and evolving out of our limits. If only they had a drug for that kind of thinking! I don’t think I need it, but without doubt there’s some folks in Washington who do.

*

My thanks to David Jay Brown for inspring this commentary piece. His Catch the Buzz article, “Psychedelic Medicines of the Future,” may be found HERE. Follow the links in his article for original source material from the Chemical Neuroscience paper. 

A New Lift: Re-Opening the Investigation of Consciousness

~ David Biddle ~ 3 Comments

Can you feel it? There’s some lift going on again. The doors are open. So are the windows. And we’re starting to move. We’re not flying yet, but we’re certainly not tethered to asphalt anymore, either.

The potential of the human mind is now a big deal again, and it’s getting to be a bigger and bigger deal if you’re paying attention. That lift you should have noticed by now is a surge in rising awareness about the powers of the human mind. I find it interesting that my novel, Beyond the Will of God, so much about the validity and mystery of these powers, was ready for publication in 2000 but didn’t make it to the light of day until this summer…makes total sense, though. Twelve years ago few people wouldn’t have gotten it at all.

Let me explain as briefly as I can. A whole bunch of stuff is coalescing out there causing this lift.

First, over the past several decades diagnostic tools for mapping the chemistry of the human mind have advanced dramatically. Something called “functional magnetic resonance imaging”(fMRI) basically gives neuroscientists the ability to track blood flow on a fairly detailed level in the human brain and spinal column. And other computer-based diagnostic tools are on the horizon as well.

These tools mean scientists are now able to see how the brain reacts to anything from reading a book, to laughing at a joke, saying something nice to someone, meditating, or taking any number of psychoactive drugs. Two of the more “famous” neuroscientists to report back on their research are Andrew Newberg and David Eagleman. These guys, and so many more, are looking at what happens to the brain during meditation, near death experiences, religious ecstasy, psychedelic excursions, and memory and perception events. 

This isn’t just science in a bubble or test tube. Neuroscientists and psychologists are now able for the first time to get a read on thoughts and emotions. There are people attempting to connect minds to computer graphics programs that can draw images from dreams and visions. If you pay attention to the details of newspaper accounts and magazine stories about the mind you will bump into fMRI research more and more. Scientists don’t know what a lot of the mapping means yet, but they’ve only just begun to get a real handle on consciousness. 
The world of mind altering drugs, then, is partly being opened up by fMRI research. At the same time, over the past decade or so the “moratorium” on study and clinical use of psychedelic compounds has finally been lifted. While most Americans were “re-educated” about the question of psychedelic drugs beginning in the late 1960s, prior to that the psychiatric and psychology community did ground-breaking research on how to use these drugs to treat everything from mental illness and alcoholism to PTSD and other forms of psychological trauma. 
As David Jay Brown reports in “LSD & ESP: Scientists Study Psychic Phenomena and Psychedelic Drugs”, LSD research is now back in a big way and it’s providing scientists at quite prestigious universities with truly exciting discoveries about the open-ended powers of human consciousness. Brown has a new book coming out in the spring of 2013 called The New Science of Psychedelics. That will create more lift for sure.
Perhaps the biggest and most profound cultural awakening of the past decade, though, is in the expansion of interest — for scientists, artists, and knowledgable citizens alike — in dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Long considered one of the ultimate mind altering substances, smoking DMT creates what apparently amounts to a 15-minute interplanetary adventure that usually changes peoples’ lives forever. Check this out if you think I’m full of shit.

You may have heard of ayahuasca ceremonies in South America. Ayahuasca is a plant-based infusion that was ceremonially consumed by some South American tribes for thousands of years. Since the mid-20th century when people like William Burroughs and, later, Terence McKenna sought out these tribes, there has been a steady growth in interest in these ceremonies. Competing “tour” groups now make it possible for anyone to experience this deep altered state.

The DMT experience is said to be profound. One of the important things about this new lift I’m talking about is that, for the most part, participants and practitioners are not being so reckless and recreational in their approach to transforming their minds. Most people recognize that psychedelics were never about “getting fucked up.” Back in the ’60s and ’70s we were rather stupid and innocent at the same time. We understood what we were dealing with, but we still made huge mistakes — mostly because this stuff went underground and became part of a rebellious counterculture.

I did my mental adventures partly as a way to separate myself from everyone I knew in high school, but also because I knew there was something I needed to figure out. There was no supervision. No understanding of the idea of the right time and place. My friends and I were on our own. I wish we’d had even just a small amount of guidance. I might not have rolled up to the edge of insanity for five years…(that’s another story altogether).

Perhaps the most interesting cultural artifact out there right now that is openly talking about the possibilities of DMT, and psychedelic experience in general, is the dual book and documentary film, DMT: The Spirit Molecule. The book, with the subtitle “A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research Into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences” was written by Dr. Richard Strassman. It is a detailed account of DMT research he performed on 400 subjects from 1990 to 1995. The film, inspired by the book and directed by Mitch Schultz, was released in 2010. I purchased it for my iPad. It’s rather amazing and well worth the investment. As I understand it, Mr. Schultz is touring the country on invitation presenting his film and discussing the implications of DMT here in the 21st Century. The book and movie combined are probably the biggest source of lift out there right now.

The implications of this lift I’m talking about are pretty incredible. They will be the topic of conversation at a conference called Psychedemia for four days in Philadelphia this fall (September 27 -30) at the University of Pennsylvania.

But this is a meeting of the minds that is only the latest element of lift going on. For the past decade research has quietly been implemented seeking to understand the relationship between religious/spiritual consciousness and psychedelic consciousness. There are quite interesting parallels. In addition, psilocybin (an active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”) has been used to treat anxiety and depression for terminally ill people. Read here and here to find out what this is all about. It’s pretty important.

A lot of us (I’m 54) are getting close to the end of our biological potency. You can’t stay on earth if you aren’t biologically potent. It’s not practical. Are you scared of dying? Are you, maybe — even if you think you’re religious and spiritual — just a little bit concerned about the end of things?

It’s truly criminal that we abandoned research into this area back in the early 1970s. It’s also sad that our culture got so confused by the potential of mind expansion. There were “forces” at work, of course. We all know that. But the truth is that somehow mind experimentation got linked to intoxication problems. We lost about 40 years of time. But its not too late. The human race has at least another thousand years before it starts to wipe itself out (my rough estimate). There’s still time to make me wrong.

So pay attention to this lift I’m talking about. It’s real. We’re all in this together. This really ain’t no hippie thing. It never was. It’s just that the hippies were the only ones really hip back in the good old days.

Now we’re all hip. Trust me. I’ve been watching. We all have creative intelligence and we’re all connected now (although I’m the only person in my family who doesn’t have an iPhone). I wrote Beyond the Will of God as a piece of fiction — a mystery, if you will. But I also knew the whole time I was concocting my weird little story that I was creating an allegory and using the mythology of that amazing time that began about 50 years ago to help open the doors and windows again…and to make a small contribution to lightening the load of being alive in a seemingly mundane world.

Now we got lift! It’s very real, and very soon it’s going to become a movement (or at least a trend). Just watch. Pay attention. Don’t hang up. Just breathe. We’re all here, together, now. There’s no telling how far we’re going, but we’re going.

What is it Jimi Hendrix advised? “Just float your little mind around…”. He knew a thing or two about lift. So do you I bet.

A Free Sample Short Story from IMPLOSIONS OF AMERICA

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

Uph! Ya’ missed it. The story, “So Beautiful,” self-destructed at 10:37 PM, July 9, 2012. 



You can find “So Beautiful” again in the story collection Implosions of America, due out in September and available in both Kindle and paperback editions. Check back here for another free story next month. 


Don’t forget to buy the Kindle edition of my novel Beyond the Will of God. It’s still a steal at only $2.99. Just go to the top of the page and click on the cover of the book. Check out Trying to Care as well, and my short singles, too. 

Indies Unlimited Sneak Peak: July 8

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

Indies Unlimited is a great resource for independent authors and their readers. They post loads of information on quality books available at reasonable prices online. They also run a fabulous FaceBook page you should check out here:

http://www.facebook.com/IndiesUnlimited

At around 5:00 on Sunday evening, July 8, they will be posting one of their Sneak Peak specials on Beyond the Will of God. You can take a peak and then use their store to buy my novel through Kindle. Or, you can buy the book right now.


A little more news here as well. I’ve been hard at work setting up a paperback version of the book. If you’ve been following this blog at all over the past few weeks, you know that this is one of the basic rules for Indie Writers that I’ve discovered (Lesson #9). Kindle books are a great buy at under $9.99 (BWG is a steal right now at $2.99). But half the readers out there are still just not interested in making the investment in an e-reader — or they have issues with reading on a screen.

Cover for the paperback

So, I just finished up a second round of proofs and am waiting for the next set of gallies to be sent to me. I feel confident the corrections I spent all day making will merit a finished product by the end of next week. That means you will be able to buy a paperback version of Beyond the Will of God before the end of July.


That’s all good news, I hope. Now the medicinal news. Writers have to work with Amazon and Create Space on pricing. Ultimately, they give you your say on things, but they have to cover the cost of manufacturing, marketing, and distribution. They have a pretty hardcore equation for print-on-demand publishing and because they sell to a huge number of outlets, the equation has to take all costs into account. I looked at the best pricing given their equation. The price I have come up with is fairly competitive. And you need to remember you can still get the e-book for $2.99. The comparative paperback price will be $15.99 (plus shipping, of course). It’s comparable to pretty much anything you’d buy at Barnes & Noble or your local bookstore. If you have strong opinions about this, please let me know. 


In the meantime, check out Indies Unlimited after 5:00 p.m. on Sunday. Now’s the time to buy the book electronically. It’s really intended to be crazy summer reading. 


See you in the funny papers. 


David

Independence Day with Global Illage: Improvisational Music and Freedom

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment
http://www.1krecordings.com/home for availability

We had the opportunity last night, Independence Day Night, to attend an album release party for the new Global Illage album “The Complete Portland Sessions.” I’ve written about this mind blowing quartet previously. They’re all about improvisational music and, truthfully, I think they’re channeling the 22nd Century pretty forcefully. Global Illage is Chris Cuzme on reeds and bass; Dan Sears, trumpet and keyboards; Jim Hamilton, percussion; and Tim Motzer playing guitar and electronics (like a winged angelic mad professor blend of Frank Zappa and Pat Metheny). Their music grooves, flies, digs, screams, settles, electrifies, and calls forth the spirits of so many of our greatest musical geniuses of the past 100+ years.


I asked a couple other people at the concert last night what we would call this stuff. Our final pick was global acid jazz fusion beat. Each musician brings his distinct musical intelligence to the mix. And each musician is a world-class performer who could probably sit in with anyone from Yo-Yo Ma to Taylor Swift.

I did a lot of chuckling last night. Most people hadn’t heard a lot of the work these four wizards were spinning for us. I had. My friend Jim Hamilton, the band’s percussionist extraordinaire, gave me an advance demo of the album about a month ago and I’ve had it cranked every morning since while I do layout and editing of the paperback version of my novel Beyond the Will of God. I was chuckling because while I heard pieces of the tunes from their album, they were taking us off on insanely fascinating uncharted musical adventures in each of the maybe 10 compositions they performed over a 2 1/2 hour trip. 
It was Independence Day and most of the country was jostling for parking space and a piece of ground to watch fireworks. We were in Jim’s backyard with 40-50 other likeminded jam lovers watching four cats groove as independent musical thinkers in a totally American far out way. [Note: Philly has the blessing of The Roots as our 4th of July houseband down on the Parkway before fireworks, so that’s a pretty descent improvisational crew sending out their own vibe for the half million who show up there, too]. In fact, we weren’t just watching guys jam like few others can jam, we had the added visual treat of a digital light show by Dejha Ti and Eric Silverson flashing and swarming the colonial era barn behind the band.
Near the end of the concert last night I was struck quite cleanly between the eyes by the revelation that the creative improvisational act has to be one of the most powerful altered states available to us as humans. I chuckled at that as the Ill boys were winding down their last number. We were standing in a dense urban neighborhood in the city where liberty was born watching astounding musicians demonstrate the magic and height of freedom. 
Thanks Tim, Jim, Dan and Chris. You guys are the best. Miles and Trane would be proud.

R.I.P. Andy Griffith: You Did Something Very Special

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

I grew up watching the Andy Griffith Show several times a week. It ran from 1960 to 1968. We watched it when it was a prime time show and we watched it more once it became syndicated — probably from 1968 through 1980 three or four times a week in one way or another. Andy Griffith is deep inside my head. News today that he has died gave me a long pause and then a shiver. Without Andy, I don’t think I would have become the man I have become. Let me explain.

The parents of baby boomers have been called the greatest generation. I don’t want to debate that here, but I do want to say that while the fathers of the Greatest Generation had to face the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the insanity of the Cold War, and a host of major civil rights issues, as a group they didn’t do a very good job being fathers. Many of them were emotionally distant, unyieldingly judgmental, and workaholics. Far too many of them also destroyed their families with booze, early death, or affairs with younger women. They were good men, but they were confused — or maybe it’s better to say they just didn’t know any better. Their fathers (our grandfathers) had also been troubled men. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, one of the Greatest Generation, “So it goes.”
My generation of men, however, is the first generation that has had the benefit of self-actualized moms. We watched them become empowered in the 1970s (and deal with their husbands leaving them). And we also watched Andy. He presented a profound mix of manliness, intelligence, gentle humor, and — most importantly — a fearlessness when it came to empathy and emotional connection with everyone. As Sherif Andy Taylor, Griffith showed his son Opie (has there ever been a more lovable and innocent kid on the screen?) so much affection and love without ever giving up an inch of his masculinity. Even today it’s a marvel to watch Andy Griffith play that special character. He was the paw we all wanted. He was the dad we all knew we needed to become. And, I think, he was also the father that our own fathers wanted to be…but just had a hard time becoming. 
Griffith’s character didn’t just stop in his relationship to Opie. His best friend (cousin?) Barney Fife (played by the staggeringly hilarious Don Knotts) was a wimp and, essentially, an idiot. Besides getting himself into trouble, he was often a magnet for bullies and tough guys. Andy stepped in and pretty much always showed how you deal with that kind of jerk. Andy also demonstrated how to love and support other men who might not be as strong or confident — men who chatter like fools and act like idiots, but are good-natured and sweet nonetheless. His friendship with Barney was a pretty good template for all of us to follow.
Andy was, in fact, beloved by the whole town of Mayberry. He showed us how to be a compassionate leader without upsetting others who didn’t know any better. And the way he dealt with women — widower that he was — may well have ushered in the women’s movement a good decade before it would have come otherwise. Here was a man full of love, honesty, and integrity who respected the women of Mayberry almost to a fault. Here was the good soul that was hidden inside all the Boomer dads of America that women knew might step up if only their men weren’t so selfish and emotionally protective. 
The picture I paint here of our fathers is perhaps harsh. Things are never so black and white. There were certainly men in the 1960s — fathers — who knew how to show love and connect with their families. In some ways, I suppose, most men tried as hard as they could. I know my dad did. Maybe all Andy Griffith offered was the channeling of that desire most men had to be the perfect man, the perfect father. 
In the end, though, the generation of boys who grew up watching him be Andy Taylor were the ones who benefited the most. So many of my friends are now profoundly amazing dads, knowing how to show love and how to accept it. We, of course, have our own problems. But we each have Andy inside of us — even if we don’t know it — giving us permission to show compassion and empathy to our children, our wives, co-workers, and neighbors. We aren’t afraid to show emotion. We hug long and hard. And we even know how to talk about our feelings…sort of. Heck, even John Boehner isn’t afraid to cry in public. 
So, the loss of Andy Griffith should give all of my generation pause. There was no greater scene in our lives than the one that started and ended that show (as I remember it). Andy and Opie headin’ off to a fishin’ hole. Just the two of them, trundling like magpies through the woods. That was a scene I got to live (along with my brother) several times in my youth with my own dad. It didn’t happen enough, but it did happen. It never occurred to me until today that I got to watch it on TV five times a week for most of my early life and that in one way or another I’ve now lived out that scene with my own sons hundreds if not thousands of times in one way or another. 
Rest in peace Andy of Mayberry. You were an American treasure, and you shaped this country like few other actors ever have. You may be gone, but your Mayberry Soul is deep inside so many of us. It’s what gives me hope for America here in the 21st century. 

Paperback Rider: Beyond the Will of God, The Real Thing

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment
Cover of the paperback, due out in July.

I’d originally planned on publishing a paperback version of Beyond the Will of God late in the fall. But within days of getting the word out to friends and family that they could download my book at the Kindle Store, it became astoundingly apparent (like a slap upside the head from my older cousin Danny) that there’s a huge portion of my world who still like to buy and read bound paper books.

Plus, never thought of it, but there’s certain people I want to make this book available to personally. I know even if friends are super iPad users (or whatever), they’re just not going to get to reading it unless Beyond the Will of God is sitting around their bedroom making them feel like it is, in fact, a real thing. I also need to go to the local bookstore in my neighborhood and give a copy to the owner. You don’t give e-books to bookstore owners.

A bound paper edition of Beyond the Will of God is therefore currently in production (under the Flat Branch Press imprint) and should be available for purchase in a week or so. You can see the draft book cover at the top of the page here. The hard copy will cost more than the digital version, but its likely at least some readers will find it a more familiar and cozy reading experience which is certainly worth the expense.
Important Indie Point and Lesson #9: The Paperback Rider
So, yeah, it may seem obvious now, but, if you’re really serious about your books, it probably makes sense to plan on producing both digital and paper versions of them simultaneously. Statistics I’ve read show that roughly 50% of the reading market use e-readers. The other 50% is more or less leery of moving down that road. Print-on-demand costs a bit to set up, and buyers have to pay more, but if half your market is non-virtual, you need to meet their needs…that includes your cousin Danny.

That said, I realize, too, that one of the problems with digital books is that no one can really see what you’re reading. The idea of a book cover is to advertise and create interest everywhere that book travels — the beach, train, picnics, whatever. Makes sense. Never thought of it so definitively until it became an issue that was personal.

I still highly recommend purchasing this book as an e-book now. It’s priced at $2.99. The paperback version will cost considerably more for obvious reasons, plus you will have to pay for shipping.

Also, check out my Amazon Author’s Page for my short story collection Trying to Care. These are straight ahead urban angst stories about mid-life love and confusion. Like life, they’re not about good and evil. They’re about you and me and all the people we know. Another collection called Implosions of America should be out before the end of the summer. When that hits the stores online, I promise it will be in both real and virtual renditions. Trying to Care should be out in paperback as well in a few weeks.

http://www.amazon.com/David-Biddle/e/B007BFDF22

Happy reading. Happy summer 2012.

-dcb

Burial of the Query Letter: Inside Beyond the Will of God

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment
Somewhere in this photo is an envelope containing over 100 rejections.
You will find below an actual query sent earlier this year to a book publisher for my novel Beyond the Will of God. I sent out over 200 query letters for this novel — mostly in the early nawts. This is the very last one. I have an envelope, conveniently lost in my office now, with over 100 rejections of Beyond the Will stuffed into it. Yes, only about half the folks I reached out to actually made the effort Continue reading →

Mind Maverick: Check out David Jay Brown

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

David Jay Brown covers the far edge of consciousness research. I stumbled into his work while reading a weekly report on entheogens at Reality Sandwich. Brown recently did a piece for the Santa Cruz Patch on telepathy and precognition studies performed on subjects under the influence of LSD. You can read that article HERE. 

There really is a lot of movement going on out there in the world of psychedelic and entheogen research. It’s surprising how dramatically things are changing but how quiet this research still is. Brown probably covers this information better than anyone with his Catch the Buzz column, and has been called “the altered statesman.” 
What he’s best known for is his in-depth and intelligent interviews with consciousness visionaries. He is the author of at least 8 books, many of which are compendiums of his interviews with everyone from Deepak Chopra and Allen Ginsberg to Terence McKenna and Jerry Garcia. His web site, Mavericks of the Mind, is like a hall-of-edge-of-everything wisdom that you don’t mind getting lost in because you can’t stop learning about the meaning of life and human consciousness. 
To give you a taste, and because it’s germaine to much of what Beyond the Will of God is all about, read a snippet from Brown’s interview with Garcia. This gives you an idea about how thought-provoking he is, and how disarming he seems to be in getting his subjects to really open up with their ideas. We’ve strayed so far from trying to legitimately understand the mind over the past 20 years or so. It’s a good thing David Jay Brown is still on the case. If you don’t believe me, read this.
Excerpt of Jerry Garcia Interview:

Rebecca: How do you feel about the fact that you enjoy such a divine-like status in the eyes of so many of your fans?
Jerry: These things are all illusions. Fame is an illusion. I know what I do and I know about how well I do it, and I know what I wish I could do. Those things don’t enter my life, I don’t buy into any of that stuff. I can’t imagine who would. Look at David Koresh. If you start believing any of that kind of stuff about yourself, where does it leave you?
David: What about the subjective experience a lot of people talk about that there’s a group-mind experience that occurs at your shows?
Jerry: That’s been frequently reported to me. In fact, even more specifically of direct telepathic connection of some kind.


Rebecca: Do you experience that yourself?
Jerry: I can’t say that I do, because I’m in a position of causality. So, I don’t look at the audience and think, I’m making them do what I want them to do.
Rebecca: I’m thinking of it more as a spontaneous non-causal experience which is being mediated by something greater than either yourself or the audience.
Jerry: You might think of it as a kind of channeling. At the highest level, I’m letting something happen – I’m not causing it to happen. We all understand that mechanism in theGrateful Dead and we also know that fundamentally we’re not responsible.
We’re opening a door, but we’re not responsible for what comes through it. So in that sense, I can’t take credit for it. We’re like a utility, like a conduit for life-energy, psychic energy – whatever it is. It’s not up to us to define it or to describe it or to enclose it in any way.
Rebecca: It’s rumored that the Grateful Dead can control the weather, can you shed any light on this? (laughter)
Jerry: (laughter) No. We do not control the weather.
Rebecca: You’ve heard those rumors though ?
Jerry: I’ve heard them, of course. Sometimes it seems as though we’re controlling the weather.
Rebecca: But that is synchronicity?
Jerry: It’s synchronicity, exactly.
Rebecca: So what is the relationship dynamic like between you and the audience when you’re on stage?
Jerry: When things are working right, you gain levels – it’s like bardos. The first level is simply your fundamental relationship to your instrument. When that starts to get comfortable the next level is your relationship to the other musicians. When you’re hearing what you want to and things seem to be working the way you want it to, then it includes the audience. When it gets to that level, it’s seamless. It’s no longer an effort, it flows and it’s wide open.
Sometimes however, when I feel that that’s happening, that music is really boring. It’s too perfect. What I like most is to be playing with total access, where anything that I try to play or want to happen, I can execute flawlessly – for me that’s the high-water mark. But perfection is always boring.
Rebecca: I’ve heard that musicians using computer synthesizers are complaining that the sound produced is so perfect that it’s uninteresting, and that manufacturers are now looking to program in human error.
Jerry: Right. I think the audience enjoys it more when it’s a little more of a struggle.
David: What is it that you feel is missing in that case?
Jerry: Tension.
David: Tension between what and what?
Jerry: The tension between trying to create something and creating something, between succeeding and failing. Tension is a part of what makes music work – tension and release, or if you prefer, dissonance and resonance, or suspension and completion.
David: Joseph Campbell, the renowned mythologist, attended a number of your shows. What was his take?
Jerry: He loved it. For him it was the bliss he’d been looking for. “This is the antidote to the atom bomb,” he said at one time.
David: He also described it as a modern-day shamanic ritual, and I’m wondering what your thoughts are about the association between music, consciousness and shamanism.
Jerry: If you can call drumming music, music has always been a part of it. It’s one of the things that music can do – it can transport. That’s what music should do at it’s best – it should be a transforming experience. The finest, the highest, the best music has that quality of transporting you to other levels of consciousness.
David: Do you feel sometimes at your shows that you’re guiding people or taking people on a journey through those levels?
Jerry: In a way, but I don’t feel like I’m guiding anybody. I feel like I’m sort of stumbling along and a lot of people are watching me or stumbling with me or allowing me to stumble for them. I don’t feel like, here we are, I’m the guide and come one you guys, follow me. I do that, but I don’t feel that I’m particularly better at it than anybody else.
For example, here’s something that used to happen all the time. The band would check into a hotel. We’d get our room-key and then we’d go to the elevator. Well, a lot of times we didn’t have a clue where the elevator was. So, what used to happen was that everybody would follow me, thinking that I would know. I’d be walking around thinking why the fuck is everybody following me? (laughter) So, if nobody else does it, I’ll start something – it’s a knack.
>>Snip
You can read the entire interview at his web site, HERE.