* (restored)
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‘It was as though I’d somehow managed to tear through the fabric of reality and to step behind the scenes of the world. Everything moved in slow motion in an endless cycle. I remember being overwhelmed at the very first sight of seeing the universe endlessly revolving in upon itself, as it had done for eons, and as it would continue to do for eternity. I remember repeating a word over and over in my head. It was not an English word and to this day I don’t know how to write it or what language it is. I do however know what the word means. The word being spoken to me from the inner most depths of my soul was my name, not the name I have been given in this lifetime, but my eternal name, the name I have remembered at the point of all my previous deaths. The thought passed through my consciousness, ‘I am about to die… I know what’s going to happen now…this moment is about to be the moment of my death.’ I felt all the people in the room turn in slow motion to look at me, as though something profound was about to happen. Again there was a primordial word for it that I heard from someone in the room. ‘He’s about to go through his……(then the primordial word for death).’ Suddenly it was as though all the cells in my body turned to water and I quite literally felt myself collapse into the ground, back into the very universe from which I first sprung. I let out a cry, an inhuman scream from the very depths of my soul. It is a sound I never realised I could make, a sound that my friends told me later literally stopped every person in the club in their tracks and caused them to look over to where I had collapsed.’
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‘It seemed as if I traveled into a television, went through the bowels of the earth, and wound up in the darkest, most horrifying place I had ever seen. A rush of HORRIBLY disturbing thoughts fired through my brain such as: the extent of my own personal ‘sins’, deception, hate, giant teddy bears with demon faces raping children, Nazi imagery, sado-masochistic overtones, animals dying all around, weapons going off, sex with corpses, immeasurable carnage and gore, but most importantly, there seemed to be this message of a childlike innocence being horribly tainted and corrupted all around. I was surrounded by millions of mainacally laughing demons carrying sticks and singing nursery rhymes, that seemed to chase me through these dark alleys where around every corner was another dead end. There was one face that kept flashing through my mind that seemed very large and its features were constantly distorting themselves. This face glared at me and screamed, at such a volume that is not possible for any earthly speaker, no matter how powerful, to reach. At that moment in time I truly believed that hell now reigned on earth and that the world was going to end.’
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‘I have just flown past our dimension of time and space. I am flying forward in an erratic yet peaceful spiral direction, not only in my mind but my body as well. The speed is picking up, and I feel my mind communicating with my hands (who have remained in the first dimension with the rest of humanity). I have just flown through the second dimension, into the third, into the fourth. My speed has maxed out, far beyond the standards of terminal velocity, and I continue in the form of a particle through each successive dimension. I pass through the last gate – the end of the line. I am in Dimension 11 and this seems to have been my destination all along. I come to realization that only a few entities are ever allowed this deep, and I must not take my presence here for granted. I am floating in void, many shapes and scenes unfolding in front of me – all of them alien, none realistic in regards to the physics and chemical make-up of the known universe. Then, something happens. The 11th Dimension has imploded onto itself. I watch every other entity within this realm begin to connect to one another, to become one. They are acting in this manner at a very fast rate. With no delay or transition, I become one. I am the singularity. All of us entities have finished connecting with each other and begin to contract into a single point in reality [or, non-reality]. We surpass the form of a point and become…’
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‘The ceiling began to shimmer. Strange patterns began to manifest themselves. The patterns seen were like none other I had ever encountered, and I consider myself a fairly seasoned traveler. They seemed to have deep purple and blue shades to them, and they were just spinning bars. Music began to play. It wasn’t from a stereo, it was from my head. I could decide a song, and it played. The Rolling Stones “Paint it Black” began to play in my head. I am not sure why I chose this song, but it began to play and it sounded amazing. More bizarre images began to appear. Numerous fractals were visible, but even more interesting were the non-fractal images. I saw an image of a house with little elves working on it. They were all singing a song, and I knew all the words. Then two bars appeared. They looked like long chrome bars. The began to spin and they burst into blue flames. A voice in my head was chanting “blue flame, blue flame.” I decided to try to change this, and I thought “red flame.” Instantly the colors changed. I was interacting with the images I saw. Then, to see what would happen, I thought “kaleidoscope.” The flaming bars vanished and my whole visuals field was filled with amazing colorful patterning. I was watching a mental television that was on my ceiling. At this point I rolled over and looked at the time. 10 minutes had elapsed. I then closed my eyes, and I disappeared. Everything about me was gone. I couldn’t even think to remember my name. The visions faded, as well as the room. The room was no longer recognizable. I completely lost all sense of self and body. This is where my memories end.’
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‘I had what we call a ‘mind-explosion.’ It had started with me just thinking about the number 23. I like to think very philosophically and was pondering the purpose of this number. I quickly came to the conclusion that the number was almost like life’s personal metaphor to make us realize how connected we are. After this realization the mind-explosion happened. I was quickly and constantly able to make connections between everything and anything. Colors, sounds, animals, words, buildings, races and species all blended in to one concise object and thought. I was literally holding the entire universe in my conscious. My mind snapped back. 23 became God. The absolution of the complete oneness of the universe. I snapped back again and thought “how can a number be a God?” Then I had a breakthrough that I have not been able to leave behind since. This is the night that I finally realized what Zen thought is truly about. The complete opening of the door that lead me to the paradoxical oneness of it all. Everything pieced together, anything anyone has ever said, written, drawn, done, was a representation of the whole because that’s what we are. We try to separate, categorize, and ostracize things but in truth we are all just one piece and that piece is existence. And thus continues the paradoxical nature of the world.’
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‘In my head, my ego felt as though it was being dissolved and I remember very quickly my body sunk down into the bed going pretty deep, as I was going down I caught a glimpse of my room it was bright neon blue and there were very detailed and intricate geometric patterns flowing and swarming throughout the air. All sensory perception disappeared, in what must have only been seconds after I had dropped the syringe. The drug now forcefully turned off everything that was “me”, my entire consciousness shut down. From there it rebooted my consciousness, but when it booted back up it wasn’t “me”, it was an empty shell of a consciousness, a blank ego. It was like the drug was reformatting my brain for a new person. One by one traits, qualities, and memories of another ego were being uploaded into the empty shell that my brain was running. After awhile enough of this information had been uploaded to constitute a person. I still didn’t know exactly who I was or even what I was. I started piecing together the information that had already been uploaded and I started making connections. Apparently the other ego that had been being installed was actually myself. All I could make sense of at this point was that I was just some kid who does a lot of drugs. The drug had seemed to defragmentize my ego much like a computer would defrag itself. I felt like “I” ran much better and more efficiently than I used too.’
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‘I first remember being in the stretcher. The thing is, while I was in it, I didn’t have a body to see, as if I was just a set of eyeballs. It started screeching me around the hospital, at more than two million miles an heartbeat. My stretcher was anchored to the floor, but years and years of life and the people in the hospital went by. Now you would think I wouldn’t even have the time to make out there face in the tiny amount of time that I saw them, but for every single face, there whole lives broke down in front of me, and I would see their whole lives pass before me. And may I remind you that billions upon billions of faces passed by in fractions of seconds. I would be watching the people (in my floating set of eyeballs, out of body state) pass by, and the breakdown would happen, and in some weird transfer, I would be sitting in a hospital bed. I was tripping so hard that once I fell into peoples lives, I genuinely believed I was whoever persons life I took over at the time. I lived the life of an woman who went to the hospital and was diagnosed with breast cancer. Then I was Richard, who started getting bumps on his nut sac. I was reading The Children of Men by P.D. James when the doctor came in and diagnosed me with AIDS. Suddenly I was back were I was in phase one, being the eyeballs on the stretcher. I started falling out of life itself, while I was still in the process of falling out of life itself. It all started to climax worse and worse and worse. I would fall out of life itself going a billion miles an hour while they alien sounding doctors were trying to talk to me. Then all the sudden one of the doctors got straight in my face, grabbed me by the shoulders and said “You’re going to die”. My vision went black.’
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‘My ‘trip’ began as soon as the streetcar started to move. My field of vision began to narrow and unfocus, and soon I was not aware of any of my senses at all. I soon realized that anything and everything I did had no meaning or importance. The essence of what I now was now perceived as liquid, a drop moving throughout the universe. I soon entered into a sort of waiting room, where I was presented with a mass of spherical liquid which represented the collection of individual ‘drops’, one of which was me, watching it from outside. I realized the truth – that all individuals sprung from this mass of liquid as drops, but that the drops themselves had no individual identity UNTIL they had been individual drops for some time. In other words, if I were to re-enter this sphere my identity would be lost. I briefly wondered if my identity would be absorbed into this mass, but realized that in fact my identity, everything about me, would be completely erased. The physical world in which we lived, and everything that constituted who I thought I was, was all illusionary and meaningless. At this point I knew I had a choice – I could re-enter the sphere and get my destiny over with, or I could continue this fabricated life for a little longer. I was unsure what I would decide, but then the horn on the streetcar went off loudly and I was brought abruptly back into this world. I had lost my chance to choose because I had hesitated.’
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‘The night started out with me getting ready for bed and putting on That 70’s Show in my bedroom. This was my regular routine. Fwooom! I was falling! Falling fast! Into my bed I sunk, further and further, and then all of the sudden; Black. The black disappeared in a flash of blue, and there I was, but not in my normal body. I was in the body of a human fetus. Was it my fetus? Someone else’s? This was irrelevant. The fact was it was me. I was floating through this blue dimension. I was beyond our world, and I soon realized that I could see the lines that made up my room, but I was outside of them. To describe this to you, I would say that I was in a fourth dimensional blue-print, viewing my three dimensional room. It was amazing. I was floating around the Fourth Dimension! I was there! I had somehow reached a new world that has been co-existing with ours this entire time. Soon after I found myself back in my room, but my room was not the same. I was still in the fourth dimension. I continued to float. At first I was in the corner of my room above my bed, and then swiftly I moved up into the top of my closet. Now I could start to feel the fourth dimension slipping away. But I didn’t want it to. I was saying to it something along the lines of: “I welcome you to the third dimension!” As I pulled my arm out of its reach for salvaging the fourth dimension my eyes opened.’
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‘I crawled to the mirror not being able to walked. looked in and jumped through to see my other side. I thought I had entered the mirror and was staring back at me. or so i thought. I looked down at my dog and to my suprise he was frozen in time.. I tried to pet him and i hit a sheet of glass. this when i relized i was still ‘in the mirror’ (when in reality i probally tried to pet the dog in the mirror) I crawled back to the sofa and tried to pull myself on. i decided to turn on music television because my fucking computer Crashed. I lay there on the couch making what seemed to be new revoloutions, including how i was one with the sofa, that why i couldent move. I even believed that humans turned into sofas when they die. I had a flash with god next as he appeared out of my curtains. He told me I had sinned. although not through phsycoactives but through my lack of respect for others. He told me i could still redeem myslef but i said ‘i’m too lazy’ and he said ‘Then i banish you to hell’. I dont remeber much i just remeber i was seriously comtemplating death as a way out.. Death dident seem that bad for some reason. I was still vary dissy and felt sick to the stomach but my dog started barking and chewing on my hand, so i needed to take him out for a walk.’
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‘I decided that the world we are forced into by birth was the alternate dimension that K helped you escape, but at the right dose would free you from. I stayed off the stuff for about three weeks. During this chapter in my life I really had no concept of time, it was pointless to me. Once I prepared my lines, rolled up my ‘lucky’ two dollar bill, and drank a small glass of orange juice I stared at myself in the mirror. Just stared. I did every line staring into my own eyes, and then felt myself suck through to the otherside. I am pretty sure I died, or at least tampered with the thin drape that seperates life from death. I found God, and God is not in religion. God is everything. Positive and negative, right and wrong, exsistant and non exsistant. God is the nexus of the universe, while being the universe itself. We are parasites. We feed off of the earth to survive, killing it in the process. We are nothing more than matter bumping into itself and re generating. Death is another word for freedom, the ultimate goal for any rational thinker. To my dismay, my mortal sight came back, but this is the strange part. If you recall earlier, I noted I was sucked into the other side of the mirror. To this day, everything is backwards to the way it used to be. I live in the other side of the mirror, and this is the life long physical effect K has left me with. Sadly, I found that the meaning of life is only to find life has no meaning.’
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‘I remember talking to D who was sat across the room but my words felt like they were having to travel much further than normal to reach her. I walked over and sat next to her and held her hand. I heard D say ‘I’m melting’ and I think I said ‘Goodbye’ as I also melted away from reality, as though I fell backwards into another space. Obviously we had entered the infamous k-hole, but I had no sense of this or any rational thought to cling onto or justify the experience. From here onwards it is very difficult to remember or relate the experience, all I can say is that it was as though I was stripped of my personality, memories, language, vision – everything that makes me human. There was just a sense of existing as part of the fabric of the universe, as if I had become sewn into it. I have vague recollections of some form of communication with other entities in this space, but not through language or visual means, probably more like telepathy or sharing the same point of consciousness in this most unusual domain. Although I struggle to retain any true memory of this place and the things that happened there I know without question that I witnessed the truth of the universe and our existence, or rather was reduced to the point, having been stripped of my human faculties, where I was returned into the truth that we somehow vacate to travel in our human vehicles.’
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‘M has this pre-trip ritual that he likes to go through, and I must say, I enjoy the calming he brings to me as well. He lights incense or a bundle of sage, and walks about the house in a meditative fashion. The Ketamine was injected at around 8:50. My trip began in a familiar space, that is, almost exactly where my last very powerful Ketamine trip had ended. I was greeted back by familiar beings, who existed only as energy in the form of light. I was being taught and rewarded with beautiful strings of music for each lesson that I learned completely. I was completely unaware of my human body and existed not as Erica, but as an energy on which the universe relied. In my transformed state of light, colorless light, I felt the presence of many other energies, including M’s, and many old energies who seemed happy to reunite with me. It seemed as though we were gathering in a timeless space, black like the moonless sky, and infinitely large like the universe. In the blackness of infinity, I witnessed the union of two energies, M’s and mine. We were, again, joined by all of the energies of the universe, and we all existed as white light. I was a particle, being united with my anti-particle, and when our streams of white light collided, we were all witness to the birth of a universe, a new existence, and we were all very happy. I suppose in some sorts, it was like the Big Bang, energies colliding and causing such disruption that existence was changed, and time began.’
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*
p.s. Hey. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. It’s funny or interesting that another filmmaker is making a big doc about Hirschfeld right now. I was asked to be interviewed for it, but I really am woefully uneducated on him and his work. First you were indeed. ** Adem Berbic, Hi. ‘Human creativity is overrated anyway’: Seriously? As compared to what exactly? ‘Only God can make a tree’? AI is human creativity. Cynicism about human creativity is human creativity. Makes no sense to me. Oh, I had this feeling at Breillat is trending right now, but maybe not. Ah, but you have plenty of friends who are only relatively safe in the best situations. Play your shoegaze faves at a slower speed? ** _Black_Acrylic, Kick off, no kidding. It was intense, as you probably saw. My usually sleepy neighborhood is usually deprived of protest action, but it was one of the hot spots for some reason. Police and protesters tearing the place up from late morning til early in the next morning. Too long a situation to recount, but my neighborhood is really trashed. It was exciting at first, but then the agitator set interfered and turned it ugly, and now the whole potentially amazing thing was completely counterproductive. The violence and damage are all the media and government are talking about, and the causes themselves are swamped. ** Steve Erickson, I assume by now you realise that what was kicking off was the protests. But your djing to the rescue! Everyone, Steve: ‘My latest “Radio Not Radio” episode is out now. I can’t pull up the complete tracklist because it’s on my other laptop, but it begins with a metal set, followed by art pop (more or less), then a mix of R&B, ambient and jazz. Here’s the link.’ ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thanks, luck of the draw. ‘Wellness’, thumbs up from the big D, noted. Absolutely about dipping into those starving apps. Has AI finally reached the point of believability at least when it comes to boys? That could be useful. Love wondering where he’s going to withdraw a little cash today since the bank and ATM he always uses was smashed to bits on Saturday night, G. ** Carsten, Hi. I sort of laid out the local protests’ effect to _B_A above. It was wild to put it mildly. Yeah, characters with minimal dialogue can have as strong an effect as the talky ones, for sure. The beauty of film. Well, we don’t say ‘there will be minutes of silent viewing and/or action at this point’, no. We just infer that. The Zoom club: the Rohmer film was beautiful, of course. The poet Ralph Dickey was a real find, a Black poet who committed suicide very young and whose work has been recently discovered. Very strong poems. I remember liking ‘Reservation Dogs’. Interesting. ** scunnard, The only ‘Animal Crossing’ game I played was the Gamecube one. Like I said, it was too addictive. It ‘ruined my life for a while, haha. My weekend was a crazy one thanks to the protests/riots, but it was for sure interesting. Cool about the interview. ** laura w, Hi. Oh, shit, I’ll email you today. The weekend got a little crazy. Your weekend sounds more imagination friendly. Wow. You got me as to why France and horror don’t mix so well. Movie-wise, there’s the director Jean Rollin, but then I run out of immediate examples. ‘I Saw the TV Glow’ is pretty good. Worth seeing. ** Dev, Hi. LAX, ‘good’ old LAX. LA is great but getting around, especially when it’s a foreign location, with its woefully un-adventagious public transport systems, is a challenge to be sure. I just saw your email. Poquito Mas! Your trip was a huge success! I moved here partly for love and partly because it was my nearly lifelong dream to live in Paris. Basically. ** HaRpEr //, His films can be a little uneven and messy, but there’s real value in them. Obviously very happy to hear you’re feeling less ‘crazy’. Ruts don’t have electrified fences around them, but that’s only a little of the battle. Whenever you’re ready to speak or spout, I gotcha. ** Uday, I’m such a non-techy guy that I had to look up what dataframes is, and I still don’t understand it. Well, more than I had. ** Okay. I think today’s restored post is very good at explaining what it is all on its lonesome. See you tomorrow.
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