—-

_____________

‘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.’

_____________

‘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.’

______________

‘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…’

________________

‘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.’

________________

‘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.’

_______________

‘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.’

_________________

‘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.’

_______________

‘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.’

________________

‘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.’

_________________

‘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.’

_________________

‘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. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben, Thanks, man. New Play Therapy! Cool! It’s been a while, no? Stay ultra-safe. ** David Ehrenstein, Thanks, Mr. E. I think the whole world is very aware of what’s going Stateside right now. It’s the international media’s ‘big show’ of the moment. ** David S. Estornell, Thank you kindly, David. ** kier, Kier! Whoop! Thank you, pal. I talked to Zac briefly yesterday for the first time in weeks — he’s sick at his mom’s place in the south — and he’s still pretty ill and says it’s quite horrible, but he says there are very vague signs of improvement. Scary shit. The ‘big day’ had no plans other than a couple of Zooms with friends. It was a non-starter, which was fine. Paris isn’t really so bad right now. I think, relatively, we’re a good place to be. But a strict lockdown is assuredly in the cards for any day now. We have galleries, but no restaurants or cafes. And an 8 pm curfew. Oh, man, awesome about your show and hopefully it’ll open up as scheduled as a bonus. That lake events sounds so, yes, extremely dreamy. Even in what I can only imagine is the freezing cold. Fun? Oh, wow, I didn’t know about that page on Ian White’s site about that crazy event. I’ll go scour it. Wild. Thank you a ton, mighty K. So good to see you, pal, I miss you. I still hope you’ll be able to get down here for that residency at some point. Big love! ** James, Hi. Well, happy birthday back to you, sir! I had no special plans whatsoever other than getting burritos from the Paris Chipotle for my b’day meal, which sounds sad to US people, I know, but it’s a big deal to a Mexican food loving person in Paris. That was it. No friends, no cake, whatev’. I’m so sorry about your father. I hope he pulls through. I wasn’t close to my father. We were estranged for a long time, but we were okay in his later life. The deaths of parents is intense. For me, it’s a recurring feeling of confusion and strangeness accompanied by profound seeming thoughts about life’s futility and stuff like that. It’s heavy. I don’t know how one deals with it. The effect seems like something that you have no control over whatsoever. It’s big, and you either repress it or go with it. Okay, I’ll send you my address. Man, best of all possible luck and wishes re: your father. Hugs, love, me. ** Zak Ferguson, Hello there, Zak! Thanks so much for coming in here. The first two Jorodowsky films (‘ET’ and ‘TMM’) are by far the best ones, if you ask me. I’m kind of not a huge materialist type or whatever, so, no I don’t buy/collect film physical media. I have some stuff in LA, but here I have limited space, and it’s over-occupied by books, so, with exceptions, film and music collecting is 90% digital for me. My pleasure and a no brainer and so on re: your and Jared’s books on my faves list. Readers like me are the honored ones. Thank you for all the sweet words, comrade. We’re all comrades together in the furthering of writing. Maxing out whatever talents we’ve got. It’s a-hierarchical. Things are okay here considering and so to speak. With you too, I hope. Lovely to see you, man. ** Misanthrope, Thanks, G. If it wasn’t for all the well wishers on Facebook, I would have hardly known it was my birthday. Welcome to the 21st century. Well, then maybe an OnlyFans? If she’s that nice then I’m sure she doesn’t read my blog and will never know. ** Bill, Morning morning high five, bud. Zac’s recovery is a slow one, but recovery is the point. Nasty, nasty stuff. At least for him. Yeah, I’m kind of surprised that Krishna Shiva doesn’t have a kind of Skaggs-like following. He seems like the Outsider Elvis or something. How’s your week looking? ** Sypha, Thanks. Uh, Martin has asked me about publishing the other notebooks. The problem is, one, they’re not as lengthy, and, two and most importantly, the decision to publish ‘Gone’ is what lead to the Fales Library defacing/destroying that notebook without my knowledge and permission, and I can’t risk a repeat of that. As always, your reading habits rival mine. Good on you. As for music, you have become such a pop music focused guy. It’s interesting. Bon day! ** T, Hi, T! JozankeiL: noted, sounds great, thank you! And those baths, definitely. Yeah, Satoland looks to be agricultural. And not amazing, but the agricultural bent is offbeat enough to magnetise it. With the scrapbooks, generally I made them in preparation for the writing, or alongside making notes and graphs and stuff, but sometimes I would go back to them during the writing if there was something I wanted to do that vexed me and if I thought trying to figure it out with visuals would help. Thanks about my b’day. My only goal was that the Paris Chipotle would be open and that my trek across town to its entrance would not be a sad, in vain endeavor, and it was! Have a lovely week starter. ** G, Aw, thank you so much! Um, it’s very difficult and emotional and painful to think about much less write about George, and as someone who’s most interested in being challenged by art/life/etc., I guess that’s why. It’s the hardest thing. It’s a doomed pursuit, and I keep looking for the right answer or something. It doesn’t feel courageous at all. It’s feels more complicated than that, I guess. It was, of course, amazing and hugely honoring to hear/see those artists, all of whom I admire a lot, wrap their brains and voices around my work. It was humbling and nuts. I hope your weekend was a big winner. Love, me. ** Twelve, Hi, Twelve. It’s really nice to make your acquaintance, and thanks a lot for coming in here. Yeah, me too, re: Chris Gentry. He makes an appearance in my novel ‘Guide’, which that scrapbook was related to. Thanks for your question. Re: the original story from which the graphic novel sprung — ‘Introducing Horror Hospital’ — there was an actual band called Horror Hospital. They were a teen punk band I saw perform in LA, and they, like their non de plume, were really terrible and completely charming. So the story used them as a model. At the time when Keith Mayerson and I expanded the story into the graphic novel, he and I were both obsessed with Alex James. I was working on ‘Guide’, where a slightly renamed AJ is kind of a main character, and Keith was as smitten with him as I was, so he decided to make AJ the model for Trevor Machine, and he used photos of AJ as his models/guidelines when drawing TM. So, long story shorter, yes, physically, TM in the graphic novel is AJ. Thanks again, and thanks for the b’day wish. If it needs to be said, please come back and visit or hang out any time you like. It would be a pleasure. ** Ian, Hey, thanks a bunch, Ian. I gorged out on a big, American-style burrito, which, over here, is a delicacy, believe it or not. I love that story idea of your re: ‘The Magic Christian’. He’s a great character who was not nearly maxed out enough. Cool, exciting. How’s it going? ** Jeremy McFarland, Hi, J. Aw, thanks, man. It was an uneventful b’day, but uneventful is another word for fine. I hope some of whatever good vibes my b’day created wended their way into your household. ** Dominik, Hi, D. Thank you, thank you! For the b’day wishes and about the post. Scrapbooks, right, I know. I miss scissors and glue and destroying magazines. I think the new edition of ‘Gone’ comes out in the spring, but I don’t know exactly when. Now my brain is cycling through all the possible things/people I’d wish would ring my doorbell. Thank you. Love like this, Dennis. ** Steve Erickson, Thanks, man. Zac has promised me that he will make me a huge bowl of cold sesame noodle — he’s a maestro at making them — as soon as he’s back on his feet, so that’ll do. Cool about the film programming possibility. I jinx all jinxes. Everyone, Perk up your ears for the latest tune from Mr. Steve Erickson, a la … ‘I wrote this song over the past 2 days, trying to express my recent mood swings and a yearning for hope and beauty coming from a pretty pessimistic place. It alternates between distorted samples of drumming on metal and soothing, almost New Age passages of bells, piano and synthesizer.’ ** Damien Ark, Thanks, D. Same and more back to you. Gee, thank you so much for the mix! Holy moly! I’ll go spin that in just a minute. Everyone, Mighty Damien Ark made a birthday music mix for me for my birthday, but you can hear it too. Pretend it’s your birthdays. Okay, you in that head space? Then click and listen. Love to you, man. ** wolf, Roar! Dude, you just wished me the greatest birthday that any sentient being has ever possibly have had going back for centuries. Love you to death, pal of pals! ** Jeff J, Hi, Jeff. Thanks. Uh, if there were better photos they’re in the memory of the camera I had back then, and fuck knows where it is now. Somewhere. Shit, your horrible IRL body’s life continues. Man, you are like a beacon for unfair physical occurrences. It’s getting kind of Ripleys Believe it or Not. Except without the ‘not’ part. WTF! Feel/get better ASAP, man. I know of Frank Stanford, but I don’t think I’ve ever read him. I’ve heard really great things. I’m going to find his stuff. IOW, from what I’ve heard, he does seem like a poet to investigate, yes. ** Gus, Hi, Gus. Time is so fucking weird, no? More than ever. Anyway, it’s good to see you. Best of the best of luck with the masters application, and congrats on getting its construction out of your hair. And thank you a lot about the post and about ‘Sad Story’. I’m doing fine. I do think Paris is not the worst place to be at this very moment, but I think we’re due for a re-quarantine any day now, so I don’t recommend booking a flight. And obviously really good luck with getting your work published. I’m sure you know that that’s the one bonifiably hellish part of being a writer, but it passes. Let me know how that goes and what happens if you feel like it. Lots of the best to you too. ** Armando, Thanks a lot, A! I hope all is really well on your end. ** cal, Thank you, Cal. It was centred around a burrito which tasted very delicious, so … yes! ** Brian O’Connell, Thanks a lot and howdy, Brian. Aw, thanks a lot, man. That’s all so great to hear. It was cool and trippy to see all the stuff I never thought anyone but I would ever see in glass cases in an art space. Yes, a big publisher who I guess I probably shouldn’t name was going to republish the Cycle novels in one volume concurrent with ‘I Wished’ because ‘IW’ is about George, but it didn’t end up happening. And my agent(s) have been trying to get Grove Press to republish them in a compendium volume for years, but Grove doesn’t want to for whatever reason. It’ll happen. I think eventually they’ll only be available in one volume, and it’s just a matter of whether I’ll have to die first for that to happen, ha ha. My weekend was very usual. My birthday was almost like any other day, which wasn’t a problem whatsoever. Onwards. How was the first slice of your week ahead? ** Nik, Hi, Nik! How’s it going with you and yours? Thank you a lot for the birthday shout out. Take care.  Hope to see you again soon. ** Right. Interested in knowing (kind of) what it’s like to travel through a K-Hole? If so, the blog’s got you covered. See you tomorrow.

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Alejandro Jodorowsky Homepage (in French)
alejandro.jodorowsky
Alejandro Jodorowsky @ IMDb

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Fando Y Lis (1967)

‘Fando Y Lis definitely shows what was to come from this unorthodox, inconsistent genius. Based on Fernando Arrabal’s play, the flick was castrated by its distributors, Cannon Films, after causing a fracas at the Acapulco Film Festival for being too “corrupting.” Working with no budget to speak of, and filmed on weekends, the production reeks with Bunuel influenced surrealism and pretensions. Sergio Klainer and Diana Mariscal star as the title characters, a young couple in search of the enchanted city of Tar, where ecstasy can (supposedly) be found. Fando is impotent, Lis is paralyzed, and together they travel across a rocky landscape, equipped with their only possessions, a drum and an old fashioned phonograph. Basically, it’s a road movie that takes these holy innocents nowhere, as they encounter bizarre characters, experience childhood flashbacks, play cruel jokes on each other, and sit on rocks, rambling banalities. Sure, there are plenty of striking images along the way (i.e. a musician sits amidst urban rubble, playing a flaming piano), but the first half of this flick is an incoherent, maddeningly edited mess that makes even Fellini’s most indulgent work look coherent. It’s not until Jodorowsky ups the tripped-out absurdity that the movie begins to hit you on a gut level. Such as when Fando is whipped by a bikinied torturess and eyed by some horny transvestites, or encounters vampires drinking snifters of blood (as an additional note, Jodorowsky said that all on-screen blood was real). And what other director would keep a straight face while live pigs are being pulled from Lis’ vagina? It’s dense going for Jodorowsky amateurs, yet a field day for fans of murky, symbolic baloney.’ — Steve Puchalski, Shock Cinema

Trailer

the entirety

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El Topo (1970)

‘The movie may seem bewildering, however, because the narrative is overlaid with a clutter of symbols and ideas. Jodorowsky employs anything that can give the audience a charge, even if the charges are drawn from different systems of thought that are — *as thought* — incompatible…. Well, of course, you don’t need erudition to draw on matters religious and philosophical that way — any dabbler can do it. All you need is a theatrical instinct and a talent for (a word I once promised myself never to use) frisson. Jodorowsky is… a director for whom ideas are sensuous entities — sensuous toys, really, to be played with. By piling onto the Western man-with-no-name righteous-avenger form elements from Eastern fables, Catholic symbolism, and so on, Jodorowsky achieves a kind of comic-strip mythology. And when you play with ideas this way, promiscuously — with thoughts and enigmas and with symbols of human suffering — the resonances get so thick and confused that the game may seem not just theatre but labyrinthine, ‘deep’: a masterpiece.’ — Pauline Kael

Trailer

Q&A with Alejandro Jodorowsky, “El Topo”

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The Holy Mountain (1973)

‘It is totally impossible to summarize Alejandro Jodorowsky’s film, The Holy Mountain. Like El Topo, it is drenched in blood and abounds in monsters. The film is the adventures of a man in search of the wise men on the Holy Mountain who finds that there are no wise men, that they are all stuffed dummies. The film attacks everyone, everything. A mother wakes up her son by tickling his genitals. She sits on the toilet seat while he takes a bath. A gas is sold that turns mothers into cannibals who then eat their children. A handbag case comes equipped with a beartrap for feminists to castrate men. The ruler of an empire is deaf, dumb, and blind. Before making an important decision, he puts his hand into his wife’s sexual organs. If they are moist, the decision is positive. If dry, the response is negative. Groups of young men are initiated into a secret society by cutting off their penises. At the end, the films’s guru makes comments like, “The flower knows. You don’t need to ask it. Plants are the books where knowlege is written. The grave is your first mother.”‘ — BJ Demby

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Dune (never realized)

‘Jodorowsky began working in 1975 on an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. The project was intended to involve his son Brontis (Paul), Orson Welles as the Baron, Salvador Dalí as the Emperor, Mick Jagger as Feyd Rautha, Alain Delon as Duncan Idaho, Geraldine Chaplin as Lady Jessica, Dan O’Bannon for the script, Chris Foss, Pink Floyd, H.R. Giger and Jean Giraud (Mœbius). Ultimately, its funding evaporated, but Jodorowsky claimed it was sabotaged by the major studios in Hollywood because it was too French (a strange claim considering that Jodorowsky, while a naturalized citizen of France, has never identified with any particular country or culture. Although the funding and his producer were French: Jerome Seydoux). Many close to the project claim that the set designs later turned up in Star Wars. Several of the people working on Jodorowsky’s version of Dune later worked on Alien with elements (specifically those designed by Giger) similar to that of the failed Dune project.’ — Wikipedia

from The Film You Will Never See

by Alejandro Jodorowsky

The actor that I wished for most was Dalí: for the role of the insane Emperor… Which adventure!… The Emperor buffoon, seemed to me it, could be played only by one man of the great delirious personality of Dalí . To New York, with Michel Seydoux and Jean-Paul Gibon, I arrived at our hotel, San Régis and in the hall I sees sitted El Salvador Dalí . I guess that it is indelicate to approach him immediately and the following day I called him by telephone. I speak Spanish. Dalí had not see my films but friends spoke to him about them with enthusiasm. He invites me to a very private surrealist exposure and promises to leave me the invitation under the door.

Dalí agrees with much enthusiasm the idea to play the Emperor of the galaxy. He wants to film in Cadaquès and to use as throne a toilet made up of two intersected dolphins. The tails will form the feet and the two open mouths will be used one to receive the “wee”, the other to receive the “excrement”. Dalí thinks that it is of terrible bad taste to mix the “wee” and the “excrement”.

It is said to him that I will need him for seven days… Dalí answers that God made the universe in seven days and that Dalí, while not being less than God, must cost a fortune: 100,000 dollars an hour … (read the rest)

Jodorowsky’s Dune | Official Trailer

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Tusk (1980) *

‘Set in turn of the century India, Jodorowsky drops most of his crazed mystical/ religious/ hallucinogenic stylings in order to tell a relatively straightforward story of a little girl, Elise, and a little elephant, Tusk, both of whom are born at the same time, and how their lives interconnect over the years (yawn). It begins on a good note, with Jodorowsky intercutting an elephant and a woman, each giving birth. But the movie swiftly turns into nothing more than a Disney G-rated nature film, with most of the $5 million budget going for Elephants-Are-Us rentals. There are a few sledgehammer-subtle points about French colonialism vs. the Forces of Nature, with Anton Diffring playing the girl’s tyranical father, and a nutty Indian medicine man popping up for comic relief. But for most of this debacle’s interminable two hour running time all we’re fed are long scenes of big animals lumbering around the countryside. When the little girl grows up, she discovers a psychic link to Tusk the Elephant when she stops it in its tracks during a rampage, but none of Jodorowsky’s crackpot enlightenment or savage grotesqueries from his earlier epics is on display here. Instead, it takes all too many predictable routes, such as Elise getting kidnapped by the buffoonish bad guys (they’re the ones who don’t respect elephants), with our heroic packyderm saving her life. Maybe Jodorowsky was so desperate to get behind a camera after all his failed attepts at DUNE, that he grabbed the first thing to come along.’ — Steve Puchalski, Shock Cinema

* Note: ‘Tusk was never distributed, and Jodorowsky has subsequently disowned the film. I’ll add that I actually saw the world premiere of Tusk at Filmex (The Los Angeles Film Festival) in 1980, and it is an excruciatingly tedious and awful film.’ — DC

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Sante Sangre (1989)

‘Sante Sangre is a throwback to the golden age, to the days when filmmakers had bold individual visions and were not timidly trying to duplicate the latest mass-market formulas. This is a movie like none I have seen before, a wild kaleidoscope of images and outrages, a collision between Freud and Fellini. It contains blood and glory, saints and circuses, and unspeakable secrets of the night. And it is all wrapped up in a flamboyant parade of bold, odd, striking imagery, with Alejandro Jodorowsky as the ringmaster. I will never forget one sequence in the movie, the elephant’s burial, where the circus marches in mournful procession behind the grotesquely large coffin of the dead animal. It is tipped over the side into a garbage dump, where the coffin is pounced upon and ripped open by starving scavengers. Another powerful image comes in a graveyard, where the spirits of female victims rise up out of their graves to confront their tormentor. And there is the strange, gentle, almost hallucinatory passage where Fenix joins his fellow inmates in a trip into town; Jodorowsky uses mongoloid children in this sequence, his actors communicating with them with warmth and body contact in a scene that treads delicately between fiction and documentary. When I go to the movies, one of my strongest desires is to be shown something new. I want to go to new places, meet new people, have new experiences. When I see Hollywood formulas mindlessly repeated, a little something dies inside of me: I have lost two hours to boors who insist on telling me stories I have heard before. Jodorowsky is not boring. The privilege of making a film is too precious to him, for him to want to make a conventional one. It has been eighteen years since his last work, and all of that time the frustration and inspiration must have been building. Now comes this release, in a rush of energy and creative joy.’ — Roger Ebert

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the entirety

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The Rainbow Thief (1990)

Thumb up: ‘At once stupefying and whimsical, unconscionably absurd and yet undeniably enchanting, the legendary Alejandro Jodorowsky’s little-seen British follow-up to his X-rated Mexican horror piece Santa Sangre (1989) is a kind of baroque, mildly surrealistic, and irreverent slapstick parable about platonic love and friendship between two miscreants — the dispossessed prince Meleagre (Peter O’Toole) and his sidekick, the diminutive and chubby thief Dima (Omar Sharif), who live together in the city sewers. Gone is Jodorowsky’s cruel streak. As is typical for the director, however, he populates his film with social outcasts and freaks — a towering yet slightly backward and soft-spoken giant; a dwarfish “bug man,” dressed all in green, sent into a state of utter panic when Dima steals his Victrola; Kronos the dog, an Afghan-hound puppet given life by Meleagre. One would be hard-pressed to explain the meaning of this piece of arcanum, yet it retains a dotty charm throughout.’ — imbd.com

Thumb down: ‘Made just after the return-to-form that was Santa Sangre, 1990’s The Rainbow Thief finds a de-fanged Jodorowsky infiltrating the world of middlebrow international cinema, with Omar Shariff as a bum playing butler to Peter O’Toole’s sewer-dwelling heir – a potentially queasy premise to be sure. To his credit, he fails miserably, damaging the film with fuzzy plotting (test audiences said they couldn’t even find the story) and rampant weirdness, much of it during the opening where Christopher Lee plays a dalmation-obsessed billionaire who serves giant bones to his guests. Still, better a failed attempt to play straight than a successful calcification. Shariff, unpredictably, delivers some unsightly mugging, but there’s a dark side to his turn, and a couple times where he could turn murderous. The ostenatious rainfall that eats up most of the final half hour is techinically impressive, but it’s sad to think that, should the upcoming DVDs not result in the handing-over of a budget to Jodorowsky’s whims — or worse, his game is now gone — this would be where his oeuvre stops.’ — Matt Prigge

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The Dance of Reality (2013)

‘The Dance of Reality, which premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, certainly looks like Jodorowsky put in the hours with the money men, as it’s an exotically articulated autobiography of the director’s upbringing in Tocopilla, Chile, realised with some (if not all) of the radical bombast of the films that made his name: 1970’s El Topo and 1973’s The Holy Mountain. The film, however, is something of a glorious mess, with individual grandiose set pieces inelegantly stitched together in the place of an immersive and comprehensible drama. The director himself appears to offer advice to his younger self, though his musings are, for the large part, comically unintelligible. It’s an unflinching depiction of the violent atmosphere which erupts under totalitarian regimes, and amid its eccentric loungers, there is evidence that the director does offer a pithy political commentary to these trying times. Eventually, The Dance of Reality is too big for its boots, with Jodorowsky seldom convincing that he’s been strict enough with the material in the edit suite. The production design, costumes and sets are spectacular, yet the director milks them for all they’re worth, trying audience patience at every conceivable chance. Yet it does prove that the director still has the nous to do what he has always done best: to operate at the combustible point where violence and beauty commingle and to sear outlandish images into your deep sub-conscious.’ — David Jenkins

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Endless Poetry (2017)

‘Endless Poetry broadly covers the period in Jodorowsky’s life when he left home for a bohemian life in the Chilean capital of Santiago, dabbling in poetry and performance, before finally moving on to Paris in the 50s and bidding a painful final farewell to his father, who has now evolved from a stern communist to being just a fierce and closed-minded shopkeeper who doesn’t scruple to assault and humiliate shoplifters. His mother (Pamela Flores) only ever sings her lines in the manner of an opera diva: a bizarre convention that you cease to notice almost immediately. The circuses, clowns and dwarves have understandably led many to compare this to Fellini; I would also suggest a bit of Kusturica. But the early scenes are very literary and interestingly Dickensian. Alejandro’s parents are larger than life in the right way – and so are his dodgy cousins and grandma who cheat at cards when Alejandro is dragged round for a get-together In a rage, Alejandro chops down a tree, which triggers his final showdown. He walks out and finds himself living in a raucous – and Dickensian – colony of artists, one of whom falls poignantly and unrequitedly in love with him. It doesn’t look like an old man’s film to me: there is gusto and energy, a need to excite, shock, bewilder. You can sense here something you rarely experience, even in the very best films: how much the director is simply enjoying himself.’ — Peter Bradshaw

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Psychomagic

‘Alejandro Jodorowsky has lately committed his time and attention to developing a psychological therapy called “Psychomagic” which aims to heal the psychological wounds suffered in the early stages of life. This therapy is based on the belief that the performance of certain outside acts can directly act upon the unconscious mind, releasing it from a series of traumas, some of which are passed down from generation to generation. These acts are prescribed by the therapist after having studied the patient’s personality and family tree.’ — Wikipedia

What does it take to be a psychomagician?

by Alexandro Jodorowsky

# A true therapist cannot be trained in less than five years and a psychomagician in no less than seven years.
# A psychomagician must first be an actor, artist, poet, writer, painter, mime, musician, etc. He should have mastered all art forms.
# Studied a martial art, Eastern philosophies and shamanism.
# Experimented with hallucinogenic mushrooms and other elements.
# Have an occupation outside of being a therapist to work free of financial pressures.
# Be familiar with tarot, alchemy and cabbala.
# Had contact with a well known healer.
# Been psychoanalyzed, know the history of psychoanalysis and its many theories and know the works of Freud, Jung, Grodeck, Lacan, Erickson, Dolto, etc.

(read more)

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s – Psychomagic, A Healing Art (Official Trailer)

Alejandro Jodorowsky Performs Psychomagic

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Tarot Scholar

TAROT OF MARSEILLES

restored by Philippe Camoin and Alejandro Jodorowsky

‘Keeper of the Tarot of Marseilles Tradition for more than two centuries, the Camoin House was forced by the industrial revolution to change the colors of the Tarot. After a long research work, Ph. Camoin and A. Jodorowsky have restored the original colors and symbols of the Tarot. Some of them were incomplete or had already disappeared in the 18th century.’

Order it here

RESTORING THE TAROT OF MARSEILLES

p.s. Hey. A generous regular reader of this place who chooses to call themself Crop Encircled Boy wrote to me to say that one hole in my otherwise pleasurable blog was the absence of a post dedicated to Jodorowsky. They were right, of course, and they sent along the excellent post/fix you see above, and we’re all the much richer for it, I say. Please scroll and hunt and peck and so on through the wares on display and give a hey-or-thanks-or-something-shaped shout out to our guest host if you will. Thanks, and thanks a bunch for righting DC’s wrong so colorfully, CEB. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, and thanks. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, B. thanks for thanking PKinman who maybe hopefully checked in. And thanks for your parallel playlist, which I will launch into my ears once this p.s. is history. Everyone, Treat alert! ‘Back in 2013 DJ Ben ‘Jack Your Body’ Robinson (aka _Black_Acrylic) brought this set of “Outsider Music” for the I Like Yellow Things zine launch in Dundee.’ Ben knows his shit like few others, so hit those green words and pig out. ** Misanthrope, HI, G. Work swampage. Consequential money and the masses’ needs being met. Good on ya. But, yeah, don’t exile your own stuff. ** Dominik, Hi, D! Thanks about the post. I really should find a way to tell PKinman his fest was reborn. Mental note. Love after discovering through his search of his parents’ amateur porn tapes that they’ve been sneaking into his room late at night and having orgies with his snoring bodies for years, Dennis. ** G, Hi, G. Well, we got lucky again. The lockdown was not made stricter but just extended longer, and travel between here and the UK has been made even more impossible than it was. I bet your graph was plenty beautiful. Aw, thank you about your ‘Try’ birthday. That’s crazy (in the great way). When I was a teenager, I was famous amongst my friends for my carrot cake making skills. But everyone always ate my carrot cake when they were really 420’d out, so who knows. Oh, wow, thank you about the birthday gift! Wow! My birthday is saved. My building’s concierge left me a note yesterday saying he has some packages for me, so it must be among them. Now to track him down. He’s slippery. Thank you, thank you! I’ll take my reading glasses off until the package is open. Hugs! ** T, Hi there, T! I haven’t been to Sapporo. I’ve traveled around the country and did some islands, but that’s a spot that hasn’t been creased yet. It’s actually on the list of cities I want to visit on my next trip. Did you go to the ‘art islands’: Naoshima, Teshima and Inujima? They’re amazing. I try to go there every trip. You almost did a sumo match, wow. It’s hard to imagine a non-very padded person doing those moves and stuff. Sounds dangerous even. The one I saw was at some big stadium in Tokyo. It’s was a national championship thing. It was super weird in the great, mindblowing way ‘cos I didn’t understand at all what going on or what the rules were or anything because I don’t speak a syllable of Japanese. There was really cool merch. I didn’t buy any, which is a big regret now. I read and do the p.s, in the morning. It’s, what, 8:25 am as I type. so your wish for the day has a lot of room available to come true. When do you read this? I hope your day has either a rocketship-like launch or looks amazing in the rear view. ** Jack Skelley, Ha ha, I had a feeling you might be on board with that post. Really? About David Liebe Hart? Maybe I’ve seen him and blanked it out to avoid trauma. Want to read your poem. Findable? Shiva makes me almost wish I was still curating the Beyond Baroque readings. I’d love to book him, maybe as an opening act for (name of horrible local LA poet). Big up! ** Steve Erickson, It is, and Mr. PKinman is one of the great online scholars of it. I too have a guilty pleasure thing for celebrities’ nose dives into pop music. I don’t know the Pesci, but obviously I’ll head over there. I think this calls for a post. ** Jeremy McFarland, You can probably find those CDs on eBay, but it seems kind of possible that your imagination is a funnier Amish recording artist than the actuals. We didn’t get more strictly locked down after all. Phew. But what with all restaurants and cafes and entertainment venues of every kind locked up, it’s not exactly a very birthday-friendly time even so. Oh, well. If I can manage to get a Switch by then, my birthday will be a most joyous one, so fingers crossed. Thanks, J. ** Brian O’Connell, Good morning, Brian. PKinman did the blog very good, yep. I hope he knows. Mann is interesting because he can write very clearly/elegantly and he can also write dense, difficult fiction, such as in his giant tomes ‘The Magic Mountain’ and ‘Dr. Faustus’, both of which are great, in my opinion. As are the simpler ones like the stories and ‘Death in Venice’. The Visconti film is great, I think, and one of those rare cases when a film adaptation of a great literary work doesn’t suffer by comparison. Curious what you’ll think of novella/film. Mm, so hard to know how these last 14 days will play out. I suppose if social media keeps banning him and the people around him keep him sequestered and spinning in his insanity as privately as possible, the time could pass somewhat uneventfully. But, hey, he could explode too, and probably will. Utterly psycho situation. But, yes, let’s figure out a way to have simultaneously peaceful and productive, output-y Fridays, eh? xo. ** Okay. Be with Jodorowsky and his stuff on the local level until I see you next, i.e. tomorrow.