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Published: August 26th 2005
IN THE SOUTPANSBERG MOUNTAINS
Looking for the white sangoma, we travelled many miles...O illustrious denizens of compound interest in the fascination of dreamtime avenues, O Greeters of the dawn, O mindspring overloaders and resistors of note: Yeah though we walk in the shadow of bomber Harris, we fear no fear for we are the cut and pasted, the transplants of civilisation, the x-pollinators of memetic positivity, the destroyers of evil myth and unbelivers in lies, transhumanic fad creators, photons of half-life in the blue beam of fractal reality where an infinity of waiting for schroedinger's cat can't prepare the unwary to grok the fact that it's not all black...we each view reality through our own rosestta stone where understanding intent can give one powers close to those described in Sun Tsu's 'Art of War' where it leads to understanding that continually uploading the correct memetic technology is one of the tools required to jumpstart morphogenesis. Although we've possessed the means to wreck this planet for over 50 years, it hasn't happened, so maybe it's time we took the next step up the evolutionary ladder?
Is the plant kingdom sentient?
-OLD HINDU SAYING-
-AHINTSA PARMA DURUM -
-NOT TO KILL IS THE PREMIER RELIGION-
Meantime, back in the third
IN THE SOUTPANSBERG MOUNTAINS
we found wood that looked like a dinosoar chicken... dimension; There’s lots of road but besides a great toasted cheese at a place called Jakkalsfontein and negotiating a R1000 speed trap down to R200, cash, we join Joburg traffic early Wednesday evening. Guided by Joey on the cellphone, we arrive at his place on Wednesday evening. When night falls in Joburg and you just know that people are getting loaded before going out. It doesn’t matter that it’s not a Saturday night because this is Johannesburg and Saturday night goes down every night. I try not to think about all the times I’d been here in a revious life where five star hotel rooms and cocaine fashion models with bare legs in high heel shoes prevailed. For me, times have changed, but I’m not so naïve to imagine that it doesn’t happen anymore. We make contact with Mark and arrange to meet him and some of friends at a local curry restaurant. This is Joey’s town and I’m done driving for the day so after a quick soak in a hot bath we pile into his silver Merc and head towards Mark and the Mckenna tapes - and food.
Besides Joey and Mark’s two friends, we’re three survivors
IN THE SOUTPANSBERG MOUNTAINS
we found wood that looked like a dinosoar chicken... of the ’96 Rustlers gathering and I’ve got feelings of déjà vu. Mike Aldridge, Myke, Mark Napier and myself. We’re three Mikes and a Mark. Mike Aldridge had been the person I’d managed to get hold of after receiving the wake-up call from Craig. Mark just happens to be Mike Aldridge’s best friend. Coincidence? Or are things coming down faster now? Though Mike Aldridge lives in CT, he just so happens to be in Joburg for the night on a film shoot. Things couldn’t be any easier as Mark has brought the 27 betacam tapes in three cardboard boxes labeled ‘Terence Mckenna. October ‘96’. Supper goes by in a haze. Overwhelmed by Mark’s generosity in handing over his entire Mckenna archive, I gladly pay and we eventually return to Joey’s house in Norwood where I pass out with highway streaming behind my eyelids.
Thursday 9th
Before digi-beta came the standard betacam format. That was ten years ago. Though the digi-beta format is still around, it has recently been surpassed by HDV, (High Definition Video) for TV. Mark’s oxide betacam tapes hail from the very dawn of the betacam era, long before the digitization of video became a tool
of the independent film maker. Betacam oxide tapes are now obviously only used to retrieve original archive material and thus it is not a ‘normal’ format to work with. For a start, you need a betacam playback machine the size of a small pinball machine to play the tape, and that’s only possible if you can find someone who’ll rent you one to play oxide tapes on because oxide tapes have a bad reputation for messing up recording heads so I’m lucky that Mike Aldridge has connections. In fact his connections are so good that the betacam player is delivered to Joey’s house at 9.30 AM by Henck, a friend of Aldridges who just happens to run a rental business specializing in old format copies. Henk arrives way before I’m ready to get up. While it’s good to be starting the mammoth task of copying the fourteen hours of video of Terence at Rustlers early, I’m somewhat hazy groveling on the floor in my dressing gown at the back of some dinosaur tape deck trying to figure out why there are four output sound channels when my super-modern Sony DSR-11 mini-DV player only has two inputs. Just as well that Mark pitches up at 11.00AM to check how I’m doing because though I’ve already recorded two tapes he points out that the main sound channel isn’t recording and I have to start things all over again.
Analogue hell! I suppose it’s better getting it wrong early but it’s only after watching blankly for sometime that it occurs to me that I could speed things up enormously by making some notes on what Terence is saying. No biggie, there are still 25 tapes to go. Grabbing some foolscap paper and a pen from Myke, I jot down timecodes and references while whacking tape after tape into the two machines for an endless day that descends into the worst headache I can remember, and all the while Terence Mckenna is on the wall-sized television screen wanting to know what I’m ‘really’ doing. It’s too tight a call to make. I’m watching Terence say the words I know so well. It’s surreal because I’d been there and recorded the same stuff, except most of it was only captured on audio tape. Although I recognize everything Terence is saying I’m now also seeing it for the first time since 1996. This would be cool, except for the headache and the tension from Joey’s kids who naturally resent the fact that we’ve turned their house into a recording studio dedicated to counter culture. My kids seem to have taken it in their stride but other people’s kids are not always that understanding. Besides, what could be more frightening than walking past a whole lot of ageing hippies engrossed by Terence Mckenna saying stuff like; “Culture is not your friend”. It doesn’t help that I’m unable to stop and explain anything because taking notes and switching tapes just about precludes going to the bathroom. It’s OK that Myke convinces me to shut down around about 2.00AM by which time there are still 10 tapes to go. Closing my aching eyes isn’t difficult, but trying not to worry about what time I’ll finish tomorrow most definitely is. Time is always in the present. Sleep comes with difficulty.
Friday 10th
I needn’t have worried because the headache is gone and the last three tapes have nothing on them. The digitization of the Lost Tapes is over by 2.00PM and I retire to a long bath. Leaving Joeys place after a night out on the town isn’t easy, but we manage it by noon, taking in some gas and passing on good cheer as we leave the bright lights of Joburg behind us, ever wary of the speed cops who’d busted us for R200 on the way in. It wasn’t long after we’d burned the second joint that it came to me. Rustlers Valley, the place we’d first met Terence 9 years ago, was just around the corner. Geographically, Rustlers is only a few hours from Joburg, so we rightly assume that we could ‘swing past’ on the run home. After all, there’s still three days till we’re expected back. I close the sunroof and Myke makes the call. Frik from Rustlers tells us we’re welcome anytime. So far so good. Stopping at Jakkalsvontein for toasted cheeses with hand cut chips followed by cinnamon and honey pancakes, Mike checks the map while I use the phone. Turning off the main highway, it isn’t long before the road is surrounded by a cornfield that meanders for mile after mesmerizing mile. The towns click on and off one by one until we’re at somewhere that looks familiar. Past Ficksburg, we head towards Fouriesburg, hoping we’re headed in the right direction. I hadn’t remembered how bad the road was for the last few clicks, nor can I conceive how my old rusty Pontiac made it up here in ’96, but we must’ve made a crazy sight. No wonder they remember us. Frick, the owner of the place rushes out to meet us just in time to hear me say “This place feels really weird”, which I think he likes but I can’t be sure. More novelty flushes over me as he asks us where we want to sleep. I don’t really say anything here, just nod blankly as he leads us to Terence’s old room, undamaged by the fire of ’98 that razed most of the surrounding area to walls and floors. Mike offers to sleep next door but I think maybe he’s creeped out by the thought of sleeping in Terence’s old room, but this doesn’t phase me. Moving some of my stuff over from the adjacently parked Jeep, I find myself sitting in Terence’s room at Rustlers nine years downstream, reminiscing. On the wall it says “Man is a series of states of consciousness” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, which is not really pinning anything down, except the weirdness of it all. Of being here the night before all hell lets loose for the long four day weekend which traditionally includes a sort of shooting down of consciousness from one state of being to another, a wispy trail they call history, sometimes just a repetitive act of a self determining nature? Gibbering at best, I try typing some of it down so it can also be misunderstood by those downstream but while I’m doing this it’s like I’m having an out of body experience complete with ringing in my ears and a dissasocative feeling towards my bo-dy but maybe these are all just physical reflexes from days on the road. “It ‘feels’ real’. Is he here right now? I’m well qualified to witness that Terence enjoyed his stay at Rustlers in ’96, but back in 2005 this is the room in which he slept nine years ago. One can never dismiss what lies beyond the veil, as Mike and myself learned from Dr. Cumes, the past is always with us in some form or another, our ancestors perched on our shoulders trying to advise or sometimes warn us not to repeat mistakes we’ve already made. Going down to the restaurant for supper I continue reflection, dragging the laptop with me in case the muse feels like popping in again.
We get a table where the fire is only three feet away. This is good because it’s cold outside after dark near the winter solstice here in Rustlers valley and we’re in a future that no one predicted. Does this mean determinism demands that even prediction is determined? The fire cannot answer, but it’s enough, for now, the questions, I mean. Sitting next to us is a cool family. Three kids with good looking parents. What more could any in-law want? They’ve got it sorted, exploring the mountains in their jeep while their Joburg contemporaries are lounging by the pool at Umshlanga Rocks complaining about the service and exchanging hijack stories. They’re the only other people here, except the owners and their kids. Tomorrow is a holiday. But not for Frik and Jeanesse. They’re being invaded by a full complement of guests while all their staff have the weekend off because it’s the ‘celebration’ of the June riots, way back when apartheid meant more than a good shit. The curry is so hot that even Mike backs off on it. Tomorrow may require some serious meditation, but I’m optimistic that my stomach will eventually recover. This feeling is backed up by a great jam pancake desert served by a nice hippy American lady called Ina, an unusual name, one I used in the sequel to a sci-fi book I once wrote, but that’s another story.
Alone once again in the room, I turn on the electric blanket and reboot but thoughts don’t come like before, or maybe I’m just plain tired. The Ipod plays Genesis, ‘Selling England by the Pound’, which is heavy Shiite to be listening to while expecting to be plugged into GODMIND, or whatever else I think is out there. No problem. I’ve learned a lot on this trip. Everyone gets a different answer. Just make sure you ask a question. Novelty is still with me. Some call this state akin to ‘fate’s fool’. Creative madness. You should try this. Back in ’99 at the AllChemicals conference on Hawaii, some months before he died, Terence said; “I’ll try to be around, but if I’m not, I’ll be behind your eyelids”. I close my eyes and wait. I get mushroom clouds. Trying to type this down could see me down the rabbit hole because tomorrow needs me to function as a professional film maker and not a neuronaut, so bring on some interesting dreamtime.
Schwann 12.16 AM June 16th 2005.
adapted from 'Lost Tapes Caper'.
copyright 2005 All media
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Brother-D
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Life Signs
Great to be invited to share the adventure again big bro! Did you happen to see any parts of my heart there around the foothills of Table Mountain?....the magical land holds so much of it still. To hang on your every word or post is a practice in olympic patience....but just the kind of workout eternal friends relish. ONWARD! ...you crazy diamond. -me (http://alwaysalreadyone.blogspot.com/) PS: you've got Terrence's bed and i, in dream-time celebrations, have him sitting at the end of my bed laughing and playing the BANJO (of all things) just shining at me with that same cosmic mischievousness and, in a great mock Dylan, "don't you get it?......don't you GET it?!" *sigh*