IVIV Beach Boys, Sunflower

[Doug Millison]

Robin, I've probably already told you, and have posted to Pynchon-l  
before, that Sunflower is my favorite Beach Boys album.  A fellow p- 
lister - one of the unsung heroes of this forum - many years ago was  
kind enough to burn and mail me a cd, before the album was  
commercially reissued in that format.  I first listened to it when it  
was new, on vinyl, and under the influence of a rather strong  
entheogen, the song "At My Window" still sends chills reverberating  
through the synapses that fused on that occasion ("Cool, Cool Water"  
too), while "Add Some Music to Your Day" echoes Pynchon's descriptions  
of all the free music in the air in the Gordita Beach day.  The Boards  
and their house seem to reflect what I've read about Brian Wilson's  
house, the one where Pynchon supposedly went during his Manhattan  
Beach period, and the Byrds connection through Melcher makes sense.

It also makes sense to me that Pynchon, fluent enough in math to  
consider grad studies in that subject if it's true what I remember of  
his bio in that regard, could also be involved as deeply in 60s  
counterculture mystical practices, and even if he isn't/wasn't a  
wizard or adept or merely the shaman I sometimes enjoy picturing to  
myself -- Pynchon daydreaming or dreaming material that he sometimes  
is lucky enough to retrieve later and work into his books, as he  
describes writers doing, in his Sloth essay -- it's no stretch at all  
to imagine him laying out Tarot cards or throwing the  I Ching, or  
casting a horoscope, along with the billions of other folks who were  
doing the very same thing at the time in the mid-to late '60s, some  
taking it more seriously than others, but indeed a lot of folks were  
doing just that, including artists who above and beyond whatever  
belief they might have had in the power of these tools to predict the  
future or clarify the present or otherwise aid in their spiritual  
development, may have been using Tarot cards and the I Ching and  
astrology and hallucinations and dreams and other methods to help  
create or structure their works.