IVIV page 129

[Michael Bailey]

Spotted Dick's keyboard player, Smedley...

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot)
("Butler told MacGuire that the American Legion was "nothing but a
strike breaking outfit.")

...has a Farfisa, "a little Combo Compact model he had obtained
on the advice of Rick Wright of Pink Floyd and which was never
observed far from his person.  He called it Fiona..."

("Richard Wright's use of the Farfisa Compact Duo was integral
to the sound of Pink Floyd's early albums, such as The Piper
at the Gates of Dawn. However, Wright came to more heavily
utilize the Hammond organ on later albums, such as The Dark Side
of the Moon. Still, Wright continued to use a Farfisa,
even on David Gilmour's 2006 tour." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farfisa)

*Stone Turntable* - the fictive magazine Doc is supposedly
interviewing these musicians for.

If you read the page, you know that Smedley mentions
paranoia, and some "scowling young gent" comes and leans
against the wall, putting Smedley to flight (unlike his Marine namesake)

So all I really want to do is riff on a couple things I liked.

Smedley asks his Farfisa where he can score, gotta coin a word
for that: farfisapharmacophantasticamancy?  Doc can relate,
having asked a Ouija board the same question.
Implicit in the notion is the idea that Smedley might not be
wanting to consume the free house dope, and "quite rightly"...

"A private eye didn't drop acid for years in this town without
picking up some kind of extrasensory chops..."
c'mon, that's just pleasing...

"a high level of discomfort, even fear, about people
who couldn't be dropped in a bag right away and labeled."
and it's also reflective of how media labels discourage
deeper thinking, maybe.

"unwillingness to blur out, like everybody else at the psychedelic
events of those days, beyond official envelopes of skin"

- just to deconstruct that a little bit: people at the Events,
blur out beyond official envelopes of skin.

That is to say, enlarge their consciousnesses - or, allow
their consciousnesses to follow a natural inclination to enlarge -
 to assume an identity that includes the other people, "the rain, the park
and other things", the music, feelings...

and these guys - Doc is thinking of the young scowler
as an example - stand out because they don't relax their guard.
I have a little chorus going in my mind of "milspec milspec milspec"
it's like I read that word in an SF book somewhere and now
I think I know something!
- a heavy-duty physical consciousness (which Doc is also
cultivating down at "Waste-a-Perp") heavily skewed toward
self-preservation and threat-demolition, which militates against
such relaxation



-- 
--- "Can't say it often enough -
change your hair, change your life."
- Sortilege