Thanks all the same

[Robin Landseadel]

On Sep 8, 2010, at 10:36 AM, Matthew Cissell wrote:

> Robin,
>
>     Yeah, I noticed that but i figured it looked a little more plain  
> than my
> previous posts. I'll try to straighten it out so that it's a little  
> more reader
> friendly. I appreciate the effort.
>     That's a great story about how you got introduced to Pynchon's  
> work. Did i
> understand correctly that TP knew your mother?

No, not to my knowledge. However, they moved in the same circles.

Did you read Inherent Vice? There's a bit bit in there about a Tommys  
Burgers burger flipper who would slip in a joint for a little extra? I  
heard that story from my mom back in 1969, crusing for burgers.  
Trillium Fortenight? The Renaissance Pleasure Faire is where the San  
Francisco Early Music Society got started—I was their recording  
engineer for about eight years. The Renaisance Faire was also a nexus  
of dealers of visionary enhancers in the greater LA region.   
Sortilège? Z. Budapest set up shop at the Ren Faire, as did Starhawk.  
My mom moved in those circles. I moved in those circles to the extent  
that I was around her, for various reasons that didn't happen all that  
often. [ Bea appears onstage with Mae West voice and gestures] "Go  
away son, you're blowing my act." But seriously folks, it was a post  
"The Pill", pre AIDS sexual wonderland, Bea was its biggest  
cheerleader. All the seemingly random sexual acts in Pynchon's novels?  
Golly, was anyplace ever really like that?

I posit that Thomas Pynchon knows something about the relation of  
these things because that was the environment he lived in. Inherent  
Vice confirms it.

>  It is interesting to hear your
> view and about your background. Sadly, I've only been to California  
> once so i
> don't get the feel that others like you might get when you read TP.  
> Still,
> though I lived a good share of my life in the midwest (Illinois to  
> be exact; i
> now live in the north of Spain) i did manage to get a taste of that  
> west coast
> vibe by seeing what Grateful Dead shows i could in the early 90's.

And I got really close to that, getting to be friends with a Berkeley  
audio engineer who did the circuit design work for the Grateful Dead's  
infamous "Wall of Sound." Also got to bump into Wavy Gravy on a  
periodic basis, got to know the folks that worked for Owsley. Their  
circles of influence also overlap with Pynchon's. Managed to be the  
recording engineer at Phil Lesh's chance to lead the Berkeley Symphony  
Orchestra in some distinctly difficult 20th century Music. Was an on- 
air host at KPFA with a vocal interest in the occult and a public  
embrace of Starhawk/Reclaiming's politicized take on Feminist  
Spirituality as well. Loaded with unintended consequences, that one.  
This meant I also got to interact with others once swept into the  
circle of Witches and the Dead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctTQeTPILI8

And I take it from the contents of the novels that Pynchon spins on  
the Owsley/Huxley/Captain Trips  Axis of Acid promoters. He sees LSD  
as having a decidedly Blakeian influence on the partakers of that  
popular entertainment. I take it that there's a strong feminist  
spirituality spin to that aspect of his work as well, which helps  
explain the preponderance of references to the western occult  
tradition in his books, Gravity's Rainbow, Mason & Dixon and Against  
the Day in particular—the last one doubly so, as it positively reeks  
of the stench of a Wiccan supply store/Occult Bookshop.

Or smell good, depending on your personal tastes in such matters.

> I reckon it
> was as close as I can get to that time & place (early 60's - with  
> Merry
> Pranksters in the west & Dylan in Greenwich village - to the early  
> 70's when/
> where Hunter S claimed "with the right kind of eyes you can almost  
> see the
> high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and  
> rolled back"). It
> was enough to help me appreciate some things that are narrated in  
> TP's work. Or
> so it seems to me. I mean, man, I can really dig his paranoia trip.
>
>     Thanks again Robin.
> MC

Thanks again Matthew

And now for something completely different:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivBxpp0iJ1g