Interviews – Joseph Matheny: Recent Episodes
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(This conversation originally took place in 2021.) Joseph Matheny, legendary transmedia storyteller and creator of Ong’s Hat, has got some insight to share about the appeal of conspiracy theory and the … Continue reading Cracking the Code with Joseph Matheny
***Begin transmission Joseph Matheny, David Metcalfe, and Ken Eakins send you transmissions from the Mauve Zone. David’s ‘Scars of Dracula’ T, Amicus v Hammer, Robert Bloch and HP Lovecraft, Cosmic … Continue reading The Mauve Zone #009 – The Media v Miracles, the Horror of Nature, and Cosmic Transmissions.
Had a blast meeting Steve and kibitzing about all our mutual passions. I hope you enjoy listening to this as much as I enjoyed recording it. Steve’s intro: This week … Continue reading Joseph Matheny: Bending Reality With Art
In this episode of The Computer Room, Katherine and friends talk about Art Bell’s legacy. We meet Leah Prime, who’s writing a book about Art Bell, John Steiger who on … Continue reading First Time Caller: An Art Bell Tribute
Join Shane Skwarek and Tim Philipps in this mind-bending episode of “Conspiracy Realist” as we dive deep into the enigmatic world of Ong’s Hat with special guest Joseph Matheny. Discover … Continue reading Ong’s Hat: The Portal to Parallel Realities? ⚫ Cocktails & Conspiracies Episode 120
***Begin transmission Joseph Matheny, David Metcalfe, and Ken Eakins send you transmissions from the Mauve Zone. New disinformation from the top and the London Riots, Will the real Collins Elite … Continue reading The Mauve Zone #008 – The Collins Elite, X Disinformation, and the London Riots
This Is Not a Game is the extraordinary untold story of the internet’s first conspiracy theory, the legend of Ong’s Hat. LINK: https://www.audible.com/pd/This-Is-Not-a-Game-with-Marc-Fennell-Audiobook/B0CYM73MWM This Is Not a Game is the … Continue reading This Is Not a Game with Marc Fennell
Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. Blog, Internet resources, online reading groups, articles and interviews, Illuminatus! info. Original post: http://www.rawillumination.net/2024/03/five-questions-for-joseph-matheny.html If you haven’t listened to it yet, the new Hilaritas podcast interview … Continue reading Five questions for Joseph Matheny
An interview about the new book, my introduction, and the book itself The Interview I recently sat down with Mike Gathers for the Hilaritas Press Podcast to discuss the newest … Continue reading Hilaritas Podcast and the Reissue of “Reality is What You Can Get Away With”
— MAUVE ZONE SIGNAL ESCAPED– ***Begin transmission Joseph Matheny, David B Metcalfe, and Ken Eakins send you transmissions from the Mauve Zone. Are the Royal family from Dimension B? How … Continue reading The Mauve Zone – Transmission #005 Satanic Panic 2.0, Spiritualism, and Kenneth Grant
A great conversation I had with the guys from The Long Seventies Podcast Show page: https://www.thelongseventiespodcast.com/home/2024/2/15/133-joseph-matheny-interview-ongs-hat-amp-the-alchemy-of-alternative-realities
Show link: https://www.vayse.co.uk/vys0036 Some rare art transcends reality, some even rarer art seems to create a new reality altogether – the work of Joseph Matheny does both of these things … Continue reading VYS0036 | Infinite Game – Vayse to Face with Joseph Matheny
***Begin transmission Joseph Matheny, David B Metcalfe, and Ken Eakins send you transmissions from the Mauve Zone. UFOs are angels? Beasttech, Kenneth Grant is the new Crowley? Magick needs to … Continue reading The Mauve Zone – Transmission #004 BEASTTECH, TIKTOK ASTRAL BATTLES, and PUNK ROCK MAGICK
Sat down and had a discussion with Greg, one of the curators of one of my favorite OG websites, The Daily Grail. LINK: https://www.dailygrail.com/2023/12/ongs-hat-creator-joseph-matheny-on-the-blurred-lines-between-fiction-and-reality/ Ong’s Hat. For those who were … Continue reading Ong’s Hat creator Joseph Matheny on the blurred lines between fiction and reality
RECENTLY, INTERNET CREATIVES ARE TRANSFORMING THEIR VULNERABILITIES INTO STRENGTH, BREAKING DOWN ALL BARRIERS OF HUMAN RESPECT. IS THE FEAR OF RIDICULE EXPERIENCING ITS FINAL HOURS? SOURCE: https://www.archyde.com/can-hyper-sincerity-save-us/ Photo caption: BEWARE … Continue reading CAN HYPER-SINCERITY SAVE US?
SOURCE: https://www.archyde.com/art-in-the-age-of-reels/ THERE WILL BE A BEFORE AND AFTER AGGRO DR1FT, THE NEW DIGI-PSYCHEDELIC FILM BY HARMONY KORINE. INSPIRED BY GTA 5, CREATED WITH AN ARMY OF DESIGNERS, AI ARTISTS, … Continue reading ART IN THE AGE OF REELS
“Perhaps the oldest internet myth of all: the mystery of Ong’s Hat” I had a wonderful conversation with Michael Förtsch, the author of this piece for the German Scifi mag … Continue reading Der vielleicht älteste Internet-Mythos überhaupt: Das Mysterium von Ong’s Hat
I recently sat down via Zoom with Jean-Baptiste Chiara of the French Art magazine, Technikart . Here is a link to the issue that has our conversation within. Description of … Continue reading Technikart 273 Digital Version
The last of the raw interviews From the Substack Today’s raw recordings are the final two for the Behind the Scenes series. This is a single file containing Denny Unger, … Continue reading Behind the Scenes of the Incident at Ong’s Hat Episode 4
Warning, large download From the Substack Here is a 5.5-hour collection of recordings I did in preparation for the BBC podcast series The Incident at Ong’s Hat. I‘ll let you … Continue reading The Incident at Ong’s Hat: Behind the Scenes- Episode 3
Someone sent this to me recently. It’s an interview Don Webb did with me in 1994 for the legendary Fringeware Review. I had almost forgotten about this. After reading this … Continue reading Fringeware Review Interview with Joseph Matheny
Behind the Scenes Episode 1– David Metcalfe
From the Substack A new series will premier on BBC 4 Radio Limelight on air and then as a podcast after every Friday broadcast for the next five weeks. The series starts on Fri, 27 Jan 2023. It is a five-part series titled The Incident at Ong’s Hat.
LINK: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001hg08
The series is inspired by Ong’s Hat: The Beginning along with elements from my personal life.
A new episode will premier every Friday. (Episode list can be found here.)
The credit list can also be accessed by clicking “show more” below the description. I make an appearance playing “myself,” or at least a fictionalized version of myself, as it were.
In anticipation of the premier, I am sharing some raw audio interviews conducted as background material by the producers. I will run one behind-the-scenes piece every Friday before the broadcast and podcast release of each episode. I am calling this series Behind the Scenes.
Here is an RSS feed for your convenience, or you may wait for this Substack to remind you each Friday for the duration of the series.
https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/232444.rss
Linked above is the first interview with my friend David Metcalfe. It is raw and unedited.If you don’t know about David, you should. I consider him one of the preeminent researchers into the nuanced world of liminal places and states.
From his vision document: David Metcalfe is currently a Scholar in Virtual Residence with the Windbridge Institute and the Editor-in-Chief for the Windbridge Research Center’s Threshold: Journal of Interdisciplinary Consciousness studies – a researcher, writer, and multimedia specialist focusing on the interrelationship of art, culture, and consciousness, in 2011 he established the Liminal Analytics: Applied Research Collaborative to focus on testing and deploying a unique combination of applied scholarship, market intelligence, digital media, and social network development in order to build strategic, multidisciplinary lines of communication.
Enjoy.
Disclaimer: The Incident at Ong’s Hat was not written by me. It is a true crime podcast story using elements of the Ong’s Hat narrative, along with elements taken from my personal life, with my permission and participation. This is part of the reason I am sharing the interviews behind this story. I think seeing both sides, the facts and the fiction, will shine a light on the process.
- The Incunabula PapersLimelightThe Incident at Ong’s Hat
Episode 1 of 5
CREDITSSarah Larsen, a yoga instructor, and her friend Charlie Brill went in search of Ong’s Hat, a fabled gateway to another dimension. Now Sarah is missing, and maybe this urban legend isn’t a legend at all…
Cast:
Charlie – Corey Brill
Sarah – Avital Ash
Rodney Ascher – Himself
Det. Stecco – James Bacon
Casey – Hayley Taylor
Ringo – Benjamin Williams
Kit – Randall Keller
Denny Unger – Himself
Joseph Matheny – Himself
Newscasters: Elizabeth Saydah, Dean Wendt
Created and Produced by Jon Frechette and Todd Luoto
Inspired by Ong’s Hat: The Beginning by Joseph Matheny
Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Jon Frechette, Chris Zabriskie, Anthéne, Macrogramma (under Creative Commons)
Editing and Sound Design – Jon Frechette
Additional Editing – Brandon Kotfila and Greg Myers
Special Thanks – Ben Fineman
Written and Directed by Jon Frechette
Executive Producer – John Scott Dryden
“Ong’s Hat Survivors Interview” courtesy of Joseph Matheny
Visit thegardenofforkedpaths.com and josephmatheny.com
A Goldhawk production for Radio 4 and BBC Sounds
Ong’s Hat and Weaponized ARG’s: A Conversation w Joseph Matheny, Ong’s Hat Creator & Transmedia Artist | RSS.com The Prop Anon Podcast explores the life and work of American novelist, … Continue reading S01 E01 – Ong’s Hat and Weaponized ARG’s: A Conversation w Joseph Matheny, Ong’s Hat Creator & Transmedia Artist
I had a wonderful conversation with Gabriela L. Laracca of Asbury Park Press which was a rather atypical interview about Ong’s Hat because it focused on one of my passions, … Continue reading Take these eerie, haunted hikes in the Pine Barrens, Jersey Shore
Sometimes the fabric of our world thins out, and people slip through – either from another dimension or into one. So some people think, while others claim it happened to … Continue reading You Can Leave Your Hat On – Joseph Matheny, Ong’s Hat and Alternate Reality Games
From the original post: July 9, 2022|#ChapelPerilousTheLifeandThoug, #Joesphmatheny, #Ongshat, #PropAnon, #qanon (This interview took place between Joseph Matheny and me not long after the January 6th failed Trump coup. Q … Continue reading Center your Schizowave (An interview w Joseph Matheny)
The Origin Story of Joseph Matheny and the Ong’s Hat ARG I sat down with Jerry Gaura of TOOWi Arts to discuss the origins of me as an artist and … Continue reading Information Golem: New Mini-Series from TOOWi Arts
This book includes a chapter that is comprised of an interview I did with my late, great, friend Diane DiPrima. I miss you, my friend. “Diane di Prima (1934-2020) was … Continue reading Conversations with Diane Di Prima
An urban legend tells of a group of scientists who successfully escaped into another dimension.Join me as we go back in time to a place where the internet was like … Continue reading The First Internet Hoax – Inside A Mind
We’re producing our first original on high strangeness. In it we explore the psyche of “strange” through the stories of three people in highly strange situations. Season One – “Information … Continue reading Coming Soon: Highly Strange
It’s refreshing to see someone make an attempt to understand what I was trying to do with Ong’s Hat and it’s encouraging to see them get it mostly right. Too … Continue reading Ong’s Hat and the construction of a suspicious model reader
Conspiracy theorizing as alternate-reality game “Many quotes from a long and enjoyable conversation I had with the author made it into this article. I hope you find it as enlightening … Continue reading This Is Not a Game
*This episode became one of the top ten most downloaded episodes of Parallax Views. On this edition of Parallax Views, a special, previously unpublished conversation with Joseph Matheny, a pivotal … Continue reading ARG Pioneer Joseph Matheny on the Counterculture’s Hijacking from Corporatization to QAnon
The first thing one learns upon becoming a subject of press interest is that there’s actually very little one can generally do in the face of inaccurate or even malicious … Continue reading Corrections to Brian Dunning’s Skeptoid Podcast About Ong’s Hat
Here’s a show with Grimerica that I recently did with my old friend Denny Unger along with the hosts of Grimerica, D-Ron, and Grahambo. There’s one more interview I did … Continue reading Grimerica: Denny Unger and Joseph Matheny – Alternative Reality Games and Conspiracies
LINK TO Gizmodo piece on Ong’s Hat, from 2/21/19 Chosen one of The Best Long Reads Of The Month, picked by Digg’s editors Chosen as a “WEEKEND READING PLEASURE” editor’s … Continue reading Gizmodo-Ong’s Hat: The Early Internet Conspiracy Game That Got Too Real
What lies at the heart of Ong’s Hat? Listen to this episode of Decoder Ring: LINK TO DECODER RING PAGE Decoder Ring is a podcast about cracking cultural mysteries. Every … Continue reading Slate-Decoder Ring: The Incunabula Papers
Topics include: Crimbus gifts, planning our funerals, Scary German Lady, Philly Legends: The Bubble Fairy, Josh is home alone, Alien Alloys, BFS Road Trip, Corrections and Josh’s Chaos Dimension: Ong’s Hat, … Continue reading Best Friend Simulator Episode 16: Those Mummy Flippin’ Flintknappers/ Ong’s Hat
If you enjoy STEAL THIS SHOW, think about becoming a patron. Our Patreon campaign keeps us free and independent – and keeps shows coming your way! This episode is part two … Continue reading Special Episode: ‘Fake Lore, Dark Memes’, with Joseph Matheny
The Grey Lodge was an underground private torrent tracker used by millions of people per month in their quest to uncover the esoteric, strange and the downright weird. In this … Continue reading The Digital Underground: with The Grey Lodge’s Joseph Matheny
Story from the Asbury Park Press, a New Jersey newspaper on the legend(s) of Ong’s Hat. Some excerpts: “Two weeks ago there were these young kids, like 19 or 20, … Continue reading Life in the Pines: Ong’s Hat
Matheny himself was there at the beginning of the ARG, when the increasing prominence of online media got him thinking about new forms of storytelling. “I’ve been a tech person since the Eighties,” he reminisces. “I was an IT expert and moved up into software, and I used to play the Steve Jackson games a lot. I also played the Flying Buffalo play-by-mail games, which were kind of like a LARP but done through mail, phone and faxes. You would send your mailing address and your phone number and you would start getting stuff in the mail.
I'll be on OTHER WORLD RADIO tonight at 8pm PST
OTHER WORLD RADIO with Sandra D. Sabatini, Host Other World Radio Show starts USA: 11PM EDT USA / 10PM CDT / 9PM MST / 8PM PDT Overseas listeners please check for your local time difference at: World Time Engine
The Chromos Kids: DNA Wars! Christopher Hyatt interviewed by Joseph Matheny from the Black Book Volume III Galts Ark Vol 01- Joseph Matheny talks to Christopher Hyatt and Hyatt opens … Continue reading The Chromos Kids: DNA Wars! Christopher Hyatt interviewed by Joseph Matheny from the Black Book Volume III…
My interview with legendary beat writer, Diane DiPrima is included in Beats In Time: A Literary Generation’s Legacy. See info on Goodreads or Amazon
The Silk Road website uses an anonymous browser, untraceable currency, shifting servers and an encrypted Web address to allow for a thriving illegal drug trade on the Internet.
Joseph Matheny in conversation with old friend and mentor Ralph Abraham.
THE GSPOT WILL BE ON HIATUS UNTIL SEPTEMBER.
Listen or download here.
Joseph Matheny in conversation with Richard Nash about publishing/e-publishing past-present-future.
Joseph Matheny in conversation with Richard Metzger about publishing and the future of media. Also, a new In Your Ear, reviewing the Sex is Fun podcast.
Joseph Matheny in conversation with old friend Steve Peters. Steve is a founding member of No Mimes Media, who produced the Why So Serious for The Dark Knight and on Year Zero for Nine Inch Nails ARG/Transmedia Experiences and a host of others. Also, In Your Ear reviews John Hummel Blogs the Religions.
Joseph Matheny in conversation withstand-up comedian and podcaster Marc Maron,. Also, an In Your Ear review of Marc’s podcast, WTF. It’s a WTF kinda day here at the GSpot!
Cup of TNB host Joseph Matheny talks to TNB editor and author Jonathan Evison.
JONATHAN EVISON is the author of All About Lulu, which won the 2009 Washington State Book Award, as well as the forthcoming novels, West of Here, and The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving. In 2009, he received a fellowship from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. He is the Executive Editor of The Nervous Breakdown, and an advisory editor at Knock. He blogs at Three Guys, One Book. He especially likes rabbits and beer.
Joseph Matheny in conversation with Rachel Haywire about the good old BBS days, music, art and all sorts of goodies. Since this is a special holiday show, they just talked … Continue reading The GSpot: Rachel Haywire
In anticipation of the upcoming performance of The Abattoir Pages, Joseph Matheny in conversation with John Harrigan about anything and everything that comes to their mind. All music provided by … Continue reading The Gspot: John Harrigan
Joseph Matheny discussed the state of independent film and ponders some solutions to the “Internet dilemma” with his friend and partner, Michael Mailer. Also, a new episode of “In Your … Continue reading The GSpot: Michael Mailer
Special on the street reports and mailbag. Gpod guy goes to the street to ask random people the questions: Have you heard of David Icke? Have you heard of the … Continue reading Can you see the lizard people following me?
Published in BEATS IN TIME: A LITERARY GENERATION’S LEGACY
Since I was a lad I’ve admired beat literature and its developers. My young mind was taken with the romantic image of Kerouac roaming the interior of the body politic, a mad sweating virus on the loose in the highway vein of Amerika, Ginsberg holy maniac,chanting, praying, exorcising a generation ruined by madness, Burroughs and Gysin, pushing the envelope, rubbing out the word, and di Prima, conjuring, straddling the magick/dream line, throwing us bits of tasty metamorsels and sumptuous subconscious feasts from the other side.
Diane di Prima is a San Francisco writer and poet who also works in healing, Magick, and Alchemy .some of here recent books are:Recollections of My Life as a Woman The New York Years, Pieces of a Song -Collected Poems, Zip Code, and Seminary Poems. See a complete list here.
I spoke to Diane in her cozy book lined San Francisco apartment. We spoke of rebellion, liberty, conditioning, and on being a women in the beat generation.This is a transcript of our recorded conversation.
JM: When you started out as a writer in the 50′s, were there a lot of control systems set up to punish anyone who tried to break out the consensus mold?
DD: It was a weird time. Especially for women. Rebellion was kind of expected of men.
JM: When men rebelled they were romantic, free. Women who rebelled were categorized as being nuts.
DD: Yes. Nuts or a whore, or something. Yes.
JM: Do you feel it’s any different now?
DD: Not much. I think there’s been a lot of lip service paid to how much women have managed to advance. The younger women that I know are behaving pretty much like women have always behaved. Maybe they don’t have so much of the middle class housewife dream, but they’ll still be the one to get a job, while the man does the writing or the painting or whatever. I can think of example after example of this. I think that the internal control systems that have been put in place for women haven’t been dented. It’s such a big step forward to single mom, but so much more could be going on besides that.
JM: That’s where the most effective censorship and control systems reside, inside ourselves, our head!
DD: Yes! How it gets there is interesting too.
JM: How do you think they get there?
DD: I would guess that it starts in the womb. Getting imprinted with the language pattern that’s around you. The way people move, the way they hold themselves. To break it you’d have to do some really deliberate debriefing, on every level. The place where I was lucky in my own life was that I had a grandfather who was an anarchist. I didn’t see much of him after I was 7 because my parents thought he was bad for me, but from 3 to 7 I saw a lot of him. I was still malleable enough so some debriefing occurred there. He would tell me these really weird fables about the world. He would read Dante to me and take me to the old peoples anarchist rallies, and all this showed me these other possibilities.
JM: So you had an early imprint of a kind of… anti-authority, authority figure. (laughs)
DD: (laughing) Yes! Aside from being an anti-authority authority figure, the imprint that I got from him and my grandmother as well, was of two people who weren’t afraid, at least from my child’s point of perspective. They would just go ahead and do what they believed in. In all the other years of my early life I never encountered anyone else who wasn’t afraid. I think kids today may be a little better off in that they encounter a few people who either aren’t afraid, or who will go ahead and try something anyway, whatever it is. There’s a possibility of that model, but during my childhood that was a very unusual model.
I was born in 1934, during the Depression, and everyone seemed to befrozenwithterror. We…..will….do… what….we….are….told! (laughs) and I don’t think it’s changed that much. Every day people are told that they should be afraid of not having health insurance, they’re going to die in the gutter, and to be afraid of all these things that aren’t threats at the moment. Of course there are present threats but nobody’s paying attention to those.
JM: It seems to me that rebellion itself has become a commodity, the media has co-opted rebellions like rock-n-roll, Dada, Surrealism, poetry, the rebel figure. Do you feel that this co-opting has succeeded in making rebellion somewhat ineffectual?
DD: No. What you’re seeing is an old problem in the arts. Everything is always co-opted, and as soon as possible. As Cocteau used to talk about, you have to be a kind of acrobat or a tightrope walker. Stay 3 jumps ahead of what they can figure out about what you’re doing, so by the time the media figures out that your writing, say, women and wolves, your on to finishing your Alchemical poems or something. It’s not just a point of view of rebellion or outdoing them, or anything like that. It’s more a point of view of how long can you stay with one thing. Where do you want to go? You don’t want to do anything you already know or that you’ve already figured out. So it comes naturally to the artist to keep making those jumps, that is, if they don’t fall into the old “jeez, I still don’t own a new microwave” programs.
JM: Reminds me of a story about Aldous Huxley. When asked if he had read all the books in his quite impressive library he replied, “God no! Who would want a library full of books that they had already read?”
DD: (laughs) It is true that rebellion is co opted, but then it always gets out of their hands, it slithers in some other direction. Then they go “oh, how can we make this part of the system?” Like rap. OK, they are co-opting all this regular rap, but now this surreal rap is starting, native tongue, surreal imagery, spiritual anarchism rap, it’s not about girls or politics or race and it’s starting to happen.
JM: Is this something your daughter brings to your attention?
DD: Yes, I go over once in awhile and catch up on what’s going on. You see as soon as something is defined, it wiggles off in another direction. I don’t think that it’s such a big problem in the sense of reaching a lot of people. How does the artist reach a large audience? The people that know are always going to find the new edge, but the mainstream are not that smart or the guy making a top 40 record is not that smart. It often takes them a long time to figure it out. Now that is a problem, because we don’t have the time. We need to reach everybody, right away, because we have to stop the system dead in its tracks. It’s no longer a question of dismantling the system. There isn’t enough time to take it apart, we just have to stop it.
JM: Do you feel that there’s a somewhat centralized or conscious attempt to defuse radical art or rebellion through co-option, or is it just “the nature of the beast”, so to speak?
DD: I think it goes back and forth. There are times when it’s conscious, but not a single hierarchical conspiracy but rather a hydra-headed conspiracy. Then there are other times that it doesn’t need to be conscious anymore, because that’s the mold, that pattern has been set, so everyone goes right on doing things that way. I’m not quite sure which point we’re at right now in history. It’s so transitional and crazy that I wouldn’t hazard a guess. Just check your COINTELPRO history to see an example of a conscious conspiracy to stop us. Other times it was just a repetition of what has gone on before. Like the ants going back to where the garbage used to be. (laughs)
JM: Robotic functioning.
DD: Yes, and it’s all in place when the next so called conspiracy comes along, which is very handy, isn’t it? I Wonder how we’ve made this monster we have here?
JM: OK. Say we stop it dead in its tracks. What then?
DD: It would be nice to say it’s unimaginable, wouldn’t that be great. That would be my hope! (laughs) For one thing, we’d have to use the same tables, wear the same shoes longer, read a lot of the same books, maybe for the next few hundred years. Dumps would become valuable places to mine!
JM: They already are to me!
DD: To some people, yes, but not to enough people. Screeching to a halt seems like the only possible solution and I’m not even sure how you would go about it. Of course the good old general strike would be a nice start.
JM: As long as we’re on the subject of deconstructing, how do you feel about the predominant intellectual fad of postmodernism, deconstruction, and the nihilism implicit in these systems?
DD: Well, when I read that stuff, it’s so frustrating. Western thought always keeps stopping on the brink. It never really makes that extra step. It could really do with an infusion of Buddhist logic. At least 4-fold logic and then what’s beyond that. It seems that although it’s dressed up in new language, nothing really new has happened in philosophy in the 20th century. Well, maybe not since Wittgenstein. It seems like the same old thing. You know, sometimes when people ask me for poems now, I’ll send out poems that have been lying around for years, I don’t always have new poems lying around everywhere, and these things that I wrote as cut-up stuff, cutting up each others’ dreams in workshops and such. I’ll send these out. Everyone seems to be taking them very seriously and publishing them. They think I’m working off of some language theory when actually these are just things I did for fun.
JM: What are you doing now?
DD: I’m working on 2 prose books. One is called “Recollections of My Life as a Women”. I’m 120 pages into it and I’m still 8 years old. I’m still dealing with how the conditioning happened. In my generation a lot of it happened with battering, you got hit a lot, and screaming. Your basic conditioning came through abuse, not really different from concentration camps or anything else. I think someday we’re going to look back on how we’re handling kids at this point in history and wonder how we could treat them such. Like when people say “How could women stand it when people did such and such?” We’ll be saying that about the way children are treated. [Note- Since this interview this book has been completed and published ]
JM: What’s the other book?
DD: The other prose book is called “Not Quite Buffalo Stew”. It’s just a rollicking, fun, surreal novel about life in California. It’s in the first person, and in the 2nd or 3rd chapter in I found out that the “I” that was the narrator was a man, so that breaks a lot of rules already. The “I” is a drug smuggler named Lynx. There isn’t a whole lot of continuity, just whatever scenes wanted to write themselves.
JM: Are you using any kind or random/divination systems, i.e., cut-ups, grab bag, I Ching, Tarot, coin tossing, etc.?
DD: Not with this one. This one dictates itself. The system I guess I’m using is that I can’t write it at home. It won’t happen anywhere that’s familiar turf and it likes to happen while I’m driving. So I’ll probably head for Nevada at some point and finish it.
JM: What do you see in the future for poetry and literature?
DD: I would like to see authors really use Magick to reach themes. I’d like to see more work coming out of visioning and trance. I’m really tired of reading about human beings! There’s all these other beings, I’d like to see a real dimensional jump and I’d like to see people working on the technical problems. Like when you come back from trance or visioning, or drugs, and what you can write down about it at that moment. What you can make into an actual piece, we haven’t figured it out yet. Yeats certainly didn’t figure it out. It’s more than needing a new language. There are actual forms we need to find or the forms have to find us, that will hold all that material without trying to make it reductive. The attempts at visionary painting in the 60′s and Yeats’ last poems show how vision didn’t translate into these old artistic forms. Of course taking the raw material and presenting that as a piece doesn’t work either. Maybe a blending of vision, word, and sounds can achieve something. We haven’t really had time to think about what the computer is. Most of us still think of it as a typewriter, or a calculator. We don’t think of it as its own dimension. It has its own medium, possibilities, to bring this kind of material across. I also think about deliberate invocation to find the plane or thing you want to write about.
JM: Do you see us as heading into a post-literate society?
DD: Yes, we might be. I don’t think that will stop poetry, in fact it won’t stop any of the arts at all. Even if it’s oral there may be a split like there was in Europe when there was the written literature in Latin and then there was the oral poems of the singers in the Vulgate. We have that to a degree already with the poetry of the great songwriters. Really though, I don’t think literate or post-literate really matters. Were cave paintings literate or pre-literate? Did they read those paintings or just look at them? (laughs) Of course the only reason a completely literate society was developed was for thought control, and now that thought control can be done via TV, etc., it’s not really needed anymore. They don’t want everyone reading Schoepenhauer!
Everyone needs to remember that they can buy a small press or laser writer, or copy machine, and go home and do what the fuck they please and it will take a very long time for anyone to catch up with them all! No one seems to remember about a few years ago in Czechoslovakia, without access to all this technology like we have here, even with every one of their typewriters registered to the police, they still managed to publish their work! In order to do this they would they would type it with 10 carbon papers to make 10 copies! We are in a situation here in the US where no one can register all the computers, no one can figure out where all the copy machines are. Get one now! Remember we can do it without government money. Government money is poison, take it when you need it, but don’t get hooked. We can say what we want. They can’t possibly keep up with us all. Real decentralization!
JM: That’s great, helping people to find their true desires, but do you think that we’re so full of false, spectacle manufactured desires that we can no longer identify our true desires?
DD: I think it doesn’t take that long to deprogram false desires. Anyone who knows that they have the desire to know that about themselves, what their true desires are, will find the tools to do it. Drugs, auto-hypnosis, you could also do it by following the false desires until they lead to a dead end like Blake recommended…
JM: Hmmm… somehow that seems… very American…
DD: Hmmm. You’re right.
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