Book Review: Chapel of Extreme Experience by John Geiger

Chapel of Extreme Experience:

A Short History of Stroboscopic Light and the Dream Machine

by John Geiger

      If you’ve ever found yourself staring into the dancing flames of a campfire and suddenly realized time has slipped away and you’ve been entranced, you probably were in an altered state of consciousness without even realizing it. Further, if you’ve sat around a campfire with friends with the play of orange and yellow light alternating with shadows in irregular rhythms moving across their faces and the conversation has taken a turn towards more philosophical, speculative, spiritual, or introspective territories, you may wonder why these kinds of conversations flow more lucidly then they do when you are immersed in the mundane aspects of everyday life. There is something primal about the presence of flames, something that taps into the deepest layers of our being, relaxes us, and allows the contents of consciousness to flow freely into our waking minds. John Geiger, in Chapel of Extreme Experience, scientifically calls this phenomenon “flicker” and explains how its effects have been studied by scientists, induced with new technologies and drugs, and embraced by counter-culturalists and artists who turn to it for artistic inspiration and a deeper understanding of who we are and how we connect to the world we come from.

According to Geiger, flicker can be induced in a variety of ways. At its most basic level, a child experiences it when looking at a light and passing its spread out fingers back and forth in front of its eyes. Some epilectics experience something similar before going into seizures and schizophrenics may encounter it through audial or visual hallucinations. In modern times, film reels work through the use of flicker and the invention of the stroboscopic light brings on trance and hallucinatory conditions that extend for prolonged periods of time, making it possibly for psychiatrists to study its effects on brain activity. During his childhood, Brion Gysin, the largely overlooked mover and shaker of the counter cultures of the 1950s and 1960s, had the experience hallucinating when sitting in the back seat of a car that was driving under tree branches during an intensely sunny day. This experience led him to his interest in the Dream Machine, the central focus of this book.

Geiger starts off with a brief survey of scientific studies from the early 20^th century conducted in the field of neuropsychiatry and pharmacology. One major finding, and the one that preoccupies Geiger most, is that flicker induced through the use of strobe lights synchronizes and alters the rate of alpha waves in the brain. Alpha waves are associated with relaxation, dreaming, and fantasizing. The science he refers to is primitive by today’s standards and the hypotheses drawn are potentially suspect, but this isn’t irrelevant in the context of this book because Geiger’s purpose is to demonstrate the cultural impact that flicker has had over modern times.

This brings us to the Dream Machine, a device originally invented by Ian Sommerville, the boyfriend of Beat Generation, transgressive, and science-fiction author William S. Burroughs in the late 1950s. The Dream Machine is made by placing a bare light bulb on a turntable surrounded by a cylinder of cardboard with shapes cut into it. As it spins, the flicker causes trances and hallucinations. Brion Gysin became fascinated with it because it could cause an altered state of consciousness without the use of illegal drugs, without dangerous side effects, and without harmful after-effects. Since the Dream Machine works best with closed eyes because its effects are strongest when the flickering lights penetrate the translucent skin of the eyelids, Brion Gysin called it the only work of art you look at with your eyes closed.

Although anyone with minimal engineering skills can construct a Dream Machine, Gysin tried to market it as a psychedelic alternative to television. He was modestly successful as some big corporations liked the idea but eventually abandoned it for being too difficult to advertise. Geiger claims it posed too great of a risk to epilectics, but this explanation sounds hollow. A simple warning label on the package could easily have dealt with that problem. My own theory is that it didn’t catch on because it requires active engagement from the user. Television is an entirely passive medium that requires absolute submission on the part of the viewer who sinks into a dream-like state and absorbs whatever content is fed to them. You can consciously choose to think about what you watch, but few people are motivated enough to do so. The Dream Machine, on the other hand, requires attention and interaction from its users, demanding a kind of self-awareness and observation of one’s own subjectivity to be of any value. Most people are just too shallow and lazy to derive any benefit from the experience (see Marshall McLuhan on the difference between hot and cold media).

While Gysin failed to bring the Dream Machine into the living rooms of mainstream America, he influenced culture in other ways. John Geiger explores his dalliances with the Beat Generation and the hippies when owning the Beat Hotel in the Left Bank of Paris and the 1001 Nights restaurant in Tangier, Morocco where he liaised with the Rolling Stones and introduced Brian Jones to the tribal mountain musicians who he recorded as The Master Musicians of Jajouka. He explored hallucinogenic drug use with William Burroughs and Timothy Leary after having met with Aldous Huxley to discuss his experiences with mescaline. Gysin’s art never received widespread acclaim among critics although his attempts at incorporating elements of flicker in his paintings of Arabic calligraphy and Moroccan market scenes inspired the Op Art movement and other postmodernists. He was associated with some of the most famous counter-cultural figures and late 20^th century artists, film makers, and musicians so his influence is largely felt yet also largely unacknowledged.

Towards the end of this short tour around technology, art, culture, and psychotropic drugs Geiger returns to the scientific study of flicker in our hyper-technological age. He dips into the realms of parapsychology, telepathy, and other pseudoscientific muck that I tend to avoid. Make of that what you will.

John Geiger’s Chapel of Extreme Experience amounts to being more of an homage to the intersection between technology, psychedelic drugs, culture, and art than a treatise that makes a definite statement. Taken that way, it’s a brief and interesting read. It does, however, show how Brion Gysin acted as a connecting thread through all of those fields, a pioneering psychonaut and maybe even the Godfather of Psychedelia. Maybe he will remain an unsung genius destined for obscurity because he was too authentic for the human species which seems to be passively stagnating in the fake realities imposed on them by digital technology. This is an obscure book probably destined for further obscurity and of most interest for future book collectors more than anyone else.

 

Classic Account of Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

by Tom Wolfe

Bantam Books, 1969 edition/47th printing

mass market paperback

Available for purchase on Ebay here

 

Vintage Book Review

Rads:

The 1970 Bombing Of the Army Math Research Center

At the University of Wisconsin and Its Aftermath

by Tom Bates

     How did the 1960s end? Conventional perceptions point to the Manson Family murders and the stabbing of a concert-goer by a Hells Angel at the Altamont Speedway during a free Rolling Stones concert. The “end of the 60s” is actually more nuanced and complex than conventional perception will allow. For one thing, there were other events and disasters that contributed just as much to the darkening of that era’s optimistic mood. Take, for example, the bombing of the Army Math Research Center on the University of Wisconsin’s campus in Madison. Rads by Tom Bates gives a thorough and accessible account of what happened there in the summer of 1970, reminding us further that history is more complicated than the mainstream narratives, mostly fueled by the irresponsibility of the media and the entertainment industry.

The central, and most prominent figure in Rads is Karl Armstrong, a college dropout and hippy who joined the anti-war movement in 1968. He had come from a rough, working class background but did well enough in high school to make it to college. He wasn’t much of a student. With low grades and lack of enthusiasm, he dropped out before re-matriculating and dropping out two times subsequently. During his off-and-on college studies, he worked at a string of blue collar jobs and quit all of them, his own personal trend that continued up until the time of his arrest. Karl Armstrong actually loved the college life, or, at least, he loved everything about college but going to classes and doing homework. He made a lot of friends on campus and spent a lot of time hanging out there, even when he wasn’t enrolled. He also got involved in the drug scene and the political demonstrations put on by the New Left which was thriving in Wisconsin just as much as it was in San Francisco and New York City.

That is when things began to get dark. Karl Armstrong attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where the police began beating non-violent demonstrators with billy clubs and tear gassing them. In fact, two of them seized Karl and threw him in the river. After that, the peace movement began to turn violent. At first, Karl was dismissive of terrorist groups like the Weather Underground, but then after police brutality continued to be a problem at demonstrations held on the University of Wisconsin campus, Karl gave in and embraced terrorist tactics to end the war too.

Of other importance in this story is Karl’s younger brother Dwight who idolized him and followed him into one insane scheme after another. With assistance from various people, the two brothers set out on a bombing and arson campaign. Most of their attacks were miserable failures, but they did catch the public’s attention and Karl maintained clandestine relationships with two underground newspapers in Madison. They became known as the New Year’s Gang even though Karl preferred to be called by the gimmicky and pretentious title of Vanguard Of the Revolution. They became heroic figures in the activist community even though no one actually knew who they were.

While the police became more violent towards the demonstrators and the war in Vietnam seemed like it would never end, Karl and Dwight decided to do something more drastic. With the help of two other activists, they made a car bomb out of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and blew off the side of a building on campus, a building that housed the office of the Army Math Research Center which was a think tank that calculated probabilities to maximize America’s kill-count in Vietnam. A deeply moral question hangs over the entirety of this story: Is the bombing committed by the New Year’s Gang, a crime that mistakenly killed one innocent man, such a terrible crime in light of the hundreds of thousands of people killed by US troops in Vietnam whose only crime was being born citizens of that small Asian nation? Who are the real criminals here?

After that, the story follows the escape of the New Year’s Gang, their trials, and the effect the bombing had on the activist movement at the time.

One of the great things about this book is how well Karl Armstrong and his associates are brought to life. The author follows them around and describes them so they seem like people you can get to know. Karl was such a laid-back and peaceful person that he appeared to be incapable of ever blowing something up. In fact, he comes off as such a loser that it is hard to believe he ever pulled the bombing off. Being the loser that he was, he was also a friendly, kind-hearted young man that people felt comfortable to be with. The contrast between his persona and his crimes is starkly drawn and a little bit troubling. Just think of the calmest and nicest person you know and then picture them carrying out acts of terrorism.

Another thing that is great about this book is the way it is is written. It reads like a novel, especially in the way it describes the settings and the characters, and also in the way it switches between depictions of Karl, his family, the political scene, the university administrators, and law enforcement. It is one of those book where you feel like you are there watching things as they happen. In that regard, Rads is also an excellent depiction of a particular time and place. Bates does a great job of capturing the feel of the Midwest city of Madison and the feeling of its college town life with the bars, the frat houses, the student ghettos, the hangouts, and the drug scene. So much has been said about the hippies and the anti-war movement in the more populated urban areas of the country that a lot of people don’t realize it was happening all over, even in the flyover states.

Rads by Tom Bates is a great book in the way it depicts its time and place. It gives a lesser-known angle on the era of the late 1960s, further helping the reader to understand what happened then and why. It also makes you wonder if the 1960s really did end. More likely, they transformed as the radicals of the time entered the work force and brought new values to the American public. Psychedelic music turned into progressive rock, anarchist politics were turned upside down and embraced with anger in the Punk movement, and young people continued to do drugs. But after the bombing at the University of Wisconsin, political demonstrations returned to non-violence and activists became more confrontational as educators, lawyers, journalists, and in all kinds of other ways too. Rads will not only enhance your understanding of the 1960s, it will also enhance your understanding of the vast and complicated fabric of American society.