Notes & Doodles from Breaking Convention 2011

Baba Ram Das breaks us in with the tale of the ga-ga-guru seemingly impervious to the effects of acid. When soul is fully manifested there is no trip but what is..?

DMT: the spirit molecule fails to impress with overused special effects and a ream of talking heads. The moral of the story: attempt to study the mystical effects of psychedelics with white coats and syringes = rape by reptillian aliens!

What’s your REAL name?

Blotter Art name badges prompt hundreds of freaks to make lame variations on the “is it dipped?” joke to ever-smiling ticket-takers…

Plans go out the smoke-soaked window as late nights and a complicated many-tracked programme make drifting around the picnic benches talking unsense and making spontaneous decisions the most attractive options.

Luis Luna gets unintended giggles with a slide supposed to show the creative benefits of mind-bending jungle juice: “This bike was based on a design received in an ayahuasca vision.” (It looks like a 1970s version of the bike of the future, some clunky scooter with the tripped out addition of SPIRAL SPOKES designed to reap kinetic energy and thereby boost system efficiency!)

Charlotte Walsh proves no reasonable person can argue with the concept of Cognitive Liberty. O for the days we don’t have to get together and begin by convincing each other we have the unassailable right to change our minds! O for the time when long-haired acid chemists aren’t sentenced like Nazi war criminals! O sanity! Whereforearthou?!?!

Graham Hancock for Prime Minister!

Room E not roomy enough! – psychedelegates overflow into corridor for “Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experiences” track…

Discover that I’m not the only person in the history of the internet to call themselves “PsillyBoy”, I seek out my brother in psilliness, and make a gift. A sparkling-eyed prayer of thanks /!\

Evening event held in student bar shocker! Tidy shirts and 10 screens of football eventually beaten into submission by slow-growing freak army! Barmen driven wild by thick audio trip-textures emanating from the Ragnagrok Allstars! Deep ambient drone makes straights scatty flipout! Man with ceaseless smile hugs untotal strangers! Football fans seen dancing to freakbeat! Stella splashing crew-cut spaz-out on tiny dancefloor! Secret Hippies 1, Norman Normalton 0.

Sun continues to shine in strange city of students, psychogeography of sprawling campus explored by brave wide-eyed strangers, everyone is lovely to each other, suspected psychedelic renaissance in fool swing.

Podcasters Panel proves wonderfully unstuffy antidote to prevailing academentia. One big circle of mostly unmet friEnds talking straight down the line and round the fucking bends.

Big names with nothing really new to say (if you’ve read their books) still bolster the atmosphere with the sheer heft of their presents.

Andy Roberts simply rocks. Albion is waking to its own special kind of dreamtime!

William Rowlandson delivers with his talk on Borges & McKenna - puts forward the case that some of our Dear Mate Terence’s finest contributions are to the field of literature. (Uncoincidentally we’re all here on the 10th anniversary of his death – PLUR.)

Torsten Passie breaks convention simply by being German and having a sense of humour ;-) More giggles please!

Roland Griffiths presents top quality research projects related to psilocybin – how about this tho: get out of the labs and into the forests & fields! Let’s see a psilocybin study involving people tripping out in nature, and record how it effects their views on ecology, animism, natural intelligence etc.

Rick Doblin raises the hackles of quite a few not-so-lone wolves. The idea of having to prove we are qualified to take psychedelics and apply for a license dispensed by some bored of dictators strikes many as regressive. At what price is social/scientific acceptence even worth having? As one fine human being points out, to a round of applause, “I think we all need to be taking higher doses!” …outside the box fellow headstretchers! But also, we must remember to fear not: if the current establishment can’t enforce their prejudices upon our bodies, with all their military-industrial technologies, the criminally under-funded MAPS folk aren’t about to warp our fundamental human rights with their well-intentioned pandering to convention. S’all good.

Overwhelming feeling is that these kind of events need to happen more often in this Fair(ly twisted) Old Isle – roll on 2013!!! So much benefit to be had from getting together. So very inspiring to see the networking. The Net Working.

The spiral worm of the still-turning revolution is winding its way into the mainstream, blossoming in the main vein to cause some blissfool art attack in the perpetual Polis at our ever-emergent centre, dissipating out to the farthest reaches of the never ether, evolving, ever-loving… old systems crumbling, the cosmic comedy is tragic, but there are reasons to be cheerful. I am we Are OURZzz. The meaning, the feeling, ever-deepening… between us… & far BEyONd!!!

what a scene!

freaks young and old

mingling with scientists and suits

(all brothers and sisters

in the lingering taste

of the bitter old fruit

of the tree of knowledge)

flapping tongues buzzing

with the morphogenetic memories

of many alkaloidal reveries

wakened from the shifting strata

of our bodies and blossoming

in the fertile atmosphere between us -

dreadlocks and distinguished grey mops,

mad rainbow hats, monocles, cravats,

shamanic medicine bundles

nestled in briefcases,

legs that’ve danced untethered

thru countless universes

now resting in pinstripe slacks,

fingers that once unwove knots

in tangled DNA strands

now stiring the air

to animate

passionately abstract ideas -

red and white wine, clouds of tobacco and 

pungent puffs of great ganja goodness

sailing thru the bubbling seas of

off-the-map conversations

ranging unchartered territories

that buzz with the little-known activities

of countless brave explorers

seperated only by the flimsiest of screens

yet often unaware of just how populated

this vast mystic wilderness is,

slowly uncovering each other

to reveal the entire vista

composed from the living bones

of our ancestors, fleshed out

with the rippling (inter)relations

of our more-than-human family,

all waking up together

to find we’ve been dreaming all ways,

are now, and always will be, finding

our cores exposed to the moment,

grounded in the multiplicitious nows

of our bodies, seeing that here we are:

this is that other world

and we’re all (not) alone together

aGain…