Psycho, Nosferatu, and The Outer Limits.

And Philip K Dick

Robert K Hogg

...Speaking of which: when was I half-heartedly watching some of the remake of

Psycho, on Channel Four some time ago, I was getting bored, but it perked up a bit
after the shower scene, the original of which freaked me out as a kid. The flashing
knife, Bernard Hermann’s searing music, the naked and wet vulnerability, the dark
blood, the close-up of the eye, and behind it all, Psycho Norm as Psycho Mum,
though I probably hadn’t guessed that then. The climactic or penultimate scene
where he, dressed as his mother, rushes to the basement – and this is a spoiler for the
movie if you’re new to this planet and have yet to see it – and spins the chair around
and his supposed mother is a skull with clothes on, electrified me. I didn’t know
what the hell was going on. It was as if it was saying the nameless horror that is
death was behind it all along, but as an active force. (I don't believe 'evil' is an active
force, though it can seem to be). I goosepimpled in subdued horror.
Now I see my memory is playing tricks on me, as in this version, it’s Julianne
Moore playing the sister (of Janet Leigh, in the original), who goes down to the
basement and discovers the corpse of his mother. Don’t believe everything you read
(In the original movie, it’s Vera Miles). A study in dissociation, maybe I felt on some
subconscious level it was too close to the 'truth.' His personality becomes identified
with his mother to the extent they become fused, and in the 'cod-psychology' of the
film, when Norman is aroused by Marion Crane, played by Anne Heche who’s on the
run after fleecing her boss of $40.000, it’s the mother side of him who becomes
jealous and murders her. Funky stuff. Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates was
creepier of course; edgier. Than Vince Vaughn. Norman Beast. Bas Normal. Simon
Bates. Abby Normal.
The remake was panned as I recall. A critical disaster. Probably because re-
filming it frame by frame was seen as a pointless exercise. Maybe it is, as the
original is so well known there is little suspense in watching a film that robs you of it
in advance, as one knows the story backwards; or so I’d assumed. The interest, such
as it is, is in watching how contemporary actors will interpret it. The elfin-like
victim, and incongruously, the football-hero-like – or at least his head – killer.
William H Macy as the private Dick. There were no shocks; it washed over me. To
picture watching it afresh, from the point of view of if I had never seen it before as in
all those years ago is impossible, and this is one reason it doesn’t work for me. A
more surreal, dreamlike Romero quality would’ve been interesting in the climax
scene.

But it’s still a creepy theme, the morbid intensity of which can seep into you.
One main difference was in the scene where he voyeuristically watches her
undressing through connecting holes in the wall. Right in front of her face it seems,
she doesn’t see it of course, as he whacks himself off, or, if you prefer, masturbates.
Plays the Devil's clarinet. Master Norman Bates. Coming, Mater dear. The novel,
by Robert Bloch, and screenplay by Joseph Stefano – who later produced The Outer
Limits – partly, based on the story of Ed Gein of course, the Wisconsin superweirdo,
dominated by his religious zealot of a mother, who eviscerated a number of women
and kept various body-parts to make useful household accessories, such as the
proverbial Nazi-stylee lampshades made from skin, along with fetching décor such as
face masks and boxes with breasts and noses and nipples and trophy vaginas for the
hell of it. Everyone needs a hobby, as Tippy, er, Janet Leigh said in Psycho, made
some twenty years later, remarking on Norman’s professed Jeffrey Dahmerishlike
enthusiasm for taxidermy.
The death-fixation theme again. Why are we watching these films I thought,
and all these films of death and murder and mayhem, yet go about our business as if
everything was normal, as if death is a normal part of life, as if we know what this
world is about, everything under control, when it’s an abomination and if we really
thought about it for any length of time, we might come to finally realise just how
fucked up and weird this world is and us along with it.
But no, we see these 'monsters' as a part of some other world, entirely separate
from ourselves, but let all manner of monstrous thoughts invade our psyches of our
own choosing and volition whether due to our own narrow-mindedness and
timidity/fear, or in the guise of the latest utilitarian political rhetoric that tells us what
we should be thinking, of ourselves as well as others. I find it interesting I was so
unsettled by it – unnerved, at the age of ten or eleven, by the shower scene, having to
half-flee the sitting room. My mum was watching it I think, or was half-making the
tea in the kitchen. And I remember the comforting presence of my granddad, always
adding a lightness and humour. This must have been when he was staying with us for
a while after his wife died, and working in the smelting factory just up the road; at the
top of Kilberry Street. Otherwise it’d have been plain unpleasant. An undiluted
morbid experience.
I think death always frightened me, and because of that, held a compelling
fascination. An image I’ve never forgotten is of running down Cobden Street to the
chip shop, and just as I came to the end of it to cross the road, there was a dead dog
lying my path, sprawled over the pavement, the impact of the car – I always assumed
it was a car – having dislocated its eyes from its sockets so that they hung there from
the thin stalk-like appendages like a frozen still from a cartoon that had been playing
in some other-dimensional hell, now frozen in time in this one in all its morbidly
stark reality as if mocking my absurd belief in life and the assumption of a future, yet
somehow unreal.
But the memory of that sense of oppression, and almost unspeakable dread at
the edge of consciousness I felt from the shower scene in Psycho reminds me of an
earlier memory, going back to childhood when I was five or six and left to watch TV.
I had little trouble separating fantasy from reality, but on some level I must have
thought and felt – asking myself, what kind of world or reality is this that allows a
beautiful woman to be menaced and perhaps murdered – a thought that was even
more unthinkable – by a man who seems to be as much of a kind of monster than a
person, as he slunk slowly up a flight of stairs, with, as I used to think, a huge knife,
as that's how I'd always remembered it, before confronting an apparently harmless
and innocent woman in bed who was as clearly in as stark terror of him as I would be,
all the while as aware of the unreality of the scene as it was only images on a screen,
yet knowing on some subliminal level that this could be real, it could happen.
The film was Nosferatu of course, the ‘silent classic’ from 1922. What I
remembered as the incredibly sinister man's knife was of course the vampire’s long
fingernails and the shadow of them and him on the wall as he crept up the stairs.
Deeply unsettling viewing for a five or six year old. Perhaps I was four, but it seems
unlikely. The girl was every future woman to me, a symbol of love, and beyond that,
God, not that I was ware of this. I experienced it all in non-verbal terms, intuitively.
The sense of unreality and horror and conflict it aroused. What had she done? Why
was she so unfortunate as to be there in such a position? Why was there no one there
to protect her? Why would the manfiend hate her so as to be so intent on terrorizing
her? Was it because she was so pretty and desirable and he was so ugly and
repulsive? How could God allow this to happen, when she was so obviously of the
good and harmless and heaven? Or so one assumes.
I loved her. Or someone did, but no one was there to help her. Worse, I knew I
would give anything not to be in her situation; that was the fascination and the horror
of it, but I knew on some level that to abandon her, psychologically, to her fate would
be somehow a betrayal of myself. Would I be capable of dying in her place and for
her sake? But I’d be dead. Game over, which would seem to negate the very asking
of the question, if not existence itself. None of which made any sense. My thoughts
drifted into abstraction, became a tissue of impossibilities.
I was here, alive, new to myself and it was all fascinating, if sometimes
unsettling; specifically my mother’s dislike of me, yet there was already much to be
fascinating by, but this film, this alternative reality here and now, was the most
disturbing of all. Or so I’m assuming, but there were other’s, such as The Outer
Limits TV series (And was it shortly after this I began to imagine a girl there with me,
to offset the isolation I felt over the hostility of my mother? I’d picture her there on
the settee with me and as long as my mother knew nothing about it, nothing she said,
however she behaved towards me could affect me. My first experience of the
invulnerability of the mind, perhaps).
In one episode of The Outer Limits series, there was this tall monster creature
that seemed to emit light, but on whose dark body light spots speckled. The memory
of the bright white spots comes from a scene that l recall as the audience were
watching a movie, and then to their amazement and no little horror and mine, the
creature seemed to step out of the moviescreen. That’s all I remember about it. This
was mind-blowing. Reality itself and my assumption about it was dislocated in one
fell swoop. What I had took to be an image, a story, a fantasy, was now real, yet it
was still only a story, an image, a film. This impacted me on a level beyond
conscious awareness. It was so startling and shocking as to be of monumental if
undisclosed importance.
Reality was a given, as was my mother and more nebulous presence of my dad,
as was looking at comics and drawing my triangular-headed people and manic
sketches of fighter-jets. But this was something else entirely. Was reality? I wasn’t
consciously aware of the question, as I say, but it had been posited, however
indirectly. There were others that remain embedded in my mind, though I retain only
the briefest of images, such as talking spiders out in the desert, the words emanating
from their creepy little faces. Maybe they were from Mars. Big wasps... The Zanti
Misfits):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfPzF4DlGyE

Another memory centred around this lone, tortured individual who somehow
injures or otherwise does something very untoward to one of his fingers, or that’s the
impression I got, with the image of him holding jis hand, clasping it to his body. But
it was the atmosphere of tangible isolation and aloneness that seemed to surround
him, of his being persecuted by the world in some way, that made the strongest
impression and once again, deeply unsettled me, yet was the reason I was so gripped
by it. Clearly, the story was lost on me. I mention the latter, vague as it is, because it
came to mind again some years ago when I was thinking about an unpleasant
experience I had as a kid still, some years later when an older kid was intent on
beating me up, convinced I was someone else, who had... bent or twisted his finger.
Very odd.
But the most disturbing of them all – and I feel sure it must’ve been an episode
of The Outer Limits, though I saw episodes of the Twilight Zone as well, was one
which featured either The Clay Man (a title that stuck in my mind ever since) or The
Melted Man. (It was The Man Who Was Never Born):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnmwOq3VwuA

My memory is of the former until I recalled the latter featured on cards of the
series in the late 60’s when I was at school. For me, at the age of five or six, the
emotional impact of the images was as important as the story, or whatever I followed
of it. And again, it was the sense of utter isolation of the character, his almost
tangible loneliness and the sense of persecution made worse by the fact he seemed to
be a kind of monster, if an apparently harmless and misunderstood one. My abiding
memory is of him and a woman he’s either abducted or who has befriended him,
rushing to a spaceship to escape – and I was struck he had to escape the actual world
to find peace with his love interest, who didn’t seem to be frightened of him that I
recall, unless she was a hostage. And then they are in the depths of space or about to
be, cooped up in that little booth, and I felt suddenly overwhelmed by the awareness
and thought of those endless depths of space they were launching into, or to put it
another way, their and his terrible isolation seemed to combine with the thought of
eternity; I felt it creeping into my consciousness as if from a great depth itself, then,
and this may not be an accurate visual memory, but it was as if a ring of light
appeared, and for some reason, I knew this to be the point of no return and felt a
combination of absolute dread and fascination; that when they passed through this
ring, the future was entirely unknown, if it existed at all, or perhaps it was too
unspeakably horrific to portray and this is why it ended there, or my memory has. I
felt almost numb with horror at the thought of infinite space. Why life had played
such a cruel trick on him as to make him unfit to live with others was unfathomably
unpleasant as it was. Then it looked as if fate means to give him a break, a second
chance, so to speak, by having him have a girl who seems sympathetic to his plight,
perhaps even loves him, then suddenly, as if in mockery of it all, the carpet is pulled
out from under them both and me along with it and everything I took to be real and
solid, not just physically, but metaphysically, such as the assumption of the reality of
love in the form of an attractive girl and his link to it and if not the world – as they
were leaving it – then to the source of love, as clearly, it wasn’t dependent on being in
or on the planet, which is when it hit me; that it’s impossible that space can’t end, yet
also impossible that it can’t not go on forever. It seemed to me they weren’t escaping
but were venturing into a deeper metaphysical horror that was no escape at all. The
absolute nihilism of it felt like a tangible thing, also. The real sense of threat
stemmed from the realisation, however subconsciously, that it made no sense to be
here if existence made no sense in terms of space. There was no question it existed,
as I was here, but now, confronted with that paradox it was as if existence itself were
playing a dastardly, unspeakable trick on me as it had on them, and worse, what if I
was playing it on myself? That would mean I couldn’t even trust my own mind, and
this and myself was the real meaning behind my identification with him. That I was
as doomed as he was, and as we all were, love included, as there was no answer to
this. A literally impossible vision to keep in mind for any length of time, so I
promptly forgot it of course, but in all my reading over the years since, and the
excitement in the discovery of new concepts and ideas – and I was as attracted as
much to science fiction as I was the traditional children’s classics, I would find
myself drifting back to these questions, that they were always there, hovering or
lurking in the background, behind everything.
Significantly, I did feel a sense of isolation and was the classic lonely kid I see
in the Sci-Fi films, most of which I missed at the time, but I’ve always seen this as
relative as it was counterbalanced by the connectedness I felt through reading and
school friends and the experience of nature. The universe of living with my mother,
paranoid to the point of schizophrenic or psychotic, admittedly could be very
oppressive, but interestingly, the horror I had experienced some years back never
returned in such a naked or even concentrated form. I could now speculate that
neither space nor time could have a beginning or an end – still an affront to my sense
of logic as well as my very existence, but now it seemed more in the nature of an
interesting if mildly infuriating problem I may well find the answer to in some far
flung future, though as my tendency was to think of it in literal terms, I would try and
imagine the world in fifty years time when I would probably still be alive, then the
thought of the world and this town and this spot in one hundred, or one thousand
years time, that I knew to be a reality or would be as much as my being there thinking
about it was a reality, but seemed as real and intangible as a dream. And when I
thought back in the future to these moments, wouldn’t they also seem as intangible as
a dream in the experience of the present? And what of the future I would never see
and all the people I would never know but might know of me if there were any reason
to remember me, if I were a great writer I thought I might be if I was fortunate, not to
mention all the people I didn’t know now and wouldn’t, and the people I had yet to
meet?
 And behind it all the thought that none of it made any logical sense. That at
whatever point you may be in time or space you would be no closer to the beginning
or the end of it. And this went for any being in the universe, or any other universe
beyond or interpenetrating this one or in the past or to come. No one could know.
Paradoxically, I derived some comfort from this. That ‘grown-ups’ might behave
with all the cocksure complacency adulthood seemed to expect of them by their own
estimation, but as they never spoke about it, it was obvious they were either too dull
to think on it or too arrogant to admit they were as clueless as myself on the subject.
And anyway, reading some Sci-Fi later had taught me I wasn’t the only person who
was preoccupied with these questions, as was apparent from titles like The Heat-
Death of The Universe, or an emotive combination of themes, such as the finality of
murder, of Harlan Ellison’s Jack The Ripper at The Edge of The World, as I thought it
was called (The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World ). And later, the cult
film Time After Time).
But I felt a real sense of wonder at the climax of the film of H. G. Wells’ The
Time Machine, however bleak, where The Traveller sets the destination to 90.000
years in the future. That the reality of the vast expanse of history, especially the
reality of the future, somehow negated the petty preoccupations and daily slights and
attacks from these overly clever emotional blackmailers. As for the thought none of it
made any sense anyway, this was in its way, the biggest joke of all. Now that I knew
others were on the case and that I wasn’t necessarily only a negligible extra in
Invasion of The Body Snatchers, surrounded for the most part apparently, by
malevolently obtuse oldsters, I could feel less isolated as I had a times. I might not
know any authors’ and thinkers personally, but the fact of their existence surely
transformed the world as well as my perception of myself.
They were a truer mirror than the myopic, psychologically stunted oddballs who
took themselves and their limitations, of thought and interests, for granted. The
ultimate question/s might never be answered, or not in my lifetime, but it seemed
equally absurd life and, specifically, my life in all its bitter-sweetness – the central
character in this ongoing drama, as we all are in our lives – and beauty could ever end
only to have meant nothing at all. And whatever the case, with the existence of books
and ideas and films and humour, I could feel a steady sense of progression and better
still, that I was in control, it depending only on my level of comprehension, and that
came with application, which came with enjoyment for its own sake. A virtuous
cycle. None of which, was a conscious decision, but came naturally, intrinsically. As
naturally as my mother felt it was natural to criticise it, living in the past with her
negative projections over my father who she now saw in me, as I shared his habit of
reading, as well as drawing.
But reading, the need to discover more aspects of myself through exploring
ideas was stronger. It seemed the essence of existence. Art was only a reflection of
it. Stories were far more interesting, and had always been. I think it was why I drew
so fast as a kid. I wanted it to capture the speed and reality of a film; of reality. What
I couldn’t draw or explain was the clear paradox. Absurdity, and horror inherent in
existence that had come upon me in all its jarring intensity through the medium of
watching some Sci-Fi shows, culminating in ‘The Clay Man’ episode of The Outer
Limits; if that’s what it was.
There were other, less startling dislocations, if no less thought-provoking in the
long term... An episode of The Twilight Zone, where people are temporarily frozen in
time while a girl walks around them, unaffected, as if in some separate dimension. A
theme used to great effect in The Matrix, of course, some thirty-odd years later,
shortly before which, these ideas were coming back into the forefront of my mind
with ever increasing frequency. I'd thought the girl in the Twilight Zone episode was
Jenny Agutter after somehow misinterpreting an announcement on the TV when I'd
been in the bedroom.
http://www.homunculus.com/eikona/agutter.html

(In an episode of the modern series of The Twilight Zone, an

overworked/harassed housewife discovers she has the ability to freeze time when she
tells her family to shut-up. Then disaster strikes; World War Three is declared, and a
nuclear warhead is heading towards the US. She freezes time just before it strikes...
the bomb frozen in the sky just as it explodes... I'm reminded of a section in The
Revelation, by David Spangler, where his source, claiming to be Jesus, 'the Christ
Consciousness,' whatever, as it generally is in the world of New Age, says that if a
nuclear bomb were released, he would simultaneously precipitate the Second
Coming. A pretty dumb thing to say I would've thought, let alone believe,
considering the world seems to be run by insane fanatics. Or just think how many
people would love to try and put that to the test).

What was significant for me was I had often remarked on the similarity of her to
R, who I believed I was in love with on some level, as well as the relationship being
important for the same reason. She was a challenge, and then some. Self-confessedly
narcissistic and emotionally undemonstrative, though she often did a pretty good
imitation of the opposite, she was exactly who I needed to know at that point in time
in order to grow, though I failed to recognise it, or rather, ignored the odd little clues
and signs, letting my own emotions get the better of me. And one was she had a more
than passing similarity to Jenny Agutter, as I say, whom I knew from Nick Roeg’s
Walkabout (1970), where I think she spent most of the film in a state of semi-
undress, or a good part of it, it being set in the Australian outback, culminating in her
captivating naked swim.
Previous to that, though made later, I’d caught Logan’s Run at the cinema in ’76
with G during our weekend’s out. In the movie, a sci-fi tale, no-one is allowed to live
beyond the age of 30 and is killed of in a spectator sport. She escapes that fate along
with Michael York, Logan of the film, who always reminded me of a younger Colin
Wilson (as did the suitably austere Michael Rennie of The Day The Earth Stood Still,
who played a visitor from another planet, along with their invincible robot, Gort. who
makes mincemeat of the military after a trigger-happy/nervous soldier opens fire on
Rennie, as Klatuu). There was also An American Werewolf in London, but what
grabbed my attention after meeting R and making these connections, however
loosely, was to be reminded she had featured in E H Nesbit’s The Railway Children, a
book I remember as a kid, if mainly because I never got around to reading it.
 But making a point of seeing the film again, I’d forgotten that she’s called
Bobby; my own name, as preferred by my mother and relatives and other responsible
adults as well as the more conventionally upmarket kids and girls who didn’t call me
Bob. What was interesting, to me anyway, is that in the movie, Jenny Agutter would
be around the same age as myself, (she was older) and as much to the point, L when
she took off with her family to Australia. A year or two after the Nick Roeg movie
was made. Not that L looked anything like JA that I can recall, though she was no
less attractive in her way. What is significant is the convictions I’d come to over the
nature of time by the time of the involvement with R and the memory of that episode
of The Twilight Zone, seemed to confirm this as well as going some ways in
formulating it.
That we don’t meet who we meet by chance, and the feeling of recognition, as
if we’ve known them all our lives stems from having known them from well before
our current lives and possibly many lives before that, though admittedly, this doesn’t
explain why more well-known/famous people that they resemble should feature in
metaphysical and psychological thrillers as well as evocative period pieces I felt
equally and profoundly drawn to.

It could be argued, if one were so inclined, that I was unconsciously drawn to

people who resembled these actors I had seen before over the years. But I take the
view that as the actors were portraying certain ideas I came to see as central, the
episode of the Twilight Zone a specific example, it’s the ideas themselves that are
important, and the central idea is that everything is an idea, including the experience
of time and space, as both are only beliefs of the mind and the only thing that's real is
the present moment, the reflection of eternity. And that, as I say, is worth learning,
even if I’ve jumped the gun a bit and then some, in this narrative.
Did they learn that? I doubt it, as they were too wrapped up in the past in the
form of here and now, confusing it with the present. Nick Roeg also made The Man
Who Fell To Earth, starring David Bowie, in 1977, which I saw at the time, and
which PKD’s 1981 novel Valis centres around, as well as focusing on his series of
numinous/visionary experiences culminating in the pink beam experience in ’74.
http://www.philipkdick.com/works_novels_valis.html
He also came to believe he was possessed by a 2000 year old entity of vastly
superior intelligence and benevolent wisdom, leading him to the conclusion that, as
he put it, “The Empire never ended,“ referring to the 'Holy Roman Empire,' and that
the Second Coming of Christ would take place in this period in history. Interestingly,
he dreamed as a kid of having written a story called The Empire Never ended. That it
lay on the bottom of a pile of other stories, and as he repeatedly dreamed of it,
coming ever closer to the bottom of the pile and recovering the story, he experienced
an increasing dread, so much so that he was reluctant to reach it and gave up on it or
stopped dreaming of it.
I used to have an 'analogous' dream of sorts and I’ll come to the underlying
reasons for them after this, which I’ve already written, having come back to this, but
I’ve come to see I can apply the same explanation in many contexts of life, and very
likely will. I’d go as far as to say the account to come of past dreams and just how
significant they came to be in their implications as well as the experience of them is
the basis of this narrative overall. The rest is, erm, bread and circuses. But to get
on… I found I was dreaming of L again – this only a few years ago, or rather, that I
was back at school again, and she was there of course. A scene between Tom Sawyer
and Becky of the novel comes to mind, where he passes her a note as I ever so
vaguely recall – must reread it – and in the dream, we’re all sitting on benches (there
were benches in the TV room, where we'd see school programmes, thought there was
no indication of this in the dream), no doubt paying attention to the teacher, but I can
feel L’s presence, she’s there, and as always, I’m as fascinated by and attracted to her
as I am terrified, the fear subdued as, under the circumstances, the story of my
school-days, there’s no need to force myself to make any overtures of a more, er,
overt nature. I can go on procrastinating as I always have.
And now (now) I recall the reason for the dream, or the more ostensible reason,
and that is, having thought back to these situations, her, so many times, as well as
speculating as to how I would’ve handled secondary school with the
differences/changes in my personality or outlook since then, it comes to me in the
dream that my intention is to be the person in the future I know myself to be now, or
be me as I know myself to be now in the past; that’s the problem with dreaming – the
personality can be as ill-defined and nebulous as the dream itself, and as I found out.
This time, rather than wait for her to approach me, I could unselfconsciously be the
friendly upbeat witty self I knew myself to be without that past in the present I
believed was there and that I was in all its negative associations of self and memory.
The present was as open as the future and this time I would be the master of my own
destiny. Easier thought than done, even in the dream, and no matter how much I
knew I could deal with it better in 'real life' than I ever did as a kid and teen. Because
as I sidled towards her I felt an increasing sense of anxiety in spite of myself. I tried
and I tried or so I believe, and couldn’t overcome it. The sense of increasing terror
was too great. How to interpret this…
But now it falls quickly into place, only it took a lifetime and it is of course, an
ongoing process. She was a symbol of love, of God, and we're all unconsciously
terrified of love and God, as they're the same thing.

One thing reading never fails to remind me is that I could be anywhere (not
literally true I might add, but the meaning stands), and it would be no more or less
satisfying. Whether I sit here and contemplate these ignoramuses across the street
and the way the slight gap in the curtains just happens to always be on the side more
facing me, or mull over an amusing episode of the Simpson's, featuring Keith
Richards and Cliff, er, Vic ah, Mick Jagger of The Strolling Bones, reminding me,
and no doubt a good section of the population of the unappreciated and unrewarded
sacrifices we made in the name of some worthier cause and so missed our chance of
being the next, er, whoever, and as The Simpsons reiterated the possibility of all that
fame and riches and girls girls girls – they’d have said women of course, but I want to
keep it in the idiom – and so I’m not sitting in my plush new York loft, or palatial
mansion, or as it happens, even a modest semi like the maladjusted sociopaths across
the way, but when it comes to reading as well as writing, does it really make any
difference? The questions that might be asked is, what is worth reading and what
experiences are worth having?
One could go further and say, how did/does my reading shape my
comprehension of my experience and the choice of that experience, if at all, and if so,
at what point would I say I felt it made a radical difference? And the corollary, if
true corollary it is, what would my experience have been and be if I had never read or
had only read certain books and how would this have affected my comprehension and
how does it affect my interpretations and comprehension now?
This could go on forever, and in its way, will. What if I was never born at all? I
wouldn’t be here to write this. Another thought: Most of us have formed our opinions
at some point in the past and rather than question them we prefer our current
prejudices and biases, our pet perceptual distortions, so in effect, most of us are
inhabiting as well as carrying on a former version of ourselves, itself only a reflection
of an even earlier past we identify with as ourselves as do all the other sleeping bores
in this society in an endless succession of infinite regress to a past long forgotten
when we were one and knew who were were, before we wondered what it would be
like to be an individual, separate from the creator and the whole; and so we were and
are, as our wish was 'His command' and this is the reality we wanted and asked for.
But that doesn’t mean it’s real. If I truly believed it was I would be forever
faced with the thought, the reality, that there is no going back, and this is what I did
think, and often do think, in spite of myself, the habit is so ingrained. As I said, the
most intense sense of loss came from the thought of losing L from school-days and
that whatever I do since then only reminds me that nothing can ever measure up to
her.

Objectively speaking though, if in a necessarily subjective context, it’s not as if

she was lost in any other sense, not least to herself. Her parents knew where she was
as they will do now if they’re still alive and indeed she is. Wherever she is, whatever
she’s doing, however things worked out for her, I would doubt she feels any great
sense of loss, if any, aside from the deeper sense of loss we all feel on an ontological
level for having separated from our creator and true source and original state of being
in a non-dualistic state of oneness with Him and each other. It was clear enough she
had deep feelings for me – though I’ve little doubt this would be conveniently
dismissed by those who refuse me with real emotions at the time because was a kid,
then teen – not so dissimilar to sciences view of animals – as if everything they might
feel do or say can only be a Ken and Barbie projection of emotions, an analogy I
think might be more applicable to the adults who condescended to me in their
counterfeit, simulacra-like impersonations of the roles they felt obliged or compelled
to play out.
'Objectively' speaking, all of this is after the fact; so to speak, as the experience
of loss isn't a fact, only an interpretation, and by the same token, the world is after the
fact, and if it doesn’t really exist – and this is the vision I was given or shown, then
neither can it be fact nor can anything in it be. Somewhat 'alarmingly', this has to
include myself, writing these words as well as mulling over a girl I used to think of as
good as lost me, though not to herself I hope, and most of all, I’d hate to think she
might ever feel the same way now or has, or if she has, then she’s come to the same
conclusion, as it is of course, the only answer, as anything else is a recipe for despair,
and I think sometimes, has been until I began to grasp this.
It hit me again around ten years ago when I was going through a stressful period
– the story of my wife, pun intended, during which time I read PKD for for the first
time rather than just of him, and later, I recalled one of his characters telling himself
he’s demoralised – a more descriptive term than being merely discouraged, and I
thought yes, that’s what I am right now, for all my intense energy and optimism. That
I was allowing guilt and a deep sense of loss over the past and dissatisfaction over the
present and the attendant guilt over being far from where I had envisaged myself to
be from my early teens to half-convince me, in non-verbal terms that the game
probably wasn’t really worth the candle; my rock god dreams were over as all I
seemed to do was involve myself with attractive narcissists who made a mockery of
love and of me and worse, I made a mockery of it all by knowing better, but allowing
myself to become cynical and potentially exploitative, playing to their own
preconceptions, and the worst self-betrayal of all, the thought I might have confirmed
their deepest fears, a situation they set up themselves, but seemed incapable of seeing
their own part in it – the story of my life, or my mother's.
And the thought that behind the myriad and even varied interests and apparent
similarities of temperament and sympathies, at least initially, behind the culture and
the good manners or lack of them, the no BS stance, the ability to function normally
in the world, emotionally, intellectually, the coincidences, the synchronicities, the
modicum or maximum of mutual attraction and respect, the openness to the bigger
questions, the sharing of more secret and existential fears, past slights and confusions
and present uncertainties and even miseries, there lies a tirelessly calculating and
methodical mind ever bent on seeking out any sign or hint of guilt with all the
proficiency of a guided missile and all the intensity of your common garden variety
psychopath. Search and Destroy. No Fun.
Yeah, I could describe the meetings and the conversations and the frustrations
and more tender moments and the tricks and games and small-minded petty
viciousness and the surprising moments of generosity and the sense of sadness behind
it all and the moments of hatred at myself over my own failings, but as an
acquaintance of mine once said that with these insights, you come to laugh at people
– in their pretensions and intellectual arrogance, because you know that behind it all,
all they're doing is swapping guilt, believing it can be done in reality. Everything else
is just bread and entertainment. A backdrop to the main event, the main agenda. All
this in a pathetic effort to stave off the unconscious terror we all have over believing
we killed God in reality in order to experience ourselves as separate individuals, and
that He, in His intimate and bloody quest for revenge over such an unspeakable crime
– which took place and takes place nowhere but in our own minds as does everything,
only nowhere and nowhen as it’s all only a hallucination, the reflection of our own
projections – will search for all eternity until he tracks us down and snuffs us out
forevermore.
And hatred and guilt in the guise of love – and hatred, are the means to keep
others at a distance, and through them keep the God of Love at bay as love is seen as
the destroyer of everything we’ve made, in opposition to God’s creations – our real
Self, and hatred and even death are welcomed as the great saviours from the love that
would end Their and our existence. Odd, because I had been thinking it was because
of the unpleasantness of my mother and the negative self-image she engendered in
me, this shaped my behaviour so that as well as never having the courage to directly
reciprocate LE’s feelings for me, it’s had a knock-on effect ever since, or so I’ve
always assumed, ever since school-days of reading Freud – books on Freud and Jung
– and psychology and self-help and shyness and Astrology and the Paranormal and
Martial Arts and psychopaths and Colin Wilson, and music and Bowie, always feeling
that in some other ideal existence, with some other past and not the past I had, which
seemed to be who I was, I would surely be someone else if still very much me and
even more so as it was because of the past my emotions didn’t seem to be my own
and because of that, I felt no real control over the present and my life; that it surely
should be possible to be one’s own superhero of you put your mind to it, or as I read,
become the play-actor of ones own ideals, but my emotions seemed intent on having
a volition of their own when my conscious mind knew better.

By myself or with my younger bro, I was a fount of wit and good humour, as I
could be with friends, and later as I found I could be with girls, but the impulse to
take the plunge – into being the centre of attention, of the world if need be, was never
strong enough. The world was too big, too complex, too baffling, overwhelming. I
could be reduced to my wits end by any clever, hostile individual – and any openly
affectionate person I cared about it seemed. The world would only present the same
in more complex and innumerable forms, even if I ever got over my reluctance to
face an audience, ostensibly as a performer. Temptation would always be there,
emotionally, sexually, and they didn’t seem to mix naturally. And I was as prone to
falling for pretty women as I was intensely sexually attracted to them or others. I
feared my own jealousy and possessiveness as well as theirs, or that I would throw
away what I might have and would have (Subsequent events had born and bore most
of this out).
And behind it all would be the thought of L, and the thought that my life and
fate had been set-up somehow to not appreciate her when she was there, and lose the
very thing I cared most of all from the outset. Now I understand that nothing is really
lost, or lost at all, as behind it all is the love of God, and it’s only through our fear of
Him that we keep love at a distance. I’ve already touched on it, but it’s worth
describing how all of this began to slowly sink in and how it came about. if only
because I’ll never let myself rest until I don’t, as I think it’s worth saying, and further,
I still feel that inability to commit myself to either lust or love right now, yes, the
story of my life, and now is as good a time as any as they say, to attempt to get to
grips with it. I always knew I’d write, but I didn’t know I’d be writing this. Call it
my own version of The Time Machine. Or, The Invisible Man, Star-Begotten, The
Food of the Gods, whatever. The War Against Myself. Why has no-one thought of
this for a title for a novel or story or chapter title? It’s not bad at all. And entirely
derivative of chapter 23 of ACIM of course.
 Gorilla Biscuits – Start Today. Al right then, I will. The Hope Conspiracy –
Nervous Breakdown; a cover of Black Flag. Great stuff, Great Scott.

Events almost too mundane to describe, but on a more upbeat note my

downstairs neighbour bought some paintings, for the princely some of £500. I’d just
been to the bank to sort out this business account business and was going out again to
get along to Greyfriars for my free meal I think; he was outside his door, seeing to his
bike, I hadn’t realised it was his and said so, for something to say. He quickly
brought the subject around to paintings, saying he needs some art work for his flat
and was thinking of buying some. “Don’t get me all excited,” I 'quipped.' Mild
sarcasm lost on him. He can sell them for ten times the price before too long. He
asked of I had them on a website, but I’d already told him I had, some months before,
so I offered to let him have all the originals for a day or three “as anyone can see
them on the net, and they’re sitting upstairs anyway.” So I rounded up the spare ones
sitting around and put them with the rest in the cheap polythene carrier I have them in
and left them with him. He knocked on my door a couple of days later, having
chosen the large Canongate, a half-sheet RSA from the foot of Hanover Street, a
beach and mountain landscape of Sutherland, and an abstract I randomly titled
Teardrop Explorer, obviously with Julian Cope’s band, The Teardrop Explodes, in
mind.

I came up with the guestimated (HA!) figure myself when I was, predictably,
clearly reluctant to come up with one when he was there in front of me, so he
suggested I write it down and put it through his door, which I promptly did, the
thought of some always needed potential cash easy to keep in mind. I also
anticipated he might be a bit cool in accepting the price when it came to it and might
try feeling me out a bit, so I resolved to be as firm as I should be, and predictably
enough, when I knocked on his door on the way back from the supermarket or
wherever, he seemed only to be interested in the two smaller paintings. I think he
wanted to know how I’d come to the prices I had, or rather, what they were exactly,
when I’d said over 200 for the Canongate, and over 100 for the RSA, and under 100
for the other two. It was simple enough; Add £25 to the first two and subtract £25 for
the other two.
But if he only wanted the two they were still 75 each, and anyway, I coulda said
300 for the big one and 200 for the RSA and I’ll throw in the other two... Aside form
which, go by any gallery, and you’ll see small (framed) paintings from 75 to 160+.
True. Having sorted that out, he’d said the only problem was being short of funds at
the moment, but he could pay me 250 now and the other 250 in a couple of weeks
when he got paid again. So he was up and handed over the 250 which was just as
well as in the meantime I spotted a computer on sale in a shop in the Grassmarket, for
£140, an ex café model as it turned out, so at least I know I’ll get on-line on it. A
silvery, snazzy looking model with a number of accessories as well as its capabilities
all Greek to me, if not to PKD.
After much preamble, including mentioning it to R in his bookshop again, this
after I’d went down to Greyfrars for their afternoon meal (Wed and Friday’s), as well
as nipping into the fantasy and SF bookstore there to see if the copy of What If Their
World Is Our Heaven?... had arrived yet (It hadn’t), I thought I’d better go in and at
least enquire on the guarantee, knowing I’d be committing myself, R having brought
this up; they were a bit cagey on it, but nice enough. I said I’d come in first thing in
the morning and get it, then capitulated, offering them 50 as a deposit, which I’d have
to go and get from the cashpoint, and all I had left in my account – I’d be dependent
on J not to change his mind over buying the paintings. When he turned up, I let him
have an extra one from another half-dozen I’d forgotten about. He chose an
impressionistic Scott Monument with flowers in front, and trees. Had I ever been to
the top of it? he asked. “Yes, when I was 23 (and felt I had my whole life before me).
I think the stairs would kill me now.

Oddly enough, I was thinking just the other day again that I’d like to climb up
there again, to take some photographs.” Now that I have the digital camera with its
zoom, I’d be fascinated in going through them in detail at my leisure and no small
expense. A St Giles was probably the best painting, so in retrospect, I’m glad I still
have it. I’ve still to pay the rest on the computer and collect it. I’ve been enamoured
of the PKD biography by the French bloke. It’s been riveting. And I woke up with a
sore back again, the bottom half, but slept on anyway. Later when I was reading I
was overcome with drowsiness, a state ideal for semi-conscious dreaming, so I
allowed myself to drift off, getting involved in emotionally intense events for them to
vanish as soon as I came to. I also had an interesting moment where, when I knew I
was dreaming, dismissed the dream at will to experience a blank mind, then tried
bringing it back. Whether I failed or succeeded I can’t recall. What I do know is that
it plays havoc with my sleeping pattern
And I experienced once again – or was it during an earlier period/dream? – the
memory of an earlier dream, while dreaming, but aware enough to register this and so
remember this and be intrigued by it as I am now, even though I can’t recall anything
of either of them. Neither has the memory of an earlier dream been a recent one, but
of a dream of months ago, and more often, years, and like recalling a long-forgotten
memory of an actual event in all its emotional and psychological distinctness and
individuality. Another time I caught the moment where my thoughts transformed
themselves into images and the beginnings of a dream sequence before I drifted off;
nothing more amazing than the mind's ability to spin endlessly inventive fantasies.
The world and this whole phenomenal universe are a testament to that. More on
dreams later.
The bank was like Dr Who’s Tardis; you walk in off the street, George Street as
it happens, and then you’re in the headquarters of Spectre or Thrush (Thrush! I’ve
just got it!), as in the James Bond movies. The youngish woman I saw didn’t
introduce herself as Pussy Galore, though (“I must be dreaming.” Connery/Bond, in
Goldfinger). I was given a visitors pass and combination swipe for the barriers,
probably no more sophisticated than the London Underground, but reminding me of
Star Trek, but without any 'swish' (He’s on his way up; set phasers to stun/kill). She
led me to an open lift, by which I mean one of those glass ones I’ve managed to avoid
my whole life, though I have a head for heights. Beam me up. Spotty. James Doolan
– for it was he, was at The City Art Centre some years back.
I was too indolent to go down. What I really regret is not going to see Leonard
Nimoy at the Assembly Rooms in George Street, shorty after the publication of his
autobiog, I Am Spock (“No, I’m Spock. No, I’m Spock,” etc.). “Do you use any
aliases?” No, but just call me Captain Quirk/Goldmember. Where’s my ray gun?
She said she’d ring me (why?), as well as send me my account details. No sign of
them yet, and it’s been a week. She’d asked me where do I have paintings on sale
and wrote them down. But I gave her the addresses of the people I was foolish
enough not to insist on receipts from – which covers just about everyone. If she rang
them , the last thing they’re going to admit to is having any of my paintings…All
likely sold by now in any case. So this might be another tedious delay and pointless
obstacle, due to my own naivete or weak-mindedness. It never pays to go along with
others wishes against your own. They seem to always work in unspoken collusion to
goldfinger you as the bad guy. These Bullion Dollar Bastards and their “Vulcan”
mind-melds. Materialistic parasites one and all. This whole world is out of order.
The aliens are already here. They’ve always been here.
On the news: Have a go newly anointed heroes saving and attacking dying men,
a citizen, assuredly becomes a laudable and exemplary act. Violence really will solve
everything, apparently, as always, in the name of patriotism. Political extremes and
the rising of the waters. Parts of England are still flooded, such as Hull. It made me
think, in my rather limited – or focused repertoire of cultural analogies, of former
Hull landscape gardener, Mick Ronson, deceased, and formerly of The Spiders From
Mars, Bowie’s old band in his Ziggy days of course. Five Years – until the end of the
world as we know it. These people must feel like they’re in an episode of The Outer
Limits or The Twilight Zone; or would if they ever bothered to watch it. I try and
take for granted now, my life is indistinguishable from a SF movie, if a rather
protracted one. And that separate bodies and times and places are all a part of the
illusion. I try and stand on the shoulders of the great PKD. or peek over them to see
and accept what might be ahead. I accept he may have stumbled onto a great truth
and had the courage to pursue the vision. Nor do I have any predilection or need at
all for drugs of the hallucinogenic variety. Not that he was big on that at all. The
occasional beer and bottle of wine, that’ll do me. That and my insane book habit.
But life is too short to keep asking the wrong questions and refusing to see the wood
for the trees. The Woodentops. That’s what I’m going to refer to them as, now. Like
bonehead. Ziggy and Zebede Freud. Time for bed.

The more I sleep. the more fatigued I seem to feel. The older I get, the more
impatient and easily irritated I am, even if I don’t show it. Typing drives me up the
fucking wall, I make so many mistakes. Now I have to get up for a pee. It never
ends. Writing becomes a chore. Or not do so much the writing, as the references I
have or had in mind to write down on Dick and his studies for his Exegesis. All those
references I have to keep in mind, but forget of course, such as the Shekinah, from the
Torah, or is it the the Cabalah (or Kabalah), or no, the Zohar? And there’s still the
context; something about it representing a little girl, (but she represented Sophia); this
in the biog on Dick by Emmanuelle Carrere. And now I’ve just discovered a pain in
the joint of my left arm as if it’s bruised or I'd been 'jacking up'. All I can think of is
it might be because of sleeping with all my weight on it on the mattress on the
bedroom floor, which has less buoyancy than it might. So I’ll come back to the Dick
stuff. The serious stuff.
Thinking about the task of writing, I’ve felt overwhelmed at the thought of
it, the amount of ground I want to cover, but that’s to forget what I’ve covered so
far. That it’s really only a matter of plugging away at it and accepting that it will
go slower than I had originally intended, not least due to the amount of reading
material I keep adding, engrossing in itself I might add, so much so, it’s been all I
can do to pull myself away from it to write anything at all.. The last book on
Dick is WHAT IF OUR WORLD IS THEIR HEAVEN? A great title, if puzzling.
It’s his final conversations, with a journalist friend of an ex-partner, the rather
conventionally religious Doris Elaine Sauter, or at least according to the French
biog I’ve just read. Anything that smacked of the 'New Age' wasn’t her bag, so
you got the picture. In fact I recall thinking he must’ve been deluding himself to
have this woman move in with him, but she certainly sounds rational enough in
the intro to the book
What surprises me about Dick, though maybe it shouldn't, is his lack of
emotional independence. That he seemed to be incapable of living alone, though
he had to eventually. And that when his wives and galfriends left, admittedly
with their kid/s in tow, he would fall to pieces, piling on the pills in the
occasional suicide attempt. You’d think he would believe he had more to live for,
what with the virtual possession by a superior entity or entities – who took
radical control of his life for him, (such as telling him to fire his agent, and
vaccuum clean his flat) – whether it was one Thomas from 70 AD or some
goddess-like female being – I really don’t care.
In HEAVEN/CONVERSATIONS, he describes her as Hag Sophia,
synonymous with Christ; and seems to be indicating, that ultimately, he came to
see the source, the originator of his mystical experience and visions as of Christ.
I would myself say Jesus, as I see Christ in generic terms, referring to the whole
of humanity. No, our collective Self, outside of time and space.
Significantly, Robert Anton Wilson comes to emphasise the importance of
this for Dick in his essay on him in D. Scott Apel’s The Dream Connection,
which I read on-line again, having originally come across it back in 2000. The
essay was published in Magical Blend back in 1988, two years before I came
across Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger 1, where he also discussed Dick along
with his own telepathically transmitted messages from Sirius; though he's
typically ambivalent about it, as well as pointing out that Doris Lessing wrote,
('anachronistically'), on the same theme in The Sirian Experiments, also in the
early ‘70’s.
Dick had his experiences in ’74, referring to it/them as 2-3-74. Or we in the
UK would. It's 3-2-74. No, hold on, I – he – was right first time. I'm letting my
phrasing trip me up. I think it's Three-eyed extraterrestrials from Sirius
beaming messages to him from a spaceship he referred to as VALIS – “Vast
Active Living Intelligence System” – circling the Earth, their purpose is to help
humanity escape from the Empire and the Empire's Black Iron Prison as well as
guide our evolution from animal through human to Superhuman? As I’m
paraphrasing some RAW from his essay on Dick in Cosmic Trigger 111 here, I
begin to see the mark of Wilson in the latter reference. This is a bloke as I say, as
with his friend, Timothy Leary – who believed also he’d received “starseed
transmissions,” presumably from Sirius; this when he was in prison – and who
believed in cryogenic suspension – physical immortality.
Presumably also, they’d have seen this as a kind of pinnacle of human
evolution; which just shows how even brilliant and open minds such as Wilson
can get it so wrong. I can state in all bluntness, anyone who believes that,
doesn’t/didn’t really have a clue – immortality will never be of the body but is
already of the mind – though his writings on Dick are most informative – and
brilliant. And often very funny, as is his writing in general. Truth be told, I find
his writing intimidatingly brilliant and erudite, as I do my fave SF author Robert
Charles Wilson. Communications/channellings from Sirius or the denizens of
Sirius are plausible enough, as there are channellings long available now of just
that, as well as from the Pleiades and elsewhere, I don’t doubt.

RAW also remarks on Dick’s speculations that he may have somehow tuned
into or was being targeted by Soviet parapsychologists who were themselves in
communication with extraterrestrials, though whether this may have been the
Sirians also, RAW neatly bypasses being so specific by also referring to them,
semi-humorously, as “their Space Brothers,” – who may have also given Dick the
phantasmagorical display of Klee and /or Kandinsky-like paintings in a vision of
sorts lasting eight hours at a stretch as so vividly described in his Radio Free
Albemuth.
I once dreamed of vividly realistic paintings myself and I was aware I was
dreaming it, though never once did it cross my mind it could be coming from
extraterrestrial sources. But PKD seems to have been wide awake at the time.
Transcendental sources, maybe – I’ve often not only heard, but written
music while dreaming, again, very aware of the process and marvelling at it.
Instead of thoughts and emotions turning into images that make up dreams, I
somehow found myself in the frame of mind or having stumbled on the trick of
effortlessly transposing intellect and emotions into music – excellent ambient
music, with incredible, emotive melodies.

Now I picture myself doing the musical equivalent of waking up and writing
down a joke or some profound thought, and when you read it in the morning – or
sometimes afternoon in my case, it is of course, garbage. Unlike the music of the
band of that name. One could speculate or even concede they might blend into
each other, but RAW leaned toward non-Christian sources, more in keeping with
his interest in Crowley. Big surprise. He does point out though, that it may have
been due to Dick’s scientific training and, er, modernist approach, that he may
have been less inclined to frame his experiences in a more Christian linguistic
context.
And that Dick believed he may have been experiencing himself as living in
70AD, so much so that it would superimpose with the present, so that Nero could
be interchangeable with Nixon, and that we might be living in a fascistic state
without realising it, it having been brought about so surreptitiously and
insidiously – covertly – seems particularly apposite now, and either downright
prophetic or at least remarkably prescient.

But many people even now would see the notion that we live in a creepingly
fascistic state of affairs as symptomatic of a paranoid outlook or some kind of
incipient mental illness. In tandem with the relevant authorities of course,
increasingly hostile to any perceived criticism of their means and methods, the
public-spirited citizens and good patriots brought in on the act in stifling dissent
in any shape or form. Method in the madness, and madness in the methods. 'The
end justifies the means only in the logic of deceit'. The Third Millennium.

But not to be sidetracked, the most important aspect for me in Dick’s

scenario is his conviction that the last 2000 years were a kind of hallucination, a
false memory,' as RAW puts it – the Black Iron Prison of linear time, as opposed
to our selves in 'real time' – eternity, as Wilson says. But the eternal isn't of the
world. I'll have to reread it. Dick also saw Jesus as being reborn in our time, but
that his very being was the biosphere surrounding the planet. The latter at least,
sounds more in keeping with some of the themes of Carey’s Third Millennium,
but as his books are couched in a Christian perspective (if a decidedly non-
traditional one), we hear nothing of RAW on Carey, or Colin Wilson, or anyone
else who has had anything to say on Dick. (Wrong! Erik Davis has, but I've still
to read it.... And now I have. Pretty good. But if some UFOs have been brought
down with pulse-beam weapons, I'd call that pretty nuts and boltsy...So why not
just take the view they can alternate between different dimensions, from
formlessness to form? And anyway, Carey's sources state as much).
http://www.levity.com/figment/martians.html
Both scenarios which can be dismissed as unsatisfyingly dualistic and
definitely, in the case of Jesus being born again into the world. The necessity for
a non-dualiitic interpretation – the only real solution to my mind, also rules out
any blatant ego compromise such as the belief we might one day achieve
physical immortality. Neither is a hypothetical superhuman evolution the
purpose of existence, as evolution is as much of an illusion, a dream, as the body
and time is.
I think Dick in his fundamental kindliness and compassion intuitively knew
that the answer lies in forgiveness, though I think he suffered from a tendency
towards false empathy, identifying through a misplaced sense of compassion and
loyalty with what would sometimes weaken him. Or often weaken him.
The other side of the coin I think was in his possessiveness with his
girlfriends and wives and jealousy towards others. His French biographer
Carrere described him as demanding no interruptions under any circumstances
when working, yet expecting them to be there for company when he was done.

None of this sounds very admirable, and worse, I can empathise with it to an
extent as I know these emotions all too well. It makes it clear he was deeply
insecure still, well into his forties and possibly up till when he died from a series
of strokes. The thought of a man in his early to late forties putting this kind of
pressure on girls barely out of their teens if that, seems very subjective to me to
the point of a serious emotional immaturity. A brilliantly imaginative and gifted,
possessive middle-aged man. In short, a mass of contradictions like the rest of
us.
But I can see how he felt a psychological affinity with people more in the
range of late teens to 25 or so, as he described in Heaven/Conversations, as well
as the assumption the converse also applies. Living with him seems to have been
a different story, no pun intended).

Go on to discuss SF/novel speculation in Heaven/Conversations -

somewhere!

All that would really matter is that it gave him a wider perspective; that he
could look down on that smaller self in all its subjective problems and woes and
see them for what they were – atemporal, temporary, wrapped in subjectivity Not
so easy when you’re nose is against the grindstone and you’re all wrapped up in
it, I know, but all this business with the pills and the drugs and the hypochondria,
ye Gods, it reminds me of no-one so much as my mother and her bathroom
cupboard full of her piled and the bottles of pills under the coffee table in later
years. The cabinet in the bathroom was never locked of course, and neither did
she ever warn us or me not to touch them, but like her cigarettes, I was more
repulsed than curious about them in any way.
Dick could be pretty heavy on the dope-smoking as well it seems, but as
smoking was anathema to me, and by the time I was old enough to have drifted
into it – I didn't – punk rock had arrived, with all its scorn over any of the
standard hippy pastimes, and postures, which chimed in with my own views just
fine. Drippy hippies, super-neurotic emotionally abusive straights, it made no
difference to me. They were all hopelessly addicted fucking idiots, lacking in the
sense of self-awareness that would lend itself to criticising the stereotypical
parody of type they were.
In my mother and bo’s case, typical self-righteous/hypocritical, working
class ignoramuses I could learn very little from. The counter culture might have
many useful ideas and was more profound at its source, but Afghan-wearing
pseudo-mellow smelly clichés – a combination of earthworms and marijuana –
with their “yeah man,” and “that’s heavy,” and all the rest, seemed as much as
reflection of the environment and an aspect of the culture as much as my mother
or any other group. It was a revelation in its way to discover Woody Allen some
years later, who seemed to echo my views in the way he refused to take any of it
seriously, even if he sort of looked like them as well as coming from the same
period, though that only made his flippancy all the more authentic, a breath of
fresh air.
Here was a man of genuine intelligence I felt, a like soul in a way. If I was a
comedian, he would be the one to be, however much I came to like others. I did
love Bob Hope from childhood _ I loved the 'Road' movies and Dorothy Lamour,
she was so sweet) – and it became clear he was like a more contemporary
version. This seemed obvious enough in his portrayals of the cowardly leading
man, making jokes to cover his lack of courage; or take the piss out of false
humility. It was interesting to hear him say, many years later, that he picked up
so much from Hope, much of his persona was Bob Hope, and that he was
surprised no-one had remarked on this.
“He’s affy stupit,” my mum would say, in her severely insular, emotionally
and culturally stunted world, some years later. But people such as Woody Allen
were the potential escape from that soul-destroying insularity, as alien to her way
of thinking as it would’ve been for her to have been capable of fathoming why I
could identify with the adolescent Peter Parker. An imaginative leap as beyond
her comprehensions as it was for me to understand why she needed so many
pills... “for my nerves,” as she claimed to need her “fags” for the same reason.

In retrospect I see her as hating her life as well as her own company, the
existence of both creating a sense of unmanageable panic in her, in her
resentment over the past and the awareness of a fearful future, knowing she’d
chosen the wrong 'partner,' backed the wrong horse, and that nothing had really
changed for the better. But even before then, I her behaviour was exactly the
same. She was a chronic narcissist, a spoilt child, in fear of herself and the
world. As if getting laid into me would improve matters. She didn’t have a clue,
and as with someone like Woody Allen – as with me, as with herself, missed the
point of everything worth spending any time and effort on.
When I read about Dick, it’s as if he suffered from the same ontological
terror, only on a more intellectual level, and far more interestingly, as he didn’t
shy away from it, but pursued every metaphysical possibility, until he stumbled
over the truth of the matter (even if he didn’t have a fixed position on the matter
and was as likely to come up with a thousand other possible hypotheses or
interpretations of the human condition); that the world is an illusion; nothing
more than a projection of the mind.
The pills and dope also reminded me of my old schoolmate, Billy Forbes,
when we lived in Benvie Road in Dundee, a street well known for it’s long-term
association with bohemians as someone pointed out to me any years later. I can
still recall hearing about some blokes being arrested for making bombs,
supposedly, this twenty-five years back. That would be anarchists. A bomb-
making ring. They would be called a terrorist cell now.
He, Billy, was working at Valentines the postcard company – I was as
amazed that he’d taken a job as I was at who had employed him; and after
staying up half the night with his comedy chums – other nonconformist types, or
the latest girlfriend or some late-night pubbery or all three, he’d be up in the
morning with a rolled up £20 note or whatever he had left, snorting a line of coke
from my little table in the front room as I looked on in mute and slightly bemused
incomprehension, but as it would get him through the day he said, then I could
understand his need for it, knowing how low his threshold was for boredom
and/or lack of distraction/excitement.

He didn’t stick the job for long or he got the sack; no different from me.
Nor could we share a flat with each other for any length of time as I had already
developed the habit of enjoying my own company in reading and listening to
music, whereas he was in the habit of bringing people back at random, late on, to
'crash.' He loved the vernacular. It would be increasingly irrelevant to me, but a
bond had developed from childhood onwards. That we had grown up together
with a significant parent missing, his mum in his case, was probably enough to
cement the bond, even if neither of us ever mentioned it that I can recall.
His mother was an imaginary being to me, his dad a bit of lad, but he was
pleasantly humorous when I was around his place with Billy, after school; or
even the odd lunchtime, when the flat was empty. Billy was prime material, the
archetypal blueprint for a future rock star, if not necessarily a very great one, as
he did have me listen to Yes albums with my head between the speakers to get the
full stereo effect at the time, and I didn't much like them even then.
(Unfortunately I missed Gabriel's Genesis at the time, but as much due to
ignorance as prejudice).
Nor did he ever acknowledge the same possibility in me, being far too
egocentric for that, and I was far too unassertive. He’d already become adept at
laying on 'guilt-trips,' keeping me in my place, for all his professedly
'enlightened' outlook compared to “the squares,” throwing cutting remarks, his
wit as remorseless as his ego was to both of us. Not that I looked on it in those
terms then.
But I was deeply impressed, when years later, in a flats of his off Benvie
Road, in Black Street, he alternated between his acoustic and electric having
taken up classical guitar, and became remarkably proficient at it, learning to read
music by himself and as was necessary for the task. The dexterity of his fingers
seemed incredible to me. What impressed me was that he could give himself
over to an artistic discipline to an extent that seemed to contradict the purely
personal aspects of his personality.
I felt it echoed and complimented the greatness I felt was there, if
potentially, in the extent of his wit and imagination. That for all his fondness for
artificial substances and chasing women, there was hope for us yet. I was as fond
of women, but as yet, less inclined to put it into practice, alternating between
reveries of lust and poetic crushes on any vaguely suitable candidate that might
come my way. I had a lot to learn. A couple of more years later, and I had
changed considerably, but the romantic streak remained.

Now I see the parallels with PKD and his writing about women the
interviewer described as cruel and heartless in …HEAVEN?/The Final
Conversations of… Dick remarks that his therapist points he was involved with
eight of these in his actual life... Good for him to be so certain about that, but
what is interesting is that Dick describes having written about a particular women
in a novel, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, (I read most of Dick's novels
in my mid-thirties, but have of the 'Valis trilogy,' I've only read Valis, so far) right
down to her name and other details, five years before he met her counterpart in
real life. He’d written the novel and left it for some reason, putting it away and
forgetting about it, then reading it later, when it was published…

He also goes on to describe the character, Angel Archer, who sounds like his
ideal of a women and the devastating loss he felt when the novel was finished, as
if she had been a real person; and this is what he’s saying, that to all intents and
purposes, she was a real person, separate from his own personality, and he goes
into some detail as to why he believes this, emphasising her intelligence and
great wit, and superior vocabulary, using words he didn’t know himself and had
to look up later.
But it’s the precognitive element – he uses the term himself in the
conversation, in agreement with Gwen Lee, that grabs my attention right now. I
picked up the book only yesterday after paying the rest on the computer I’d put a
deposit on, Transreal Fiction being only a few doors along from it. And it was
only a day or two before then I’d written about Jenny Agutter (in an episode
of...The Outer Limits, as it turns out, the updated series) as well as the part of
Bobby that she played in The Railway Children, and the parallels, or resonances,
with a person in my life and the developing preoccupation with time it brought
to the fore.
It’s probably worth adding I’ve noticed many women of her physiognomy if
you like, to the extent it does seem to be quite common if no less appealing.
Colin Wilson once remarked, in The Janus Murder Mastery, or rather his
protagonist Chief Inspector Saltfleet did, that it’s almost as if God had only a
limited number of moulds for everyone. We’ll be coming back to this, and right
now.

Going by a charity shop in Tolcross on the way to the Grassmarket to pick

up the computer as well as the the Dick Conversations, I had a quick glance in
the window as is my want in case there was anything that might grab my
attention and had to stop in my tracks when I saw there was a paperback
bafflingly titled, Pip Pip. It probably brought David Copperfield to mind. I
assumed it was a novel, but read the blurbs at the top and bottom: “A wonderful,
delightfully humorous piece of polemic against everything wrong with the way
we deal with time today,” and “Pip does for time what ZEN AND THE ART OF
MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE did for philosophy.”
I went in and bought it. Along the side of the front cover it says, A
SIDEWAYS LOOK AT TIME, and the authors name, Jay Griffiths, but I hadn’t
noticed it. Reviews over two pages as well as a photograph on the inside cover,
and whadayaknow, she’s the spitting image of a younger Jenny Agutter – I kid
thee not, if with an interesting arrangement in freckles. Chapter 4 is titled
Bottoms Up, Mischief Nights and Millennium Days, which focuses also on 'the
end of the world as we know it' prophecies, including the Mayan Calender 2012
end date, naturally, though the Bottoms Up would do it for me alone I think.
She’s playing my tune.
A serious book from a serious scholar, but clearly with a sense of humour.
I’d be in love or lust or a combination of both if it weren’t for the virtual
guarantee she’s married as well as having a far more respectable background and
outlook than this 'maverick,' quasi-cosmically inclined clod. But seriously, it’s
the perfect illustration, as there is no doubt she exists, whereas I could be making
up the personal connections solely for the purposes of entertainment say, or to
make myself windswept and interesting, with intriguing elements of possible
mental imbalance, but no matter, it’s not in question the connection with Jenny
Agutter is there, however loosely on the face of it.

And I don’t think I mentioned that in Logan’s Run which she starred with
Michael York, it was set in the 23rd Century. All the 23’s. “All will be revealed,”
as Robert Plant sings in Kashmir. Or at least touched on. Can I just add I picked
up SF writer, Robert Charles Wilson’s first novel, A Hidden Place, long out of
print, in that same bookshop in Tolcross, though under different management as I
recall... Now they behave with all the assumed gravitas as if they wrote the
books or made the clothes and shoes and recorded the music themselves.
Alright, I’ll come clean, I also bought some cassettes, a double album of
which was Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, for 40p. Recently or currently on
tour again as I saw somewhere, perhaps in The Fortean Times. I’ll also just add
again that in line with L from school, it’s a certain 'Dark Haired Girl' look a la
PKD that appeals to me, and the JA analogy and connection only came back to
me after the involvement with the former theology student and good Catholic
who resembles/d her. The difference between them is probably the degree of
actual sanity. Interestingly, someone at the time did once describe her to me, as
“heartless.” A judgement I felt to be a bit harsh, but the awareness of my own
mistakes and guilty conscience tends to cloud any objectivity I might gain in the
circumstances. On the other hand, she did open up before she clammed up and I
can’t doubt the insecurity I felt and saw in her.

I’ve just turned on the TV to check the time, and there was film of a younger
(Sir) David Frost and I just knew he’d be interviewing Nixon, the Ferris
Freemont of Dick’s Radio Free Albemuth, and main big cheese if not prime
mover in the continuation of Rome in the present day; Dick’s The Empire Never
Ended, the Iron Prison, based on the Gnostic’s belief in the world as a “black iron
prison.” Someone’s written a play on Nixon I gather.

Watching Dorothy Maguire as the mute girlwoman in The Spiral staircase. Not
being my type, she doesn’t appeal to me. The manly doctor is intent on taking her
away from all this – literally, and saving her from herself it seems, as well as
convinced he’ll get her to talk again; and he’s only a doctor. The real looker,
Blanche, has just been murdered. She was having a fling of sorts with the playboy
type brother of the upstanding master of the house, who lets slip the reminder she
also had an affair with him also, so naturally, she has to pay for such latent
immorality by dying at the hands of thee resident psycho. Shades of the later
Halloween movies. I’ve pegged the good guy as the potential killer, incidentally.
after going through the likely and most unlikely suspects, such as the dying mother
laid up in bed as well as Helen/Maguire herself, which would be quite surreal, and it’s
looking promising.
Other staples such as the surly resident footman or whatever he is, as well as the
dodgy brother are too obvious, but mind you, so was the death of Blanche, or so I’d
assumed. The local policeman or detective won’t be the killer as that never happens
of course, even though the film was released in 1946, just after the war and Nazi
Germany. No killers in uniform here.

PKD. A great pity he dropped dead at the age of 53. He does look much his age
from the photographs of the time, I thought. A lot of grey, which is standard, but also
the furrows on his forehead. His eyes didn’t look so worn though. You can see the
humanity and sensitivity and intelligence in them. It never fails to amaze me I’m
living on the same planet as such people were – and are – and I’ve come to know
many similar cultural and intellectual references and his writings and thoughts
through interviews are available to me as they are to others, but he was, essentially,
before my time.
At the age of 23, when I’d have been more interested in aspects of his life and
work/thought, he was already dead. The film Blade Runner was brilliant and
atmospheric, and I probably picked up on the parallels with the Russian mage and
mystic Gurdjieff’s observation that most people are a kind of living dead and Dick’s
preoccupation with similar ideas as in comparing people to androids – the Blade
Runner of the movie’s occupation to terminate a number of androids, called replicants
in the film. It was interesting that he said that Sean Young played the part of the
replicant, Rachel, just as he’d long imagined her to be. With the dark hair and make-
up and tight dress, she does look more the part of the femme-fatal, Dick’s bete noire
and something that has applied to myself if I may say so, and I have.
But how do we gauge our capacity for love as well as becoming aware of our
hate and the limits of it except through emotional and psychological extremes? I’ve
never been murdered as I’m still here, but I know the thought has been there in its
various forms, as it has been in me. Am I to condemn myself for what I condemn in
them, or will I forgive them for the illusion it was and is and so let myself off the
hook?
I’m looking forward to reading The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, the third
novel in the Valis trilogy, after the latter, and The Divine Invasion, as he describes the
central character of the novel, Angel Archer, as having been deeply traumatised by
death. That it has affected her character, changed her deeply, so she can be bitter and
cynical. Trust Dick in his perceptiveness and compassion to get to the heart of the
matter. He himself emphasises it’s not a matter of intelligence. Though he’s clearly
highly intelligent himself, fiercely intelligent as some have described him, and it has
to be said I think, that this may be a necessary component of learning to deal with
highly manipulative and clever narcissists, one of the most unsettling and even
disorienting and frightening aspects of which can be the light this can throw on
aspects of ones own psyche and motivation.
Nobody really likes being put under the microscope for any great length of time
but this has to be accepted as a part of the deal, the often unspoken emotional
contract, which if stated overtly, could end it there and then, and before you know it,
you’re beginning to learn the real meaning of commitment, which may have to go
beyond what we conveniently term as necessities for a trusting, ongoing 'relationship,
such as physical intimacy/sex. questions of jealousy, time expected in the company of
the other person, or having to question every expectation and assumption we may
have.
This, not including the more overtly, even hypersexually inclined, and/or
emotionally histrionic types, who mask their need for power and control through a
more overt dependency and emotional blackmail, the diametrical opposite of the
classic narcissist who professes to scorn all forms of dependency, not least in
themselves, yet endeavour to illicit it as much as they profess to detest it.
An extremely tricky business, but as much an eye-opener about oneself as I say,
as long as you get through it.