Well, I finally saw Inception. I hadn’t planned on writing about it, however, as everyone from fanboy to critic to armchair PhD has already weighed in. Still, Christopher Nolan’s latest certainly squeezed my mind grapes, so I figured I’d throw some ideas together.

++Dream a Little Dream++
Artists of all kinds have long been fascinated with dreams — from painter to playwright to composer to filmmaker. The connection should be obvious: dreams are nearly synonymous with imagination itself. Artifacts from the sleep state can be inspiring or disturbing, but the true nature of dream remains an enigma. Inception makes a noble attempt at cracking the cipher, but Nolan’s airtight aesthetic fails to convey the mind’s deepest and most anarchic interiors.

The film is hardly a failure, however. Nolan seems to understand that Hollywood is America’s dream factory — that to step into a theater is to enter the headspace of the filmmaker. This an environment where your own reality is no longer of primary concern (plus it’s air-conditioned!). We moviegoers are willing participants in a ritual of sensory subjugation, and cineplexes exist to enhance this ceremony via giant screens, stadium seating and potent sound systems.

This dream extends in multiple directions. Like the subconscious projections in Nolan’s film, movie actors, sets, wardrobes and so forth are but ancillary expressions of the director’s imagination. Which means that, metaphysically speaking, Inception can be seen as a facet of cinema itself.

Grad-school grandstanding aside, Inception is basically a big summer movie. So the lofty stuff ultimately takes a backseat to elaborate effects and action sequences. To his credit, Nolan maintains a cogent sci-fi narrative while simultaneously exploring the nature of loss. Dialogue and exposition are nonetheless sacrificed on the altar of audience comprehension, yet these faults can be forgiven due to Nolan’s heroic balancing act. I mean, you try making a movie like this.

One complaint I wholly agree with is that Nolan’s dreamworld isn’t terribly… well, dreamlike. There’s no doubt that Nolan is a gifted cinematic architect who has shown himself capable of wrenching powerful performances from his actors. Still, he’s more watchmaker than imagineer, which is why his slumberland feels clinical. It’s not the fault of technology — as was the case in The Dark Knight, Inception goes light on obvious computer trickery. And directors like Stanley Kubrick and Stephen Spielberg have crafted far more evocative worlds with less.

Consider the nature of the sleeping unconscious. Even those dreams with high a degree of detail contain plenty of shifty elements when we recall them in the light of day. And that shiftiness extends to pretty much every aspect of the dreaming experience. The interrelation between objects, places and events are nothing less than fluid. Meaning is multilayered, enigmatic and “extra-logical.” None of this lends itself to moviemaking, but Nolan seems to duck the challenge entirely. Inception’s only hints of elasticity are in its architectural elements, and these are ultimately more mechanistic than mutable.

Such criticisms aren’t solely limited to set design and FX — they apply to Inception’s characters and concepts, as well.

++Interpolation and Identity++
Though an original work, it’s impossible to consider Inception without recognizing the kaleidoscopic imagination of sci-fi scribe Philip K. Dick, whose intertextual tales have eluded translation by several gifted filmmakers. To some degree, Inception mirrors the concepts in PKD’s The Minority Report, as well as the Spielberg-helmed adaptation. It’s a powerfully freaky thing to think that someone can get inside your head for the purpose of extracting information. In Dick’s story, it’s a preemptive law enforcement technique — the mere thought of committing a crime being justification for arrest. Nolan’s yarn is more about mindjacking as corporate espionage, but it’s certainly in keeping.

What scared PKD most wasn’t ubiquitous authority but rather the porousness of identity. Even his protagonists that are agents of “the system” (The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) experience the paralyzing and pervasive fear of losing themselves across multiple layers of consciousness. Another occupational hazard is the danger of being subsumed by one or more cover identities (A Scanner Darkly) — a literary fascination shared by William S. Burroughs.

My point is this: to effectively evoke dream reality, there must be at least passing attention paid to the mutable nature of identity. Nolan’s film deals with three layers of dream consciousness, each a further step removed from the rules of waking reality. Yet his protagonists remain rooted even as they descend further into raw strata of mind. This is especially odd considering that they’re occupying another person’s dream and therefore susceptible to said individual’s subconscious idiosyncrasies. PKD would’ve thrown everybody’s physical, mental and emotional characteristics into one big psychic Cuisinart until the mission was either a paranoid shambles, or an entirely new plotline emerged. Why do I feel like me, but look like you? Is this my memory or yours? How do I know I haven’t already been compromised? Which reality is the “true” reality, if that can even be ascertained? And does it even matter?

Nolan expresses some of this by having his characters struggle with the idea that their current reality is a mirage. To me, this is the most powerful aspect of the film, touching as it does upon mental illness and the effects of consensus reality. Those unwilling or incapable of entertaining this shared consensus suffer tremendously, as did PKD in his own life. I wish more of these themes were addressed in Nolan’s film, but I understand the difficulty of building a summer blockbuster using madness as the cornerstone (we’ll see what Del Toro does with Lovecraft).

++Neurosecurity and Mindfulness++
I’m surprised that the geek overlords on Boing Boing, etc. haven’t brought up mindhacking in their discussions about Inception (or maybe they have, and I missed it). To me, the idea of establishing a defense against brain invaders is interesting, especially in light of new discoveries in neuroplasticity and the battle to maintain computer network security.

Fascinating stuff, but I’m pretty sure our psyches are less in danger of being harmed by outside forces than our own mental habits.

One of Nolan’s most original ideas is that the subconscious can be trained to act as a built-in police force during synaptic security breaches. The director seems to gravitate towards characters who exhibit tremendous martial/intellectual/transcendental discipline on the road to exceptionalism (Batman, The Prestige). This includes certain mental technologies.

Buddhism has for centuries been aware of the the mind’s plasticity. It teaches (among other things) that we can shape the function of our neural networks by observing our thoughts and establishing new patterns. In therapeutic psychology, this is called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) — a remarkably effective treatment for a host of mental afflictions. Borrowing from Buddhism, it prescribes mindfulness as a method for rooting out “bad code” and establishing a healthier psyche.

Remapping the mind requires a great deal of discipline, but it can be done. Brains are far less rigid than stone, and even stone can be shaped by water. In this view, our thoughts are similar to ripples on a swift-moving river. Like thoughts, these ripples spontaneously and constantly appear and disappear. By not fixating on the origin of the ripples, but rather accepting the simple fact of their existence, we can begin to see the river as a whole and even influence its flow.

Inception takes a more martial approach to mindfulness, but it does offer hints as to how we can keep our shit together in the midst of chaos. In the film, one of the characters experiences acute panic when he realizes the reality he thought was solid is in fact quite the opposite. (We experience similar feelings of disassociation when someone close to us dies, we lose our job, get divorced, etc.) The character is told to focus on his breath and remember his training. The particulars of instruction aren’t revealed, but I’m guessing it involves meditation and mindfulness.

It’s easy to dismiss all of this as pop-culture exotica. And that might be true of the mystical kung-phooey on display in The Matrix, but this is different. Keep in mind that neuroplasticity and mindfulness training are hardly the core of Inception, but since it takes place almost entirely in people’s heads, there’s no way of avoiding some of these concepts.

If you haven’t seen movie yet, I definitely recommend it. Less as an artistic achievement and more as an incitement to cognitive investigation. Popcorn and Milk Duds optional.

The Council On Spiritual Practices offers information on psychoactive sacramentals in their Enthogen Project.

While the New York Times reports on emerging studies with psychoactives.

This is much along the lines of Aldous Huxley’s beautiful deathbed experience.

Troublesome Creek could be the name of your next band/novel/screenplay. Maybe this is where the term “blue blood” originated, though I don’t think they had a clan of Kentucky hillbillies in mind.

In the lives of modern American families, this is pop culture gone adorably wild. As Rebecca Mack aptly describes, this video demonstrates the “dangers of rigid gender roles.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9eL3ejXmE

And if you thought it just couldn’t get any cuter, please observe this orangutan and hound, who are clearly soul mates. WARNING. This may be too cute to handle. Please beware before following the link.

But sometimes, you just need a friend. Again, this is bromance.

This article includes a photo of some roadies, speaking of bros. I may plagiarize parts for my resume.

Though this blend of talent and ambition with the irony of their theme will likely dominate more of my time. To quote Animal: “DRUMS!”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl82N69B7qw

Meet Carter Lefebvre, data processor. I put this fictional character together like puzzle, adding upwards of 25 elementary pieces where I found they fit. One paranormal investigation group even ran a “background and criminal history” check to make sure that I wasn’t a pedo-bear or other criminal. I was shocked to learn that Mr. Lefebvre passed with flying colors. Guard your children, folks.

My experiences have led me to one basic conclusion: the term “paranormal investigator” is a misnomer. Actually, it’s the misnomer of all misnomers. Nothing paranormal was ever “investigated,” nothing was ever “debunked,” and certainly nothing was ever proven to be supernatural. There were no fact-finding techniques used, no group ever probed background information relative to a purported haunting, and nobody came to any logic-defying conclusion that would result in a sound or compelling case study.

This stuff should be called “paranormal waiting-for-something-to-happen” rather than “paranormal investigating.” I don’t say this to belittle those who investigate; I just feel that the reasons that we do what we do have become irrevocably compromised due mostly to the recent rise of pop-culture paranormal phenomenon and its attendant fandom.

Certainly I’ve had some strange events occur while on hunts: in Lithonia, the sounds of movement from an unseen source; in Decatur, a strange and distant voice heard; in Elberton, a mysterious, milky white ball of light resembling a woman’s shoulders. And yes, in each of these cases we unsuccessfully tried to replicate the phenomenon.

So these occurrences must be paranormal, right? If we can’t with our own faculties recreate the event, it’s got to be a ghost, right? Unfortunately, the more I investigated, the less I believed so.

Paranormal investigators need to admit to what they are: lovers of the paranormal who crave experiences more than answers. We must accept the fact that if there ever was any legitimate, scientific evidence of a haunting — whether it be an EVP, photograph, video recording, or other data proving life after death through even a minuscule but verifiable scrap of substantiation — it would be one of the most earth-shattering breakthroughs in scientific study since the splitting of the atom. Definitely the most significant religious event since the birth of Jesus. It would change everyone’s view of everything.

But it hasn’t happened yet, and it’s highly unlikely to. Therefore, paranormal investigation needs to stop referring to itself as a science and begin to rectify its purpose. Paranormal investigators are not scientists, we are documentarians of humanity’s lore and legend. We chase humankind’s prehensile tail, scouring locations across the planet for remnants of how we’ve become what we are. We search for symbols, archetypes and connections to our own past — the unifying pieces that cross all cultural boundaries regardless of distance and time.

Forgive me for concluding with a bit of nostalgia. The following is an account of one of the earliest events of my life, clouded as it is by subsequent revisions of memory and the hyperbole of passing years. Nonetheless, it remains an experience of my life like no other.

As a seven year-old, my friends and I would play in the woods behind Haircrafter’s Salon in South Burlington, VT — on the corner of Cottage Grove and Williston Road, to be specific. There, we would hold the most epic hide-and-go-seek games known to kid-dom. Jason, Garrett, Dylan and I, along with other kids from the neighborhood, would spend an entire day in the forest, only arriving home at sundown.

During one most distinguished game, I found myself secured in a fantastic hiding place: a turning point along the path, where I had a perfect sight lines of anyone who approached, with a thick thicket of branches and dead foliage hiding my face from all passersby. Completely obscured, I buried myself deep into the dried Vermont leaves and tested my ability to remain motionless, not crackling a single twig or leaf.

Down the path he emerged wearing a pear of jeans and a flannel shirt. The sun behind him blinded my first glimpse, but instantly I recognized him to be older than my friends and dressed differently — a stranger. This being Vermont in 1983-ish, I didn’t feel threatened; he was just a fellow cutting through the woods.

When he entered focus, head blocking the sun and revealing his face, I shivered in fright: it was featureless. Rather than eyes, nose and a mouth, what I saw was nothing more than the fabric of skin, like window drapes. Emptiness.

My eyes watered, my trembles rattling the leaves I knelt upon. The man continued walking down the path, ever closer my position. What I thought was the ill-focused flaw of distance that erased his features proved to be incorrect — his approach cleared any speculation — this man had not one facial feature, just a shroud of skin.

He stopped in front of me. By this point, I was nervously mumbling to myself and crying uncontrollably. From my lowly perch, the man towered over me. He scanned the area — as if that was possible without eyes — for a brief second. I held my breath. I employed every bit of self-control to still my shaking as the leaves below me rattled and crackled like a passing freight train.

His head bent down to mine, mimicking being face-to-face. Without his ability to do so, we became eye-to-eye.

With a strange “huff” sound, he turned and lumbered down the path with heavy footfalls that seemed to rumble the ground below me, disappearing into the thickness of the forest. I sprang from my hiding place and ran home, never telling a soul about it until later in my adulthood.

Do I believe that a faceless man was walking through South Burlington, VT sometime in the early ’80s? Of course not. With age I have come to the conclusion that it was either a dream or the subsequent enhancement of a semi-terrifying event from my childhood — perhaps a man with a facial deformity that I embellished with memory. Maybe it was the trauma of seeing the mouth-less girl in Twilight Zone: The Movie — a cinematic mainstay for my friends of the time. Who knows?

Still, it is an experience of my childhood. It is one of the million puzzle pieces of my life that when added together make up the person I have become — a curious-minded person, willing to accept the unacceptable, without the need for scientific evidence to consider those things which defy explanation.

The type of person who feels life should be experienced, not necessarily investigated.

This morning I awoke to a head full of thoughts — not an unfamiliar phenomenon, I must say. During coffee, something drew me to an online collection of interview snippets about/with Syd Barrett — the late psych-pop acid casualty and leader of the original Pink Floyd. Actually, I know exactly how I got there — I caught a random blog comment concerning Floyd’s onetime manager Peter Jenner, a fellow I happen to know (somewhat) personally and whom I like an awful lot. Summary: there was of fascinating stuff on this page, laid out in forensic detail. Check it out if you have the interest.

After that, I decided to vacuum the house, which for some reason always lubricates my synapses. The soundtrack to this chore was, of course, Piper at the Gates of Dawn. I started thinking about influences, aesthetics and all sorts of other things. I realized that most artists never fully transcend their influences, but the best of us steal flame from our forebears’ fire — Prometheus style — which in turn illuminates our own creative path. This is a natural tradition, as old as art itself, though it does have a tendency to muddy the business side of things from time to time.

Personally, I have begun to retreat from the au courant, the now, the hip, in order to focus more fully on my own craft. And that’s exactly what it is: a craft. Somewhere between a practical trade and extrasensory perception. Some equate it with spirituality, others magic, others don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. My point is this: there’s a time to soak up influences and check your vocabulary against the common tongue, and there’s a time to put aside distractions and simply go about your business. And that’s where I’m currently at.

On the aesthetic side, I’m comfortable in the knowledge that whatever art I produce will naturally be informed by my influences and previous experimentation. Perhaps I actually have learned some lessons — like, it might seem like a cool idea to put Beach Boys harmonies on a Swans-type cut, but it really doesn’t come out all that that well! Of course, I reserve the right to be contrarian. Meaning that, that even when popular taste matches my own inclinations I could — out of temperament or pique — reject an approach that might otherwise suit me. For example, I refuse to chase the current neo-shoegaze/indie-psych movement around hoping to catch a wink. Firstly, I’m too old for that, and the whippersnappers would have me terribly out of breath. Secondly, I think that a lot of today’s expression lacks clarity of vision. Where is your gestalt? What about your work screams out to be heard? So much of the new psych-gaze stuff sounds as shiftless and non-committal as the generation that produced it. Give me danger, give me drama, give me noise, give me melody, give me sensuality. Look, I’m as moon-addled as the next guy, with a profound love of being enveloped in puffy wafts of sound. But The Goddess requires a Consort, and he better be ready to fucking throw down.

Even approaching midlife, I’m game.

Back to influences (and Syd) for a second. It’s clear to me — and anyone with ears — that Robyn Hitchcock is hugely influenced by Barrett. But Robyn’s done the gentlemanly thing and taken part of Syd inside himself, consumed him, if you will. This is the noble tradition that I spoke of earlier. I swallowed Jimmy Page, for example. (And he tasted like velvet dragons!)

Who did you have for breakfast?

As I get older, it becomes more important for me to create. Not out of vanity or the sense that I’ve got to “leave something behind,” but rather because life is indeed short and I abhor waste. Talent should be refined, tested, refined, tested, refined, tested until you run out of breath. If you’re a creator, anyway. If you’re an accountant (and there’s nothing wrong with that), your path and purpose is different. As it should be.

The craft continues to inform, particularly as one gets bolder about embodying it in all parts of one’s life. I am no longer intimidated by the “marketplace.” What marketplace? I engage where appropriate. I consider my (admittedly limited) audience. I challenge myself to find new ways for my ideas to be formulated and disseminated. I trust my instincts, yet work hard at perfecting my ideas. And I hopefully get better.

Perhaps you take a similar approach. If so, I raise my glass of mid-morning Scotch.

The Process Church of the Final Judgment

It is my belief that there are points in history when societal structures — cultural mores, spiritual tenets, control apparatuses — go haywire, resulting in a funhouse reflection of human behavior. At times like these, distortions appear in the patterns of the mundane, creating a seasick feeling in all but those willing to indulge in the existential pandemonium. The ’60s and early ’70s were such times, and I dare say we’re on the cusp of a new freak-out. I mean, just look at the teabaggers, populist Christianites, elite fundamentalists and wrath-addled “patriots.” Something is fucking happening out there, and it ain’t flower-power.

As George W. Bush, disgraced saint of Manifest Destiny 2.0 once said, “bring ‘em on.” But I digress.

The Process Church was an offshoot of Scientology, formed by a pair of L. Ron Hubbard-worshiping lovers named Robert DeGrimston and Mary Anne MacLean. Like any sensible cult leader, Hubbard did not tolerate splinter groups that might siphon off his followers, so he declared DeGrimston and MacLean “suppressive persons.” By doing so, he inadvertently midwifed one of the most fascinating counter-culture cults of the era.

Occult historian Gary Lachman (who we’ve written about before) published a summary history of The Process, which is a good place to start learning about the movement and the cultural context that fueled its ascendancy.

The Process took the idea of hippie “love” to a creatively cosmological level. At heart, it’s not really all that different from the reconciliation of opposites described by Carl Jung and countless alchemists and magicians. But let’s skip the hocus-pocus for a minute and look at what Process theology actually represented. The Church believed in theurgical henosis, which is to say, they sought to syncretize the Three Great Gods of the Universe (four, if you count Christ, their emissary): Jehovah, Lucifer and Satan. By flower-power logic, loving everyone necessarily includes loving the Adversary. “Come Together,” dig?

Here’s the breakdown, cribbed from Wikipedia:

Jehovah, the wrathful God of vengeance and retribution, demands discipline, courage and ruthlessness, and a single-minded dedication to duty, purity and self-denial.

Lucifer, the Light Bearer, urges us to enjoy life to the full, to value success in human terms, to be gentle and kind and loving, and to live in peace and harmony with one another. Man’s apparent inability to value success without descending into greed, jealousy and an exaggerated sense of his own importance, has brought the God Lucifer into disrepute. He has become mistakenly identified with Satan.

Satan, the receiver of transcendent souls and corrupted bodies, instills in us two directly opposite qualities; at one end an urge to rise above all human and physical needs and appetites, to become all soul and no body, all spirit and no mind, and at the other end a desire to sink beneath all human codes of behavior, and to wallow in a morass of violence, lunacy and excessive physical indulgence. But it is the lower end of Satan’s nature that men fear, which is why Satan, by whatever name, is seen as the Adversary.

In the original 1960s literature of the church, Christ, Lucifer, Satan, and Jehovah were all arranged on a mandala, with Christ at the top opposite Satan on the bottom and Jehovah on the left opposite Lucifer on the right.

In between these Three Great Gods and man, is an entire hierarchy of Gods, beings and superbeings, angels and archangels, demons and archdemons, elementals and guides, and fallen angels and watchers.

The main doctrine of The Process is the unity of Christ and Satan, who exist as opposites. Jehovah and Lucifer exist as opposites and when Christ and Satan are united this will unite Jehovah and Lucifer.

The Process folks had a lovely eye for design and editorial, borne out by their groovy newsletter, which featured contributions from luminaries like Marianne Faithfull, George Clinton, Mick Jagger and everyone’s favorite boogeyman, Charles Manson. And, like any successful cult, they knew how to recruit. At its peak, The Process had chapters in a number of metropolitan areas, where members did all manner of “good works” while stealthily indoctrinating noobs.

After the Manson Family killings, the Church began to suffer from bad press. Later, an unfounded connection to “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz further damaged their reputation. DeGrimston, getting more and more into the Satanic side of the cult’s cosmology, was ousted. Mary Anne MacLean divorced him and started — along with her loyal followers — a more traditional Jesus sect called the Foundation Faith of the Millennium. At some point, MacLean realized that you can raise more money through social appeals, and her group eventually became the Best Friends Animal Society — a multi-million dollar nonprofit that even has a show on the National Geographic Channel. Perhaps this is a way to atone for the cult’s previous engagement in the gory sacrifice of dogs?

DeGrimston supposedly got a job with AT&T. I’m guessing he runs the company’s joint venture with the NSA.

Although the original Process Church archives were destroyed following the great schism, if you do a little digging on the interwebs, you’ll find some fascinating documents, like these crypto-Satanic missives by DeGrimston. And, if you’re ready for the cult motherlode, check out this PDF of more than 500 Process internal documents, uploaded by someone calling themselves “Process Friend.”

My renewed interest in The Process comes via a Contrarian supporter who tipped me off about a new book on the notorious Feral House imprint called Love Sex Fear Death: the Inside Story of The Process Church of the Final Judgment. I purchased it this morning, and am very much looking forward to reading it.

This Christmas, why not take a moment to consider the origins of the holiday you’re celebrating? You may be surprised at where you end up…

For those not privy to cornerstones of Western lit (or suffering from severe amnesia), the book tells the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge — a curmudgeon of a human who mocks the Christmas spirit, and is subsequently visited by four ghosts. The first, his long-time business partner and heartless mentor Jacob Marley, returns from the grave and tells Scrooge to change his ways — displaying his own earthly errors in the form of ghostly chains hanging from his arms and legs. Marley informs Scrooge that he will be visited by three ghosts: the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet-to-Come, in an attempt to persuade the man to mend his manners. Each of these three spirits whisks Scrooge through time to witness his life from several perspectives and see the things to which he had been blind. In the end, Scrooge is reborn again as a lovable man, full of holiday spirit, and thanks the ghosts for showing him his folly.

It is a tale of Christian redemption (a recurring theme in Dickens’ works) — where a man can transcend his uncharitable and self-serving attitudes to become a more sympathetic member of society, harnessing his own largess to a greater purpose. But yet there is more to this tale. Each ghost represents a specific rhetorical persuasion device — Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Fear — twisting and pulling Scrooge’s increasingly fragile psyche, driving him to a climax of redemption. And Scrooge’s journey depicts a higher level of truth-seeking that can only be attained through loosing one’s grip on the “rational” world.

Dickens’ uses the supernatural to bring his protagonist out of darkness and into light; his rite of passage is dependent on the concept that there are things in this world that are beyond his control — beyond his understandings. Scrooge initially passes off his encounter with his old partner as nothing more than undigested plum pudding, but in the end he begs the spirit to leave him be and alter the final reality presented to him: his own gravestone.

A Christmas Carol is an ode to the Romanticist movement of the 19th Century — the Age of Reason, when scientific discovery was ascendant. To be expected, artists and writers fought back with stories of the strange, macabre, unknown and the supernatural. Such creators believed that the Enlightenment use of logic remained integral to human advancement, but logic and reason was limited —  it was only through imagination, spontaneity and the acceptance of the unexplainable that certain “hidden truths” could be ascertained.

Scrooge’s story is immortal; it transcends the Romantic period and has become a part of the Christmas tradition. This story of yuletide redemption has been told and retold through multiple devices, but in each the Romantic truths remain strong: it is the world of the supernatural that seeds our love of the Christmas season, and allows us to suspend our beliefs for a brief moment. Scrooge finds his place in the natural world by listening to the supernatural one.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you. Be merry and joyful.  See you in 2010.

Greetings.

I trust your Thanksgiving indulgences were agreeable. Now that the tryptophan coma has worn off, we can get back to business. Here’s an update about some recent concerns at The Contrarian HQ.

• Scotch Whisky: I’m learning (or hope to begin learning more) about this magical beverage. I never much cared for Scotch, considering it to be another affectation of an American male leisure class to which I have no business belonging. Which is why I’m somewhat annoyed that I’ve developed a taste for single malts — seemingly right on schedule. 35 years old, with something resembling an actual career and what might even be considered in these dour economic times to be disposable income. It’s all so predictable. Sigh.
• Lists: I loathe them. But I’m gonna do the responsible publisher thing and throw our lot into the “best of the decade” hullaboo. The other night, I drank a bit too much of the aforementioned Scotch whisky and emailed a crapload of people to hopefully persuade them to tell me their fave albums of the aughts. Looking back, I think it’s been a grim decade for music, but others may disagree. I’ve also asked a more select group of folks to help me think through a “most underrated guitarists” list. So stay tuned for all that.
• Existential Dread: I’ve been considering what it means to be a writer of horror fiction, mostly due to the positive responses to my short story “The Cove” — which is part of the “digital extras” package for my new album, Eldritch Musicks. Though the story will be published at other outlets, those who purchase the CD directly from this site will get an early edition featuring illustrations from our own Susan Norton. But back to the existential dread. Since childhood, I’ve had very few ambitions: to be a writer, to be a rock star, to be a horror movie visual effects person and to work in politics. So far so good? While I won’t be breaking into the FX business anytime soon, I might be able to do the horror writer bit — albeit at a modest level. Lately, I’ve been revisiting those “outsider” scribes with a grasp of our cosmic insignificance and a knack for crafting tales of philosophical terror. Currently, I’m reading Roland Topor’s The Tenant (with an introduction by Tomas Ligotti!), and my Amazon cart is a who’s-who of literary foreboding and antipathetic decadence. Now, I’m sure I will never reach the heights of the masters, but I can always fail above expectations.

If there’s a lesson that I’ve drawn from my 35 years on this planet it’s that imagination is precious and no one is keeping score. At least no one that matters. So I am delighted, in my own peculiar way, to have the means to pursue my fancies and the temperament necessary to advance my ideas, however trifling. This feels as close to liberation as I imagine I will ever comprehend.

End Transmission.

My first interview is with Tiffany Smith Johnson, a good friend and colleague of mine who I met last year while in Buffalo, NY. Johnson is a world-renowned psychic, writer (Seeds of Thought & Picture Yourself Developing Your Psychic Abilities), healer (Reiki Master), media personality, ordained minister and speaker. With 20-plus years of experience, there isn’t much that Tiffany hasn’t encountered. At a young age, Tiffany began her studies with the Tarot and continued to pursue her interests in Mediumship, Magick, hypnosis and various other topics. Now, in her 30s, Tiffany has had the opportunity to work and study with many experts in the spiritual and paranormal field.

Practicing out of Minnesota, but touring nationally, Tiffany’s down to earth sense of humor and metaphysical knowledge on topics ranging from Ghosts and the Paranormal to Psychic Development, are well received by those looking for guidance on their spiritual journey. She continues to receive regional and national accolades and media attention with her no-nonsense approach.

With a new TLC television show on the way, Johnson will soon be a household name to all paranormal enthusiasts.

Thanks for talking to me today. First, can you tell us about your early years as a psychic? When did you first identify yourself as a psychic? How did you know that you had sharpened abilities that others did not?

You know, there wasn’t any specific day that I had an epiphany about being psychic. It was a part of who I was/am. So, it wasn’t like there was an event. One of my first memories is waking up, in the middle of the night. I would wake up due to the “noise”. Upon opening my eyes, I saw shadowy people around me. And they were all chatting. Not TO me, but just AROUND me. I started to listen. I’d “overhear” stories. Eventually, I’d go back to sleep. Upon waking in the morning, I would relay the stories back to my mom over breakfast. Often, what I found out was that the “stories” that I heard were those of loved ones that passed long before I was born. My mother would recognize the names and knew the events that I’d heard. I do feel I have a predisposition to what I do, although I believe everyone is psychic. But, it really didn’t dawn on me until my 20’s that maybe I was a bit more “dialed in” than others.

Was there ever a time when the possible stigma of being a psychic caused you to think twice about “outing” your abilities?

Absolutely. I think that’s human nature. It happened a couple times. I remember being 14 or 15 and really struggling. Then again in my later 20s after I’d really committed. At that point, I was more concerned about the stigma brought on to my family.

How would you define “psychic” or “psychic abilities?”

A psychic is someone that is able to gain relatable, verifiable information from other than the 5 physical senses.

Psychics are frequently turned to in paranormal investigations, what is the role of people with psychic abilities when it comes to paranormal investigation? What can they accomplish that scientific investigation cannot?

A good friend said that psychics are best used as “drug dogs” on investigations. I think that says it all. Psychics are often utilized to tap in to energies that may not be obvious to all those investigating. OR they may have an insight as to WHEN something can, in fact, be captured using equipment.

Every so often people hear of psychics assisting in police investigations of missing children, homicide, etc. Have you ever been approached by a police department for the same reasons? Do you feel that this is an area that psychics should be utilized more often?

The police don’t typically approach me, however, I am approached by families of those victims. And yes, I absolutely think that psychics could and SHOULD be used more in that capacity, but I understand the stigma of utilizing them. It’s too bad, but some departments believe that if a psychic can find evidence OR a missing person, that it makes the police look like they weren’t doing their job. When, in fact, it’s the other way around. That they were open to using all resources necessary to get a job done.

Obviously, a person who publicly declares themselves a psychic is going to attract a level of disbelief and skeptics who will confront him or her of fakery. How do you explain yourself to those who do not believe in your abilities? Have you ever converted someone?

I don’t explain. I respect their right to their belief system and appreciate their conviction. About converting anyone. . . I think I have. However, they have been OPEN to the possibility of truth.

Where do you see psychic research and abilities in the future?

I really, REALLY believe in the next ten years we will make great strides in understanding how psychic ability works. We’ve come SO far in the paranormal world with folks making their own equipment; those same people are branching out and making equipment to examine psychic work as well. It’s a natural progression. I’ve been approached on several occasions by “engineery”  — is that a word? — type people to work with them as a test subject to take measurements while doing readings and I’m super excited to see what we can accomplish!

What advice do you have for those who would want to hone their own abilities, or perhaps test their own hidden talents?

Really, read everything you can get your hands on. Read books on those psychics that came before you in history. Study up on Edgar Cayce. He’s an amazing individual who allowed himself to be a heavily documented subject. Then, find books on technique. And read up on how working psychically affects those that do it on a regular basis. And, of course, you can check out my book: Picture Yourself Developing Your Psychic Abilities! I really tried to put in all aspects of psychicism. History. Technique. Expectations, etc. From there, it’s just practice, practice, practice. I get asked all the time about trusting what you receive and that really only comes from doing the actual work.

What’s next for Tiffany Smith Johnson?

Gosh. So much. I’m super excited to be a part of TWO shows that will air by the end of the year. I was asked back on the second season of “Psychic Kids” (A&E) AND am super stoked to be part of a brand NEW series premiering on TLC in Nov. tentatively called “Ghost Intervention.” And, of course, I’m working on a third book that is really the silly side of being a psychic. Funny stories both personally and thing I hear professionally. Of course all names, etc. will be changed to protect those involved!

Thanks for talking with me, Tiffany.

Thank you!

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Johnson’s books are available on Amazon, or off of her website, www.readingsbytiffany.com. And, of course, as a friend of The Contrarian, when Tiffany Smith Johnson’s television show is set to air, I will immediately report it here.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyErfpJRvqo

I love it when he starts screaming “the quark is real!” Oh, and what do I need to do to become a “spoken word, poetry, philosopher and performance artist?” Sounds like a good career move.

Today, I have chosen to reflect on an investigation that my former paranormal group took part in earlier this year. Granted, my former group was one dedicated to discussing their importance and prominence within the paranormal community versus actually doing something in the field — the three total investigations, not created by my own hand, that transpired during my one year stint compared with the abundance of times I was told that we were going to be “the new TAPS” when Jason and Grant quit “Ghost Hunters.”  However, the following “case” is undoubtedly one of the most memorable experiences of my twelve month stint with the aforementioned group.

It began with a phone call from the group’s second-in-command, a person that I will refer to as “Eric.” Although Eric’s no longer affiliated with the group and has since moved onto a much more luxurious existence, I have still decided to use a pseudonym to protect myself from the a) Boston mafia connections who may come along to ‘shake me down’ in an attempt to get their money back from him, b) the military who may try to assassinate him due to his infinite knowledge that dinosaurs never existed or because of his post-traumatic stress disorder he got from watching the first Iraq War (on television), or c) lawsuits from his lawyers when I ruin his chances of becoming the newest member of “Ghost Hunters in Space.”

Ahem.

So Eric calls me up and tells me that he got a call from a woman who believes that she has something in her house. Rarely does the group go out and conduct an investigation that isn’t a friend or family member throwing a pity investigation — images of Ghostbusters’ Janine yelling “We got one!” came to my mind.

I ask him to tell me about it.

Eric proceeds to tell me the typical run-of-the-mill investigation details: tappings heard at night, cold spots throughout the house, voices coming from empty rooms, etc. He then explains how the family came home to find their dogs’ feces thrown onto the ceiling. The feces hangs down in clumps. It drips to the floor and leaves a foul smell throughout the entire house.

And, Eric explains that he placed a phone call to John Zaffis to discuss the case: Zaffis told him that it sounds like we have a Negative Entity on our hands and should proceed with caution.

In the paranormal world, a Negative Entity is believed to be something that has never walked the world in human form. Some claim NEs to be demonic in nature, others say they are evil in energetic forms, still others suggest they are the result of humanity’s psychological errors manifesting in the physical realm.

Cool, in a nerdy way.

Now, in any under circumstances or months earlier, I would have been very excited about this. This would have been my Zu’ul moment: the first major challenge as a paranormal investigator to document an NE. To me, the Negative Entity phenomenon is more exiting than the idea of a ghost — here you have something that transcends human mortal existence, a different beast altogether — something with no beginning or end. I was excited to attempt interaction, much less contact, with such a concept. Under any other circumstances, I would have gone to my local church, ala “The Lost Boys,” filled my canteen and water guns with good old holy water and busted out the door to take down the Kiefer-vampire, but by this time, my albeit limited experience in the field (especially with this group) would teach me better.

Eric, ever the sycophant, begins to name-drop all the people that he consulted concerning these matters. He says Zaffis is at our disposal, and if needed, television psychic Chip Coffey may fly to Atlanta to help us with this case.

Because, as paranormal investigators, we are here to “help” others, at least that is what we are told we are supposed to do.

He claims that even TAPS themselves may drop by during their busy filming schedule to witness the events unfurling at the house in question — like they have nothing better to do.

But by this time, I was so jaded by the team that I called bullshit on 99 percent of this story. I believed that someone contacted the group and believed that they believed they had something evil in their home – after all, this is north Georgia, the armpit portion of the Southern Bible Belt just above Alabama’s muffin-top midsection and many members of our group were the hairs in said armpit. And a quick Google Earth search proves that the building located at the address given to me from Eric is a disgusting hovel with garbage and trash spewed across the yard — typical of that area of the South. Decrepit cars are scattered along the dirt road driveway. I can see a rickety front porch, a rusted swing set and an above ground pool filled with brown water.

I also see holes in the roof.

Water, ladies and gentleman, their “Negative Entity” is nothing more than water.

I want to tell Eric to get a ladder and to climb up to the attic to take a look because all of this can be explained by the dripping of water through the holes in the roof. The feces is stalagmites, water fills the attic and drips down to the roof above the ceiling causing the water to turn brown with filth and eventually petrify itself to rock form. The smell, too, can be stale water, years of neglect and general filthy living turning the air acrid. Moisture causes the wood of the house to bend under its weight, causing the house to fall in on itself — hence the tapping.

It’s not a beast from the bowels of Hell banging on the walls, it’s the sound of the house caving in.

Cold drafts and voices? When you live in a home that has no ceiling, you too will be cold as Hell, feel drafts, and hear voices from all over the place. But Eric wouldn’t want to hear that, he tells me that he has the equipment packed up and ready to go.

If my former group was anything like it claimed itself to be, a professional group of investigators set on proving the supernatural to be nothing more than the natural, I would have shared my theory with Eric, but I chose not to — his world of paranormal investigation is one of a different beast. Some people do not want to be shown the obvious. They choose to live in a perceived world of ghosts and specters, negative entities and portals to Hell behind every hillbilly’s closet door. A world where feces can be thrown to a ceiling at the hands of Belial before moisture settling in the cave-like squalor living conditions of a north Georgia home.

His world is one of delusions of grandeur, boot-licking and self-satisfaction. Eric, like so many other people in this field, represents a much larger problem to paranormal investigation than any Negative Entity: the lack of personal ethics. As the field grows in popularity, and more and more people tune into primetime ghost hunting shows and founts of wisdom like “Ghost Hunting for Dummies” — more and more people and groups enter the field for all the wrong reasons: their own personal gain.

I would later find out from multiple sources that Eric never contacted Zaffis, Coffey, or TAPS, and they wouldn’t have taken his calls even if he did.

But for a moment, his twisted version of reality and self-importance manifested itself in the form of this case. He was able to pump himself up a little bit and become important for one brief moment. But, in reality, his desire to be integral and viewed as the metropole of paranormal investigation in my perceived gullible eyes was typical of the true intentions of many of this field: to be viewed as vital and connected. And it’s this negativity that drips from the ceiling and stinks up the entire paranormal community.