Dr. Timothy Leary--former
Harvard lecturer and '60s counterculture cheerleader,
acid advocate and author
of 20-plus published books (including High Priest,
Confessions of a Hope Fiend,
and his newest, Chaos and Cyberculture),
world-class idea man and
salon keeper, jailbird and a source of inspiration to
millions of anti-System
types--was diagnosed last year as suffering from a case
of inoperable prostate cancer.
Since then, Dr. Leary has
set about concluding his life the way he has lived
it: by researching, exploring
and experiencing the very nature of consciousness.
Until Madame Cancer has
her way and the good doctor goes into the Big Sleep or
takes the Deep Freeze (he
hasn't decided yet), Leary remains ensconced in his
comfortable Benedict Canyon
home in Beverly Hills, accepting visits from old
friends and collaborators
while working on a plethora of new projects (including
one entitled "Design for
Dying") with a team of young cyberartists, writers and
technicians.
The doctor's home itself
acts as a museum to the "alternative" culture of the
latter half of the twentieth
century. Walls are covered with original artwork
from Keith Haring's endearing
primitivism to Al Jourgenson's acoustic guitar,
the Christmas cards on the
credenza are from Oliver Stone and William S.
Burroughs, and the house
soundtrack is Spacemen 3 and "Screamadelica"-era Primal
Scream. A bizarre shrine,
complete with a Yoda-headed body in some kind of
cryo-sarcophagus, is being
assembled near the living room. The garage has been
converted into a four-terminal
website construction space by employees of Retina
Vision. Beneath broad ribbons
and strung Christmas lights, Joey, his brother
Chris and their assistant
Michelle work to create Leary's homepage, using photos
of Leary's actual house
and archival material stashed in the hundreds of file
boxes also in the garage.
And a general open door policy ensures that, even on a
weekday, there is a steady
stream of suitably bohemian visitors.
When I arrive on a Friday
afternoon, Leary is just finishing up an appointment
with his medical staff.
He doesn't look good. Now confined to a wheelchair, Dr.
Leary is frail and gaunt,
and rarely leaves the house. Tubes slide up his
sleeves. His hearing is
worse than ever, thanks to some prescribed medication,
and during our conversation
I have to shout in his right ear. His eyes are not
cloudy, not crystal, not
bloodshot--just strangely, serenely blue. He speaks
quickly, articulately, and
with enthusiasm, cracking jokes and making puns with
ease and obvious satisfaction.
He is affectionate with his
employees/collaborators,
encouraging them to take nitrous hits while they fetch
him apple juice, give him
neck massages and rub the top of his head.
In the last few weeks, Leary's
bedroom has begun to resemble the stereotypical
acidhead's psychedelic hovel.
The hallway to the room has a blue carpeted
ceiling, and the walls are
covered in simulated red fur and rows of small
circular mirrors that resemble
eyes. (One of Leary's assistants explains to me
that the hallway decoration
has something to do with "returning to the womb.")
The wall behind Leary's
bed is a large, multiple-plate collage of staggering
detail and complexity. In
the corner is a giant nitrous oxide tank. The doctor's
bed is covered with reading
materials, fromm the new issue of Science News and
today's Los Angeles Times
to the V for Vendetta comic book.
Dr. Leary takes one more
hit from a nitrous balloon, puffs on a (nicotine)
cigarette and stares raptly
at the collage as I peer out his window at the
sensory deprivation unit
on the back patio. Then he snaps to...
Q: You've assembled quite
a bunch of people here to work on your books and
websites and various projects.
TL: [Not hearing the question]
Yes, the major thing [death] of course happening
in my life has been extremely
rich with human texture, because people I've known
all my life are flying in
and it's been a deeply moving and joyful experience.
Q: [louder] So you've got a bunch of people working on your website.
TL: That's the big thing,
outside of the human thing. All of our energy goes
into the web. What the web
is-we start out with the ideas, naturally we have
written words. The way the
website is set up is as my home. You have the living
room. You click around the
living room. There's a picture of my living room, but
it's also a menu. It's a
living room, but it's also got my works of art. So if
you want to know more about
any artists, you click on the art, boom! The screen
fills with...my home. Then
there's the art room. You click in there. There's a
featured painting of the
month by an artist we know and a featured painting by
someone that I know. For
example, for the next nine months, we're going to
feature people like the
photographer Dean Chamberlain and then we have Howard
Hollis, and it goes down
the list. We'll have more famous artists: Kenny Sharp,
Keith Haring. So it's both
classics and ongoings.
Then you keep going to the
library. There'll be two big blow-ups book covers...
of the featured writer of
the month, Tom Robbins-a dear dear friend of mine. (He
and his wife Alexis purchased
this great galactic comforter that I'm using.)
So we have something called
the Living Book. We put up the first page of Tom's
novel, on the other side
I revise it. Now the revision's in color, we ask Tom to
make comments about it on
the left and my comments on the right. So anyone who
looks in on the website
can see that writer of the month is... (we also have a
classic one too-same thing),
photographer of the month (Helmut Newton-dear
friend). We are featuring
the works of our friends, and all of these artists,
painters, writers have something
to do with the new field of what goes back to
William James, it goes back
to Joyce, it goes back to the new literature,
cutting up language and
not flourishing with the old Victorian English
Literature major.
Q: So when someone comes
to your webpage, they can see what you've posted and
what Tom Robbins has posted,
so they can see the interaction between you two.
TL: Then they can do their
own version. They can rewrite Tom's first page. They
can make comments. So that
you have the original there-it's not changed-I keep
revising it, anyone can.
So the first page is a living book.
Q: Okay, cuz it's never going to end.
TL: So if it's Burroughs
the writer, I click and I can see all the covers of his
books. I can click on a
book, and get maybe Naked Lunch, and I can play Naked
Lunch page by page. But
remember, don't call it "the visitor to the site" or
"the guest" or "the user,"
call it a "performer." You perform Tom Robbins' book
along with him. That allows
Tom the thrill of coming back anytime he wants to
and seeing what people are
doing with his book! It's wonderful. It's in various
stages of...
Q: What else do you have planned for the near future?
TL: Well, there are about
six artists with whom I work and each one is putting
out three or four products.
Howard, who's doing the hallway here, Howard has
done this whole wall, [motions
at collage] 16 panels, and I help... [Venice
photographer Dean Chamberlain
enters the bedroom] Dean is here... Dean is one of
our featured artists. He's
the first featured artist of the month. We've all
been blown away by that
[points at picture].. .room with a view! [laughter] I
contribute a little bit,
I even suggest stuff, I help sign, I help market it.
Q: Are you working on a book right now?
TL: Gosh yes, we're working
on ten living books of mine that are changing all
the time.
Q: I notice you have V for
Vendetta on your bed. I interviewed [writer] Alan
Moore a few weeks ago.
TL: What a book! I get chills
when I read that. I've never been really able to
get into it, it's kinda
spooky. You know the book, huh? Tell me, is he well
known?
Q: Yeah he's pretty well
known amongst comics fans... He did another book called
Watchmen -
TL: I got that.
Q: He's just finishing a
project about the Jack the Ripper murders called From
Hell.
TL: Yeah, that's on the Web, isn't it?
Q: No, I don't think so...
He's looking to start working on CD-ROMs as well. I
know that's an area you're
interested in as well... So you're finding that book
[V for Vendetta] inspiring?
TL: Fascinating. Spooky.
Q:So you're planning a big
party before you go out. Is that how you're looking
at it?
TL: No...well...no, I'm not
planning a BIG party, I like to have people come by
and they usually come between
the hours of 4 and 6, over the weekends there'll
usually be between 4 and
5 people. But I'm not going to have an enormous party.
I had a big birthday party
in October. We had valet parkers all the way down to
Sunset and the neighbors
have never forgiven me. [laughter] Oh, they have...
Q: You have a number of plans, when the time comes...
TL: Well, they're in operation
right now. You'll notice we're assembling all of
the paraphernelia and equipment
that people have used over the years to study
out-of-body experiences,
including dying. Over there you can see the isolation
tank, designed by my good
friend John Lilly. I try to log an hour or so in that
every day, because it's
like an out-of-body experience, it's like a death
experience. So silent..and
you float... and you can also click something and
speak your words through...
There's this area between when you leave your body
and your body things go
and your brain goes, 12-15 minutes there. And we're
trying to colonize and explore
this area.
Q: That's new terrain...
TL: Yeah, the human mind.
[Announces triumphantly:] The brain is the new
terrain! Human beings have
not understood that the brain is different and must
be explored just like the
outer world or the outer galaxy...
Q: Do you still consider yourself an optimist?
TL: [disdainfully] What are
these words... I'm suicidally depressed at least a
minute an hour. I go through
'em all. I'm not an "optimist." I try to scan all
the possible emotions.
Yes, I deeply deeply believe
that the human brain was designed by DNA. We have
this incredible brain, 120
billion neurons, the complexity is beyond our ability
to conceive. The challenge
of the human species is to learn how to operate this
wonderful equipment. We've
always measured the success of a species in terms of
the killing ability. Now
you can measure many different species by their ability
to communicate and to use
their brains and the language of the brain, the food
of the brain is light. That's
why we use these words so much. That's why Retinal
Logic [the Website development
group that is building Leary's website] strings
lights everywhere. You'll
notice in all of the bushes there's lights. Light.
Because that is the original,
it comes from the sun.
Q: Okay, I see that...
TL: See: you "see" that. Thank you! "I see"! I see too! [laughter]
Q: And you feel you've made
progress in helping us understand how to use our
brains.
TL: Everything I'm saying
is paraphrasing and carrying on McLuhan. He said that
the function is, it's all
communication, and the medium that you use to
communicate defines the
society or the species you belong to. If you just speak,
that's okay; if you speak
and make signs, that's even better; and if you get
into the oral, you play
music, you get into the whole range of the complexity of
the various media. We try
to explore all of these.
Q: Right, then there's broadcasting
and multimedia and the Internet, and you see
that as the next big.. you
see that as...the development you're anticipating.
TL: Yup. Yeah.
Q: What's exciting you about people...
TL: I'm most interested in
artists who are using light more directly. Dean, of
course... you'll notice
that. Eyes are very prime. How many more questions?
Three.
Q: Perry Farrell's been coming to see you.
TL: Perry is a very dear
friend. I'd put him in the top, top top list of the new
magicians. He represents
the '90s. He's very much involved in cyberspace-he's
got his own website. His
attitude is extremely funny and positive. I adore him.
Also, [industrial-disco-metal
musician] Al Jourgenson, another wonderful and
creative guy from Chicago,
I'm honored to appear on his last album.. which went
platinum? At the age of
74, I got a platinum. [laughter]
Perry comes by. I'm not planning anything public with him. We hang out.
Q: Do you see him as one
of these people who are going to carry on the work of
you and Marshall McLuhan
before you?
TL: Yes, I do see him, he's going to live on.
Q: You got to see Yoko Ono.
TL: Yes I've known of her
for years. From the 60s. She's her own medium, she
takes singing beyond "moon
and june." She screams, she shouts, she purrs. I was
lucky enough to see her
in concert about two weeks ago. Just AWESOME! And it was
nice of course to have her
son Sean there on stage, he's a brilliant
to-be-proud-of son of John...
Q: Do you see a connection...
Neil Young worked with Pearl Jam... Yoko Ono's
working with young musicians...You're
working with younger people.. Comment on
that? It's like the elders
are coming and imparting wisdom on the younger
generation...
TL: Well, in the past, the
elders would pass on the wisdom they'd accumulated
because every generation
was pretty much the same, i.e. My parents wanted to
grow up to be like their
parents and their parents and their parents. The idea
of generations came along
in the 20th century because of new media. When the
radio years, the 1920s and
1930s--the radio totally changed American culture,
just as McLuhan would predict.
I was a radio kid, I listened to the radio. My
family couldn't understand
why I would listen to that music because when they
would be listening to the
music of Beethoven-- [downs a whole glass of apple
juice] I guess I wasn't
thirsty. [laughter]
What was the question?
Q: Your family would listen to Beethoven...
TL: My family would listen
to Beethoven and I was listening to new music made
for phonograph. Da-da-da
was for symphony hall, but I was buying the cheapo 25
cent Dekka records. So raucous
and all of that. And then television came on and
then MTV, each creating
a new music. Rock n roll in the '60s-the television
generation. Now they use
graphics-we don't use the word "computer"-audio/visual
graphics on screen.
Q: So... we're looking for the relationship between the generations...
TL: Well, it's not that I'm
working with... I'm working with the new technology
and the people that are
working with the new technology are the kids!
I never really got into television.
I'd watch it only for World Series. The
television was put in the
kids' playroom. Get the point? [laughter]
And then in time, those kids
grew up... Their kids are playing Nintendo. They're
not into the idea of changing
stuff on the screen, they don't want to do that.
They'd do that at the office
maybe, but their kids are in the room spending all
of their time developing,
creating, and inhabiting an electronic world. And it
will continue to be that
way.
Yeah, I keep learning, cuz
it's only young people who know how to operate the
new equipment, and not only
operate it, but weave it into their lives.
Q: It's like you're learning
from them, they're learning for m you...it's like
when you're writing with
Tom Robbins and he writes back...
TL: Yeah. Learning is truly
an interactive thing. it's not a teacher/learner
thing, it's like tennis.
The teacher serves the thing, and back and forth.
Everything I do is interactive...
Q: Do you keep in touch with people like William Burroughs?
TL: William Burroughs I've
talked to three times in the least two weeks. Of
course he's been way ahead
of me always. He's one of my great teachers. He's
very pleased and proud of
me. Because I am really expressing in my dying
attitudes that I have learned
from him.
Q: Ken Kesey?
TL: [holds up framed certificate]
Ken Kesey just sent that down, isn't that
wonderful. I knew him in
the '60s. His bus came to millbrook. Is he up to stuff
or what? He's still up to
something. It's the new thing. For a while, I didn't
know that was Ken's--[to
Dean] I thought it was yours, I thought it was one of
the young kids. That's the
greatest tribute I can pay to Ken... I love Ken and
I'm proud...
DEAN: And you talked to Hunter Thompson last night...
TL: Yup. [to me:] Okay, good.
go out, walk around, talk to people, and then
before you leave come back
for a couple more...
Q: What have you been writing lately ?
TL: I am reanimating many
of my former books, meaning they're put on screens
where I can revise them
and anyone who clicks onto that screen can revise my
books. That is, in the future
you don't just passively read a book, you keep
revising, interacting. If
it's on the Web, I can see what people are doing to my
book, I can be reacting
back, so the book becomes a Living book. And you always
have the original Gothic,
Gutenberg Bible here, you're not in anyway destroying
the authenticity of the
original.
Q: It's like the Talmud, people are commenting and arguing on the scripture.
TL: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
People are encouraged to update and revise the Bible or
my book. [laughter] Cuz
it's alive! The book is literally alive and changing,
and I can look at it and
rewrite what they've written. And that's the key to the
quantum universe--
We're reanimating a book
of Allen Ginsburg's, William Burroughs, Tom Robbins.
Confessions of a Hope Fiend.
Chaos and Cyberculture, my newest and still
hot-off-the-presses and
the one I want to tell the book buyer about, go to the
bookstore and demand--
Q: And then revise it online?
TL: Right. We're going to
be doing other authors, as a way of publicizing other
authors' work.
Q: You do this with writers..what about filmmakers...musicians...
TL: Yeah, I've been in negotiation
with two very famous screen directors. I've
not signed a contract with.
But yes, there will be a film. It's tricky too,
because the film is contributing
raw material to the CD-ROM. They all go
together. But it doesn't
cramp the director's style at all. We'll be taking
parts of the film and chopping
it up.. Q: Right, so you'll be providing the raw
material and other people
will rearrange it and recombine it in new ways.
TL: Yes. we're going to be
putting up 2 or 3 new books a week. Next week it
could be the Bible and next...
Babes and Bimbos by Immanuel Kant. [laughter] The
point is that in a year
we'll have maybe a hundred books and you can see what's
been done with them...
Q: You have these very ambitious plans...
TL: It's easy! All I have
to do is set up a program, it's like a spreadsheet.
All you have to do is scan
in the first page. You just do that and...
Q: Have you've tried the drug ketamine? What has been your experience with that?
TL: Yes, but I don't like
to talk about my drug experiences. I don't want to
influence anybody else.
I've spent 30 years studying consciousness in its
various forms and my reactions
are different obviously from anyone else's.
Ketamine is a very powerful
experience. It's not as confusing or psychologically
dangerous as LSD because
you're always aware of what's happening. "I have taken
this..." etc.
Q: Right, because on LSD you can forget...
TL: Another thing about it
is you have to shoot it and I basically don't like
needles. Though you can
also use spoons, make a paste and cook it.
Q: But it's not as easy as taking LSD...
TL: I don't know, see, I
don't want to talk about drugs. I try to use every
illegal drug once a year,
just like a good Catholic does Easter.[laughter] It's
my duty, to use every illegal
drug and to see what's going on.
By the way, I publish every
day a health summary, and my use of drugs. I have
defined 12 different classes
of drugs. My drug intake. Like today, I've taken
three balloons of nitrous
oxide. Also, they have put in a morphine patch, and
I've taken, I'll probably
take one highball during the day. Caffeine,
nicotine... I've got a whole
list. It's useful to take drugs. "War on drugs"
which means nothing because
"which drugs"? Cuz there's actually 12 that are very
different.
Q: And you're saying they're all altering...
TL: Yeah, everyday you see
a list of what I've used and how many times, and
sometimes comments. I'm
not going to write a comment on every nicotine cigarette
I've had. [laughter]
By the way, common sense
and street smarts underpin everything I do. Common
sense and street smarts
and friends are my guiding points.
Living is a team sport...and
dying is a team sport. And I'm working with... On
the dying project, there
are 11 people that are on the payroll who will be
getting royalties on the
material about my dying. It's nice.
Q: What's going to happen with your projects once you die?
TL: We are... it's up to
the people whether they want to keep on going as a
group. There are six different
groups that have a different product. They are
basically supported by the
money the product will bring in, but in the meantime
I am supporting them with
a salary. Yes of course I am leaving to my son and my
granddaughter who's here
a lot.
Of course the archives are
a great treasure. And sometime in the future we'll be
selling the archives. University
libraries, Stanford and University of Texas:
University of Texas has
the '50s, you walk in the Lady Bird Johnson incredible
Greek temple and there in
the lobby is the vilest, wonderful, sexy, homosexual
prose of William Burroughs!
So they've got the '50s and Stanford is building up
the '60s. They gave $1.2
million to Allen Ginsberg for his archives. So yes, my
archives...and that again
I want them to be taken care of. And I want as much
money as possible to go
to my family and to my friends.
Q: You have quite a number of things that are unpublished, correct?
TL: Oh yeah. I have about
30 books I have published, 30 are published, 40 are
... kinda hard.. depends
how you jumble them together.. At least 15 full-length
manuscripts on computer.
They're ready to go and we're gonna put em up and
people can finish them.
With those I think, "Well, I should go to work and
finish it" but there's no
such thing anymore as a finished book. The final work,
selling something as intellectual,
there's no fun in the concept of "final
product." You want to watch
it grow and change. I'm not going to work hard on
what's here. Everyone's
going to be co-author.
You can make your own version.
You can print it out and you'll be co-author with
me.
Q: This house, this situation
is amazing. I've been talking with people out
there and they say...
TL: What do they say?
Q: Oh they say how people
are always coming and going, people are always working
on projects between themselves
and with you and that there's a sort of contact
aura around this, a zone
of creativity that you've managed to keep going on, and
they're wondering who's
going to do that when you're gone?
TL: What do they say?
Q: They're not sure, but
that this is a function that you have had in this
house, when you were at
Harvard in the early '60s... that you have had...
TL: I started this when I
was at Berkeley. We had the Kaiser Foundation
interpersonal research and
the people there, when I packed up and went off, the
people there all went on
and got good jobs and we stayed in touch. Some of em
worked for universities,
many of em didn't. At Harvard, there we were working
with much more complicated
stuff, and the students that were there, four of them
were here last week for
a reunion. Very thrilling. Ram Dass, my co-"professor",
about eight of the graduate
students who went through all of our adventures
there, giving LSD to the
prisoners, at the church and on Good Friday. It was a
big project. They all changed
... they're not working regularly together, but
they stay together, yeah.
Same thing at Millbrook-the Merry Pranksters came to
visit.
Q: So you've always has this lifestyle, this situation of living...
TL: Yes, I've always had
what's called a "salon." Yes it's very important. You
see, typically artists,
writers, poets are outsiders-they see things
differently. So they can't
get tenured jobs, they can't be president, they give
up bureaucratic power for
the freedom.
Q: So they have to have someplace where they can come together.
TL: Yeah, and there's always
been a salon. In the early 18th century around
Harvard, it was Emerson
and Thoreau. And a woman too. And that was a very famous
school studying individualism.
It was us! They didn't have the technology. There
was some drug use.
Q: Opium?
TL: Yes, opium was it, they
would go over because of the hashish. In New York
City in the '50s, Allen
Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac started a salon situation...
They all knew each other.
Burroughs is still talking about it... and there were
musicians too and there
were painters. The same thing happened-uh yeah.
Q: What about a cyberspace salon? A virtual salon.
TL: Right now this house
is a salon. We're taking advantage of this new
technology so that a kid
in Tokyo can beam in. Yesterday for one hour on that
computer on there was a
picture of a group of friends in Tokyo and they would
talk for a while and then
wander off and keep going. This is probably the first
time in an individual private
home that you had this type of thing going. And
it's no longer any big deal-we
can play games, shine a flashlight into the
camera all that, but we
can upload and...
Q: Then your salon acts as a transformation to the next type of salon--
TL: It's a global salon.
Yup. [excited] We're doing something historic here! The
people that are there are
the hotshot cyperartists and cyberfigures of Japan and
they're all young. and right
now we've had one of our people over there for two
or three weeks and he's
going to come back loaded with technique and equipment
and he's teaching them a
lot. So our ties with Tokyo are extremely close.
Q: In the end, this is all gonna go back to McLuhan isn't, it?
TL: Yup. Awesome. Reading
McLuhan and his stuff from the 50s-it embarrasses me!!
In my offices, I have 36
aphorisms up on the wall to the left, go and take a
look at em before you leave....