[Landline] Circling back around
Hermits, Diggers, Ted Nugent, J Mascis/Geddy Ruxpin, Erik Davis summer school, more
Hello friends,
A bunch of follow-ups this time…
ITEM! Brother Wayne Kramer of the MC5, memorialized in the Feb. 3 Landline, has been given a loving tribute by Ted Nugent in a moving piece by Brian McCollum at the Detroit Free Press. “I was honored to be his friend and I was honored to play music with him,” said Nugent. “And I was a lucky man to be there when the MC5 let it rip.” Read the article here.
ITEM! Author David Toop’s forthcoming Two-Headed Doctor: Listening For Ghosts in Dr. John’s Gris-Gris, drooled over in the Jan. 22 Landline, is now available for pre-order in the USA from amazon and bookshop.org. Publication date: July 9. Not too long. Get it!
ITEM! The work of the late Jane Wodening, recommended in the Dec. 29, 2023 Landline, has been striking a chord with many Landline readers. One subscriber had this to say:
At your previous recommendation I have been listening to Jane Wodening's book Living Up There. Absolutely my favorite thing in this new year. Generally I don't listen to books, I prefer reading. But in this case her voice is central to my enjoyment. I'm from Colorado and am only slightly younger than she was, so the cultural and language connection is solid. I also used to spend a lot of time in the mountains and Boulder and Nederland in the 70s. I know that co-op! This is an absolute gem. Almost done, and after that on to her short stories.
Me too! Intrigued readers can investigate the audiobook of Living Up There here.
ITEM! In a similar vein, I recommend checking out Hermits, a gorgeous 2015 documentary film directed by Shiping He, Peng Fu and Chengyu Zhou that chronicles visits by American translator Bill Porter (aka Red Pine) to Chinese hermit monastics. Here’s a decent synopsis from dharma-documentaries.net:
In 1989 Bill Porter, who had become well-known as the American translator of Chinese Zen works, Red Pine, went to China to see if there was a living tradition of practitioners of the ancient meditation traditions he had been translating. In the Zhongnan mountains near Xi-an he found that there were still dozens of people practicing in the ancient ways, leading very solitary and simple lives deep in the mountains, and he wrote a book about his experiences, called Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits.
This book was also translated into Chinese and became very popular, and when Bill returned to the same mountains in 2014 he was very well received. This film is a record of his meetings 25 years after his original encounters, mainly with newer disciples on the path.
The film, which consists mainly of conversations between Bill and the hermits, is itself very contemplative and supports well the theme of its main story. Being beautifully, calmly and simply shot and edited, it brings to life the enduring essence of the monastic life as it is currently lived by both Buddhism and Taoist, lay and monastic, and male and female practioners in contemporary China.
I’ve been watching this one very slowly over the last few late nights on youtube. Wonderful, sensitive, beautiful filmmaking that could change your life, or at least clarify it. Highest possible recommendation for contemplatives and the hermit-curious.
ITEM! Longtime Diggers archivist/historian Eric Noble has posted an edited transcript of a previously unpublished/unseen interview with Arthur Lisch, conducted in 1998 by filmmakers Alice Gaillard and Céline Deransart for their documentary film Les Diggers de San Francisco, released that same year. For whatever reason, none of the footage from the interview made it into Les Diggers’ final edit.
Lisch, a lifelong artist-activist who played a major role in the Diggers’ activities, died in 2020. This is the only interview that I’m aware of where he reflected on the Diggers period at any length. I am so grateful that Eric was able to recover it, and it was my privilege to assist in the transcribing and (minor) editing.
Read the interview here: Arthur Lisch – Interview by Alice Gaillard and Céline Deransart, 1998
ITEM! Poet/author/mensch Jerry Martien has edited A Watershed Runs Through You: Essays, Talks, and Reflections on Salmon, Restoration, and Community, a gorgeously appointed print compilation of Freeman House’s writings on ecology and bioregionalism. Longtime Arthur readers may remember many of the essays featured herein from when they were presented as part of Freeman’s weekly “Sunday Lecture” series that we published on the Arthur website in 2010-2011.
Amongst other things in his long and varied life, Freeman edited Innerspace, a mid-1960s independent press magazine for the nascent psychedelic community…
… as "Boo-Hoo" leader of the Neo-American Church, presided over the marriage of Abbie and Anita Hoffman at Central Park…
…and was a member of both New York City’s Group Image and the San Francisco Diggers, before moving to Humboldt County, where he labored across four decades to restore the Mattole River watershed. Freeman’s award-winning 2000 book Totem Salmon: Life Lessons From Another Species was blurbed by Gary Snyder thus: “A grave and personal book, both personal and cosmic.”
I loved and admired this man, who died in 2018, and am so grateful to Jerry and Empty Bowl Press for bringing A Watershed Runs Through You to the public. And so is Fup author Jim Dodge who has blurbed the book like so:
"Endless bows of gratitude to Jerry Martien for his savvy salvage of Freeman House's scattered essays and talks. Freeman's essays, along with his longer works, are absolutely fundamental to understanding bioregionalism, living-in-place, living-by-life, or just drawing breath in these unsettled times where humans must deal with the damages wrought by everything from dammed rivers to internal combustion. Freeman offers insights into clearing the wreckage as well as a constant sense of delight in dealing with the natural world; we neglect his heart-root wisdom at our own peril."
ITEM! New comfort food for the inner child's third eye courtesy J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr) and animator Geddy Ruxpin…
ITEM! Our friend Erik Davis checked in with Landline the other day to share that he and Christian Greer will be co-teaching a two-week in -personal seminar in Amsterdam this June called “The Psychedelic Universe: Global Perspectives on Higher Consciousness." Here’s the promotional text:
Co-taught by Dr. J. Christian Greer and Dr. Erik Davis, this seminar offers learners from a variety of backgrounds something they cannot find anywhere else: a comprehensive examination from a humanities perspective of psychedelics across time, space, and cultures. The program is designed for advanced Bachelor and Master's students, PhD students and Post-docs, interested self-starters, as well as professionals working as clinicians, therapists, educators and psychedelic guides.
…and here’s a short video from Drs. Greer and Davis introducing the course…
…and for more information, head on over to summerschool.uva.nl
That’s all folks,
Jay Babcock
Arizona
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Oops, this bit dropped out of the text for some reason. The 2009 Bill Porter/Red Pine book is "Road to Heaven: Encounters With Chinese Hermits." https://amzn.to/3I3WWyp
Fuck Ted Nugent