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Is this Grant Morrison's Barbelith?

 
 
Nobody's girl
14:55 / 20.03.04
So I'm reading a transcript of an interview with Terrance McKenna here's the link to the whole interview and this paragraph in particular lights a bulb above my head-

"What happens to me when I smoke DMT is, there's a kind of going toward it. There's a sequella of events which lead to the antechamber of the mystery. I mean, you take a toke, you feel strange. Your whole body feels odd. You take a second toke, all the oxygen seems to have been pumped out of the room. Everything jumps into clarity. It's that visual acuity thing. You take a third toke if you're able, and then you lay back, and you see this thing which looks like a rose or a chyrsanthemum, this orange spinning flowerlike thing. It takes about fifteen seconds to form, and it's like a membrane. And then, you break through it. You break through it, and then you're in this place, and there's an enormous cheer which goes up as you pass through this membrane. Some of you may know the Pink Floyd song about how the gnomes have learned a new way to say hoo-ray? They're waiting. And you burst into this place, and you're saying, you know, 'Geez, you know, this stuff is really speedy.' (laughter) That's like describing a Space Shuttle launching as noisy, you know? (laughter) And you say, 'Am I all right? Am I all right?' That's the first question, and so then you run your mind around the track, and you say, 'Hmm. Heartbeat normal? Yeah, normal, heartbeat normal. Pulse normal? Breathing? Breathe breathe breathe, yes.' But what's right here, right here and from here out is this thing which, no matter how much science fiction you've done, no matter how much William Burroughs you've read, no matter how much time you've spent in the company of the weird, the bizarre, the autre, and the peculiar, you weren't ready. (laughter) And it's completely real. It's in a way more real than the contents of ordinary reality, because, see how the shadows here are muted and there's a lot of transitional zones from one color to another and so forth? This isn't like that. This is crystalline, clear, solid, you can see the light reflected in the depths of these objects, and everything is very brightly colored, and everything is moving very, very rapidly."
 
 
Nobody's girl
15:09 / 20.03.04
"and you see this thing which looks like a rose or a chyrsanthemum, this orange spinning flowerlike thing"

 
 
Nobody's girl
18:00 / 20.03.04
bump
 
 
Bed Head
19:28 / 20.03.04
Well come on then, tell us what you think of this, Diziets. Get the ball rolling. Not all of us smoke DMT, you know.

It’s not the only McKenna reference in GM’s Invisibles though. And, as it’s a 1992 interview it’s certainly possible he’d have been reading this stuff while he was conceiving the series.
 
 
Nobody's girl
19:43 / 20.03.04
Well sure, I think Morrison has read McKenna. Thing that I'm interested about is whether he read and referenced McKenna for the big red Barbelith or whether he had a similar experience to McKenna and is referencing personal experience independently. I think it's a wonderful correlation either way.
 
 
Bed Head
20:00 / 20.03.04
From Tom Coates’ interview with Morrison on this very site:

While the idea was still being formed, however, something happened to him. He describes it (with a grin) as a "bizarre experience in Katmandu", as "an encounter - a contact experience - with something else - something from another level of reality".

"The Invisibles is my attempt to try and understand this experience," he explains. "I have read every piece of literature about abductions that I can find. I read Terence McKenna's work - it was the same - and Philip K Dick describes a similar experience. That really became what the Invisibles were about - this event that happened to me."


You already know this, right?
 
 
Nobody's girl
20:03 / 20.03.04
Sadly, I haven't had the time to read every interview on this site
 
 
Bed Head
20:23 / 20.03.04
I’m always apologising to you! Wasn’t having a go. This ‘contact experience' of Grant's is, like, key. He’s talked about it in interview after interview (in fact, I think he mentioned it in the text page in the back of Issue 1. All those many years ago..) but I don’t know how familiar you are with all the lore that surrounds the comic, or indeed if you’ve been reading the (shudder) trades. That you’ve dug up an interview with McKenna from the same period, in which he describes such an experience using the same imagery that GM went on to use in the comic: well, maybe you’re looking at a primary source sort-of-thing here. It'd certainly be interesting if any DMT users on this site can describe anything similar.
 
 
---
20:32 / 20.03.04
From Tom Coates’ interview with Morrison on this very site:

Whereabouts is this? Can i have a link to it?
 
 
Bed Head
20:43 / 20.03.04
Blimey, Jack! I would have thought you of all people would have read every Grant Morrison interview on the site. At least twice.

Here’s part one.

And here’s part two.

You can google your way thru Barbelith history now, remember.
 
 
Nobody's girl
21:30 / 20.03.04
Tom, m'dear, I must come over more prickly than I mean to, I'm sorry.
I found the McKenna interview on an excellent website, purely by accident using the random button, that I'd reccomend to all 'lithers Deoxy.org
 
 
---
21:32 / 20.03.04
Haha, well i could go and read all of his interviews but i don't wanna start obsessing over the guy, i fear doing that so i'm just reading one every now and then.

Thanks man!
 
 
PatrickMM
02:52 / 24.03.04
There's a lot on Grant's experience in Anarchy for the Masses. He talks a lot about how the series completely changed as a result of what he experienced then.
 
  
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