Fraser Forever

"Pronoia: The sneaking suspicion that people are conspiring behind your back to help you." - Fraser Clark

Here's an off-the-cuff eulogy for psychedelic subculture luminary Fraser Clark, who passed on January 21.  He had been diagnosed with some form of terminal cancer just a couple months ago.  You can catch a YouTube video of a healing circle held for Fraser at a recent Megatripolis reunion party.  It may not have quite worked but how many Maha Zippy Bards get to live through their own rave wake party?

Fraser's not so well known on this side of the pond but he played a pivotal role in connecting the 60s hippy and UK festival culture with the rave scene. His magazine Encyclopedia Psychedelica International was one of the few such publications in the 80s (anywhere).  Towards its end, Fraser identified the acidhouse scene as the second chapter of the 60s he had long been predicting, and hooked up with young designers, the Scooby Brothers from the acidhouse scene, who helped him design the blockbuster EVOLUTION coffee table color manifesto of philosophical rave culture.

Frazer also coined the phrase ZIPPY - Zen Inspired Pagan Professional, organized many a zippy picnic at Hempstead Heath, made the cover of WIRED magazine and piloted the massive and massively influential Megatropolis parties, which were jam-packed with psychedelic gurus, activist networking and psytrance beats.  He also published the smaller Zippy Times; and later, his ranty and typographically mad UP! email blog/zine/digest.

Alas, lamely, I never got to experience Megatripolis, but did have a chance to stay with Fraser at his Hempstead flat. The Megatripolis model was definitely a big influence of my own Learning Parties and related events. Fraser visited LA a year or two after 9/11 and I remember him pointing out, "Hey, its just a few hundred of them versus millions of us -- why be so paranoid?"

Fraser's last work in progress was "Megatripolis@Forever," an ambitious multimedia epic/mythos sort-a-thing about ourselves in "the future perfect state." The heroes of this work "time-dance" back into the present moment to save the planet from an apocalypse created by "the Concrete Boys."  The whole escapade begins in 1995 at a club called Megatripolis when a group of ravers suddenly stumble into time-dancing, and are met by a group of people welcoming them to the future and asking how come it took them so long. And with that, the Legend, begins.