Tagged with Literature

Where is the intersection between literature and healing? Between narrative and neuroscience? Between writing and life? . . . It is a little like tracing the boundary of self, like scrying a mirror for distinctions between mind and matter. What fearful, fitful relations exist between these sister terms? (more)

Introducing our new column of book, video and music reviews. In this edition: Cloud Atlas, Two Fingers Stunt Rhythms, The Moneyless Manifesto, Dreams and Guided Imagery, Genetic Roulette: The Gamble of Our Lives, The Secrets of Alchemy, Video Game Play and Consciousness, and Terence McKenna Omnibus 2012.    (more)

A generation of avant-garde writers are making conscious magazine headlines and electrifying the festival-speakers' circuit. Featuring a brutally honest look at the shadow self, and society at large, these books are not fluffy New Age reads. They are harder to define, hosting a multidimensional mix of spiritual awakening, new media activism, punk attitude, Burning Man aesthetic, and Occupy ideologies.  (more)

Perhaps it hit me when Time Magazine named their 2006 Person of the Year. You. It was so simple, so obvious. The decision must have been based largely on the runaway success of YouTube. Much else was changing about the ways we communicate and spend our free time and energy. But even that simple switch from passive to active media consumption was one that, I felt sure, would forever transform our society. (more)

They wear pleasant looks on very white faces and hand out literature. They also wear helmets and some of the boys are big enough to play for the L.A. Rams. They are ready: members of the American Nazi Party. Well, it's Hollywood . . . (more)

In the mind, sound is not so neatly sectioned off from space, touch, words, or image. One bleeds into the next, slipping and sliding in a spiral of associations. Digital media has already begun to reflect qualities of consciousness that had been beyond the means of artists to capture. In coming years, this will only accelerate. (more)

Fifty years after its first broadcast, an interview with Aldous Huxley is presented to a new generation.

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Rudy Wurlitzer's first novel in over twenty years, The Drop Edge of Yonder, is a strange metaphysical saunter through the Wild West. (more)

I get asked what I think about sampling a lot. Think of this essay as a soundbite for the sonically perplexed. (more)

Last week British science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke passed away, but he's left us a moving video to remember him by. (more)

Hans Silvester presents an astounding collection of photographs of two African tribes who use plants and other natural materials to create elaborate fashions. (more)

RU Sirius is a writer, musician, and one-time presidential candidate best known for co-founding and editing the early '90s psychedelic cyberculture magazine Mondo 2000. In this interview, RU explores Open Source politics, transhumanism, and the wisdom of Robert Anton Wilson. "There's this group mutation that seems to have grown out of the counterculture – a new and possibly evolutionary, collaborationalist mind-meld." (more)

Old categories for media are falling to the wayside as audience taste broadens and the borders between genres blur. We also lose our group identities in the process. Is that a triumph or tragedy? (more)

Paul Krassner, creator of the classic satircal zine The Realist and co-founder of the Yippies!, was one of the funniest and most poignant satirical writers of the 1960s counterculture. In this interview he reflects on his 50 years of activism, and offers thoughts on today's world. "My advice for the future is to always remember that the political system is merely a buffer between the status quo and the force of evolution." (more)

When first published in 1968, Carlos Castaneda's The Teachings of Don Juan was hailed as a groundbreaking ethnographic account of Native American shamanism. With fame came scrutiny, however, and a debate clouded Castaneda's legacy. But there's no doubt that both Castaneda and Don Juan shaped the Western world's understanding of entheogens and Native American culture. (more)

Abbie Hoffman's classic guide to counterculture is now available for free on the Internet. (more)

David Lynch's book Catching the Big Fish addresses creativity, meditation, and the human condition. (more)

Reality Sandwich conributor Douglas Rushkoff discusses his acclaimed comic book series Testament – a hypertextual, progressive reworking of Biblical stories into modern day relevance. "The Bible tells the story of how a faulty model can get mistaken for reality, and how that can slowly rob us of our humanity. It seem these myths are not only relevant, but living." (more)

Portable Po-Mo. Disposable Derrida. Foucault-To-Go. How 365 neatly-numbered, digestible action statements can heal the fractured post-modern self. (more)

 

 

 

 

Reality Sandwich and Bluestockings present One City: A Declaration of Interdependence, a reading by Ethan Nichtern on December 2. (more)