HOWARD CAMPBELL: When he’d won, we decided to go shoot pool. Emily Kischell asked him if he used magic to roll the dice. He explained that it wasn’t magic, it was somehow real. He talked about finding the power we all have in us. When I asked him about the event, he didn’t remember much of what was said. Anyone else present would probably have a better recollection. But, we were all really stoned. Best way to stump a stoner? Ask them: “What were we just talking about?” Bucky was talking about breaking the boundaries of convention. He talked about them forming a brain trust or a corporation to do some sort of big business, the specifics were unknown to him, but he was confident we could figure something out. Stephan asked what kind of boundaries and Bucky lunged over and kissed him. He wasn’t accustomed to kissing men and neither was Stephan. Stephan went with the flow and waited to see what Bucky was getting at. Bucky talked about how we were blind because we saw life through our parents’ veils. He said that with a new perception, the world was ours for the building.
Later, Emily said she felt like she had witnessed a manifestation of newborn madness that was so viscous in the room that day that it could’ve been bottled. She said she was both worried and in awe, but more than anything, it was incredibly interesting to her. Emily stressed that the vibes in the room were in disturbance. She was convinced Bucky was suddenly seeing the world as it really was, that he’d snapped into a different dimension, and that she and her friends were still as confused as cavemen in a solar eclipse. She wanted to know if it was magic.
DR. WILLIAM FINK: What did she mean by magic?
HOWARD CAMPBELL: Bucky had paid his way through UCLA as a magician. Emily was asking if he was using sleight of hand to control the dice. He wasn’t using prestidigitation. He was certain he was somehow influencing the outcome of the dice. He viewed this skill as a science, a science rooted in the heart of our current world order. He knew the power to be real. He feared better practitioners would be invisible to him. He felt excited by the prospect of learning, yet vulnerable to those with mastery. I’m adding a lot of commentary. I’m synthesizing from his notes. Bucky saw the world as imbued with spirits. This was his first dose of the spiritual world manifested real. It was bound to happen. His mother is a mystic, having had a deep, active spiritual bent.
This period in Bucky’s life was filled with deep exploration. He had more notes on his interactions with Brian than any other college friend. Brian was kicked out of Bennington College for assaulting another student, having released saliva from his mouth onto another student who was taunting him. The guy he spat on was Justin Theroux, the character actor playing the producer in the Lynch movie Mullhuland Drive, and from Charlie’s Angels. Justin was very well liked. The act of spitting is an act of assault. Bullshit if you ask me, but I imagine the law was created for a reason. Brian wouldn’t have been expelled if he hadn’t been so disliked. He creeped most people out. But, Bucky liked him. A couple of months before the Cosmic Wipeout incident, Brian was expelled. A friend gave Bucky a play to read that Brian had written. Bucky thought it was great and wanted to meet him. The first couple of times Bucky tried to talk to him, he scurried away. On a whim, Bucky asked Brian if colors had meaning. The two talked for almost two days straight. Bucky wrote that he couldn’t remember most of their conversation, except that they talked colors, number theory, and about the functional meaning of grammar. On the second day, Bucky made a comment about the effect of hierarchy on learning. Brian responded, “So, you know Kaiser.” Bucky said, “Huh?” Bucky noted that Brian looked pissed. Brian said, “You’re shitting me.” Bucky assured him he didn’t know who Kaiser was. Brian looked spooked and wandered away. Bucky would see Brian and ask him, “Kaiser who?” and Brian would say something about Kaiser having been a great man in history. Bucky compiled a long list of Kaisers and showed them to Brian, who just laughed. Bucky wrote that they never really talked after that, between that conversation and Brian being expelled.
There is no date on these notes, but all of this evidently happened before April 6, 1993. Bucky interspersed these notes with the notes about the events that led up to his incarceration. That’s what Bucky called his stay in the Southern Vermont Mental Hospital, an incarceration. When I asked him about this, he asked, “What do you call it when the people in a building have the legal right to forcibly hold you captive?” This is plain weird considering he admitted himself into their care. But, Bucky had a different relationship with the idea of incarceration than most. He thought that when a person found themselves unable to act, that their actions were arrested. The physical means to this “incarceration” would have been cultural. In this way, people are prisoners of their own thoughts, but the bars are invisible, the bars are what we understand or hold to be true, the assumptions of their cosmographies. I should describe more of the specifics of his path to incarceration.
DR. WILLIAM FINK: That would be helpful.
HOWARD CAMPBELL: His journal reads, “April 6th, I made it back to my dorm with little incident.”
DR. WILLIAM FINK: This was after playing pool?
HOWARD CAMPBELL: No. They decided to play pool, but a lot happened between playing Cosmic Wipeout and playing pool. Bucky describes that, on the way to his dorm room before playing pool, his head was clear and that he had extreme focus because he was on a mission. He had found the Sufis. In the privacy of his dorm room, he rolled a die as he reshaped words in his head. He thought hard.
He decided he needed to pack. He surmised he needed gear that was versatile and traveled light. He filled a fanny pack with a credit card, a passport, what cash he had around, a toothbrush, a lighter, Chapstick, the key to his dorm, three packs of cigarettes and a comb. He was ready.
Sufism was relatively new to Bucky. He’d been introduced to the idea, the meme, at Mildred’s parents’ house. Mildred was a girlfriend he never fully let go of. Maybe not even now. It’s hard to tell since he’s catatonic. Although self-proclaimed Sufis had their own definition, Bucky said that Hank, a warrior of the newly found recycling initiative of the late ‘80s, described it to him best. Hank surmised Sufism was derived from Sophism and was the art of seeing things more clearly, more simply. Hank was wrong about the name being derived from Sophism. But, he understood Sufism. Bucky used to tell Hank stories on his morning route collecting aluminum cans. Hank would tell him stories of his own.
Sufis refer to themselves as idiots, and refer to their teachings as the wisdom of the idiots. The underlying principle of Sufism is to not take one’s self too seriously. Sufis call themselves idiots in a loving way. Idiot refers to acknowledging when one’s perception has been off and one has been an “idiot.” This appreciation, as opposed to resistance, leads to clearer sight, allowing one to appreciate having had a misperception as opposed to resenting having been wrong. Sufis teach through stories. Many of the stories have the same lead character, Nasrudin, a fool. For example, Nasrudin was sitting on his porch getting wet in the rain. A passerby asked why he didn’t go inside the house. Nasrudin explained that his roof was leaking and he would get wet either way. The passerby asked why he didn’t fix the leak. Nasrudin explained that when it was raining he couldn’t do work on his house, and that when it was sunny, it didn’t leak, so it didn’t seem like it needed fixing. This story amused Bucky enough for him to repeat it to me several times.
DR. WILLIAM FINK: Would Bucky repeat many things?
HOWARD CAMPBELL: Bucky collected stories like some people collect jokes, and similarly, he would tell them often. At school, I don’t know how many times I heard his story of Great Sphinx of Giza. I didn’t know where he got the story from until I began reading Fingerprints of the Gods.
DR. WILLIAM FINK: The book on the back of the Sphinx in the photo?
1 comment:
i'm jealous
i'd like to make a movie
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
When he’d won, we decided to go shoot pool. Emily Kischell asked him if he used magic to roll the dice. He explained that it wasn’t magic, it was somehow real. He talked about finding the power we all have in us. When I asked him about the event, he didn’t remember much of what was said. Anyone else present would probably have a better recollection. But, we were all really stoned. Best way to stump a stoner? Ask them: “What were we just talking about?”
Bucky was talking about breaking the boundaries of convention. He talked about them forming a brain trust or a corporation to do some sort of big business, the specifics were unknown to him, but he was confident we could figure something out. Stephan asked what kind of boundaries and Bucky lunged over and kissed him. He wasn’t accustomed to kissing men and neither was Stephan. Stephan went with the flow and waited to see what Bucky was getting at. Bucky talked about how we were blind because we saw life through our parents’ veils. He said that with a new perception, the world was ours for the building.
Later, Emily said she felt like she had witnessed a manifestation of newborn madness that was so viscous in the room that day that it could’ve been bottled. She said she was both worried and in awe, but more than anything, it was incredibly interesting to her. Emily stressed that the vibes in the room were in disturbance. She was convinced Bucky was suddenly seeing the world as it really was, that he’d snapped into a different dimension, and that she and her friends were still as confused as cavemen in a solar eclipse. She wanted to know if it was magic.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
What did she mean by magic?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Bucky had paid his way through UCLA as a magician. Emily was asking if he was using sleight of hand to control the dice. He wasn’t using prestidigitation. He was certain he was somehow influencing the outcome of the dice. He viewed this skill as a science, a science rooted in the heart of our current world order. He knew the power to be real. He feared better practitioners would be invisible to him. He felt excited by the prospect of learning, yet vulnerable to those with mastery. I’m adding a lot of commentary. I’m synthesizing from his notes.
Bucky saw the world as imbued with spirits. This was his first dose of the spiritual world manifested real. It was bound to happen. His mother is a mystic, having had a deep, active spiritual bent.
This period in Bucky’s life was filled with deep exploration. He had more notes on his interactions with Brian than any other college friend. Brian was kicked out of Bennington College for assaulting another student, having released saliva from his mouth onto another student who was taunting him. The guy he spat on was Justin Theroux, the character actor playing the producer in the Lynch movie Mullhuland Drive, and from Charlie’s Angels. Justin was very well liked. The act of spitting is an act of assault. Bullshit if you ask me, but I imagine the law was created for a reason. Brian wouldn’t have been expelled if he hadn’t been so disliked. He creeped most people out. But, Bucky liked him. A couple of months before the Cosmic Wipeout incident, Brian was expelled. A friend gave Bucky a play to read that Brian had written. Bucky thought it was great and wanted to meet him. The first couple of times Bucky tried to talk to him, he scurried away. On a whim, Bucky asked Brian if colors had meaning. The two talked for almost two days straight. Bucky wrote that he couldn’t remember most of their conversation, except that they talked colors, number theory, and about the functional meaning of grammar. On the second day, Bucky made a comment about the effect of hierarchy on learning. Brian responded, “So, you know Kaiser.” Bucky said, “Huh?” Bucky noted that Brian looked pissed. Brian said, “You’re shitting me.” Bucky assured him he didn’t know who Kaiser was. Brian looked spooked and wandered away. Bucky would see Brian and ask him, “Kaiser who?” and Brian would say something about Kaiser having been a great man in history. Bucky compiled a long list of Kaisers and showed them to Brian, who just laughed. Bucky wrote that they never really talked after that, between that conversation and Brian being expelled.
There is no date on these notes, but all of this evidently happened before April 6, 1993. Bucky interspersed these notes with the notes about the events that led up to his incarceration. That’s what Bucky called his stay in the Southern Vermont Mental Hospital, an incarceration. When I asked him about this, he asked, “What do you call it when the people in a building have the legal right to forcibly hold you captive?” This is plain weird considering he admitted himself into their care. But, Bucky had a different relationship with the idea of incarceration than most. He thought that when a person found themselves unable to act, that their actions were arrested. The physical means to this “incarceration” would have been cultural. In this way, people are prisoners of their own thoughts, but the bars are invisible, the bars are what we understand or hold to be true, the assumptions of their cosmographies. I should describe more of the specifics of his path to incarceration.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
That would be helpful.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
His journal reads, “April 6th, I made it back to my dorm with little incident.”
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
This was after playing pool?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
No. They decided to play pool, but a lot happened between playing Cosmic Wipeout and playing pool. Bucky describes that, on the way to his dorm room before playing pool, his head was clear and that he had extreme focus because he was on a mission. He had found the Sufis. In the privacy of his dorm room, he rolled a die as he reshaped words in his head. He thought hard.
He decided he needed to pack. He surmised he needed gear that was versatile and traveled light. He filled a fanny pack with a credit card, a passport, what cash he had around, a toothbrush, a lighter, Chapstick, the key to his dorm, three packs of cigarettes and a comb. He was ready.
Sufism was relatively new to Bucky. He’d been introduced to the idea, the meme, at Mildred’s parents’ house. Mildred was a girlfriend he never fully let go of. Maybe not even now. It’s hard to tell since he’s catatonic. Although self-proclaimed Sufis had their own definition, Bucky said that Hank, a warrior of the newly found recycling initiative of the late ‘80s, described it to him best. Hank surmised Sufism was derived from Sophism and was the art of seeing things more clearly, more simply. Hank was wrong about the name being derived from Sophism. But, he understood Sufism. Bucky used to tell Hank stories on his morning route collecting aluminum cans. Hank would tell him stories of his own.
Sufis refer to themselves as idiots, and refer to their teachings as the wisdom of the idiots. The underlying principle of Sufism is to not take one’s self too seriously. Sufis call themselves idiots in a loving way. Idiot refers to acknowledging when one’s perception has been off and one has been an “idiot.” This appreciation, as opposed to resistance, leads to clearer sight, allowing one to appreciate having had a misperception as opposed to resenting having been wrong. Sufis teach through stories. Many of the stories have the same lead character, Nasrudin, a fool. For example, Nasrudin was sitting on his porch getting wet in the rain. A passerby asked why he didn’t go inside the house. Nasrudin explained that his roof was leaking and he would get wet either way. The passerby asked why he didn’t fix the leak. Nasrudin explained that when it was raining he couldn’t do work on his house, and that when it was sunny, it didn’t leak, so it didn’t seem like it needed fixing. This story amused Bucky enough for him to repeat it to me several times.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Would Bucky repeat many things?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Bucky collected stories like some people collect jokes, and similarly, he would tell them often. At school, I don’t know how many times I heard his story of Great Sphinx of Giza.
I didn’t know where he got the story from until I began reading Fingerprints of the Gods.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
The book on the back of the Sphinx in the photo?
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