Open thread 003
Interplanetary Fest & The Santa Fe Institute, Psychoactive literature, and the legendary Art Bell
Happy Wednesday, friends. Let’s get right to it - there’s a lot going on!
The Santa Fe Institute is the epicenter of complexity studies: an interdisciplinary research organization seeking patterns in complex physical, biological, technology, and cultural worlds. In addition to their world-class educational resources to learn the basics of complexity … they’re also hosts to the Interplanetary Festival.
The Interplanetary Festival (IPFest) is streaming free October 22-23, 2022: keynotes, panels, and avant-garde performances. Follow@sfiscience on Twitter, they’re updating event information on this thread.
The stacked lineup includes Ted Chiang (author, Stories of Your Life (the basis of Arrival), James Gleick (Chaos, Time Travel, The Information), and a live theremin virtuouso performance. I’ll be tuning in all weekend in various states of consciousness, and hope some of you can join, too.
Recently reminded of the sheer brilliance of Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World. Probably the greatest novel I’ve read in the last decade; the enormity of its brilliance forced me to periodically abandon it, overwhelmed at its beauty and richness. It’s the closest literary experience I’ve found to the entire experience of spiritual emergence. If you like magical realism, quantum physics, non-duality, and parting the veil: you will also love it.
Related: I’m on a search for literature so psychoactive it requires integration after reading it.
Some current selections: Alien Information Theory by Andrew Gallimore, The Red Book by Carl Jung, The Baghavad Gita (Easwaran translation), Trialogues with Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake (Chaos, Creativity, & Cosmic Consciousness; The Evolutionary Mind)
Have any other recommendations? Let me know.
Ten years of Lord Huron’s Lonesome Dreams. Cosmic country, astral western… the point is, Ben Schneider gets it. Dreams of desert dunes, open skies, guitar-twang, and the mystery of it all. Check out “The Man Who Lives Forever”
I joined Steven Cambien of Truthseekers for a fun, high-energy conversation about the glory days of Coast to Coast AM, aliens in the freezer, and the extraordinary showmanship of the King of Nye, Art Bell. Check it out here.
Went to NYC last weekend for An Inquiry into Anomalous Experience and the Phenomenon, a one-day symposium hosted by Jay Christopher King and James Iandoli. Absolutely stacked lineup, far more academic than I’d expected.
A second symposium is coming on December 3, 2022, also in NYC. Details TBA, though the early lineup includes Leslie Kean and Whitley Streiber. I’ll be there, and will make sure to stay for the afterparties 🛸
I’m definitely a ‘very woo skeptic,’ or a ‘very skeptical woo,’ but the opportunity to coalition-build and connect with others was a blast. Great to meet everyone, and if you see me in December, please say hello!
An aside: taking the train with a bunch of ComicCon people made being a UFO person feel very normal.
This Friday (October 14, 2022) @ 7p ET/4p PT, I’ll be joining Eric Lukes on UFO Classified to talk about the need for ethnographic research on experiencers.
The Invisible Night School has been on a brief hiatus, but we’ll be back soon - and moving to Wednesday evenings, 9p ET/6p PT. Like, share, subscribe, blah blah blah, for elevated conversation with Campbell Moreira, Nick Coffin-Callis, Luis Cayetano, and myself (Leah Prime).
Finally: I’m working on a long-form piece about holotropic breathwork and the retreat experience, and another on - loosely - ‘what we talk about when we talk about UFOs.’ Those should come out soon.Ish.
Until next time, friends - be well.
Yours,
Leah