Playlist for WORD THE WORD, Part 1: Meta Psych

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1. Tripping, The Pretty Things 3:27
2. Do You Hear The Words, Magic Carpet  3:01
3. Psychedelic Ride, Ides 2:19
4. Mobius Trip, H.P. Lovecraft  2:45
5. Talk About It, Harumi 4:15
6. My Eyes Are Getting Heavy, Parish Hall 5:16    
7. Flight Reaction, The Calico Wall 2:41
8. Voices Green and Purple, The Bees 1:37       
9. Workshop, Hunger 4:20
10. I, The Electric Prunes 5:14    
11. Your Mind Is, The Luv'd Ones 3:25
12. Listen to the Silence, Blossom Toes 4:51

Anna Mayer's Script for WORD THE WORD, Part 1: Meta Psych

Let your body sink into the floor…Get comfortable….Shift and move a little to let your body settle deeper into the ground…I welcome you to close your eyes for the duration of this session….This will help you focus your attention on the sounds in this room. Be comforted that at this time, everything is audible. Nothing else matters right now….Everything is okay…There is nowhere to go and nothing to do…You are here to listen.

 

Don’t worry or become agitated if you don’t catch everything I say if or if you miss some of the lyrics to the songs we’re going to listen to tonight… It is natural to flow in and out of conscious hearing…The deepest part of you, your core self, is always listening….The body protects itself from flashbacks, and it lets itself have them when necessary…Whatever your experience today, this practice will still work…There is no way to listen incorrectly. Do not try too hard.

 

You are in a safe environment… To begin, let’s bring our minds to our ears. Take your right hand and raise it to your right ear. Gently run your fingers along the edge of your ear, down and around, then up and over. Do this several times. Now squeeze your earlobe for a few seconds at a time. Do this twice more. Take your index finger and insert it into your ear, making a counter clockwise circle slowly. Do this several times sensually. Now take your right palm and press it firmly against your ear so that all sound is blocked. Remove your palm. Press again. Remove your palm.

 

Let’s say hello to our tympanic membranes and our cochlea, and with gratitude wake them for this listening session. Focus your attention on the middle cavity of your right ear, where your tympanic membrane, or eardrum, rests at a 90-degree angle. Send a thought or some energy to this thin, tough, flexible, fibrous membrane, and then keep it moving to your bony, spiral-shaped cochlea.

 

Let’s move to our left ear. Raise your left hand to your left ear. Gently run your fingers along the edge of your ear, down and around, then up and over. Do this several times. Now squeeze your earlobe for a few seconds at a time. Do this twice more. Take your index finger and insert it into your ear, making a counter clockwise circle slowly. Do this several times sensually. Take your left palm and press it firmly against your ear so that all sound is blocked. Remove your palm. Press again. Remove your palm.

 

Focus your attention on the middle cavity of your left ear. Send a thought or some energy to your left eardrum, asking in gratitude for its attention over the next hour. Send another thought or more energy to your cochlea. Ask it to transmit these songs to your brain smoothly and clearly.

 

I’m very glad you’re here this evening. Returning to the late sixties is not something I ask people to do casually. Given that this is a 1960s- themed contemporary art event held in 2010, I was going to make a statement of qualification at the start. But I think we’re post- anti-heyday nostalgia enough for that….

 

Let’s begin with a track that heralds the beginning of the psychedelic era. The Pretty Things released this surf-y song in 1967, and it very simply asks us to take note of what many at the time were doing with enthusiasm.

 

1. TRIPPING 3:27
The Pretty Things, 1967

 

 

I ask you now to consider dropping in to see what condition your condition is in. Enthusiasts will always want you to join them doing whatever it is that turns them on. For example, I asked you to join me here tonight. It is hard to understand what it is that’s exactly so good about, say, rock climbing, eating dumplings, or taking acid when someone is only telling you about it with their words.

 

I’ve woken up from a vivid dream and described it in detail to a friend, only to not be able to remember anything about the narrative only a few days later. This is the only time I can remember where words take themselves back. I don’t mind; I sort of like it that there’s a part of my subconscious that my friend knows and I don’t.

 

In this 1972 song by Magic Carpet, our singer uses language to remind us of other modes of reception besides analyzing language. Here is ‘Do You Hear the Words’:

 

2. DO YOU HEAR THE WORDS 3:00
Magic Carpet, 1972

 

 

Just be where you are and see the picture/ Just be where you are and hear sound./Minds grow from the inside and the outside,/Just in being now is truth found. These lyrics propose—in the negative--that there is experience beyond the linguistic or narrative. Yes. Yes. I believe. But just—just—so I can really understand it-- Tell me again?

 

3. PSYCHEDELIC RIDE 2:19
Ides, 1967

 

 

Thanks to the Ides for that garage psych nugget. Rather than continue to try to describe the psychedelic experience, their singer asks us to join him so we can live through the ‘wild screaming ride’ ourselves. He wants to spread the word, but eventually deems the word to be inadequate. Using language he calls for our participation in what can’t be described through language.

 

The band, HP Lovecraft’s song, Mobius Trip, introduces in its title the idea of the seemingly infinite expansive feeling that comes with a trip’s shift in perception. Non-orientability: how do you register that you have this? I am mobius. This is mobius. What is mobius? Here, let me sound you.

 

4. MOBIUS TRIP 2:46
HP Lovecraft

 

 

In our next track, Harumi from Japan stresses his songwriting and performance as a way for him to gain clarity in the face of disorientation or in response to inadequate accounts of other people’s experiences. He describes his need to try new things for himself in the song ‘Talk About It.’

 

5. TALK ABOUT IT 4:15
Harumi, 1968 (Japanese)

 

 

I’m gonna. I wanna. I tried. I realized. I wondered. I’m still gonna. I’ve got to. I must. Thank you Haruki for your unbridled statements of intention. His is a song about intention. It doesn’t describe anything but desire. The history of pop music is about articulating states of desire…the object of that desire has shifted here, from a romantic interest to a time-based experience with unknown results. The song uses words to pose questions and propose experience…

 

In this next track of a hard psych-rock variety, Parish Hall expresses its reluctance to speak about new experiences, but the band agrees with Haruki that musical articulation is valuable. From 1970, here’s what the band says:

 

6. MY EYES ARE GETTING HEAVY 5:16
Parish Hall, released 1970

 

 

Those wailing, cock-rocking guitar jams are well introduced by our singer’s description of his reluctance to think or talk about what he’s experiencing. What do the guitar jams say? Not much? But they mean more from having been framed by the lyrics’ insistence that language does not suffice—‘Nothing I can do or say.’ In relation to language, the song’s instrumental takes on meaning.

 

In the face of trauma, however, sometimes words and even metaphor become more useful. In this next tune, the Calico Wall uses an extended yet familiar metaphor to process a bad trip. The distancing effects of metaphor both protect and instruct…whether we can believe our speaker about whether he’ll never ‘quote” ‘fly’ again is another story. Here is Flight Reaction, by The Calico Wall, from 1967:

 

7. FLIGHT REACTION 2:41
The Calico Wall, 1967 garage psych

 

 

Like The Calico Wall, The Bees go on a bad trip, too. Theirs involved some terrifying ‘Voices of Green and Purple’:

 

8. VOICES GREEN AND PURPLE 1:37
The Bees, 1966

 

 

That track rides the fine line between description and reenactment. The containing effects of language can’t quite do the trip justice, so The Bees briefly—very briefly—reenact the green and purple voices to give us a taste of the experience.

 

The psychedelic experience is one that’s been characterized primarily through metaphor from its inception—the name of the experience is ‘a trip.’ The journey metaphor indicates a continuum of time—there is a past and a present, and while the future may be the focus of intention it is still unknown. The trip metaphor puts the emphasis on movement and firsthand experience.

 

Metaphor is relational by its very nature. Metaphor requires that, as you define something, you always refer to another, second entity. This actually seems quite apt, very fitting for characterizing the psychedelic experience, as it points to a web of interconnectivity that often becomes undeniable when tripping.

 

An Oregon band called ‘Hunger’ devised a metaphor other than ‘the trip’ as a way to describe psychedelic experience. It emphasizes more the spatialization of the experience, rather than its timeframe. Here’s the 1969 song, ‘Workshop.’

 

9. WORKSHOP 4:20
Hunger, 1969

 

 

The Electric Prunes are a band known for their word play—hits include I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night and Get Me to the World On Time. The track I’ve chosen to play for you is entitled, “I” and uses the sound of EYE as a way to explore the phenomenon of shifting between perspectives and points of view. Fluidness of identity is mimicked by the fluidity of the lyrics’ language. From 1967, let’s have a listen:

 

10. I 5:14
The Electric Prunes, 1967

 

 

Ah yes, thankfully the Electric Prunes did not lose its voice…I’m glad our singer was comfortable “quote” living in his head. The head, the mind is not an easy place to be sometimes, but we do have the language to describe that mind as a place that can be inhabited or not. Let’s see what the Luv’d Ones, an all-female group from Michigan, have to say about this matter.

 

11. YOUR MIND IS 3:25
The Luv’d Ones, 1967

 

 

Your mind is just another page in a book you’re reading in your thoughts.

 

What is a metaphor except a way to express a desire to understand? It is an attempt at equivalency that only language can offer. Sometimes it works, especially when it frames or is framed by other-sensory input.

 

As we’re hearing this evening, the ability of language to describe limits—the limits of language itself, sometimes—makes it incredibly valuable. Language can also articulate desire, warning, and difference. It does all this relationally.

 

No one else can feel it for you/No one else can let it in/No one else can speak the words on your lips.

 

Our last track this evening is by Blossom Toes. ‘Listen to the Silence’ is from, when else, 1969:

 

12. LISTEN TO THE SILENCE 4:51
Blossom Toes, 1969

 

 

Renunciation, relinquishment, apostasy, defection, abandonment, tergiversation, …..

 

Renunciation is no easy thing. The quickest way to announce that you’ve renounced something is through language. Then, over time and in our habits, actions, relationships, hearts, and the way we give--we have other ways to register change…...

 

Let’s take a moment to offer some final gratitude to our ears. Please take your time opening your eyes and coming out of your listening pose. We’ll be serving drinks if you care to stay and chat. Thank you for coming tonight to this first installment of WORD THE WORD. Thanks so much to emcla and Adam. Your attention means the word to me.