I was a Space Age boy. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in Project Mercury’s Friendship 7 a month before I was born, and growing up in the 1960s it was impossible to be unaware of the NASA missions. The first encyclopaedia I was given in 1967 had a whole chapter about the Mercury and Gemini projects which ran from the late 1950s through to 1966. A subsequent section showed an artist’s impression of how it might look when we were exploring the Moon and the planets. By the time the photo above was taken, in 1968 or ’69, I was obsessed with the Apollo missions and had the names of the astronauts memorised the way others memorised the names of football players. (Everyone knows Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon; I’ve never forgotten that Michael Collins was the third member of the team, waiting for them in the command module.) For a while there was an American boy at school of whom I was deeply jealous; his father was in the USAF and his family had actually been present during the launch of Apollo 8!

Space was everywhere, it became a dominant theme, at least while the Apollo missions lasted. Pop culture of the 1950s had its share of rockets ships and flying saucers but was predominantly filled with Westerns and other Earth-bound adventures. You can see a watershed moment occurring when the hugely popular Gerry Anderson puppet shows went from the cowboy adventure of Four Feather Falls in 1960 to the science fiction of Supercar and, immediately after that, the full-on space adventure of Fireball XL5 in 1961 and ’62. Cowboys couldn’t compete with astronauts; Supercar and subsequent Anderson shows were regularly repeated; Four Feather Falls wasn’t. As well as being enthused by the Anderson shows I enjoyed something called Space Patrol, another science fiction puppet series which few now seem to remember.

A page from a 1977 catalogue for Airfix model kits. I had the lunar module and the Saturn V. I don’t recall ever being interested in the Russian craft.

I wasn’t watching TV when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the Moon—it was 3.39 am here, I was fast asleep—but that didn’t matter, it was the event rather than the moment which counted. And there were five more landings following Apollo 11, each repeating those first moments and all accepted with the same spirit of innocent enthusiasm. What none of us kids realised at the time was that these events weren’t universally seen as a positive thing. Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson later declared that going into space was the next crucial step in human evolution but you wouldn’t know it looking through the underground press of the period. Appraisal of the NASA missions was filtered through the prisms of the Cold War and the cultural war of the 1960s, with the entire Apollo enterprise being seen as a spin-off of the US military—the astronauts were all airforce pilots, after all—encouraged by a despised President Nixon and used as a means of embarrassing the Soviet Union. (That latter point tends to forget that the Russians were playing tit-for-tat, and had earlier embarrassed the US with Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin.) No one wanted to support men with crewcuts who prayed in space and enjoyed country & western music. And few were prepared to concede that a President stoking the Vietnam War might have inadvertently done something worthwhile by continuing Kennedy’s space programme.

The cover of International Times for July 18, 1969, the Moon mission seen as an exploding Coke bottle which shatters the sky. An editorial within complains about the hoisting of an American flag on the Earth’s satellite.

There was a similar hostility in the attitudes of some of the younger breed of sf writers of the time who saw the Moon missions being praised and supported by the old guard of sf and, like the counterculture freaks, seemed disappointed by the conservative character of the astronauts. I only know this retrospectively, of course, but the complaints have always seemed rather purposeless; those guys were test pilots, what else were people expecting? Equally dismaying was the amount of times throughout the Seventies and Eighties you’d hear black musicians only referring to the space missions in terms of a waste of money. What happened, I’d want to know, to Sun Ra’s “Space is the place”, to the elegant science fiction of Samuel R Delany, and to Parliament’s Mothership Connection? (For a more positive attitude we now have Afrofuturism.)

My own disappointment came in 1972 when it became evident that the whole show was over. As Tom Wolfe notes, after the Moon landing there was nowhere left to go. I developed a taste for written science fiction which lasted for several years but I’ve wondered sometimes whether that sense of a vaunted interplanetary future being brought to a dead stop isn’t the reason why I’ve since regarded all visions of the future as deeply suspect. Everything in the 1960s told us that by 2009 we’d have bases on the moon and probably Mars; some of us might be living in Gerard K O’Neill’s space colonies. When that future, which for a while seemed not only likely but inevitable, can be so easily short-circuited, why should we believe any others presented to us?

Related links:
• NASA’s pages for the Apollo missions
• Wired: The Moon Landings: Fact, Not Fiction
• Wired: The Science of Apollo 11
• Geeta Dayal on Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks
by Brian Eno with Daniel Lanois and Roger Eno
• Pink Floyd’s Moon-Landing Jam Session
• Armstrong and Aldrin’s “lost Lunar City”
• Julius Grimm’s map of the Moon from 1888

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Apollo liftoff
• Earthrise
• East of Paracelsus

Continuing this occasional series. The above motif is the Golden Dawn’s Wedjat or Eye of Horus emblem as reproduced in the hardback edition of The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, an “autohagiography”. Crowley was under discussion here a few days ago and the eye in a triangle symbol can also be seen on the sleeve of the single featured in that posting, forming a part of the seal of the Ordo Templi Orientis, the occult order which Crowley joined in 1910. Crowley’s use of the eye in a triangle caught the attention of writer Robert Anton Wilson and the first part of his Illuminatus! trilogy (written with Robert Shea) is titled The Eye in the Pyramid. That latter symbol appears on the reverse of the American dollar bill, of course, and some of the conspiracy theories surrounding that usage are explored in the novel. Wilson went on to make the eye in a triangle something of a personal symbol and his obsessive use of the motif caught my attention in turn when I began reading his books.

All of which leads us to Hawkwind and a person whose name keeps turning up on these pages, designer Barney Bubbles.

Hawklog cover (detail) by Barney Bubbles.

The booklet which BB designed for Hawkwind’s second album, In Search of Space (1971), featured a version of the dollar bill symbol on its cover. This is the only eye in a triangle design I’ve seen among Barney Bubbles’ work although he was so prolific there may well be others. When I began producing my own significantly inferior Hawkwind graphics in the late Seventies I incorporated eyes in triangles partly as a way of avoiding having to draw hawks all the time but mainly because of Robert Anton Wilson. BB had already established a precedent and it so happens that the eye in the Golden Dawn/Crowley version is the eye of a hawk-headed Egyptian god.

Church of Hawkwind booklet (cover detail).

My first published work for Hawkwind outside fanzines was in another album booklet, for Church of Hawkwind in 1982. The first three pages each feature the eye in a triangle motif.

Church of Hawkwind booklet (detail).

The design above may be crudely drawn but it went on to have a life of its own, as we’ll see below. Be thankful you’re spared the rest of the shoddy drawing.

Church of Hawkwind booklet (detail).

This more finely-rendered illustration surprised me when it turned up in the 1989 RE/Search book Modern Primitives (below) which catalogues contemporary tattooing and piercing trends. I’ve no idea whose arm this is, the only credit is for the tattooist, “Morbella in Amsterdam”. That makes me wonder just how many tattoo versions there are and whether it was one of the tattooist’s available designs or something brought in by the tattooee.

Browsing in a record shop in 1992 I came across a pair of Hawkwind and Kraftwerk compilations on a new American label, Cleopatra, and was surprised (again) to see my crudely drawn eye from the Hawkwind booklet being used as the label logo. They never asked me about this and I doubt they asked Dave Brock either. Not that I’m too concerned, it was rather satisfying to see something of mine on a Kraftwerk release (below) and on their later reissues of the Chrome albums, a cult band of mine for many years. The label is still active and still using a a slightly more streamlined version of this eye design as their logo.

Kraftwerk: The Model—Retrospective 1975–1978 (1992).

One of the Cleopatra Chrome reissues (1996).

The other eye in a triangle from the Church of Hawkwind booklet was resurrected next in digital form in 1994 on the cover of 25 Years On, a 4-CD Hawkwind box set from Griffin Records. If nothing else this seemed to confirm that the symbol had become one of the secondary Hawkwind icons after the ubiquitous hawk silhouette.

Out, Demons, Out! (2004).

And so to my most recent dalliance with this ancient symbol which brings us back to the dollar bill pyramid. This was my cover illustration for issue 13 of Arthur Magazine with its feature on the 1967 exorcism/levitation of the Pentagon. I wouldn’t say this was necessarily the last appearance of the eye in a triangle in my work either. As the examples above demonstrate, some things creep back into your life in the most unexpected ways and some symbols are far more durable—and more flexible—than others.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Aleister Crowley on vinyl
• Design as virus #6: Cassandre
• Design as virus #5: Gideon Glaser
• Design as virus #4: Metamorphoses
• Design as virus #3: the sincerest form of flattery
• Design as virus #2: album covers
• Design as virus #1: Victorian borders
• Chrome: Perfumed Metal
• Barney Bubbles: artist and designer
• Robert Anton Wilson, 1932–2007

The Digger issue, August 1968.

Here’s something of major importance, The Realist Archive Project. Four complete issues online so far, with a promise of all 146 issues to be uploaded eventually. The Realist started out as a satirical magazine in the late Fifties and moved into the slipstream of the counter-culture as the Sixties progressed. Editor Paul Krassner is introduced in the RE/Search Pranks (1987) book thus:

Paul Krassner is famous for doing The Realist (1958-1974; now revived), described by OUI magazine as “the most satirical and irreverent journal to appear in America since the days of HL Mencken.” The Realist published explicit photos, outrageous cartoons, vicious satire, and extreme paranoid conspiracy theories on topics ranging from the Kennedy assassinations to Jonestown. When Mike Wallace asked him on a 60 Minutes interview about the difference between the underground press and mainstream media, he told him that Spiro Agnew was an anagram for Grow A Penis, adding, “The difference is that I could print that in the Realist, but it’ll be edited out of this program.” That prediction came true. Harry Reasoner said of Krassner that he “not only attacks establishment values; he attacks decency in general.”

During his lifetime of weird experiences and friendships with notables like Lenny Bruce and Timothy Leary, Krassner claims (among other things) to have taken LSD when he testified at the Chicago 8 trial, on the Johnny Carson show, with Groucho Marx, and with Squeaky Fromme and Sandra Good. In 1977 he became publisher of Hustler magazine for six months.

I first encountered the Realist from mentions in Robert Anton Wilson’s books (RAW was one of its writers) but, unlike UK undergrounds which often turned up secondhand, there was no way to ever see a copy over here. Hence the value of this archive. If you want an idea of Krassner’s outrageousness—which makes much of the political sniping of Private Eye seem very tame indeed—look no further than the May 1967 issue with its lead story describing Lyndon B Johnson fucking the dead John F Kennedy’s neck wound shortly before his being sworn in as president. And in the same issue there’s the notorious cartoon spread by Wally Wood depicting a host of Disney characters doing all the things that recently-deceased Uncle Walt wouldn’t allow them to do in the cartoons. That drawing was so scurrilous that it’s generally supposed Disney preferred not to sue for fear of giving it greater publicity.

The issue edited by the anarchist Diggers was altogether more serious, and the list of names involved shows a lineage connecting the Beats to the hippies:

Memo to the Reader

When Time magazine decided to do a cover story on the hippies last year, a cable to their San Francisco bureau instructed researchers to “go at the description and delineation of the subculture as if you were studying the Samoans or the Trobriand Islanders.”

Thus were they supposed to remain—a frozen fad for posterity.

But a few months ago, police rioted on Haight St. Next day, at a town hall meeting in the Straight Theater, the spectrum of reaction ranged from “Let’s have another be-in” to “We gotta get guns!” A compromise was reached: bottles painted Love were thrown at the cops.

And yet, the question remains—What is being defended?

This issue of the Realist, therefore, has been created entirely by The Diggers, in an attempt to convey the flavor and feeling-tone of a revolutionary community.

An inadequate list of the brothers and sisters whose work is represented in this document:

Antonin Artaud, Richard Avedon, Billy Batman, Peter Berg, Wally Berman, Richard Brautigan, Bryden, William Burroughs, Martin Carey, Neil Cassidy, Fidel Castro, Don Cochran, Peter Cohon, Gregory Corso, Dangerfield, Kirby Doyle, Bill Fritsch, Allen Ginsberg, Emmett Grogan, Dave Haselwood, George Hermes, Linn House, Lenore Kandel, Billy Landout, Norman Mailer, Don Martin, Michael McClure, George Metesky, George Montana, Malcolm X, Natural Suzanne, Huey Newton, Pam Parker, Rose-a-Lee, David Simpson, Gary Snyder, Ron Thelin, Rip Torn, Time Inc., Lew Welch, Thomas Weir, Gerard Winstanley, and Anonymous.

The contents herein are not copyrighted. Anyone may reprint anything without permission. Additional copies are available at the rate of 5 for $1. The Diggers have been given 40,000 copies to spread their word: free.

Many of those writers are no longer around but happily Paul Krassner is and he’s been writing regularly for The Huffington Post, the Arthur magazine weblog and other sites.

Via Boing Boing.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ginsberg’s Howl and the view from the street
• Simplicissimus
• Revenant volumes: Bob Haberfield, New Worlds and others
• Underground history
• Wallace Burman and Semina
• Robert Anton Wilson, 1932–2007
• Barney Bubbles: artist and designer
• 100 Years of Magazine Covers
• Oz magazine, 1967-73

First Robert Anton Wilson, now Alice Coltrane, widow of John Coltrane and one of my very favourite musicians. She died on Friday but it seems the news is only now circulating. A great musician (harp and keyboards) and a great composer, she managed to carve her own creative space away from the giant shadow of her husband. Even so, many of her early albums have yet to be reissued on CD outside Japan, a criminal state of affairs which tells you a lot about the way the music industry marginalises jazz and avant garde music. If you’ve never heard any of these recordings the best introduction is probably the Astral Meditations compilation but all the early works are flawless and essential.

LA Times obituary.

A Monastic Trio (1967–68)
John Coltrane: Cosmic Music (1968)
Huntington Ashram Monastery (1969)
Ptah, the El Daoud (1970)
Journey in Satchidananda (1970)
Universal Consciousness (1972)
World Galaxy (1972)
Lord of Lords (1972)
John Coltrane: Infinity (1973)
Reflection on Creation and Space (A Five Year View) (1973)
The Elements (1973; with Joe Henderson)
Illuminations (1974; with Carlos Santana)
Radha-Krisna Nama Sankirtana (1976)
Transcendence (1977)
Transfiguration (1978)
Divine Songs (1987)
Translinear Light (2004; with Ravi Coltrane)

There are few people who really change your life but Robert Anton Wilson—who died earlier today—certainly changed mine. Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy (written with Robert Shea) was my cult book when I was at school in the 1970s, a rambling, science fiction-inflected conspiracy thriller that opened the doors in my teenaged brain to (among other things) psychedelic drugs, HP Lovecraft, James Joyce, William Burroughs and Aleister Crowley as well as being a crash-course in enlightened anarchism. I’ve had people criticise the books to me since for their ransacking of popular culture but this was partly the point, they were collage works, and they worked as a perfect introduction for a young audience to worlds outside the usual circumscribed genres.

The philosophical side of Wilson’s work was probably the most important at the time (and remains so now), his “transcendental agnosticism” made me start to question the adults around me who were trying to force my life to go in a direction I wasn’t interested in at all. I’m sure I would have resisted that kind of pressure anyway but the value of RAW’s writings in Illuminatus! and the later Cosmic Trigger came with being given an intelligent rationale for those decisions; I couldn’t necessarily articulate why I was “throwing my life away” by wanting to drop out of the whole education system but Wilson’s work had convinced me it was the right thing to do. I still mark the true beginning of my life as May 1979, the month I left school for good.

He wouldn’t want us to be maudlin, I’m sure. It’s typical for a writer who spent so much of his life writing about drugs and coincidences that he managed to die on Albert Hofmann’s birthday. So I’ll just say thank you Robert, for changing my life. And Hail Eris!

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Absolute Elsewhere