Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods, directed by Patrick Meaney
Halo 8, 80 minutes, 2010
I suspect there are only a few kinds of people who’ll be interested in the documentary Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods – either serious documentary fans, devoted comic-book readers, or magical practitioners. Each of them will come away from this film quite happy.
Director Patrick Meaney largely works with a familiar pattern for this kind of celebrity documentary – one of mostly stepping back and letting the interviews (and, of course, editing) tell the story. There are several attempts to visually represent the psychedelic elements of the tale created by cinematographer Jordan Rennert, though the results are far less annoying than is often the case in such films! The perspective is mostly one which aims at the comic-reading audience, introducing them fairly gently to the core of occult thought that permeates his work.
The film opens with a montage of several comic-book writers and artists talking about Morrison’s reputation as a very successful comics creator who is also out as a practicing chaos magician who’s no stranger to psychedelics – and the usual kind of “drug-crazed madman” rumours that inevitably follow. Continue reading »
The Akashic Experience: Science and the Cosmic Memory Field, edited by Ervin Laszlo
Inner Traditions, 9781594772986, 288 pp., 2009
The Akashic Experience presents a series of accounts dealing with the intrusion of nonlocal events into everyday life. Ervin Laszlo, systems theorist, philosopher of science, concert pianist and recipient of two nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize, has gathered individual contributors from a range of fields to recount their experiences. Contributors include Alex Grey, Stanislav Grof and – most surprising to me – Raffi Cavoukian, the children’s musician.
The main thrust of the book is aimed at establishing the existence and utility of the akashic experience. Laszlo defines this as a “lived experience that conveys a thought, an image, or an intuition that was not, and very likely could not have been, transmitted by our senses at the time it happened or at anytime beforehand.”
The collected reports include Continue reading »
In July I posted about the one-man, one-act play written and performed by John Burns, Aleister Crowley: A Passion for Evil, which is showing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August.
LAShTAL.com hosts an in-depth review written by Frater FS, which is largely favourable:
Condensing any life, never mind Crowley’s into less than an hour requires some remarkably tight editing and Burns wisely chooses some key vignettes to give the broad strokes of the Crowley biography. Burns does this with remarkable intensity and effect, slipping into various characters on a minimal stage with nothing but a writing desk, a phone, a dagger and a wine glass for company (Burns plays Crowley in his 50s, balding and in bow tie and frock coat).
Check out the full review on LAShTAL.com, it sounds like Burns has done an excellent job – wish I was in Edinburgh!
I haven’t been able to locate many other reviews of the show, and none go as deep into it as Frater FS. (For example, EdinburghSpotlite.com gave it three stars in a review by Keith D, but without much analysis.)
The show is still on, and will be until August 28th, 2010. If you see it, I’d love to know what you think.
