"Psilocybin Productions." Ink & Psilocybe semilanceata on paper. (1999)
In the last years of the previous century the internet truly came alive for me. My growing mind was open wide, and what should I find at the tapping tips of my fingers but a strange and vivid world of liberating knowledge waiting to come inside…
I’d been fascinated by psychedelics ever since watching a piece of Government anti-drug propaganda in my early teens in which a young LSD casualty believed he was on fire, I missed the intended message of FEAR and instead became incredibly enamoured by the idea that certain drugs could so completely alter one’s experience of reality -
it sounded like fun to me!
I vaguely recall sitting in a doctors surgery leafing through a brochure designed to inform parents of the various drugs their children may be on, when I saw a picture of these shrivelled little elves called, irresistibly, “magic mushrooms”.
Magic mushrooms?!
How phucking purrrfect!
I immediately fell in love.
It wasn’t until years later, just after starting college, that I met them in real life. I was sat round my dealer’s house one happy evening, smoking the wonderful weed with a few good friends, when she announced to us all that she’d got in some shrooms and asked if we’d like to try them. We gobbled a few down and carried on as usual. We felt a bit buzzy and giggly but that seemed to be about the extent of it – at least until the character in the movie we were watching started tripping: I was fascinated by this magnificent special effect that made objects seem to bleed into one another, their boundaries being composed of reaching and retracting spiral tendrils caught in a rhythmic dance. It wasn’t until I went to the toilet and saw the same thing happening to the wallpaper that I realised the effect I was seeing wasn’t in the TV but in my mind! How very amusing! I watched this beautiful wriggle, this self-contained movement like a time-lapsed vine constantly growing into itself, ever active but going nowhere, and felt a calm elation; I felt happy in the face of this benign mystery, comforted by the infinite possibilities implicit in such a happening.
So it came to be that I typed “magic mushrooms” into a search engine, and found my destiny fed back to me in the results. It was the holy trinity of deoxy, erowid & the lycaeum that served as focal points for my early education. I read all about mushrooms, taking my pseudonym “PsillyBoy” from the ‘Psilly’ in “Psilly Psimon’s Mushroom Growin’ Guide,” and the ‘Silly Boy’ I could hear the mother in my mind call me as I greedily drank down all this forbidden knowledge. I joined a mailing list discussing the crazy beyond-quantum world of the Mexican mint Salvia Divinorum. I found a Gnostic Garden that sold various dried plants & seeds labelled NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION! (luckily I didn’t consider myself fully human.) I was awestruck by the self-taught “Psychonauts” who voyaged these far-out plains chasing experiences that enriched their lives, thinking thoughts that expanded their minds into realms scarcely dreamt of by the scared and sleeping masses. I was exposed to ancient philosophy and frontier science, to art and music and poetry that went to the weird heart of the human condition and didn’t blink. I was free to think whatever it was possible to think, to embrace a world beyond belief.
It was at Glastonbury Festival in the sunny summer of 1999 that some of the possibilities the mycelial wwweb had shown me became reality. O the excitement of walking down that long hill filled with colourful people towards the vibrating mysteries of that magical temporary city of tents!!! We set up camp in a little field opposite the Jazz World stage, not far from some Hare Krishna dishing out free food that became a salvation for those of us who spent all our money on drugs. O the drugs! Bearded champions breezing through the fields calling like plucked birds: “Ganja! Acid! Pills!” Bless the old hippy who sat with us fresh-faced fools and doled out his shrooms before uttering the immortal words: “Would anyone like to try some Salvia Divinorum?” As the blue smoke dissolved into the orange sky we cried with laughter. Everything became clear, an awesome understanding blotted out my monkey-mind and filled me completely with a sense of ecstatic contentment. The sun went down as the shrooms came up. STRONG. I walked through tents of unknown depths arranged in misty but perfect geometries towards the palpable sounds and entrancing visuals emanating from some impromptu late night party. I danced like a marshmallow ballerina on steroids, like solid liquid playing cat’s cradle with itself, like a young man suddenly become half mushroom trying to make a new face out of curved space. I got lost in a timeless eternity that night. I wandered through the mists of a strange purgatory feeling all I’d been reading become shadowy amorphous blobs in a new reality. My whole life had led to that point. That NOW. That Eternal Plateau. I thought I was never coming back… and in a way I never have.
These are my poems and paintings, my raves and rants, my crystal clarities and utter insanities…
These are the things “Being Psilly” is all about.
With love,
in joy,
explore…
Feathers & Leaves, Earth & Sea...
DRAWING
FILM
NOTEBOOKS
PAINTING
POETRY
PSILLY.ORG
RADIO
In the last years of the previous century the internet truly came alive for me. My growing mind was open wide, and what should I find at the tapping tips of my fingers but a strange and vivid world of liberating knowledge waiting to come inside?
I’d been fascinated by psychedelics ever since watching a piece of Government anti-drug propaganda in my early teens in which a young LSD casualty believed he was on fire, I missed the intended message of FEAR and instead became incredibly enamoured by the idea that certain drugs could so completely alter ones experience of reality – it sounded like fun to me!
I vaguely recall sitting in a doctors surgery leafing through a brochure designed to inform parents of the various drugs their children may be on, when I saw a picture of these shrivelled little elves called, irresistibly, “magic mushrooms”. Magic mushrooms?! How phucking purrrfect! I immediately fell in love.
It wasn’t until years later, just after starting college, that I met them in real life. I was sat round my dealer’s house one happy evening, smoking the wonderful weed with a few good friends, when she announced to us all that she’d got in some shrooms and asked if we’d like to try them. We gobbled a few down and carried on as usual. We felt a bit buzzy and giggly but that seemed to be about the extent of it… at least until the character in the movie we were watching started tripping: I was fascinated by this magnificent special effect that made objects seem to bleed into one another, their boundaries being composed of reaching and retracting spiral tendrils caught in a rhythmic dance. It wasn’t until I went to the toilet and saw the same thing happening to the wallpaper that I realised the effect I was seeing wasn’t in the TV but in my mind! How very amusing! I watched this beautiful wriggle, this self-contained movement like a time-lapsed vine constantly growing into itself, ever active but going nowhere, and felt a calm elation; I felt happy in the face of this benign mystery, comforted by the infinite possibilities implicit in such a happening.
So it came to be that I typed “magic mushrooms” into a search engine, and found my destiny fed back to me in the results. It was the holy trinity of deoxy, erowid & the lycaeum that served as focal points for my early education. I read all about mushrooms, taking my pseudonym “PsillyBoy” from the ‘Psilly’ in “Psilly Psimon’s Mushroom Growin’ Guide” and the ‘Silly Boy’ I could hear the mother in my mind call me as I greedily drank down all this forbidden knowledge. I joined a mailing list discussing the crazy beyond-quantum world of the Mexican mint Salvia Divinorum. I found a Gnostic Garden that sold various dried plants & seeds labelled NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION! (luckily I didn’t consider myself fully human.) I was awestruck by the self-taught “Psychonauts” who voyaged these far-out plains chasing experiences that enriched their lives, thinking thoughts that expanded their minds into realms scarcely dreamt of by the scared and sleeping masses. I was exposed to ancient philosophy and frontier science, to art and music and poetry that went to the weird heart of the human condition and didn’t blink. I was free to think whatever it was possible to think, to embrace a world beyond belief.
It was at Glastonbury Festival in the sunny summer of 1999 that some of the possibilities the mycelial wwweb had shown me became reality. O the excitement of walking down that long hill filled with colourful people towards the vibrating mysteries of that magical temporary city of tents!!! We set up camp in a little field opposite the Jazz World stage, not far from some Hare Krishna dishing out free food that became a salvation for those of us who spent all our money on drugs. O the drugs! Bearded champions breezing through the fields calling like plucked birds: “Ganja! Acid! Pills!” Bless the old hippy who sat with us fresh-faced fools and doled out his shrooms before uttering the immortal words: “Would anyone like to try some Salvia Divinorum?” As the blue smoke dissolved into the orange sky we cried with laughter. Everything became clear, an awesome understanding blotted out my monkey-mind and filled me completely with a sense of ecstatic contentment. The sun went down as the shrooms came up. STRONG. I walked through tents of unknown depths arranged in misty but perfect geometries towards the palpable sounds and entrancing visuals emanating from some impromptu late night party. I danced like a marshmallow ballerina on steroids, like solid liquid playing cat’s cradle with itself, like a young man suddenly become half mushroom trying to make a new face out of curved space. I got lost in a timeless eternity that night. I wandered through the mists of a strange purgatory feeling all I’d been reading become shadowy amorphous blobs in a new reality. My whole life had led to that point. That NOW. That Eternal Plateau. I thought I was never coming back… and in a way I never have.
These are my poems and paintings, my raves and rants, my crystal clarities and utter insanities…
These are the things “Being Psilly” is all about.
With love, in joy, explore…