Flesh-Prism » Being Psilly

Being Psilly

psilly — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:08:07 +0000

"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 with 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 down a few and carried on as usual, 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 was to become 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 rants and raves, 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

You Win

NOTEBOOKS

1999

PAINTING

Mandala Paintings 1999-2001

POETRY

PSILLY.ORG

Psilly Organisation circa 2002

RADIO

Psilly on Lilly

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…

Buh-Ding! Buh-Da!

psilly — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:10:01 +0000

Buh-Ding! Buh-Da!

Psychedelic Pin-up

psilly — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:02:15 +0000

Psychedelic Pin-up

you wanna be a shaman baby?

psilly — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:22:26 +0000

you wanna be a shaman baby?

Trust the Medicine!

psilly — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:17:06 +0000

Trust the Medicine!

You Win

psilly — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:13:21 +0000

[See post to tune in]

Spontaneous Schizophrenic Psychodrama involving a young man
being driven insane by his telepathic video camera…
Entirely improvised and unedited, (super)natural sound.

Notebook 1999

psilly — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:06:34 +0000

The Flash Player and a browser with Javascript support are needed..

Mandala Paintings 1999-2001

psilly — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:31:46 +0000

The paintings you are about to set eyes upon come from 1999-2001, they are my first ‘real’ paintings. I’d just begun studying Audio/Visual Production at the Bournemouth Arts Institute, 18 years young, when I stumbled across a copy of Carl Jung’s “The Archtypes and the Collective Unconscious” whilst browsing their library. I was flicking through the pages when the MANDALAS jumped out at me, I read what he had to say on the matter and was inspired:

…Mandala means ‘circle’. There are innumerable variants of the motif (…) but they are all based on the squaring of the circle. Their basic motif is the premonition of a centre of personality; a kind of central point within the psyche, to which everything is related, by which everything is arranged, and which is itself a source of energy. The energy of the central point is manifested in the almost irresistible compulsion to become what one is, just as every organism is driven to assume the form that is characteristic of its nature, no matter what the circumstances. The centre is not felt or thought of as the ego but, if one may so express it, as the self. Although the centre is represented by an innermost point, it is surrounded by a periphery containing everything that belongs to the self—the paired opposites that make up the total personality. This totality comprises consciousness first of all, then the personal unconscious, and finally an indefinitely large segment of the collective unconscious whose archetypes are common to all mankind. (…) The self, though on the one hand simple, is on the other hand an extremely composite thing, a “conglomerate soul.”
- C. G. Jung

Thus armed, and following my instincts, I would take my canvas and cover it in paint; my only restraint was to be a circle, or something approximating a circle, in or near the centre. I would then sit back and contemplate the painting-in-progress, focusing intently on the central point. Forms would begin to make themselves known to me and I would pick them out. I would take long contemplative breaks often throughout the work; until eventually it was clear that the painting was finished.—
Though I may’ve been finished with the painting, the painting was not finished with me: in the period soon after completion (and continuing to a lesser degree even to this day) the images would reveal me to myself as I contemplated them. Rich self-imaginings would stir inside and I would make realisations about my deeper feelings, my truer selves, my path.

InJoy…

InneRevolution

This one deals with Introspection & its fruits,
it marked the realisation of my own Inner evolution…

A Herb aided Contemplation of my Being
that spreads far beyond Now,
to there & soon…

I see myself looking towards my centre,
where I am brewing in the heart
of a Psychedelic Octopus -

I swim in a primordiartistic soup
of swirls spirals triangles squares & circles,
gradually gaining shape…

A (k)New Beginning that will never End,
as long as the Start alludes us…
forever Beginning to End.

__________________________
1999. Acrylic on Canvas Board. 30 x 40cm.

Delving deep…

                           I stare at the deep blue
                           Purple hue
                           Night sky,

         I reach before me into the Green-tinged haze I just exhaled
         and find my fingers probe my brain…
                  I find myself again
                           In the arms of a plant,

Together we gather myself for a
Journey to the haunted Center…

         Everything is going swimmingly, even solid trees ripple
         as I ease further into myself which is
                  out of my mind…

         Though here now, hear know
                  I see sights that blind me to deafness!!!
                           In the dark I see All!!!
                           a a a A!!

                  the rest just doesn’t compare to this…
                  Is…
                  SubSubConsciousness

_________________________
1999. Acrylic on Canvas Board. 30 x 40cm.

Hear I Am(?)

There is a sense that is All senses combined,
a Sixth Sense…

There is a Third I that Sees what you hear…

                  There is a place,
                  a hyperspace,
                  where your boundaries dissolve
                  and you are energy in motion…

         Everything exists here in Infinity,
         here in the very center of the perimeter where we is
         Stoned, infatuated with the Sounds
         we See we feel we Be…

         We are the Light that dances in the void,
         without whoms trance Life itself would be devoid
         of Love, and everything would fall apart…
                  a part
                  a p a r t . . . …

         _________________________
         2000. Acrylic on Board. 100 x 40cm.

         I in the Try Angle

         A Triangle inside a Circle, a Trinity in Infinity…
         A Fourth: Dimension, A Pyramid observed…
         Our Earth, constrained by Cubists…

Where the cube is constructed happiness, the spiral is the destroyer:
Bliss.

                           My Eye
         Buddha smiling at me from the void:
                           My
                           (k)no
                           I

         Feel his laughter ripple a spiral of concentric
                  Circles
                  Of Bliss
                  In this, in
                           This
                           this
                           this…

         _________________________
         2000. Acrylic on Cardboard. 70 x 100cm.

         EveryThing I Ever Wanted To Say (About my elfs)

         I Love Everything…
         yet I try to extend beyond myself
         only to find me chasing right behind…

I fractal within
when I just wanna be going out,

                  But where is She?
                  Where is the one to take me out of me?
                  Break me out of embracing myself???

The elf ladies are kind to me
but they cannot satisfy my physical desire…

The Fire that rises
The mushroom cloud.

                           I need to Bless
                           All else
                           In embrace
                           With the Goddess
                           Embodied.

                  But my appearance is shoddy,
                  I shine from within
                  but not everyone sees that

The elf men are also good to me…

                  All
                  So
                  People
                  think
                  I am crazy,
                           In a hazy daze
                           of laziness…
                  ’Cos you cannot
                  get to us

In here

                  I embrace
                  Our
                  One Soul
                  at the inverted
                  Centre

I kiss myself

                  All else
                  IS
                  Forgotten…

         __________________________
         2000. Acrylic on Canvas Board. 40 x 30cm.

         Making Love With The Universe

E-gooooooooo…

going…

                           *Try a toot*
                           Gone.
                           *It’s a hoot*
                           Back.
                           *In cahoots?*
                           Gone…
                           *Inner roots…*

         After taking a toke on a spliff, our man, who was sitting cross-legged, slowly leaned back -
         his hands coming to rest behind his head, elbows up & out…
         The configuration of his limbs reminded him of the mid-section of the Tree of Life…
         He looked for the Soul of Man and he found it at his centre…

Hello? Heylo? HALO…

The angles, of my triangles…
The Angels…

Can you see them in the ‘ringleader’?
Can you see them in the Stars?

They reflect themselves above and below and in every direction out into infinity,
Then her arms unfold – leaving tracers… becoming more arms…

                  SHAKTI/SHIVA!!!
                  How I wish to please her!
                  That is my intent!! Manifest !
                  LOVE IS ALL!!! ! !

Another wave retreats, and by some amazing feat:

                  There is my protection…
                  A huge Rasta in the sky,
                  manifest in the clouds, is it I?

Who am I?

Here I am…
On the ground, feeling sick…

                  The wave is coming back in,
                  surging through my body and
                  pushing puke onto the sand beside me,
                  which is me for a second before I am me again…

Then I purge myself from myself once more and re-enter.

I have to lie on my side as I leave myself,
I cannot support my own weight…

         My stomach contorts and I feel pain -
         not just physical distress but the distress of being expelled from myself and then accepted…
         then expelled then accepted… It gets less like pain and more like the sheer intensity of existence
         until I can no longer contain myself, this is the last of the purge and I roll onto my back…

                  Infinite… then definite -
                  Yes, definitely sweating –
                  Heart beating fast…

         I crawl out of my sleeping bag, peeling off another layer of personality with it…
         Depth perception and angles are all sorts because I am perceiving from so many places,
         taking off a jumper is a transcendental delight because I am perceiving from so many dimensions…

Still I sweat, is this dizziness?
No… it’s disassociation… diffusion…

Confusion for a while, then the Wind cools my burning body and I slip into a lesson:

                  Every time I close my eyes I become that nothing…
                  Adjusted to the infinite non-action of that nothing… … ???
                  Something:

                           So I open my eyes and suddenly I’m flowing out into everything…
                           Enjoying the infinite results of that one-action… … ???
                           Becoming too intense, my body twists, back to nothing:

                                    So I open my eyes and suddenly I’m flowing out into everything…
                                    Enjoying the infinite results of that one-action… … ???
                                    Becoming too intense, my body twists, back to nothing:

         And this in itself is a joyous blissful agonizing eternity of flux between identity and BEING,
         off and on, On and on… then longing and seeing and FEELING and BEING and SEEING
         and BEING to INFINITY (even beyond! As Buzz would say)…

                  That’s what I am:
                                    What I am:
                                                      I AM.

                  Each time is increasing or superior or just different but the same…
                           Evolved on somehow, mutated maybe…
                           But baby it’s all the same because it’s new…
                           KNEW…
                           There is no memory of what has gone before…
                           Just the living product of it…
                           Extending infinitely from where it’s been to where it’s going in a big fat Circle
                           (which {when viewed from multiple dimensions} is really a Spiral)…
                           Man! It’s all so complex I think I’ll just ride it for a while…

                                    Smile…
                                    ^^…Wake UP!!!^
                                    HAPPINESS…

__________________________
2001. Acrylic, Photocopies & Bodily Fluids on Canvas. 60 x 80cm.

yoUtopia

psilly — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:08:59 +0000

                                                      Be sure
                                                      This is for you
                                                      Mystic purple vein
                                                      In folds of blackened blue

                                                      Extending milky arm
                                                      Beyond the sparkling black exterior
                                                      Of the lucky charm
                                                      Dangling from the wrist of our lady Utopia

                                                      Jangle us, rub us, extrude good luck
                                                      As we play around oblivious
                                                      To the games above…
                                                      A tug o’ war between Gods!

                                                      Riding Chariot Earth
                                                      The Giant-Baby-Blubber-God of Birth!
                                                      Tugging invisible umbilical threads, bringing close
                                                      The morose and shrunken, leather-skinned Daddy of Death…

                                                      Put his alkaline eyes to the acid test
                                                      Look into his spiral pupils and let
                                                      Your second sight emerge from the back of his head
                                                      Like the first time you slept

                                                      Leapt into worlds beyond those we let
                                                      Exist, no friction in the fiction of my life
                                                      I ride the helter-skelter slide
                                                      Thru truth and lies…

                                                      I hide inside the outside world
                                                      A clam in his shell suffocating wisdoms pearl
                                                      Propelling himself with his jabbering jaws
                                                      He’ll talk and he’ll talk ’til words mean no more…

                                                      No less than the most compassionate caress
                                                      From the silken psalms of the Goddess
                                                      Would put Peace in the rest
                                                      Of this bulbous beast.

                                                      And Peace is a must
                                                      For the release of us
                                                      When deaths wrinkly starfish grip
                                                      Snatches the lucky charm from our lady’s wrist

                                                      And casts us back into the abyss
                                                      Where the ego twist
                                                      Tickles our feet as we shift
                                                      Between spinning paradigms…

                                                      Make up
                                                      UR Mind

Death's wrinkly starfish grip...

Thin-King of Games

psilly — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:18:03 +0000

The King
some hidden thing
My Crown
my cover blown
I Wear
a spiral o’ hair
To Disguise
the rising glare

…like the sun hides
the brilliance of night
…like my eyes hide
a portal to my soul

pouring into all
rising up my spine
blowing my mind

like princess pretty face
wishing on a flame

like grumpy science mask
with its atom-splitting game

I wear my crown
like a mushroom cloud

…everywhere…

I where..?

My Crown
like sound
is vibration
is form & colour
in formation

My Crown wears me down
so I loop it round
in my verse the universe
loses itself and is found
to have no bounds

for I am the edge
recycling myself
to the centre

I am thin-king
sitting in meditation
with the elation
of countless big bangs
stretching every second to infinity
and still not even happening

outside but in me
subjectivobjectivity
I am thin-king
of mice elf

tiny furry
zee row u/r boat
rodents, my loyal subjects
in this strange creality
infinite fractal personality
they dance & sing around me:

“all hail the thin-king, sin-king into a sea of mice elves!”

Mice selves growing grander
they pander my every whim
I am the king!

Then bhamwhack!
The multi-mouse is trapped
under the heavy hearing foot
of my trampling elephant higher self
My ancient wrinkled greyness
scattering the little things
that have been accumulating
ever since I looked inside
and started making faces in the mirror
I remember when I turned & terror

!struck!

the mirror appeared again in front
what was behind
my mind plays games,
my thoughts echo thru time…

I am trapped in the consequences of that original mime
I pulled for my own amusement.

Repeated a million times the laughter fades -
a million times later it is funny again..!

God Bless the heavy foot
of my Giant mammalian mamma
Taken down by lions on the playa
and resurrected as smasher of mirrors
in the empty blackness
is empty blackness
A-gAin

Who wants to play?

I AM
Thin-king
of my own little game…

I AM
Thin-king
of my own little name…

I AM THAT I AM NOT

I AM THIS…
I AM WHAT???

I AM
Thin-king
of my own little game…

Who wants to play?

I

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Thin-King of Games