Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna

[00:00:13] Welcome to Brainforest Café with Dennis McKenna. [00:00:23] Dennis McKenna: Graham St. John, Ph.D. is a cultural anthropologist and historian of transformational events, movements and figures. His forthcoming book, Strange Attractor the Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna, published by the MIT Press this September 30, is the latest among his 10 books, which also include Mystery School in Hyperspace, a cultural history of DMT, published by North Atlantic Books in 2015. Graham is senior Research Fellow in the Department of Media Humanities and Arts at the University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom. Graham, welcome to the Brainforest Cafe. [00:01:11] Graham St John: Thank you, Dennis. It's great to be here. [00:01:14] Dennis McKenna: Thank you. It's wonderful to have you. I can't tell you how much I've looked forward to this. So how would you like to structure this? I have some ideas, but what would you like to discuss? [00:01:30] Graham St John: I'm happy for you to structure this in the way you like. I mean, you being the reader. [00:01:38] Dennis McKenna: Well, that's true. I am the reader, I guess, also. And the participant. Well, I read your preface and your introduction, and you talked about some of the experiences that Terence and I shared in our early life. And then after he left Paonia for Berkeley, we were still very much involved with each other for the rest of his life. And the 1970s were really a decade of our, probably our most intense involvement with each other, besides growing up together and all of that. And when Terence was in high school, I was still in touch and frequently would see him. But then later in that decade, well, at the end of that decade, I started my graduate work in ethnopharmacology at the University of British Columbia in 1979. And I went to Amazon. Well, I've elided maybe the most important event of the 1970s, which is our trip to La Cherrera in 1971. And I was a junior in college. I was an undergraduate at the time, but I dropped out of school to take that trip. And that, of course, brought the mushrooms into our lives for the first time. [00:03:14] Graham St John: Can I just step in just for a second here, Dennis, because I think you're getting up to that point there in the early 80s, when Terence tried to get you to go back to La Cherreira. [00:03:26] Dennis McKenna: Right. [00:03:27] Graham St John: Essentially from that sort of moment that your lives kind of diverged a lot more. [00:03:34] Dennis McKenna: Exactly. And then when we did go back to the Amazon, this time in Peru, I was there as an ethnobotanist, and I really wanted to focus on ethnobotany. Terence wanted to replicate the experiment at La Chorrera. And I wasn't having any of it. I was like, no, I'm not here to do that. And he was only with me and with my colleagues for a few weeks in 1981. But then the decade of the 1980s unfolded, and I continued my graduate work and so on, and Terence continued what he was doing. And it's not that we weren't involved with each other, we very much were. But there was a distancing in a certain way. I could see, see these trajectories of our lives kind of splitting at that point, separating. I had my interest in botany and ethnopharmacology, and Terence was more interested in what you might call metaphysics and psychedelic exploration. I was not uninterested in those things. But one of the effects of the experiment and the experience at La Cherera after it was all over, well, it's never been all over because we've lived in the shadow of La Chorrera forever and continue to do so. But after the return, Terence expressed the position that science will never explain this, what happened to us, and we should reject science. And I was saying, well, wait a minute, we're not really scientists. We need to learn how to do science first. Then we can reject it, keeping in mind the limitations of science. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. There is value in science. So I cleaved. I felt like I had to learn to do science. That's why I focused on all these relatively hardcore disciplines like chemistry and pharmacology. And Terence, by that time, had more or less rejected academia. He didn't have those aspirations. And I think we shared an understanding that exploration of these edges of reality and understanding certainly delineates the limitations of scientific knowledge. It very much makes that clear. But that doesn't mean it's worthless, you know, and not that he said it was worthless, but you know what I mean, he was quick to dismiss it. It was like, well, let's get on with it. And I was like, well, I have to do some science. And I did. [00:06:38] Graham St John: Yeah, I suppose it. His resistance to science is mixed in with his rebellion against all authority, whether religion or political, academic celebrities, all forms of. And that, you know, also leads into the ambivalence with his own sense of authority, his own leadership, his own sort of unwillingness to a reluctance to take a. Take a leadership role, which I think is quite evident and is a subject of a couple of the chapters in there. His ambivalence with authority, yes, not only. [00:07:36] Dennis McKenna: His ambivalence about authority. I mean, it was sort of a rejection, but also a sense that there was a certain messianic cast that grew out of our experiences at la. I think he felt that he was hearing a higher authority. He was in touch with some at times during his life. He called it the Logos and he assumed that that was coming from the mushroom in some ways and perhaps it was. I mean, this was something that he looked to and he felt that there were, you know, and then it's like, as you describe it in the book, Terence had, I guess, connection with at least two different fonts of wisdom or sources of wisdom as he developed his thinking. One was the logos, the logos coming from the mushrooms. The idea that you're in touch with this intelligent entity that is dispensing wisdom or at least advice. And then the other one is the elf machine population of the DMT space, which is not a place that he, despite what people like to think, didn't go there that often. He went there often enough to appreciate it. He was terrified of it in some ways and perhaps with good reason. I mean, I found it a challenging experience also. But there were these two things that were really more than all of his reading and everything else that really shaped his understanding. It was like those were the lenses through which he viewed and constructed his model of reality and his understanding of what was going on. You think that's a fair way to put it? [00:09:49] Graham St John: Yeah. And he resisted other methods of trans personality and the paranormal. I mean, any method that didn't involve essentially tryptamines, psychoactive tryptamines, was belittled and, you know, it wasn't, wasn't authentic, wasn't the real thing. And, you know, he, I guess through, through his career as a spokesperson, especially at Esalen, became a seminal figure, you know, held fast to that position. But yet he also had, throughout his life he pursued his opus, which was the Timewave, which was ever present in every rap, every rap he gave, which, as you know, every rap was never the same. The story was never the same. It might have been regurgitated in different ways, but in every spoken word performance, the Timewave was ever present. And I just came back from a Ozora festival where I spoke a little bit about that and. [00:11:34] Graham St John: You know, how seminal that was, but that the typical approach to the Timewave is to attempt to understand it as an algorithmic thing as opposed to what I think is more readily apparent. And that is that it's more of a mythopoetic construct. It's more of a myth, it's more mythical than mathematical to make sense of it. I think it's a myth more than a mathematical. [00:12:16] Dennis McKenna: It works better as a myth. It's effective as a myth. It's not so effective as an algorithm. I mean, it's interesting how personal to me. It's interesting to me how personal it was. The time rave is as much a reflection of Terence's understanding of time and history than anything else. I mean, the events that he identified as pivotal, as transformative in the Timewave were events that he was very much involved with, very interested in, and not necessarily the pivotal events. Terence and I used to have. I don't know if you'd call them arguments, but lively discussions about the Timewave. When many of them in that loft on Tunnel Road, we would sit around and smoke hash and discuss this. And. And my position was that the problem with the Timewave is it could not be disproven. And so in a sense, it wasn't a theory, it was a postulate. It was a beautiful construct. It was very interesting from many perspectives, mathematical and in terms of a novel way of looking at the I Ching and all of this. But it could not be a map of time. And it certainly couldn't be proven that the tricky part with the Timewave was always where do you put the end date? And built into the very structure of the Timewave was there had to be an end date. And eventually he settled on December 21, 2012, which of course he assumed that he would be around to witness, and sadly he wasn't. But for various reasons, as you well document in the book, there were various end dates proposed during the evolution of the Timewave. Finally, that was the one. And I think I felt that, in some ways the Timewave, although it was uniquely from Terence, of a construct of his mind, I think in some ways it distracted from other things about his thinking that were perhaps more valid, in some ways more interesting the Timewave could be. I think that later in life, in the 90s, and particularly when Watson showed up at Palenque and basically criticized the Timewave in a way that was very hard to respond to, he began to lose faith in the Timewave. I don't know if faith is the right word, but he began to have doubts about it. And I'd always been skeptical about it, and I think he was beginning to understand my reservations. And unfortunately, when Watson came along and gave it this mathematical analysis and basically demolished the theoretical foundations, Terence did not, honestly, try to respond to those criticisms. He kind of turned the fan base loose on poor Watson and they piled on and there was not any attempt to. Let's step back from it a bit and let's try and understand what Watson is saying and can that be rectified? Is there a way to save the Timewave? That attempt wasn't made. [00:16:31] Graham St John: Yeah, but yet, right through to the end, right through to his final recorded conversations, it was still ever present. And one thing that I did note in the book is that he did have trouble kind of sharing the mantle with figures that he would class as squirrels, like the squirrels from LA and the Mayan calendar crowd, and specific individuals there whose ideas he rejected, but he did maintain. And I guess this is why he, you know, the word prophet has been, you know, cast at his feet in his life and posthumously, that he independently arrived at that date. And it was astounding, always astounding for him to even contemplate that he'd done so or that, more to the point, that the mushroom divulged the date to him. Because, of course, that was the ultimate explanation. It was the mushroom muse that provided him with that information. [00:18:10] Dennis McKenna: But the mushroom divulged various dates through the course of the Timewave, and there was a revision each time, revisionism. And eventually he settled on the. The December 21, 2012 date, which made a lot of sense in a certain way because of the relation to the Mayan calendar and this sort of thing. But that was not the initial date. And another thing about it, it was comfortably in the future. There were various dates that were postulated in the 70s, in the 80s, those dates came and went, and that did not help the validity of the Timewave. So finally, I think part of his thinking was, let's put it at a future date, that basically it may be more easy to defend, you know, and I think. But, you know, his interest. We're not confined to the Timewave. The Timewave is a unique, whatever you want to call it, a statistical construct, an alchemical object, an algorithm, something. I mean, a puzzle garden. What's that? [00:19:44] Graham St John: A puzzle garden? [00:19:46] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, a puzzle. [00:19:48] Graham St John: One of the many metaphors used. But yeah. So I'm sure someone will come along at some point and do a project exclusively on the Timewave. And that's not what my book is. I have one chapter on that, and there may be, because I continue to work on a biographical work. I mean, this is the first output. This book is the first output of a longer project. But I'm sure that someone that Others will excavate the Timewave in ways that I haven't and ask questions like, if this opus was so central to his life, then how come it didn't predict his own end? Questions like that could. [00:20:44] Dennis McKenna: Another good question. Right, Right. Yeah. [00:20:47] Graham St John: And how come. Because he left us just a year before events started to really roll, such as, I think, September 11th, the following year. And in fact, I think he had a. In an interview with someone near the World Trade Towers in. I think it was early 2000. I figured his name. I can't recall. But he did do an interview, and there was no inkling that within a year or so there should have been some serious zeros being pulled on those charts. If these were charts that predicted change. Significant changes. [00:21:57] Dennis McKenna: Yeah. I mean. I mean, you look at various aspects of it and it's clear from conceptually that it couldn't possibly be a map of time. It just didn't work. For one thing, it took no account of relativity and the relativity of time and time. The idea was that this applied to all times in all places, and the universe doesn't really work that way. A major, major misunderstanding which people pointed out. [00:22:35] Graham St John: And yet the underlying theory of what he on stage called compressionism, which was a concept that he didn't persist with, but in conversations with Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph Abram, came up with this concept of compressionism, which dealt with complexification and acceleration. And these are ideas that still hold their own in a certain sense. And given how things have developed in the last 25 years, I suspect that if he was a true revenant who returned, then he might say that we were in I told you so country. [00:23:46] Dennis McKenna: He would say what? [00:23:48] Graham St John: He might say that we were in I told you so country. [00:23:52] Dennis McKenna: Right, right. [00:23:55] Graham St John: Regardless of the specifics about particular end dates. [00:23:59] Dennis McKenna: Right. And that's a good point, because in some way, from a broader perspective, the Timewave and Terence's entire preoccupation with the end times and with transformation, both self transformation and transformation of the culture, in that sense, he was right. It seems like. I mean, as we've seen in the 25 years since 2000, we've seen all of these changes take place, and things seem to be going in a very peculiar direction, it seems to me. And not. Not. I mean, it's hard to know the way that history is unfolding. It does seem to be headed in the direction of some sort of pivotal transformational event. He talked about the transcendental object at the end of time. And in a certain sense, I think he probably had that. That intuition is probably right. And I think we may have reached a point where maybe we know what the transcendental object at the end of time is, but it's not what we think it is. It's not what we hoped it is. My own perspective on this, as I look at what's happening in the world, is that the transcendental object at the end of time may be AI. And AI, may people worry, Is it the end of humanity? Potentially, I think it is, because what we're doing is outsourcing our spirit. And Terence talked about the exteriorization of the spirit. He was very preoccupied with this notion that the spirit, this liberated angelic instantiation of the exteriorized spirit, its something you engineer, it's something you build with psychedelics or various things, but it's actually an artifact in a certain way. But the way that the. He was always the optimist and always aspirational, and the way he discussed it, this liberation of the spirit from matter or the projection of spirit onto matter was always discussed in a very optimistic way as a salvation, as some sort of angelic metamorphosis. You don't see that with AI. AI is extremely. @ least to my mind, it's extremely the direction it seems to be leading. This is quite dark and quite terrifying, frankly. And to my perspective, and my perspective being also perhaps the perspective of an old man whose day is done. I can't change what's happening. I'm along for the ride along with everyone else. But what seems to be happening is on the geopolitical front, on the rise of AI, on the ecological front, the collapse of planetary ecosystems, the outsourcing of our minds, our creativity to AI. Apparently the world is well along toward dividing up into different authoritarian spheres of influence. And these things are what is shaping the world right now. And compassion and decency doesn't seem to be a big part of it. It's more about power and dominance. [00:28:27] Graham St John: So, I mean, I'm just a biographer. I don't tend to make. I'm not a prognostician. But the interesting thing about, as you know, about Terence is he was so unique in that, in all of intellectual history, because he was such a. His voice was his art form. And he was and is, frankly remains a unique oratory intellect who has. Who's left us with this vast archive of spoken word performances. It's quite unparalleled in the depth and the breadth of this content that was recorded over, as you know, over about three decades. And in fact, I think I know that the oldest recording goes back to, is 1972, which is a recording that was made privately by Thomas Starr in. In a San Francisco apartment about a year after La Cherreira. And it's about three hours of that. And it hasn't been released before, but it will soon be released. In fact, just before my book's published, we'll release it in conjunction with a video sync that's going to be. That's being created by Peter Bergman. And I'll also write an essay, which is an essay about, you know, his distinct oratory intellect and how this rap, how his rap really reflects the immediacy of his performance. And the reason I bring that up in relation to what you're talking about is in recent times we've seen. [00:30:45] Dennis McKenna: People. [00:30:46] Graham St John: Generate models, large language models, based on Terence's voice. That is these bizarre spectral reanimations of Terence using voice simulators as well as that are based on well over 300 hours of Terence's public pronouncements on a vast range of matter. So just in terms of how Terence left us in. In the year 2000, he left at a time when the Internet was just starting to rock. And in many respects, he didn't really leave us. And as you know, as. I mean, he's probably one of the most bizarre examples of a figure who's perpetually departing while always arriving. And I think that makes him, just from a biographer's point of view, a fascinating spectral phenomenon, because here is a figure who, you know, he's performing the role essentially of the logos for multitudes of people, whether it's his voice in electronic music tracks, because, I mean, we're talking about the most sampled individual in the history of electronic music. And this is going back to the early 90s, you know, before he, you know, before he died. So this was years before he was already a disembodied voice. [00:33:00] Dennis McKenna: Right, right. [00:33:01] Graham St John: And it's continued to be that disembodied voice that performs in many ways like what I call a meta trip sitter. And so in terms of, you know, when you consider that his voice appears in sampled. In music that appears in heightened states of people's lives on dance floors around the world or in their own lounge rooms when they're in altered states. And so an amazing spectral phenomenon. [00:33:56] Dennis McKenna: Right, right. I agree his perpetual cyber immortality or his perpetual presence on the Internet is a big factor in shaping the sort of cultural meme that. That we encounter when we're thinking about the future. But Terence was totally oriented toward the Future, obviously, because of the Timewave, he was looking ahead at this postulated end date. But do you think, and we've reached a point now where all of these different trends seem to be coming together, AI, planetary ecological collapse and the rise of authoritarian and fascist authoritarianism and fascism the world over. The picture is pretty dystopian when you think about it. Do you think Terence ever anticipated that aspect of it? Because his vision was redemptive. His vision was about the transition out of history into some sort of ahistorical or non historical paradisical state like Eliade talked about. What do you think he would have said? I mean, I have not. I have to admit, I haven't looked into any of the Terence chatbots or any of the AI simulations of him because I. Well, I have this innate sort of reservation about AI in general. But I also think that no AI could possibly come up to, could provide a realistic simulation of Terence's thought because it's too complex. It could repeat and mix and put things together that he said, but it can't simulate. Terence, there's only one. [00:36:11] Graham St John: Well, it's interesting because I've been given privileged access to experiment with an app that's being developed that is called Eschaton, and that may be available as a freemium release, as they say, in the next months, which is. And this is a project that Lorenzo Haggerty has been involved with, or at least the model is based on his podcasts. And that's. I don't know, I think they were saying something like 60 gigs of content, hundreds of hours of Terence's spoken word stuff. [00:37:00] Dennis McKenna: But. [00:37:01] Graham St John: And I've tested that, and it's pretty vintage Terence. It's quite a remarkable advent as basically an oracle, a Terence oracle that you have on your phone. But you're right, I mean, obviously it's not Terence, and these recordings weren't. So this is based on Terence's public performances. These aren't Terence's private thoughts or based on his personal musings in private. So there's that and then there's also, you know, because as we know, one of the primary traits that Terence had was his humor and his wicked sense of humor, and that's impossible to replicate. [00:38:03] Dennis McKenna: No AI can simulate that. That's exactly right. And with all due respect to Lorenzo's efforts, which I respect, I know it's a lot of work, but inevitably the material that he has to work with is vintage, because that's what there is. And then you try to reformulate that, repurpose that into some sort of contemporary instantiation of the Terence Persona, whatever it is, is due to failure in a certain way. Although not. [00:38:46] Graham St John: I must say that when I asked the. When I asked. I was going to say it when I asked him, Terence, about what he thinks about Donald Trump. I have to say that their response was pretty interesting, though. I imagine that when this comes out, you might have a bit of a laugh, but you might also find it somewhat insightful. I mean, I haven't experimented with it in depth. I don't know how that's being released, but it is a fascinating concept. And I did explore that recently when I was working on an article about Terence's cybernetic reanimation, which is a whole other project, and maybe the subject of more writing down the line, but it's not really a subject that I take up to any great extent in the biography. And can I say that this project, I mean, I have so. I mean, you've read the acknowledgement section of my book, which is like a minor thesis in its own right. [00:40:12] Dennis McKenna: Yes. I have not memorized all of it. [00:40:15] Graham St John: I could never have undertaken a project like this without the support and assistance of a great many people. [00:40:24] Dennis McKenna: Right. And testimony to the thoroughness of your work. [00:40:28] Graham St John: You know, and. And I don't intend to name all those people now, but it's a huge, huge undertaking. And, you know, I've. I had the distinct pleasure of having the support of so many people, including yourself, and, you know, bending over backwards to assist me and point me in various directions and link me up with key characters such as the late Rick Watson, who left us a year ago now or more. And, I mean, he was just so pivotal to my project. He was the first person that I interviewed in London in 2018, and it all sort of snowballed from there. And Rick being the guy who supplied Terence with the DMT that he got the elves visiting him in February 1966. [00:41:36] Dennis McKenna: Right. And they also shared this interesting morning glory seed experiment, which would be 1964, that was really, from the description, that was really Terence's. I mean, it was effective. It was Terence's and Rick's first real psychedelic experience. Terence had played with morning glory seeds in Paeonia a little bit and had some minor effects. But the morning glory trip in Golden Gate park and then at the City Lights books, that was a real trip, and that was my opener for them. One thing that came up to me when you were discussing. Maybe this is a bit of a tangent, but when you were discussing Terence's experience at Mountain View High School or Awol High School. There was Rick and all of these characters. And another key figure there was John Parker, which you don't say much about. I think he gets a paragraph in the whole book. I think he was quite influential. Maybe not as much as Rick, but they were kind of a triad. They got into a lot of mischief together. And John Parker was also. He was a unique and amazing figure, like Terence, but in a different way. I think there was a much darker aspect to him. His father also was a brilliant chemist at NASA Ames, but in lots of ways not a good person. I mean, John's girlfriend Barbara became, for a while, my girlfriend in Boulder around 1969. In fact, she basically was my first serious lover. And John bequeathed her or introduced her to me, knowing what would happen. John visited us in Paonia on summer vacation when Terence was in Berkeley. One summer, John came back and. And I was there. And he took a shine to me and kind of adopted me as a. He became a mentor to me. I think he was bisexual. I think he had some kind of maybe sexual impulse toward me, but it was never expressed. And he was. I learned a great deal from him. We corresponded extensive letters over almost a decade. We talked about this lost correspondence that his son may have. But I was just surprised that there was less about him in the biography, considering how important Rick was. And maybe it's because you didn't have the material. [00:44:43] Graham St John: Yeah, it is, I think, largely because I don't have the material, but I think there's more than a paragraph. But I. I did also mention there that I think this is based on a letter that you'd written to Terence that is in the Purdue archives, where you hailed John Parker as a formative influence on the HyperCarbolation theory that emerged at La Chorrera. [00:45:26] Dennis McKenna: That's right. And actually, John and his father were a formative influence. It was really his father who came up with the idea or who proposed this crazy idea that these molecules could intercalate into DNA and then sort of radiate this superconducting signal. And actually, when the book from the Invisible Landscape came out and we came up with this theory, John was very dismissive. It's like, oh, yeah, we talked about this years ago. You guys completely ripped this off for my dad. Not quite, but there was that element. I mean, had John had a more prolific output in terms of. He was not really in the public eye. In fact, he was almost pathologically introverted and covert and very much into the occult and staying in the shadows. Had there been more material, I mean, he would make a great figure for a similar biography. But he, of course, didn't have the cultural recognition and iconic recognition that Terence. [00:46:49] Graham St John: You have to dig up those letters. I think that's probably going to be instrumental to any further knowledge on that. But it did interest me that he had an interest in joining the trip to South America. Initially, I think he wanted to go through Mexico. [00:47:09] Dennis McKenna: Right. [00:47:13] Graham St John: So I'm sure that his presence there would have changed the mix. [00:47:19] Dennis McKenna: It would have absolutely changed the mix. Yeah. But anyway, so many interesting people in Terence's life and you talk about this very elegantly and eloquently. People that we knew in Paonia, I mean, considering this town, Paonia, basically a coal mining, fruit growing town, and the biggest community events are the Friday night football games. But there were some of the weirdest people I've ever met in that town, including myself. Like Ron Curry, for example. He was an athlete. He was all very much in the high school scene. His dad was a coach. That Ron was a really weird dude, which is why we got along with him. And I used to say there's something in the water or something that mutates people from Paeonia. And then of course, when Terence finally escaped from Paonia, did this, this thing managed to create all this anxiety on my parents' part about Chris Hutchins and his involvement with Chris Hutchins. I don't know if, you know, maybe I shouldn't even say it, but I recently learned she lived in Paonia all of her life. I don't know what her life was like, but she was killed in an automobile accident not too long ago. Two or three years ago. [00:49:03] Graham St John: Right, I know that. Yeah, I mentioned that in the book. [00:49:09] Dennis McKenna: Well, that was the thing. I mean, I do think that Chris, and of course I knew Chris. I mean, she was an attractive young lady and very smart. She was nerdy like Terence. I don't know if they ever even consummated their relationship, but they were definitely involved. And my dad, my parents were of course, very, you know, with all the repression of sexuality and being Catholic and all that, he was just afraid that he would, you know, he would knock her up. And whether that was even a risk or not, he played that card to get himself out of Paeonia, you know, as well as, I mean, making out in the graveyard. I mean, that was nothing. There was really nothing out of line. Everybody did that. Bethlehem Cemetery was a great place to go, knack, you know, I did it myself. Not that I had many girlfriends at Maonia, but, you know, it was not an uncommon thing. But Terence sort of leveraged that, whether deliberately or not, so that my parents thought we got to get him out of here before something like that happens. And we just happened to have these relatives, close relatives in Menlo Park. They were both schoolteachers and highly respected by us at the time. Later, the relationships soured. So then they sent him to California for his junior year, and he fell in with all of these. Whatever my parents had imagined he might get into in Paeonia, whatever mischief he might get into, it was exponentially enhanced when he went to Awold High, to Mountain View, and fell in with these people who were also brilliant, quirky rebels and just amazing, like Rick Watson and Doug Hansen and. And I knew most of these people because I would make visits to Berkeley. I mean, I was in Berkeley. The 2894 Telegraph House was very much a going concern when I went to Berkeley in 1967 with my friend Bob Peak, who was part of my cartel, if you will, or circle of druggie stoners at the time. And 2894 was very Terence, as your book makes clear. He was living up on Tuttle Road at the time, but the salon at 2894 was very active, and I was in on many of those sessions when I was out in the summer. And it was an amazing thing. I think it was during one of those sessions where Terence said to be something like the Philosopher's Stone. I know what the philosopher's stone is. There's a jar of it over here on the shelf, right? [00:52:25] Graham St John: Yes. [00:52:25] Dennis McKenna: And it was tmt, and it may well be the Philosopher's Stone. [00:52:30] Graham St John: So just so that listeners understand what we're talking about. So there was a period for two years that Terence leased a house on Telegraph Avenue. And it was basically a rooming house where his fellow students took up rooms. So he was essentially the lessee. And he lived there from. So he took out that lease in 1965 at the start of his term at UC Berkeley in the Experimental College. And so for the first year of those two years at the Experimental College, he lived there. And he lived there in the master bedroom. I think it was the corner room of the house. And that was where he would hold nightly meetings. And he had a television set, or maybe he had a television set later, but he held court there. And that was where he got the elves. And. But after a year or so, I think he decided that he would maintain the lease there and move out to Tunnel Road for a quieter time. And I think that's where he finished his. That's where he finished the second year of the experimental college. And he. He produced a thesis there, and from there he went overseas for the first time. But, yeah, this was a situation that you hadn't, in your memoirs fleshed out. He hadn't fleshed out exactly what he was doing at that stage in terms of where he was living. And this only really came about through talking to a lot of people. And Rick Watson was really instrumental there. And there were a whole bunch of other people even before he moved into Telegraph Avenue. People like Nina Wise, who. A really important figure that he met and who was also a very close friend of Kat Harrison's. [00:55:06] Dennis McKenna: Right. [00:55:06] Graham St John: In fact, she was kind of instrumental into. [00:55:11] Dennis McKenna: In fact, those guys met him at Terence, did she not? [00:55:14] Graham St John: Yeah. [00:55:15] Dennis McKenna: And Cat were students at UC Santa Cruz. I think Kat met Terence through Nina. I'm not sure. Well, it's true. Yeah. Nina's still around, of course. I understand she is. [00:55:31] Graham St John: And I mean, just lots of little details. Like she introduced me to a newsletter that was produced by. Not by a Walt High School, but Los Altos High School, where Nina was a student. And they. There was this Numerograph newsletter that was produced, and she has one of those that I've seen a copy of. And we see Terence's name, you know, Terry McKenna listed in the. As one of the editors. [00:56:13] Dennis McKenna: Right. [00:56:14] Graham St John: Precisely. What he did in this newsletter, which I believe was called Neo Etudiant. Say it again? [00:56:23] Dennis McKenna: It was called the Neo Etudiant. [00:56:25] Graham St John: Exactly. That's it. [00:56:26] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, I know what he did, but I know he was affiliated and they just wanted him on the editorial board because he was such a raconteur and wordsmith and all that. I mean, he was a perfect fit. I saw some of those issues. I don't recollect. I mean, what they were publishing was kind of the typical polemics, political and otherwise. I'm not sure what led the school to shut it down. It only lasted a few months and the school shut it down. I'm not sure why they shut it down. I suspect it just was because it was too. Too avant garde or too heretical for. They just didn't approve. They frowned on it. They shut it down. Didn't help Terence's attitude toward authority. You know. [00:57:29] Graham St John: It's interesting. They shut it down around the time that Terence was experimenting and others were experimenting with morning glory seeds. This goes back to this story that we're really only. We really have Rick Watson to thank for this and other stories that he shared with me. These are unpublished short stories. And he was an amazing writer in his own right. And then on top of that, he's also, you know, one of the characters in his story happens to be Terence. And this one story that he wrote called Morning Glory, that I document this story in the book, which was, as you said before, was an experience with morning glory seeds that they had in 1964. I believe it was the early 64. It could have even been late 63, but it was probably 64. And one of the significant things about this story is that they were introduced to the process and the sourcing and the process and the administration method and all that by a scientist that showed up at a night science class that they both went to, who was. Jim Fallow was a PhD student at that stage, who, as it turns out, as you say, was James Fadiman. And Rick and I approached James about this, and he had no recollection, but he couldn't deny the details. He said it had to have been him. And he was quite astounded and pleasantly surprised. And I guess it's somewhat ironic that a figure who has become such a spokesperson for microdosing was essentially responsible for Terence's first trip. Terence being the. You know, the heroic Dota. [00:59:54] Dennis McKenna: Yeah. So that's interesting because, yeah, Jim is still very much in the loop and doing this microdosing thing, which probably Tariffs would scoff at. I mean, I tend to scoff at it, too. I sometimes say, well, you could microdose, that's fine. But you shouldn't forget that just around the corner is a world of wonder. And you should take a look around the corner once in a while just to remind yourself what we're dealing with. But Jim is a very kind, very wonderful guy. And I've only met him a few times, but we've corresponded and. Yeah. So one of the influences, one of the mentors of Terence, in a certain way, provided he and Rick with just enough information that they could go out and do it for themselves. You know, that's an aspect of your biography. I don't think people realize how influential morning glory seeds were in their initial psychedelic experiences. That was their initial psychedelic experience. I never got very far with morning glories. I tried it, obviously, being stuck back in Paonia, you know, and being four years behind Terence. But of course, we were in touch. Right. So everything Terence was Doing the little brother was trying to simulate too. So, yeah, I went out, got morning glory seeds and took them. Got, you know, unbelievably sick and had no other result from it, you know, but. But they turned out to be pretty interesting. Pretty interesting psychedelics, particularly the stronger ones, which we didn't know that at that time. Maybe Hawaiian Wood Rose is a serious psychedelic. I'm surprised there's not more discussion of it because it's quite pleasant at moderate doses and it can be quite challenging at higher doses. [01:02:06] Graham St John: And it's interesting that I recall Rick and I had a lot of exchanges. And one of the things that he said that there was at Walt High School around that time, there was information circulating about morning glory seeds. And I'm not quite sure, but there may be a connection there with the demise of Neo Etudiant. There may have been a story in there. We don't know. I mean, maybe someone has these. I mean, they obviously had a very small circulation. There may be. I mean, I did try to. I mean, you wouldn't believe the sorts of things I've tried to do. But I have spoken with various characters who were fellow students of Terretz at that time, and John Parker and Rick Watson, who knew of. Knew of that publication, which wasn't an awalde high school publication. It was a Los Altos publication. But I came up short of finding the smoking gun. [01:03:32] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, well, I'm not surprised. This stuff is hard to track down. Somewhere it's out there. And I think your suggestion that they might have published something in Neo Etudiant and that was just over the line for the faculty that was probably kind of loosely overseeing this. That was just a bridge too far, and that was the end of it. [01:03:59] Graham St John: Who's to say that someone else. I mean, as I said before, this is my biography, is not the final word on Terence. If it inspires other people to dig further and excavate further or provide competing views, elaborate on various aspects of his life and relationships, or go deeper into his iconoclastic metaphysics, then my project will have served its purpose. [01:04:41] Dennis McKenna: Well, anyone who tries to excavate further and uncover things that you have not already discovered, they have a challenge. Because your work has been so thorough. It's been obviously a labor of love, but a labor of excellent and remarkable scholarship. [01:05:03] Graham St John: Thank you. I mean, there's been so many challenges along the way. And I don't envy anyone going in there and going in deep. But I must say that working through this over Covid was particularly important because I interacted with so many people who had a lot of time on their hands. And so it was quite fortuitous that I was actually living in one of the world's most locked down cities, which was Melbourne during that time. And fortuitous to have access to the Internet and be in daily communications with dozens of people who may not have had and probably wouldn't have had the time to dig into their archives and so forth otherwise. So, yeah, a strangely fortuitous set of circumstances, but ultimately a hugely challenging project for a whole bunch of reasons that I outline in the preface. [01:06:26] Dennis McKenna: It's been a real privilege to talk to you about this. As we said earlier, we've barely scratched the surface. So I thank you for your time and I hope this attracts a lot of interest in the book and I'll do everything I can to make people aware of it. And we'll try to revisit this a couple more times before it launches. So we'll coordinate on that and we'll keep our audience tuned. And I really appreciate your cooperation. And let's make this the book of the century. It needs to be recognized. Maybe not the book of the century, but. Yeah, maybe not. [01:07:13] Graham St John: But I really appreciate your support and, you know, thanks for having me on. And, you know, I, you know, I relish the, you know, chatting about Terence with you and look forward to, you know, our next jaunt. [01:07:30] Dennis McKenna: Me too. It is the definitive biography so far as you sent the forward. Maybe not comprehensive, but comprehensive enough for the moment. So we'll leave it there. Get some sleep. I'll be in touch. Thank you so much, Graham. [01:07:48] Graham St John: Thank you, Dennis. See you. See you next time. [01:07:51] Dennis McKenna: Thank you. [01:07:56] Graham St John: Join our mission to harmonize with the natural world. Support the Makena Academy by donating today. Thank you for listening to Brainforest Café with Dennis McKenna. Find us online at McKenna.Academy.