Magic Mushrooms, Messiaen and the Marsh Chapel Miracle

Scholar, performer and composer Peter Bannister

Peter Bannister has the first installment of what is already a fascinating examination of the connection between psychedelic drugs and religious response. Happily, he leads with reminiscences of two Apparition of the Eternal Church screenings, one at Boston University's Marsh Chapel, where decades earlier Harvard researchers dosed churchgoers with psilocybin.

The Apparition pull-quotes:

Extremely thought-provoking...an extraordinary exercise in musical phenomenology... The film’s genius lies in its portrayal of the capacity of Messiaen’s music, and by extension any music, to affect human consciousness at an extremely deep level... Undeniably gripping, at times hilariously funny, at others highly disturbing...ranks as one of the most penetrating studies of the nature of musical phenomena that I have ever seen.

Two months into my road trip for the new film (working title: Tie It To My Hand), I've encountered a fairly demoralizing concentration of bumps in the road (though the last week's interview/lessons with Jennifer Balderama MacDonald, Laura Miller and Eisa Davis have gone a long way toward remoralizing me), and kudos five years into a film's life is a rare event. Peter's commentary was nice to wake up to.

April 6: Kansas earnings

Distracted driving #1: Kansas tilts

Distracted Driving #2: Kansas is flat

After my feverish night in Tuscarora, Gail armed me with a bag of fresh-baked bran muffins and I headed straight for a drugstore in Elko. I didn't feel very well at the outset of my 800-mile drive but that's what off-brand No-Doz and flu medication are for. Next stop was Denver, where I would stay with my cousins, but I'm one of those hybrid-driving mileage slowpokes and with all the medications coursing through my system I had to keep pulling over to pee so it was nearly midnight when I found myself in an opaque fog, in the middle of the Medicine Bow National Forest, going 20 mph while semis passed me at, what, 100? They have the road and the placement of stray deer memorized, apparently, but I didn't, so I gave up on Denver and cousins and pulled over and spread my queen-sized memory foam mattress pad (Craig's List, $60) over my luggage in the back seat and curled up and slept, very well thank you, and woke up six hours later and kept driving. By the time I crossed into Kansas I felt perfectly healthy - whatever was wrong with me, I must have scared the shit out of it. 

Driving through Kansas, it occurred to me that once I landed in Lindsborg, I would have to play the Tchaikovsky concerto for my teachers, Lee Becker and her husband Allan Harlock. So at the next rest stop, I found a little picnic shelter and spent 20 minutes practicing. On my way back to the car, a large man in a plaid shirt and wide white visor stepped out of his Winnebago and handed me a dollar. 

April 5: Tuscarora

Driving instead of flying means you can bring more than one carry-on.

I spent some time in the last few days thinking up new names for the blog. "Paul Festa's Inability to Commit" was one; "Paul Festa's Sporadic Contribution to the Global Problem of Information Overload" was another. I was trying to think of a way to avoid boxing myself in to a commitment as foolhardy as "giving you fever every Monday in 2011" and finally decided it would be easier to just update the blog than to rename it. As it happens the archive is brimming with new material, thanks to the recent travels that prevented me from updating this in the first place. New blog resolution: keep it short, screw Mondays.

First stop (April 5th) was Tuscarora, NV, where I stayed up late with the painter Ron Arthaud reminiscing about Juliette. As the evening wore on I began feeling a little woozy and went to my bed downright feverish. It was a strange fever, which felt concentrated in my muscles so that if I stretched very hard the feeling was relieved, somewhat, so I stretched this way, and that way, arms and lower back and neck and hands and legs and then I started over again, because every time I stopped stretching that feverish feeling became oppressive, like it was tightening me up into an undifferentiated mass the size of a billiard ball. If I wanted to remain differentiated, I had to stretch. So I stretched, and kept stretching, until finally, about 90 minutes into this, I realized, darling, Scribble, you're not stretching. You're writhing. 

Tuscarora Community Center and Tourist Information Office

Greater Tuscarora

Leaving Tuscarora - view of Wheeler Mountain (?)