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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you.

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Speaker 2: It was last with me about eleven years ago. Gary

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Speaker 2: Lachman back with us. Author of more than twenty books

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Speaker 2: on consciousness, culture in the Western esoteric tradition. He's written

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Speaker 2: biographies on Alistair Crawley, Carl Jung, Rudolph Steiner, Emanuel Swedenburg,

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Speaker 2: Colin Wilson, among others. He has been a founding member

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Speaker 2: of the rock group Blondie. In two thousand and six,

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Speaker 2: was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Gary,

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Speaker 2: welcome back.

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Speaker 3: Have you been. I've been fine, George, and thank you

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Speaker 3: very much for inviting me to be on the show again.

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Speaker 2: It's good to have you back. What's for new with you?

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Speaker 3: Well, I've been writing a lot, and as you mentioned,

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Speaker 3: I have a new book out called Touch by the

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Speaker 3: Presence From Blondie's Bowery and rock and Roll to Magic

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Speaker 3: and the Occult, And basically it's still the story how

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Speaker 3: I went from playing in Blondie and my own band

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Speaker 3: and iggy Pop years ago and transitioned over about a

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Speaker 3: decade or so into writing books about what you just talked.

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Speaker 2: About, I'm going to assume that you were always interested

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Speaker 2: in the occult prior to the group, right, Well.

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Speaker 3: Actually, my interest in it became began around the same

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Speaker 3: time that I was playing with Blondie. I mean, I've

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Speaker 3: always always been a reader, and in the book, in

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Speaker 3: the memoir, I talked about how important comic books were

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Speaker 3: for me when I was very very young. I think

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Speaker 3: I was reading at about five, and I can remember

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Speaker 3: when comic books in the States went from ten cents

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Speaker 3: to twelve cents, and that happened about towards the end

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Speaker 3: of nineteen sixty one, So I was born the end

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Speaker 3: of fifty five. So I was reading at a very

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Speaker 3: early age. And I got into weird fiction like HP

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Speaker 3: Lovecraft and the Weird Tales writers from that pulp magazine

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Speaker 3: in the nineteen thirties. They were being republished in paperbacks

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Speaker 3: in the sixties and seventies, and I was gobbling those

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Speaker 3: things up. But when I started playing with Blondie in

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Speaker 3: April of late March early April nineteen seventy five, it's

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Speaker 3: quite quite some time ago. Now. After living with Debbie,

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Speaker 3: Harry and Christine in this tiny, tiny, one bedroom flat

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Speaker 3: in Little Italy. We moved into a squalid, decrepit lofe

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Speaker 3: space on the Bowery in New York. And this was

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Speaker 3: back when the Bowery was skid row. Not today it's

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Speaker 3: like he can't afford the cappuccinos there, ridiculous. But this

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Speaker 3: was back in the day when it really was skid row.

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Speaker 3: And the guy who had the lease on the building

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Speaker 3: was this wild, gay, flamboyant biker artist who was into

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Speaker 3: the Hell's Angels and all that, but he was also

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Speaker 3: into Alista Crowley, and he used to do these impromptu

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Speaker 3: readings of the Tarot Deck and he did these paintings,

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Speaker 3: and he would read from Croley's novel Diary of a

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Speaker 3: Drug Fume. And so I was in that mill yere.

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Speaker 3: But the book that did it for me was just

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Speaker 3: book just called The Occult and was written by a

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Speaker 3: British writer named Colin Wilson, and it came out in

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Speaker 3: the early seventies and I read in seventy five and

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Speaker 3: it just blew me away. It just just opened the

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Speaker 3: door to this whole of the world that I knew

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Speaker 3: nothing about.

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Speaker 2: And you got into it in a big way, didn't you.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, totally just and it was an interesting time

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Speaker 3: to get into this too. This was like seventy five

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Speaker 3: in New York. There were a lot of bookshops, and

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Speaker 3: the occult had become very, very popular. It became really

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Speaker 3: really popular in the mid sixties because the Beatles were

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Speaker 3: into it. If you remember the Beatles, Sergeant Pepper's out

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Speaker 3: on the cover, Alistair Crowley's on the cover, and C. G. Jung,

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Speaker 3: who's the psychologist who was writing about synchronicity and flying

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Speaker 3: saucers and the altered states of consciousness, and Alvius Huxley

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Speaker 3: who had famously experimented with mescaline and wrote his book Doors.

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Speaker 3: So all this kind of stuff was mixing in with

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Speaker 3: the counterculture and the youth culture and all that, and

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Speaker 3: for a while it became the most popular thing. I mean,

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Speaker 3: if you remember the end of the sixties, you know,

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Speaker 3: the dawning of the Age of Aquarius and all of that.

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Speaker 3: I mean, my first book was all about that. It

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Speaker 3: was called Turn Off Your Mind. The Mystic Sixties and

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Speaker 3: the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius. How a

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Speaker 3: lot of the pop culture in the nineteen sixties was

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Speaker 3: informed with a lot of mystical ideas, so I just

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Speaker 3: totally got into it. And by the time, I mean

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Speaker 3: many many years later, the late nineties and then when

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Speaker 3: I moved here to England and early in the ninety

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Speaker 3: six ninety seven, that's when I started writing full time.

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Speaker 3: But my first foray into writing about this stuff was

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Speaker 3: actually a song, and it was a song called I'm

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Speaker 3: Always Touched by Your Presence, Dear, and that was a

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Speaker 3: big hit, not so much in the States, but in

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Speaker 3: the UK and in Europe. It was in the top

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Speaker 3: ten nineteen seventy eight. That's a while ago. But the

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Speaker 3: song was about these range experiences I was having with

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Speaker 3: my girlfriend at the time. And the first Blondie North

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Speaker 3: American tour, we were the support act for Iggy Pop,

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Speaker 3: the grandfather of punk rock and all that, and he

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Speaker 3: had been resurrected by David Bowie. His career had gone

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Speaker 3: into decline a bit and then Bowie kind of got

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Speaker 3: him going again. And actually on this tour, Bowie was

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Speaker 3: the keyboardist, but he was incognito. And you have to

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Speaker 3: remember this is well before social media and mobile phones

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Speaker 3: or anything like that, so word got around by the

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Speaker 3: old grapevine, you know, word of mouth and all that

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Speaker 3: kind of stuff. And then but on this tour, Lisa Persky,

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Speaker 3: my girlfriend, who's an actress stage, screen and cinema and

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Speaker 3: also a writer and a photographer on the scene at

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Speaker 3: the time in New York. She had a list of

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Speaker 3: all the hotels we'd be staying at, and whenever I

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Speaker 3: went to call her from Chicago or Kansas City, wherever

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Speaker 3: the hell it was, excuse my strong language there, she

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Speaker 3: would be about to call me, or if she was

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Speaker 3: just about to call me, I'd be picking up the

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Speaker 3: phone to call her. So we had and we discovered

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Speaker 3: we were having the same sorts of dreams. I can't

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Speaker 3: remember now exactly what the dreams were, but we seem

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Speaker 3: to having these shared dream experiences. So I wrote this

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Speaker 3: song about that, and that's on the second Blondie album,

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Speaker 3: Plastic Letters, and it was a big hit. But that

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Speaker 3: was the first time I started, you know, actually creating

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Speaker 3: something based on my interest in this. And around the

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Speaker 3: same time, a little bit later than that, I started

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Speaker 3: to record my dream seriously and I discovered that I

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Speaker 3: actually had precognitive dreams, you know, bits and pieces of

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Speaker 3: my own future were turning up in my dreams. And

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Speaker 3: I started doing this after reading a book called An

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Speaker 3: Experiment with Time that came out in the nineteen twenties,

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Speaker 3: about a century ago by now. But the guy who

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Speaker 3: wrote it, he was an aeronautic engineer, J. W. Dunn.

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Speaker 3: He wasn't an occultist or anything, and he just discovered

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Speaker 3: by chance that bits and pieces of his own future.

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Speaker 3: It wasn't not predicting that like Chriswell predicts like that,

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Speaker 3: it's like what you're going to read in the newspaper

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Speaker 3: the next day, or what you're going to see on television.

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Speaker 3: So I started doing that and lo and behold it

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Speaker 3: really was true. And twenty twenty two I finally wrote

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Speaker 3: a book about that, called Dreaming Ahead of Time. I

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Speaker 3: wrote it over the first lockdown here, the COVID lockdown

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Speaker 3: here in the UK. But that all started way way,

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Speaker 3: way way back then, you know, fifty years ago.

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Speaker 2: Was Debbie Harry's name was She named after the group

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Speaker 2: Blondie because she was a blonde.

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Speaker 3: Well, I mean Debbie had a couple of different incarnations.

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Speaker 3: She first started in the late sixties. She has sort

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Speaker 3: of a hippie band called the Wind in the Willows

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Speaker 3: and nothing happened with them, And then she had a

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Speaker 3: different few different incarnations in the early early seventies in

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Speaker 3: New York the Stilettos. When I first saw her, actually

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Speaker 3: before I was even playing in the band, and before

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Speaker 3: my friend, good friend Clem Burke, Blondie' drummer who said

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Speaker 3: they passed away last year. I knew him. We went

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Speaker 3: to high school together in New Jersey, so I knew

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Speaker 3: him before either of us were playing in the band,

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Speaker 3: and we were hanging out. In New York. There was

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Speaker 3: a club called Club eighty two in nineteen seventy four.

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Speaker 3: It was the old drag club, but it started letting

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Speaker 3: bands play. And this was the kind of the glitter scene.

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Speaker 3: So there was this kind of strange, you know, crossover

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Speaker 3: between kind of the camp be gay, you know scene

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Speaker 3: and this glitter, glam rock, sexual ambiguity kind of scene,

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Speaker 3: wearing glitter and makeup and all that. I was into

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Speaker 3: it at the time, but yeah, I saw the Stilettos.

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Speaker 3: This was a band that Debbie was in. But they

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Speaker 3: finally she used. The story is that when she was

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Speaker 3: crossing the street, you know, truck drivers whistle and say, hey, Blondie.

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Speaker 3: This kind of thing is So this was eventually why

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Speaker 3: they decided to call the band that name, but.

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Speaker 4: I know you're gonna want some after hearing this. This

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Speaker 4: is an amazing story.

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Speaker 1: We've got Steven and Malachi Gregory in Nelson, New Zealand.

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Speaker 4: I understand that Malachi, who is eight almost nine years

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Speaker 4: old now, was suffering with not just one or two warts,

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Speaker 4: but I mean a significant outbreak of warts all over

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Speaker 4: his body, so significant it impacted his ability to really function.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, he was having trouble even holding a pencil to right.

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Speaker 5: It was Tye's book actually that got me thinking about it.

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Speaker 3: I'm not surprised.

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Speaker 4: It is an amazing immunal modulator, and so I can

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Speaker 4: see that it would work. And so at what point

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Speaker 4: did you see that there was actually improvement It's really

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Speaker 4: going to work.

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Speaker 5: Well, look, we really started to notice it around twelve weeks.

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Speaker 5: You can see these things actually getting smaller and smaller

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Speaker 5: and then going down to with just little red marks.

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Speaker 5: The whole things are gone, and we're talking about what's

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Speaker 5: you know one the size of the wanner. I thought,

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Speaker 5: no way, that's gonna wow. That's just been miraculous to

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Speaker 5: see him get into a pair of shoes.

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Speaker 3: Yes, how wonderful.

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Speaker 5: It's great to see him so happy and yeah.

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Speaker 3: Confident, absolutely wonderful.

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Speaker 1: Friends that have seen it that is blown away.

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Speaker 3: TI, this is awesome, Yeah, this is awesome.

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Speaker 6: Another amazing story. Why we're talking about Carnivora. Call them

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Speaker 6: to awaken your immune system and protect yourself now called

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Speaker 6: one eight six six eight three six eighty seven thirty five.

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Speaker 6: That's one eight six six eight three six eighty seven

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Speaker 6: thirty five. Or visit carnivora dot com c A r

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Speaker 6: niv o r A carnivora dot com.

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Speaker 2: Now what got you to leave the band when you

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Speaker 2: finally did.

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Speaker 3: My ego? I wanted to have my own band, That's

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Speaker 3: the austraightforward, honest answer. But I was writing lots of songs.

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Speaker 3: I mean I wasn't a musician. That's the other thing too.

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Speaker 3: I mean I when I grew up in New Jersey,

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Speaker 3: I knew lots of people who were great musicians. These

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Speaker 3: were guys who could put on the headphones and figure

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Speaker 3: out a Jimmy hendrixlick, you know, or Steve Howe or

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Speaker 3: Robert Fripp or any of these great super guitar heroes.

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Speaker 3: And if you remember, like the prog rock in the

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Speaker 3: early seventies that Emerson Lake and Palmer and yes, a

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Speaker 3: dance like that, and it got so complex and so

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Speaker 3: over the top that even in the early days then

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Speaker 3: there was a reaction to that. If you remember, there

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Speaker 3: was a band called Seanna Nah who did all the

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Speaker 3: old do wop right right, And then people like Chuck

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Speaker 3: Berry and Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, they were

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Speaker 3: having revived revivals of their careers in the early seventies,

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Speaker 3: so there was a kind of nostalgia for this simple,

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Speaker 3: stripped down, you know, basic kind of rock stuff, and

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Speaker 3: that's what started happening in New York at that time.

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Speaker 3: There was a band called the New York Dolls who

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Speaker 3: never never made it very far out of New York.

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Speaker 3: They put out a couple albums, but they weren't they

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Speaker 3: weren't successful, but they were They were this glitter band

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Speaker 3: that did simple, like almost like Rolling Stones, early Rolling

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Speaker 3: Stones kind of music. And I was hanging out with

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Speaker 3: all these people in Jersey, but I could barely play.

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Speaker 3: I mean I could. I picked up a few chords

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Speaker 3: here there, but by the time I had left your

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Speaker 3: the Left Hones living in New York. Just before I

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Speaker 3: was playing with Blondie. The thing What was interesting for

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Speaker 3: me was that because I wasn't a great musician, I

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Speaker 3: didn't feel somehow inhibited because these other guys are really

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Speaker 3: great guitarist and they knew how difficult it was to

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Speaker 3: play some of these great, you know, guitar licks and

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Speaker 3: all that, and they could do that. They were very

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Speaker 3: proficient at that, but they were inhibited to do anything

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Speaker 3: creative of their own, whereas for me, it was the opposite.

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Speaker 3: It was like, I knew I was never play anything

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Speaker 3: like those complex guitar licks, but I could get something

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Speaker 3: out of the guitar. I could. I could put a

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Speaker 3: couple of chords together. And if you if you don't

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Speaker 3: really play all the time and you put a couple

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00:12:40,559 --> 00:12:42,960
Speaker 3: of chords together and they sound like they really work,

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Speaker 3: it's a revelation to you. At least was to me,

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Speaker 3: said God, I could do this. So I I just

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Speaker 3: taught myself how to play, and that was what was

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Speaker 3: needed in New York at the time. It was very

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Speaker 3: very simple, you know. It was a reaction to all

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Speaker 3: the you know, the over the top kind of operatic,

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Speaker 3: you know, kind of rock that was going on. So

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Speaker 3: I just kind of fell into it. And what happened

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Speaker 3: was that the bass player in the very very early

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Speaker 3: days that was playing with Debbie and Chris Stelling, the guitarists,

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Speaker 3: and when Clem Burke just started playing with them, he

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Speaker 3: left to join another band. There was a band called

256
00:13:17,040 --> 00:13:20,199
Speaker 3: Television at the time that were considered sort of the

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Speaker 3: you know, the really genius new wave rock band in

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Speaker 3: New York. And Patty Smith who was around in this

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Speaker 3: meal year or two, and she and Debbie had a

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Speaker 3: long kind of feud in New York. This this this

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00:13:33,840 --> 00:13:36,360
Speaker 3: clubing big enough for the both of us sort of thing.

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Speaker 3: And she told the bass player Fred Smith, there was

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Speaker 3: no no, no relation, but she told them, you know,

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Speaker 3: Debbie's not going anywhere. You should you should quit. Tom Vlaye,

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Speaker 3: who had the band Television. Their bass player quit was

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Speaker 3: is Richard Hall, and he went on to start a

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Speaker 3: band called the Heartbreakers with Johnny Thunders, one of the

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Speaker 3: guitarists from the New York Dolls. Uh So he quit

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Speaker 3: and Blondie was at a bass player and Clem I

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Speaker 3: was living in New York. I had been going to

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Speaker 3: some of the early gigs and hanging out and he

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Speaker 3: knew I could kind of almost maybe play, and he said, well,

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Speaker 3: why don't you, Why don't you audition? So I went

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Speaker 3: to their audition space and I didn't even I didn't

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Speaker 3: have any equipment or anything. I was starving in New York.

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Speaker 3: I was working as a messenger and barely making enough

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Speaker 3: money to keep body and soul together. But I went.

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Speaker 3: They had a bass and the guitar, and I just

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Speaker 3: jammed with them, And next thing I knew, I was

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Speaker 3: in a rock band.

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Speaker 2: And you went by the name mcgeary Valentine.

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Speaker 3: At that time. Yeah, yes, yeah, agreed. I got the name.

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00:14:32,680 --> 00:14:36,480
Speaker 3: That name came from Henry Miller, who was my favorite

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Speaker 3: writer at the time, or one of my favorite writers.

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Speaker 3: That was his middle name, and I identified with him

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Speaker 3: a couple of ways. Were both Capricorn's at birthdays around

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Speaker 3: the same time, towards the end of December. He worked

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Speaker 3: for Western Union. When I was before playing in Blondie,

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Speaker 3: I was working as a messenger in New York and starving.

290
00:14:53,440 --> 00:14:55,600
Speaker 3: I mean, there's story, there's stories in the book about

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Speaker 3: mount My stealing cigarette butts out of secretary's astrays in

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Speaker 3: the offices. I couldn't afford to buy cigarettes back then,

293
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Speaker 3: and running you know from one you know from the dispatch,

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Speaker 3: the dispatch office too, wherever I had to you know,

295
00:15:10,280 --> 00:15:13,720
Speaker 3: deliver the package so that I didn't use the subway

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Speaker 3: token and I could turn that in. There was a

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Speaker 3: local little mom and pop shop on the corner who

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Speaker 3: would give me a couple of slices of bread and

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Speaker 3: some cheese for some subway token, so I paid the dues.

300
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Speaker 3: I live rough life. But another reason I took that

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Speaker 3: name is that everybody else had these Johnny Thunders, Richard Hell,

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Speaker 3: Alan Suicide. There were all these very extreme, you know, dark,

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00:15:39,760 --> 00:15:43,480
Speaker 3: kind of despairing names, and I never all angry. And

304
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Speaker 3: I wasn't angry about anything. It was nineteen years old

305
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Speaker 3: playing a rock band. I was doing exactly in New

306
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Speaker 3: York rock band. I was doing exactly what you know,

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Speaker 3: most kids I knew Jersey wanted to do. So I

308
00:15:52,560 --> 00:15:55,200
Speaker 3: wasn't angry at all. So I took a more friendly name.

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Speaker 3: So I thought, Gary Valentine. That sounds like the name

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Speaker 3: of a good pop star.

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Speaker 2: Now you're still playing music, Gary, No gay stop a

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00:16:04,640 --> 00:16:05,320
Speaker 2: funny thing.

313
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Speaker 3: A few years ago, I was invited to do some

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Speaker 3: shows with the Blondie tribute band. It was a band

315
00:16:14,720 --> 00:16:17,080
Speaker 3: called Bootleg Blondie. Here in the UK. They're They're very

316
00:16:17,120 --> 00:16:19,440
Speaker 3: good and in fact, Clem Burke, the drummer, did a

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00:16:19,440 --> 00:16:23,120
Speaker 3: whole tour with them a few years back, and I

318
00:16:23,160 --> 00:16:25,520
Speaker 3: went to see them because we kind of kept in touch.

319
00:16:25,520 --> 00:16:27,040
Speaker 3: I didn't keep in touch with the other members, but

320
00:16:27,120 --> 00:16:29,040
Speaker 3: we knew each other from Jersey back in the days

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Speaker 3: when you're teenager, so we kept in touch. And yes,

322
00:16:32,720 --> 00:16:34,120
Speaker 3: I went to see their show and they did a

323
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Speaker 3: very good job. You know, they're one of these there's

324
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Speaker 3: a whole genre, there's a whole you know, economy of

325
00:16:39,880 --> 00:16:43,080
Speaker 3: these tribute bands. You know Pink, you know Pink Floyd

326
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Speaker 3: tribute bands, or you know whatever it might be, the

327
00:16:45,240 --> 00:16:47,200
Speaker 3: Ramones or you know, whoever it might be. Who didn't

328
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Speaker 3: they do it, you know, pitch perfect, everything is perfect done.

329
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Speaker 3: So I went to see the show. And then Blondie

330
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Speaker 3: Proper was in town here playing at the O two Center,

331
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Speaker 3: which is a big, you know, concert hall, and I

332
00:17:00,400 --> 00:17:04,120
Speaker 3: went to see and they sat me next to the

333
00:17:04,119 --> 00:17:06,560
Speaker 3: the Blondie tribute band and they kept they say, I said,

334
00:17:06,600 --> 00:17:07,919
Speaker 3: do you want to do this? You want to do this?

335
00:17:08,000 --> 00:17:11,280
Speaker 3: I hadn't played in ages, so I wound up doing

336
00:17:11,440 --> 00:17:13,399
Speaker 3: a bunch of shows with them playing, you know, playing

337
00:17:13,440 --> 00:17:15,720
Speaker 3: the songs I used to play on, so the early

338
00:17:15,760 --> 00:17:20,000
Speaker 3: Blondie songs and the early Blondie album and some of

339
00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:23,720
Speaker 3: the songs I wrote. But funnily enough, I mean over

340
00:17:23,760 --> 00:17:28,159
Speaker 3: the years ages again, ages ago. I'm old enough to

341
00:17:28,160 --> 00:17:31,640
Speaker 3: almost everything is ages ago. But when I first moved

342
00:17:31,680 --> 00:17:34,800
Speaker 3: here to London ninety six, I wound up playing with

343
00:17:34,920 --> 00:17:37,880
Speaker 3: Blondie again. This was just before they did their sort

344
00:17:37,920 --> 00:17:42,000
Speaker 3: of reunion album, and Chris Stein called me and asked

345
00:17:42,000 --> 00:17:44,160
Speaker 3: me to come back to New York because he wanted

346
00:17:44,160 --> 00:17:47,640
Speaker 3: to put the band together. So I just turned forty,

347
00:17:47,840 --> 00:17:50,840
Speaker 3: I come here, so I figure what he got to lose.

348
00:17:50,880 --> 00:17:52,720
Speaker 3: You know, you don't do this that often. So I

349
00:17:52,800 --> 00:17:54,719
Speaker 3: played with them again for another year or so. But

350
00:17:54,920 --> 00:17:57,040
Speaker 3: there's a whole dark story behind that, which which I

351
00:17:57,080 --> 00:18:01,600
Speaker 3: won't go into. But now my stratocaster is hanging on

352
00:18:01,640 --> 00:18:03,639
Speaker 3: the wall right now. Good for you.

353
00:18:03,800 --> 00:18:06,879
Speaker 2: We're friends with Billy Gibbons from Z Top and John

354
00:18:06,960 --> 00:18:13,880
Speaker 2: Foggerty and Pat Boone. All you folks are great artists,

355
00:18:14,080 --> 00:18:17,879
Speaker 2: great stuffy. When did you start writing books?

356
00:18:18,480 --> 00:18:24,440
Speaker 7: Well, let's see, Well, when I after I left Blondie

357
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Speaker 7: and I had my own band for a while, and

358
00:18:27,320 --> 00:18:29,560
Speaker 7: then played two North American.

359
00:18:29,160 --> 00:18:31,399
Speaker 3: Tours with Iggy Pop. That would have brought me to

360
00:18:31,400 --> 00:18:35,920
Speaker 3: about nineteen eighty two, and I moved to Los Angeles

361
00:18:36,840 --> 00:18:40,439
Speaker 3: and lived off my royalties for a while from the

362
00:18:40,440 --> 00:18:44,800
Speaker 3: Blondie songs and then let's look around something to do.

363
00:18:44,880 --> 00:18:48,520
Speaker 3: I was in my late twenties and mid to late twenties,

364
00:18:48,520 --> 00:18:50,359
Speaker 3: and a friend said, well, you read all these books,

365
00:18:50,760 --> 00:18:53,359
Speaker 3: why don't you go back to university. So I wound

366
00:18:53,480 --> 00:18:56,520
Speaker 3: up doing that. So the early eighties I went back

367
00:18:56,520 --> 00:19:00,520
Speaker 3: to university in California, and I decided to get a

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Speaker 3: degree in philosophy. That was my career change after Rock

369
00:19:03,400 --> 00:19:06,159
Speaker 3: and Roll. My philosophy professions. Why do you want to

370
00:19:06,160 --> 00:19:07,600
Speaker 3: do that? The only thing you can do with the

371
00:19:07,680 --> 00:19:11,600
Speaker 3: green philosophy is teach philosophy. But I really was into it.

372
00:19:11,600 --> 00:19:13,840
Speaker 3: They couldn't believe I really wanted to do it. They said,

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Speaker 3: we want to do what you do. This is really boring.

374
00:19:15,800 --> 00:19:18,399
Speaker 3: But no, I was very serious about it, reading all

375
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Speaker 3: the time. And then from about then to about nineteen

376
00:19:25,560 --> 00:19:29,840
Speaker 3: ninety three, I worked at a new age bookshop in

377
00:19:29,840 --> 00:19:32,399
Speaker 3: Los Angeles called the Bodhi Tree, and this was a

378
00:19:32,480 --> 00:19:35,080
Speaker 3: very well known place in the seventies, eighties and nineties.

379
00:19:35,080 --> 00:19:38,320
Speaker 3: It doesn't exist anymore. But I started working there in

380
00:19:38,320 --> 00:19:41,240
Speaker 3: the eighties eighty seven, and there was something called the

381
00:19:41,280 --> 00:19:46,040
Speaker 3: Harmonic Convergence. I can remember this right. That was the

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Speaker 3: beginning of something that would have been that the Denu

383
00:19:49,080 --> 00:19:53,359
Speaker 3: Momentevit was the return of Catzequota in twenty twelve, so

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Speaker 3: there's twenty five years in between. It was the Mayan

385
00:19:55,560 --> 00:20:00,240
Speaker 3: Calendar and Terence McKenna and this novelty and their heading

386
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Speaker 3: towards the Singularity and all that kind of stuff. So

387
00:20:02,240 --> 00:20:04,720
Speaker 3: I first started working at this shop when all this

388
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Speaker 3: was going on, and it was you know, it was remarkable.

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Speaker 3: I mean I was reading about all this stuff. I

390
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Speaker 3: used to I used to buy books at the shop,

391
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Speaker 3: but I hadn't worked in one yet. And it was

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Speaker 3: remarkable because in one I'm you know, I'm studying Wickenstein

393
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Speaker 3: and Hegel in the day and in the evening because

394
00:20:19,520 --> 00:20:22,680
Speaker 3: it was opened late, I was talking to people about

395
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Speaker 3: their auras and what crystal to get to dispel negativity

396
00:20:26,359 --> 00:20:29,159
Speaker 3: and how does one throw the e chain coins and

397
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Speaker 3: all that. So I had this you know, polarity of

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Speaker 3: like you know, Western intellectual and mystical kind of side.

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Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at

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00:20:38,400 --> 00:20:41,360
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