Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: George Nori with you along with Matthew Pellamary, Matthew, you
Speaker 2: were going to talk about a story about what's it
Speaker 2: like right before one dies?
Speaker 3: Go ahead, Yeah, this is wild. So back in the
Speaker 3: late nineties I went to these Antiobotani seminars in the
Speaker 3: Maya Ruins, a bush model in Polanca, and a number
Speaker 3: of people were there, Terrence mckenner and a bunch of
Speaker 3: other people, and a friend of mine, Jacques Olivier lives
Speaker 3: up on Orchest Island, now found out about this substance
Speaker 3: called five neo d MT. It's five myth foxy dimethyl
Speaker 3: trip to mean. It's highly psychoactive. And you hear a
Speaker 3: lot these days about people smoking toad venom, and it's
Speaker 3: the primary component in that toad venom. Toad venom. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the Buffo Alvarez, the Sonoran desert toad people. They they
Speaker 3: drive the venom and then they smoke it and it
Speaker 3: blows your ego away. It can be very transformative. It's
Speaker 3: a very powerful experience. Back then, nobody really knew what
Speaker 3: it was except a few people, and we were getting
Speaker 3: it from a lab in China and we smoked it
Speaker 3: and had a life changing experience. So he and I
Speaker 3: have always had this funny, weird sort of death connection.
Speaker 3: So when I was finishing this book, the Death Book,
Speaker 3: right when Covid was hitting, he was up playing on
Speaker 3: a stage up at Orchests Island at the Imagined Festival.
Speaker 3: And it was Friday the thirteenth, it was a full moon.
Speaker 3: He was in this big stage and there was a
Speaker 3: heart above him. Yeah, and he's playing a song and
Speaker 3: I never get the words right, but he's playing a
Speaker 3: song by David Byrne called Lazy, and he's playing it
Speaker 3: and he's singing on a ukulele and it goes something like,
Speaker 3: I'm lazy as a lover when I work, I'm lazy.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm wicked and I'm lazy. And he gets
Speaker 3: through the line and he goes, I'm feeling so lazy,
Speaker 3: I think I'm gonna stop. And right when he said that,
Speaker 3: he literally dropped dead on stage.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you're kidding.
Speaker 3: No, he dropped that. A nurse was in the audience.
Speaker 3: She jumped up, she broke two of his ribs. Trying
Speaker 3: to resuscitate him. She worked on him for five six
Speaker 3: minutes I don't know. The life flight ice came in
Speaker 3: and they hit him with the paddles six times and
Speaker 3: they brought him back geez, and they rushed him off
Speaker 3: with the life flight. He got a triple by a pass.
Speaker 3: He goes by a Poloca Leiley and he lives up
Speaker 3: there on Orchest Island, and so you.
Speaker 2: Know he's still.
Speaker 3: Movies. So what I did is I went up to
Speaker 3: Orcus and I helped him. I edited and published the
Speaker 3: book about that experience. It's called Nature Loves Courage, which
Speaker 3: is something that Terrence Man kind of used to say
Speaker 3: all the time. But when I got to sit with
Speaker 3: him and I said, Buddy, I gotta know this, that
Speaker 3: that five amo experience that we had. I always thought
Speaker 3: that was a dress rehearsal for death. Was it? And
Speaker 3: he looked at me and he said, yes, it was. Wow.
Speaker 3: So though he was gone and clinically dead for it
Speaker 3: could have been ten twelve minutes, I don't know how
Speaker 3: long it was, he said he was aware.
Speaker 2: I had a friend of mine, Matthew, who I think
Speaker 2: he died while sending me a text. Yeah, because a
Speaker 2: couple of Texas came in it made sense. A third
Speaker 2: one came in, it didn't make sense. A fourth one
Speaker 2: came in, it was all gobbledgook. And then nobody heard
Speaker 2: from him. And then the next day we had a
Speaker 2: wellness check with the police and they found him dead.
Speaker 3: Ind Wow, isn't that wild?
Speaker 2: Strange?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really is strange. Funny things happened, like I
Speaker 3: won't get into all the details, but when my mom died,
Speaker 3: hers stereo suddenly turned on really loud with Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 3: I love that, right, And she loved Frank Sinacha. She
Speaker 3: had worked with them years ago. And seems like this
Speaker 3: whole electronic thing and the boundaries between the world, so
Speaker 3: to speak, it's pretty strange, you know. To me, it
Speaker 3: makes life more dreamlike in many respects and more magical.
Speaker 3: And so one of the things that inspired me to
Speaker 3: write this book is I'm not afraid to die. I'm ready.
Speaker 3: I'm not in any hurry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're in no rush, no rush.
Speaker 3: But part of me is looking forward to it, right
Speaker 3: because all the experiences I've had in the jungle, with
Speaker 3: all these plant diets for all these years, I've been
Speaker 3: through everything imaginable and unimaginable. If there's something new I'm
Speaker 3: waiting for it. But I mean I've been at it,
Speaker 3: you know, for like twenty five years with that.
Speaker 2: If you're going to go, though, what do you want
Speaker 2: to go in your sleep? I think so, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: the best way to go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want I would like to stay vital and
Speaker 3: healthy all the way up, but it's time to go
Speaker 3: and then bang, just go.
Speaker 2: Then just go, you know, I don't want to stay
Speaker 2: in the hospital for six months or anything like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've seen too many people go on the installment plan. Uh.
Speaker 3: Charles Schultz, who was a friend of mine, he died
Speaker 3: in his sleep.
Speaker 2: Like that the Peanuts Charles Schultz, Yes, sir, how about that?
Speaker 3: He was He was a good friend. He was a
Speaker 3: big part of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for many years.
Speaker 2: The actor just died sleep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, well, you know,
Speaker 3: to George, the older we get, the more it happens.
Speaker 2: Right, that's true.
Speaker 3: Well, we're gonna be up to bat sooner or later.
Speaker 2: I guess when you die in your sleep, what happens.
Speaker 2: You just have a heart attack in your sleep or something.
Speaker 3: That's what happened with We called them Charles Shults. We
Speaker 3: call them Sparky. Uh, that's what happened with Sparky and
Speaker 3: his son Manti now owns the writer's conference and he's
Speaker 3: keeping it going, keeping the tradition going. But to go
Speaker 3: just like that, right, you probably don't even know what
Speaker 3: hit you. Suddenly you're off wherever you end up going.
Speaker 2: Assuming there's an afterlife, right, you'll know that you died.
Speaker 2: But it'll be puzzling to you, I would assume, right,
Speaker 2: A little confusing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I like to think. Of course I'm a
Speaker 3: wee bit biased here, but all the visionary experiences that
Speaker 3: I've had in the jungle and all the psychological things
Speaker 3: I've been through all these years, I do feel very
Speaker 3: prepared for whatever's going to come. Even if it were
Speaker 3: to cease to exist, you have to accept it. No
Speaker 3: matter what you know, it's it's always there. And you know,
Speaker 3: there's that old saying that you start at the moment
Speaker 3: you're born, you start to die. Right exactly.
Speaker 2: In June of this year, you wrote a book called
Speaker 2: The Thinning Veil. Tell us about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's my third short story collection. Thank you for asking,
Speaker 3: And my very first short story collection is the one
Speaker 3: that Ray Bradberry gave me the blurb for and my
Speaker 3: fans have been begging for more fiction because I've been
Speaker 3: writing so much nonfiction lately. So I worked really hard
Speaker 3: and I came up with thirteen Twisted Tales short stories.
Speaker 3: Some of them are science fiction, science fiction, horror. I
Speaker 3: got a nice Haunted Castle Scottish Haunted Castle story in there,
Speaker 3: genetic manipulation, all kinds of weird little things. I did
Speaker 3: thirteen of them, and I dedicated one of them to
Speaker 3: Ray Bradbury.
Speaker 2: It was Ray Bradberry versus the Alien.
Speaker 3: Thank You. Yes, I had been asked Ray would have
Speaker 3: been one hundred or few years ago, and I was
Speaker 3: asked to write a story having to do with his life.
Speaker 3: And there was the story boys Grow Giant Mushrooms in
Speaker 3: your Basement. It was on the old Alfred Hitchcock Show.
Speaker 3: It was on the old Ray Bradbery Theater, about aliens
Speaker 3: taking over the world. So I wrote a first person's
Speaker 3: story about a Ray Bradberry fan going back to Wakegan
Speaker 3: where he was born and runs across the mushrooms again.
Speaker 3: And in the story, the aliens are taking over by
Speaker 3: making everybody eat the mushrooms, and they're getting possessed by
Speaker 3: the aliens.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: So I did a first person with Ray Bradberry with
Speaker 3: the Mushrooms, and I had a lot of fun writing it.
Speaker 2: Did I ever tell you my Ray Bradberry story.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I know we have him in common.
Speaker 2: We used to put out a newsletter called the after
Speaker 2: Dark Newsletter, and I wrote a story about Ray Bradberry's
Speaker 2: Twilight Zone script he wrote called I Sing the Body Electric.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: It was about a family who lost their mother. Two kids,
Speaker 2: little boy, little girl, and the father and the mother
Speaker 2: died and they were in tremendous morning, as they should be,
Speaker 2: and he went to the robots store and bought a
Speaker 2: nanny robot who raised the kids. They became adults, and
Speaker 2: she went on to a different family to do it
Speaker 2: all over again. But it was called I Sing the
Speaker 2: Body Electric. And I just loved that show. Oh so
Speaker 2: I wrote a story about it in our newsletter. It
Speaker 2: somehow got the Ray Bradbury. He sent me a letter
Speaker 2: which I still have on my bulletin board in my
Speaker 2: office here that just says, reading the story you wrote
Speaker 2: about me just delighted me to no end. Thank you,
Speaker 2: Ray Bradbury.
Speaker 3: That's sweet.
Speaker 2: It's a classic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I got my picture in my postcard that
Speaker 3: he sent me.
Speaker 2: He was one of the best.
Speaker 3: Man he was, so I was such an honor to
Speaker 3: be with him. But he used to come to the
Speaker 3: conference and after he would speak, he would go to
Speaker 3: the back of the restaurant and I would get invited
Speaker 3: back there with like maybe three other people, and he
Speaker 3: would tell stories of writing Mulby Dick with John Houston,
Speaker 3: and he would go into the John Houston voice, whoa
Speaker 3: you know, and he would just do the whole thing.
Speaker 2: What do you think made him so clever?
Speaker 3: I have? I told this to a friend and they
Speaker 3: thought I was a little crazy, but you know, we
Speaker 3: were talking about visionary experience and drugs and this and that,
Speaker 3: and I said, Ray Bradberry is the kind of guy
Speaker 3: I would never ever need to take any drug ever ever,
Speaker 3: because I think he always had that sort of three
Speaker 3: year old childlike wonder yep and it's it's just a
Speaker 3: beautiful thing. He always was was that that questioning and
Speaker 3: what if and he was very much playful like a
Speaker 3: pre year old. And I think that's just the sweetest
Speaker 3: thing and what an inspiration. And he used to get
Speaker 3: up there kicking off the conference and He would just
Speaker 3: go on about how with the green place and the
Speaker 3: hell with the novels just right for the love of it,
Speaker 3: and he would just really get into this passion, you know,
Speaker 3: and it was everybody would want to be there and
Speaker 3: make sure they got raised. Opening night keynoted because he
Speaker 3: was so full of just passion. You know, what a
Speaker 3: blessing he was.
Speaker 2: Where was he born.
Speaker 3: He was born in Waukegan, or he lived in Waukegan,
Speaker 3: Illinois until he was something like eight or something like that,
Speaker 3: and then the family moved to la and he lived
Speaker 3: in Venice Beach and he was writing, eking out a living,
Speaker 3: writing for the for the pulp magazines, you know, like
Speaker 3: weird Tales.
Speaker 2: He was when he died.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And I saw him just before he died.
Speaker 3: And then and I gave him a copy of my
Speaker 3: memoir and I just said, Ray, I'm not asking you
Speaker 3: for a blurb or anything. I just wanted to give
Speaker 3: to it this he put so great to me. And
Speaker 3: he put it. He held it and he looked at it,
Speaker 3: and he looked up at me and looked back down
Speaker 3: at it, and then he held it to his heart.
Speaker 3: And now that was.
Speaker 2: Last time I saw him how many Alfred Hitchcock shows
Speaker 2: did he write?
Speaker 3: Yeah he did, he did about he did a lot
Speaker 3: of those, Yeah he did, he did. He did probably
Speaker 3: three or four Twilight Zones. He probably did maybe half
Speaker 3: a dozen of the Hitchcock ones. And then in the
Speaker 3: eighties when they had Ray Bradberry Theater, he got to
Speaker 3: redo a lot of them.
Speaker 2: Would you say Fahrenheit four one, four or five one
Speaker 2: was his biggest work.
Speaker 3: It was as big as the most well known. But
Speaker 3: when he when he first started out, he took a
Speaker 3: bus for three days to New York to try to
Speaker 3: get a book published way back, and he spent the
Speaker 3: whole week knocking on publishers doors and nothing happened, and
Speaker 3: he was staying at the y m c A. And finally,
Speaker 3: on Friday afternoon, the senator said, well, Ray, what about
Speaker 3: those Mars stories? You know, you go, why don't you
Speaker 3: do something with those? And so he the weekend he
Speaker 3: threw together the Martian chronicles, brought in and they accepted it.
Speaker 3: And then from then on he was kind of on
Speaker 3: his way. But I think, yeah, Fahrenheit four fifty one
Speaker 3: is probably his most famous one. But you know, something
Speaker 3: wicked this way comes illustrated man.
Speaker 2: I mean, how did you come up with your thirteen
Speaker 2: twisted tails for the Thinning Vail book?
Speaker 3: They were not easy.
Speaker 2: I gotta tell you, how'd you find him?
Speaker 3: Well? I scanned the newspapers all the time. So there's
Speaker 3: one story I read about they put a pig's heart
Speaker 3: into a guy because it's just like a human heart,
Speaker 3: for real, for real, and he lived for about a
Speaker 3: month and then he died.
Speaker 2: Oh jeez.
Speaker 3: So I had a story about a guy who was
Speaker 3: a freak about bacon. He was really into his bacon,
Speaker 3: and he ends up in the hospital because he doesn't
Speaker 3: take care of himself. He eats terribly, and he ends
Speaker 3: up getting a pig's heart and he starts turning into
Speaker 3: a pig. Only get into all the details, but I
Speaker 3: got it from what I've been in the news. I
Speaker 3: have another story about genetically engineered babies that are perfect.
Speaker 3: Call that one feudal fantasies. And then I want to know.
Speaker 3: I read some really really old short stories from like
Speaker 3: the turn of the century, so I wrote one in
Speaker 3: that style. But short stories in many respects are harder
Speaker 3: than a novel because you got to get it all done.
Speaker 3: You got to come up with the idea, and you
Speaker 3: got to wrap it all up and do it, you know,
Speaker 3: and then you got to come up with a new idea.
Speaker 3: Whereas when a novel gets going, it has a life
Speaker 3: of its own. He just starts to build. But the
Speaker 3: stories you got to keep coming up with new ones.
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