Download your FREE Synthesis Magazine i08 PDF Featuring Circa Survive, Polyphonic Spree, Robert Smith of The Cure, Mooney Suzuki, and much much more!

In this issue’s cover story, Circa Survive frontman Anthony Green mentions that Breaking Open the Head – A Psychedelic Journey
into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism, a book by Daniel Pinchbeck, played a part in inspiring his band’s latest record, On Letting Go. The book is a personal memoir chronicling Pinchbeck’s experiences with psychedelic drugs. According to the inside flap, the book is “a vivid account of psychic and intellectual experiences that opened doors in the wall of Western rationalism and completed Daniel Pinchbeck’s personal transformation from a jaded Manhattan journalist to shamanic initiate and grateful citizen of the cosmos.” Unfortunately, I haven’t read it. But I did catch an interview with Pinchbeck a little while back on The Colbert Report. At the time, he was plugging his latest book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. In it, according to Publishers Weekly, Pinchbeck “has set out to create an ‘extravagant thought experiment’ centering around the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring about the end of the world as we know it, ‘the conclusion of a vast evolutionary cycle, and the potential gateway to a higher level of manifestation.’” I haven’t read that one either. Pinchbeck sort of looked like that old dude who still lives in the dorms, but he had plenty of interesting things to say about shamanistic religions, Mayan prophecy and how we may be headed toward a dramatic spiritual shift in our society. I never really experimented with drugs; I mean, I took them, but it’s not the same thing. Mostly, I just smoked pot. When I was younger I thought it would open my mind, but while I think it helped me get over myself a bit, it never really led me to some major epiphany. It enhanced my enjoyment of cookies and milk and helped me realize the subtle comedic genius of Taxi, but that’s about it. I took LSD once and it was a good time, but it didn’t transform my worldview. The only thought I remember with any clarity is sitting on the stoop of my friend’s house and seeing what I believed was the grass of his front lawn slowly crawling over the concrete of the walkway leading to his front door and thinking that this was how the world would end—that nature would somehow reclaim everything. I know. Deep. Maybe I was doing the wrong drugs. Maybe if I was hanging out with Hopi tribespeople instead of watching television, things would be different. But I always thought Reverend Jim Ignatowski was pretty spiritual. Elsewhere in this issue you’ll be able to delve deeper into expanding worldviews with Texas choir-poppers The Polyphonic Spree. Also, Tyson Vogel and Adam Stephens of Two Gallants talk about playing live in kitchens, BART stations and major summer festivals.

Enjoy.
–James Barone.

Free PDF Synthesis Magazine i08

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