C.B. Murphy  .:. Writer

I would call this “Stuff I’ve been reading but Nick Hornby already has a column with that name in Dave Eggers’ Believer magazine. By the way if you haven’t read Believer, you should. Though I didn’t realize it was supposed to be “optimistic” until I read an article in the New York Times squaring it off against another hopelessly hip magazine that was supposed to be “pessimistic” (i.e. realistic, as they said).

Nevertheless, I thought it was important to have a place to record what I’m reading which is different from what I’ve read (or viewed, or listened to) and have decided to recommend.

I’m researching a new book, bringing together some ideas I’ve been kicking around for a while, including but not limited to: cults, voodoo, politics, and infighting among the anointed or what Mark Wisniewski and I call “Charley Murphy territory.

The first book I picked up on this was Daniel Pinchbeck’s 2012: The Return of Quetzelcoatl. It’s a very strange book, part hipster journalism, part Timothy Leary territory and part prophetic raving (or more accurately talking to prophetic ravers and agreeing with them). Sometimes I laugh at it and sometimes I am impressed with the guy’s persistence, for example, in pursuing exotic hallucinogens in strange and spooky places. Huzzah, dude. However, I don’t want to be too satirically dismissive of the whole thing and I’ll tell you why. Recently I was drawn into a conversation with Nic, my son, about magic. We watched part of David Blaine’s DVD “Street Magic�? and then discussed: was it real? If it was real, how can it be? It is real, what’s the physics of it? I have to admit I found myself using some of Pinchbeck’s logic, that there’s a heck of a lot we don’t understand (nodding to science and technology, keep up the good work, guys). I tried to illustrate my position by saying to him that if he went out with a serious UFO fan who brought along their charts and videos, it would be entirely possible that he’d come away from that encounter a “believer” in UFOs. Ditto for Bigfoot, etc. and all what I call the “National Enquirer stuff.” My point was that a person has to decide, given all these unknowns (and we’re only using these at the tip of the iceberg, avoiding all the political and social unknowns and controversies) how much time and energy you want to give each and every issue and, ultimately, the question is how much power you want the unknown to have over you. In my opinion, Mr. Pinchbeck is over the line I would draw for myself. I am fully aware of the possibility that trolls (or whatever) inhabit a dimension close to and intermixed with ours, but unlike Mr. Pinchbeck: I don’t want to see them!