Blotter is Erik Davis’ homage to the Acid Medium that has had cultural implications coursing through the years of the counter-cultural revels all the way to the current decade & perhaps even the years to come. The author of High Weirdness appears to have struck story-weaving gold—a standard of journalism that breathes life into the oft-biased psychedelic renaissance, which appears to use a veneer of medicalism that seems to brush aside the cultural impact that blotter, or LSD, had played in the shaping of the current milieu of psychedelic poisons.
Here, we follow the evolution of the many morphisms undertaken by the molecule LSD-25 as it came to represent a potent harbinger of a culture that blends skill and technique with an outlaw disdain for patriarchal, and dictatorial mores—and perhaps more pertinently a consciousness of the breath of Life that the Whole Universe is gifted with—a most vibrant aliveness that had since antiquity at least, never quite been at the forefront, and is now appearing to be coming back to life.
About the Author
Erik Davis is an author, award-winning journalist, sometimes podcaster, and popular speaker based in San Francisco. He is the author of five books: High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the 70s (MIT Press/Strange Attractor Press); Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica (Yeti, 2010); The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape (Chronicle, 2006), with photographs by Michael Rauner; and the 33 1/3 volume Led Zeppelin IV (Continuum, 2005).
His first and best-known book remains TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information (Crown, 1998), a cult classic of visionary media studies that has been translated into five languages and most recently republished by North Atlantic Press. He hosted the podcast Expanding Mind on the Progressive Radio Network for a decade, and earned his PhD in Religious Studies from Rice University in 2015. He currently writes the Substack publication Burning Shore.
Acid Media
Blotter reads as a meandering essay, dealing with the guises that acid has undertaken, from the Sandoz Delysid pills, all the way to current era Divine Moments of Trump (pp. 233, Blotter, Erik Davis) blotters. Acid Medium, is the quintessential guide to the vibrant Dionysian 1960’s, along with the much lesser-known psychedelic underground, and in no small part were these ages reliant on acid and other visionary art tools.
The reader is given a most engaging tour of the Institute of Illegal Images, and of the transformation that LSD has taken along with a more all-encompassing look at how the media, such as blotter art has been dipped with the poison—how the art itself affects the trip to come soon therein—with one of the first experiments in this “perception-impacting-experience” upon eating the acid to have been conducted by Augustus Owsley Stanley III, or Bear.
Psychedelic Illuminati
For my part, being born in a remote corner of India, which was, and despite all the technology and all, still is quite far from the meat of the sandwich, so to speak—this book, for a mindful geek as myself has ushered in a very sincere feeling of belonging—with all of the many off-shoots of the movement, or subcultures, still seeking the vision of the original revolution—which is yet to reach a decisive denouement.
Besides the more popular, how poet Dale Pendell describes certain plant poisons as, “loudmouths in the crowd”, Davis here brings us close to the thousands, if not millions of nameless-faceless ones of the movement who strive to shift the entire basis of the culture.
Particularly heart-warming were the development and documentation of the success stories of the casualties, or prisoners, of the War on Drugs—which is, in essence, a Religious War (a recurring notion, extrapolated poetically in Love’s Body-).
Because, to any man who creates an entire series of Art pieces for a love interest to be considered a menace to society, with lethal intents for polluting the waters—well, to me it is the arbiters’, the prison-guards who are insecure, small-minded (and certainly other body parts! That’s naughty!) nitwits.
Blurring the Boundaries
What, more subtly (or maybe not?) —What I found Davis to accomplish through this Great Work, is to take a sober and objective look at the farce that is the War on Drugs—including the quote from the DEA (pp. 25, Blotter, Erik Davis) about the nature of so-called ‘acid crime and acid criminals’. Law courts filled with evidence ranging from a perforated sheet of a visionary portrayal of Jesus Christ (pp. 196, Blotter, Erik Davis) to politics-charged front page interpretations of the front page of the Times (pp. 98, Blotter, Erik Davis).
Gary Snyder is well worth quoting here: ‘Who truly are the crazies of the 19th & the 20th centuries?’
However, Davis does all this gracefully, to mean filled with Grace—true spiritual teaching, it’s said, often contains within it a surprise element of humor; well, here Erik makes one laugh silly by his craft of presenting the atrocities committed by a misinformed and secretive Law Establishment—only to allow us to later (perhaps upon a drop of our own?) realize what a complacent populace, drugged out (!) by the consumerist-capitalist artifacts, has allowed it to occur, and perhaps even, re-occur.
Drug prohibitions and punishment are ages old, and even concomitant across cultures. Then, this book is a bring being brought to the flimsy glass door of the so-called War on Drugs.
Art Theory on Acid
What is most tasteful is Davis’s humble approach, which I as an outsider feel, to be a humanizing, or clarifying of ‘erudite’ concepts of political, media and art history, and theory.
Each thread is palpable and no single part, as I read the work, felt as Davis to be Othering, or in some way maintaining an illusion of a (non-existent) barrier to entry to basic truths and tenements of cultural theory. From a critical look at the movements in politics and beyond bubbling up as the Summer of Love rolled around—and where it is that the movement stands now. However, for those disinclined, philosophy can well be avoided— I spent the entire trip dancing in front of a mirror, an Elder spoke.
Coming to the End
If for no other reason (though, there are quite, quite a few more) than the fact that this book contains gloriously gorgeous frames of so, so, so many blotters and the testimonials from various tricksters, mystics, ne’er-do-wells (and of course Erowids! Have you ever anagramised the word?) on the impact that Blotter has had on this Earth of Ours—for sure we’d recommend this slice of Guerilla High Art. And remember: every silver lining’s got a Touch of Grey.
