NEWS FLASH: At precisely 8 p.m. on June 30 (if hostess TerriLee has her act together, likewise me, and the internet gods smile upon us), I will be a guest, for the second freaking time, on the podcast True Crime & Coke. This marks a new level of sophistication in my career as a dolphin evangelist, because it’s the first time anyone has asked me to be on a second time!
But this time, the subject won’t be those clever dolphins and their unstoppable sex drives. Instead, it will be two experiences in my life which affected me profoundly: The influence of the mad 1950’s pseudo-scientist Wilhelm Reich on my family when I was a child, documented in my memoir Growing Up in the Orgone Box;and, decades later, in my 30’s, learning to become a Witch (yes, not a warlock) from my first wife Seafoam, only to suffer, some 20 years later, a complete loss of my faith in ritual and magic as my marriage to my second wife (I can’t remember her magical name, so I’ll just call her as I do in my most recent science-fiction novel Mel-Khyor: An Interstellar Affair, Susie Louise) crumbled around me, taking my profession, home, family and sanity with it.
The late Dr. Wilhelm Reich with his “orgone energy cloud buster,” a claimed weather modification device which ran on bluster and pseudoscience.
I don’t know exactly how long the program will be, 1-2 hrs. (I can’t go much longer than that, especially starting at 8 p.m.) is the usual, or whether listeners will be able to ask questions by text or call in. All that is to be determined, is above my pay grade, is being contemplated by cool and objective minds far greater than mine… or any humans! Muuu-hahahahaha! But, if you’re not too busy digging your new flower bed in the evening hours, or working on a canning project, or finding a cleaning solution that remove those stubborn blood stains from the curtains, why don’t you tune in?
Members of the Neo-Pagan community particularly invited, not because I’m going to try to talk you into or out of anything, but maybe you can find something in my story to relate to. After all, who among us has not, at some time, doubted the efficacy of their magic? And Reichians? Sure, they can listen in if they want, and learn that their “Great Man” (Reich’s own term for himself — modest, much, Wilhelm?) had serious feet of clay. A man who, despite having written a textbook called Character Analysis, proved to be an absolutely clueless idiot when it came to analyzing the character of his closest associates.
What more can I say? I’m going to reveal some really awful family secrets? Yes. I’m going to spill my guts? I’m going to set my hair on fire? Sorry, no seppuku, no ignitions, but, as said of the celebrated Mr. Kite in the Beatles’ song,
“A splendid time is guaranteed for all, and tonight Mr. Kite is topping the biiiillllll!” (Cue the calliope.)
The first installment of this three-part series dealt with my involvement in the 1970’s with Dr. Richard Blasband, a follower of the late misfortunate Neo-Freudian psychiatrist Dr. Wilhelm Reich, who claimed to have discovered “orgone energy” in the 1930’s, a primordial substance that explained… everything! Except why Reich was such a narcissist, comparing his heavy-handed prosecution by the FDA to the cruxifixction of Christ, for instance. Got it?
The third part will deal with the analysis of the photos taken at the cloud busting training session.
This installment is taken directly from my journal That Ol’ Tripe-Face Boogie, a spiral-bound notebook dated beginning January 1974. Dr. Blasband’s cloud-busting training session occurred on September 28, 1974, a Saturday.Sections in italics are my editorial clarifications of things that need to be explained in context.
…So we come to today (actually the previous day, as this was written at 3:30 a.m.). Hugh (my brother Hugh R. Brenner, R.N., then receiving orgone therapy himself) and I set off for Blasband’s early but he took a long time showering at Rena’s so we got there 20 minutes late – not that it mattered much. Blasband was in the middle of a very detailed lecture to a group of about a dozen ergonomists and others – (M.D. Charles R.) Konia, Sally L****’s orgonomist, was there, looking very strange – Gypsy-ish, with swarthy skin and heavily lidded eyes.
After about an hour’s lecture we removed to the field with the CB (cloud buster in Reichian jargon) in it. It was a beautiful day but unfortunately no clouds. The air was very clear but not quite sparkling. I was filming with the Beaulieu (Blasband’s movie camera, a very expensive French Super-8 mm. with an excellent Angenieux zoom lens) and trying hard to remember all the controls – I think it’s not well-human engineered but I think I did everything right. Blasband put the (cloudbuster’s flexible metal) tubes in the water (a pond) and pointed it W. Within 5 minutes a strong breeze had sprung up. The breezes had been fairly random all day, more or less from the east, but this was constant and from the W. I couldn’t see the discharges on the tubes too well – only a slight purplish flame – but we noticed that the W –> E shimmer of the atmosphere OR (orgone energy or “heat waves”) stopped and went straight up. I tried to film it but the 66 mm. telephoto (on the Beaulieu) wasn’t quite long enough. 100 mm. would be good.
I had Blasband’s Beseler Topcon (a 1960’s Japanese 35mm. camera equivalent to the Nikon-F) full of EK IR (Ektachrome Infrared, a unique Kodak color slide film that recorded red and infrared light in false colors) rated at 100 ASA (now ISO) thru deep red filter and took a lot of photos (with a Topcon RE 35mm. f2.8 lens) at 1/125 @ f5.6 and f16, for bracketing. 5.6 was the meter reading off the grass. I was getting pretty close to the tubes & began to feel dizzy and slightly sick. Blasband had pointed out a kind of patchy blackening of the horizon of a hill to the W. Now the blackening was swirling in a cyclonic fashion! I had never seen anything like it before! It looked like Cecil B. DeMille special effects. I could just barely perceive it. How do we record it on film? It reminded me of a passage in (Arthur C. Clarke’s science-fiction novel) Childhood’s End where Clarke describes the Overmind manifesting itself.
I tried shooting the pipes in innumerable different ways. My spaghetti-legs tripod didn’t help. Finally I felt I had enough. I was so highly charged I felt like I was tripping. B. then swung the CB to the north. Within a minute, the wind had changed direction! That was eerie. I felt like an observer at a magic ritual – things unseen, powers almost beyond control surging around me. I shot the tubes both in normal speed and at 4 fps. at f22, shutter closed to 1/2, 1 stop underexposed. We went back – I’d shot 2-1/2 rolls, or about 7 minutes worth – good tie-in for the footage we already have.
I just threw up twice in the bathroom. 5:20 a.m. This could have any one of 4 causes: 1) The Sherman’s cigarettes I’ve been smoking. As of now I stop smoking cigarettes forever. 2) The dinner – although it wasn’t all that bad; ham, sweet potatoes, string beans. 3) The wine and beer I had at Rena’s (our stepmother). 4) Overcharge from the CB, or 5) all of the above. Sometimes I do abuse my system a little… (writing about sister’s birthday party). …In retrospect, even tho’ there were no clouds to bust, the demonstration was very impressive.
(Historical note: I came to my senses quite suddenly one afternoon, while talking with a customer over a joint in the back of my Seattle photolab, Superposter. When I told him about having had orgone therapy, he said “Huh! You went through that shit?”)
(I’d never heard anyone refer to Reich’s work like that, but his words seem to coalesce several suspicious, subversive thoughts about Reich’s work, the objectivity of his science, the reality of “orgone energy,” his self-appointed reputation as a Great Man, his “UFO experiences,” his closeness to the Great Cosmic Orgone, whether the USAF was REALLY watching over him as he believed, his “murder” in a federal penitentiary, how crazy the people who followed him were, etc., and from that point on I found myself falling out of love with Herr DoktorReich. His feet of clay had left tracks all over my life.)
(But, at the time this was written, I was still amenable to explaining everything in orgonomic terms, hence the comments about the “purplish flame on the tubes” (retinal rhodopsin fatigue, when you gaze steadily at any object) and the swirling cyclonic formation — I was obviously seeing something, but I don’t attribute it to the demonstration of the cloud buster any more. I am absolutely certain that “orgone energy” as Reich described it, a bio-field or life-energy that apparently extends into the Universe at large, and moves everything, doesn’t exist, and Reich’s headlong plunge into self-delusion about it only shows how increasingly narcissistic and crazy he became toward the end of his life.)
From March 1 until March 7, you, Dear Reader, can buy my two ebooks from Smashwords for half price! Why, that’s almost 50% off! 🙂 Both titles temporarily marked down from $6.99 to $3.50 in honor of nothing in particular, just that Smashwords gives all their authors a chance to do this every year, and I’d be a sucker if I didn’t take advantage of it!
Why Smashwords? Well, when I published Wet Goddess in 2010, they were the only ebooks publishing site that would accept “bestiality” — provided it was between consenting adults of both species, of course.
Nevertheless I’m in their debt, because the publisher fought hard to prevent the major distributor of ebooks from dropping the entire Smashwords lineup. So he got my second book as well, and a third ebook of Mel-Khyor: An Interstellar Affair is in the offing!
I think a lot of my critic’s problem lies in their not believing that a creature like a dolphin can exercise free will, or, being female, can experience libido, or can change her behavior on the apprehension of a thought. But they can do and feel all these things.
I’m looking into new ways of exploring the dolphins’ world without getting wet, specifically Remote Viewing, the information-gathering technique used by the U.S. military and the CIA in the 1980’s to spy on Soviet military objectives, allegedly without the Soviets being aware of it. Scientists are, of course, skeptical of any kind of out-of-body experience, but I’ll perform some tests and judge for myself, thanks.
So hurry, get out your charge card — er, your cell phone — and get two of my books for the price of one! They won’t last long at this price!
WARNING!
Both of these books contain unusual sexual situations which some people may find objectionable, and Orgone Box in particular contains scenes of adults committing physical, sexual and emotional abuse on a child (me). I don’t believe in “being triggered,” because people are not Colt .45s who walk around half-cocked, as my father, a GI in WWII, used to say, but Godz forbid somebody should accuse me of doing that because of the content these books! You have been warned, okay? If you’re easily offended, don’t buy them and then complain about the subject matter. You have been warned!
Thought For The Day
“One of the great challenges in life is knowing enough to think you’re right, but not enough to know you’re wrong.” — Nick GT on The Joe Rogan Show.
Malcolm J. Brenner 