Freshly Sprouted

Santa Clause does exist. He exists in the Fourth Century, in the area that is now northern Turkey, under the name of Saint Nicholas. To say that he doesn’t exist is a lie, as much of a lie as saying he has magic reindeers and a home in present day North Pole.

   The obvious rebuttal is to say he existed—not exists—in the past tense. My argument is that this is not more truthful, just more ‘our-own-time-centric’. Biased, in other words, like a metaphysical prejudice. Saint Nicholas does exist in that time and place. Being biased towards our own time and place is closed-minded, and leads to illusion and even violence. A case in point: somebody once said that the world is flat, based on the fact that no one in his own time could prove that it was round. Somebody could prove it, of course, in the future. But some notable people went to prison or were tortured, or killed, because they did not cater to the time-bias (shall I say ‘timeism’?). Giordano Bruno, I hear, is being burned at the stake in 1590 for affirming the Earth's motion around the sun.

  JOKES usually have three main parts to them. Here is an example:

Buddha walks into a pizza restaurant and says, ‘Make me one with everything.’

The following is an excerpt from Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey now available from Icaro Publishing.

"The vine has spread her tendrils across the world and a genuine archaic revival was underway. My bags were packed; South America beckoned, and the ancient mysteries of the rainforest awaited. I wanted in on it..."

Iquitos, Wednesday July 5th., 2006

IQUITOS IS ELECTRIC WITH NOONDAY HUMIDITY as Vance, John and I wade through the horde of locals hustling trinkets outside the Parthenon gates and join the other ayahuasca gringos amassing by the pool. It's Bowman's birthday -- he's twenty-four today -- and drinking with Guillermo is going to be his present.

We're waiting for Alexis, a blond, twenty-ish dude from Washington D.C. who's going to help translate the interview with Guillermo I've lined up. Alexis is a Princeton dropout who's backpacking around on a spiritual path, drinking ayahuasca with shamans and asking critical questions to deepen his own understanding. He's drunk with Guillermo four times now, and calls him "a fucking Jedi." When he turns up an hour late, wearing a Corey Feldman School of the Arts t-shirt, I know he'll fit right in with our media crew.

Vance wants to get out to the Espiritu de Anaconda, Guillermo's ayahuasca retreat to take some shots before we lose the afternoon light, so we pile into two motorcarros and speed away from the front of the Hotel Parthenon before the touristos bus has even arrived. But our motorcarros get bogged down on the dirt road turnoff from Km 14, a long undulating strip of mud from recent rains, and we get out to walk. The local villagers are busy building a concrete footpath to run from the highway past their village and towards the ayahuasca retreat a few miles in, and part of me wonders if this will facilitate t-shirt and refreshment stalls springing up wherever the gringos go, like mushrooms after a fresh rain.

COGNITION FACTOR: THE SMART MOVIE


written and directed by Mike Kawitzky, who answers some questions with Undergrowth at the bottom of this article. Photo by Louise Goddard.

The plot takes place in a stream of consciousness as a cyberpunk quests for enlightenment in the digital age.

The viewer is transported to a narrated virtual world in search of answers to the " Big Five" questions. It's a totally human experience as Cognition Factor stitches live conversations with Terence Mckenna, brother Dennis Mckenna, along with Ralph Abrahams, Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Metzner, Alex Grey, and twenty more of the top thinkers of our times.

The Cognition Factor is a narrated gonzo documentary, showcast inside a 3D landscape backed by original compositions from top musicians like Dr. Lx Paterson, Dom Beken and Phil Le Gonedic, of The ORB, Merv Pepler (EatStatic/Ozrik Tentacles), Colin Angus& Matt Catt (The Shamen/Pablo_Sandoz), Steve Hillage (System 7), all brought together by ambient composer, performer and originator, Mike Martin (Indidginus).

The Cognition Factor poses Five Big Questions in order of appearance:

   1. What is consciousness/cognition?
   2.  Are we evolving as a species, or are we going extinct?
   3. What do you understand as G-D?
   4. Can the fusion of science and technology occur?
   5. What happens when we die?


"What we're going to do is we're going to all wire ourselves together, linking ourselves together at higher and higher bandwidth, with greater and greater understanding"

– Terence Mckenna - the Cognition Factor

for more info and to buy the DVD visit:

http://www.cognitionfactor.net

UNDERGROWTH is proud to preview an excerpt from the new novella META-DETECTIVE by regular contributor LEVIN A. DIATSCHENKO.author of The Man Who Never Sleeps, comes another surreal adventure that experiments with reality.

META-DETECTIVE is a new illustrated novella is a cross between pulp fiction detective classics and Greek mythology. 

'Mercury' is an excerpt form the new Undergrowth anthology of poems by Melbourne slam poet Si, winner of the 2008 Victorian Poetry Slam.

'Mercury' will be launched at the Emerging Writer's Festival in Melbourne's Thorbury Theatre - Friday May 29th.

 Radio Undergrowth is proud to feature Spoonbill as our first regular artist of the month to celebrate the release of his album Zoomorphic across the country this month.

As a sneak preview of the album, we are featuring the track Bunkerfunk with it's belly of a whale bass line, stilted soul vocals and gentle synth, almost makes you want to wrap yourself up in it's lyricless glitch aesthetics. Listen here.

"Humans and nature construct one another."
- Alexander Wilson, 1992