A meditation on future event potentiality can be seen as a quantum state in which all possible actions, outcomes and phenomena existing until attention from the observer solidifies it into a single state. Here are three very different examples of artists who saw things not as others saw them, but the worlds they conceived shape the one we're in in strange ways.
PKD was paranoid and thought he was under surveillance. So did Hemingway, and it was thought until recently that Hemingway's paranoia had no basis in reality, but he had indeed been watched by government agencies. PHilip K Dick raised many questions in his work that we had better find answers to. As irksome as recent years have been, without reflecting on the issues of consciousness, the very real threat of being subject to pre-crime punishment and many other topics he originated that seemed so fantastic at the time.
Philip.K. Dick documentary on BBC's "Arena" originally broadcast on 9th April 1994.
Elvis Costello Interviewee
Philip K. Dick (archive footage)
Thomas M. Disch
Terry Gilliam
Himself - Interviewee
Kim Stanley Robinson
Himself - Interviewee
Consider this - a recluse from Providence writes tales for a tiny fringe publication and ends up influencing writers generations later. Through the continued popularity of his work and spreading influence of those he influenced weave their way throughout culture. Culture shapes thoughts, and thoughts determine actions. I have put forth the idea that all narrative is myth, and that political, commercial, cultural and religious myth is largely what determines what manifests as the world in which we live. The Chthulu mythos is like the mythological equivalent of "art for art's sake". Freeing the imagination from mundane perception is as valuable as conscious memetic engineering. There is real value in not having to justify everything in practical, pragmatic and material terms. Our current political/corporate power structure is Terry Pratchett's Auditors possessing human institutions. we can take comfort in the cold, indifferent universe and rest assured that the Old Ones will awaken and chaos never died...
http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/lovecraft_fear_of_the_unknown
H.P. Lovecraft was the forefather of modern horror fiction having inspired such writers as Stephen King, Robert Bloch and Neil Gaiman. The influence of his Cthulhu mythos can be seen in film (Re-Animator, Hellboy, and Alien), games (The Call of Cthulhu role playing enterprise), music (Metallica, Iron Maiden) and pop culture in general.
But what led an Old World, xenophobic gentleman to create one of literature's most far-reaching mythologies? What attracts even the minds of the 21st century to these stories of unspeakable abominations and cosmic gods?
LOVECRAFT: FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN is a chronicle of the life, work and mind that created these weird tales as told by many of today's luminaries of dark fantasy including John Carpenter, Guillermo Del Toro, Neil Gaiman, Stuart Gordon , Caitlin Kiernan, and Peter Straub.
It's fashionable to hate on Crowley in certain circles these days, but I'm not inclined to take part in that. What are the current tendencies towards social control but an old Aeon struggling to live on while in its death throws?
Aleister Crowley "The Wickedest Man in the World." Featuring the Voice of Joss Ackland and Music Score by Rick Wakeman.
