so long albert...

albert hoffman died today aged 102. what a gift he gave us when he synthesised his 25th compound from ergot derived lysergic acid amides - lysergic acid diethylamide or lsd-25 - hoping it would be a stimulant for the respiratory and circulatory systems. it wasn't until his seminal bicycle ride on friday afternoon, april 16, 1943, after taking what he thought was a conservatively tiny dose, that he realised exactly what he had done.


"i had the feeling that i could not move from the spot. i was cycling, cycling, but the time seemed to stand still." by the time he reached his home, its furnishings had transformed themselves into terrifying objects.

"everything in the room spun around, and the familiar objects and pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms. they were in constant motion, animated, as if driven by an inner restlessness. the lady next door [became] a malevolent, insidious witch with a colored mask."

hofmann thought he was dying and sent for a doctor, but the physician could find nothing wrong. after about six hours, the experience began to change into a pleasant one.

"after some time, with my eyes closed, i began to enjoy this wonderful play of colors and forms, which it really was a pleasure to observe. then I went to sleep and the next day i was fine. i felt quite fresh, like a newborn."

and why did he decide to sample it? "lsd spoke to me," he said. "he came to me and said, 'you must find me.' he told me, 'don't give me to the pharmacologist, he won't find anything.'"

whoohoo...where would we be without fate and you albert...

mre
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forty years of wonder and awe...

yup, its been that long since kubrick's 2001: a space odyssey first filled the cinerama screen at its world premiere at the Uptown theatre in Washington DC and about thirty six years since a naïve fourteen year old me saw it and was railroaded into the first major fork on my life journey.

i still savour every hypnotic second of this movie, again and again. the recent death of arthur c clarke (who unfortunately just couldn't resist spelling things out, and was responsible for that awfully ill conceived '2010') brought the movie back into our media consciousness, but it's the pending arrival of a blu-ray copy of the film (and, along with other blu-ray kubrick movies of course, the motivation for buying my first blu-ray player) that has me filled with an-tici-pation and i will celebrate this anniversary by gazing again in wonder and awe at those iconic images that first warped my fragile little mind.

wow! cheers once again, stanley...

mre
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