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Interview: The Bear-- Owsley: Acid Artist of the Sixties |
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Written by Scott
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Tuesday, 12 August 1997 |
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Page 7 of 9
(ED:)
You are preaching to the choir; it must be understood that it is my personal belief that the government has absolutely no business making laws to control moral beliefs; I personally believe that all drugs should be legal, and all people should be responsible for themselves; as a community we should take care of each other and not let the government do it for us. BUT, and this is where ED stands, Entheogen Dot is a magazine about Entheogenic plants and substances, not politics. If we let Entheogen Dot stray to become a political zine we have lost focus. The laws are there, they need to be changed, but that should be the subject of another magazine, or a column, not the focus of Entheogen Dot. Entheogen Dot is written collectively by a bunch of people. I can only speak for myself, not for them, and to do so would be wrong, in my opinion. Every man and every woman is a star, and they each have the capacity to make decisions themselves, specifically moral decisions such as breaking unjust laws.
I can only achieve freedom if I allow you the same freedom...although if you want to know my opinion, all you have to do is ask.
(ED:)
What do you think of cyberspace and the Net? What do you see as the future of it?
(Bear:)
It may be our only hope. This is a great and open forum which anyone with a computer (and increasingly, with access in cybercaf&eaccent;s and libraries, people without computers) can contact almost any sort of information and discussion groups anywhere in the world. Inevitably the internet will be the end of the sorts of government that we find in the world today. It is no wonder that the government is so anxious to put some sort of controls on it. That, of course cannot be done without shutting it down, due to the configuration of the packet switching network. The funny thing is that the government set it up to be uninterruptible in the event of a nuclear war. They created their own Frankenstein child, who will grow up to eat them.
(ED:)
Any comments about the Dead or Jerry's death? Most remarkable experience of your career with the Dead? A lot of people don't realize that essentially you MADE the Dead what they came to be. You provided the latest whiz-bang sound equipment and financed the band initially...you helped them to become the sound, look and feel that went with acid like sugar goes with Kool-aid  Do you still keep in touch with the band? With Kesey? With Wavy Gravy?
(Bear:)
How many questions do we have here? [ED: sorry Bear ] I am a family member of sorts in the Dead. You are welcome to your views on what effect I may have had on the band during my association with them. I made only minor contributions in a financial way in the beginning to the Dead, as I had little money, since I didn't make money on acid, rather I gave most of it away, as well as much of the money. In the end, the lawyers had it all. I did try to bring the music technology into the space age. Once the pinnacle of man's technical expertise went to building the great organs of Bach and Beethoven's era, but in the '60's, except for the space program, technology made mostly weapons, not music. I am not an engineer, but am an artist, sound being a form of “sculpture” if it is true stereo, like the sound on the albums of Old and In the Way. I have sought the tools to make my art, even as I felt that acid was a tool, and made my own when it proved necessary to do so. The tools to make sound sculptures are the same.
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