New York City Book Launch for Chapel of Extreme Experience

Publication: The New York Sun
Date: Dec 15, 2003
Section: New York
Page: 13

Strobe Down Memory Lane

A congeries of haute bohemians--reminiscent of the 1960s and '70s--descended on Chez Es Saada Moroccan restaurant to celebrate John Geiger's book "Chapel of Extreme Experience: A Short history of Flicker." The evening was hosted by Leila Hadley Luce and Soft Skull Press.

The walls of the basement boite were speckled with patterns evocative of the book's theme: exploring flickering stroboscopic light and artists' and scientists' attempts to understand its effects on human consciousness.

In the room was a "Dream Machine," created by Brion Gyson and Ian Sommerville. People stood and meditated before its flickering strobe and shut their eyes to experience the pulsating light through their eyelids. For some, it is said to lead to a hallucinatory-like experience.

Some of the room's flickering color had a red glow, which was surprisingly appropriate for the entrance of author Ted Morgan, who recently wrote "Reds: McCarthyism in the Twentieth-Century America" (Random House), and his wife Eileen. He is now writing a book about pundits.

Others in the room included poet and photographer Ira Cohen and Lisette Coly, executive director of the Parapsychology Foundation. Her grandmother, Eileen Garrett, was an author, entrepreneur, and trance medium psychic who founded the organization in 1951 and was arguably one of the most famous medium of her day--a kind of John Edward ("Crossing Over") of her time. Garrett was ambivalent about her own gifts and sought to use scientific methodology and critical thinking to examine psychic phenomena to get to the bottom of its ultimate meaning.

"It's nice to see the Dream Machine for the first time as an adult," said Ms. Coly. She said she was 6 or 7 when she first met Aldous Huxley, a close friend of Garrett. "I was fearful of his glass eye, and yet he was a gentle soul."

Among the swirling crowd were artist Chris Cran; publisher Theo Green and his wife, Adele Parker, and Mary Jordan of Tonguepress, which publishes biographies and books about human rights, among other categories. She is working on a feature documentary film about Jack Smith, the performance artist, filmmaker, and photographer. Also present was Jordan Zinowich, a senior editor of Autonomedia Collective who grew up in British Colombia and has published two historical biographies about the opening of the western Canadian north. Near him was Hawk Alfredson, who hails originally from Sweden and lives in the Chelsea Hotel.

Standing under a brick arch, author Colson Whitehead ("Colossus of New York") said of the pulsating presence of the Dream Machine casting its incantatory shadows upon all: "it made me kind of dizzy at first, but now I'm kind of diggin' it."

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