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George Nori with you along with Matthew Pellamary, Matthew, you were going to talk about a story about what's it like right before one dies?
Go ahead, Yeah, this is wild. So back in the late nineties I went to these Antiobotani seminars in the Maya Ruins, a bush model in Polanca, and a number of people were there, Terrence mckenner and a bunch of other people, and a friend of mine, Jacques Olivier lives up on Orchest Island, now found out about this substance called five neo d MT. It's five myth foxy dimethyl trip to mean. It's highly psychoactive. And you hear a lot these days about people smoking toad venom, and it's
the primary component in that toad venom. Toad venom. Yeah, the Buffo Alvarez, the Sonoran desert toad people. They they drive the venom and then they smoke it and it blows your ego away. It can be very transformative. It's a very powerful experience. Back then, nobody really knew what it was except a few people, and we were getting it from a lab in China and we smoked it and had a life changing experience. So he and I have always had this funny, weird sort of death connection.
So when I was finishing this book, the Death Book, right when Covid was hitting, he was up playing on a stage up at Orchests Island at the Imagined Festival. And it was Friday the thirteenth, it was a full moon. He was in this big stage and there was a
heart above him. Yeah, and he's playing a song and I never get the words right, but he's playing a song by David Byrne called Lazy, and he's playing it and he's singing on a ukulele and it goes something like, I'm lazy as a lover when I work, I'm lazy. You know, I'm wicked and I'm lazy. And he gets through the line and he goes, I'm feeling so lazy, I think I'm gonna stop. And right when he said that, he literally dropped dead on stage.
Oh my god, you're kidding.
No, he dropped that. A nurse was in the audience. She jumped up, she broke two of his ribs. Trying to resuscitate him. She worked on him for five six minutes I don't know. The life flight ice came in and they hit him with the paddles six times and they brought him back geez, and they rushed him off with the life flight. He got a triple by a pass. He goes by a Poloca Leiley and he lives up there on Orchest Island, and so you.
Know he's still.
Movies. So what I did is I went up to Orcus and I helped him. I edited and published the book about that experience. It's called Nature Loves Courage, which is something that Terrence Man kind of used to say all the time. But when I got to sit with him and I said, Buddy, I gotta know this, that that five amo experience that we had. I always thought that was a dress rehearsal for death. Was it? And he looked at me and he said, yes, it was. Wow.
So though he was gone and clinically dead for it could have been ten twelve minutes, I don't know how long it was, he said he was aware.
I had a friend of mine, Matthew, who I think he died while sending me a text. Yeah, because a couple of Texas came in it made sense. A third one came in, it didn't make sense. A fourth one came in, it was all gobbledgook. And then nobody heard from him. And then the next day we had a wellness check with the police and they found him dead.
Ind Wow, isn't that wild?
Strange?
Yeah, it really is strange. Funny things happened, like I won't get into all the details, but when my mom died, hers stereo suddenly turned on really loud with Frank Sinatra. I love that, right, And she loved Frank Sinacha. She had worked with them years ago. And seems like this whole electronic thing and the boundaries between the world, so to speak, it's pretty strange, you know. To me, it makes life more dreamlike in many respects and more magical. And so one of the things that inspired me to
write this book is I'm not afraid to die. I'm ready. I'm not in any hurry.
Yeah, we're in no rush, no rush.
But part of me is looking forward to it, right because all the experiences I've had in the jungle, with all these plant diets for all these years, I've been through everything imaginable and unimaginable. If there's something new I'm waiting for it. But I mean I've been at it, you know, for like twenty five years with that.
If you're going to go, though, what do you want to go in your sleep? I think so, yeah, that's the best way to go.
Yeah, I want I would like to stay vital and healthy all the way up, but it's time to go and then bang, just go.
Then just go, you know, I don't want to stay in the hospital for six months or anything like that.
Yeah, I've seen too many people go on the installment plan. Uh. Charles Schultz, who was a friend of mine, he died in his sleep.
Like that the Peanuts Charles Schultz, Yes, sir, how about that?
He was He was a good friend. He was a big part of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for many years.
The actor just died sleep.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, well, you know, to George, the older we get, the more it happens.
Right, that's true.
Well, we're gonna be up to bat sooner or later.
I guess when you die in your sleep, what happens. You just have a heart attack in your sleep or something.
That's what happened with We called them Charles Shults. We call them Sparky. Uh, that's what happened with Sparky and his son Manti now owns the writer's conference and he's keeping it going, keeping the tradition going. But to go just like that, right, you probably don't even know what hit you. Suddenly you're off wherever you end up going.
Assuming there's an afterlife, right, you'll know that you died. But it'll be puzzling to you, I would assume, right, A little confusing.
Yeah, but I like to think. Of course I'm a wee bit biased here, but all the visionary experiences that I've had in the jungle and all the psychological things I've been through all these years, I do feel very prepared for whatever's going to come. Even if it were to cease to exist, you have to accept it. No matter what you know, it's it's always there. And you know, there's that old saying that you start at the moment you're born, you start to die. Right exactly.
In June of this year, you wrote a book called The Thinning Veil. Tell us about that.
Yeah, it's my third short story collection. Thank you for asking, And my very first short story collection is the one that Ray Bradberry gave me the blurb for and my fans have been begging for more fiction because I've been writing so much nonfiction lately. So I worked really hard and I came up with thirteen Twisted Tales short stories. Some of them are science fiction, science fiction, horror. I got a nice Haunted Castle Scottish Haunted Castle story in there,
genetic manipulation, all kinds of weird little things. I did thirteen of them, and I dedicated one of them to Ray Bradbury.
It was Ray Bradberry versus the Alien.
Thank You. Yes, I had been asked Ray would have been one hundred or few years ago, and I was asked to write a story having to do with his life. And there was the story boys Grow Giant Mushrooms in your Basement. It was on the old Alfred Hitchcock Show. It was on the old Ray Bradbery Theater, about aliens taking over the world. So I wrote a first person's story about a Ray Bradberry fan going back to Wakegan where he was born and runs across the mushrooms again.
And in the story, the aliens are taking over by making everybody eat the mushrooms, and they're getting possessed by the aliens.
I love it.
So I did a first person with Ray Bradberry with the Mushrooms, and I had a lot of fun writing it.
Did I ever tell you my Ray Bradberry story.
I don't know. I know we have him in common.
We used to put out a newsletter called the after Dark Newsletter, and I wrote a story about Ray Bradberry's Twilight Zone script he wrote called I Sing the Body Electric.
Oh yeah.
It was about a family who lost their mother. Two kids, little boy, little girl, and the father and the mother died and they were in tremendous morning, as they should be, and he went to the robots store and bought a nanny robot who raised the kids. They became adults, and she went on to a different family to do it all over again. But it was called I Sing the Body Electric. And I just loved that show. Oh so I wrote a story about it in our newsletter. It
somehow got the Ray Bradbury. He sent me a letter which I still have on my bulletin board in my office here that just says, reading the story you wrote about me just delighted me to no end. Thank you, Ray Bradbury.
That's sweet.
It's a classic.
Yeah, yeah, I got my picture in my postcard that he sent me.
He was one of the best.
Man he was, so I was such an honor to be with him. But he used to come to the conference and after he would speak, he would go to the back of the restaurant and I would get invited back there with like maybe three other people, and he would tell stories of writing Mulby Dick with John Houston, and he would go into the John Houston voice, whoa you know, and he would just do the whole thing.
What do you think made him so clever?
I have? I told this to a friend and they thought I was a little crazy, but you know, we were talking about visionary experience and drugs and this and that, and I said, Ray Bradberry is the kind of guy I would never ever need to take any drug ever ever, because I think he always had that sort of three year old childlike wonder yep and it's it's just a beautiful thing. He always was was that that questioning and what if and he was very much playful like a
pre year old. And I think that's just the sweetest thing and what an inspiration. And he used to get up there kicking off the conference and He would just go on about how with the green place and the hell with the novels just right for the love of it, and he would just really get into this passion, you know, and it was everybody would want to be there and make sure they got raised. Opening night keynoted because he was so full of just passion. You know, what a blessing he was.
Where was he born.
He was born in Waukegan, or he lived in Waukegan, Illinois until he was something like eight or something like that, and then the family moved to la and he lived in Venice Beach and he was writing, eking out a living, writing for the for the pulp magazines, you know, like weird Tales.
He was when he died.
Yeah, yeah, And I saw him just before he died. And then and I gave him a copy of my memoir and I just said, Ray, I'm not asking you for a blurb or anything. I just wanted to give to it this he put so great to me. And he put it. He held it and he looked at it, and he looked up at me and looked back down at it, and then he held it to his heart. And now that was.
Last time I saw him how many Alfred Hitchcock shows did he write?
Yeah he did, he did about he did a lot of those, Yeah he did, he did. He did probably three or four Twilight Zones. He probably did maybe half a dozen of the Hitchcock ones. And then in the eighties when they had Ray Bradberry Theater, he got to redo a lot of them.
Would you say Fahrenheit four one, four or five one was his biggest work.
It was as big as the most well known. But when he when he first started out, he took a bus for three days to New York to try to get a book published way back, and he spent the whole week knocking on publishers doors and nothing happened, and he was staying at the y m c A. And finally, on Friday afternoon, the senator said, well, Ray, what about those Mars stories? You know, you go, why don't you
do something with those? And so he the weekend he threw together the Martian chronicles, brought in and they accepted it. And then from then on he was kind of on his way. But I think, yeah, Fahrenheit four fifty one is probably his most famous one. But you know, something wicked this way comes illustrated man.
I mean, how did you come up with your thirteen twisted tails for the Thinning Vail book?
They were not easy.
I gotta tell you, how'd you find him?
Well? I scanned the newspapers all the time. So there's one story I read about they put a pig's heart into a guy because it's just like a human heart, for real, for real, and he lived for about a month and then he died.
Oh jeez.
So I had a story about a guy who was a freak about bacon. He was really into his bacon, and he ends up in the hospital because he doesn't take care of himself. He eats terribly, and he ends up getting a pig's heart and he starts turning into a pig. Only get into all the details, but I got it from what I've been in the news. I have another story about genetically engineered babies that are perfect. Call that one feudal fantasies. And then I want to know.
I read some really really old short stories from like the turn of the century, so I wrote one in that style. But short stories in many respects are harder than a novel because you got to get it all done. You got to come up with the idea, and you got to wrap it all up and do it, you know, and then you got to come up with a new idea. Whereas when a novel gets going, it has a life of its own. He just starts to build. But the stories you got to keep coming up with new ones.
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