RN Abbott 1979 Dead Reckoning and Hamburger Metaphysics

Abbott, Lee. 1979. The Jerry Garcia
Feature: Dead Reckoning and Hamburger Metaphysics. Feature (March): 32,
34-37. Also reprinted in Dodd and Spaulding 2000.

Reading Notes

Tags: 1978, Atlanta, interviews, drugs, Army,
why, death, fascism, reading notes, GA

Took place in Atlanta 12/18/78, at the
Colony Court’s Savannah Suites hotel. Not sure the name address.

Jerry, with his “chemically lit” eyes, is grooving in this
interview.

Doesn’t want to talk about himself. He’s old news.

“Jerry is in a self-described ‘state of happiness’ (Abbott
1979, 34).

”I was a fuck-up in high school,” Jerry says, easing
himself onto the couch. Outside, a hard rain threatens. Inside, Garcia is in
high animation, giggling and working over the past with a bantamweight’s vigor.
“When I was a kid, I was a juvenile delinquent. My mom even moved me out
of the city to get me away from trouble. It didn’t work. I couldn’t stand high
school ’cause I was burning my bridges as I went along. But I didn’t have any
way to go. I don’t think I did any more than anybody else. It’s just that I was
always getting caught-for fighting, drinking, all the stuff you’re not supposed
to do. … I was involved in more complex ideas. I started reading Schopenhauer,
Heidegger and Kant when I was in the seventh grade. After that, school was
silly” (Abbott 1979, 34).

Unfiltered Camel

“there were gunfights in the halls, but I didn’t fit into
that either. I was happening on a different plane entirely. That’s one of the
reasons I got into drugs. In all that teenage craziness, it was the only good
trip around” (Abbott 1979, 34). #drugs

“I had been court­martialed twice and had tons of extra
duty and was restricted to barracks. I was just late all the time. 1 would miss
roll call. I had seven or eight or nine or ten AWOLs, which is a pretty darn
serious offense in the Army. So one day I’m called to the CO’s office. No heavy
trip or anything. He says, ‘Private Garcia, how would you like to get out of
the Army?’ And I said, ‘I’d like it just fine.’ Two weeks later I was out”
(Abbott 1979, 34). #army

Car accident changed his life, no more coasting.

“I was in a good automobile accident.” Jerry grows
anxious. “I was with four other guys in an old Studebaker Golden Hawk-
supercharged engine, terrible suspension, ninety-plus miles an hour on a back
road and we hit these chatter-bar dividers. It was just Wham! We went flying, I
guess. All l know is that I was sitting in the car and that there was this …
disturbance … and the next thing, I was in a field. I went through the
windshield and landed far enough away from the car where I couldn’t see it. It
was at night. It was very, very quiet, you know. It was like a complete break in continuity-from sitting in the car roaring
down the road to lying in a field wondering what had happened- nothing in
between.” Anybody get hurt? “Yeah,” Garcia says with genuine
awe. “One guy did die. He happened to be the most gifted of our little
group. It was like losing the golden boy, someone who had a lot of promise, the
person who had the most to offer” (Abbott 1979, 34).

“You were lucky,” I suggest.

“Oh, yeah,” Garcia agrees. “The car was like
a crumpled cigarette pack. It was almost unrecognizable. And there were my
shoes in it, dig? I had been thrown out of my shoes and through the
windshield.” He pauses over the memory of a pair of scuffed Army-issues
lying on the floorboards of a violence sculpture. “That’s
where my life began.” He breathes. “Before
then I was always living at less than capacity. I was idling. That was the
slingshot for the rest of my life. It was like a second chance.”
[#why] He looks at me hard, his expression earnest, grateful, dead. “Then
I got serious.” Another toke. A deep suck of mortality. “I dig the
affirmation side of death. Death is one of those things that’s been taken from
us as an experience. We hide it. As a result, it becomes fearful, scary,
because it’s unknown. Really, man, it’s the other side of being born”
(Abbott 1979, 34). #death

“Garcia is on his knees, praying to the coffee table. The
toot is vicious, cut with meth, not with quinine, and it’s enough to rip your
sinuses out. It goes straight to the forebrain – a howling blizzard of Insight
and Truth. The rush is, well, chilling; your scalp tingles, a hospital sourness
scours the back of your throat.  Then a
Con Ed generator of electricity sizzles your synapses … Your smoke is tasty.
You are ready to Talk.” (Abbott 1979, 35). #drugs

“my most palpable experiences have all been psychedelics” …
there was one in particular, the ne plus
ultra trip, the apocalypse” at the end of what Jerry describes as his
psychedelic period” (Abbott 1979, 35). #drugs

“It featured countless-thousands, millions– births and
deaths. The phoenix trip, you know. And in my consciousness, it went all the
way from, uh, insects to vegetables to mammals to civilizations-to organisms of
every sort.”  What happened?
”Everything,” Garcia barks, drawing closer, the glint of his eyes grave
and dear. “For me, my trips began to take a different kind of form. The
first ones were visual, you know, patterns, colors, profound revelations,
‘Yeah, I get it’- the standard stuff. Then I started going to the Acid Tests
and experiences were happening to more than one person at a time. They had this
telepathic quality. Then into that stepped another level which was between and
amongst the telepathic explosions. Between the flashes and surprises was this ‘You’re
almost getting it.’ An urging. Then there was a presence which I think of as
the Teacher, which represents a higher order. There would be this feeling of déja vu. All these little bits of
input-people talking, certain sights-would start to coalesce: ‘Damn, You Got
It! BOOM!’ It took on this teacher-pupil relationship: Me and my other mind! … It
scared the shit out of me, man. It was like, What do you believe?’ It removed
everything I was certain of. And in its place was a new set of circumstances.
And these circumstances were like pages in a book. They started moving until I
was living out a whole lifespan with all the intricacy of one’s life, all the
way up to the moment of one’s death. The final realizations, the summation” (Abbott
1979 35).

“Cosmic is the only word for it,” he sighs.
“Nothing has happened in my life since then, man. Nothing was as
climactic, as complete as that.” (Abbott 1979, 36). Everything after was anticlimax.

Story of a tripper with a big knife threatening JG on stage
at a ballroom (Abbott 1979, 36). The power of the crowd “comes somewhere close
to losing your will” (Abbott 1979, 36). #fascism

Rock Scully is onetime cellmate of Bob Haldeman (Abbott
1979, 37). JGMF: is this true?

“I don’t want to be a leader because I don’t want to be
a mis-leader. I haven’t put any safeguards there. I haven’t paid the dues to be
responsible for leading people. The most I would want to do
would be to indicate, using my life as a model, that it’s possible for you to,
uh, go for it.
But following me is like a dead end street. There’s nothing here but me.
I can’t multiply fishes and loaves and turn water into wine” (Abbot 1979, 37).

“I remember going down to Watts Towers after the Watts Acid
Tests. It had been a hard night, I’d gone through a lot of heavy changes, and
it was dawn. I remember looking at this stuff. It was just junk. Nobody could
tear it down, so they made a monument out of it. I remember thinking that I’d rather have a life that gets me off while I’m living it
and leave nothing and not litter the world with concrete relics or ideas or
things that will hang you up” (Abbott 1979, 37).

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