Manual of Evasion

So imagine a trippy cyberpunk/transhuman film that features Terrence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson, and Rudy Rucker.

Well imagine it no more as I've got it for you right here:





It's called "Manual of Evasion." It was made in 1994 by Portuguese filmmaker, Edgar Pera. Rudy Rucker, who plays Lord Chaos in the film, wrote a piece for it on his site. It's a somewhat melancholy reflection as both McKenna and Wilson have of course passed on, leaving Rucker the only one left. He calls the video a "dadaistic movie."

Me? I just wish I could have been a fly on the wall while the film was made. Those three deep thinkers in one place? Bouncing and riffing ideas off of one another? Extraordinary. I'll wager that whatever didn't make the cut was just as fascinating as what remained.

McKenna offers us his musings on time over hypnotic pulses. Wilson calls for caution and awareness over the insidious "Time Flies." "They're the worst," he says. They eat the arrow of time. The only way to evade the time flies is to "remain in a state of continuous attention and astonishment."

Different species will emerge from between the cracks in realities.

Wow. Watching this makes we want to reread my Rudy Rucker books. I'll admit, his cyberpunk takes on these matters were a bit off-putting to me at first, but sure did grow on me.

I won't pretend to understand everything I heard while watching this film. I just let it wash over me and suggest that you do the same. Let flow over you. Listen to what Robert Anton Wilson says about the distortion of time and especially to what McKenna says about consciousness and controlling the rhythm of time. He really was trying to get the world to evolve to a higher state of consciousness and we would quite probably have been so much the better had we listened.

Sorry. I'm babbling on this post. But I'm just trying to sort out everything I just saw.

"You are the cutting edge of a thirteen billion year old process of defining novelty. Your acts matter. Your thoughts matter. Your purpose? To add to the complexity. Your enemy? Disorder, entropy, stupidity, and tastelessness.”

- Terence McKenna

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