Bureau of Lost Culture

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“Ima­gin­a­tion thrives in dark­ness” 

We talk about The Undergound often at the Bureau - not London’s subterranean rail sytem, but the countercultural alternative society of the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s.

In 1964 he was a working class hippie student crossing Haight Street, a road in San Francscso, when hit by a vision  - and life as he knew it was over

When musician ARTHUR RUSSELL died in 1992, at age 40, of complications related to HIV-AIDS, he was an obscure figure — though a legend in the 70s and 80s underground music scenes at downtown New York clubs such as The Loft and Paradise Garage. 

RICHARD KING, author of 'Travels Over Feeling'(Faber) a poignant and evocative visual chronology of Arthur's life and times, came to the the Bureau to tell us about him and why he matters.

Despite his prodigious output, his inability to finish songs, and the genre-busting uniqueness of much of his music, meant that he released only two albums under his own name in his lifetime. But in the decades since his death, a series of posthumous releases have generated a deep love and admiration in many who have been lucky to come across his music.

We also get into indie record shop culture, music sobbery, the underground New York club scene of  the mid seventies and ask the question: 'How do you know when, a song, a book or a piece of art is finished?'

Thanks to Dan Papps at Faber, to Steve Knutson of Audika Records and Cat Corrigan of Beggars Banquet who have posthumously released much of Arthur's unpublished work, for permission to include his music.

We also included two selections from Matt Wolf’s film 'Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell'

*Whatever happened to the Greek Gods? if you are a teenager living half way up a 1970s tower block listening to Drill, should you even care?

*On this epside we travel in time and space to Ancient Greece, the classical psycho-geographic birthplace of Western Culture (and therefore of counterculture), specfically to the mythic landscape of Epidavros and the sacred temple of Asclepius.

*Our guide and guest is Sarah Janes, one of Britain's foremost lucid dreamers, explorer and teacher of ancient mysteries. 

*We hear how the Temple of Asclepius's treatment of the sick involved diet, excercise, theater - and comedy - in addition to surgery and medicine.

*We revisit the subject of dreams, nightmares and countercultural consciousness  - and hear why the gods are still with us, whether we ignore them or not.

•And the Scottish band The Proclaimers make a surprise apearance.... 

For more on Sarah and her work

#dreaming #psychedelics #theunconscious #consciousness #truth #madness #counterculture #sleep #luciddreaming #dreams #neuroscience #consciousness #nightmares #epidavros #ancientgreece #greekgods #asclepius #jung #ecstasy #thegods