Voices in Our Head: Where Is Good Old American Weirdness? (Aug 14, 2005)
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Author: Ron Rosenbaum
Date: Aug 14, 2005
Words: 2242
Publication: The New York Observer
So where do you find Truly Weird America these days? Does the “Ghost
World” exist any more?
The Old, Weird America: That was the title of Greil Marcus’ admirably
eccentric and illuminating book on the obscure sources of the Basement
Tapes; it was the world of backroads, crossroads voodoo the Steve
Buscemi character searches for in
Ghost World. But let’s face it, there’s not much Old, Weird America,
not much Ghost World left in the backroads and back alleys of Wal-Mart
America. Believe me, I’ve looked.
But you can still find True American Weirdness if you look hard
enough. Or, rather, listen hard enough. You can still find True
American Weirdness on the last remnant of midnight-to-dawn radio. The
kind of weirdness that the great American novelist Stanley Elkin
celebrated so memorably and brilliantly in The Dick Gibson Show, the
classic account of the etheric voices that emerge from the ghostly
static of the night. (I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: The
90-page “Dr. Behr-Bleibtreau” section of The Dick Gibson Show may be
the greatest sustained comic/metaphysical tour de force in American
literature of the past century.)
But until recently, I’d thought that midnight-to-dawn radio weirdness
had vanished from the ether with the disappearance of the legendary
Long John Nebel show (which inspired the “Dr. Behr-Bleibtreau”
episode.)
I was wrong. I wasn’t paying attention to the growth of Coast to Coast
AM, the midnight-(well, 1 a.m.)-to-dawn marathon weirdathon. It’s
nationally syndicated and live, and you can tune into it here in New
York on WABC, 770 on your AM dial, Mondays through Thursdays and also
on weekends. It’s like a link to an Invisible Republic of the strange,
occult Bizzaro World America.
The Old, Weird America of Edgar Cayce (“the sleeping prophet”) and
other “Ascended Masters,” of U.F.O. contactees, U.F.O. abductees,
alternative-cancer-cure types, Atlantis historians, six varieties of
Illuminati conspiracy theorists (including those who believe the evil
Globalists are really alien lizards in disguise)—you name it. And 10
varieties of End of the World apocalypticists, including a new one for
me: the solar-flare “Killshot” that is rapidly heading for Earth,
coming to fuck you up.
This is the late-night American Unconscious in its purest form,
unburdening itself of its dream life, its nightmare underside,
disclosing the seething fantasies within. All hosted by an
astonishingly mild-mannered radio personality, George Noory, who
almost heroically gives them all equally respectful attention. (Art
Bell, the founder of the show, hosts on Sunday nights now. I once
appeared on the Art Bell show in a probably futile attempt to separate
myth from reality about Skull and Bones.)
Alas, New Yorkers can’t hear Coast to Coast AM on Friday, which is
when the show offers its regular feature “Trucker Hotline,” when
listeners—specifically restricted to truckers, cops and newspaper
carriers—call in to Coast to Coast with their truly scary ghostly
encounters out there alone on the road at night. (You know, the
“hitchhiker” who turned out to have been murdered weeks ago, that sort
of thing.)
Coast to Coast: Sometimes it feels more like
ghost to ghost listening to the disembodied voices of midnight-to-dawn
radio, all these dematerialized creatures of the ionosphere, emerging
from some afterlife of utterance resonating at 50,000-watt frequencies
across the American night.
I grew up on midnight-to-dawn-radio American Weirdness. I grew up
listening, as long as I could stay awake (which was a lot), to Long
John Nebel’s midnight-to-dawn show on WOR, back when a 50,000-watt
clear-channel station could reach halfway across the country, and
sometimes more on a night when the ionosphere was right.
The appealing dramatic premise of the original Long John Nebel show
was that there was no formal finishing time—they’d go all night, even
past dawn, to exhaust the weirdness they dealt with on a daily
(nightly) basis. It was on Long John that I first heard some of the
weirdest shit imaginable, prototypes of today’s weirdness. The
krebiozen “cancer cure” (the A.M.A. wouldn’t give it a fair test!).
The Men in Black (although, as I remember it, they first entered the
picture as the sinister teams who silenced Kennedy assassination
witnesses). The original saucer-contactee stories. Orgone-box
advocates. Bee-venom arthritis cures. Anti-fluoridationist activists,
the right-wing “purity of bodily fluids” tendency (later to be adopted
by the New Age movement—right-wingers and New Agers both tending to
the puritanical in their own way, a connection that Terry Southern
picked up on in Dr. Strangelove). Dowsing. Conspiracy theorists of
every variety imaginable. The Anastasia claim to the Russian throne.
And, of course, reincarnation—and don’t forget “mind control” (Long
John’s later programs were increasingly devoted to the question of
whether the one-time cover girl he’d married had, under hypnotic “mind
control,” lived a double life as a paid C.I.A. undercover agent).
I didn’t believe much of the stuff I heard, but in the incredibly
boring suburban culture I grew up in, it was amazing just to hear
people say such weirdly outlandish things with such self-confidence in
their voices.
You can hear the avatars of those voices every night on Coast to Coast
AM. And I think it’s worth pointing out that while you can find a lot
of weirdness on the Web, there’s something about midnight-to-dawn-
radio American Weirdness that is different from reading it on a
screen. There’s voice, there’s timbre, there’s Presence—all of which
gets denatured, so to speak, on the Web.
I’m still fascinated by the voices of those people who think they have
the Secret Key to Everything in their head. The voice of self-
confident madness. Either that or invincible self-deception. Or who
knows—and this is scary—maybe one of them does have the truth.
One of the weirdest experiences in my life was tuning in to those
voices in person. (No, not in my head.) In fact, I tuned in to the
voices at the Voice—The Village Voice—when I first started working
there. I had no place to live in those days and slept in a sleeping
bag on the office floor. I didn’t get much sleep: The night line rang
all night long, and I got into the habit of answering it. It was a
time when a certain number of excitable people evidently believed that
The Voice would be hospitable to their weirdness. A hotline for the—
well, how shall I put it?—nocturnal outcast visionaries on the fringes
of American bohemia. And they’d call on the night line, and I was the
only one there, and so I’d get to listen to them clue me in to secret
conspiracies from the political to the personal, to the secret color
code the Mafia used to fix horse races—that sort of thing.
People wanted to confide the secret workings of things. It’s something
that made me realize how Pynchon’s fantasy of a secret communication
system in The Crying of Lot 49 wasn’t paranoid, as is often said, but
“highly attuned.”
Maybe it was there I developed my divided attitude to it all: a
skeptical distrust for the voices that claimed they Had It All Figured
Out. But a fascination with the structure, the imagery, its patterns
and resonances in their fantasies. It’s a way of learning about
America hidden in the glaring light of day.
Long John is long gone, but Coast to Coast AM is there to keep you in
touch with the night side of the culture that Long John first gave
national voice to. You can still find that special undying brand of
weirdness there. Updated, yes, and sometimes with the same kind of
conspiracy theory you can find all over the Web, but still with room
for iconic occult curiosities like Benjamin Creme, who appeared at 2
a.m. on a recent show.
You know of Benjamin Creme, right, and his relation to Jesus, and you
know about Benjamin Creme’s prophetic function in regard to the coming
of the Super Fifth Degree Master and Teacher, the great and mighty all-
powerful Maitreya, who outranks Jesus himself, right?
Well, don’t feel bad if you don’t. To recognize the name Benjamin
Creme, you probably have to be, as I am, an assiduous student of New
Age rhetoric and literature (I believe in what Stephen Greenblatt
first called a “poetics of culture” before it was renamed and mass-
marketed to grad students as “the New Historicism”). Anyway, while
following New Age trends and obsessions, I noticed that Benjamin Creme
was always a little on the fringes of the New Age guru circuit, but
the guy seemed to have staying power.
He always seemed to turn up in the New Age lecture calendars, a
distinguished-looking gentleman who had something to say about the
Second Coming of the Christ. I recall something about Jesus having
already come back, that he was living quietly in London, awaiting
recognition. I somehow had the impression—mistaken, I now realize—that
he was implicitly suggesting that he was Jesus (he lived in London).
But I guess it was more a matter of him having inside info on the
London Christ’s plans for revealing himself.
It gets confusing, and I could be wrong, but after listening to his
appearance on Coast to Coast AM recently, I got the impression that
Benjamin Creme’s emphasis has shifted from Jesus to an entity called
Maitreya, who outranks Jesus in the Ascended Master hierarchy.
Benjamin Creme is apparently in “telepathic contact” with one of the
Fourth Degree Masters and in sporadic contact with the Master of All
Masters, this dude Maitreya, who’s planning to reveal himself and set
us all straight so that all humanity will start caring and sharing
like the great big family we all are. About time.
I have to admit that listening to Benjamin Creme being interviewed by
George Noory on Coast to Coast AM was a little frustrating. (Mr. Noory
said that after Mr. Creme’s last appearance, a number of listeners
called in to say they’d become physically ill afterward because they
felt something coming through the radio. And there was some discussion
of whether or not Maitreya might be the Antichrist).
Mr. Creme was somewhat evasive about who the hell this Maitreya might
be, what his deal is, why he doesn’t manifest himself already aside
from sporadic appearances in other people’s bodies, like that time in
Nairobi. (Mr. Creme’s Web site, in case you want to try to figure it
out, is www.shareintl.org.)
There was some dialogue on whether Maitreya had “suspended” his
visits. Or whether he was coming “very soon,” and also what exactly he
was coming for and why he was waiting. I mean, if we need help from a
Teacher to get us caring and sharing, couldn’t he have shown up in,
say, 1914?
So there was a bit of vagueness, and I could see maybe this was the
way Benjamin Creme had become such a perennial icon on the guru
circuit for so long: He wasn’t giving a lot away. And as long as he
just brings news of Maitreya’s imminent arrival but the Big Guy never
shows up, Benjamin Creme is still The Man.
But it just makes you wonder: What would it be like to be Benjamin
Creme? It’s the old deception versus self-deception thing. You gotta
admire the guy’s persistence, but out on the road, in the quiet of his
Comfort Inn, does he feel like the Willy Loman of the guru circuit?
The Benjamin Creme interview turned out to be a bit frustrating for me
in another way as well. I had set my tape recorder next to my radio
just as the interview began around 2 a.m., and it picked up the first
45 minutes even though I’d evidently dropped off to sleep. But I
thought I had auto reverse, only I didn’t (hate when that happens), so
my 45-minute tape ends at something like 2:45 a.m. with George Noory
saying to Benjamin Creme, “I want to ask you about Maitreya and
U.F.O.’s, because apparently he has said something to you or others.
Is that not true?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Creme.
Amazing: a potential harmonic convergence of True American
Weirdnesses! Would Maitreya endorse the U.F.O. claims? Would he
proclaim that he’ll be arriving in a saucer? Are the aliens Fourth
Degree Masters?
The Second Coming guy and U.F.O.’s: Didn’t it suggest, if you took a
poetics-of-culture perspective, that the appearance of U.F.O.’s may
have been a secularized, sublimated substitute for disappointed hopes
about the Second Coming? Alien abductions as the Rapture (minus the
anal probes, of course).
Interesting: One of the previous night’s guests was someone who’d
written about Elvis’ contacts with U.F.O.’s and the possibility of The
King being an alien himself, among other things. Another convergence.
Could it be that all weirdness was converging?
But I don’t have it on tape, damn it. I’m not sure what position
Benjamin Creme revealed that Maitreya has taken on the aliens.
Fortunately, the show’s Website (www.coasttocoastam.com.) has
streaming audio files, if I can only figure them out. I need to know.
In any case, do me a favor: Read The Dick Gibson Show—or, at the very
least, the “Dr. Behr-Bleibtreau” chapter. A landmark in American
literature. All will be clear, in an etheric way.
Meanwhile, I just learned about another Friday feature on Coast to
Coast AM that we can’t hear in New York City: On Aug. 5, George Noory
unveiled the “Zombie Hotline,” devoted especially to people “who
believe they’ve encountered the walking dead.” Something I think we
could all relate to. I know I could name a few.
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