THE GURU SPEAKS

McKENNA ON MUSIC AND THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE:

"Something about psychedelics blurs the cultural channels that media like print set up in the human physiology, so that what is fascinating about psychedelics is the way the acoustical input spills over into the visual field as hallucinations. The power of sound is almost an archetypal conceit of all theories of magic anywhere in the world. For us, magic means stagecraft and illusion. But for many people, it simply means another way of doing business with reality."

ON HIS FAVORITE MUSIC:

"Music has to be percussive and to some degree lyrical to address the human physiology. I mean, you wouldn't want to listen to too much Schonberg on acid. Music that arises completely out of theory the way much of that atonal Cologne school did I find very, very difficult to listen to, but I'm quite comfortable with Nirvana and Mr. Bungle and everybody else."

ON WHETHER THE UNITED STATES WILL EVER LEGALIZE PSYCHEDELICS;

"Left to ourselves, probably no. But there is not a monolithic front against psychedelic research. Different cultures are handling it different ways. The availability of cannabis in Europe is fairly startling. I think that over time, and given that the government doesn't unleash the propaganda engines against it the way it did in the '60s, this issue might be worked out. I see the real hidden issue here as how much money is being made from illicit drugs: Not psychedelics, but narcotics and stimulants, and the way in which this is an industry that many people wish to see continue."

ON WHAT WENT WRONG IN THE '60S:

"I don't think people should drop out: There's nothing to drop out to. Half the people Fm talking to are running society. The democratic impulse has always been correct, it's just that in this country we lost our nerve after the 1960s because suddenly we realized that the consequences of universal public education in a media-dense society meant a revolutionary Jeffersonianism that the capitalists who owned this country weren't ready to put up with. So the universities were gutted, turned into trade schools, and everybody was sold on having a Mercedes and a second home, and they managed at great effort to get the lid back on. But none of the problems were solved, so now here is this new generation of kids. They've observed all this, they see what happened, and this seam can't be run again. They have .30 years more of 20th-century history under their belt."

ON CELEBRITY AND TWENTYSOMETHING CYNICISM:.

"The community, the tribe, is so suspicious of success that making it almost disqualifies you. The Shamen were a good example of that-1 did a cut with them, 'Boss Drum,' that went double platinum in England, and they've sort of not had credibility ever since. "What there is in the youth culture is a hunger for reality and a very strong aversion to bullshit. It can be bullshit inside the community�self-indulgent stars blowing themselves up�or it can be cynicism toward the rest of society, which is just so plastic and sold-out and TV-addicted that it's ridiculous."

ON WHETHER HE HAS EVER BEEN HASSLED BY THE GOVERNMENT:

"{laughter] No, and I don't know what that means. I suspect that's some kind of bureaucratic error, {laughter] Until informed otherwise, I will continue to act as if it's a free country. I don't know how else to behave. If we become our own cops, then they don't need to build walls and prisons. That's the ultimate nightmare, that we become so docile and subservient to their agenda that we don't even raise our voices."