"Shortly after the
Megabus arrives in Mecca, we're stopped at a red light next to a car
blaring that Jay-Z duet with Alica Keyes about the joys of being rich
in a corporate police state."
What the fuck? Forgive
me. I'm over sixty and feel compelled to spell it out. I feel silly
using text abbreviations like I'm trying to be a young hepcat. But
what is that? Sounds like somekinda newfangled Islamofuturism.
It's
the opening sentence of Tripping with Allah: Islam, Drugs,and Writing by Michael Muhammad
Knight. A book I found via Libby—an app that allows you to check
ebooks out from your local library, that as a library employee, I'm
using to help encourage my job to still be there when the
quarantine ends.
Libby had a couple of
Michael Muhammad Knight's book tacked on to a list that came up when
I searched for William S. Burroughs. The cover looked interesting—a
funky anime-looking robot relaxing with a sword. Knight also has been
called "the Hunter S. Thompson of Islamic literature."
Interesting. Then I read
that first line. I checked it out. Wow!
Just the sort of thing I
need to take my mind off bizarre lockdown realities. Burroughs and Thompson
are evoked early. Knight knows his drug and counterculture
literature. And it's full of stuff like this:
"Not even my Muslim
friends who do coke want to join me for ayahuasca, but they're not
doing coke for the sake of spiritual growth."
"If I could get enough
Muslims into ayahuasca, then ayahuasca-Islam would become the new
orthodoxy."
". . . I'm a mostly
nonfictional protagonist in a mostly fictional universe."
Just what do we have here? A
novel? Gonzo journalism? A collection of essays? We have a case of
post-modern fiction/nonfiction (con)fusion here. Names have been
changed to protect the innocent . . . or maybe not so innocent, like
in Thompson, Kerouac, and Dragnet. Though I don't think Sergeant
Friday would approve -- he would go into one of his hardboiled lectures.
To hell with that ancient
video fascist, I approve!
This jaded, 60-something Chicano had his mind blown, which isn't
easy.
Knight
throws the reader into strange territory.
Ayahuasca. Islam. 21st
century countercultures. It's kind of like when a
Muslim girl asked me if I liked Beavis and Butthead right after I met
her. Introduce me to things I don't know about—it's what I live
for!
There's
also an excellent overview of drugs (including caffeine) and Islamic
history, Muslim takes on the Transformers, Star Wars, and 2001:
A Space Odyssey. He also
writes about his experiences in professional wrestling, as well as
studying and teaching at Harvard.
And, of course, there's
ayahuasca.
For
those of you unhip folks who don't know about ayahuasca (AKA
yage),the hallucinogenic drug from a vine found in the South American
rain forests that has literary streetcred throught William S.
Burroughs' The Yage
Letters, was the sci-fi
gimmick in Murray Leinster's 1930 novel Murder Madness,
and the fuel for a revolution that finally defeats Donald Trump in
Jonathan Greenberg's recent America 2034: Utopia Rising.
Also ayahuasca retreats
are fashionable in some circles.They mostly involve going down to South America. I was going to joke
about them coming to our hometown soon, but after a Google search, I
discovered that there are Ayahuasca "ceremonies" being held in
the Metro Phoenix area. Not much information. I wonder if they're
practicing social distancing?
Who knows? Maybe
psychedelic Islam will help us into the post-COVID-19 reality . . .
