William S. Burroughs was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. A major postmodernist author, Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays. In 1943 while living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, the mutually influential foundation of what became the countercultural movement of the Beat Generation. Much of Burroughs’s work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict, as he lived throughout Mexico City, London, Paris, Berlin, the South American Amazon and Tangier in Morocco. Finding success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), Burroughs is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959). He was born on this day in 1914 and died on August 2, 1997.
Aldous Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. He is best known for his novels, including Brave New World (1932), and a wide-ranging output of essays, including The Doors of Perception (1954). Huxley was a humanist, pacifist and satirist. He spent the later part of his life in Los Angeles and became interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism, in particular Vivekanda’s Neo-Vedanta and Universalism. Huxley is also well known for his advocacy and consumption of psychedelic drugs. He was born on this day in 1894.
Luis Buñuel was a Spanish filmmaker who worked in Spain, Mexico and France. When Buñuel died at age 83, his obituary in The New York Times called him “an iconoclast, moralist and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later.” Often associated with the Surrealist movement of the 1920s, Buñuel created acclaimed films in six decades, from the 1920s through the 1970s. Still, he is perhaps best known for his first film, Un Chien Andalou (1929), a 16-minute silent short made with Salvador Dalí. Buñuel was born on this day in 1900.
Alejandro Jodorowsky is a Chilean-French filmmaker, playwright, actor, author and comics writer. A hero of the underground film circuit, he is best known for his violently surreal avant-garde films, including cult classics Fando y Lis (1967), the acid western El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973). Jodorowsky’s “psychoshamanism” spiritual system borrows from his interests in alchemy, the tarot, Zen Buddhism and shamanism. He was born on this day in 1929.
Hans Rudolf Giger is a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for Best Achievement for Visual Effects for their design work on the 1979 film Alien. Giger suffers from night terrors, a sleep disorder that has inspired his “biomechanical” work. One of Giger’s main influences was Salvador Dalí and he was a personal friend of Timothy Leary. He was born on this day in 1940.
In October 2012, while train-hopping across Europe, Heidi and I toured the Museum H.R. Giger in Château St. Germain in Gruyères, Switzerland. We also had lunch at the otherworldly, skeletal H.R. Giger Bar, where we ate Margherita pizza and I drank a flaming glass of absinthe. It’s an incredible place set in a stunning Swiss Alps landscape.
David Lynch is an American filmmaker, visual artist and musician. He is known for his unique surrealist films, which are characterized by dream imagery and meticulous sound design. Lynch’s first motion picture was the surrealist horror Eraserhead (1977). Three of his subsequent films operate on “dream logic,” nonlinear narrative structures: Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006). Lynch has practiced the Transcendental Meditation technique since the 1970s. He was born on January 20, 1946.
Throughout my entire adult life I’ve said that Lost Highway is my favorite film of all time (with The City of Lost Children and Chungking Express being close seconds). This might still be true. David Lynch is my favorite director. I even enjoy listening to him talk about cooking quinoa—because before you know it he’s telling an amazing story about buying colored sugar water beneath a moonless night sky in the barren, dusty landscape of Yugoslavia, 1965.
Brian Hugh Warner, better known by his stage name Marilyn Manson, is an American rock musician and former music journalist known for his controversial stage persona and image as the lead singer of the eponymous band Marilyn Manson. His stage name was formed from juxtaposing the names of two American cultural icons – actress Marilyn Monroe and murderer Charles Manson. Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor produced Marilyn Manson’s debut album in 1994. Manson, now with his own brand of absinthe, was born on January 5, 1969.
Nostradamus was a French apothecary and reputed seer who published collections of prophecies that have since become famous worldwide. He is best known for his book Les Propheties, the first edition of which appeared in 1555. Despite loads of academic whining about popular misinterpretations and deliberate mistranslations of his vague quatrains, Nostradamus has still been credited with predicting many major world events. He was also a famous plague doctor who gave medical advice about preventive measures.
Note: Nostradamus was born on December 14 or 21, 1503. This means his birthday is either today or next week, which precisely coincides with the so-called end of the Maya calendar. So, Happy 509th Birthday, Dr. Apocalypse.
Timothy Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs such as LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project. His studies produced useful data, but Leary was fired from the university. Leary believed LSD showed therapeutic potential for use in psychiatry. During the 1960s and 1970s, Leary was arrested and imprisoned regularly. President Richard Nixon once described Leary as “the most dangerous man in America.” Leary was born on this day in 1920.
Aleister Crowley was an English occultist, mystic and ceremonial magician, who was responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He came to see himself as the prophet entrusted with informing humanity that it was entering the new Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. Crowley was also pansexual, a recreational drug experimenter and a social critic. He gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime, and was denounced in the popular press of the day as “the wickedest man in the world.” Crowley was born on this day in 1875.
A Russian Orthodox Christian and mystic healer (and/or debauched religious charlatan) who influenced the latter days of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II. Some people called Rasputin the “Mad Monk.” It is believed that Rasputin helped to discredit the tsarist government, leading to the fall of the Romanov dynasty in 1917. He was born on this day in 1869.
Isaac Newton was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian, and is considered one of the greatest and most influential scientists who ever lived. Newton described universal gravitation, the three laws of motion and built the first practical reflecting telescope. He was born yesterday in 1643.
Salvador Dalí was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter known for his striking and bizarre imagery. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. He is best known for the melting clocks of The Persistence of Memory(1931).
I decided to represent Dalí’s eccentric manner with 8-bit butterfly wings à la Landscape with Butterflies (1956). Also, today is the end of U.S. Daylight Saving Time. Time to embrace perpetual darkness and “fall back.”
H. R. Giger – No. 571
Hans Rudolf Giger is a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for Best Achievement for Visual Effects for their design work on the 1979 film Alien. Giger suffers from night terrors, a sleep disorder that has inspired his “biomechanical” work. One of Giger’s main influences was Salvador Dalí and he was a personal friend of Timothy Leary. He was born on this day in 1940.
In October 2012, while train-hopping across Europe, Heidi and I toured the Museum H.R. Giger in Château St. Germain in Gruyères, Switzerland. We also had lunch at the otherworldly, skeletal H.R. Giger Bar, where we ate Margherita pizza and I drank a flaming glass of absinthe. It’s an incredible place set in a stunning Swiss Alps landscape.