thecages

Paranoia:
1. Suspicion of others that is not based on fact.
2. A psychosis characterized by a system of delusions with often include the belief of persecution or grandeur without hallucinations.
3. A mental disorder, or an element of several other mental illnesses,
characterized by suspicion, delusions of persecution and jealousy.

Reading a revisionary article about Talking Heads in my new favourite magazine[1] last night, I was struck by this paraphrase of Charles Manson by David Byrne: 'Paranoia is the highest state of awareness'.


Having dipped amateurishly into and out of paranoia to a lesser or greater extent for some years(haven't we all?) this little bite of Manson's psyche is, to me at least, either a great discomforting truth, or total bullshit.

Here's the original from a Rolling Stone interview of 1970 (by which time Manson was already hanging out with bubba at the US government's expense - in the chookie):

Have you ever seen the coyote in the desert? Watching, tuned in, completely aware.
Christ on the cross, the coyote in the desert -- it’s the same thing, man.
The coyote is beautiful. He moves through the desert delicately, aware of everything, looking around. He hears every sound, smells every smell, sees everything that moves.
He’s in a state of total paranoia, and total paranoia is total awareness.

Now, through the rest of the interview it becomes quite clear that he (Manson) is, in fact, crazy. And not just the kind of crazy that could get one aquitted of murder (in his case it didn't), but real-deal, bona-fide kerrrrrrazzy.

Here's some more from the same interview:

Yeah, well, paranoia is just a kind of awareness, and awareness is just a form of love.
Paranoia is the other side of love. Once you give in to paranoia, it ceases to exist.
That's why I say, submission is a gift, just give in to it, don't resist.
It's like saying, "Tie me on the cross!" Here, want me to hold the nail?
Everything is beautiful if you want to experience it totally.

...

I can get along with girls, they give up easier. I can make love to them. Man has this ego thing. I can't make love to that. Girls break down easier. When
you get beyond the ego thing, all you're left with is you; you make love with yourself.
With a girl, you can make love with her until she's exhausted.
You can make love with her until she gives up her mind, then you can make love with love.

Yup - loopy.

But is what he says about paranoia (about it being the highest state of awareness) from the same fruitbowl?
And not just whether it is the highest state, but also, and here I'm making a leap for which I hope Manson doesn't come and haunt me, a desired state of heightened awareness.

Have you ever seen the coyote in the desert? Watching, tuned in, completely aware.
[...] He moves through the desert delicately, aware of everything, looking around. He hears every sound, smells every smell, sees everything that moves.

I've never cut up my sofa cushions or smashed every lightbulb in my house in an attempt to find the little microphones that I'm damn fucking sure the cops have planted, but I have been in that state where your eyes zip about incessently and you're constantly fingering a blunt, heavy object.
And from these experiences I can clearly say that it certainly is a very heightened state - everything is sharp and edged and cuttingly clear.
It's a state in which every tinkling dink or tiny rustle has encoded within it a clutch of hints and warnings about the world and what it's trying to do to you.
And in that sense I suppose I do agree with Manson.

But where the whole thing falls apart (why he's kerrrrrrazzy and I'm not) is in his own words: 'He moves through the desert delicately'.

There's nothing delicate about paranoia, nothing balanced or open.
It's all about keeping precise tabs on the outside world: what is it's state (the world) and what is my state? And what does the world's state mean for my state?

Paranoia doesn't involve taking in anything from your surroundings - it's about manning the gate and keeping the catapults primed.

The coyote doesn't keep catapults primed - it is why the catapults are there in the first place.
This beautiful state that Manson describes is exactly what paranoia tries to deflect.

[1] The Word - mainly for the free CD