I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought
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"Wetter water." From the Bombay Sunday Chronicle, 1947.
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The System Hates Free Minds:
How a Music Producer and Eccentric Scholar
Fled the Powers that Be, Got Unstuck in Time, and Made it to Cloudland
One of life's weirdest challenges occurred when quantum physicist Dean Rickles recently interviewed me without asking any questions. The resulting string of answers comes across as utterly surreal to my own eye — like joining a conversation in progress without there being an actual conversation to provide any context. This wasn't some form of channeling, or psychic intuition, or stream-of-consciousness improvisation. I didn't even consider imaginary questions but rather simply began answering. Dr. Rickles' interviews typically last two hours, but I finished communicating what I didn't know I had to say in a blessedly brief fifteen minutes. The result seems to be a rather personal portrait of what it's like for a free mind to seek being creative, and what it's like to experience a distorted sense of time passing. It's all too true that a sort of time sickness has long plagued me and affected my creativity. So here's a transcript and video of my questionless answers to a quantum physicist.
If you're feeling experimental, let's try making this an actual conversation by testing the Sheldrakian morphic field, to see if the group mind might elevate whatever we discuss. Off the top of my head, as the field enlivens, let's touch upon the uncanny experience of distorted time, whether ideas might come from the future, what happens when independent scholars follow mad whims, how much control an artist actually has over a creative work, how creativity might become cancerous, what our curiously strong affinities might be all about, and what time actually is. Let's find out if viewer thoughts seem to break through along the way.
Is it possible that academia deliberately warps one's experience of time? An academic year begins in the autumn, so a college yearbook sports two dates to cover twelve months. There are 12 to 15 hours in a season or semester, as that's how classroom time is calculated. A lecture hour itself is 50 minutes. Don't even ask about summer or winter breaks, when Bardo-like "intersessions" speed and cram an entire season into 1 to 4 weeks. Yearbook illustrations classically depict freshmen as babies and seniors as elders, as if an entire lifespan covers the four years of a bachelor's degree. My tenure as an untenured college teacher untethered me from a metronomic experience of time. Perhaps it's no wonder that in order to create music now for Neons Gone Mad, I incorporate samples of clockwork as percussion so as not to fall into a jazzy chaos. What's certain is that with only academia to blame, since psychedelics have never been in the equation, I metabolize an hour as I remember metabolizing an entire day in my childhood. Waiting a day or more for someone's sluggish response is excruciating, as if an entire week has gone by. I'll look back at what feels for all the world like an old email and marvel, "That was only yesterday?" With hours like days, one does get a tremendous amount of work done, though at the cost of profound fatigue and disorientation. You'd think one would feel ahead of the game with such acceleration, yet inexplicably I now feel precisely 20 years behind. So while Zeno's Paradox may have been debunked, it's yet possible to live it, racing faster and faster to halfway points of halfway points and progressing to the illusion of stasis as the horizon appears fixed. That's uncomfortable, to put it mildly, and note that I never even mentioned the exacerbations of Daylight Saving Time. Fleeing academia into what it calls "the real world" didn't reset the body clock.
As Dr. Charles Stang says, one can't always be certain about the overall vision of one's work, and one seems to be playing catch-up. That's quite a thing to ponder, catching up to one's own enterprise. It's like the apocryphal Ledru-Rollin quotation, "I must find out where they are going so I can lead them." And so one wonders whether our creative projects are, as Dr. Michael Eldred posits, actually from the future. When we flatter ourselves over having new ideas, are we merely remembering what already exists in the future? People speak of putting "the cart before the horse" as if that's doing something backward, but what if it's a more accurate metaphor of reality, as Dr. Eric Wargo suggests? I seriously do have to muse over why, for example, the idea to write a dictionary of one-letter words first popped into my head, why I spent years following through with it, and how such a thing could actually now exist in hardcover by the top-three publisher HarperCollins. Every stage of the linear path is frankly ludicrous, but playing the filmstrip of life backwards, reverse-engineering a pre-existent book, feels like a tidier explanation. Interestingly, the hundreds of books I've written have presented themselves to my so-called imagination not as jotted notes or typescript drafts but as finished products, in that I envision formally laid-out pages and even create my books in Photoshop as opposed to word processing software, composing and arranging the presentation simultaneously, as if reconstructing a finished work from mental snapshots of the future.
B. Dave Walters assures people that they don’t have to believe every thought that pops into their heads, and while it's comforting advice, I'm afraid I do tend to follow and manifest my whims. That's a perk of being an independent scholar, but it has left a body of work that appears "quirky" at best, spanning several college textbooks on human diversity for McGraw-Hill and a dictionary of magic words for Weiser Books, to works about sheet ghosts, identifying unicorns by sound, reading the palms of crosswalk signal hands, the secrets of chicken whispering, feng shui for seance parlors, writing numbers in cursive, tracing one's genealogy to mythical ancestors, and pencil-based witchcraft. Some of these whimsies have come close to breaking into the mainstream. My exploration of Books of the Dead throughout history was commissioned by Wooden Books but ended up being self-released (at no fault of the book, mind you), and The Young Wizard's Hexopedia was commissioned and even titled by Quirk Books, who for mystifying reasons dropped the magic 8-ball and allowed me to release it independently. Works like How to Be Your Own Cat have been mini hits in independent bookstores like Quimby's in New York and Chicago. Mixing serious and humorous publications perhaps comes with some risks, as so many lines are blurred. Yet being independent is freeing, and frankly I take seeming absurdity as seriously as anything else. Dr. Raymond Moody has studied how nonsense passages, such as those made famous by Lewis Carrol, trigger altered states of consciousness in a psychomanteum chamber. It's possible that all of my works have that basic purpose, to open the mind to some mysterious realm. If the overall impression is one of being at least a touch unhinged, I embrace that as Salvador Dalí did, as a deliberate artistic tool.
It rings true that the act of reading is a form of necromancy in which the ghostly voice of a distant author lives again in one's head. So, too, does authorship feel like channeling. My ego is far too embryonic to claim most any of the ideas that manifest through me. The concept of the Greek Muses sparking creative breakthroughs is appealing. Feeling in control of creative projects would be a novel experience — it's more like going along for the ride. On a couple of occasions working as a songwriter and remixer, a collaborator was ultimately disappointed in how my recording veered off expectations, as when he wanted Rudy Vallée and got a jazzy blues treatment. It was fair for him to expect that I was at the helm, but the music simply developed as it seemed to "wish." There was no intention to go off script much less to let down a client. Belatedly, it seems time to include a formal disclaimer for future collaborations.
Less mysterious than the origin of a creative spark might be why that spark tends to trigger a wildfire. In full disclosure, outside of the textbooks, my book sales haven't warranted and certainly haven't funded the hundreds of publications that followed. Why have I kept on writing, with so few accolades not to mention royalties? Nor have viewership numbers of my horror-comedy tv series Grave Mood Rings encouraged me to produce over 200 episodes and counting. It's a distressing question, in that creativity can seem to take on a cancerous quality. A musician friend has fallen into that situation to a profoundly greater degree, seemingly never satisfied by the number or frequency of his album releases and now relying on material to be generated by what I call the Dreaded Two-Letter Acronym to churn out releases faster and faster. Productivity took precedence over content. Could this be tied to some sort of evil Muse? Perhaps someone like the biblical angel Abaddon who rules over the bottomless pit? It's uncomfortable to consider the drive to create to be a sickness. Perhaps a paraphrase of Dalí is in order: "The only difference between me and one possessed by Abaddon is that I am not possessed by Abaddon." An advisor of mine, who is more than something of a mystic, assures me that the work I do is not for the present but for the future, that in fact I do have a sizable readership and viewership in the future and on higher dimensions of reality. Finding consolation in such a perspective has been a process, but I embrace it because, since I can't know for sure, why not default to optimism? My nature abhors a vacuum, and I wish my work to be seen and heard. As Dr. David Temperley has noted, "Why would the great composers have bothered to create such elaborate mental structures if they thought that these structures would never be shared by listeners?" Hence my perplexity over Emily Dickinson, my 21st cousin 6 times removed, who locked her poems into little drawers.
Perhaps a mad creative drive is tangled within a fear of death. Leave enough evidence of yourself and surely something will endure as an insurance policy for future readers, viewers, and listeners to serve as mediums for one's departed spirit?
Possibly a comfort for those conspiring with Abaddon, there's the intriguing idea in esoteric philosophy that one incarnates as a facet of an Oversoul and that an Oversoul manifests as hundreds or thousands of seemingly separate lives — not as in reincarnation but rather multiple lives at once. That implies that an author, for example, might encounter works by one or more of his parallel incarnations. The idea is that if one resonates strongly with a book, a piece of music, a painting, or what have you, the reason for the strong attraction is that it's a communication from another part of you via an additional facet of the same Oversoul. What a rather mind-blowing thing to consider, that all of one's favorite authors, musicians, or other artists might technically be oneself on a higher plane! It seems a tidy explanation for otherwise baffling affinities, and it's a lovely thought that we might learn and grow from the wisdom of discrete instances of our greater selves.
While searching the literature for things that third parties might have somehow written on my behalf, I collect bullet lists of wisdom nuggets. Though the nature of Time remains somewhat mysterious, I've encountered a card deck's worth of things that Time is not. Let's quickly see if any of these sound true, and I'll save my personal favorites for the end.
Time is not an academic curiosity
an endless corridor
on our side
young itself
nor like mittens snapped to your coat.
Time is not creative
noisy
a linear coordinate
the neutral wallpaper of reality
nor the cask under the faucet.
Time is not a cock. (That might be a typo.)
Time is not money
change
what we measure
corrected gradually
nor when you get up.
Time is not self-interpreting
the passage of nature itself
a freestanding substance
an independent realm
a bird or a bug.
Time is not the problem
the framework of existence
an arrow
the enemy of eternity
nor is it mad or sane.
Time is not an illusion
a brute fact
autonomous
the one that's passing
nor an orphaned mechanism.
Time is not a prison
punishment
an eternal continuum
under our control
nor is it enough.
Time is not expensive
self-sustaining
a river
an empty box
nor meaningless drift.
Time is not yet ripe
of the essence
the intersection of science and religion
rightly construed
nor what you've been told.
Time is not based on philosophical reflection
not a yardstick but a life
not what we think it is
not available for rent to outside organizations
nor to be exceeded without further authorization.
Well, I've played my last card ...
[Time, gentlemen, please!]
... and apparently I'm out of it!
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"I don't dislike the fact that I'm being mistaken as a plant." From How to Eliminate My Teacher (2020).
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"Queen of Spades. She's calling me." From Dark Shadows episode 788.
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"Following the links until you forget where you began is a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon." From Internet Magazine, 1995.
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Recording artist Spacey Panda interviewed and profiled Grave Mood Rings:
https://spaceypandamusic.com/inside-the-strange-genius-of-grave-mood-rings/
Imagine a Gothic soap opera from the 1970s collided with a midnight electronica musical and decided to keep rolling. That’s Grave Mood Rings: a surreal comedy that manages to be both hilarious and haunting, filled with layers of theatricality and sound. Across its many episodes, it somehow delivers fifty-two original theme tunes and song interludes, making it one of the most musically ambitious parody series I’ve ever seen.
I connected with Craig Conley, the show’s co-writer, director, cinematographer, and producer. Alongside his creative partner Michael Warwick, who plays every character himself, edits the episodes, and co-produces the music. They’ve built something completely unique: a surreal hybrid of Gothic melodrama, experimental music, and tongue-in-cheek performance art. It’s campy and clever, but also surprisingly heartfelt.
I wanted to dive into how such an unconventional world is made, what drives their creative energy, and how they keep the ideas flowing episode after episode.
By my count, there are 52 unique theme tunes and song interludes in your absurdist comedy series spoofing slow-moving Gothic soap operas of the 1970s. Is Grave Mood Rings out to beat the 170 distinct versions of the Seinfeld theme song? And are you actually a band disguised as a TV series, like The Monkees?
It’s spooky that you asked that, because we are, in fact, out to beat Seinfeld’s record! And yes, we are a band in disguise. In our episodes, we often credit musical elements to our band Neons Gone Mad, but it’s all just me and my partner Mike, since we’re merely presenting music and vocals in the guise of different Grave Mood Rings characters. The Monkees, indeed, have been a big influence on the show and even in our attitude toward life.
How do you handle creative blocks?
Funny thing, but over 200 episodes into Grave Mood Rings, we haven’t had a single creative block! I can credit two factors. We teamed with a co-writer who is both highly creative and dependable, and he delivers scripts on a regular basis, so we’ve consistently had production material waiting in the wings. Also, my own background as a daily newspaper reporter trained my brain to write on the spot for looming deadlines, and I’ve honed that skill to the point that even a single random word can generate an entire Grave Mood Rings script. This happened recently when horror hosts Bad JuJu and J Bone asked for a special episode to include in their cable show, and all I had to go on was that the theme was “tea.” What does tea have to do with vampires in Gothic soap operas? That was my challenge, but the benefit of my experience kept it from being difficult. My philosophy has always followed my magic teacher Eugene Burger’s great secret behind how to perform any illusion you can imagine: “Just do it anyway.”
You’ve worked with so many bands from around the world that it’s clearly an important aspect of Grave Mood Rings. You have also recorded several covers. How do you handle rights issues?
I continually pursue collaborations with musical acquaintances, to keep enthusiasm flowing. We love incorporating guest instrumentals into our shows, most often with new lyrics that I write to accompany the music. Whenever I discover a new band with a song whose themes or tone fits in with the vibe of our show, I reach out to see if a collaboration would be possible. I either secure direct permissions or purchase licenses via Songfile.
With your series set in the 1970s, the era of shows like Dark Shadows that you parody, the Disco genre is obviously up for lampooning, but presumably good-naturedly?
Yes, we do make good-natured fun of Disco, a genre we happen to love. Without doing the math, I might very well have been “around” in Disco’s heyday, with the Bee Gees being a special favorite. But admittedly the musical bits of Grave Mood Rings are just as likely to sound like 80s and 90s electronica – genres that are easier for us to play than Disco – which we can get away with because our vampire’s manor house features a time-bending staircase like the one in Dark Shadows.
You and your partner play which instruments?
We were both classically trained on the piano, and Mike also studied saxophone. Since the mid-90s, we’ve both focused on electronic music. But we’re not techies, to this day we have only the cheapest 2-octave Casio keyboard. In my childhood, my mom played Wendy Carlos LPs, surely instilling an appreciation for synthesizers.
For those who haven’t caught your show on Roku, The Monster Channel, or YouTube, where else is it available?
All of our episodes, including ones not yet public on YouTube, can be seen on our main website, MysteryArts.com. There’s a playlist there, too, with all the songs by our vampire character and his minions.
What fascinates me about Grave Mood Rings is how it exists somewhere between a music project, a Gothic soap opera, and a surreal art experiment. They created a universe where every detail feels handcrafted and slightly haunted.
Their work makes you smile, but it also makes you feel. What starts as a joke somehow ends up being a celebration of imagination itself, messy, funny, and full of heart. It’s the kind of creative madness that only comes from people who truly love what they do.
Thank you, Craig Conley and Michael Warwick, for sharing your wonderfully strange universe and for reminding us how imagination can twist the familiar into something unforgettable.
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"What is Scotland famous for? (Me thinking out the above question.)" From The Children's Newspaper, 1932.
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