Q&A with Ken Wisman
by Ros Freese
Opening comments
I worked with Ken Wisman on the last two drafts
of his novel, Eden, taking him through the rewrites of the novel's
first chapter, the softening of some of the science in later chapters,
and a concentration on mechanics including grammar/punctuation/point
of view. In the course of our writer/editor relationship we had occasion
to exchange a lot of email, not all of which involved the polishing
of his writing or the perfection of his craft. Ken and I decided to
revisit some of those exchanges and, with some editing and additions,
turn my queries into a formal interview .
-- Ros Freese
Q&A
Freese: At the beginning
of Eden, you explain your use of a hallucinogen as an inspirational
source. Why the  confession?
Wisman: My hope is that the message will
get out there to someone able to do something positive and constructive
with the information.
Freese: The message
being?
Wisman: Psychedelics and hallucinogens
can have a positive effect on creativity.
Freese: What was the
direct result of the hallucinogen in relation to the novel?
Wisman: Well, let's start with some of
the images. In the contest between Eden's two artistic groups,
one group bioengineers the delicatons out of the genome for jellyfish.
One night I had a vision of these delicate creatures floating with tendrils
flowing down and with human faces. An inner voice even named them for
me -- the delicatons, all of which I used in Eden.
Besides images and visions, the hallucinogen took me deep down into
places we normally don't visit, except possibly in dreams. There's a
scene in Eden where Alepha and her lover Gammeo make love and
are taken on a journey to the source of life and existence. It's a place
found at the bottom of the unconscious where no opposites exist -- no
good and evil, no life and death, no male and female.
The hallucinogen also took me to a place of complete emptiness and
void. I could've stayed trapped there but chose to go on until something
filled the void. From a deep experience that no god existed to run the
universe, I came to the realization that humanity -- that all conscious
creatures -- were an awakening of the universe to itself, the birth
in the aggregate of god. I also came to believe that a universal force
that I call an impetus-to-life exists and that it impels matter into
life wherever conditions are viable. I also came to believe that one
of the primary purposes and outcomes of our science and technology will
be to spread life to places life would not be able to form on its own,
or places where life was destroyed. This is the source of the philosophy
of Ankh that Calif, the creator of Project Eden, practices; the idea
that humanity is soon to turn from destroyer to caretaker of life.
Freese: What else inspired
Eden?
Wisman: Jung, Beethoven, and Bosch.
Freese: That's an impressive
trio. How did they inspire you?
Wisman: I've been a student of Jung ever
since I began reading him in my 20's in my travels through Europe. With
his theories of the archetype, I believe he puts the source of our gods
back where they belong -- proceeding outward from humanity's psyche,
not inward from the world surrounding.
Eden is arranged loosely on Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, his
Pastorale. Eden begins with a lyrical lilt, an innocent melody,
a tribute to nature just like the Pastorale. The symphony builds to
a storm, with lightning flashes and thunder, as does Eden, reflected
in Iamoendi's insanity and wrath and the three battles fought with the
gigantic, bioengineered insects. At the end of the Pastorale there are
flashes of transcendence. You hear it three times in the rise of the
violins. The melody is both sweet and sad, and that's what I tried to
capture in Eden's ending.
Freese: What about
Bosch?
Wisman: Bosch painted 500 years ago,
and his work is very strange. My attraction to his work is much like
Alepha's (Eden's main character) attraction to Iamoendi's (Eden's
villain) work -- a mixture of fascination and repulsion. The painting
of Bosch's monsters and chimeras and hybrids are what most attract and
repel me. They look like they were put together by a madman. Maybe Bosch
had a glimpse of the future and what our science could bring. Anyhow,
I wanted the towering fountain in the left portal of his triptych painting,
The Garden of Earthly Delights, for the cover of Eden. I use
a description of the fountain for Thera's bioengineered creation of
her coral fountain. I also describe one of the weird constructions in
the background of the central panel -- a bluish egg-shaped construction
with spikes protruding -- when describing Iamoendi's bioengineered creation,
the poisonous egg.
The other thing about Bosch is I'm half convinced he used hallucinogens
to intensify his own vision, which he translated to his paintings. If
you examine the middle portal of the Garden of Earthly Delights, in
the upper left portion of the painting is a pink structure that looks
like the viscera torn from some dinosaur-sized creature. On top of this
structure is a mushroom with one man squatting on the top and another
man balanced and upside down. Psilocybin perhaps, and the results of
ingesting it -- turning one's world upside down and inside out.
Freese: Do you know
of any other artists that may have used such unconventional methods?
Wisman: There were the French artists
-- like Lautrec -- who used absinthe from wormwood, which is known to
have mind-altering qualities. Probably the most famous is Coleridge,
the Romantic poet, who prefaced his poem "Kubla Kahn" with a note describing
how the words and images came to him while under the influence of opium.
There is some evidence that Poe may have also taken laudanum, a tincture
of opium.
Freese: Your author's
notes say that you experimented with hallucinogens for three years.
No return?
Wisman: No. And let me just say this
about it. There's a Norse legend about Odin who goes to Mimir's well,
which lies under the roots of the world tree, Ygdrassil. Odin wants
to drink the water from the well so that he can gain wisdom. Mimir says
the price of a drink is Odin's right eye. After much agonizing Odin
agrees, painfully plucks out his eye, drinks, and is enlightened. The
point being that there is always a price to pay when plumbing your inner
self.
Freese: What price
did you pay?
Wisman: No comment. Besides I have images
and ideas enough to write a sequel to Eden (working title Eros),
and have no need to return to my inner well for any further inspiration,
at least not at the present.
© Ros Freese 2004.
Eden is
published by Authorhouse (May 2004, ISBN: 1418427411); an
extract is available elsewhere on this site.
Order online using these
links and infinity plus will benefit:
...Eden, paperback, from Amazon.com
or Amazon.co.uk.
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