The Creativity Issue
Have you wondered what’s going on behind the recent rash of positive news stories about psychedelics? I couldn’t believe it when I heard about them on the TV news. Then I heard a specialist on NPR discussing how she microdoses LSD regularly. She made it sound as regular as Metamucil. Call me old, but I’m accustomed to the prohibitionist world where psychedelics received the same “bad for you” admonishments as anthrax. LSD was said to make you sterile and jump out windows.
Rick Doblin is founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Sciences (MAPS), and he’s one of the primary behind-thescenes players in the public perception shift. He’s been proving it with science. I think you’ll enjoy my interview with him. He tells about what it’s been like for a counterculture hippie to penetrate Pentagon barriers to gain permission to treat veterans with PTSD with psychedelics. The results are astonishing. I call him the “overnight sensation over 30 years in the making.” What a long, strange trip it’s been!
Given our creative psychedelic theme, we compiled a pictorial of contemporary visionary artists. Following in the footsteps of Alex Gray and Ernst Fuchs—who followed in the footsteps of the likes of Salvador Dali and M. C. Escher—there is an astounding crop of young artists such as Android Jones, Amanda Sage, Martina Hoffmann, Michael Divine, and Layla Love, among many others, whose work we’re proud to showcase. Their art is sometimes displayed at festivals, but we presume this trend of visionary art they’re leading will expand. Particularly, I want to thank Layla Love for helping us curate this feature.
As ever, we’ve included our popular West Coast Festival Roundup. Looks like it’s going to be a hot season of fun! Thanks, Sharon Cummings, for compiling this annual roundup.
Our issue is chock-full of terrific articles about creativity. I think you’ll like Jennifer Dumpert’s “Using Liminal Dreaming to Woo the Muse” as well as Aninha Livingstone’s “Call to Soul Activism: The Role of Creativity and Imagination in Creating Change.” Louis Chew suggests how we can live in a permanent beta state and overcome our fears of failure. Kimerer LaMothe gives a pithy “Message for Artists—and for the Artist in Everyone.”
Mark Metz, the cofounder of Conscious Dancer magazine, reminds us of the importance of analog versus digital and why we should never have ditched our vinyl collections. Believe it or not, vinyl has made a comeback and apparently for good reason—it seems our hearts are analog. Along those lines, John Beaulieu and David Perez-Martinez contributed an essay about sound healing and how we can expand our consciousness through mindful listening.
We look forward to seeing many of you at events coming up in the next months. Our July-August Summer edition will be our next, followed by our Yoga issue in September. If you feel there’s something we should know editorially, please reach out. Your appreciation for the magazine is best expressed by patronizing our advertisers. Thank you! Say you saw it in Common Ground. And please consider becoming an advertiser yourself. We have a very long track record of connecting people.
Keep creating,
ROB SIDON, PUBLISHER AND EDITOR IN CHIEF