Exert from a travel diary to the Dam (April 2008)

The Professor was sitting in the Dolphin Coffee-Shop, just on the edge of the Old Town in central Amsterdam. A plume of smoke rose from his musk coloured ashtray, interrupted only by the Professor's hand as he fumbled the cream into the thick black coffee in his cup.

Drip

Drip

Stop.

The third drop seemed slower than the first two. Too slow. This was it.

luckily I'd packed glucose tablets and had made sure we both ate a large breakfast. When you're playing with psychedelics, you can't afford to have your blood sugar levels suddenly crash out on you. You need fiber in your system; and some carbohydrates. Slow burners. Marathon food.

"...I can see this is going to be a long trip", I quipped casually beneath baited breath.

But why where we here? What insane motivation had we for being out of the safe haven of London town, what wayward desire had brought us here, to the center of the Dam?

Remember; we are Westerners. We don't have a week to sit around in a tin hut on the outskirts of a Central Mexican village while a Shaman burns us for 50 dollars a night not to eat the food that he's putting on a sacrificial alter for Mother Earth while promising us spiritual enlightenment. We need hard, solid, freebased experiences which shortcut straight to the good stuff. We don't care for spirits and ritual any more, we've replaced the old gods of the past with laptops, palmtops and iPhones... No respect is to be found here, no grand questing for truth, divinity or greater meaning; this is about pushing it to the limit. This is about squeezing as many psychedelics as you can into a weekend away and getting back to your office in time for breakfast on Monday morning. This is about escaping the monotony of bed-to-office, the rat-race which grinds us down and brings us to our knees. This is adventure, living on the edge and plane stupidity all rolled into one. This is that extra something; that sparkle in your eye when people ask you ”how was your holiday“. This is scratching a little deeper.


Plastic time is always the first sign of a mind starting to twist it's self into perceptual knots.

Don't fight it.

Steady yourself and continue to do whatever you were doing. Let it creep on gently... that way you might have a chance of retaining some sense of control. But not for long.

Was that drop of cream really suspended in mid air?

The Dolphin painted on the wall opposite winked before animating it's dorsal and propelling its self out into the middle of the shop floor.

”Did you-”

The Professor appeared startled. Even the most experienced of psychedelic tourists can't prepare himself for such a sight.

”What?“, I replied. The smoke had got into my eyes and I was thinking of coming clean and telling the man that I wasn't particularly enjoying myself. I had come to The Dam in search of art and architecture, not smoky underground drug dens. I looked up and saw the mans eyes. They were glazed, as if covered with a generous helping of translucent jelly. He was focused on the mural across the room. starring intently. Waiting. Watching. Feverishly expecting something to happen.

But how had I got into this mess in the first place? My thoughts wandered back to the previous Tuesday, sitting at my desk in Dare; cursing myself for not booking a holiday in April. The phone rang and on the other end was my Friend and some-time creative partner Lady Matisse. Her dark husky voice on the other end of the phone was the last thing I needed at this early hour of the morning.

”So do you want the ticket or not?”. She was offering me a ticket to see yet another fucked up psycho-trip-hop band play at a concert hall over in the Dam. She was supposed to be meeting the Professor there that Saturday evening but had to pull out at the last minute.

”Sure”, I replied. ”Your loss“. The game was afoot.

I knew that this excursion would be a difficult one. Our mutual friend the Professor was not an easy man to travel with. His hunger for the surreal and lust for some twisted understanding of what he considered to be the lucid world at large could often be like some all consuming and horrendously destabalising tornado. And so the ticket was mine.

Fast-track through three hours at an airport; all kinds of zealous security measures leading to a thirty minute Easy Jet flight; plane, train, automobile and tram...

...oh... here I am. The Dolphin Coffee Shop. The Professor sitting opposite me. The smoke, the coffee, the cream.

The cream?

The cream had remained suspended in time, just for an instant; but that instant had been long enough for both of us to realise what was about to happen.

The Professor drew in a long breath. As he did so, the expansion of his lungs was echoed in the slow, yet definite expansion of the room.

Exhale.

”Did...did you see that?“; his eyes were beyond help. Reality was draining away as quickly as the mural painted on the wall was starting to run down on to the floor. Even from where I was sitting it was clear that something was wrong with this place. What kind of a twisted psychopath decorates the inside of a smokers paradise coffee shop with corral reefs, pirates chests and life-sized polystyrene models of flipper anyway? Clearly the owners were in some sort of pact to see us both wind up checking into a rehab clinic before our trip had even begun.

”Will you calm down? You're freaking out the tourists”, I kicked him under the table in a effort to curb what was about to turn into a spiel of some sort of crazy paranoid babble. The last thing we needed was a scene; and the Professor's sudden lurching back on his chair, as if avoiding a joust from some invisible terror swimming right at him through thin air was already starting to cause a stir with the owners of the establishment.

I was starting to feel a little uneasy myselef. I knew we had to change the scene; but it wouldn't be as easy as pressing the red button.

Somehow I managed to settle up with the owner and found the Professor outside, lost in the daze of a waking dream.

Flash frame. Snippets of situation, mixed with a saturated streak of super realism.

Tram lanes... Is that the Professor standing in the middle? The expression on the face of the driver as he pulled on the breaks of his big metal beast was one of acceptance. The professor was evidently not the first psychedelic screw-up to suddenly have a reality check with one foot glued solidly to each rail.
“Move you fool“, I shouted from another place in the dream. ”Get out the way! That great iron whale is about to eat you“. At least I knew what I was talking about. The Professor was moving from the waste up, but his feet appeared to be welded to the track. I remember the breaks making a loud screeching sound and the Professor's head thrashing around like a guard-dog on heat. This was the end, I remember thinking. I'm about to witness the poor fucker leveled by a tram.

Flash frame. What next? A park. Arh yes, that park; just on the north east side of the old town. Surely the perfect place to take time out, rest and regroup.

"Can you see them?" The Professor exclaimed. A look of awe on his face.
"See what?", I felt like a broken record.
"The men... Aztec men, everywhere. The come from the sun, they link together and their energy grows the trees, the lake, the grass... you."
"Don't involve me in this..." I tried to take a back seat, helping him onto a bench and sipping my coffee.
"The warmth of the sun is the little men, nymphs of the day, of the night; they burn brightly and bring life to the dark. They are inside us, they make us who we are - they are... energy".