My 2021 New Year's Revolution

Bobby BeauSoleil

 

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t the end of the previous year, I wrote and sent out a little poem speaking to how 2019 had been a rough row to hoe, and raising hints for the better times ahead in 2020. The dubious quality of lyrical content aside, it’s obvious that I’m hardly a reliable oracle.

 

Now, with the passing of another rough year, a part of me is wishing we could skip 2021 altogether and use the time to get a running start at 2022. If the previous year was a difficult row to hoe, this last one has been a bitch in the ditch, and it worries me that tough years might run in threes.

   But then, it’s already a clearly established fact that when it comes to making predictions about the future my track record is dismal. With that understanding, here comes the straight skinny as I see it, unvarnished by flowery platitudes. READ MORE

 

 

Emailing with Bobby BeauSoleil

Viola Bonaldi

 

 

 

 

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his is the raw interview Viola Bonaldi did with Bobby BeauSoleil in the summer of 2018. Viola Bonaldi wrote an article incorporating the raw material below for Salmuria.

 

You can read the English version here.

 

… Or if your first language happens to be Italian, read it here.

 

How did your passion for art — first music and then visual art — come about? Do you remember a specific moment or an episode that enlightened you? Did the Sixties atmosphere play an important role?

 

As far as I can tell, I mean, to the best of my recollection, I already had a passion to express myself in creative ways when I was born. According to what my mother told me later, about the time I took my first steps I was playing her pots and pans and making drawings on the walls of the house. READ MORE

 

LUCIFER RISING:

A Song to Herald the Dawn

Bobby BeauSoleil

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whe genesis of my extended musical production for the film Lucifer Rising occurred in the spring of 1967, the evening I met the filmmaker Kenneth Anger for the first time. I had just finished playing a set with my psychedelic instrumental band The Orkustra during a counterculture event called The Invisible Circus staged at San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Church. The event may have taken place on hallowed ground but there was nothing much sanctified in what went on there that night. READ MORE

 

 

 

© 2018 Photo by Nick Syracuse

 

Bobby BeauSoleil - Voodoo Shivaya

Peter Thelen

 

Wad breaks and hard knocks, it’s been a long hard road” are the opening lyrics on “Hard Road,” a dark, bluesy number that opens the first disc of this two disc set, lyrics that are coming straight from Bobby Beausoleil's heart. The bulk of the album came together behind prison walls between 2008 and 2015, with some collaboration on a few of the cuts, and then a couple additional years to arrange the release and subsequent distribution. READ MORE

 

 

 

 

Bardo Methodology Interview (Part Two)

Niklas Göransson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wobby BeauSoleil is nearing his fifth decade in American prison; time spent creating a colossal body of art. He speaks of Luciferian ascension and how dying by the sword bestowed upon him the gift of existential knowledge.

 

 

The Ekphrastic Review

Anthony Stechyson

 

 

 

 

 

Whave recently participated in an interview with Anthony Stechyson for The Ekphrastic Review, about my visual art and process.

Many visual artists draw inspiration from the world around them. You’ve been in prison since 1970. What inspires you?

 

 

 

While I admire the work of some of the artists in prison who are inspired by their surroundings, I am not one of them. Rarely do I encounter anything in my immediate physical environment that moves me to produce a rendering in visual art as anything close to a literal representation of it. But then, were I in an environment where I would be surrounded by beautiful natural vistas it's unlikely I would be inclined to produce artistic images of what I see. In either case, however, the surroundings may influence how I feel or what I imagine on the screen of my mind, and this will often move me to create art rooted in these visualizations or emotions. So you might say that my immediate surroundings may inspire my work indirectly. READ MORE

 

 

 

 

Shadowplay

Questing in the Underworld

Bobby BeauSoleil

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

n the dark, eyes shut, there are no limits to what may be seen as the mind shines its light into the mystery. Patterns shyly emerge, tentatively; hints of forms, suggestions of potential ... things. Then retreating as a vagrant thought disturbs the surface reflections on the nightpool. Swirls of subtle color arising once again as stillness returns. Disciplined practice is required, therefore, to resolve what may be seen in that place where there is no light.

 

 

 

 

Bardo Methodology Interview (Part One)

En Espanol

Niklas Göransson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wusician, writer and visual artist; Bobby BeauSoleil is also serving a life sentence in prison. His tale is one of being condemned to die, of cultivating spirituality in nightmarish surroundings, and drawing upon the arcane to survive hell. READ MORE

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bobby BeauSoleil - Dancing Hearts Afire

Peter Thelen

 

 

 

 

 

 

n the spring of 2013, Bobby Beausoleil released this as a download, a single 18+ minute piece of music originally written and recorded for his wife of 30+ years, Barbara, who had planned to choreograph a dance to the music to perform with her dance troupe, a full fledged music and dance collaboration. READ MORE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Manifesto of an Artist in Prison

Bobby BeauSoleil

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

very so often I have come under fire for the path I've chosen around expressing in the creative arts and publishing my work through an online presence. There are people, perhaps well-intentioned, who are adamant in their stance that prison is for punishment, and that people who are doing time for a crime should not be permitted to engage in activities that do not strictly conform to this narrow definition. Since my ability to produce and publish my work in a reasonably meaningful way are occasionally influenced by controversies of this sort, I am taking this opportunity to address the issues head-on and describe what drives the kinds of activities that sometimes put me in the line of fire. READ MORE

 

 

It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine Interview with Bobby BeauSoleil

Klemen Breznikar

 

 

 

Hello Bobby! Thank you very much for taking your time and effort to discuss about your music. You were born in Santa Barbara, CA. What would you say were some of the early influences on you as far as music goes and at what age did you start playing an instrument?

 

When I was growing up in the 1950s, my hometown was said to be a place for the newly wed and nearly dead.  The local radio station played only cloying, stodgy fare for the most part, though I liked some of the instrumentals.  The music in the old horror movies I watched on TV appealed to me much more.  When I was 11 years old, I found an old Silvertone guitar in the attic of my grandmother’s house.  My parents couldn’t afford to get me guitar lessons so I began inventing my own music on that old guitar.  R&B, which was popular in Los Angeles, barely penetrated the local radio play list but finally, in the early ‘60s, surf and hot rod music insinuated itself into my consciousness.  The first popular song I learned to play was Link Wray’s “Rumble”. READ MORE

 

The Yoga of Sound

Bobby BeauSoleil

 

 

 

 

hen I arrived at San Quentin in 1970, it was with a tortured conscience, confused thoughts, and a malnourished body.  After two trials, a conviction for murder and a sentence of death, I was a perfect wreck and bitterly resentful of the travesty that passed for justice in America at that time.  My friends had abandoned me and, so it seemed, had God.  I was at ground zero in the self-wrought devastation of my life. READ MORE

 

 

 

 

 

A Conversation with Bobby BeauSoleil

Kirin Anderson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

he following is an interview with Bobby BeauSoleil.  To some of you who are Current 93 fans, the name might ring a bell, and of course, there are those grim and splendourous years known simply as The Sixties.  But, this is 1999.  If you want to know more about where Bobby BeauSoleil has been in his lifetime, what he's seen, and what he's done, there are ample histories available regarding the tragedy that lead Bobby to prison in the first place.  It is not my intention to discuss those things here, and there is no discussion of them in the following interview.  This interview is about who Bobby BeauSoleil is TODAY, and about the music he's been making for most of his life.  It's an interview full of joy, and grief, and wonder, and longing, but above all, hope.  I can honestly say that I've never interviewed another human being in my life, which was more gentle, more sincere, and more full of colourful joy than Bobby BeauSoleil.  His music is just as profound. READ MORE

 

 

The Saga of a Soundtrack

Michael Moynihan

 

 

 

 

 

ith the advent of the conformist nightmare that consumed most of America in the 1950s, something eventually had to break. By the middle of the following decade, it most certainly had—and the shattered evidence was plain to see. Under a California sun, the shards and splinters of what had been a monochrome world now glinted in Technicolor brilliance, dazzling the eyes of those who dared to look toward new frontiers. The old rules were dispensed with, scorned and abandoned as anachronistic restraints. Dividing lines between art and life melted away, and for a few fleeting moments—or even years—anything seemed possible.

 

Once the dark mirror reflecting status-quo culture had been shattered and the floodgate opened to an alternate stream of consciousness, there was little controlling what came through it. Those hardier souls possessed of stamina and vision could ride the cresting wave and even channel its rushing forces as a means to propel their own creations. But as one wave rolled in, another was right on its heels—sometimes more disorienting than its predecessor. Many who immersed themselves in this tumultuous tide were soon lost at sea or drowned in unfamiliar waters. READ MORE

 

 

 

Hymns From The Solar Temple

Dennis Dread

 

 

 

 

 

"But the bridge resounds no less under just you, and you do not have the colour of dead men. Why are you riding here on the road to Hel?"

 

~Gylfaginning

 

he music of Lucifer Rising reverberates with all the pathos and raw emotive energy of an ageless archetype. Like the film itself, the symbols evoked in sound are at once timeless and yet strangely born of a very specific time and place, a frozen moment that has been sealed to us forever. Something emerges from the grooves of this vinyl collection that we can only hope to borrow for a short while and ride like a solar disk to places yet unknown. In the Old Norse tale concerning Thor's missing hammer, Loki borrows the goddess Freyja's cloak to make haste to the Land of Giants. In an altogether more somber Viking-age dirge involving mistletoe and funeral pyres, Hermod borrows Odin's eight-legged steed to ride into the underworld and request that Hel bid their beloved Shining God's return to the living. The borrowed vehicle is a recurring mythic theme throughout the world, and I am reminded of this archetype as I pull onto Interstate 5, in a van that clearly does not belong to me, heading south toward Interstate 84. READ MORE

 

 

 

The Lucifer Rising Suite: A Journey Out of Darkness

Bobby BeauSoleil

 

 

 

 

 

 

an Francisco in the spring of 1967, it was, and the grand cultural experiment, that great hoax of freedom unfettered, was in full swing. Social forces swirled in dangerous eddies and crosscurrents, wreaking havoc and destruction and creative splendor by turns. Some of the people swept up in them became intoxicated with their belief that it was their role to usher in a bright new world. They were beautiful, and incredibly naïve.

 

Perfectly in keeping with the delirious spirit of those times in that city was the axiom of The Invisible Circus. This event was a neo-pagan free-for-all “happening” staged by The Diggers and their counter-culture cohorts in the inner sanctums of Glide Memorial Church. It would prove to be a pivotal point in my life. READ MORE

 

 

The Orkustra: Notes from the Psychedelic Underground

Bobby BeauSoleil

 

 

 

an Francisco, 1966.  Narrow Victorian façade houses, gaunt and quaint, squeezed together side-by-side like musty books in the library of a lunatic. The roller-coaster streets arranged with about as much apparent forethought as a casual toss in a child’s game of pixie sticks, each hilltop offering up its own unique vista, each vale a haunt of subtle intrigue. Elegant old theaters, dilapidated warehouses, eateries and clubs and coffee houses, places of commerce, places of worship, houses of the holy and the unholy, all gracefully suffering the same kind of slow decay that time and salty sea mists inflict on coastal communities. The noise, the din, an ever-present song: machines and voices, music from windows and doorways, in clubs and concert halls; wavelets lapping at the piers on a wharf, the deep bellow of distant fog horns. Twinkling spires supporting colossal bridges spanning the placid waterways, countless city lights sparkling their reflections on the bay like diamonds, like the stars of galaxies. The fairyland gardens of Golden Gate Park, a living testimonial to the vision and determination of one man, and the wisdom of city fathers who allowed him a free hand to create them out of the wasteland. Cops walking their beat on Haight Street, dressed for another era in dark blue double-breasted coats adorned with rows of shiny brass buttons. Unruly traffic on a confusing disarray of highways and byways; the buzzing hustle of an electric streetcar, the more stately bustle of a clanking trolley. And the people—young and old, rich and poor, sane and senseless, revered and misunderstood, fastidious and unwashed, drunk and sober, stoic and passionate, godless and born again—of every kind and color; a port city’s rich and pungent brew of diverse cultures. READ MORE

 

Poetry and Song Lyrics

 

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