My last studio Patron called me a few months ago and informed me that my painting is hanging next to a Damien Hirst. I couldn’t imagine why I should care, as I’ve never been a huge fan of his. However, there was this one series of prints he did using Swiss Pharmeceutical design. He replaced the brand names with food names. This one I just altered said, “Chicken”. There were also ones that said, Fois Gras, Steak, Caviar, etc. One should have said Mushrooms. Food and drugs are related for sure and I have always been intrigued by how Swiss pharmacology seems to have grown out of Swiss food science. The whole act of making chocolate and or cheese is a very complex act of chemical engineering and leads nicely to making any sort of drug. It is an issue of being Chinese and making Tea. You put nature into solution and then percipitate out crystals of the compounds you want. It is sort of Alchemy. Though this time not lead, but something like Coca leaves that you suspend in petroleum solvent tea and then percipitate out the purified (what did Sherlock Holmes call it? Seven Percent Solution) cocaine. T being the symbol of Switzerland always seemed fitting to me as it’s less about Christianity and more about T and Tea and TNT and all the permutations that cruciforms have meant to man long before some desert Jew named Jesus started making trouble in the Empire.
Anyways I was raised with this kind of packaging all over the studio as it’s what my father did for a living… Infact, here is a fluke, in searching for an image of Clearasil’s orginal packaging which my dad designed a million years ago, I found only this image of Keith Moon using a tube from The Who Sells Out. Talk about Pop art… my mind reels. Getting in Tune… right in tune.
The character that is missing now, Is Monsieur Tristan of Geneva Switzerland. I imagine him as a sort of cross between Albert Hoffman and one of the grand Titans of Industry: a sort of Rockefellor/Pailey. A fellow of infinite jest and resources. He is a kindof active chemist, chairman of the board, CEO of a Swiss Pharmaceutical company that is more or less Sandoz. When I was at Brown, one of the departments that suddenly blew up in the 80’s was neuroscience. Thanks to digital imaging technology, the mechanical/chemical way that the human brain (and therefore human conciousness) works cold be seen and studied. There were all the new Magnetic and sonic and blah blah imaging machines and also ways of mapping and compliling data. Don’t ask me, because I don’t know, but I do know that the backwatter became a torrent and suddenly had a new building, etc. The new frontier was innerspace.
My conceit for this story is that the Swiss and specifically M. Tristan and his company (not Sandoz…maybe Canndoze) never having quit research in so called “psychodelic” drugs have a profoudly advanced understanding of human brain chemistry and are poised on the moment of introducing a line of experiential pharmeceuticals that are edible states of conciousness: Nostalgia, dread, joy, fear,mirth,lust,angst,panic,intolerance,acceptance, etc. ad naseum.
These chemicals are so subtle and so prfound (the side effect (affect?) of hallucinations is done away with and leaves only the pure emotion/ state of mind) that they are like keys that could open a world of Peace, or a world of Armegeddon. Afterall, they could create brilliant joy, or work as a weapon to create hysterical warfare…
They are the Flouride in Dr. Strangelove to the fifty fifth power.
I think M. Tristan is waking up in Geneva as the Characters arrive. Perhaps they will meet at a cafe? Well here is a relatively straighforward T. Rex Glam of N.Y.C. water taxi trip:
