Philip K. Dick Playlist (a selection of songs/works mentioned in his books)

Thanks to David Gill for sharing the complete list (and whoever made it)

Bach - Sleepers Awake
Beethoven - Quartet #13
Berg - Wozzeck
Berlioz - Roman Carnival Overture
Bizet - Carmen
Brahms Symphony #3
Captain Beefheart - (unspecified)
Dowland - Flow My Tears
Jerome Kern - Old Man River
Liszt - B Flat Sonata
Grateful Dead - Workingman's Dead
Gilbert and Sullivan - HMS Pinafore
Handel - Belshazzar
Bob Dylan - "I Gave Her My Mind" (PKD might have meant this song)
Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit
Debussy - La Cathedral Englouti
Donizetti - L'Elisir d'Amore - una furtiva lagrima
Karl William Dittershand - Song of the Wind
Koto Music
Paul McCartney - Teddy Boy
The Mamas and the Papas - Young Girls are Coming to the Canyon
Mozart - Symphony #40
Jan Peerce - Bluebird of Happiness
Prokofiev - Alexander Nevsk
Puccini - La Boheme - thy tiny hand is frozen
Purcell - Dido and Aeneas
Ray Noble's Orchestra - Turkish Delight
Linda Ronstadt - You're no Good
Ravel - La Valse
Schubert - Erlkonig
Schumann - Happy Farmer
Sibelius - Symphony #7
Frank Sinatra - I've got Spurs that Jingle Jangle Jingle
Pete Seeger - Out on Penny's Farm
Stockhausen - Gesang der Jungelinge
Stravinsky - Firebird Suite

Religion and Madness in Valis

Quotes lifted from Palmer Eldritch again

I'm not sure God did anything at all for him; in fact in some ways God made him sicker.

Fat was certain that God had healed him completely. That is not possible. There is a line in the I Ching reading, "Always ill but never dies." That fits my friend.

There is no door to God through dope; that is a lie peddled by the unscrupulous.

After he had encountered God, Fat developed a love for him which was not normal.

We enjoyed baiting Fat into theological disputation because he always got angry, taking the point of view that what we said on the topic mattered - that the topic itself mattered. By now he had become totally whacked out.

"God is either powerless, stupid or he doesn't give a shit. Or all three."

During the years - outright years! - that he laboured on his exegesis, Fat must have come up with more theories than there are stars in the universe. Every day he developed a new one, more cunning, more exciting and more fucked.

"There's something in the Bible about falling sparrows," Kevin said. "About his eye being on them. That's what's wrong with God; he only has one eye."

You cannot say that an encounter with God is to mental illness what death is to cancer.

How are we to distinguish a genuine theophany from a mere hallucination on the part of the percipient?

A lot can be said for the infinite mercies of God, but the smarts of a good pharmacist, when you get down to it, is worth more.

For Fat, total psychosis was a mercy.

"Many claim to speak for god, but there is only one god and that god is man himself."

"Madness has its own dynamism; it just goes on."

David Gill on PKD as a guide, caring about the world around you

Dick asks, what is real is what you perceive when you care about the world around you and what is human is the condition that puts you in a position to see reality and these are important tips. That’s what I want to get to. It’s not about Dick’s notion of Freudian thought or any of that. It’s like he’s given us a guidebook on how to operate in this century and how to stay sane and how to stay centered and how to stay positive, even though those aren’t characteristics that are used to describe his work or him. Something comes out of that when he goes over to the dark side. He’s suffering from his mental illness, which is a disease that he suffers from rather than some pool of great inspiration that he takes from. He can tell us what that's all about. It’s good stuff.
Interview with David Gill

illustrating the Sefer Yetzirah (a proto-Kabbalistic text)

Hoeller on Jung's Gnostic Paracelsus

The cosmos, according to Paracelsus, contains the divine light or life, but this holy essence is enmeshed in a mechanical trap, presided over by a kind of demiurge, named by Paracelsus Hylaster (from hyle, "matter," and astrum, "star"). The cosmic spider-god has spun a web within which the light, like an insect, is caught, until the alchemical process bursts the web. The web is none other than the consensus reality composed of the four elements of earth, water, fire and air, within which all creatures exist. The first operation of alchemy therefore addresses itself to the breaking up (torturing, bleeding, dismembering) of this confining structure and reducing it to a condition of creative chaos (massa confusa, prima materia). From this, in the process of transformation, the true, creative binaries emerge and begin their interaction designed to bring about the coniunctio or alchemical union. In this ultimate union, says Jung, the previously confined light is redeemed and brought to the point of its ultimate and redemptive fulfillment.

While these statements ostensibly refer to the material universe and to nature, Jung perceives in them a model or paradigm for the material and natural aspect of human nature as well. Under the guise of liberating the light confined in matter, the alchemists were endeavoring to redeem the spirit or psychic energy locked up in the body and psyche (the "natural man" of St. Paul) and thus make this energy available for the greater tasks of the spirit or spiritual man.

The roots of this thinking within both the Christian and the Hermetic gnosis are clearly acknowledged by Jung, who likens the imprisoned light to the primordial man of the Gnostics, the Adam Kadmon of the Kabbalah, and by association to the lost lightsparks of the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria. (The implications of this concept of alchemical redemption are many and impressive. On the one hand, it is clear that matter and the body are by no means to be equated with evil and darkness, while on the other hand, the pagan emphasis on a mere immersion of human consciousness in nature as advocated by some in our times under such slogans as "affirmation of life" and the "celebration of nature" reveals itself as a limited view to which alchemy may serve as a much needed corrective.)

Stephan Hoeller, C.G. Jung and the Alchemical Renewal

for further illumination try these books on Jung and Gnosticism/Alchemy. Stephan Hoeller reads Jung's Gnosticism in the light of the Nag Hammadi books (which of course fascinated PKD), and Raff on the concept of "Alchemical Imagination"

Letter 23: PKD's Gnostic Key to the Sefer Yetzirah

At some point in the late period of his Exegesis, Philip K. Dick discovered Kabbalah. He can probably be considered a Christian Cabalist in the light of passages like this below, from Fall 1981

[64:E-5] The universe was created out of 22 Hebrew letters ("Sepher Yetzirah") but there is a missing 23rd letter; when his 23rd letter is added, all the negative prohibitions of the Torah vanish; severe limitation and justice are replaced by mercy and freedom: this is the third Shemittah and it is the Messianic Age. Christ, then, can be construed—as rogue information system—to be the corrected, completed basis of creation in which 23 Hebrew letters replace the 22 originally employed.
...
The plasmate is this hyper-information (the 23 letter system) feeding into the old rigid, mechanical, limited, fossilized 22 letter system. As the blood of Christ, just as Valis is his cosmic body.

Philip K. Dick on Prophets of Science Fiction

Buy it for two bucks -- cheap! Below are the comments I live-tweeted about it,
and a brief exchange with a fellow Dickian. Read from the bottom up for chronology.


@1ZenWoman I don't mean to gripe. Very much glad that it's there to introduce folks to the PKD bio, if not the themes. My wife liked it.

@1ZenWoman: @t3dy It was no BCC Arena piece, but my friends loved it... their first "glimpse" of this man who has so dominated a chun ...

@1ZenWoman I would simply add that you don't need the fancy technology coming true to have a phildickian story. Not his only trick.

RT @1ZenWoman: @t3dy Well, I preferred KSR's definition of phildickian. Pessimist to sum up PKD? I like his own "philosophizing writer."

@1ZenWoman I don't agree that he was an unqualified pessimist. Was motivated by hope, had great insight into optimistic side of gnostic coin

@1ZenWoman Have you gotten much into Terence McKenna's I Ching stuff? I was delighted to learn in the Exegesis that PKD knew TM's theories.

@1ZenWoman Best parts of the show were those reconstructions. I'm glad they did MiTHC but bummer it's the only unfilmed book they mentioned.

RT @1ZenWoman: @t3dy ahhh... I-ching and pink beams, just a few of my favorite things ;)

Ridley Scott: "Aren't most prophets troubled souls?" #PKD

KSR: "He's really one of the best descriptors of our entire culture."

I maintain that "phildickian" is a much better choice than the infelicitous "PhilipKDickian." Don't get me started on these definitions.

I'm not all that interested in this "PKD predicted it" approach. He was talking about problems that reality already had, didn't need to wait

@1ZenWoman I'm not 100% on the same page with Rickman's theories about PKD, but I'd have like to see him talk about them.

What about Phildickian cosmology? His "insights" are not in the realm of theoretical physics (although they're interesting as info science).

Not digging the choice to have Michio Kaku do the same rant on string theory and parallel universes we've already seen a million times.

@1ZenWoman Me too. I've neglected too many opportunities to meet Rickman. (+ keep forgetting that it's his first name has the double-letter)

Digging the I Ching stuff. KSR "he would plot his novels using the I Ching..."

The reconstruction of PKD working at his wife's jewelry shop and having the inspiration to write Man in the High Castle is a nice surprise.

RT @1ZenWoman: @t3dy watched earlier, but missed the close. Gonna see that now. 1st time I've SEEN Rickman.

PKD: "Nietzsche was right about Christianity." http://t.co/n11JjPVP His anti-religion moments weren't all that rare.

I wish they had spent a little more time showing the trippy old 60s
70s paperbacks we barely got a glimpse of just now.

Having Gregg Rickmann summarize the minority report story is a waste. Let him talk about his biographical theories and literary arguments!

apparently he's only an influence thru films.

Would PKD fans be up in arms if they had chosen Sasha Grey to play Tessa?

KSR narrates the fish neclace pink beam experience. Fortunately they're using the Crumb comic to illustrate. But no clip from @rfamovie

Stan Robinson very soberly telling us that PKD predicted it all in advance. Too bad he can't really say anything else given the format.

some of these talking heads are mistakes. "loose yourself" pun not intended.

The quick shot of the UCSD library is a more interesting and phildickian image than most of the computer stuff

"Dick's insights into the flexible nature of reality are prophetic." KSR:"he was talking about, well what if the TV's taking over our lives"

Neuroscience of memory dude is pretty rad. "manipulate... the information."

Glad to see the emphasis on loss of his sister. Disappointed that it follows the order of the movies, which don't explain PKD's literature

Getting off track w/PKD as influence on android designers "Androids that are humanlike make us nervous...b/c we wonder if they have a soul."

glad to see Kim Stanley Robinson, and especially Greg Rickmann interviewed. The reconstruction of Dick theorizing the break-in is hilarious.