Michael M. Hughes

I’ll be duking it out as CityLit’s representative in Baltimore’s debut Literary Death Match, a multi-city reading/performance series sponsored by Opium Magazine and described as “the magic mushroom of Planet Lit.” Here’s a description from Opium’s site:

Opium’s Literary Death Match . . . marries the literary and performative aspects of Def Poetry Jam, rapier-witted quips of American Idol’s judging (without any meanness), and the ridiculousness and hilarity of Double Dare.

Each episode of this competitive, humor-centric reading series features a thrilling mix of four famous and emerging authors (all representing a literary publication, press or concern–either online or in print) who perform their most electric writing (in eight minutes or less) before a lively audience and a panel of three all-star judges. After each pair of readings, the judges—focused on literary merit, performance and intangibles—take turns spouting hilarious, off-the-wall commentary about each story, then select their favorite to advance to the finals.

The two finalists then compete in the Literary Death Match finale, which trades in the show’s literary sensibility for an absurd and comical climax to determine who takes home the Literary Death Match crown.

It may sound like a circus—and that’s half the point. Opium and the Literary Death Match have long been passionate about inspecting new and innovative ways to present text on the page and off of it, and the most fascinating part about the LDM is how seriously attentive the audience is during each reading. We’ve called this the great literary ruse: an audacious and inviting title, a harebrained finale, but in-between the judging creates a relationship with the viewer as a judge themselves.

The event takes place at the Windup Space on January 30th—full details here. Come on out and support literary lunacy in Charm City!

It’s been a long time coming, but yesterday I received a letter from the Baltimore Civilian Review Board, in response to the complaint I filed with the Office of Internal Investigations for the Baltimore City Police about my arrest on election night, 2008. I was arrested, along with 14 others, for doing nothing more than exercising our First Amendment rights to assemble, in an orderly and well-behaved celebration of the Obama victory.

I’m not sure if the other two who filed complaints have had them sustained, but I hope that is the case. (UPDATE: At least one of the other individuals who filed a complaint has had his sustained as well.)

My thanks go out to everyone who has been supportive of those of us who were falsely arrested, including City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke (who accompanied 3 of us filing complaints to the Office of Internal Investigations), Congressman Elijah Cummings (who wrote a strongly-worded letter to the city police department). I also would like to thank the people at the CRB for doing their investigation and making the right decision.

I’ll comment on this further once I find out the rulings for the other complainants. In the meantime, City Paper has an archive of articles and documents about the incident.

My City Paper article about the experience
Jeffrey Anderson’s City Paper coverage can be found here and here.
Letter from Congressman Elijah Cummings to Police Commissioner Bealfeld
Letter from eyewitness Michael Rogers, a Hopkins student (PDF)
My discussion of the incident and the increasing harassment of photographers by police.

A few years ago I sat down with NPR’s religion reporter, Barbara Bradley Hagerty. She was writing a book about the scientific basis of mystical experiences, and had come to Baltimore to interview me. I spoke to her about a profound experience I had, when I was in my 20s, after ingesting Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms, aka “magic” mushrooms—an experience that, to this day, I look back upon as life-changing and pivotal in my understanding of what falls under the loaded term “spirituality.”

Barb’s book has just come out, and it’s titled Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality. From what I can gather, the book presents a balanced assessment of the current scientific inquiries into the nexus of science and mysticism (exemplified by the rigorous Hopkins Psilocybin studies conducted by Roland Griffiths, which I wrote about in my City Paper article “Sacred Intentions”). I haven’t read the book yet, though I have read some of the galleys, and while googling the title I came upon this review in Christianity Today:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/may/31.61.html

The review takes a fairly moderate tone until this:

Nobody who believes in the Incarnation—in a God who thinks matter matters so much as to take on human flesh to communicate himself—can conclude otherwise. God uses all of our senses to allow us to understand him, so why not the brain, which processes the senses? That drugs or epileptic fits can induce spiritual experiences is not surprising or any more or less significant than that drugs can induce fear or euphoria.

But if so, does that mean the person actually encountered the divine? No one can say for sure, not even the recipient of the experience—which, unless he is a complete narcissist, can only leave the recipient in deep doubt about the authenticity of the experience.

But Hagerty’s conversations with mystics show that the temptation to narcissism—to relish the experience as a “high” that makes me a better person—remains powerful. For example, when Hagerty asks Michael Hughes to compare a non-drug-induced mystical moment with his mushroom-induced one, he says, “Ultimately, I don’t really care if it is my brain chemistry doing this. They were equally profound. They both changed me dramatically.” For many, an encounter with Reality is less important than how they feel.

I don’t understand why my comment about my experience is labeled narcissistic. Don’t classic Christian conversions or alleged episodes of “grace” change the experiencers and make them more positive and well-adjusted? And ultimately, whether it’s a chemical inside a mushroom or intense prayer and meditation or just something spontaneous that causes profound, life-altering experiences, why should it matter? Didn’t Jesus himself say “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them”?

Also, for what it’s worth, I make no claims to have met “God” or any sort of deity. But I have read a lot about classic mystical experiences, and what happened to me in that tiny church in historic St. Mary’s, alone, late at night, fits the definition. I felt immersed in the universe, but it was a living, conscious universe, and I was connected to every part of it. I also had a deep sense of knowing what spirituality meant, and I understood that human religions are a desperate attempt to reconnect with the type of primal connectedness I was feeling. Make of it what you will. It doesn’t matter to me, in the end, because it is intensely personal experience that cannot adequately be put into words. All these years later, I’m still processing it.

It seems to me that the reviewer’s ambivalence comes from his fear that the evangelical Christian path to spirituality isn’t the only game in town, and that science may be pointing out the basic truth of the perennial philosophy—that there are many valid paths to deeper spiritual understanding and mystical union with God, the Universe, the Collective Unconscious, or whatever you want to call it.

More:

Sacred Intentions: Inside the Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Studies (City Paper, October, 2008)

Roland Griffiths’ TEDx MidAtlantic Talk “Psilocybin and Experimental Mystical Experience.”

The iconic Trevi Fountain in Rome, taken at night. Click on the photo to see it in all its High Dynamic Range goodness.

Poe: 19 New Tales

It was a dreary, cold, and rainy night, which made it a perfect evening to catch some readings from Poe: 19 New Tales at the Enoch Pratt Library. Editor Ellen Datlow was joined by writers Gregory Frost and John Langan in the Pratt’s Poe Room. Frost read a doppelganger-themed story from the anthology (not his own) that was very Twilight-Zone-ish and subtly creepy, while Langan read his college professor lecture-as-story, “Technicolor,” a clever and grim tale of Poe’s mysterious last days. Datlow ended the evening with a too-brief discussion of the ins-and-outs of anthology editing before the Pratt staff kicked us out into the dark, soggy night. I grabbed a copy of the anthology, and if the two stories I heard that evening are any indication, it looks to be a collection worthy of its inspiration.

John Langan, Ellen Datlow, and Gregory Frost

Gregory Frost

John Langan

The story of my stint as a porn paste-up artist on Baltimore’s infamous Block is now in print, courtesy of the Urbanite magazine. It’s a story I’ve told probably hundreds of times, including at the storytelling venue Stoop Stories (listen here), but this time Urbanite editor David Dudley encouraged me to take a broader look at pornography and the way it has escaped from the confines of sleazy strips like the Block and become almost, but not quite, mainstream.

Dirty Work: Is porn bad for us? Urbanite #61, July 2009.
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