Mere chance encounter on a dissecting table or testament to polymath Willem De Ridder‘s extraordinarily disparate interests, this issue of Spiral cassette magazine contrasts rather diverse interviews and sound documents. For De Ridder, doubt and transgression are preferable to the infallible certitudes of human knowledge, and the common denominator of the individuals presented here is to explore alternative ways of thinking. Also typical from De Ridder is relying on individuals, not groups or organizations.
The hour-long conversation with English alternative scientist Rupert Sheldrake (born 1942) can hardly pass for a short introduction to Morphogenesis and morphic fields, the concepts Sheldrake disclosed in his 1981 book A New Science of Life. I suspect De Ridder was attracted to a keen spirit here, as the book was written in the ashram of Bede Griffiths, in Hyderabad, India, where Sheldrake worked as a plant physiologist from 1974 to 1985. As an expatriate himself, De Ridder experienced the benefits and disadvantages of exile.
And so does Mistress Monique Von Cleef, 1925-2005, who was banished from the United States in 1965 after the New Jersey police raided her House of Pain S&M salon in Newark, NJ. Coincidentally, she then fled to her native… Netherlands (see good bio here). The sound document included here is supposedly the recording of a BDSM session with a volunteer Japanese slave. This might or might not be a genuine audio document, but listening is fun and is probably the closest De Ridder ever got to a snuff-movie-for-the-ears.
As responsible for film to tape transfer and HDTV processes for Hollywood’s 20th Century Fox during the 1980s, Richard M. Wolfe can be considered a key person in all things television. However, the fact he is also a drug legalization activist since the 1970s keeps me wondering if De Ridder was really interested in his professional skills. There might be a portion of hypocrisy in De Ridder, which should be taken into account when approaching this complex personality.
Thanks to anonymous reader for the rip.
Other issues in the Spiral series can be found here.
01 Rupert Sheldrake Morphogenetics In Austria Theory (57:01)
02 Baroness Monique Von Cleef Disciplining A Client In Tokyo (21:00)
03 Richard M. Wolfe On The State Of Television (11:34)
Total time 90mns
Cassette released by Spiral Information Service, Amsterdam, 1990
* *
*
Continuo's weblog 
0 Responses to “Spiral #10 – February 1990”