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Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

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<strong>Conversations</strong> <strong>with</strong> <strong>Avant</strong>-<strong>garde</strong> <strong>Sages</strong><br />

pretty beautiful process. I mean, I've seen it up close, and it's<br />

amazing how people can transform around death when we avoid<br />

it, and we're taught to avoid it.<br />

TRIP: For sure. We had as beautiful man drop the body this past<br />

week, John Hartley, and he had a beautiful send off from his<br />

friends who gathered around, and he was watching the sun rise as<br />

he dropped his body, and people were drumming. I think it was a<br />

beautiful send off and then there was a wonderful gathering in<br />

town over the weekend that was very moving, and I think uplifting<br />

for a number of people.<br />

So in the '70s in New York, you were a prolific and driven artist,<br />

after a while you came to the understanding that your art was<br />

limiting you, and you described that art as a false God. I'm<br />

curious, why was art for you in the '70s a false God, but today it's<br />

become such a beautiful expression of your higher self?<br />

JERRY WENNSTROM: Well it gets back to what I was saying<br />

about the place where it doesn't matter. I think anything can<br />

become a false God, and the gods are going to demand their pound<br />

of flesh. Like I have a friend who fiercely spent his life making<br />

money as if it were the one thing that was going to save him, and<br />

now later in his life, it's all coming undone, and he's being sued,<br />

and his money is going out his window. And I think that's the<br />

ultimate end to false Gods, and I had a sense of that. I had a sense<br />

that art for me, even though the whole world was making a great<br />

fuss about what I was doing, for me personally it became that false<br />

God. I didn't know who I was, and so I was here this shield<br />

against non-existence, which was this idea of an artist, and I was<br />

good at what I did, and I was driven, but now I do it because it's as<br />

natural as everything else in my life. And I had to get to that place,<br />

it's the same <strong>with</strong> marriage, I had to get to the place where I could<br />

let it in a way that was natural.<br />

TRIP: Okay, so here's something that I wanted you to clarify. You<br />

recognize that your art was not a substitute for life itself, and so<br />

you decided to destroy your art and give everything away and<br />

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