Joey Cavella and Chris Graves were on the original Leary.com web development team.
Joey and Chris flew all the way from New York and LA to attend our November 15, 2008 Video Collection Launch Party at the Internet Archive.
The next morning, down at Fisherman’s Wharf, I asked them to tell us a little about what it was like working on organizing and digitizing the archives with Tim, when he was alive.
Video by Lisa Rein. Available under a
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License.
Just in time for the holidays!
A new collection of Leary’s drug writings, Leary On Drugs, has just been released from RE/Search Publications.
We managed to catch up with Hassan I Sirius, who edited the collection, to ask him a few questions about his use of Tim’s archives in compiling the book.
Note: Although the books have not yet been released to the public, they have all been digitized and OCR’d, and are available for use upon request. Please Contact Us if you need access to them for a specific project.
Q: Tim was very excited about the prospects of his archives being made available to academics. How were the archives helpful in your doing the book?
A: The archives were a life saver for me. I got them in the middle of the process of editing the book. I’d gotten books from the actual physical archives before that and then I also had some of Tim’s books that I’d collected myself. So I’d been going through and marking off passages in pencil and with post-its. And I dreaded having to type all that stuff out.
So, just for starters, when I was given the privilege of using the online archives, I could find these passages, copy them, paste them into a word document, and then edit them.
Then there were a number of out of print books that I didn’t have a copy of – for instance, Jail Notes and Confessions of a Hope Fiend. And they were up on the archives. I didn’t use a lot from those books but I really loved the few things I did use. And then I could also go through all the books and do a word search, something you obviously can’t do with a physical book unless the word is included in the index.
The obvious thing was to look for mention of specific drugs. I didn’t wind up using a lot of that because I ultimately decided to go for the best writing rather than to try to include every drug. But I’d still be feeling like something was missing if I hadn’t searched – for instance – for Nitrous Oxide through every
single book.
This medium is just an incredible boon to anyone who is editing a collection.
Q: What excited you the most about having your hands on this material?
A: There were some books I’d never read, so that was a thrill. Some of these books
and monographs from the early seventies, for instance, have kind of a different style from his other stuff. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it has a certain edge to it.
Q: RU Sirius wrote the introduction. People are going to wonder, are you guys related?
A: I probably should maintain that fiction. Hassan I Sirius is a name that RU has used a few times… referring to him as his “great and terrible brother.” But really, I just lifted the name from one of RU’s books. Actually, I asked his permission and he said OK. Now he says the name is all mine, so maybe I’m unofficially his brother.
I guess the difference is that RU uses his name because he likes it, and I used this name because I actually want to remain anonymous.
The word “Futique” was coined by Timothy Leary when he began designing computer software in the 1980s.
“‘Futique’ is the opposite of ‘antique,’” he said.
And, let’s face it, everything about Timothy Leary was aimed at the future. Thus, he called his company Futique, Inc.
Futique was a consortium of artists, writers, programmers, designers, educators and, of course, philosophers all working toward a common goal.
When Timothy was near the end of (t)his life, he put all his assets IN TRUST for the future – and so Futique, Inc. became The Futique Trust.
The trust is principally his archival material which consists of a huge collection of papers and memorabilia from his birth certificate, through all phases of his life and his attention getting death.
The Trust also holds his publishing rights, archival materials and any business dealing involving Tim. It was structured for his heirs to be able to reap the rewards of his legacy.
When Dr. Leary put his affairs in order before his death in 1996, he asked Donna Scott and Rosemary Leary to be his trustees. Donna and her husband, famed movie diector, Tony Scott were good friends of Tims and shared, among other things, many Sunday evening dinners together at Mr. Chows.
Rosemary was Tim’s wife during the sixties. She was with him at Millbrook, helped mastermind his escape from prison and flight to Algeria, and finally their stay in Switzerland. Even though they parted in Switzerland and she went underground for the next 25 years, they reconnected about 2 years before his death and he asked her to oversee, with Donna, the Futique Trust.
When Rosemary died in 2002, Denis Berry, who was appointed alternate trustee in Tim’s will, assumed Rosemary’s spot. Denis met Tim through her “Dial a Wife” business, and they became good friends.
Denis shared Tim’s house for about 2 years, from 1993-1995 or so, before she moved to Santa Cruz, California. (And not long before Tim’s death, in 1996.)
Tim would have loved blogging…
