Shooting the Ghost

A Podcast About Men

Shooting the Ghost # 10: Is That You, John Wayne?

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July 26, 2009 12:50 PM PDT

We continue exploring Chris's childhood- a toxic mixture of firearms and fire water- it confirms the old idea that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Before his mother ran off and his father died he spent a lot of time with his uncles. His mother had eight brothers, the youngest of which wasn't much older than him and they took him out hunting and trapping and taught him how to skin a rabbit. They were all bad alcoholics and when they went to the bars they took him there too, regularly joining them in beer drinking at tender age of 8 years old. Not much later he joins his uncles in smoking grandma's homegrown weed in the living room. When his Uncle Pete decides to end his life he convinces his 7 year old son to pull the trigger. The wound wasn't fatal though it did lead to a frontal lobotomy and he wasn't the only uncle to get a lobotomy. His father was never around much before he died- always on the road. Chris tells of how he caught his wife writing anonymous love letters to his brother. Chris's criminal life started with B & E's and stealing snowmobiles. Later he adopts John Wayne as his surrogate mentor- the hero who saves the day (unaware that it was him that needed saving?) He shares his story of how he was diagnosed as a sociopath and locked down in a psychiatric ward for 18 months. What are the negative side effects of living in a civilization that suppresses primal instincts? Is it possible for the "bad man" to function in the role of protector and avenger? Is schizophrenia a cultural construct with similar mind frames accessed through the psychedelic experience and shamanic practices. But more importantly- with a background like his, how could he not embody an archetype; how could he possibly fit himself into our ordered and predictable consensus reality? Music- "Run Cold" by Holly Golightly. Let her rip!

Podcast Summary

Movies are collective dreams. The current focus of the podcast is on filmmaker Sam Peckinpah, the legendary, scabrous, & self-destructive director, and by extension the themes of masculinity, mythology, initiation, generational wounding, male bonding, ritual space, misfit culture, the rebel instinct, shamanism, addiction, creative expression, self-destructive urges, storytelling and the function of myth, both for survival and for gnosis, the mutation of the species through sharing of knowledge and experience - and such like!

About Jason

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Writer, independent scholar, world traveler and misadventurer, if Horsley had a mission statement to describe the trajectory of his life, it would have to include the words “heroic” and “pathological.” Horsley's hung his hat and poncho in London, New York, Edinburgh, New Mexico, Morocco, Spain, Paris, Amsterdam, Portugal, Mexico, Guatemala, and Canada. Quests ever inward to the core of his wounded psyche with an almost maniacal vigor. Not satisfied with a shallow participation in life (or able to find a day job), Horsley applies a unique fusion-philosophy to himself that combines Jungian psychology with the sorcery of don Juan Matus and the practical animism he learned as a shaman’s apprentice in Guatemala. Horsley has also found time to write countless books and scripts, a few of which have been published: a two-part treatise on film violence, The Blood Poets: A Cinema of Savagery, 1958-1999 (Scarecrow Press, 1999), Matrix Warrior: Being the One, (Orion, 2003), Dogville Vs. Hollywood (Marion Boyars, 2005) and The Secret Life of Movies: Schizophrenic and Shamanic Journeys in American Movies (McFarlane, 2009). He also produced a six-part digital documentary, The God Game, a digital feature, Beauty Fool, and a semi-autobiographical documentary, Being the One: Document of a Delusion, currently viewable on Youtube. Horsley would like it be known that he is no longer the One, being content finally to be the Other.

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