In the nineties it was totally legitimate to wear a beanie for reasons other than ear-warmth.

And in Australia the nineties lasted until 2002.

Which is how I came to be wearing a beanie in the passout area of a dance party in Sydney in 2001.

A guy asks to borrow my lighter. As he hands it back he says “you look like Jack Osborne.”

Yes, he is extremely high but in his defence, at the time, I did kinda look like Jack Osborne.

“Wait a minute… are you Jack Osborne?!”

He wasn’t the first person to see a similarity. Nor was he the last. In fact, I was developing a complex about it to the extent that I had highlights through my hair to blonde myself up and away from Jack and my natural dark brown. (Damn hair-covering beanie!)

So let’s just say the question wasn’t welcomed. And for a brief second my Lokean self toyed with the idea of saying “yeah I am, actually.” The inevitable next steps entered my mind. He’d shout “hey everyone, it’s Jack Osborne!” My face would be shown on the big screen above the DJ that was jumbotronning the revellers. Then somebody would say “you know, I don’t really think that’s Jack Osborne. Why would he say he was Jack Osborne?”

And the only thing weirder and less likely to lead to sex than being the guy that looks like Jack Osborne is being the FREAK who is pretending to be him for some terrifying reason known only to himself. (I did once get sex out of someone mentioning it at another dance party 18 months later but that’s another story.)

Instead I say “no”, pretend like it’s a really weird question to be asked and no one has ever said that before, then head back inside. There would be time for inane ecstasy chatter as the sun was coming up and everyone was walking back to the station.

Tonight was for experimenting. I was coming up on my second pill and something weird was happening to my wizard sense. I could feel the milky white outlines of my various guides and invisible companions stretching out on either side of me. I could no longer hear or communicate with them at all… the lines were cut. Trying to see them was like trying to watch a movie with your elbow. But I could feel them like I had never been able to before.

I tune into my sister dancing next to me. Hers are there too. I’m not hearing a peep but I can feel them. And as the track (which I think was Xpander because it was definitely a trance event) peaked it occurred to me that we are each of us part of a discarnate X-Men team. The Egyptian soul system, guides, non-capitalised guardian angels, totems, ancestors. You are a chandelier in pieces, fallen from the Paris Opera House ceiling.

Like anyone else who did a pointless degree, rave culture was something I studied at a tertiary level. It’s not just a sixties thing, there is a very powerful connection between an era, its outlook and its chemical of choice. Ecstasy, E, the dominance of the sound ‘e’ (“Everybody’s freeeee”) unavoidably curving your face into a smile as you vocalise it, multiple selves, The Invisibles, the Keanu movie that ripped off The Invisibles, non-utopian alien worldviews. They knot. They’re a package.

The decade between then and now, as previously explored, was defined by speed, coke, meth then coke again in pretty much that order.

But it seems that the aforementioned elephant in the room has been switched again and the blind men are having to start over with different stories and different chemicals. There’s the ancient alien thing in movies, there’s awful fairy realm-ish TV shows, there’s a change in chemicals of choice and chemognostic initiatory experiences (YouTubing salvia trips), there’s a move to multiple concurrent narratives away from monolithic, reality-defining institutions.

The whole motif of this decade is changing. I’m not saying they’re connected, I’m saying that there is something in the air. Quite literally perhaps. In a previously referenced Sheldrake interview they mention that a theory of morphic resonance is a better means of exploring the way artists and scientists can come up with the same idea at the same time in entirely separate incidents.

Which brings me to Nicki Minaj’s Starships  and how -consciously or not- it appears to be about summoning the Annunaki and contacting them using DMT.

Check it:

Firstly, there’s the Pacific motif, which you know interests me. Then there is the summoning platform the islanders (puny humans) are invoking around.

Then an alien ship beams Nicki down into the waves, birthing her on earth as Aphrodite. That’s Aphrodite who is the unbegotten child of the ancient stars. (Uranus.) Aphrodite who is also Astarte which gives us our Annunaki link right there.

If this isn’t “the myths of your gods are really about spacemen” then I don’t know what is. Wait a minute, yes I do. It’s this:

Mankind is literally summoned up from the dirt at the behest of a visiting alien goddess. The casual, almost uncaring creative act could not be more Sumerian.

The triumphant alien overlord celebrates. In the same location as the Gallimimus stampede from Jurassic Park. Which was, of course, a story about combining the DNA of two different species -one very ancient- to create something new and unexpected for commercial gain.

The chorus -in case you live in the town from Footloose and haven’t heard it (not being mean, I love the song)- goes like so:

Starships were meant to fly, hands up and touch the sky

Can’t stop cos we’re so high, let’s do this one more time

Starships, you say? That’s a rather DMT vision to match the… uhh… DMT vision of the visuals. Moving on.

Is that a returning alien overload perched on the fucking monolith of Phobos that American hero Buzz Aldrin told CSPAN about? While we humans dance, pray and worship around it?

Why yes, I believe it is.

And here, as shining beings dressed all in white dance among us puny-yet-unbelievably-attractive humans who are “higher than motherfuckers”, we have the lovely Nicki pointing directly into space.

Let’s close out with a background of repeating pyramids of light that bear a weird resemblance to what DNA sequences happen to look like when held up to lightboxes.

Did Nicki Minaj do this deliberately?

Maybe. She believes drugs are spirits which I totally respect.

It’s possible… but it’s not necessary. It could merely be culture doing what culture does: inappropriately groping at pachyderms. Expect more of this.

2012 better not be the damn end of the world because the next few years are shaping up to be very interesting. An entheogenic renaissance except this time around with the benefit of the internet.

Blindfolds on. Gloves off. Get to it.