voyage 34 phase one

Porcupine Tree

This remarkable, sometimes incoherent transcript
illustrates a phantasmagoria of fear, terror, grief,
exaltation and finally breakdown. Its highlights have
been compressed on this recording to make their own
disquieting points.

The time is 9:30 pm, one hour after the participants
have eaten sugar cubes saturated with LSD. We hear
Brian and his fellow travelers observing their gradual
transformation

Brian's been amusing his friends by chewing on some
plastic flashbulbs.

Brian's mood is gradually changing. He orders all of
his friends into another room and closes the door. He
sits alone on the wooden floor, visible only by the
dim light shining from the bathroom. He talks to
himself.

The time is now 1 am. Brian is unable to snap his
fingers and terminate the trip, which continues.

He sobs, as his joy turns to fear

Brian's rocky journey ended twelve hours after it so
innocently had begun. He was shattered by it.

Doctor Sidney Cohen:
This young man never had a bummer in some thirty-three
LSD trips.
Every one of them was a delight. Everything under
control. He needed only to snap his fingers and down
he came, any time. But on Voyage 34 he finally met
himself coming down an up-staircase and the encounter
was crushing