InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "loser say what?...WHAT!"

Cat Vincent (catvincent) wrote,
@ 2008-04-30 00:38:00

Current mood:	sad
Current music:	Drone Zone: Atmospheric ambient space music. Serve Best Chilled. Safe with most medications. [SomaFM]
Entry tags:	drugs, hero, hoffman, lsd, rip

Albert Hoffman is dead
Professor Albert Hoffman, January 11, 1906 – April 29, 2008ce.
Dead at 102.

If you ever did acid, you owe him a debt of thanks.
If you ever liked music or art made by someone who did acid, ditto.

I had the honour of meeting him at a conference in 1998. Little Swiss guy in a suit, looked thirty years younger than he was. And he glowed. Nearest thing to a Bodhisattva I have ever met.
I shook his hand and asked the only question I could think of - "why didn't you fall off the bike?"

He mattered.

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	From astvinr/Peacockpie (Anonymous) 2008-04-30 03:36 pm UTC (link)
	Sad, but then again, another sense of a long life well lived. I don't think you've mentioned meeting him. What did he say about the bicycle? I'd guess it was the scientist thing - not wanting to be distracted from observing a new phenomenon, even if it's happening to him. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: From astvinr/Peacockpie catvincent 2008-05-01 01:48 am UTC (link)
	Re. bicycle: What he said was roughly, "I was only coming up when I was riding, it didn't really kick in until I got home." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Re: From astvinr/Peacockpie
(Anonymous)
2008-05-01 03:49 am UTC (link)

Christ on a bike! That makes sense. It's great that he was pedaling along when it all started, though... very Third Policeman ("Was it about a bicycle?"). I'm also minded to think that, even when he said it, six years later, Orson Welles' famous speech was badly in need of an up-date:
“In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? L.S.D man!”

(Reply to this) (Parent)