Arcanarama by Lucid Screaming

We begin with the romantic lounge stylings of Vince Cummings, who sings the classic “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” as diners are summoned to their seats.

“In some countries the rain falls up”

Of course, romance isn’t always so romantic, and some “Sunday Drivers” have little choice but to engage in absurdist dialogue and then fuck like wild animals in the long cool grass by the lake. Before driving on in silence. Freud memorably wondered what it is that members of the fairer sex truly seek, and he is answered in “What I Really Want” by an anonymous female on the internet, who describes the smoldering passion she seeks in “a committed relationship.” “Fraction Smith” is driven to drink when his baby leaves him (“at least that is what she said”), while “Love, the Wandering Emu” explores the extremes of love, comparing it to a “firing squad of angels” and a “hierophantic pageant on Saturn’s rings,” among other things. However, love may not be in the cards if you travel to Main Street and there meet “Esmerelda the Indifferent,” a gipsy fortuneteller full of dark tidings.

“Got milked? Well I have – plenty of times.”

Encounters of a different sort are captured in “Foo 43,” an Osgoodian epic here sampled by Lord. It tells of WWII pilots who spotted UFOs (“foo fighters”) and were doped up to make them forget what they’d seen, and also refers to the mysterious death of Secretary of Defense James Forrestal (“Guess they tried to make it look like a hooker”), who some say had contact with the visitors. “The Green Mistress” shows that non-fatal contact with aliens is possible, when a rural couple has a “missing time” experience on a desert highway and encounters a green goddess they reckon will “do her spawning high in orbit.” And “Probed Like Me” is a disturbing tale of big-headed grey aliens who want samples, and lots of them.

“Yeah, right…”

Osgood brings us back to earth when he elaborates on the phrase “life is like a box of chocolates,” and we are faced with some unsettling fudge-encased truths. Once we also parse the terrible truth of consumerism in “Read the Label” and see that even alternate universes are full of “lust and fear and folly” (“Parallel Postcard”), then we have little choice. We are compelled to seek the counsel of Robert Bly and kindred spirits, to go off in the woods to beat “drunken drums” and unleash our true selves, buried by years of guilt and sorrow and brainwashing. Unfortunately, the Lucid gang does not find solace in such rituals, nor release. Instead, what happens is most unfortunate: chaos and madness ensue. The drum circle goes terribly awry.

“Don’t give me that flamma-jamma”

We must embrace our inner “whang krang,” as well as the “arcanarama” that swirls all around us. We must renounce savings-and-loan scandalmeister Charles Keating and we must heed Dr. Ruth, as we “grok ‘n roll.” True lucidity requires that we channel Mississippi bluesmen, that we scream at glowing green meteors that no one else sees, that we drink fine imported ales until dawn, that we mock jihads and crusades, that we mourn the passing of Dr. Gonzo and the Quiet Beatle, and that we seek what lies east of the sun and west of the moon. Yes, this is the Lucid way. Or so say the rumors…

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