“My father knew all about this stuff [C.W. Leadbeater]. I owe a lot of what I'm doing, I think, to him. I'm sort of continuing my father's work.” ThinkingFatherStuffContinuing Author:Paul Laffoley
“At 15 [my father] revolted against his father like any teenager, and said, "I'm out of here! What are you doing to me?" He thought he wouldn't be involved in that kind of stuff for the rest of his life. He just wanted to make money. He was one of those people who took over the family responsibility. His own father was pretty irresponsible with money and borrowed from people all the time.” PeopleKindSaidWantedFatherStuffResponsibilityInvolvedMaking MoneyTeenagerIrresponsibleBorrowedFamily Responsibility Author:Paul Laffoley
“Stephen Hawking won [Babson Institute competition ] one year with his black hole stuff. It's keeping an open mind on whether gravity exists or not. I think my father believed this because ... when the wind blew on him, he'd get angry, because it was something he couldn't control.” ThinkingYearsMindFatherStuffBlackWindAngryCompetitionHolesGravityOpen MindInstituteBlack HoleKeep An Open Mind Author:Paul Laffoley
“Forms of energy from nature gave my father trouble. He refused to believe he was going to die. He had these weird delusions. It's amazing. Along with all the great thoughts, he had all this funny stuff.” BelieveFormDiesFatherEnergyStuffTroubleDelusionFunny Stuff Author:Paul Laffoley
“To have that radical a mind in that bourgeois-looking body was really hard for a lot of people to take, because, when my mother would want to have people over she'd tell [my father], "Don't start with the gravity stuff." And then he would invariably do this and the guests would look at each other and say, "Well, I think it's time to go now."” PeopleThinkingWantMindWellsLooksHardBodyMotherFatherStuffRadicalGuestsGravityBourgeois Author:Paul Laffoley
“At one time in the mid-'70s I became the president of the Boston-Cambridge chapter of the World Future Society. Because I'd been in my studio by myself since 1968 on up. And the thing is that my social life consisted of being involved in organizations like that. I would get people to come and speak, and speak myself and that kind of stuff.” PeopleWorldKindSpeakSocialStuffPresidentInvolvedOrganizationStudiosOne TimeChaptersBostonSocial LifeCambridgeFuture Society Author:Paul Laffoley
“We would go on retreats to Florence. The people in the planning team got to be good friends and so we did things like, we'd all go over to the Fort Belvedere in Florence and take that thing over. Because it's up for grabs, you can rent it. And then have New Age meetings and all that kind of stuff. [Buckminster] Fuller loved to go there.” PeopleKindAgeStuffTeamGoes OnMeetingsBe GoodPlanningGood FriendRetreatNew AgeFortsFlorenceBuckminster Fuller Author:Paul Laffoley
“[The Theosophical Society] are ideologues in terms of the way they present the material. That's one of the reasons why, when they teach their courses, you only get a smidgen of stuff and you have to keep coming back every week. They won't do an overview. Because they're trying to bypass your conscious critical faculties by leaking the information slowly.” WayTryingReasonCoursesStuffTermTeachWeekInformationMaterialsConsciousCriticalReason WhyFacultyComing BackBypassIdeologuesOverview Author:Paul Laffoley
“I hear some guy teaches a course in diagrammatic thinking now; he's written books on it and stuff like that, and so it was kind of natural for me. Because it was a way in which words naturally fitted into something that's visual. I was always interested in doing that.” ThinkingWayKindBookGuyCoursesStuffNaturalTeachWrittenVisuals Author:Paul Laffoley
“I went to the Mary Lee Burbank School in Belmont. And it was a place where you, like, learned to go to the store? And I was saying, Oh God, I want to learn something else. I wanted to learn to read and write better and do mathematics better. They were very much into Abstract Expressionism and that artsy stuff. And where most kids did what I call meaningless blobs, I could render perfectly.” WantWritingKidsWantedSchoolStuffMathematicsStoresAbstractCall MeMeaninglessMaryExpressionismAbstract Expressionism Author:Paul Laffoley
“I could do Superman, the Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, this kind of stuff [at school]. And kids would give me their lunch money to have these things.” GivingKindKidsSchoolStuffWonderGive MeGreenLunchLanternsWonder WomanGreen Lantern Author:Paul Laffoley
“I would be constantly brought up on the carpet by these teachers who were brought up with Abstract Expressionism, saying, "You're too uptight, you're not expressing yourself, why don't you feel freer?" I said, "Well, I don't like that stuff. It means nothing to me."” FeelsWellsMeanSaidWould BeStuffTeacherAbstractCarpetExpress YourselfUptightExpressionismAbstract Expressionism Author:Paul Laffoley
“Eventually, to get through school, I would make good meaningless blobs if I had to. And so they thought I was falling in with them and stuff like that. But on the playground, kids would come up to me and say, "I need three Supermans and a Captain Midnight by four o'clock because I'm going to sell them to somebody else." So I'd take all their lunch money and whip these things out, and they'd have to stick them in their underwear to get the pictures home, because if the teacher ever found out about that.” IfsNeedsHomeKidsSchoolFallThreeFoundStuffTeacherFourSellsSticksCome UpClockLunchMeaninglessCaptainsMidnightWhipsUnderwearPlaygrounds Author:Paul Laffoley
“I was always doing paintings. I actually started painting with oil paints when I was four years old. Not crayons, not pencils and that kid of stuff. I'd paint birds. Anything that moved, stuff like that.” YearsKidsStuffFourPaintingBirdMovedPaintOilFour YearsPencilsCrayon Author:Paul Laffoley
“It was on Long John's show that I heard Orfeo Angelucci being interviewed. In other words, the whole thing about the green globes on the top of a car bumper and the voice coming out, you know, and then this beautiful lady.... So he went through the whole number, what you read in his book, that kind of stuff. A whole raft of things.” KnowsKindLongBookWholeShowsBeautifulStuffVoiceNumbersHeardCarGreenComing OutNow And ThenGlobesBumperBeautiful Lady Author:Paul Laffoley
“Long John would sometimes hold his interviews in the Carnegie Delicatessen, which is the most famous delicatessen in New York up by Carnegie. Let's see, 57th Street, you're down to like 50th Street and 7th Avenue... You'd go in there and everybody would be eating a heart attack on a plate, pastrami, malts, that kind of stuff. But it literally was the place where Woody Allen would go.” HeartKindLongSometimesWould BeStuffStreetsNew YorkEatingInterviewsPlatesAvenuesWoodyHeart AttackCarnegieMaltPastrami Author:Paul Laffoley
“I think it was because [Nikola] Tesla and [Leon] Theremin were part of what made up the movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Klaatu was actually a European among the Americans. And so the person who wrote the story said that Klaatu came from Europa, the fourth moon of Jupiter, which is now being investigated for life. There's water and ice on it and that kind of stuff.” ThinkingKindPersonsMadeSaidStillsStoriesEarthStuffWaterMoonIceFourthJupiterTeslaLeon Author:Paul Laffoley
“Both [Nikola] Tesla and [Leon] Theremin were preternaturally young. I mean, for a long time Tesla was a young man well into his 70s. And so was Theremin, even though, at the end, he looked pretty old. But he was still doing things that young guys do, beyond the time you'd normally think people should be doing that stuff.” PeopleThinkingMenShouldWellsMeanLongStillsEndsYoungGuyStuffLong TimeYoung ManTeslaYoung GuysLeon Author:Paul Laffoley
“[Nikola Tesla and Leon Theremin] were European gentlemen, very well-mannered, all of the stuff you associate with living in Europe.” WellsStuffEuropeGentlemanAssociatesTeslaLeonWell Mannered Author:Paul Laffoley
“I began to analyze the movie [The Day the Earth Stood Still] and said it was really made out of these two characters [Nikola Tesla and Leon Teremin] who were brought together. That made it fascinating to me. And especially the language they made up, that Klaatu speaks. Because it has a Latin word order. It's like medieval Latin, but it had some Navajo phonemes in it and that kind of stuff.” KindMadeSaidStillsTwoCharacterEarthTogetherOrderSpeakLanguageStuffMade ItFascinatingLatinMedievalTeslaLeon Author:Paul Laffoley
“[Nikola Tesla] said he had no interest in the spiritual. He didn't believe in telepathy, didn't believe in any of that stuff, didn't believe in any religion, and he just thought all these people were being superstitious and wanted them to go away. And in that way he was very close to H.P. Lovecraft, who was almost a believing atheist.” PeopleWayBelieveSaidWantedSpiritualStuffInterestAtheistGoing AwaySuperstitiousTelepathyTeslaLovecraft Author:Paul Laffoley
“I think [H. P. Lovecraft] knew the whole gamut. He just didn't believe any of it! He probably liked to use the esoteric stuff because he knew it would tick people off and freak them out.” PeopleThinkingBelieveWholeUseStuffFreakTickEsotericLovecraft Author:Paul Laffoley
“I belong to the Lovecraft Society, which meets at the University. They do things like follow in Lovecraft's footsteps, just like he followed in Edgar Allan Poe's footsteps. I mean the actual footfalls, you know, like they're going out looking for sasquatch, this kind of stuff.” KnowsKindMeanStuffUniversityGoing OutFootstepsLovecraftAllan PoeSasquatch Author:Paul Laffoley
“I mean, these are really dedicated people [in Lovecraft Society] when it comes to [h.P.] Lovecraft. But in the top floor of the John Hay Library, you have all of Lovecraft's archives. And messing around in there, I noticed, I said, what are these paintings? And the librarian told me, "Well, those are Pickman's paintings." I said, "I thought this was like something he made up, like The Necronomicon, that kind of stuff." And he said no, that the guy actually existed.” PeopleWellsKindMeanMadeSaidGuyStuffPaintingLibraryDedicatedLibrarianLike SomethingArchivesHayLovecraft Author:Paul Laffoley
“Look at all the stuff the Existentialists did. You can start with [Pablo] Picasso, you know, and then Francis Bacon and other guys like that. What they were doing is depicting suffering. And that's exactly what a demon is, he's pretending that he isn't. So he can get more people down there. You know, misery loves company, that's the whole thing. So that's basically the pitch that I'm working on.” PeopleKnowsLooksWholeGuySufferingStuffCompanyMiseryDemonPretendingNow And ThenOther GuysExistentialist Author:Paul Laffoley
“The whole thing that Dante [Alighieri] did was summed up in the medieval world. It's like St. Thomas Aquinas, the Summa Theologica. He didn't invent it, he just put it all in one package. You get twelve fat books there sitting in any library. Whereas... I think if Joshi thinks [H.P.] Lovecraft was doing anything like that, just throwing together all this stuff to form a kind of anti-mythology, that's where I would disagree with him.” IfsThinkingWorldKindBookWholeTogetherFormStuffSittingLibraryMythologyFatsThrowingDisagreeTwelvePackagesMedievalLovecraftSt Thomas Author:Paul Laffoley
