It’s October 2009. I’m on the plane from London, flying home to New York through Montreal. I’ve been blissfully engaged by Tom Wolfe’s non-fiction novel, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”, letting the true tale of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters seep into my thoughts, using Wolfe’s precisely evocative language to turn my own direct moment into something mythical, something more than just another gig, another film shoot. That’s what I like to do, anyway. I like to live mythically. Wolfe ponders:

“It takes a rare kind. Because always comes the moment when it’s time to take the Prankster circus further on toward Edge City. And always at that point some good souls are startled: Hey, wait! Like Ralph Gleason with his column in the Chronicle and his own clump of hipness. Gleason is one of those people… Kesey can remember them all, people who thought he was great so long as his fantasy coincided with theirs. But every time he pushed on further — and he always pushed on further — they became confused and resentful…”

When I read that passage it took me back to the night before in London, Canary Wharf, to a private room at the Four Seasons Hotel, where I’m standing next to Garo, the CEO of a firm called Antigenics. He’d said to me, “You know, John, most people don’t like change. They actually fear it.”

to read more, go to:    http://www.realitysandwich.com/mythic_proportions_and_antigenics