Chaos Rainbows

Chapter 4 provides an examination of the common states of mind arising out of openness, including schizotypy, reduced latent inhibition, and cognitive disinhibition. The chapter reconstructs a frame of mind artists themselves have a hard time describing. From there, questions center on the shaping, the organizing, and the ordering involved in art-making. Most of the chapter is dedicated to chaos and its roots in personality. But chaos alone isn’t enough. Creativity is making something. Chaos is a means to that end, the making. How the artist uses chaos is just as important as finding ways to stay open to it. Numerous artists are used as illustrations, including Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, Jerry Seinfeld, Steve Jobs, and Joni Mitchell. A four-step model for how raw materials get shaped into art is also presented.

The Fast Lane: Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll Stars

In this chapter, the film company arrives in Tucumcari, New Mexico to shoot the gas station scene where the race is set up – a tour de force of cinematography. Jaclyn Hellman blows up at her husband, Monte, over his affair with the leading lady, 17-year-old Laurie Bird. Some of the cast and filmmakers indulge in drugs, but they don’t hinder the filmmaking much except for Dennis Wilson, who is stoned nearly all the time and can’t remember his lines. But he and the amateur, off-balance Laurie Bird cause Hellman to call for 10, 15 and even 25 takes when they blow their lines. Joni Mitchell visits her boyfriend, James Taylor, and the actor Harry Dean Stanton arrives for his scene, in which he plays a gay cowboy hitchhiker.