LeGrand Cirque Psyche Presents:
The 20TH Century Tuesday of a Noman,
Pages 4 and 5 - Introduction by Doc Taylor

Introduction Part 3 (concluded)

Toc's works are an exploratory journal of his addiction. His works are both a conscious observation of, and a self-effacing parody on, the mechanics of his (and our), subconscious. He reveals to us through a labyrinth of images, the dual nature of his love for, and the state of war in which he lives with his personified subconscious, personified as Pope Joey and his Grand Circus Psyche.
I once asked Toc to explain in my language, without recourse to poetics, who Pope Joey was. He told me that Pope Joey was; "the first-voice-elect of my gathered soul". As I understand it, Pope Joey is an ambassador from the Dreamtime, or the heart of his subconscious, that very closely borders Toc's daily world. Pope Joey, it seems, was sent ahead into Toc's life, by Toc's own death, (named Papawolf), as a gesture of love. When Toc enters the Dream world (which also includes meditations, trances, and once upon a time psychotropic intended schizophrenias), Pope Joey is his guide and the initiator of the many other characters and experiences inside of Toc's "Self," a place that Toc calls (with tongue-in-cheek) "Schizotopia."
Pope Joey has the appearance of Toc when he was himself a (precocious) child. Pope Joey also carries the mercurial elements of the trickster (often dangerous, like the Hopi's Coyote), along with the biting wit of Shakespeare's dower fool. Toc considers Pope Joey's particular persona a kind of punishment for his rational resistance to the ruthless machinations of his subconscious. On occasions Toc rides disembodied in Pope Joey's awareness to witness places in towards the center of Schizotopia, but most of the time Toc is the physical vehicle for a number of observers personified from the pantheon of his Self. He calls this endless testing of his subconscious, "Puppet-in-hell's-heaven." And Toc, in turn, sets his words and images, ("like a grid full of sky"), as our test. His works are not for everyone, they are for those that recognize it, and know it as an echo of their own dream.
So here I am stepping out of my clinical voice and into Toc's shaggy company of metaphors to stand in-side, here, among unrepentant howls, where Toc lives.
Toc lives charting the inroads to good-madness, drawing out it's secrets with the loving slyness of an honest man. While standing wide-eyed to the onslaught of his Very-Self, his voice is DADA at it's best; yes, obsession, and good-bye. And the relationship between his images and writings is the exact distance that only a soul wet with poetry can cross. And for you, I recommend it highly. It is a work that lives, and life, after all, is why.

'Doc' Taylor Stubblefield, Wolfli Institute, Seelisburg, Switzerland 1999