THE MESCALINE JOURNALS
Henri Michaux went inward and found a universe with its own geography, its own creatures, its own laws. He took mescaline to get there faster. He wrote what he found with the precision of a cartographer and the urgency of an exorcist.
His writing does something unusual. It makes the strange feel inevitable and the familiar feel suddenly, slightly wrong. The creatures that inhabit his interior are described with the seriousness of a field biologist. The mescaline experiments are reported with the precision of a scientist. And underneath all of it is the sense that he is trying to get something out of himself. Onto the page, out of his body, exorcised.
In this workshop we sit with that writing until the strangeness becomes familiar — and the familiar becomes strange. We ask what Michaux found in the space within, and what it opens in us.
The strangeness of natural things.
The naturalness of strange things.
Who this workshop is for
Writers and artists drawn to the extreme edges of interior experience. Anyone curious about what happens when a mind pushes past the ordinary filters and reports back with precision. People who suspect that strangeness is not the opposite of seriousness but its condition.
No prior knowledge of Michaux required. An appetite for the genuinely strange is essential.
What the workshop covers
We read Michaux closely and strangely. Not to understand him but to be worked on by him. We look at the mescaline writings alongside his prose poems and ink drawings, asking what happens when a mind pushes past the ordinary filters and reports back with precision.
There is discussion throughout, following what the writing opens rather than what it means. And there is optional writing toward the end: a prompt that takes you into your own interior territory using Michaux's method of precise, strange attention.
We close with his question — and ours: what country do you live in when nobody is watching?
The Details
Online via Zoom · Thursday 5th November 2026 · 7.30pm - 9.30pm GMT
Open to writers, artists, researchers and the genuinely curious
No prior knowledge of Michaux required
Places limited to fifteen
Price: £35