Recipes for the Mind

Beginning in 2014, the artist Charles Lindsay began to dream “recipes” in the crepuscule of the subconscious. In this book, these feverishly written texts, many of which began as bedside jottings, are joined with images: photographs from Lindsay's past, present, and imagined future. Recipes for the Mind offers a chronicle of re-remembering, a more nuanced mashup of chronologies than the linear documentary narratives Lindsay peddled earlier in life as a photojournalist hanging out with shamans in Asia and golf-ball-wielding grizzly bears in Montana. Lindsay's recent work as an artist has pushed (and sometimes torn) the envelope of possibility, creating immersive environments, augmented realities, new chemical and digital life forms that are technically complicated, expensive to produce, and amorphous, requiring dedicated spaces at impossible scales. Recipes for the Mind is a return to words, photographs, and a book—things that can be enjoyed almost anywhere. Lindsay reflects on art, technology, consumption, near-death experiences, encounters with the wild, psychedelics, time travel, failure, and courage. There are clues embedded in the pairings of words and images; solve the riddle, then come over for supper. Bring your friends—he will cook for you. Charles Lindsay is director of the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute Artists in Residence program. His work has been featured in Wired and the New York Times Magazine and on CNN and NPR. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography, he is the author of Mentawai Shaman, Upstream, Voices of the Land, and other books.