Danison saga with Sue Watkins and Tam Mossman

There was a Sethnik fellow named Peter Danison (later pen name Tom Dark) who I struck up a pen pal friendship, ca. 1984.

Independently, he was corresponding with Sue Watkins and that culminated in her traveling to CA (San Fran as I recall) and driving back with relatively newly-divorced him to the Elmira area in a U-Haul and his living with her.

On their way, they stopped in Racine and paid me a visit, ca. Oct. 1986 as I recall.

A year or so later (ca. Sept 1987), I flew to Elmira to visit them and got to meet Rob and Laurel.

He wrote quite well. In fact there was this fanzine called Coordinate Point International which consisted of peoples' letters to it and I was going to just let my subscription lapse cos it was largely boring until his letters appeared, and that's when we started to write to one another.

When we were on good terms, he suggested to me that I start a zine and suggested I call it Sumari Bulletin. I called it Sumari BULLetin as I didn't want to be tied down to it keeping to just "Seth topics."

I was never happy with the name and eventually changed it to The (something) and he didn't like that one bit.

He tended to pick on people and turned on me a few years later when I took the honest route and told him I didn't think his music was that great or at least it did nothing for me. I suppose from his view I turned on him by not digging his music which he considered brilliant. But his writing sparkled and I admired that part of him.

He even sent a book proposal on dreams to Prentice Hall and got an encouraging response, but he dropped that endeavor.

Actually, a friend of mine who also didn't care for his music (G2T -- Gerald Theodore Tarwid) wrote a quite negative review of it which I published in S BULL. I think he took that as a betrayal, that I printed that. But while he was constantly dishing it out to others, he couldn't take any criticism in return.

And as if a bad review in the pages of an obscure zine is going to ruin his career.

But I let him have right of reply and there were a few exchanges between my friend and him in S BULL until my friend brought it to a close by insincerely writing to the effect that "My God, how could I have thought otherwise? Your music is the greatest I have ever heard!"

He did actually interest a record producer (Richard Podolor) in his music to his credit, but that ultimately led nowhere, not even a recording session.

Meantime, things over a few years disintegrated between him and Sue until they eventually parted ways.

He was always spoiling for a debate.

I recall when visiting them, that he commenced one with UFO buff me on space travel and Sue got up and left the room and he called out after her, "What's the matter, Watkins? Don't want to be bested again?"

After they broke up, when she got books published, he'd leave nasty reviews on Amazon and such.

And he badgered Tam Mossman for years.

I forget why, I suppose he disapproved of Tam's channeling of James, for one thing. I now recall, he took Tam to task for his channeling in the pages of S BULL and there were some debating exchanges which I printed until that died out.

I think an element (maybe the main one for all I know) in Tam's and Sue's estrangement was him not way-unreasonably thinking, "Sue, can't you do something about your harrassing boyfriend?"

He lorded it over me that I met Sue, Rob and Laurel thru his auspices.

He indeed suggested to me I write to Tam and send Tam an S BULL.

Indeed the idea of a zine that I would edit and publish was his. (I just used my home photocopier to run off 100-200 issues most of which were laid around places for free; bro Dave would lay some out in Mpls.)

I was indeed grateful to him for all that, but I wasn't going to grovel in his sea of abuses.

For when it comes to narcissism, he would assuredly be a Class A example as anyone who knew him would have to agree.

And there were a LOT of estrangements between him and others left in his wake. Doesn't play well with others.

He didn't have anything nice to say about any of the ESP class people such as the NY boys.

However, even when it was clear that Laurel had paranoid even schizophrenic problems he stayed on her good side by defending her. Very ingratiating.

Actually, no one was ATTACKING her; people were just urging her to get help.

He could be delusional himself.

This is on the talk tab to the entry on "zine" in wikipedia:

Tom Dark

Apparently, A blogger with a sense of humour called Tom Dark placed what seems to be like a stand-up comedy monologue in the description of Zine, along with a link to his Blog. Someone should clean that up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.106.214.39 (talk) 20:24, 25 November 2007 (UTC) --Davilvi (talk) 20:28, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

It's happened again. TL;DR, chopped. He seems to be pushing the idea that he came up with the word "'zine", but he's going about it the wrong way. -Ashley Pomeroy 16:29, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Zine#Tom_Dark

He thought that not only that he coined the word 'zine,' but that S BULL was the first zine!

He died about 5 or so years ago. Diabetic complications, I think.

Sue was in part relieved. Even tho he moved to AZ or thereabouts, she always feared he was going to show up on her doorstep one day.

A couple of the NY boys (Kendall and Stack?), before Seth, were followers of a guy who was something of a cult leader.

But on his reading list was The Seth Material which served to introduce them to Seth.

So Seth told them not to think purely negatively of him for that reason.

For me, Danison was similar in that he was truly no picnic, but I got to meet Rob and Sue thru him etc.

I understand Tam donated his S BULLs to the Yale archive.

Mary Dillman told me saw them there.

P.S.

There is a fellow in S BULL named Peter LaMorticello.

 

Him and D'son went back aways.

 

Some years after D'son and I parted ways, I read a blurb about narcissism along the lines of, as I recall, that they usually did not get enough attention from their parents.

 

D'son was from a large Catholic family, somewhere in the middle of the children, birth-order-wise.

 

LaM told me D'son's dad was pretty bad news.

 

D'son had a song I never heard called "Dear God, Please Make Me a Rock and Roll Star."

 

I sent LaM an e-mail with that in the subject line and a few remarks about narcissists that I read in that blurb.

 

For some horrid reason, when he replied, he copied D'son.

 

So what I did was, analogy, like give D'son a rather solid punch to the shoulder and since LaM shared that with him, D'son took the opportunity to, analogy, try to put me in the hospital in what he wrote where I presume he BCC'd all kinds of people cos he started it out with "Dear Ladies and Gentlemen."

 

It was a masterpiece of innuendo about me with him lying (by omission about me) and so forth. Quite the smear.

 

I didn't bother to reply as I don't know who saw it, who the Ladies and Gentlemen were other than LaM.

 

Any astute person would have realized, however, that D'son was protesting too much, WAY WAY WAY too much.

 

Confirmation that I was entirely correct: he was a narcissist.

 

Incidentally, when McCartney took some punch in shoulder jabs at Lennon on his Ram album, song "Too Many People," Lennon hit back in put-Paul-in-the-hospital fashion with "How Do Sleep?" on the Imagine album.

 

Paul, in his song, sings "You took your lucky break and broke it in two" and "Too many people going underground" and another line or two.

 

Lennon's response was, among other lines, "The only thing you done was 'Yesterday' and now you're just another day..."

 

It didn't help Paul's feelings that George played guitar on the Lennon tune.