cineSOURCE magazine

An Open Letter to My Dear Friend John Edmiston Milich
by Doniphan Blair

John Edmiston Milich became a prodigious traveller, talker, astrologer, investigative reporter and conspiracy theorist as well as close friend of this author, shown here in Guanajuato, Mexico, 2019. photo: J. Milich

NOTE: John Edmiston Milich died from pancreatic cancer at 2:11 December 11, 2023, making him 79 (born 5/10/1944). He was in a hospice in Ithaca, New York, surrounded by family, including his sister and son, who came in from Montana. See his obituary. Although he and I were no longer in touch, even though I drove out to visit him in Ithaca in 2022 (he declined to see me), I heard that he was in a good place, mellow and deeply loving. Interestingly, he had recently converted to Islam and was buried in accord with that tradition.

INTRODUCTION: John and I became close friends after meeting in Istanbul in 1972, when I was 17, and he was 28. I used to say, only half-jokingly, he was my guru. Although we had a falling out over 9/11, we reconnected because our community consensus, at that time, was that the 9/11 conspiracy theorists were just followers of an alternative religion. With conspiracies now reaching one of their highest saturation points in history, however, I feel obliged to address John publicly and forthrightly, to tell him that he taught me a lot about "the conspiracy of love," that I still have love for him and that a philosophical course correction is both possible and desperately needed.

My Dearest John,

It has been a few decades since we talked openly, but it is never too late to start again, I believe.

It’s never too late to turn towards the light. Although we may not get to enlightenment physically, since the hour is late and the road is long, we can still arrive symbolically, which will show our support for love, evolution and civilization.

Indeed, you and I come from a community where, once we truly love, we always love. That is because love is about our ideals, which are eternal.

For the same reason, we don’t abandon our wounded on the battlefield. While they may die physically, their symbols can live on, as we can see with George Floyd, martyred in Minneapolis on May 25th, 2020.

My Dearest John, do you remember your dreams back in September 1972 on the roof of Istanbul’s Utopia Hotel, where a bed could be had for a buck? You just might, given your phenomenal memory, but I don’t. Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure I dreamt of love, adventure and art—and that you did, too.

How can I make such a claim? As you undoubtedly recall, after our two-week stint on the roof of the Utopia, I had already heard hours, perhaps even a full day, of your ideas and prognostication. If that sounds somewhat hyperbolic, here’s our mutual friend David Winterburn's observations:

“The main topic on our minds… was the journey east. In this regard, the biggest source of information was a 28 year old from Philadelphia named John Milich, whom I remember sitting cross-legged on a rug up on the roof… surrounded by an attentive group of travelers, espousing on a great number of subjects, including his trip to India in 1970.”

“John loved to talk and… [h]is storytelling was inter-spliced with tidbits of erudition about philosophy, culture and religion that I had never encountered in all my travels… Half sage, half raconteur, he was truly the most fascinating character I had ever met at that point in my life.”

(From left) David Winterburn and this author Doniphan Blair (Americans), Darko Radonovich (Croatian) and Jimmy (Canadian) in Iran, 1972. photo: J. Milich

Largely inspired by your wisdom, I decided to make the long, arduous journey to the East, a spiritual as well as a physical peregrination, of course. Indeed, the former lasts a lifetime, which is why I’m writing you.

To make the trip, I joined with you and David, the Yugoslavians and the Dutchmen (notably Darko Radonovich and Hans Van Loo, with whom I’m also still in touch), and fifteen others Europeans and Americans. We each paid $35 to Dolphin, from Berkeley’s Hog Farm Commune, for a ticket on his old Bedford sightseeing bus, which he dubbed the Rainbow Express.

For 23 days, the Rainbow Express took us on a 2,700 mile adventure, replete with three breakdowns, across Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan to Kabul. There were harrowing moments, like when the bus's brakes blew out on a mountain pass and the assistant driver surfed the road's rocky shoulders to slow us down, or when we were chased back to the bus from a bath house by a passel of boys bombing us with rocks and tomatoes, both in Turkey.

Of course, there were also inspirational events, like when a policeman surprised us at our roadside campfire but then welcomed us to his district and broke out some great green hashish (also Turkey).

One of the most transcendent moments for me, however, concerns you. It transpired our very first day, within hours of crossing the Bosphorus by ferry, going from Europe to Asia, since the bridge only opened the following year.

We passed under a double rainbow. Given the name of the bus and that we were young romantic hippies, we naturally took that as a magnificent omen. But it only acquired actual insight in my mind when you began reciting, in your deep, sonorous voice, a poem from the book you dug out of my pack (where you were rummaging for some unexplained reason):

“Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all wines flowed and all hearts opened,” you boomed over the Rainbow Express’ top-speed, 50-mile-per-hour rattle.

It was “A Season in Hell” (1873), one of Arthur Rimbaud’s, if not history’s, greatest poems. In it, he details his loss of innocence, collapse into cynicism and embrace of the Devil, which turns out to be a spot-on profile of a believer in conspiracy theories.

My Dearest John, my question to you is this: Where were all the conspiracies back then? If there are so many today, surely there must have been some in 1972.

Indeed, we were just nine years and three years, respectively, from Kennedy’s assassination and the presumed moon landings. The Watergate break-in was only four months old (June 17, 1972), and the Vietnam War was raging, as was the Cold War. In fact, India and Pakistan just fought a proxy war in 1971, and we were headed toward that battlefield.

Arthur Rimbaud, the teen titan of poetry, considered romanticism civilization’s great idea, although he was from the French, succeed-through-failure school and went down to spiritual defeat. image: unknown

Given your powers of observation and analysis, your prodigious travels and conversations, not to mention your study of astrology, surely you must have known about some conspiracies back then. Why didn’t you mention them?

As you recall, the Rainbow Express broke down north of Tehran in the middle of the Alborz Mountains. As it happens, that was not far from Alamut Castle, ancestral home of the Hashashins, one of history’s most notorious actual conspiratorial groups.

Perpetrators of hundreds of assassinations across the Middle East in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Hashashins gifted us not only the word “assassin” and the strategy of the suicide strike, which al-Qaeda updated for 9/11, but the cynicism and nihilism needed to operate fluidly in the realm of conspiracy consciousness.

“Everything is permitted and nothing is real,” was the dictum of the Hashashin's founder, Hassan ibn Sabbah.

But as we wandered away from the stalled Rainbow Express and started exploring the gorgeous mountain canyon and its rushing river, as well as dropping acid (some of us: David, the Yugoslavians and me, but perhaps you as well), secret cabals and demonic forces were the farthest thing from our minds.

Despite being stranded on a barren mountain, in a foreign land, a few miles from the Soviet border, not far from Alamut—and tripping—our prevailing feelings were enjoyment, acceptance and trust.

Indeed, we felt love for each other, for the people of Iran—be it the banker, who helped us score opium the night before and was now partying with his two young daughters on his knees in the back of the bus, or the mechanics working diligently on its engine with only hand tools—and most of the people of the world.

My Dearest John, were you conspiring against us back then? Were you playing the part of an optimistic, loving and visionary old soul, while secretly believing we were doomed to drown in a sea of nefarious schemes under attack by secret groups and government agencies?

From your demeanor, actions, and everything you said, I have to conclude a resounding, "No!" which suggests your conspiracy interests came upon you later.

Milich, in a photo titled 'I love myself', on Crete 1972 shortly before his second journey to India. photo: J. Milich

Many of us are wounded, some severely. Naturally, we repress the trauma to buy the time needed to solve our injury’s riddle.

Some injuries heal easier than others. As deadly or devastating as an accident, attack or disease can be, what caused it is usually not shrouded in mystery.

Alas, other insults are more complex. Indeed, those of bourgeois life—being mollycoddled by tolerant but less-than-loving parents, being excluded from in-crowds, relinquishing bohemia to get a straight job—are insidious. They seem minimal but they scar deep.

Whatever our injury, if we come of age without achieving the inner strength to tackle the wisdom worker’s first assignment—“Know thyself”—we naturally look for a way to scab over our wounds.

Conspiracy fanaticism to the rescue.

Instead of challenging us to improve our thoughts and deeds, or those of our community, we distract ourselves and our community by blaming others, by decrying mysterious forces out to destroy us. The severity of the threat entitles us to attack it with all our public hate and private angst, while appearing to remain dedicated to our community.

Conspiracists often join together into loving, supportive groups, but to do so they must cast out the other, presenting a problem. Accepting the other, the stranger—even the criminal or enemy—is a core concept of almost all faith traditions.

My Dearest John, you’ve had decades to experiment with conspiracy consciousness and delve deeper than anyone I know. Surely by now, you can see the fruit of your labors and can guess what I am about to say:

Conspiracy consciousness stands in exact opposition to the spiritual path you outlined so eloquently on the roof of the Utopia, almost fifty years ago.

Although you may protest this pronouncement profusely, hurling heaping helpings of hurtful hate, I’m pretty sure that, in your bones, you know what I am saying.

Conspiracy consciousness is not the way of the Buddha or the shaman. Conspiracy consciousness will never lead to big love or enlightenment or even becoming a functional adult.

The psychological trick of conspiracy consciousness, of directing one’s anger towards an unknown entity or others, in lieu of looking within to its true origins, will not heal our wounds.

I am reaching out to you today not only to tell you the simple truth about conspiracies and remind you of your brilliance back in the day, but to note a secret revealed to me by my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair.

You met my mother many times, of course, indeed, you became friends with both my mother and my father, but she was reserved back then. Since you undoubtedly did most of the talking, you may not have percieved her views on love, kindness and romance.

From John Milich's India diary, 1972, showing his traveling companions, Barbara (lft) and Daniela (rt), and this author in the lower corner. photo: J. Milich

Fortunately, she has written a book about her experiences during the Holocaust, “Love at the End of the World” (see the chapter, "Stefan" here, which illustrates how a teenage orphan surmounted a tsunami of suffering, hate and trauma. Although she doesn’t use the term, I call it the Conspiracy of Love both to evoke its radical ideas and to make them crystal clear for you.

During World War II, in the belly of history’s biggest beast, my mother joined a secret society of decent people working diligently, desperately—often until their dying breath—for healing, redemption and love, especially romantic love.

Despite the immensity of the injury and suffering, although she often became deeply depressed, she didn’t descend into cynicism, bitterness and hate. She simply kept hewing as hard as she could to truth, beauty, justice and love.

My Dearest John, given that both your former self and my mother reject conspiracism, shouldn’t you reconsider your position?

The hour is getting late. There are computer conglomerates controlling much of the world, not by virtue of a conspiracy but by people voluntarily participating and providing their secrets.

Trump is president, the Covid-19 pandemic is raging and there are demonstrations in the streets. The earth’s ecosystem and its people’s physical, economic and political well being are under dire threat.

As such, there will be many unhappy people happy to leverage the chaos with conspiracy consciousness, in the hope that greater confusion will bring, if not a revolution, at least a leveling, a bringing down of everyone to their level.

Yes, the forces of good are also rising, from the peaceful protestors to the helpful neighbors or conservatives breaking rank to denounce Trump.

Nevertheless, there is a significant chance we are entering an epoch of darkness—not one created by imaginary puppet masters but by us, through our inactions and erroneous analysis.

Although it is not the end times, which is essentially a conspiracy concept, we are obviously in a period of elevated death, economic hardship and political turmoil.

My Dearest John, Won’t you rejoin me in fighting for the love and cooperation you convinced me of on the roof of the Utopia?

I realize you’re petrified of your inner demons, which undoubtedly involve your father and your sources of income. I realize you have taken up with some very dark energies, as indicated by your Facebook page. I realize change is hard at 76 years of age, and that it might seem like a betrayal of your conspiracy confreres.

But the time for petty differences and denials is done. We must get to work, immediately. Don't tarry another instant in coming back over to the right side of dream, romance and enlightenment, as well as history.

Once you get rolling, once you get back on the Rainbow Express, as it were, I think you will find that all the distrust, lying and hate required by conspiracies is hard, while love, honesty and forgiveness is actually pretty easy. That is because it is the way; it is the way of all flesh; and it is your true self.

'An Open Letter to My Dear Friend John Edmiston Milich' has three companion pieces which together make up the full essay 'Our Golden Age of Conspiracies': 'A Brief Introduction to Conspiracies', 'The Anti-Conspiracy Manifesto', a rehabilitation regimen in 13 steps; and 'Anti-Jewish Conspiracies and the Conspiracy of Love', a review of conspiracies committed AGAINST the Jewish people and the efforts of many people to do the right thing, which are based on the Holocaust experiences of Tonia Rotkopf Blair and detailed in her upcoming book “Love at the End of the World” (Fall 2020, Austin Macauley).

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Jul 08, 2020 - 01:38 AM