Hill: Well, take a collage for example. Like the early one on page 36 of the Principia. Each little piece was extracted from some larger work created by some other artist and published and maybe copyrighted. I find them in newspapers and magazines mostly. Often from ads. With a collage you select and extract from your environment and then assemble into an original relationship.

The Principia itself is a collage. A conceptual collage. All of it happens simultaneously. But visually it is a montage, passing through time, like a book does.

There is a lot of pirated stuff in the Principia, especially in the margins. But also I sympathize with artists who must own and sell their works to earn a living. Art, like knowledge, should be free fodder for everyone. But it isn't It is perplexing.

Gypsie: Where did all the things in Principia come from?

Hill: Well, a full answer would take another book in itself. Most of the writing credited to a name is a true person and almost always a different name means a different person. Most of the non-credited, you know, Malaclypse, text is mine although some things credited to either Mal² or Omar were actually co-written and passed back and forth and rewritten by each of us. The marginalia, dingbats, and pasted in titles and heads and things came from wherever I found them--some of which is original but uncredited Discordian output, like the page head on 12 and other pages which is from a series of satiric memo pads from Our Peoples Underworld Cabal.

All page layout is mine and some whole graphics like the Sacred Chao and the Hodge Podge Transformer are mine but mostly I just found stuff and integrated it. Mostly I did concept, say 50% of the writing, 10% of the graphics, all of the layout.

Gypsie: Specifically, what are some of the sources?

Hill: Weel, the poem on the front cover is by Walt Kelly and was spoken by one of his characters in Pogo. The government seals starting from page 1 are from a book of sample seals from the U.S. Government Printing Office. Western Union on page 6 got into the act because I used to be a teletype operator and had access to blank forms. Rubber stamps came from all over the place and some, like the apple on page 27, I carved myself. A few I ordered to my specification, like on page 1. The quote on the top of page 8 might be from Barnum, I'm not sure. The jumping man on page 12 is from an advertisement. I recognize the style--a popular commercial artist--but I don't know his name. The Chinese on the page is a grocery ad, I think. The Norton money on page 14 is historic, plus my little additions. The apple on page 17, as well as the triangle on 23 and the Sacred Chao on 50 are, believe it or not, pasteups of mimeographs, from Seattle Cabal. That group produced the best damn mimeography I've ever seen. The Lick Here Box on page 23 is one of many tidbits making the rounds in alternative/underground newspapers in those days. Trip 5 page header on 29 was a chapter title in one of Tim Leary's books.