Travelin‘ Man

Globe-trotter Laurence Cherniak has explored the hash-making centers of the world

By Paul Rogers

If you’re a longtime cannabis connoisseur, Laurence Cherniak is almost certainly on your radar—and very probably on your bookshelf. See, Cherniak has been a globe-trotting guru of all things marijuana for over 40 years and his Great Books of Hashish trilogy, which gorgeously documents his travels in words and photographs, is considered both a classic and cornerstone of contemporary cannabis culture.

But there’s much more to this calm Canadian than just passionate photojournalism. Over the course of his life he’s also been a painter, actor, director, activist, musician, poet, webmaster, videographer, designer/inventor, diver, frequent hemp fest speaker, close friend of the late, great Jack Herer and much more besides. Cherniak talked to CULTURE about how he fits it all in, his abiding memories—and why he’ll probably never slow down, but sometimes slows up.

“I do organize my time and the way that I do that is to be free in the first place, so that I have the ability to plan ahead,” says Cherniak, an adherent to  Alfred Korzybski’s concept of “time binding” (the uniquely human ability to pass information and knowledge between generations at an accelerating rate). “It’s a matter of binding time and giving it a direction . . . I’m fortunate that I’ve had some of my wildest dreams come true.”

Some of those experiences are documented in The Great Books of Hashish, the first of which was published in 1979. Yet despite these books’ revered status, Cherniak doesn’t regard them as his greatest achievement. “No, but it’s my proudest hobby,” he mulls in his disarmingly genial timbre. “It certainly is a major achievement, but certainly some of my paintings are right up there and also some of the performances I’ve done as an actor and some of the work I’ve done as a stage director.

“I see them as mostly a hobby, but I certainly see that they can lead to all kinds of other things and that’s what they’re beginning to do more and more—because of the spin-off items that have come along to promote them.” These spin-offs include everything from marijuana leaf-emblazoned dish sets and “casino-quality” playing cards to Cherniak’s organic plant wash and self-invented Bubbleator resin collector.

Despite the breadth of his worldwide wanderings, Cherniak doesn’t hesitate when asked about the places that linger in his consciousness. “Always Nepal, for sure, because of the attitude of the people. They’re certainly one of the most enlightened peoples on the planet. And of course Hawaii does that as well . . . I’ve lived in both of those places.”

Great Books of Hashish 4, which has been on the cards for at least five years, should finally appear this year, says Cherniak. “Then I’ll probably do 5 and 6. There’s several more involved. I have probably over 2 million photographs over these past 40 years . . . The next one that is in that series is a book called The Joy of Smoking Hash 100 Ways.”

Cherniak was about to leave for fresh travels in Central and South America when we spoke but, characteristically, already had his post-trip time booked up. “When I get back in two or three months I’ve got a series of paintings that I’ll be doing, probably about 30 paintings. The theme for at least a dozen of them will be the equivalent of microscopic photos of trichomes and that part of the [cannabis] plant.”

It’s clear the man never slows down.

“I don’t use that term in my vocabulary,” he deadpans. “I would say slow up, because there is a difference . . . If you love what you’re doing, then there isn’t really a concern about getting quite the rest.” (Photos courtesy of Laurence Cherniak)

www.laurencecherniak.com.

HOW REAL IS REAL?

Hash-minded world traveler Laurence Cherniak pays heed to some of the ideas of  Alfred Korzybski, a philosopher and scientist who created general semantics, a discipline that suggests that people are “enslaved” by language because it conditions us to perceive a false reality. For the bumper sticker crowd, one quote attributed to Koryzbski is: “There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.”