When I chose the topic of Altered States I instantly thought of getting high. Then I realised I no longer carried the disposition or the connect saving me the trouble. Then I thought back to my days at university, Mary Jane was a frequent visitor then. During the winter she was a permanent resident, not once did I see my mates not enveloped in a haze of smoke. Admittedly I did partake a few times but I never stayed for long, I had stuff to do, an exam to revise for, friends to meet, souls to save etc.
Now why am I telling you this? Am I high now? Am I going through the stoner’s motion of rambling from one topic to another? Here’s the point, the green stuff makes you sluggish and dims the mind, so when I hear a writer announce he wrote this particular masterpiece under the influence, skeptical is me.
The Beats, those purveyors of cool, ‘the angel headed hipsters’, setting the world to right, not a single back upright, were the great exponents of the altered state if only to shake their own United States out of dull conformity. But knowing their work you started to see the dedicated writers they were, the Ginsbergs, the Burroughs, the Kerouacs were sober enough some of the time to craft some fine words (for the sake of brevity I’m going to open the discussion to include other intoxicants). Admittedly the Moloch section of Ginsberg’s Howl was written through a fog, and William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch composed with a litany of illegal substances coursing through his veins, and Kerouac’s On the Road gusting forth proportionate to the amount of pills good old Jack just popped. But have you ever read extracts from the first draft of these fine works? A mess of mixed metaphors and circular reasoning. Yes, On the Road was written in three days, but they fail to mention it took months of editing and re-writes before it became the novel we know it today. Naked Lunch is on par with Ulysses for it’s pain in the arse-ness to read. And what about the 'Moloch' section of Howl, I’ll give you that but admittedly it’s the weakest part of that poem.
Alcohol is probably the worse offender of talent killing. A writer’s proficiency corresponds indirectly to the amount of alcohol consumed. I normally stop writing after the second pint and prefer to leer at the bar maid for the rest of my stay, notepad plain. So many great writers have been laid to waist by the demon sauce, Berryman, Lowell, Hemingway, Faulkner, Cheever, Chandler, Carver (all the C’s). Dylan Thomas the Welsh bard killed himself drinking eighteen straight whiskeys (although I think that’s a myth myself), and keep in mind all the poems we know him for were written stone sober in a shed, under the stern gaze of his long suffering wife Caitlin.
Psychedelics open our minds, on the marvels of LSD, Magic Mushrooms and their ilk I have spent many a Summer day in their company, and have filled notebook after notebook with insights into the universe. Unfortunately I cannot tell you any of those insights, or tell how long God’s beard is. My writing is intelligible at the best of time and after a trip my notepad looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. The bits I manage to decipher are so pedestrian and cliche I feel like I’m reading the scrip to Eastenders. However unlike alcohol which is friend of forgetting, the memory of your trip on psychedelics lasts potentially for a lifetime, so you can always tap that reservoir if needed. Although few and far between are those times.
Here’s the crux my fellow travellers. There’s nothing greater than the Altered State of Flow, that non- substance-induced state of writing when you feel in absolute control. Unaware of the passing of time, the words flow almost without thought, like they have been gifted from up on high, potentially woven into God’s beard. And up to the time when you are awakened from your trance by a car alarm or the kids running into the room, you are one with the verse/the universe. It is the greatest rush more than any stimulated high, better than weed, alcohol, or a twelve hour trip to nirvana, the feeling of completion. That final full stop and the feeling of a good job done, nothing beats the rush. This is why I write, give me that anytime.
Jamie
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