Your Words Burn the Air Like the Names of Candy Bars

I'm not exactly sure what the title of this blog means. It's a quote from some band I used to listen to when I was in junior high. Their name was Soul Coughing and the lead singer, Mike Doughty, was addicted to heroin throughout the band's career. He also wrote a book of poetry that he used as a way to keep himself off of drugs while he was in rehab. When he was shooting heroin his lyrics were charged with all this imagery that as a listener, one had so much fun imagining. He later said that everything he wrote while in the band was influenced by heroin and most of it had no meaning. However, once he sobered up, and took a solo career his lyrics suffered tremendously. You can follow his lyrical downfall in audio.

I had always thought that maybe artists relied on drugs as a way to get over certain anxieties within themselves. Perhaps they were nervous that nobody would respond to things that they were creating, and as a defense mechanism used drugs as their back up plan. The whole, "Well, I was on drugs when I wrote this." I think Hughes said "cold" creativity comes from the artist without the use of drugs. I thought that maybe he was saying that the artist is quite capable of producing the same work while sober. I think it's an interesting area to research. He only mentioned in one sentence how artists practiced their craft for many years. It wasn't just magic when they put a pen, paint brush, or instrument in their hands.

Hughes mentioned Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Kesey wrote one phenomenal book before he started using LSD, and then he never did much after that. I think he wrote one other book to very little acclaim, but for the most part he spent the rest of his life running away to Mexico to avoid being arrested, or he was driving across the country on that bus while he and his friends colored themselves in Day-Glo. Artistically, his career was rather uneventful. That's one example.

Balzac and Dumas are two of my favorite authors. I was unaware of Balzac's involvement with the Club des Haschischins, but I started laughing about Dumas' name being mentioned. There are a few scenes in The Count of Monte Cristo where I think Dumas wasn't so concerned about the plot of his novel as much as he just wanted to describe how great marijuana is.


Walsh

There was a paragraph in Walsh's text that was borderline if not pointless.

"Electroencephalograms of subjects listening to drumming seemed to show auditory driving responses. Unfortunately, the studies are flawed and give us little reliable information." Okay.
I would much rather him say, "Hey, reader. Have you ever stood near a drum set while someone bangs away on it. You know that feeling in your chest. Your whole body feels like it's not on the ground. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about."

Roberte Hamayon rejects shamanism as if these cultures are putting on stunts like David Blain or that other weird guy from Las Vegas. Not Copperfield, that rock n' roll looking one. She says, "How can we determine whether practitioners are actually in altered states, let alone which state they are in." She makes it sound as if shamans have some alterior motive. For instance, are these South American tribes doing this for money and publicity? Please.

Throughout this portion of the book, Walsh mentions the ungoing debate of drug induced ASCs and contemplative ASCs. I have yet to read any evidence of the drug induced ASCs causing anyone harm.

And Santa... That article was a lot of fun, and well thought out. It's a bit hard to write an analysis on an analysis. I was really hoping Bursenos would delve into Christmas trees. I always thought of them as being a product of someone's ASC.

"There is still such a legacy of fear and misunderstanding about hallucinogenic mushrooms that many of us simply refuse to consider the role they have played in forming the human mind." An interesting quote. Along with Santa, there are all sorts of stories related to people using mushrooms while they wrote them. Most of the stories are for kids.