Schrodinger's Cat

on marijuana

Here's a short essay I banged out for a website about uses for marijuana. I did it yesterday so haven't found out if they want it yet...

I’m writing this at age 25, so I can offer a perspective of someone not yet middle aged but old enough to have been through some ups and downs. I also live in a social milieu where cannabis is commonplace. I’m too young to offer any final conclusions, nor would I want to. I’m currently in a period of non-cannabis use, I haven’t strictly quit but I also have no intention of using it at present. There is a temptation to do so but not irresistible. It is an old friend that I miss, and it has been a factor in my early adulthood. I suspect things would have turned out very similarly in any case but I might not have had the same intensity of subjective experience without the drug.
I first tried pot at age seventeen. Before then I had already attracted an undeserved reputation at school as a stoner for my casual appearance & attitude. I was already of an artistic non-conformist temperament, and had discovered music for the first time a year or two before and started growing my hair. I read William Blake and William Burroughs for fun. Marijuana had nothing to do with any of this. I was suspicious of it not because of the illegality or fears of brain damage but because I didn’t get on well with the people who did use it. Eventually a classmate who I was friendly with offered me some. When I first tried it I didn’t get stoned and found it a bit pointless. I do remember the uncomfortable sensation of itchy eyeballs, and watching a tv movie that I was unable to work out if it was supposed to be a comedy.
The next couple of years passed, and I tried pot again at age nineteen at a party. This time it worked. I felt a rising sensation and a sudden happiness. I became much more aware of the sonic textures of the background music. A song came on that I knew the chords to, and I found myself playing perfect air guitar – to the great amusement of the other people there. I also had a great early experience with free improvised music in a group while stoned, we recorded an hour of jamming which gradually got looser and freer as it went. The last piece had us all drumming and making various vocal noises and phrases. It ended in a fast climax with me yelling in ecstasy “Eat the noise! Eat the noise!” - hinting at synaesthesia perhaps. At times when stoned I feel as though the sounds have physical presence which I can reach out and touch.
I have fond memories of that year (I had just left home) and three or four specific stoned evenings. I spent one night wandering around by the seashore furiously writing pages in my notebook. The piece was called ‘The Marion Flow’, which could be an example of a stoned inspiration. People ask me who Marion is – I didn’t know anyone by that name, it was a word I invented that evening, somewhere between ‘marine’ and ‘marionette’. I later discovered James Joyce’s ‘Finnegans Wake’ with its allusive dream-language, and that has been one of my favourite books to read while stoned. ‘The Marion Flow’ was largely nonsensical, with a nursery-rhyme rhythm – ‘…on the scintillating hot bells and lookee ye near or so that I’m reckoned to see for the seashore that to be for my kneeshore and that stockreled that night to the jouno in flight himbo with or with go and to evenly foe…’ on and on for several pages, but it became more lucid towards the end (as the pot wore off?). Some weeks or months later I made a second draft of it by taking out all the parts which made no sense to me, and subsequently recorded it as a spoken word piece set to music. It’s one of the best things I’ve done, and a later piece called ‘And in a Who Gets to Who and Who Does and Him’ was made the same way.
For the next few years while I went to university, I used marijuana occasionally in social settings or by myself listening to music. I never had the urge to use it more than once or twice a month, and usually less.
I notice pot has an effect on people, their faces became caricatures or cartoonish. I find this with films while stoned – and I become much more aware of the actors than usual. The grain of the voices, the shape of the faces, the style of delivery are foregrounded. On the other hand I find it difficult sometimes to follow the narrative. I find that actual cartoons seem too simple, my stoned brain loves complexity of texture. I’ve had two experiences however watching movies under the influence of (mild) acid, and that’s been the drug that really enhances them. The acting comes alive but I’m also keenly aware of the direction and editing and the overall mechanics of the film.

When I moved to Wellington I found marijuana use fairly prevalent among artists and musicians, including older ones whose work I admired, and who I found very intelligent and articulate – so no reason to see the drug as a bad thing. I found that marijuana helped me in appreciating dissonant avant-garde music, particularly free jazz which has a strong presence in Wellington. Listening to it and discussing it with musicians, and attempting to play it would have been the main factors but weed was (sometimes) in there as well. It helped in being able to pick out the subtle nuances of sound, and to hear how musical interaction was possible without a melody or steady beat. This genre of music is somewhat marginalized and many listeners quickly characterize it as random noise, but some people devote their lives to playing it which is proof enough of its worth, and a lot of them (not all of them) smoke pot so go figure.
Free improvised music is also interesting in that it is unpredictable and complex, the opposite of song-based music which gives pleasure through familiarity. There are certain ‘classic albums’ in free jazz by artists such as John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey etc but each listening always reveals something new. Where this ties in with marijuana is that personally I always found the drug best when listening to music that I’m not greatly familiar with. Music that I know well becomes boring while stoned, whereas a new album - or one that I do know of something very complex like free improvisation or modern classical music – is a fascinating experience. This extends to music that I have heard before while straight; the first time hearing it stoned is a new revelation but subsequent stoned listenings yield diminishing returns.
I’m certainly not uncritical while stoned, and so I found that while getting stoned doesn’t improve my music playing - it can slow down reflexes – it is good for ‘quality control’ when listening to my recordings. Mediocre playing is readily apparent. Likewise banalities such as tv - particularly advertising - become downright painful.

2002 was the year where I increased my marijuana intake sharply. I had finished university and found it difficult to get a job. I also had a girlfriend so unemployment didn’t seem so bad, and I used the extra spare time to write and record music. I wrote a book of short stories and recorded an album (my third), using a lot more pot than previously, and also grew my first vegetable garden. During the day I would get up mid-morning, go for a swim, have a shower and breakfast, get stoned and sit down to some writing. During breaks I loved watching the garden evolve, and snacking on some organic celery or lettuce or silverbeet – great health benefits, I highly recommend it (and living things such as plants are endlessly fascinating to look at up close while stoned).
This idyllic life proved unsustainable however as my bank balance was in steady decline and I was frustrated by unemployment. My girlfriend got a well-paid job with long work hours and a hectic social pace, and the inequality created tension between us. I became deeply introspective and too attached to her while neglecting my wider social circle. Marijuana doesn’t cause psychedelic hallucinations, it is more an intensifier of what is already there – for better or worse. So the tension got worse as my savings ran out and I found it hard to pay the bills, summer came and the garden was now full of weeds and insect damage, and the kitchen developed a cockroach problem. I was using marijuana to get the writing done but with my surroundings turning ugly it stopped being fun. I also started getting short-term memory loss and became reclusive. The writing became an uphill battle as my girlfriend turned downright hostile and eventually dumped me. She was a pot smoker too, we had had great times together both stoned and straight. She was more of a socialite than I, and moved on to amphetamines and heavy drinking as well. These drugs have more of an overt dark side. She was a monster to me after she left. In that scene (the film industry) creativity and drug-taking on one hand and competition, stress, egotism, overwork, and profit-driven greed on the other are not mutually exclusive.
Again I chose not to explore the harder drugs from a distrust of the social scene in which they were found. There's also the financial aspect, I was broke enough as it was. In terms of value for money marijuana is far superior to alcohol, and the harder drugs are prohibitively expensive. The other problem with illegal drugs - including marijuana - is that buying them basically means subsidizing gangs & other organized crime. This is of course a standard argument in favour of legalisation. Personally I’m in favour of individuals growing their own pot-plants for personal use as a way of not funding gangs but it has a higher risk of getting caught and I haven’t learned how to do so myself yet.
I couldn’t handle the intensity of everyday life any more, I had to cut down on pot. I spent the autumn straight, working on building sites to pay off my student debt and work through my grief at the breakup. Things have since come more or less right, I got an interesting job, a better flat, met new people and learned a lot of new things. Marijuana currently doesn’t seem to work for me any more, at least not while there’s an unresolved tension in my life. I found myself falling into the trap which I had been wary of at school, of smoking weed and then just sitting there for long periods. My thoughts run in circles. I might write a couple of sentences in half an hour. Since that summer I get a strange muscle tension side effect in my left forearm when I smoke it, and it no longer brings racing thoughts & associations. I don’t enjoy being stoned in public, I get the stoner paranoia that ‘they know’.
In many ways I’m happier now, I did get the stories & albums done, I can concentrate well on music without pot (though I don't get the synaesthetic effect), and I love watching nature. I do have to relearn how to write – my current writing is mechanically competent especially for non-fiction but I need to rediscover my imagination, how to make new things up. It’s not just a matter of taking a magic-bullet drug, it’s a whole new life’s journey. I’m excited about it. This is by no means the end of the story…

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

Posted by fiffdimension at March 8, 2004 10:38 PM | TrackBack