OFF: antidrug lemmy

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Tue, Nov 15, 2005 at 04:10:42PM -0700, Guido Vacano typed out:
> Okay, thanks. I wonder how much art and music (and possibly other forms
> of expression) would not exist if there were no "pissheads"/alcoholics,
> or drug users/abusers? There certainly wouldn't be any psychedelic art
> or music. No Salvador Dali. No Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I suspect. Edgar
> Allan Poe? I wonder what Frank Zappa's work would have been like if he
> didn't smoke like a chimney?

        I think it's certainly true that some creators of art, broadly
speaking, get or got their greatest inspiration through applying drugs of
one kind or another to their subconsciouses. But I'm not sure it's
required. Dali seems to have had whatever he had on tap; if he had
substance habits I don't know about them, but even if he did, on the other
hand there's Maurits Escher, who is famously quoted as saying, "I don't
take drugs. My dreams are frightening enough." Coleridge and Byron
certainly fond of the laudanum; but Byron's best stuff shows no trace of
it, while Coleridge's sings of drugs. As for musicians, Zappa is a fine
example of someone who could priduce `psychedelic' music without the use
of psychedelics. Steven Wilson would seem to be another. If Zappa hadn't
had cigarettes, though, the coffee might have won out and we'd maybe have
had death metal twenty years early :-)

> IMHO, "pisshead" is an overly judgemental term of limited utility. Walk
> a mile in Ozzy's shoes -- maybe you'd be a pisshead too?

        Again, it can't be that simple. The rest of Sabbath seem to have
escaped the drugs in a way that Ozzy didn't.

        I think what I'm getting at is that people deal with things
differently depending on who they are. This isn't exactly a great truth
:-) Yours,
           Jon

ObCD: On Trial - _Head Entrance_
--
        Jonathan Jarrett                Birkbeck College, London
                 jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
        --------------------------------------------------------
  "The large print giveth and the small print taketh away." (Tom Waits)