Hey Moonlapse, nice reply, mateur and insightful. There are few things which I feel you have skewed reality on a bit however, and I'll mention these things:
Originally posted by Moonlapse
Responsible, recreational mind altering... now there's just something there that doesn't click with me.
Why? Here's a couple of examples:
Mr. Joeblow, who is a lawyer currently undertaking a very stressful murder case, gets home after a hard night of arguing in court and has a few hit from his bong to clear his mind and help him relax. Is this not responsible?
Dr. Bob goes out each Friday night with his coworkers to a local pub where they eat nachos and have a few glasses of wine (which alters their consciousness far more intensely than lawyer Joeblow's bong indulgence btw), and then they all take cabs home. How is that not responsible?
Please help me to understand your point of view on this.
I believe that it's impossible to 'responsibly' dabble in mind-altering drugs that can cause permanent damage to you whether you've only done them once or hundreds of times.
There are a few things wrong with this statement. First of all, we aren't ONLY talking about drugs which can cause detectable permanet damage in moderation, we are talking about ALL drugs, the vast majority of which (even the harder drugs) are not known to cause permanent damage after moderate use, much less doing them one time.
I'm only aware of one drug that can cause permanent damage after one time, and it's LSD, and it only causes this "damage" if the person has some mental problems to begin with (like schizophrenia, the disorder can be induced by lsd).
But we aren't talking about LSD exclusively here, we are talking about all recreational drugs.
I still see the situation as a to-each-their-own, however I really disagree that it's responsible to dabble in drugs even for artistic purposes.
Whether it's done for artistic purposes, or to simply relax and enjoy life (like in the 2 examples I gave above), as long as it's done responsibly and the person isn't binging and getting stoned or drunk out of their minds to the point where they can't function well enough to take responsibility for themselves, then I fail to see how this is irresponsible (because it doesn't lead to irresponsible behaviour).
When drugs are brought into the context of music, creativity may soar, an artist may write what they could've never thought of...
Yep, that's exactly what happens.
but the fact remains that when they listen to their own material when they're off their high, they would be thinking 'what the fuck?' 'how the fuck did I write that?' 'do I really want to play that live?'
Perhaps some things they write while altered would fit your generalization, but certainly not all. Floyd, Kate Bush, Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath, The Beetles, and I'm absolutely sure that Yes, Gentle Giant, and Genesis certainly answered "Yes" to your last question there.
and in order to keep procuring their music and performing it they need to constantly consume these drugs.
I don't know where you got this idea from or how you came to this conclusion, so I don't think I need to counter it because it doesn't hold up under it's own weight. I will say this however, Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, and Pink Floyd, just a few bands who went clean and are still making music after not only using drugs moderately and responsible, but being addicted to very harsh ones for many many years (worst case scenario).
I think Opeth are a great example of how someone can write creatively with no influence of drugs (only fatigue)
Opeth are a great example, just one example of countless many opposing examples.
and the fact is that people are risking their lives because their creativity is limited to consuming these life-fucking substances.
I'm not aware of anyone who risks their live to be musically creative. In the case of those musicians who become horribly addicted to harsh drugs like coke, heroin, and alcohol, they are no longer doing it to be creative, they are doing it cuz they have a *problem*. This is not the same as someone having a drink or a toke in order to falicitate in writing music.
I think what I'm trying to get at is that ultimately, an artist that writes music while not on a high generally has a higher life-span, creative-span (if that's even grammatically correct.
Those who moderately use the softer drugs out there do not have their life-spans shortened, this only happens if they become hopelessly addicted. I feel you are NOT making the distinction between using drugs responsibly and being a slave to them. Paul McCartney or the Martins smoking a joint is not the same as Kurt Cobain being a heroin addict, there's a world of difference there that you are not taking into account in your sweeping generalizations. In the former case, the people are in control, in the latter, he was being controlled by the drug.
As for the creative-span, I see what you are saying, but I feel it's more because of this: some people write really good music while altered on something (ie. pot), music they would normally never come up with all on their own without the aid of the mind-alteration. Their creativity is invoked by that state of mind, so when they get older and stop doing drugs to write, they can't write interesting or spacy music like they once did. Look at if from the other angle however, if they never did the drug that makes them creative in the first place, would they even have had a career at all? Would we even know they exist?
The thing is, pretty much all song writers (and artists, literature writers, comedians, etc.) get crappy and run out of ideas eventually as they get older, whether they did any drugs or not. That phenomenon isn't limited to those artists who endulge to unlock their creativity.
I mean it in the sense that your mind gets completely fucked after a few years of drugs)
Some drugs? Maybe, but not certainly. I know a few people who have done obscene amounts of hard drugs and alcohol for their entire lives and they are as sharp now as when they were younger. But with all drugs (ie. pot)? Not a chance. I've been recreationally endulging in pot a few times a week for 16 years, as well as taking the occassional hard drug and having a "trip" (though I no longer do any hard drugs) and I know I'm actually much smarter than I used to be when I was a teenager, my memory is better now, I can read and comprehend things much better, and I can understand complex things far more easily. On top of all that, I have a job that involves me dealing with tedious and mind-bending things which most people are simply too unintelligent to be able to do effectively (I actually got my current job by replacing a guy who had a master's degree in math). Also, I'm not the only example of someone who's mind wasn't fucked by a few years of taking drugs, the vast majority of people who endulge responsibly and moderately also fall into this category. Therefore, your statement simply doesn't hold true for most cases and most people, it's only true of a small few who get hooked on something like herion or booze and it ends up destroying their life and frying their brains.
and a certain higher form of dignity and respect that you can only achieve through writing music in a clear and well thought-out state of mind.
If you go through your CD collection it will be impossible for you to tell (by the music alone) which albums or songs were written or inspired under the influence of a drug, and which were not. Therefore, how are you going to assign a certain level of "dignity and respect" to a piece of music based on a piece of information which isn't available to you? You can't. You can only judge the music by how it makes you feel and how much you like it, and that's where the real respect comes from, not the supposed state of mind of the writer when he/she wrote it.
Everything you've said has a basis in reality, but you are looking at it from a very narrow perspective. Like most things, there are good AND bad aspects to drugs, and you are obviously just looking at the bad and completely neglecting the good (in this case, the good is the creativity factor). Perhaps this is because you were raised with the "drugs are inherently bad" mindset and this has become so engrained in your way of thinking that you cannot think outside the box and realize that it's only one perspective of many, and one that doesn't necessarily hold true in all cases. For every Kurt Cobain or Aerosmith there's probably 10 Kate Bushes or Pink Floyds, artists who use a given drug responsibly and who artistically benefit from it. You just don't hear about these ones because they don't end up passed out in hotel rooms or dead, what you do hear is when someone dies of an overdose or becomes braindead or something, but this is the exception, not the norm, not by a long shot.
Satori
