Gilberto Gil takes a "trip" to the park
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Artist:
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Album:Tropicalia Essentials
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Track:
The idea of hallucinogens was always more compelling than the reality. Acid first arrived when I was 12 or 13. My friend Vincent (and future bandmate) and I listened to "Are You Experienced?" for the first time together and were dazzled. But we'd also heard that one dose (yes, this was before "hits" entered the vernacular) could change your personality forever, and you would never even know. On the other hand, the swirly Mellotrons, my-mind-is-melting guitars and unpredictable tempo and timbre changes of "psychedelic" music were a siren call. They spoke of freedom from the prison of "normal," boringly predictable ways of thinking. A blown mind seemed like a mind that functioned on a higher creative level than the average one.
I should say here that we appeared to be as close to be as two boys from different families - and, indeed, continents, as he had just moved to our town at 13, having spent his life in Australia - could possibly be. We were born nine days apart, we looked remarkably similar, our aptitude test scores were virtual mirrors of each other. And our musical tastes, when we met, were almost identical: the Yardbirds, the Kinks, Spencer Davis, the Animals, et al. Kids at school thought we were twins, or a gay item.
We were scared enough to stay away from acid and its cousins, for a while. Vincent - unfortunately for him, it turned out - was the son of a famous biochemist, and his parents had been involved in LSD experiments in the early Sixties. Having taken clinically approved doses of laboratory-controlled LSD in carefully thought out settings under expert supervision, they saw nothing wrong with it. Vincent was buying crap off the street and dropping it twice a week by the time he was 17. At first, he wrote some pretty brilliant songs with his newly blown mind. I can still remember quite a few of them, and they have lost little of their brilliance between then and now. But within months he had, in fact, changed quite radically. His sense of humor evaporated. His jokes, such as they were, required no audience, though they struck him as highly amusing. He spoke in a code that he was convinced I could understand, and was either pretending not to or just not trying hard enough.
I dropped with him a few times, more in the name of brotherhood than anything else. Sadly or happily, I turned out to be one of those people who just couldn't hallucinate. Sure, I'd have seeming moments of enlightenment and see weird patterns on my eyelids and get tingly and stuff, but it was easy to shake that stuff off if and when I needed to. (Once I had just taken mescaline when my sister called to remind me that I'd promised to have dinner with her and my mother. I got through the meal without my mother suspecting a thing, though it did require my utmost concentration to refrain from philosophizing, quite probably incoherently.) But my heart, or head, just wasn't into psychedelics.
Need I even mention that it turned out badly? Vincent ended up spending a couple of years in and out of mental hospitals - one explanation of his plight was that his LSD use triggered a bout with schizophrenia. My decidedly less clinical diagnosis was that he took some perverse comfort in cocooning within the entirely subjective world that acid brought him to, and that by an act of will he had figured out a mental path that would allow him to stay there even without the drug itself.
And today? He managed to pull himself together enough to get an advanced degree in a purely academic subject. More than a decade after that, he lives with his parents. Sometimes he works, usually he doesn't. I ran into his parents a couple of years ago and they urged me to get back in contact with him - tough, after some of the things he said the last time we spoke. I keep wondering if there was any way I could have prevented him from atomizing. There will probably never be a definitive, satisfactory answer to that question.
So is this a simple cautionary tale to those who would take psychedelics? Heck, no. I don't regret my limited experience one bit. And I still love that sense of possibility that the best early acid-influenced songs had. Like this one, for example. I love the way it flows from one section to the next, with little repeated motifs that tie the whole thing together even as it refuses to adopt a conventional song structure. I love the fact that I can never be sure what I'm going to hear next. And I love its beautiful moments that seem to come from another place. That, to me, is the positive legacy of psychedelia.
Comments (16)
beautiful story, even with its tragic moments. on the topic of trippin, have you ever used a dream machine?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamachine
they produce lucid hallucinations regardless of whether drugs affect you psychedelically. the flickr of light causes yr brain to produce more alpha waves, the same stuff that causes dreams while you sleep. So you dream, but yr awake. perfectly legal and no side effects. in fact, it produces a feeling of deep relaxation for the soul. And, you can make them at home from a record player capable of 78 rpms, a record you no longer want to listen to, duct tape and a giant piece of cardstock, available at art stores, some college supply stores, etc.
Dream machines were first invented by Brion Gysin, William Burroughs and Ian Sommerville, they take a bit of getting used to. But once you relax enough to let it happen, the visions are quite vivid and entertaining.
I felt compelled to share this with you for whatever reasons.
Interesting tale, Mr. Ivy.
and Molli, Nice pic of Messrs Burroughs and Gysin preparing to stimulate their optical nerves
what would happen if you used one in conjunction with a sensory deprivation tank?
Seriously, that is a tragic tale of your friend. For various reasons I never experimented too much with substances, though I agree that the psychedelics were interetsing to consider on a conceptual level, at least when younger. (now all i dream of is a good cup of coffee)
I had a very close friend experience something similar, and I often wondered if his substance use was an attempt to deal with his incipient mental health issues, or if they only rubbed off any protective resiliency he may have had that covered the potential. Regardless, my friend is not living the life he intended.
PS
I couldnt get the song to play all the way through,,, anyone else experience that? I was grooving to it , too...
I am sad to say I know a person, not nearly a best friend however, that took a similar path very early on with his experimentation with acid. I dabbled like most of the friends I ran around with but, like you, never had a visual moment that I could not explain through altered vision or light trails from the drug, not visions or hallucinations....I did have instances where my mind escaped me briefly and I would not have been able to communicate effectively or behave normally in routine situations. But, like you, I had to face an authority figure while in the midst of a return journey from our group's selected safety zone - a few miles out of town on the RR tracks and off in a cow pasture about another 3/4 of a mile. A friendly village police officer decided to check me and a fw of my friends out for walking through the small town after midnight....Amazingly, none of us looked especially dangerous to him; I am still in shock over his inability to see our horror as he checked each of our ID's as well as our corneas with his Maglite. I was extremely shaken internally but, as the typical spokesperson for our group in situations of this sort, kept it cool and respectful (plenty of yessir's and nosir's) and managed to convince the McGruff that we were good, wholesome kids....he let us continue to on our leisurely stroll, but naturally our pace quickened.
another revealing post,thanks so much.I think that most who went through those times put our lives in peril without a second thought.I was 18 when the friends I was with would do this. I am surprised that we actually survived this. We often would get in car and drive to some concert miles away, scary stuff now.I do think that you had to have a strong mind to survive these affects over time.I could not imagine even doing this in High School age. The return trip when the drug wears off was always the hard part and eventually convinced me to stop.I do agree that the music that resulted from these experiences was some of the most creative. Thanks
Mmmmmm, psychedelics.
Like most in this thread I did a little experimenting back in the day. And like so many have mebtioned there were folks who......just shouldn't have. Their downward spirals were shocking wake-up calls.
Thanks Bill for a bit more insight into the soul of Ivyland's philosopher king.
How sad to have your best friend suffer such a tragedy. A couple of psychedelic experiences in my early twenties (late 1960s) felt uncomfortable enough for me to not continue. It its worst, I couldn't hold onto a thought. It made me realize how comfortable normal sobriety is. The one-minute excerpt of Gilberto Gil is a good musical illustration. Another one, Soft Machine's "She's Gone," my favorite track from the CD White Bicycles that you tipped us off to, is another example of melodic fragments thrown together and somehow working. (Am I the only one who can't seem to upload anything today, and getting only the number 500 instead of a code?)
molli, I might consider experiencing a dream machine - the idea that you can control it is the critical factor here. What terrified me about LSD was that will power, for many, was insufficient to stop the flow of weirdness. That was more of a problem than the weirdness itself.
dharmachris, there is indeed something amiss with the audio clip. I am trying to fix it.
drifter, there's nothing quite like an encounter with the law to bring you back to sobriety in a hurry. This happened to me once, too, with a campus policemen. Luckily, the campus cops had about as much legal muscle as our local animal control officers (and similar duties, nowe that I come to think of it....)
cpeterson, I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes I wonder that I am still alive. What was driving on peyote all about?
DM, "there were folks who...just shouldn't have." You said a mouthful. I think there are parallels with alcohol. You just don;t know what it's going to trigger in you, and there's no way of predicting. Several of the gentlest, best-natured people I go have had to stop drinking because it turns them completely psycho and aggressive. Others become compulsive truth-tellers or (like yours truly) fall hopelessly in love with the world and everyone in it. It all seems to come down to where the drug intersects with your individual chemistry.
Spike, I have been getting that 500 too as I have been trying to rectify the problem with the audio clip. I am hoping this is just a temporary symptom of MOG's apparent food poisoning. Let's hope it isn't e-coli....
Glad to see you back posting, Bill. I dropped acid around 50 times, but a couple of times really DID lose touch with reality in an unpleasant fashion. That pretty much cured me. Plus on the tail end I seemed to become exceedingly, uncomfortably aware of my own mortality. This was bad enough being 19. At the age of 58, I doubt it would be more pleasant now.
The track reminds me of the subscription ads I see in the print version of The Onion: " The gift that keeps on giving...then suddenly stops".
Nice post, sorry to hear about your buddy. I stopped when it became a routine, and I did have some bad experiences. At its best it was always about getting closer to music and getting inside the sound. I guess over time, I just learned to listen better.
This cool track, by a group that toured Europe with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, has a discombobulated psychedelic structure.
Spike, that is one nifty little mind-bender. Very different from the later, jazzier, spacier Soft Machine....
It's also very different from every other track on the White Bicycles CD. This illustrates your theory about periods of turmoil creating variety, followed by a settling down to order.
Poignant tale, ivy. And very groovy track from Gilberto - even if it doesn't play out all of the way. Now, if you'll excuse me, the walls are breathing.
Another great story signed Ivylander. I haven't dropped anything that I couldn't pick up afterward. I sincerely hope that those who fell because of dropping will experience some reprieve some day.
It's nice to see you back. -- I concur with dharmachris: the song stopped mid play. (I don't like auditus interruptus)