drugs and sense (and rock 'n' roll)

i have this theory about the senses.  not that it's what i think hard and fast, but with theories i think the fun is about seeing how far you can take it in predicting and delineating interesting stuff in the real, analog world.  so with that disclaimer of sorts here we go.

i think we have at least 8 senses.

that is the usual,

sight (we're REALLY visual creatures)
smell
taste
touch
hearing;

then the sixth and seventh senses, which are really interchangeable in order

the sense of self
and the sense of the world.

the sense of self is the day-to-day appreciation of one's own incredibleness and history and mortality, of the emotions in one, and of the bearing and consequence the outside world has directly to one.  sense of the world is knowing about the world's economy ie. how things that don't happen don't happen, how some things are outside one's control and remain that way, how everything ranges from horrid to beautiful and everyone else feels vividly, presumably as oneself.

the eighth sense i don't like to define too rigidly, so we'll call it

common sense.  more on that later

part two of the theory has to do with drugs.  it is my postulation that drugs enhance the input from senses 1-7, shutting 8 down almost completely.

so people have fun and people have head trips and see things about themselves for the first time, they get duende and paranoia about the world or witness what Tim O'Brien calls its "aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference."  if they're not really careful, they also do exceedingly dumb shit in the moment that they wouldn't otherwise, which is why drugs are illegal, which is why they are underground and not getting used remotely responsibly, or to their full potential when compared to poetry or art or the other psychotropic experiences (even there's another rant).  it's a rich tapestry.  don't get mad at me for being liberal.  look at how far aldous huxley got out there, he was a smart dude.

anyways, the eighth sense shuts down.  and the eighth sense is a funny thing, it's sort of defined negatively.  this is how people who never crack into the drug-world can lead lives of utter aesthetic integrity and satisfaction.  you can tell them they have an eighth sense, but until they see how it vanishes when the chemical going gets interesting, they won't KNOW that.  a lot of artists do drugs to get that 'remove' from their work so they can tell it's good and appreciate it in the same way another person might who didn't put the thing together from scratch, knowing all the tricks and flaws.  these silly people should know better and trust themselves and go look at other people's art instead.

the eighth sense ties everything together in the perfectest way, it's the linchpin.  i'm not going to say how because i think that's outside sensation (NOT A COP-OUT, i swear).

this is why i like art, is because you get to keep all of your senses, and they all get magnified.  looking at art on drugs can be pretty cool, but you tend to forget a lot of what you learn or get shattered by what you see.  with art sans drugs, you don't wind up dead in an alley, you don't wind up in prison, you don't wind up being haunted by a lingering image for weeks.  you don't get attached to a work for some reason, then find out it actually means something totally different from what you thought.

what you get from art is a full-spectrum sensory experience, taking place at the natural saturation.  i think appreciating a piece of art always takes time and that that's right.  and i think with the best of art, the eighth sense is a little rope bridge thru the psychomond jungle, from the artist's 1-7, living or dead, to yours.  haven't you ever sat in front of a painting, and saw that it made perfect sense even though you didn't know or couldn't express quite what it meant?  you keep coming back to it and thinking on it, growing more and more fond of it, feeling more and more taken into confidence?  some people talk about a work's 'internal logic'.  i think it's much more simple than that, and more complicated.

how does art move you?  it contains a (let's dispassionately say) formula to stir emotion through the senses.  now since all art is created through a sensory feedback loop, the work contains:

a) the experience of the process of its creation.  each lick of paint laid by a hand monitored by an eye.  paint that used to smell, that sounds like something when you squeeze it out of a tube going empty.  don't discount the little things.  think about it, they're all there in that painting.  a painting can't possibly be affected by events numbering fewer than those which created it.

b) the artist's history, personality and inner emotions.  sure it's a finished work on the wall in a museum.  but it wasn't always like that.  the thing probably sat in a guy's studio or apartment while he was fighting with someone, or making love, or just sleeping or what-have-you.  even if he has a discrete studio, he's been a connotation across town, not one that doesn't exist.  he lived his life while working, and everything he witnessed and went through, every little event influenced HIM.  and if that artist dies (quick example), then the painting changes, doesn't it? so a bit of the world's installed in it too.  don't even get me started on if he had a live model.

c) the undefinable.  surpassing the dry IS-ness of 'internal logic'.  the weird sticky stuff that makes a painting even more than the sum of all the stuff i just reeled off.  what separates and binds it to the artist, separates and binds the viewer to it.

it's a link with another being in the sense continuum.  common sense.

ya don't get that with drugs.

© 2009