Queens Plaza is nasty…especially this time of year. Its a sad place, especially the train station itself. Its a cavern and its obvious they were planning on the area holding down some kind of “hub” for the whole borough of queens, which it is…
But not in any kind of “bustling city center” kind of way – a mess of train tracks and colliding people climbs the stairs to an even bigger mess of on ramps, off ramps, freeway overpasses, train yards tangled above ground level…the 7 train screams overhead…the LIRR whips by on the oil-stained ground. The place is a barely-beautiful mass of twisted metal, filth, and traffic of all kinds.
I’m walking off the train and I’m so tired I can barely see. Not any kind of actual fatigue, just the kind that rushes up and knocks me on my ass as I ride the train home. I end up in a weird trance with my headphones on. I drift into this place between sleep and awake, where I start to disconnect, but not fully. In that disconnection, there are new colors to the music, new associations I couldn’t make in my waking state. I love listening to music in that state.
We’ve all achieved similar things with all kinds of substances, and I am definitely one to really fall in love with a piece of music after hearing it in an altered state. Pot was the reason I thought track 4 off of Intestine Baalism’s album “An Anatomy of the Beast” was the most genius thing I had ever heard. Ecstasy was the reason I thought “Hard House” was a good idea. Mushrooms were the reason I ripped off the headphones and swore off the Matrix soundtrack forever.
Music is definitely experiential (is that a word?) and you listen to music on drugs for the same reason you do anything on drugs – to experience it from an alternate perspective. Altered states give you alternate takes, the drums are louder, context is clearer, you are now in a singular state of mind separate from your 9-5 and thus have more attention to give.
I’m the same way with movies…I once sat, blazed out of my mind, all the way through “21 grams”, the most depressing, terrifying, heart wrenching movie I have ever seen. It didn’t make me feel good, but for some reason my altered state had me more easily aligned with the director’s vision. Wanky as that may sound, it makes sense. Films are an alternate reality, and it follows that warping your own personal reality prepares you to understand a new one.
In my state, I was able to shed a lot of distracting notions about how weird I thought Sean Penn was, how obnoxious Naomi Watts’ overacting can be, and follow the point. At the end of the film they ask a question about the weight, 21 grams….supposedly everyone loses 21 grams at the exact second they die. “How much does 21 grams weigh?” The answer came out of me without even trying, I actually said this out loud to myself and my confused dog (he’s not a Benicio Del Toro fan). I said, “Too much”. Its about balance, the world balances itself out same as us. When the weight becomes too much, the world sheds it, one living person at a time, 21 grams at a time….thanks, marijuana.
So, the drugs are great for these kind of halfway valuable insights, but my recent episodes on the train have made me realize that I can fuck myself up a lot worse without any kind of substance. All drugs do anyway is direct the traffic of existing chemicals in your brain…drugs divert, close off, rip open synapses and cause chaos within you and without you. You can get this same effect without drugs. I’ll still do them, but I’ve recently become interested in the kind of madness that can be created inside without them.
Sleep deprivation, deep breathing, chanting, meditation, dreams. Some of these things sound a little ridiculous, but surely they cant be any more ridiculous than gravity bongs, naming your pipes, glow sticks, or deliberately repeating the phrase “Alaskan Thunderfuck” to your friends.
I once went to an Alex Grey ceremony at his chapel/art gallery in Chelsea. After what seemed like hours of lame spoken-word nonsense, and rambling stories about the concept of “home”, we chanted. I’m a skeptic as hell, but only until someone presents a compelling argument. The woman leading the chant promised altered states of consciousness, and she delivered.
After 10 minutes of deeply chanting phrases in Indian I was seeing things, white auras around basically everything. I was detached, watching my thoughts and emotions wander by without trying to understand them. Was there mysticism there? No. I was just depriving my brain of oxygen, or giving it way too much of it. The effect was like standing up too fast and almost passing out, or the ridiculous “lets make each other pass out by breathing real hard” situation that bored kids across the country were into a few years ago.
Regardless, it was an altered state, and I’ll take it. Lets call a spade a spade. I’ll take it because music sounds better in these places…ok, maybe not “better”, but “different”, and different is good.
I was still cruising out of one of these episodes as I walked off the V train and up the stairs. edIT’s album “Certified Air Raid Material” was playing in my headphones. It was my third time with it, and I was floored. My right ear begged for the bassline from the title track to come back as it panned from ear to ear. The vibration was so satisfying that, were it possible, I would have rammed it into my veins. Over and over again.
I came close to the turnstyle, into it, then out of it. There was money, right there on the ground. In one motion over the kickdrum I snagged it. A small pile of bills wrapped in a one dollar bill. An instant after that an extremely stressed looking string of a person walked up and asked me for 50 cents (he probably saw me grab the money) so i handed him the stack, smiled and kept on my affected way. I hope there was a fifty in there.
It was like it never happened, I never once considered the money mine. The music was winning, not my ego. If it weren’t for being half-asleep, if it weren’t for that bassline, I don’t think it would have happened like that. “This is New York, and you have to work to get what you want… damnit…whats mine is mine”… (Echoes from my nine to five state of mind).
Del the Funky Homosapien – The 11th Hour