What artist/authors work have been enhanced by drugs?
Edgar Allen Poe comes to mind, what other artist and authors works have been positively affected by drug use. Would Lucy in the Sky have been written without drugs?
What artist/authors work have been enhanced by drugs?
Edgar Allen Poe comes to mind, what other artist and authors works have been positively affected by drug use. Would Lucy in the Sky have been written without drugs?
That particular Beatles song was actually based on a painting by John Lennon’s toddler son of his friend Lucy in the sky with, for some reason, diamonds (what kids draw I suppose), but there is no doubt that they were all reeeeal high for long stretches of their most prolific period.
From personal experience, drugs don’t help the composition or performance process, be it literary or musical: they just make you think what you’re doing is profound and amazing due to their effect on the areas of the brain which judge ‘significance’. At least, they hinder the actual hard work of turning the vague ideas into a complete, consistent piece - they perhaps have some positive effect in coming up with those vague ideas in the first place.
Why does Edgar Allen Poe come to mind?
Opium and alcohol.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge?
Well, Coleridge is supposed to have had the inspiration for “Kubla Khan” while zonked on opium.
However, I am not convinced that anyone has ever created anything positively while on drugs. I’m a guitarist and I’ve had way, way, waaaayyy too many sessions with people who were capable musicians when they were sober. However, when they took drugs of any kind, from pot on up, their playing went in the toilet, but they were totally convinced that what they were producing was fantastic. It wasn’t.
I remember an interview with McCartney in the last year or so, where he confirmed that the song does indeed refer to LSD.
From
Hallucinogens
Nichols DE
Pharmacology & Therapeutics 101 (2004) 131-181, 2004;
Poe’s opium use is little more than a rumor (http://www.eapoe.org/geninfo/poealchl.htm), broadcast after his death by temperance cranks who thought his work was immoral. His purported alcohism came at times, not coincidentally, when he was NOT writing his best work.
Coleridge’s drug problems are also not coincident with his best work. As his addiction worsened, his work dropped off, and contrary to legends, he never toked up on opium then cranked off brilliant poems like Kubla Kahn (a poem that shows drafts and revisions over months, giving direct contrary evidence to the popular myth that he wakened from an opium daze and wrote it all at once). I don’t doubt that in relatively lucid periods he didn’t draw from his experiences, but great writers drawn on their experiences (whatever those may be). Other writers have written about war and poverty, but nobody supposes they were made brilliant by those experiences.
It’s one thing to show that so-and-so did drugs, quite another to show that they prospered because of them. The only interesting thing is that such rumors were originally used to discredit writers, not they are used to promote drug use.
Let’s not forget William S. Burroughs, although I’m not sure there’s any part of his work that’s been done sober for a comparison.
Hunter S. Thompson. Although I’m not a big fan, I understand his newer stuff (ostensibly while he’s not on [as many] drugs) is more or less the same in style and content.
Al Jourgenson of Ministry, although it appears to be Republicans in office that give him his magical abilities. I dreaded Antisomnisomethingorother, as it had the triple whammy: got married, stopped drugs and printed lyrics. It wasn’t too bad and Houses of the Mole really found him in good form again, if worse for the wear.
British acid house. In the 24 Hour Party People commentary (can’t recall if it was in the movie or not), Tony Wilson talks about how pot is a great incubator of creativity and cocaine destroys it. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the movie, but there’s an interesting sequence where he tries to get the Sean Ryder off of the coke and back onto pot because it’s destroying his output.
You were sober; they weren’t, so their perception of what constitutes good art is different. Also, ‘playing’ is not just a function of musical cognition. The dexterity for fluent playing relies on muscle memory and feedback. If your perception is altered, so is your perception and handling of the feedback you get. But this does not prove or disprove that the contents of the experience imagined under altered states aren’t worth anything special. On yet another note, you may find, say, a certain phrase in a piece of music uninteresting, because of your entrenched musical prejudices, towards the harmonics or melodic development employed. Whereas, in certain states, because one is primed to reexamine and scrutinize perceptions, you may find something new and interesting that remains so, after the altered state terminates.
You can’t make a better case against drug use than Burroughs.
Well said, II Gyan II.
Didn’t Dali spend a period using marijuana? Here’s an interesting list (that I have no intentions of vouching for) which seems to corroborate that. I just remember a psychedelic period in his works.
There’s little doubt that many musicians falsely think their playing is improved by alcohol. The late great rock guitarist Roy Buchanan noticed this about recordings he made while drunk, and consequently decided to quit drinking (or at least he tried to quit).
But that doesn’t prove there aren’t instances where the playing is improved.
Delta blues immortal Charley Patton drank like a fish whenever he played, and his recordings are spectacular. This doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have sounded great sober. But it was the opinion of H.C. Spier, the scout who discovered him, that Patton needed two hours of drinking and warming up to reach his peak. (Heck, the great majority of Delta blues was performed by really drunk people).
That probably requires a delineation: some art forms lend themselves better to being high than others. The loss of precision would probably hinder, say, a concert violinist, more than a blues singer. Myself, I notice this difference between bottleneck blues guitar and Dobro – the latter is more exacting, and I drink little or none when performing on it.
Disclaimer: music is the only art form I have any experience with. I drink a lot, but have no experience with drugs, so I’ll refrain from commenting on same.
All I have to say is look at the music that the Beatles composed before 1965, when they had never tried marijuana, and compare it to what they composed after they tried it (and LSD). I doubt you will find many people who believe that their pre-'65 compositions are superior to their post-'65 compositions. There will be some, of course, who believe that their post-'65 compositions would be even better if they hadn’t done drugs, of course.
From my personal experiences, I believe that psychedelic drug intake can enhance the creative process but detract from the actual performance.
I don’t know about Charley Patton, but I’ve known knee-walkin’ snot-slingin’ alcoholics who needed at least a .01 BAC just to keep withdrawl at bay and maintain some functionality. It wasn’t until about a .03 level that they would act obviously drunk. I’m wondering if this might be what was going on.
Hemingway was a miserable drunk. Whether that contributed positively or negatively to his later works is speculation. Enhanced is a good word though. One wonders how different Old Man and the Sea would have been had Hemingway not been the drunkard he was. Different - no one can know if it would have been better or worse.
It’s hard to say, PoorYorick. Although biographical information on Patton is sketchy (he died in 1934), many people who saw him play claim he didn’t seem drunk, so your speculation may be correct. On the other hand, when he auditioned for Spier, it was without liquor, and Spier said he knew from the first note how good Patton was. And his playing was too complicated for a DT-addled drunk to have pulled off.
It’s pretty much inevitable that if you drink enough, for long enough, your health deteriorates. So it will at least shorten the span of your productivity. And if motor skills are necessary for your art, the ill effects will come sooner.
But the ill effects may indeed be the price of increased-quality output. I see parallels to steroid use by athletes.
I think it was Samuel Johnson who said, “If the hangover preceded the elevation, drinking would be considered a virtue”.
How about Aerosmith? While their sobriety is admirable, the public paid a heavy price (Cryin’, et al).
Carlos Castaneda. Right?
A thread about drugs and art and no one has mentioned the Grateful Dead yet?
Personally, I think that whatever works, works, as long as you manage to avoid harming others in the process.