Managed to do a bit of work last night, then did some shrooms instead. Just the wrong amount as it turns out, basically enough to give me the usual few hours of mild but irritating nausea but not enough to produce any more than a slight change in spatial awareness. Knackered tonight, had a tough day, so here’re three brief things I thought I’d say:
I took some of last night's pizza to work for lunch today and was eating it while replying to some of the excellent comments being made. What drops off the pizza onto my employer's desk? A cheeky little psilocybe cap. I'd put the shrooms under the cheese in my pizza and had thought I'd got them all last night.
I just brushed it away but not before having a weird little moment. I'm sat at work in a bastard shirt, surrounded by a busy office, and I'm discussing philosophy online while what I believe is now a Class A drug sits openly on my desk. I often feel like I'm in a bubble at work, but that was the most extreme instance so far, a world within a world.
I've written recently about people exploring their own heads, also worlds within worlds, and that I believe that's all there is. I wanted to describe a particular take on the idea of an afterlife that I heard a few years ago. I've always been quite taken with this notion, not least because it fits in with my own ideas, but I do have a nagging feeling that it's perhaps a little optimistic.
Imagine you've just woken up and glanced at a clock before nodding off again. Nice and comfy you slip back into sleep in seconds and begin to dream. You have a vast and complex dream that is, you realise, actually a series of dreams, it goes on and on, dragging through a variety of detailed landscapes and casts of characters.
Eventually you find yourself fading back into consciousness after what feels like years. You look at the clock: less than two minutes have passed since you last looked. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this. The human brain continues function on some level for a little while just after death. Could eternal life actually just be what it feels like to be on the other side of the fading glow in a dying eye?
Now I wish I could take credit for such a great concept but I have to be honest and admit that my this occurred to my girlfriend a few years ago. Much to her annoyance the concept is also outlined in what I think is one in a line of cinematic jewels, "Waking Life" written and directed by Richard Linklater.
There're some great ideas in WL, some relating to the discussion that's been unfolding here over the last few days. The visual vehicle for these messages however is just stunning, I’m excited as I’d forgotten all about it, think I’ll dig the vid out tomorrow night.
Anyway, it was filmed as normal film but the each individual cell was hand painted afterwards! The result is an absolutely unique cross between live action and animation that does a fantastic job of fulfilling what seems to be the main aim of the film: to present a dream in film form.
I remember seeing “Slacker”, another of Linklater’s, on TV in the early hours of the morning as a kid. I didn’t what the hell it was but I was mesmerised. The camera roams freely through a town following a person or persons for a few minutes, just enough to get a tiny glimpse into their lives, then moves on. Through this intriguing format he manages to present a kind of snapshot of small western US towns at a certain point in time.
Of course his most famous film is “Dazed and Confused”, which follows a wide group of seventies high school kids over their last day of school before the summer holidays. This guy seems to have a great passion and talent for taking everyday situations, familiar atmospheres and, instead of using them as backgrounds for stories, translating them in their pure form in the medium of cinema.
This is the extreme end of a common denominator throughout all human art and culture. It’s all about us, even the stuff about the world is really just about our relationship with the world. We’re in everything we do and in everything we see as we increasingly surround ourselves with manmade environments.
In fact we’re all inside the inside, all the time.
