Reality is plastic insofar as minds can take us elsewhere. Utopia is a place one visits through remembered scraps of song. We can bend down and stroke blades of grass. We can grow lonely in the many rooms of our days. Solitude walks us through a diverse range of affective registers. One becomes absorbed in a full stopping of one’s certainty that one will ever again witness the passing of time. Certain changes are hard to contemplate, like the loss of a pet. A part of one’s consciousness, disappearing from active presence in one’s narrative. Must I be audience to this? One becomes panicked by bouts of painful sadness. Music sometimes suffices to dull this, as with Destroyer’s “Sky’s Grey.”
Heads up, North Korea. The masses, the invisible ones, are huddled half-exhilarated in anticipation of the story’s turn toward the tragic. “Sky’s Grey” is what it feels like to be a Marxist at the true end of history. Prog out and get super stoned to Heldon’s “Mechamment Rock.” (For more advanced heads, check out “Cocaine Blues.”)
Others don’t seem to have memories that fail them as do mine. What have been the effects of mass use of mind-altering substances throughout history? One should assume in advance that HBO’s The Defiant Ones will disappoint us because of its ideologically deficient “political statement.” Bits broken from a bar of dark chocolate will remind us of the triangles of the Triforce in Zelda. 85% cocoa, with stout and sea-salt caramel. The World Bank will fund our venture to reestablish Pax Americana, suggest my sources, and the Supercop will become indentured, too. Our minds will become like that of the Three-Eyed Raven. Imagine people telling themselves stories that actually made them feel better. We mustn’t melt castles and burn cities. Better to burn gold en route. If Game of Thrones is an allegory, and a prophetic one to boot, then which country’s dragons are supposed to take out which country’s money supply? Presence is as difficult as hope. But a curing occurs; we relate differently to time when high. But a mourning occurs as well, as knowledges known in the past recede from consciousness, and are known now only as names of computer files stored in folders somewhere in one’s laptop. How distant it all seems: I channeled my consciousness where? And for what? Is this what others call “cognitive impairment”? It’s been so long since I’ve read any David Harvey. Is that an observation or a confession? Parts of my life appear purely arbitrary. My dog and I can perform simple routines, but not much more than that. My world has in essence collapsed.
Trance-Scripts 