It is a truth unilaterally acknowledged that a person from one of the developed countries will want to devote a fair proportion of his or her life to serious substance abuse and general all-round moral depravity, a phenomenon known in former times as sowing one's wild oats. Writing as someone lacking the courage, charm or charisma required for this sort of behaviour, I feel particularly well-equipped to indulge in sour grapes for want of wild oats. Seriously, the point I want to make is that, somewhere down the line, there should at least be some recognition in the sycophantic media that figures like Lou Reed, for all their extraordinary talent, have also left a trail of destruction and misery in their wake. What is the point of such talent if so many people have to pay so much for it?
To put it in a different way, what contribution did drugs and drink make to the achievement of Lou Reed and just about everyone else in the rock scene and beyond? Did the drugs merely enhance an already extraordinary gift or compensate for its lack? Is it possible to function on the rock circuit without drugs? Should those caught indulging their habit be stripped of their gains just as athletes are stripped of their medals? Was Mozart into drugs?
To put it in a different way, what contribution did drugs and drink make to the achievement of Lou Reed and just about everyone else in the rock scene and beyond? Did the drugs merely enhance an already extraordinary gift or compensate for its lack? Is it possible to function on the rock circuit without drugs? Should those caught indulging their habit be stripped of their gains just as athletes are stripped of their medals? Was Mozart into drugs?
Hi Papa! well, I believe artistic-minded people are often the most tortured. Artistic talent and drugs make sense to me, though of course they don't necessarily go together. Drugs certainly triggered the writing of Lou Reed's best songs, as drugs were needed by Baudelaire to write his haunting Fleurs du Mal. One needs a certain degree of desperation, trips to other dimensions to write so profoundly. In the end, people don't care much about a genius' s personal life and the persons he or she hurt (well, except for you, of course !). Because they're geniuses, that doesn't matter much in the great scheme of things. The great work remains, the misery they may have created gets forgotten. They get a free pass from History.
ReplyDeleteThe nagging question remains: would I, for example, have been a genius if I had taken drugs, and if so, is it too late to start now?
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