MDMA

Different genres of music are inspired by different drugs. One cannot separate Reggae and Marijuana, The Velvet Underground and Heroin, the later Beatles and LSD, Rock'n'roll and booze.

Of course, drugs are not required by the finest minds to create: there are innumerable examples of geniuses who found the clarity of sobriety the best mode of working: and any musician brilliant on drugs is certainly brilliant without. It does not matter for the audience what the performer has indulged in before the show - they cannot share in the experience and the performance is seldom better for it.

Nevertheless, creative types, moreso than any other part of society, are drawn to drugs for some reason, and the characteristics of the drug make it's effects felt on the work, whether as a subconscious guiding or an effort by the artist to portray what experiences they have witnessed in the throes of a trip.

The artists of the old world need not worry about harming their brain with drug-use; neither the chemical drugs capable of causing sinister injury, nor the field of neurology to study and observe them existed yet.

The old-world drugs: cannabis, opium, cocaine, alcohol and nicotine (and in prehistory and tribal cultures, a number of plant-based sedatives and hallucinogens including kava, psilocybin, ayuasca, mescaline and so on); had not been criminalised and could be reliably obtained from their organic sources through honest trade.

The progress of science in the 20th century resulted in man's new ability to synthesise compounds not found in nature. This created a new class of drugs - the pharmaceuticals - and also the new recreational drugs.

New compounds were invented one at a time and put to test on animal and human subjects to determine their utility - beneficial or detrimental.

Sometimes there would be a delay until the harm was made known by the drug, such as thalidomide and birth defects in the 1960s, and an unfortunate generation would wear the damage, for the damaging effects cannot be known by science until some creatures, sometimes human, have suffered them.

The neurotoxicity of MDMA has been demonstrated by O'Hearn et al. (1996) and Croft et al. (2001). The most quoted study (Ricaurte et al., 1988) was with doses comparable to those in real life on primates - in which serotonergic axons were damaged seven years later. Gouzoulis-Mayfrank et al.(2000) have found a decline in cognition in human users which may be permanent.

The brain remains largely a mystery. Though we try to understand it as if it were a computer, compartmentalised into different sections for different functions, how a work of art is received from the ether and made into fruition - no man understands; therefore how the physical damage MDMA imparts on particular neurons impairs artistic expression is also open to conjecture.

The other heavyweight drugs; heroin, cocaine, that admittedly may cause more deaths due to impeding functions of the body or overdose, are, by comparison, innocuous to the mind.

If marijuana is tied to reggae, MDMA is tied to rave culture. It is improper to study genres such as techno, trance and hard house without assuming the intended audience, hundreds or thousands of them to be simultaneously under the influence of MDMA.

Rave culture for a young person is fallen towards in a similar fashion to religion; it offers a sense of belonging and connection centred around the MDMA experience rather than a concept of God.

The brain flooded with serotonin appreciates different things to a sober state; but none appear to be profound or even interesting. There is nothing to be gained by going outside and contemplating the wonders of nature on MDMA, not has anything insightful been uttered. Fluro colours, glo sticks, enclosed rooms full of neon lights and the nauseating, incessant, metronomic beat. Yes, the older generation have grounds to stand on when they reduce the genre to 'doof'. It is an apt description.

Now, before you accuse me of being closed minded towards a particular genre, let's ask: is rave culture and the multitude of sub-genres of locked-tempo dance music - the end product of the collective action of MDMA on the minds of humans - reflective of truth and beauty as all good art points towards, or a shallow illusion, a whole genre only made enjoyable by veritably damaging one's brain?

(note: I mean not to vilify electronic music in general)


References:
Croft RJ, Klugman A, Baldeweg T, Gruzelier JH. Electrophysiological evidence of serotonergic impairment in long-term MDMA ("ecstasy") users. Am J Psychiatry 2001 Oct;158(10):1687-92.

Gouzoulis-Mayfrank E, Daumann J, Tuchtenhagen F, et al. Impaired cognitive performance in drug free users of recreational ecstasy. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2000; 68:719 -725.

O'Hearn E, Battaglia G, De Souza EB, Kuhar MJ, Molliver ME. Methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) and methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) cause selective ablation of serotonergic axon terminals in forebrain: immunocytochemical evidence for neurotoxicity. J Neurosci. 1988 Aug;8(8):2788-803.

Ricaurte GA, Forno LS, Wilson MA, DeLanney LE, Irwin I, Molliver ME, Langston JW. (+/-)3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine selectively damages central serotonergic neurons in nonhuman primates. JAMA. 1988 Jul 1;260(1):51-5.

Brisbane

Photo: John Pryke

The coasts are equated with cultural ugliness; new housing estates, mainstreamers, tradies, boring types who enjoy the beach. To have come from the coast and be accepted in Brisbane means to turn one's back on the coast and join with them in their scoffing. Excersise is scoffed at. Healthy foods are scoffed at. When a limitation in physical fitness is revealed, for example gross inflexibility or excessive puffing after a short amount of cardio, it is joked about with a kind of pride. For they have not wasted a second of their life on the lowly and brainless drudgery of sport, save for when they might have been forced to in early childhood. It is the type of condition, that, if combined with heavy lifting, may cause an injury, or in later life, obesity, but until this happens it is all hunky dory. The flesh is unimportant, simply a vessel to consume intoxicants, a canvas on which to inscribe with ironic tattoos, a housing for the eyes to gaze on with a unique cynical view. This way of viewing is much valued, and when a deadline is due at art college, it is drawn upon to produce a work.

Perhaps it is the landscape of Brisbane itself which informs everything, it's core a mess of concreted surfaces; overpasses, tunnels, entire hills paved over, busways, grimy last-century train-lines carved obtusely through it all; the summer heat radiating back off these hard surfaces, with hardly a grassed area to soak into, being defied by the youth in jeans and docs, a counter-reaction to the shorts and thongs a simple Brisbane worker will don in his leisure time. But you will not see the worker waiting to cross at traffic lights on a summers day as the youth does, uncomfortable and hungover at midday, mid-week; they are in air-conditioned offices and later on in their cars driving home, when the network of asphalt and tollways makes the commute just-bearable. And even if it is not, a change in government at the next election is sure to result in a new tunnel or overpass.

Distant forest-covered hills can be glimpsed through certain angles, beyond the edge of Brisbane, but they are seldom looked upon, and even in the refuge of the shady suburbs, ugliness is worshipped. A dirt-bare floored area under a house is converted into a gallery; the work on show is a fan shuddering around with brown panty-hose replacing the blades. In the next room, a rotten disused 70s-era laundry, the mouth of a vacuum cleaner sucks vainly at a pair of suspended underpants.

Nando's

I have finished my Nando's food annoyingly branded and franchised to the end result of thinking it will be better than it really is.

This restaurant has managed to form an identity inside my head - only finalised when, one pound short of a drink, a gentleman loaned me a pound with the comment "Oh, Nandos is the best man, I've been looking forward to it all day" - at this point I realised I was in not a busy restaurant but a phenomenon and I was lucky enough to be joining them.

Despite this, the chicken was underwhelming; the outer surface gluggy and a coasted with too much sauce to result in crispness. Spiciness on barbecued chicken, in my opinion, is much better applied as a dry-rub held in oil to form a crust and sauce applied after. Indeed, they do have bottles of the same sauce available for a second application.

I look through the menu now, every instance of the word peri-peri capitalised (and in a slightly different font) PERI-PERI, which, in breaking style, gives the same semiotic effect as when prose is interrupted with a trademarked word marked ™, and it is read in my head in a comically exaggerated voice.

If you want some bread, you can't just get bread, it must be Garlic Bread, classified as a regular side, £2.25, or can be included as one of the two sides in a meal-deal, and then it is not normal bread - but franchised bread, the same kind you find at subway or on airline flights, probably distributed as semi-baked dough from the central Nando's factory already in the trademarked shape and re-heated onsite.

And still, I lust for Nandos when I a hungry in my room, I still dream about the flame-grilled chicken; successfully brainwashed. It's like when you realise McDonald's food is actually terrible at the age of 10, still you crave it an continue to eat it into your 20s.

***

Oh Nandos,

Ye has drawn me in yet again. Oh how I disparaged you at our last meeting.

Ye hath not escaped my mind. I concede I have fallen victim to your marketing, to your package.

I walk past your every day and see satisfied families, prams beside the tables, babies happy with their flame-grilled chicken. I want to share in their happiness.

Surf booties: a justification

The lately-shamed legrope-less hordes at Byron clumsily losing longboards into swimmer's heads - they are only imitating their idols (rasta, tudor, campbell et al) as they are/were portrayed in the media in the height of anti-legrope neo-soul era.

Let's take a random selection from the centre of the target STAB audience - 28, competent ability - when he is packing for his indo trip, now he most likely will think: "na booties are lame" - this image here one of the many influences (along with heresay from his semi-pro mate and observations from surf films) that inform his opinion. When this very same bloke is now going over the falls on a shallow section a week later, feet bare, wishing he could have the security of a protected foot to plant on the reef to save injury to other parts of the body, as one does without thinking on a beachbreak after a wipeout. But no, he has nothing, he makes a futile attempt to float atop the water in the tumult of the whitewash; his hip is grazed first, then a knee and hand; he then stands up anyway, water now shin-deep, to jump over the whitewash of the next wave.

Fundamentally, we find disregard to danger attractive. Any time there is an option to wear a helmet (snowboarding, skateboarding etc), the cooler choice is to not. Teenagers exploit a (imagined) loophole in the law by riding with the chin-strap undone, just to show that in the event of a crash, their head still has the possibility of sustaining unhindered damage. Wearing s rash-shirt vs getting sunburnt bare-chested, or wearing earplugs vs the naturally cooler option of not wearing earplugs in a rock band. What do we attribute the attractiveness to? That which is inherent in minimalism? Or an irrational evolutionary drive about courage in the face of danger?

Now, let's think about the purpose of the shoe now as a whole - a) protection b) aesthetics. Consider the precedent of circumstances in which we wear shoes and tell me: what surface do we walk across in day-to-day life that exceeds the risk of injury of a tropical reef? Tiles, pavement, carpet, grass, dirt; all relatively smooth and innocuous; yet we wear shoes.

It is difficult to take a single step across reef without breaking the skin at least in some small way, and the concurrence of reef and the tropics means any small nick is susceptible to bacterial infection.

In the case of urban casual day-shoes, which need only to ward off occasional and minor risks to foot safety (perhaps a shard of broken glass, a discarded needle, the bite of an ant) aesthetics can dominate decision making. This class of sneakers, vans, converse etc. improve on the aesthetic of the bare foot.

We need then to look at a different class of shoes to make an apt analogy to the bootie, towards more risky terrestrial environments that rival the treachery of a coral reef - take a tradesman: steel cap boots, a adventurer: hiking boots, a butcher: gumboots, a footballer: football boots. All these shoes are tailor made for a particular function without a focus on aesthetic (nonetheless - for good or bad - they do have an unavoidable aesthetic affect). The bootie is simply the protective footwear designed for sea-going, and the surf bootie a further specialised sub-category

From the above, we may postulate that as functionality increases, coolness decreases - most of us would agree one clear example is the comparison between a fetching man on a vintage single-speed bicycle wearing jeans and a t-shirt versus a gaudy cyclist on a lightweight modern carbon frame wearing a Lycra ensemble.

However, is not what is considered aesthetically-pleasing or 'in' at any moment arbitrary? Is not functionality the rightful master? As the architect Louis Sullivan famously said "Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom ... form ever follows function", or to quote design demigod Steve Jobs, "design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

We can draw on numerous examples to illustrate this point: Timberland work boots were arbitrarily adopted as an aesthetic item by American Hip-Hop artists in the late 90s; the now-fashionable sneaker was originally just a shoe for athletics, the full-deck surfboard grip came in, out, and back in again while it's function remains unchanged: indeed, even the bootie itself in context with a long -legged wetsuit in cold climes is acceptable - even fashionable.

So in conclusion, wear booties my friends! We strap shoes on already for far less!