blog 9

I found these readings to once again be coincidental to my life. In the book it talked about how the brain is used in a neurological sense to make creativity and how drugs can open your mind. Well I was sitting at home by myself eating a pizza when my mom and step dad came in asking me how classes went. I said well, my one class we learned about the Fly Agaric mushroom and they said "WHAAAAT?!" I was like yeah the fly agaric mushroom. They asked me what class I was taking and I said Creativity and the Altered States and they just couldn't believe I was talking the way I was. I was like yeah we talk about altered states and stuff and how drugs can make you perceive reality differently. My step dad is a doctor and he began to tell me this long process of how the brain works. He told me that we only use 10% of our brains capabilities. He used LSD as an example, that it actually opens our brain waves more so that we use 50% more of our brains to the point where we can actually hear colors and taste music. After that we began to talk about how there is stuff around us that we just can't see because our brains can't process it fast enough so all this led to a very indepth conversation to say the least.

Believe it or not, my grandpa was a famous jazz trumpet player. He would play in Times Square, Madison Square Garden and won this talent show that is more commonly known as American Idol back then (can't remember the name) He was about 14 or 15 years of age when he started to become famous. He played with the famous Tommy Dorsey band several times. But once he got to see how the real life was like with fame and forture, he didn't want it. He saw how alot of the jazz players were depressed and did drugs such as opium and marijuana. He also realized he was only good to them for the music he played. He said he just wanted to play. He didn't want all the recognition so he turned down all his offers and just went on with his life. But this story came up when I was reading about the whole artist creativity and jazz players. I'm not sure if they consulted drugs for creativity, but for a means to get away from their depression.

However I think you can go both ways about this. You can take my first story for example and say yes, drugs are a way of really opening your mind so that you can come up with something thats going to effect people in a way... or you can just take the side and say that drugs are for people who are depressed and just want to get away from all the stress. But when these jazz artists took these drugs, I can't help but think that they maybe took their experiences and put them into song form.