blog 9

I found the Altered States reading this week to be a good summary of the creative process we have been discussing in class. After reading chapters 11 and 12 of the Hughes book I have come to the conclusion that no matter how many drugs you take creativity comes from within yourself. “Puritanism apart, it is generally agreed that art made while on drugs is often less good than art done “cold.””

A talented musician may choose to smoke pot before he writes or performs a song and this may help the final product, but if the artist wasn’t a creative person to begin with I don’t believe they would be making music. Drugs have definitely allowed many musicians to take there song writing to the next level, but they were already creative to begin with. I guess what I’m trying to say is by taking drugs one is not automatically creative. In many cases I think the drug use gives the artist something to write about and something to build off of. All you have to do is listen to Pink Floyd to hear how taking LSD can expand the subject matter one writes about.

The discussion in class of the fly agaric mushroom was very informative and I never realized how much this mushroom was around us in our culture from the time we were little kids. I was very surprised how the fly agaric was involved with traditions and cultures from people all over the world. It seems that the fly agaric like shamanism is used in some aspect in different regions in the world. It makes you wonder how these things are known by some many people so far apart long before long distance travel was accessible to mankind. It seems hard to fathom that so many of our Christmas traditions are linked to this psychedelic mushroom. After talking about it in class it would be foolish to not think there is some connection between all of our Christmas traditions and the fly agaric. I will never look at Santa Claus and his reindeer the same way. When we talked about the color scheme of a Coke can matching the mushroom’s colors I remembered hearing how the original recipe for Coke contained cocaine and I’m not sure if it has any significance, but I found it interesting.