Love Notes: Cannabis
Visuals are usually where we first notice the change. Colors become brighter, or perhaps more pronounced. Maybe it’s not the colors, but something’s different. The world feels warmer, richer. The sun was never brighter; the night was never darker. When we’re sober, life looks like a digital photo. When we smoke, life looks like a Polaroid. Lines and borders become more defined; things stand out against their background, almost cartoonish in their definition. The world looks cel-shaded.
Time ceases to be a fluid event, and rather divides into instances unrelated to each other. We find it hard to link events or place them into context. As we walk up the stairs, we cease to remember how we got there, or why. Events are independent; we are what we’re doing. In a sense, we’re “in the moment.” At higher doses, time stutters and lags. When we look around, it seems like we’re skipping frames. Memories bubble up to the surface; we experience the sensation of being somewhere we’ve been, feeling a way we once felt. We’re reminded of places from our childhood, experiences from our past.
It’s not that it becomes harder to focus, but focus becomes different. Instead of taking in an entire situation, we find it easier to take in one thing at a time – the chair, the drapes, the carpet. Individual aspects stand out. We find ourselves noticing things about them that we’d never paid attention to before; the weave of a fabric, the grain of wood. The details we usually overlook.
Our thought processes turn from the what to the why, and through our questions the absurdity of things begin to shine through. Conversations become ridiculous, impossibly convoluted, though it’s hard to tell whether it’s the conversations themselves or if they only seem to be so. We double back, come full circle before we’ve even realized it. And we laugh at ourselves for it. We laugh not at clever punchlines, but at cleverness, at the very idea of joking. We laugh at situations, at environments. We laugh because we can’t believe we’re laughing.
We contemplate the nature of things; we look for, and find, patterns. We realize aspects we hadn’t before considered. Things may not make more sense, but often make different sense. We appreciate things in ways we hadn’t before. As such we find ourselves craving sensory stimulation. We want to see beautiful things, hear beautiful music, taste delicious food, knowing their beauty will be amplified, expanded. As we listen to a song, the each note reverberates endlessly in our ears; we evaporate into the treble, drown in the bass. Food crumbles in our mouth and we taste every atom; drinks glide down our throats like liquid velvet. In the beauty of things, we may sometimes find peace.
We wholly appreciate things we’d taken for granted, and through appreciation we see the true nature of things. We are struck by realizations that seem profound in their simplicity. We understand what it means to taste, to smell, to breathe. And the realizations stay with us long after the last of it is spent. The drug leaves the system, but the experience does not. We’re able to carry our altered perspectives with us for as long as we allow.
And then we stop. Maybe we’d only tried it once; maybe we’d done it for years. Some of us miss it, some of us don’t. And then we come back to it. Or maybe we don’t. Maybe we forget about it entirely. Perhaps we remember it for the rest of our lives. That’s love.
Brian Eno – An Ending (Ascent) || 1983/Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks
