Hello friends, this is my first blog.
What better way to introduce you to myself then to tell you about an acid trip I had a couple of days ago.
There will be plenty of useful information you might need to know about me to make it all make sense, but we’ll drip feed that in, shall we?
First, let’s introduce you to the characters.
There is myself, my name is James, but for the purposes of this blog please call me Catastropher or Cat. I took this acid trip at the ripe age of 30 years old and one day. Acid is a substance I have been used to dabbling with for some years now, but importantly, this is was the last acid tab I had. I’ve moved back to my home city of Sydney, Australia from Melbourne very recently. I’m not in contact with any of my old dealers, and consciously I am trying to lay off the drugs for the foreseeable future. Turning 30 has a way of making you rethink how you live your life, doesn’t it? Anyways, this would be my last trip for sometime. A symbolic closing of the door on my 20’s.
The next character to meet is the beautiful bathroom that exists in my parents bathroom. It has been refurbished maybe a few years ago, it is sleek and inviting with white tiles lining the floor and walls, long mirrors across one wall, and a lovely deep bathtub that is, truly, the favourite fixture of mine in my parents house. I am crashing with my parents for a month before moving along, and while there is nothing cool about staying with your parents at the age of 30, there is something immensely cool about enjoying a nice home that has been earned by two retired adults who have been very lucky in their finances. Importantly to know, as well, my parents were on vacation this eve and I had the home to myself.
Another character that simply must be mentioned is the playlist, guiding yet gentle. We’ll get to know her more as the story progresses, trust me when I tell you she has much to say.
Finally, and most importantly, I must introduce to you to a character I will refer to as The Beast. The Beast was my primary guide during this trip, a challenger who dared me always to go deeper. But I get ahead of myself.
I was running a bath for myself in this beautiful bathroom, just as dusk was stealing the light of day in that beautiful way it knows how to. I had been tripping for a few hours now, nothing out of the ordinary yet. As the warm bathwater flowed, the playlist already began, I lit two candles just behind where I would be laying and I lit a joint. Marijuana has a way of enhancing the experience of LCD in ways you cannot possibly predict.
As I was descending into the bath, I found myself reminiscing about a conversation I had about three weeks ago, just before I left Melbourne. Two friends of mine, neither who have ever really experimented with drugs, were asking me what the experience of Acid was like.
“I’m concerned about having a bad trip…” one of these friends confided, earnestly.
I told them, honestly, that in my experience all of the “bad trips” I had ever had involved being shown something that perhaps I didn’t want to see, but it was important that I did see. Like a mental sucker punch that makes you say, “damn… I’ve never thought of it that way…”
This was going through my mind as I took the first few puffs of my joint, as I lowered into the bath.
That is when I noticed The Beast.
In front of me, as I gazed at the clean, white tile wall in front of me, I noticed the reflection of the two candles burning behind me. They looked like blazing, orange eyes, in some ways demonic.
I was immediately unsettled. The weed was making the acid come on very strong very quickly. I felt as though this Beast had something it wanted to show me. But I doubted its intentions. I found it difficult to trust it had my best interests at heart.
I considered jumping straight back out of the bath and finding something else to do. Something more soothing. But that conversation that was just playing through my mind returned to me. Perhaps The Beast has something to show me, that I don’t necessarily want to see, but it is important I do see.
With doubt and unease, I settled into the bath, holding the gaze of The Beast. I surrendered to it, allowing it to show me what it needed to. It felt very, very brave in the moment, I felt that I was ceding control to this Beast.
The song that was playing in this moment is a song called Threshold by Deca. As the song ends, this passage is read by a nasal voice –
“You walk the hallways lined with
Cages where the hopeless dwell
Through shadowed alleys hissing with the
Whispered lies of hell”
It was simultaneously reassuring and terrifying. I felt that I was in for something of a journey. I didn’t trust The Beast to be gentle, but I trusted it to show me what it had to.
The song ended and The Playlist, that beautiful creature, gave me her next song. It was Real Love Baby by Father John Misty. I was filled with a sense of relief, and as I looked into the eyes of The Beast, its glowing orange eyes were now so gentle. Loving.
The guitar hits you soft, the voice ethereal and gentle. “What’s wrong with the feeling?” Father John asks you.
I relaxed and softened. I found myself singing along, looking into the eyes of The Beast as I did. Just as the lyrics say, I told The Beast “I belong to the Star and Sky”. As if to say, I have more to do on this earth, Beast. The Beast greeted me with warm, smiling eyes, agreeing with me.
“I want real love, baby.”
I started tearing up, just a little, as the chorus greeted my ears. “What’s wrong with the feeling”.
I found myself realising, The Beast telling me, that I had spent much of my last few years closed to love. More than the last few, actually. I have been protecting myself from love’s sting, not allowing myself to be truly open. The Beast was telling me something. That I’m ready for love now.
“I want real love baby, there’s a world inside me”
The Beast and The Playlist were telling me as one that I have much that I shield from the world. It is time to let it out.
I felt so serene as that song played. I felt so full as it faded out.
The next song that played was Home by Medasin. Perhaps you know this one if you’re an avid user of Spotify’s Discover Weekly. This song was great for scrambling up my thoughts. It starts very gently then evolves into a densely layered complicated soundscape.
While the eyes of The Beast were still gentle, I felt it was being more direct, now, in what it had to tell me. It was telling me that I had a duty to be creative. That I was, until this point, avoiding the many creative pursuits that I had been waiting for the “perfect moment” to invest time in.
I’ve had the idea to make a blog for months now. I’ve written at least a dozen youtube sketches that I never film for fear of the prying ears of roommates and the fear of them not being as good as I see them in my head. I’ve been writing a book, but progress is painfully slow given my fragile motivation. The Beast and the Playlist were filling my mind with expansive tones, telling me that if my goal is to get in touch with my creative self, then the time is now.
The Playlist changed her tune again, as she knows how to do so well. This time it was Walrus by D.D. Dumbo. I remember these first first few songs strangely well, as these were by far the most vivid. Walrus as a song also has a way of jumbling up your thoughts, attaching you to a new frequency. For the first little while I find my mind went quiet, following the flow. I found myself swaying slowly from side to side, descending deep into the bath water, my eyes closed.
I don’t remember specifically what was going through my head, but I remember I started playing through permutations of some social scenario. It kept playing through then starting over again. Then I realised, with shock and distress, that whatever this scenario that was playing out, I was trying to manipulate the other person. Not with malice, but I realised that with strategic use of smiles and pleasantries, I was trying to give this person a very specific impression of myself.
My eyes snapped back open, and I met the gaze of The Beast. The Beast was looking at me as a guardian might as they told me a harsh truth. That I do have a manipulative streak. That I have learned unconscious ways of trying to control social scenarios, mostly through “people pleaser” tendancies.
I found myself raising myself in the bath as this occurred to me. I didn’t want for this to be true. I found myself resisting the trip in this moment. I kept averting the gaze of The Beast, hoping to in someway mitigate this realisation. But every time I returned my eyes to The Beast it seemed to be telling me that it was my choice to resist this realisation if I chose to. There was the air of a mentor seeing in a pupil that they may not be ready. I felt a little disappointed in myself. I wanted to be exposed to whatever truths The Beast had to show me. But this one hurt a little. Reluctantly I settled back into the bath. Walrus continued to play, and it’s disjointed rhythm seemed to be telling me, hopefully, that there is room for change in my own mind. But I needed to accept this. I needed to accept that there is a part of me that is manipulative.
The next song, if I remember correctly, was one called Esther by BAYNK and Tinashe. This song has a strong sexual undercurrent. I found myself thinking about someone I shouldn’t be thinking about. The girlfriend and partner of a someone who I once considered my best friend. We will call the girl T and the guy J. It would take a long time to unravel how those friendships ended properly, but I’ll give you the spark notes. I used to live with both J and T a little over 3 years ago. They were both close friends of mine. Both J and T had a very European attitude to platonic touching, it was a very regular thing for J to encourage me to cuddle with T, which T seemed to enjoy as well. It was very confusing for me, but I never spoke up. There was one time when we were all doing ecstasy together, I ended up on the couch cuddling with T and… perhaps you can see where this is going. I took it a little too far. Nothing that would get me arrested, but I’ll admit, the cuddling didn’t feel particularly platonic. J saw it, and he was inconsolable, naturally so. The fallout was very intense, and I ended up moving out. I haven’t spoken to either of them in years.
Anyways. As this song, Esther, played, I found myself thinking about T. I was thinking about the way I was touching her that night, and how much more I wanted to touch her. I didn’t like that this is where my head was at, and yet here it was. My eyes were on the ceiling as I was thinking about this, then about halfway through the song I returned my eyes to The Beast. The Beast didn’t look quite as friendly this time. The Beast seemed to be telling me that it is the journey of a creative to do bad things sometimes, to have these ugly experiences. In fact, The Beast seemed to be asking me, if T was here right now, wouldn’t I love to fulfil those dormant fantasies of her? That if I had the chance, perhaps it would be the right thing to do.
I became distressed by this. Though J and I are no longer friends, and there is no foreseeable road to reconciling, he was a close and valued friend once upon a time. Having that kind of experience with T, however long after J and I have stopped being friends, would be considered by him to be an intense betrayal. It was the first time in this experience I had to disagree with The Beast.
“No”, I found myself telling The Beast. “I couldn’t do that, even it were something she were willing to do.”
The Beast’s eyes shone at me darkly, now, disappointed in me. It was strange to have to resist in this way. The Beast, being my guide, had no interest in forcing me down one path or another. As the song ended, though, I felt deeply that we were no longer on the same page.
The next song was Monument by Mutemath the Kasbo Remix. This song is highly euphoric and I discovered it just after moving to Melbourne. I’ll be sure to make posts about my time in Melbourne, but to give you a little background – I had been living in Sydney throughout the Covid years, and had been feeling my life was a little stagnant. I decided to do something radical and move to a new city where I didn’t know a soul. It took me about a month of living in hostels to find my own place, but on my first night in my dingy little shithole I discovered this song. It is so hopeful and vibrant, it made me feel as though this new city is my oyster. I felt like I could achieve anything in this new chapter.
The truth is, while I had many transformative adventures in Melbourne, with sadness I had to accept that it was not to be my home. At least not for now.
As this song came on while I was in the bath, I recognised that I was at the precipice of yet another new chapter. I will be moving to Newcastle soon to complete my teaching degree. This is very much a new chapter. As the song chorused “This is our time,” I tried to let it fill me with hope like it did when I discovered it in Melbourne. But I felt resistance.
My eyes returned to The Beast. But I didn’t see him anymore. I just saw the reflection of two candles looking back at me. While I was still undeniably tripping, I felt that this part of the trip was over. This brought me a tinge of sadness.
I stayed in that bath for another hour, enjoying many more songs. Shooting Star by Richard in Your Mind taught me to be patient in my creative pursuits, to maybe seek a partner in my creativity and to be open to partnership and the journey. The Way Through by Deca taught me to be sincere and raw in what I look to put out there, to not edit that which I do to make myself look better. Deadcrush by Alt-J and Ben de Vries taught me to embrace my sadness and to make it beautiful.
Ultimately though, the most powerful part of my trip had come to an end. I tried to keep hold of the lessons I had learned.
Spurred to create, straight out of getting out of the bath I sat down and wrote a draft of this very blog post. It was, frankly, unreadable in its current form and I have written this post from scratch. But having written down what I did helped cement the memory of the first three songs in particular.
To The Beast, while I did not take all of your advice, I thank you for what you had to show me.
To you, if you read all this – god, you’re the friggin’ best. I love you. Stay tuned for more.
