The Right Song
I’ve noticed there’s a specific song for every substance and every stupid decision that leads you there. Not like I’m recommending anything - I’m just saying what I watched happen.
Wine and beer are the warm-up. You’re getting loose with people who don’t bore you, not trying to leave the planet yet, just trying to loosen your shoulders a little. You put on something like Solar Bears or Thievery Corporation - music that’s got enough going on that you don’t notice the silence, but not so much that you have to think about it. Maybe Jon Hopkins if you want time to feel thicker. This is the foreplay before anything real happens.
Weed is about slowing everything down and noticing things. The day gets wider. You listen to Nightmares on Wax, Shuggie Otis, Bob Marley if you’re willing to be that obvious, and the music just sits there understanding that you’re trying to turn your brain off for a few hours. It’s not trying to prove anything.
The fast stuff - coke, MDMA, speed, whatever you can find that makes your body feel like it’s vibrating at its own frequency - that needs beats that own the room. Deadmau5, Röyksopp, the kind of house music that doesn’t ask you anything. You’re not listening to this music anymore, you’re being moved by it. Your heartbeat becomes part of the track.
Hallucinogens are different because you’re using the music as a steering mechanism now. You’re looking at colors that don’t exist and your brain is remapping itself and you need bright songs to keep from sliding into the bad part of the trip. Empire of the Sun, Ellie Goulding, that Japanese stuff that sounds happy without trying hard - the brighter it is the less likely you end up staring at something dark inside your own head. Someone I knew took acid once without any music and said it was like watching a film with the sound off, which sounds about right.
I stop thinking about the music after that. The people who went for heroin either disappeared or came back as different people, and I don’t know what they listened to because they weren’t around to say. Maybe Burial. Maybe that murky Massive Attack stuff. Maybe nothing at all, just the sound of waiting.
Sometimes I’ll hear a song and remember being in a room with people and whatever substance and the hour when everything lined up and made a kind of sense that nothing makes anymore.