Eerie Tom (ago)

Earlier this year, I walked through part of the northwest industrial area of Portland (the area around the Montgomery Park building) and intended to go back and check it out at night (while stoned, which I wasn’t the first time), and that day finally came. I mapped out my course: starting at the Montgomery Park building, I would head north via Wardway, then west on Nicolai Street/St. Helens Road, east on Industrial Street, then south on 26th Avenue back to Vaughn Street. I took my tincture and had a late dinner, so it would be past civil twilight when I began my walk.

I reached Montgomery Park, but was disappointed that the big sign wasn’t illuminated. I guessed the lights of the letters had simply burned out over the years and never were replaced—a common phenomenon these days, unfortunately. I still intended to take a few pictures. I got out my phone, lined up the shot, and just as my finger was only a half inch away from tapping the screen—and I swear I’m not making this up—the lights came on! How was that for magical timing?


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The first part of Wardway and Nicolai St/St. Helens Rd reminded me of Japan: quiet, clean, a few buildings lit by streetlamps, some park-like areas. But after 30th or so, there was a change: it became a little grungier: older buildings, signs with “classic” fonts and logos, a bar with honky-tonk music coming out of it. I started feeling a bit like Jim Rockford, sleuthing on a case somewhere in industrial Los Angeles. Explanation: I had begun watching The Rockford Files for the first time a few months ago after seeing James Garner in an episode of Maverick, and found Rockford to be an engaging character and role model: an assertive guy who would prefer not to fight, but can take care of himself when the need arises.

Since moving into my new digs back in February, I haven’t had the chance to have my monthly cigar. No smoking permitted in the apartment, of course, but also not on the balconies. One had to go down to street level. However, for me, a cigar is something to be enjoyed and savored, something for relaxing, and standing on a sidewalk while pedestrians and cars go by (especially with the combination of a busy intersection and construction since before I moved here) is anything but relaxing. I figured I could have a smoke without anyone hassling me while going through the industrial area at night—and I brought a portable ashtray along, too. Alas, it was a particularly windy night, and it was difficult just lighting my cigar, much less keeping it lit.

After turning east on Industrial St, I reached an area near some railroad tracks (about 500 feet east of St. Helens Rd). I could hear a dog barking from behind a building. It finally appeared, unleashed. I guessed the owner would soon appear as well, but one never did. I wasn’t sure of the breed, but it resembled a bull terrier. The dog stopped in the middle of the street and began barking and growling at me. I was smart enough to not just turn and run, so I stopped and kept an eye on it. It neither approached nor retreated, but it kept barking. Since I wasn’t sure if it was guarding one of the buildings (it seemed odd a watchdog would be running loose) or just a stray (and possibly rabid), I decided the best thing to do would be to go back the way I came instead of trying to go around it. Again, I didn’t just immediately turn and start walking. And I was still trying to light my damned cigar! It was at that point I felt my most Rockford-ish and wished I had been wearing a sports jacket and that someone had been there to snap a picture of me: late at night, looking like Rockford, facing down a possibly dangerous dog, but standing my ground while trying to light my cigar. Was that the epitomy of cool or what?

So see? I do know when to be careful while stoned!

Failing utterly in my attempt to light my cigar, I gave up and took a few steps backwards—the dog didn’t advance. I took a few more steps, then turned slightly to walk sideways (still watching the dog), then finally began walking forward, heading west back to St. Helens Rd. I took a few glances over my shoulder, but the dog didn’t advance, although he was still barking at me. After walking about 50 feet, I suddenly heard a man shouting: You son of a bitch! Get your motherfucking ass in here! You goddamn fucking dog! No idea from where the voice was coming, but obviously the dog wasn’t a stray. I looked: the dog hadn’t moved, and the man was still screaming. And he was still screaming after I had walked another couple hundred feet!

I wished I had at least thought to take a picture of the dog!

Maybe I should’ve stopped at the honky-tonk for a whiskey to celebrate my Rockford-ness!

For the last several weeks, I’ve become more interested in hiking while stoned, so I’ve been exploring a lot of new areas for me. One such area was the section of the Springwater Corridor that runs just east of the Willamette.

The corridor was a narrow paved path that seemed to be only for bicyclists, so I checked the signs carefully to make sure pedestrians were allowed. It didn’t say they weren’t, so I proceeded, walking to one side and keeping an eye out for approaching bicycles. Here and there were dirt paths paralleling the paved trail, which made it easier to avoid them. The bicyclists would whiz by very quickly; I felt like I had stumbled across a secret express lane for elite bicyclists to get around Portland.

To the left (facing east), was a tall line of trees on a hill, which made them seem even taller. Barely visible through the tops of those trees was what seemed to be an elevated highway (it was actually SE Grand/SE McLoughlin). With this odd combination of beautiful nature and the elevated road, it seemed there should be a monorail up there. It all felt somewhat utopian, like a scene from a sci-fi film.


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I came to another section of the tall trees. I was instantly reminded of the moai on Easter Island. Were these trees then, Portland’s moai? I felt like I had discovered a holy place. This area was full of dragonflies, which buzzed around quite audibly.


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After I left the Moai Area, I reflected upon how much I enjoyed the sound of the dragonflies. And then I thought, didn’t it sound a bit like my tinnitus? I’ve been suffering from moderate tinnitus for about a year now, and there are periods where it seems more acute and noticeable than others, and particularly so these last few weeks. I try not to think about or dwell on it; I’ve tried to make peace with the idea I’d never hear total silence again, for it’s easy to “catastrophize” the condition. So how could I find one sound enjoyable and not the other? (of course, one answer is I can always walk away from the dragonflies) And that’s when I decided I had a tiny dragonfly in each ear. Since real dragonflies need to eat and rest and can’t flap their wings constantly, the dragonflies in my ears must be robots with an indefatigable power supply, buzzing endlessly. I wondered, when their host (me) dies, what will happen to them? Will they just keep buzzing in my skull for all eternity? Will they fly out and find a home in someone else’s ears? Of course there aren’t actually tiny robot dragonflies in my ears, but as I have a bit of a cyborg fetish, I like the idea that there are. Anything that makes me tolerate the tinnitus better, even such an obviously fanciful idea.

While walking on the path, I saw a man ahead sitting under a tree with his bicycle parked nearby. He was playing what sounded like old-school Eurodisco music on a portable radio. I appreciated the incongruity; most people play tunes on their phones these days. From the way he was behaving, I guessed he was also in an altered state of consciousness. As I got closer we both nodded and smiled at each other, and that’s when I noticed that he looked just like Snoop Dogg. Now, I didn’t really think it was Snoop out there all by himself. While everyone needs solitary time now and then, Snoop doesn’t seem the type to be out in public without an entourage or some bodyguards. But I looked online, and this article says he was in Eugene, OR less than a week before, so it very well might have been him! And if it was Snoop, then I could just kick myself for not at least saying hi! (however, the guy I saw seemed a little younger than Snoop)

The nearby Oregon Rail Heritage Center offers open air train rides along the Corridor. One passed me, then eventually disappeared from sight but I could still hear its bell. As it got further and further away, the sound “degenerated” until it was mostly echo, and mostly the higher frequencies, so it sounded like a celesta. Ordinarily it’s the higher frequencies that roll off with distance, but perhaps my “enhanced hearing” made a difference?

Although I had taken my usual dose that day, it sure hit me much harder than usual. Some sounds seemed somewhat distorted and became almost unrecognizable. I felt a little dizzier than usual while walking. I wasn’t alarmed, just a little surprised, but also oddly unconcerned. Shouldn’t I have been more concerned? Shouldn’t I have just gone back home, or at least sat somewhere until the effect had peaked? Was I so high that I was throwing caution to the winds? And then it occurred to me that each time I heard a bicycle approach, I would instinctively get over as far as possible, so obviously I wasn’t so unconcerned I might do something foolish. I thought about this, and then came to this conclusion (dictated into my phone that day, edited for clarity):

There are those who skydive or similar for the thrill. There are those who climb impossibly high mountains or dive from space for the thrill. So why can’t one explore one’s mental universe for the thrill? Because I’m walking outside and I am really fucking dizzy and I feel like I should feel more concerned, yet I don’t! I understood that I had to concentrate on my walking because I was stumbling a little more than usual, and yet I didn’t feel concerned, and that’s when I thought, maybe in my own way, I am just one of those thrill-seeking types?

It was later that I discovered the word psychonaut. While doing cannabis has been a lot of fun and has helped with my overall self-esteem and depression, I enjoy the insights and flights of fancy I get. And besides cannabis and (dreaming about) magic mushrooms, I’ve long kept a dream journal (for my dreams tend to be very long and quite vivid, not the “I dreamt I saw a dog cross the street” variety), have tried guided imagery and meditation before, and so on. It’s more fun to say I’m a stoner, but really, I’m a psychonaut.

Finally, a few random anecdotes:

⇒ I swear I’m not making this one up. On the way from OMSI Station to the start of the trail, I saw a building for a company called TRD Motors which, of course, I read as turd. And the first thing I thought was, I hope their advertising slogan isn’t “Put a TuRD in your driveway!”

⇒ While eating lunch earlier, I was reading on my phone that dimetrodons (don’t know why I was thinking of dimetrodons) were not true dinosaurs, but also existed 40 million years before the dinosaurs appeared. It’s not that I didn’t know how old the earth was (especially since I once recorded a piece of music called Gondwanaland, which contained a segment entitled “Six Billion Years Pass”), I guess I had never really thought about it before, and had a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around those figures, the idea that the earth formed some 4.5 years billion ago ... humanity’s presence here barely registers as a blip on the timeline.

⇒ I also read an article that said it’s a myth that rabbits love carrots (don’t know why I was thinking of rabbits, either). It said rabbits prefer green leafy vegetables, because they find carrots too sweet. Can you imagine Bugs Bunny carrying around a big head of cabbage and munching on it as if it were an apple? lol

⇒ As one of the open air trains passed, I waved at the passengers and some waved back. However, waving at them distracted me just enough that I stumbled pretty dramatically on the path, though I stayed on my feet. The first thing I thought was, every parent on that train probably pointed at me and said, “Look kids, it’s the town junkie. Don’t do drugs, m’kay?” lol

March 5, 2024

City Limits (MST3K version), dir. Aaron Lipstadt, 1985
The Tale of the Heiki, Akira Sakata, 2011
The Lost Episode of Star Trek, 2021 (watch on YouTube here)

March 8, 2024

Repo Man, dir. Alex Cox, 1984

March 12, 2024

KDGJ-TV, dirs. multiple, 1993

KDGJ-TV is a series of video clips I made with my friend Duane and my brother Kain. We “played television station” and improvised commercials, a talk show, sitcoms, and so on.

Best Chillout Space Futuristic, dir. unknown, 2021?

In a recent blog, I mentioned how some of the courses in Mario Kart were like “hyperTokyo”, a “futuristic Tokyo even cooler than it is now, with science fiction architecture, Möbius strip pathways, gravity-defying zones, and huge entertainment complex space stations in geosynchronous orbit.” Coincidentally, while looking for trippy videos to watch, I found this one, and wow, if it isn’t a depiction of hyperTokyo, I don’t know what is. Impossibly tall skyscrapers, floating buildings rising far above what is surely the limits of a breathable atmosphere, and structures in all kinds of architecturally-impractical shapes. I know it’s all computer-generated animation, but I still can’t imagine how anyone, even a whole team of people, created this. I also substituted other music when I watched it, namely Holger Flinsch’s 2007 DJ set “Nachtnetz”, available for free download here.

March 16, 2024

Being from Another World (MST3K version; aka Time Walker), dir. Tom Kennedy, 1982
Dr. Strangelove, dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1967

As I had done with Evil Under the Sun and Master of the Flying Guillotine, I thought it was time to “psychedelic-ize” another film, and chose Dr. Strangelove. I didn’t want to repeat the same video and audio effects from the previous two efforts, which sometimes got boring once the novelty wore off. Despite this, though the final result was entertaining in parts, the rest was still a little boring, so I’m not even going to post a video excerpt, though I was rather proud of the mashup I did of the film’s final song (“We’ll Meet Again”) with an instrumental version of Enya’s “Orinoco Flow”.

March 19, 2024

Separate entry: “A Trip to IKEA”

The Benny Hill Show, “Is This Your Life”, dir. John Robins, 1969
Cool and Crazy, Shorty Rogers and His Orchestra featuring the Giants, 1953
Unknown World, dir. Terrell O. Morse, 1951

March 23, 2024

The Twilight Zone, “Where is Everybody?”, dir. Robert Stevens, 1959
Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, Radiohead, 2021
Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure, dir. Sergio Corbucci, 1981

March 26, 2024

The Human Duplicators (MST3K version), dirs. Hugo Grimaldi and Arthur C. Pierce, 1965
Shaolin Dolemite, dir. Robert Tai, 1999

March 29, 2024

Separate entry: “A Dream of Allen”

The Benny Hill Show, “Undercover Sanitary Inspector”, dir. John Robins, 1971
The Legend of Suram Fortress, dir. Sergei Parajanov, 1985

I got back from Japan about a month ago, and will eventually blog about some of my experiences, including the album I wrote and recorded there.

Because medical and recreational cannabis are illegal in Japan (though there are coffee vendors offering CBD shots), one of the first things I did upon my return was get stoned. Due to the fact I’ve also spent the last several weeks looking for a new apartment, moving stuff out of storage and into said apartment, dealing with lots of logistical issues, blah blah blah, I haven’t been posting to my blog regularly, hence the lateness of this entry.

Jan 25, 2024

This was my first time trying cakeballs (usually I take tinctures). I ate one then hopped on the bus to my usual carousel sushi restaurant. There was a young Chinese woman working there, someone I hadn’t seen before, about 20 years old. She spoke in a very high pitched voice, kind of like Minnie Mouse. She had a heavy Chinese accent, but whether she was speaking Chinese or English, there was a rhythmic lilt to her speech which was quite alluring, almost like she was rapping. The album I recorded in Japan has quite a few samples of announcements and speech: I could have sampled her speaking for three minutes and made a song out of it!

After lunch, while back on the bus, there was a woman behind me talking on her cellphone. She had the speaker on, but the other person’s voice (my guess was it was the woman’s mother) was so distorted it sounded like it was being fed through both high pass and tremolo filters. This made her mother sound like a Dalek. In contrast to her mother’s voice, the woman was speaking in a very rich, musical tone, almost like she was singing opera. She tended to extend her vowels, and every sentence ended with a dramatic drop in pitch, almost like a cat meowing. I tried to guess what language she was speaking; it wasn’t Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian (a friend later suggested it might be Romanian). It was almost like Siouxsie Sioux singing flamenco, all dolorous cries and moans.

Random stoned thought: What an odd custom it was, to tip one’s hat when meeting someone, and so inconvenient, always having to have a free hand to tip one’s hat every time someone said hello to you!

I went to the medical plaza lobby to have a coffee and just chill for a while. There was a man in front of me at the coffee bar who was telling the barista he had been “a cycling buff for a while”, but it sounded like he said he had been a psychopath. This of course sent me into a paroxysm of giggles. When I sat down, there was a man standing behind me talking to someone. I honestly couldn’t tell if he was speaking to a child or a dog. What he said was just vague enough that it could have been either. Finally at one point he said, “Emmett, do you want to put on your shoes?” And a little girl (her name must’ve been Emma, but Emmett is a great name for a dog!) gleefully said yes! Of course, my brain just decided Emmett the dog had suddenly learned to talk, which also brought on some giggles!

Jan 28, 2024

While re-watching my Digital Wonderland #5 video, it occurred to me that the racing courses in Mario Kart were like “hyperNature” and “hyperTokyo”, depicting outdoor settings of dreamlike hazy sunny days, or a futuristic Tokyo even cooler than it is now, with science fiction architecture, Möbius strip pathways, gravity defying zones, and huge entertainment complex space stations in geosynchronous orbit.

Feb 4, 2024

Fellini Satyricon, dir. Federico Fellini, 1969

Feb 8, 2024

The God of Cookery, dirs. Stephen Chow and Lee Lik-chi, 1996

Feb 13, 2024

Split Soul, Jylz, 2005
Curious Alice, dir. unknown, 1971

Feb 21, 2024

Rocket Attack U.S.A. (MST3K version), dir. Barry Mahon, 1958
Invincible Obsessed Fighter, dirs. Jeong-yong Kim and Tomas Tang, 1982
Paranoid, Black Sabbath, 1970

My biggest laugh of the evening happened during Rocket. I somehow missed the caption saying a scene was taking place in Berlin. I couldn’t understand why half the cast was speaking like Elmer Fudd. Of course, they were supposed to have German accents, but it was funnier thinking the town was populated by relatives of Fudd.

At one point during the evening, I closed my eyes and listened to the traffic outside. I kept seeing Sailor Moon (with very short hair) dancing and skipping around, with multiple exposure, strobe, and kaleidoscopic effects at varying speeds, including at 10^10 frames per second. I also saw Asterix the Gaul, who seemed constantly enraged.

Feb 24, 2024

Star Trek, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, dir. Jud Taylor, 1969
The Eraser, Thom Yorke, 2006
The Phantom Creeps (parts I-IV), dirs. Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkind, 1939

I have new respect for actor Frank Gorshin, who played Commissioner Bele in Battlefield. It’s not that I didn’t respect his acting before, but he was so intense in this episode. Just watch him even when he’s in the background; he’s not merely standing there waiting for his turn to speak. He stole every scene he was in.

I saw the Gammoth flying in space, with infinitely long wings, like an exaggerated moesode (as opposed to a furisode). As the Gammoth receded into the distance, the wings stretched out beyond it, undulating like a sine waveform.

I saw a giant flying building, like an old cube-shaped grain elevator, without windows, 50' in each dimension, equipped with windmill sails and airplane propellers.

I once compared Thom Yorke’s voice to that of an ironic choir boy. On The Eraser he is more like an angel who whispers into humanity’s collective ear to address injustice and hatred, especially on “Black Swan” and “Harrowdown Hill”. The angel then ascends into heaven on the climactic final track (“Cymbal Rush”).

Feb 27, 2024

The Benny Hill Show, “Benny’s All-Star Finale”, dir. John Robins, 1972
Anima (Thom Yorke), dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2019
Gymnopêdies (1965) and Our Lady of the Sphere (1969), dir. Larry Jordan
Giants of All Sizes, Elbow, 2019
Voyage to the End of the Universe, dir. Jindřich Polák, 1963

As with the aforementioned Frank Gorshin, I have even more respect for actor Henry McGee, especially when he played the overly laudatory film critic, absolutely straight.

At one point in the evening, I suddenly envisioned I had awakened in the future in an ultra-modern apartment cube in a complex several dozen stories high (as were the surrounding buildings). The light from the city at night was so bright one needed blackout curtains to shut them out so one could sleep. Everyone was in futuristic technological body suits, all tied cybernetically to an information network. Advertising “billboards” were holograms projected around everyone as they walked. There was no need for physical billboards or signs or posters. Researchers had discovered people responded better to hologram ads than images projected into someone’s mind, because one is then compelled to walk around and “find the interesting ads” (not unlike playing Pokémon Go). Ads were customized to each person, so every pedestrian had a different experience.

Voyage sounded like some of the voices were dubbed by Paul Frees and Peter Fernandez, though imdb.com doesn’t list the film among their credits. I was expecting a cheesy sci-fi film, the kind MST3K would show, but the film looked like Ingmar Bergman or Fellini had made it—the dance scene especially looked like something out of Fellini. How is it, as obviously influential as this film was (particularly on Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey), I’d never heard of it? The scene after the “coma”, when someone speculates that a force of some kind intervened and saved them, reminded me of a few episodes from Season 1 of Space: 1999 (1975-76). The scene where one of the crew is climbing up the central core ventilation shaft made me think of The Andromeda Strain (1971, dir. Robert Wise).

$6M-Man invited me to go with him and a friend of his to The Oddities and Curiosities Expo at the Portland Convention Center. We thought it would be a good event to attend while stoned, so I took my tincture shortly before heading for the venue. The Expo featured vendors selling a variety of creepy and eerie goods and curios, such as weird little sculptures and dolls and actual stuffed animals. There was also a stage with sideshow type performers, such as a husband-and-wife sword swallowing act. While there, I had my usual trippy thoughts:

I suddenly felt very Daoist, or at least as Daoist as I could feel based on what little I understand about Daoism. It began with seeing the abstract sculptures in the shapes of animal heads. I could see the life in them, despite the fact they were obviously fake. And I began to see life everywhere, in objects and in people.

We’re all just wonderful little molecules and cells and atoms! The medium of air connects us all. My group of molecules moves through the molecules in the air, which swirl and circulate around me and everyone else. Everywhere in the world, every creature is breathing. Humans and animals breathe in air, then it reacts with our bodies and changes on its way out. In turn, the plants suck in the air, it reacts with their bodies, they exhale, and the cycle continues. Thus, we interact with each other in this way.

Some people may be better at manipulating their molecules and energies than others, either psychically or physically or emotionally. These ways might include body language, pheromones, the words one says or the manner in which one speaks, and so on. These manipulations reach out like ripples in a pond and communicate with everyone and everything around them, even if others are only responding to them on an unconscious level.

I remember thinking there was a lot of good eye-candy there, but then I realized everybody looked like eye-candy that day. Everyone was a movie star, everyone was beautiful, and there was so much joy there.

There were so many depictions of decay at the Expo, some realistic, some more metaphorical. Ordinarily I wouldn’t find this interesting at all—I’m more cyberpunk than goth—but suddenly I found it all fascinating. I know it’s a cliché to say this, but I saw that one doesn’t really die; one’s physical form just changes to some other form and continues.

One vendor was selling some art; my eye was immediately drawn to an illustration of a moth or butterfly suspended in the air, its wings disintegrating, so I bought it. At that time, my partner and I were getting ready to move to Japan for a few months. We were giving up our apartment in Portland and putting all our furniture and belongings into storage. We weren’t going to store any food aside from some canned goods, but I still didn’t want mice or rats gnawing at my clothes or books or documents. I read online that mothballs were a good way to keep such pests away, so I bought a few packs. I decided I would hang the picture of the moth in the storage space, and whimsically thought the irony of a moth in a space filled with mothballs would protect it from intruders, both animal and human.

After the Expo, $6M-Man’s friend went on their own way. $6M-Man asked if I felt like some kava. I thought he said java and assumed we were going somewhere for coffee, but no—we ended up at a place called the Nalu Kava Tea Lounge. Kava tasted like slightly bitter gourd but I liked it, and the more I drank, the more my tongue tingled with an almost spearmint sensation. We played Higher Thoughts for a while, then left.

We got some drive through food to go and went back to his place. I handed him my visor headset and showed him a couple of my tincture vids (specifically, number 4 and number 5), then decided it was time to head home. Bus service from $6M-Man’s place at that time of night is pretty spotty, so I ended up walking most of the way. Just as I reached the stop before my place, a bus showed up. Now, I could’ve just walked the rest of the way, but it was late, I was tired, I had already walked over two miles, so I hopped on the bus.

After I got off the bus, I was halfway to my apartment when I realized I didn’t have my moth with me. I hoped I had merely dropped it on the ground, but no—I must have left it on the bus. I cursed myself for not walking the rest of the way home, for if I had, I’d still have my moth. I filled out a lost-and-found report online with Trimet, but didn’t really expect I’d get my moth back. But two days later, Trimet contacted me and said they had found it! Hurrah!

The moth story doesn’t end there. A week or so later, we began moving stuff into the storage space. I taped the moth to the back wall so it could keep an eye on things. After nearly everything was moved in, there was no free space at all. Boxes were stacked nearly to the ceiling, and there was no room to walk. I took two of the mothball packs and tossed them over the stacks, hoping they would find their way to the floor and be relatively equally spaced apart.

I had never used mothballs before, and had no idea how much or little I should actually use. The instructions said not to open the packs, just to use them as is. However, the smell was overpowering, even from clear down the hallway in the storage space. I feared all our stuff would just reek forever, and worried the storage space management would object, even though there was nothing in the lease forbidding the use of mothballs. Unfortunately, since we’d be in Japan, it wasn’t like we could just come back and get the mothballs out if the management complained—they had to be removed now.

I began pulling out boxes and furniture, with no idea where the packets would be. I found one almost immediately—that would cut the stench by half at least, but that’s like celebrating the fact a fire destroyed only half your house. By now it was nearly impossible to pull out more boxes without either removing everything or having boxes topple down on me. I still had no idea where the other packet had fallen. But lo and behold, I finally saw it. It had somehow made its way down to the floor and under some furniture. I crawled through a very narrow gap and was able to pull it out. Hurrah again! I had to think, my moth must have had pretty damned powerful magic: not only did it find its way back to me after being left on the bus, it was powerful enough to drive out the mothballs. Surely such a creature was worthy of veneration. Not omnipotent like the Godcat but it definitely should be exalted, so I named it Gammoth. As I finish writing this, we are in Japan, so here’s hoping Gammoth is still protecting the space!

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A disclaimer—as Carl Sagan once said:

I was lying on my back in a friend’s living room idly examining the pattern of shadows on the ceiling cast by a potted plant (not cannabis!). I suddenly realized that I was examining an intricately detailed miniature Volkswagen, distinctly outlined by the shadows. I was very skeptical at this perception, and tried to find inconsistencies between Volkswagens and what I viewed on the ceiling. But it was all there, down to hubcaps, license plate, chrome, and even the small handle used for opening the trunk. I can remember another early visual experience with cannabis, in which I viewed a candle flame and discovered in the heart of the flame, standing with magnificent indifference, the black-hatted and -cloaked Spanish gentleman who appears on the label of the Sandeman sherry bottle. Looking at fires when high, by the way, especially through one of those prism kaleidoscopes which image their surroundings, is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful experience. I want to explain that at no time did I think these things ‘really’ were out there. I knew there was no Volkswagen on the ceiling and there was no Sandeman salamander man in the flame. I don’t feel any contradiction in these experiences. There’s a part of me making, creating the perceptions which in everyday life would be bizarre; there’s another part of me which is a kind of observer. Source

So no, I don’t honestly think an illustration of a moth is going to keep out rodents or intruders—I just enjoy the trippy thoughts I get. ;-)

I took the Yellow Line to the Delta Park/Vanport station and decided to walk to the Expo Center station, which goes through a nice little wooded area.

The road and the wooded area made me feel like I was in a 1960s French New Wave film. And for whatever reason that day, I felt like Michael Hutchence or Jim Morrison, full of confidence and a little swagger. And when you feel like that, you don’t walk, you mosey. And despite the swagger, I felt relaxed with nothing to prove to anyone, so I smiled beatifically at everyone I passed.

And then I wondered, where was this confident guy when I was in my 20s, or 30s, or 40s? Instead, at various times, I was a young man who was lonely, closeted, who didn’t think he was attractive in any way, who came across as shy, quiet, and uncertain. But I bet that confident person had been there all along, just waiting to express himself. Oh! What that young man might have become! And I wept a little for him and for lost opportunities.

But ya know what? I’m that person now. Even when I’m not stoned, I remember that feeling of confidence, and for that I’m grateful that I didn’t have to wait until I was in my 60s or 70s to realize this. “I am an astonishingly remarkable person,” I texted to myself.

Later that evening I listened to Eftsoons by Hal Russell and Mars William (1981). A real mind-blowing album, very experimental, with what sounded like random household objects used as percussion. There were moments when I could not tell the saxophone from a human voice, if there were any voices at all.

In mid-September, I was obliged to fly to Southern California for three nights, and I thought, “Since I’ve been experimenting with my tincture on buses and trains, how cool would it be to fly while stoned?”

However, while recreational cannabis is legal in both Oregon and California, it’s still against federal law, meaning you can’t transport it from one state to another, even if it’s legal in both states. I don’t know how strictly that law is enforced, but I didn’t want to take any chances, so I left my tincture at home. Instead, I searched online before I left and found a dispensary near my destination town. My plan was to buy some gummies that came in a ten-pack. Each gummy was a 10mg dose of THC, about 2/3 my usual dose. I figured I’d take a single gummy each night, just to relax before bedtime, then take two (about 1/3 higher than my usual dose) just before takeoff (and ditch the rest before going through security).

When I arrived at the dispensary, I was surprised how large the building was. I entered and found myself in a security vestibule. The guard scanned my ID and buzzed me through the door. Inside, it didn’t seem any larger than the average dispensary. There were the usual displays and cabinets and counters. But when I walked around one cabinet, I saw a wall of large windows on the far wall, through which was a field of cannabis! It was like something out of Silent Running (1972, dir. Douglas Trumbull). A young woman came up to me to see if I needed help. She was friendly, courteous, and knowledgeable, and I ended up choosing a pack of Kanha brand gummies.

My trip to So Cal, unfortunately, was filled with an inordinate amount of stress. To make matters worse, I didn’t care for the company of my host. My first evening there, I said I was very tired (which was true; I had been up since 3:30am) and wanted to turn in immediately after dinner. This was just to give me some time to myself. With all the stress just from the first day, I decided to take two gummies. The package promised it was “fast acting”, and it sure was. It hit me fast and with the higher than usual dose, hit me hard. Not a complaint.

Mostly I listened to music on my phone, including Holly Herndon, 4T Thieves, and Kaoru Mansour, and had some pretty wild visions and thoughts. I would just like to say at this point that when I have such visions, I don’t really think they’re real. It’s just what I’m imagining, as vivid as they are. Carl Sagan once wrote (under the pseudonym Mr. X):

I was lying on my back in a friend’s living room idly examining the pattern of shadows on the ceiling cast by a potted plant (not cannabis!). I suddenly realized that I was examining an intricately detailed miniature Volkswagen, distinctly outlined by the shadows. I was very skeptical at this perception, and tried to find inconsistencies between Volkswagens and what I viewed on the ceiling. But it was all there, down to hubcaps, license plate, chrome, and even the small handle used for opening the trunk. I can remember another early visual experience with cannabis, in which I viewed a candle flame and discovered in the heart of the flame, standing with magnificent indifference, the black-hatted and -cloaked Spanish gentleman who appears on the label of the Sandeman sherry bottle. Looking at fires when high, by the way, especially through one of those prism kaleidoscopes which image their surroundings, is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful experience. I want to explain that at no time did I think these things ‘really’ were out there. I knew there was no Volkswagen on the ceiling and there was no Sandeman salamander man in the flame. I don’t feel any contradiction in these experiences. There’s a part of me making, creating the perceptions which in everyday life would be bizarre; there’s another part of me which is a kind of observer. Source

I saw three dimensional arrays of perfectly aligned galaxies. I saw the Godcat sliced into a thousand disc-like cross sections, each one floating off in every direction and rotating on different axes and at different rates. I felt like Disney’s Alice in Wonderland again, falling through an infinite white universe, except populated not by geometric figures and equations like before, but by giant Fruit Loops.

Usually, I just keep my phone by my side in bed, but I was sleeping on a very narrow cot and worried the phone might drop to the floor. So, while listening to the music, I held it in my hand. I fancied the glow from its screen was a digital deity that watched over me while I was majorly tripping out. The Patron Saint of Good Trips, perhaps? I knew that as long as I held the phone in my hands, the deity would protect me, even as I floated through the space of a million brilliant stars.

I saw giant spidery walking sticks silhouetted black against blinding white floodlights. I felt like cannabis was a gift of nature, essential for humanity, like food and air and water. The meta-pine manifests itself in cannabis, a connection ancient humanity once had that put us in a state of emotional and spiritual harmony, and that it was right and good. But eventually the powers that be decided it was sinful and immoral and wicked, and humanity lost this valuable metaphysical connection. I was in symbiosis with the deity of my phone, and thus I was a conduit between the meta-pine (flora) and the metals in my phone.

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The next evening, I took two more. I listened to a little music, but was fascinated by the sounds of my room: the hum of the air conditioning, which caused the window blinds to rattle delicately, like the sound of a far-off woodpecker. There was the ticking of the clock, and a very faint sound of someone street racing in the distance.

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Finally, it was time to go home. I returned my rental car, then took two more gummies just before proceeding through security.

I like being in airports (stoned or not). They seem utopian, usually with very modern buildings, clean, pristine, sometimes futuristically antiseptic. The various counters often had huge screens behind them, glowing with information. And plenty of PA announcements, which I also like.

While waiting to board, I watched another episode of Are You Being Served? (“Shoulder to Shoulder”, 1975, dir. Ray Butt). The poor auto-generated captioning resulted in a few good laughs. “Cheeky devil” became “Chiqui Death”, which sounds like a great drag name. When Mrs. Slocombe said, “I think I’ll go and get myself a coffee.” it was captioned as “I think I’ll go and get myself a coffin.” I thought it would be interesting to take the script from an episode of Are You Being Served? and have someone translate it into Japanese, but tell them to localize it to fit modern Japanese culture and customs. Then, take the results and give it to someone else, telling them it’s a traditional Japanese play and ask them to translate it into English, and again, localize it for modern Western culture and customs. Then, redub the episode of Served? with the “new” script. With a show so full of double entendres and very British idiomatic speech, the results ought to be interesting. Alas, my own Japanese skills are too poor to attempt such a thing.

Some “monumentally funny” thoughts and incidents occurred:

I’ve always detested the term “pre-boarding” when used to mean “early boarding”. Pre-boarding to me just means before anyone boards. So ... what happens to the first guy in line when they say passengers can pre-board? Does he get stuck in some kind of temporal limbo? A man made an announcement asking a passenger to return to security for a lost item. He sounded like a drunken James Earl Jones, reading something by Edgar Allen Poe, painfully aware he might win an Oscar for his performance. I wish I had caught it in time to record it on my phone for sampling.

Soon we boarded the plane, and more weirdness ensued on the flight.

There was a really weird noise while we were waiting on the runway. No idea what it was, but it sounded like a vocoder haunted by Enya ... “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh ...” A woman sitting a few rows ahead of me was fiddling with her air vent controls, and every time she made an adjustment, the engines would make a funny noise. I didn’t realize the flight engineer was sitting in the cabin with we passengers! The woman across the aisle had her cell lying face down on her tray table. The phone had one of those little suction cup thingies (like a Popsocket) on the back, but at first glance I thought it was a really tiny cup off tea! A woman somewhere behind me was speaking Chinese with such pronounced tones, it sounded liked she was singing “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down”. It was probably the time dilation I usually experience while stoned, but our takeoff seemed like the longest one ever. I fancied we were just going to drive all the way to Portland, which would be a funny sight—a plane going 500mph down the freeway, obliterating or knocking aside everything in its path: trees, bridges, overpasses, cars, and everyone running in terror like it’s Godzilla. But if something that fast ran you down, you probably wouldn’t see it coming, and you wouldn’t know what hit you. Kinda like Nomad! A woman and her seventeen children occupied the row behind me. “Oh, great,” I thought, “I get to sit in front of The Brady Bunch”. Then the theme song got into my head, but similar to when I was rearranging lines of nursery rhymes, my brain rearranged the lyrics, which of course, I found immeasurably funny: Here’s the story of a lovely lady Who was busy with three boys of his own All of them had hair of gold, like their mother Yet they were all alone Here’s the story of a man named Brady Who was bringing up three very lovely girls They were four men, living all together The youngest one in curls One of the Brady kids began kicking my seat. I heard his mother say, “Don’t do that, some people don’t like it,” and he stopped. Some people? Is there any one who actually likes it? Maybe she was referring to those into BDSM humiliation, who would probably enjoy that. Nice the mother is open to alternate lifestyles!

Being stoned on a plane is quite different from being stoned on a bus or train. It’s quieter, with no outside noises, so conversations really stand out. Most people were speaking in very hushed tones, just ordinary, quiet dialogue. No shouting, no braying. And ya know, I thought, life is pretty damned amazing. I was in a big metal box, soaring high in the air, using something the size of a wallet to watch movies and create art. I watched movies and created art in my teens, just not in such a high tech fashion. I guess I’m just a higher (no pun intended) tech teen now.

Several weeks ago, my friend $6M-Man (not his real name, obviously) hosted a roleplaying game party, then said he would like to host a more structured Dungeons and Dragons game in the future. I’d never played D&D before; I had some friends in high school who were into it, but it just sounded overly complicated and besides, I’m not really into fantasy and trolls and wizards and dragons and elves and so on. But I had a good time at the first party so I thought I’d give it a go. $6M-Man then had a party where we created our characters, which took up the whole evening, then said he’d have the actual gameplay on another day.

I guess I was expecting D&D to be mostly a dice roll game: for example, an elf armed with a the sword of Reueltolkiena would have to battle an amethyst dragon, which can only be killed with a combined total of 117 with the roll of three 20-sided dice, one 50-sided die, and one 12-sided die. If the dragon is vanquished, it’s the next person’s turn. If not, I guess the elf ... runs away to battle another day? However, actual gameplay was rather different, although there was plenty of dice-rolling. There was considerable improv, not unlike the first game we played with the evil porpoise.

I was also quite impressed with some of the player’s knowledge, like ...

Eleanor the Elf-zard	I want to attack the dragon with my sword!
Dungeonmaster	Okay, you can combine your strength points with your dexterity points and add your intuition bonus.
Eleanor the Elf-zard	Oh wait, I don’t have enough intuition, but what if I used wisdom points instead of dexterity points?
Dungeonmaster	You can’t use wisdom points against a dragon, but since you are a half-wizard with lava teleporting powers, you can multiply your intuition bonus by what you roll three times on a 22-sided dice, then add three charisma points.
Eleanor the Elf-zard	Can I imbue my sword with a lava stream?
Dungeonmaster	Only if you’re a 7th level elf-zard ...
Eleanor the Elf-zard	... which I am!
Dungeonmaster	... but are you immune to blood mists?
Eleanor the Elf-zard	Err ... I’m not sure?
Orneela the Ogre	Elf-zards of level 6 and up are immune to blood mists.
Dungeonmaster	Done! Roll your dice ...

What the huh? It sounded like they were making it up as they went but I think not. Considering there was a stack of D&D guide books as thick as a dozen New York City phone books, I was amazed anyone could remember all those little statistics. I was particularly impressed with $6M-Man, who sometimes comes across as a little reserved: here he was like a mix of master auctioneer, raconteur, and improv performance artist.

At one point when everyone was talking, I closed my eyes. I saw a boardroom (I was stoned, by the way), like one might expect in a Fortune 500 company, with a high quality, long wooden conference table and chairs, all very old school. People sat on either side of the table. The room itself was decorated in muted tones, with wood paneling and sconces. Overhead was a row of blinding white fluorescent lights. I did a rough sketch ...


Click image for larger view; opens in new window.

description of above image, from top to bottom, drawn in pencil on a sheet of ruled loose-leaf paper
caption	“I picture us in a multipurpose room”
illustration	Sketch of a long table, with three people sitting on either side. There is a row of fluorescent lights overhead.
captions	“real wood table” “blinding fluorescents” “and later [$6M-Man] turned on his kitchen light, which put the blinding, pale, fluorescent light in the exact above position and this POV” “sitting at a table with a trippy auctioneer/raconteur and Siouxsie”
illustration	A slightly more detailed sketch of the table scene above, with $6M-Man at the head of the table, two people on the left side, and four on the right. The light casts dramatic shadows and puts $6M-Man in silhouette. Behind $6M-Man on the wall is a carving(?) that resembles a tiki; to the left is an enlarged drawing of the carving.

As the sun set and $6M-Man’s living room grew dark, he turned on the kitchen light behind him. It was quite bright and put him in dramatic silhouette. I sketched the actual scene on the same page. And as if what I was seeing wasn’t dramatic enough, one of $6M-Man’s friends (I’ll call them Farrar) was sitting to his left. I had met them several times before, but this time they were sporting a striking new hairdo with feathered bangs. In that light, and with their makeup, Farrar looked like Siouxsie Sioux. What an evening ... being at a party with this master auctioneer and Siouxsie Sioux!

My only critique was, as a new player, I didn’t know the limits of what I was able or allowed to do. I didn’t know one could rebel against the dungeonmaster, for example. My character didn’t seem to have any magic powers ... did I simply not know I had them? I did ask ... apparently I was the only one without magic powers. A week or so later, $6M-Man and I discussed the game over coffee, and he said he’d see what he could do to give my character some powers; he also suggested I simply say what I wanted to do, and he’d let me know if it fell within the limits of the game or of my character’s abilities.

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After a few hours, I left and went to catch the bus. By now it was completely dark outside. The red lighting of the bus interior was so intense it cast a bloody pall on the passengers. The effect was even more pronounced on the security cam monitor—we all looked like glowing embers. It was like riding a bus to hell. The electronic sign listed the upcoming stops as if to taunt us: the bus wasn’t actually going to stop where any of the damned might hop off and thus be spared an eternity in hell. Very little of the outside was visible through the windows. All I could see from my seat were street signs without visible means of support, like specters that appeared out of nowhere and floated past.

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I got home and turned in and listened to the debut (1986) album by jazz band Last Exit, with Peter Brötzmann on sax, Bill Laswell on bass, Sonny Sharrock on guitar, and Ronald Shannon Jackson on drums. Sublime!

I took my tincture, caught a bus to go to lunch, then decided to catch a shuttle (for the trains were out of service) to hang out at the airport for a while. The ambient sounds of the OHSU Wellness Center made for a great afternoon, so I figured the airport would surely have some interesting sounds, too.

If you’ve ever heard small children try to tell jokes, it’s like they haven’t quite figured out the concept of humor, so their jokes are more non sequitur than humorous. But that was the kind of mood I was in while waiting for the shuttle. I kept coming up with such “jokes”. For example, I had the idea of taking song lyrics or poetry and reversing the second and third lines of every stanza. Armed with this daring, innovative idea, I tried it on the first thing that came to mind:

Mary had a little lamb And everywhere that Mary went Its fleece was as white as snow The lamb was sure to go

This struck me as monumentally funny, but before I could try the trick again, I thought of other “jokes”:

If you want to discourage vandalism in public bathrooms, just build them so that the floor is a grate fifty feet above the ocean. It would be so cold and windy and dank nobody would want to stay in there any longer than they had to because who wants wind blowing up their skirt?

If you like chocolate, date a guy who doesn’t like chocolate. That way you won’t suspect him when your chocolate goes missing.

A woman wants to do some extended travel. She’d like to rent her house to earn a little extra money while she’s gone, but she doesn’t want tenants messing with her stuff, nor does she want to have to put everything in storage. She asks a magician for a spell to make everything in her house both intangible and invisible. He tells her she can have one or the other but not both. If he makes everything invisible, the tenants will bump into the furniture and think the house is haunted. If he makes everything intangible, the tenants will still see the furniture and also think the house is haunted.

Riding the shuttle to the airport was like being on the Concorde. Most bus drivers will say hi or nod their heads as you board, but this driver acted like he was welcoming V.I.P.s on a luxury liner. He also seemed to drive the bus much faster than the speed limit. That might have just been the time dilation I experience while stoned, but I imagined it was because we were on a special bus that was allowed to go faster. And, because it’s a shuttle for the rail line and not an ordinary bus, the stops were very far apart and so it seemed more like an express train.

At most of the airports I’ve been to, the area around them is a sort of futuristic “utopia”. The surrounding land is completely flat out of necessity, of course, and the only things in sight are sometimes futuristic buildings or distant trees. It can look as if the runways stretch on forever. As you get closer to the airport itself, it’s all concrete and steel and glass and ramps and millions of signs about which way to go, like a benevolent Big Brother was helping you get to where you needed to be.

I went to get a coffee and a pastry at a kiosk. There was an unusual looking pastry behind the glass, so I asked the barista what it was. She wasn’t sure, and there was no little placard for it. She reached under the counter and pulled out a deck of placards and began going through them. With the time dilation, this seemed to take forever, and I kept saying, “It’s cool, don’t worry about it,” but she was determined to find it. After she had identified it (it wasn’t anything I wanted), I pointed at yet another unidentified item.

ME:	Is that a chocolate chip muffin?
HER:	(not being sarcastic) Does it look like a chocolate chip muffin?
ME:	Well, it’s either chocolate chip or blueberry, I can’t tell from here.
HER:	(peering at it) Hmm ...
ME:	Oh, don’t worry about it, I’ll take it, whatever it is.
HER:	You’re sure it’s a chocolate chip muffin?
ME:	No, but I’ll take it anyway.
HER:	Well, if you say it’s a chocolate chip muffin ...

I knew I was stoned, but was she stoned too? Or just new at the job? I couldn’t be sure.

I sat very close to a ticket counter. At first I thought I heard the sounds of construction, but it was the sound of luggage moving on the metal conveyor belts. Grr-rrrrr clunk thunk bonk. Sometimes it sounded like I was in a strange bowling alley. Other times it sounded like the deepest note on a bass harmonica.

A couple of announcements also gave me the giggles from mis-hearing them (passenger names have been changed):

“Would Joan Baker please return to Henry’s cabin for a left-behind item.” ... and ... “Would passenger Evan Marsan please come to ticket counter 2B, for passenger luggage and suspense.”

The first announcement was actually calling Ms. Baker back to Henry’s Tavern, but the way I heard it, it sounded like she was having an assignation with Henry in his cabin and left her panties or something behind. As for Mr. Marsan, what the heck was the suspense going to be? Would the counter agent say, “Here’s your luggage, Mr. Marsan—GASP! WHAT’S THAT BEHIND YOU?!” I really had no idea what had actually been said.

After a while, I caught the bus home. I was feeling mellow, feeling like the world was at peace. I wondered if I were only capable of good, happy thoughts while stoned, so I dictated this into my phone:

[Riding] the bus home and looking outside and thinking that everybody and everything seems so nice today and I thought, am I even capable of an evil thought while I’m stoned? KILL EVERYONE! KILL EVERYONE! Lol

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After reaching home and having dinner, I settled in for my usual evening of media:

Battle Beyond the Stars, dir. Jimmy T. Murakami, 1980

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Tokyo Pig, dir. Shinichi Watanabe, 1997-1998
Two episodes: “Lookout! It’s a Cookout!” and “Pigs on Ice”

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Midnight Parasites, dir. Yōji Kuri, 1972

Watch on YouTube

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Evil Under the Sun, dir. Guy Hamilton, 1982
This is my favorite of the big screen Poirot films. An all-star cast camping it up on a beautiful island while murder is afoot. Having seen it quite a few times already, most recently just a couple of months ago, I wondered if I might get a little bored watching it again so soon. Solution? I divided the movie into roughly ten-minute segments, and heavily processed each segment with a variety of effects, including saturation, posterization, temperature change, motion blur, delayed superimposition, and glow for the video, and tremolo, reverb, distortion, and various delays (echo, reverse-echo, bouncing ball delay) for the audio. The result? Something that ranks with my Cozzilla-ized version of Gigantis The Fire Monster (aka Godzilla Raids Again! And while these are all relatively simple effects, watching it while stoned, it was as if a nuclear holocaust had occurred: in some scenes, the sky and sea flashed and flickered as though radioactive, and glowing ghosts walked around and spoke. Posterization made the actors look like they’d been drenched in blood or skinned alive. Here are a few excerpts:

The trippiest audio effect was the bouncing ball delay, which sometimes extended to several seconds. This made the characters, particularly Poirot, sound like they were talking incessantly. Another audio effect made the dialogue unintelligible, and everyone sounded like Daleks trying to cough up furballs.

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The Process of Weeding Out, Black Flag, 1985

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Live at Jazz Spot Combo 1975, Itaru Oki Quartet, 1975

Note
This blog entry is one of two parts about my August 3, 2023 experience. This page deals with my perception of sounds after an experience at the OHSU Wellness Center lobby; the other entry deals with various media I watched that day.

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As I said in another blog entry about how THC affects me, I feel like I hear everything more deeply when I’m stoned. And while I can point to this article about why music sounds better while stoned, it doesn’t explain why even just ordinary noise sounds like music to me. The following are some thoughts that occurred to me while I was sitting in the lobby. I dictated them into my phone as quickly and as coherently as I could, but even so I could not always keep up with the flow of ideas. Some of what I came up with is just flights of fancy, although there is perhaps value in that as well!

The ambient noises in the lobby—of people talking, of echoing footsteps, of elevator bells ding-ing when the doors opened, of phones ringing, of outside noises when someone entered or exited the building—all sounded like the best soundtrack ever to the “live theater” I was watching. But it wasn’t just about enjoying sounds, like one might enjoy the sound of waves breaking on the beach or the sound of the wind. I didn’t perceive these sounds as sounds but as music. Everyone speaking was a singer, and every noise was made by an instrument, all being played and mixed with each other in real time into an incredibly complex composition.

The trippiest thought of all was the idea I was able to perceive aspects of music like time signatures, tempos, and pitch far beyond what most people, even professional musicians, can perceive. We easily tap our feet to the beat of music if it’s most pop music (a time signature of 4/4) or a waltz (3/4). But listen to the opening of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913): the bassoon seems to meander rhythmically, and even with the score in front of me, I have difficulty following the melody, much less tapping my foot to the quarter note counts.

There are probably very few signatures where the note value is higher than a 16th. And while I’ve never seen any score where a note of a shorter duration than a 64th is used, theoretically one could have notes with durations of a 128th, a 256th, a 512th.

Popular song tempos are usually measured in beats per minute (BPM). A lot of upbeat popular music, for example, falls in the 110-130 range. I remember being surprised as a teen that Racey’s “Lay Your Love on Me” (1978) was listed at about 170BPM. Moby released a song called “Thousand” that boasted a BPM of 1015. Again theoretically, it’s possible to have a BPM in the millions, though it would demand a lot of music software to be able to play it.

Watch on YouTube

Finally, music is often expressed in terms of pitch. Middle C on a piano vibrates at approximately 261.63Hz; the note above it, C-sharp (or D-flat) vibrates at approximately 277.18Hz. There is no piano key to play a pitch between those two, but that doesn’t mean such pitches don’t exist. If you subdivide the range between those two notes by 1Hz, you could have about 15 more “notes”. Microtonal musicians love to play with these “extra” notes. And instruments from Asia and the Middle East often have tuning different from Western tuning, creating microtones, which is what gives them that “exotic” sound.

Watch on YouTube

So imagine a song, with a time signature of 263/512, played at 5000BPM, with microtones. It wouldn’t sound like music as we know it. It would be an incomprehensible din of blurred pitches and rhythms.

Or, perhaps ... what real-life ambient noise sounds like.

Perhaps it’s not unlike listening to a foreign language; to most of us, it would sound like gibberish, impossible sometimes just to try to imitate the syllables, but to someone, it’s language, with meaning and context. So why couldn’t what seems like random, arrhythmic noises be music to someone? Maybe this is why I like The Shaggs! I would like to point out, however, I was a fan of The Shaggs looooong before I got into THC.

Watch on YouTube

So ... I was sitting there listening to all these ambient voices and organic noises, imagining them as instruments making very complex sounds, and enjoying this “symphony”. I fantasized I was on an alien planet and this was the aliens’ idea of music, or language, or both. Then, somewhere in the lobby, an electronic alarm sounded, a brief, shrill note. Compared to the symphony, it was jarring, inorganic. I had a thought: what if these aliens thought we humans weren’t sophisticated enough to understand or decode their “language” ... what would they have to do if they wanted to communicate with us? Dumb it down for us by creating the simplest sound possible, like a sine wave. Baby talk!

In any case, these were just the musings of an amateur musician, happily stoned, enjoying the sounds around him, and trying his best to understand the thoughts that came to him. Not the worst way to spend an afternoon ...