[Ed. note: Nowhere Girl is our Polish correspondent; the news articles she quotes within have been translated from Polish news sources. Dig it!]
Whether we want it or not, psychedelics are a part of our culture. A direct psychedelic practice is demonised, labeled as "moral turpitude" and fought with groups of agents versus a citizen's brain; but a static substitute of the experience, a design object with quite clear psychedelic associations, can often be acceptable enough to be even suitable for kids.
Last Sunday I cycled about 8 miles to get to a funfair - I'm childish enough to really enjoy it. I tried a roller coaster simulator: a "box" is moving to give you an impression of riding a real one and inside, in near darkness, a clip shown on a screen presents a ride on a roller coaster in outer space as seen from a passenger's view.
In April (accidentally, very soon after the anniversary of the discovery of LSD) a British art foundation put up a labyrinth made of bright-coloured rubber in a park in front of one of Warsaw's palaces. It became very popular; one had to wait over an hour to enter because "only" 60 people are allowed to be inside at the same time. Press articles add yet more psychedelic flavour to the whole installation...
The labyrinth is quite large: 40 square meters. It has 60 rooms of various shapes where one can feel like being in a magical world, where our clothes change colour and we can hear music being performed live by musicians encountered along the route or played from special loudspeakers.
From the outside the labyrinth resembled a huge honeycomb made of identical colourful modules and wasn't too attractive - just a plastic or rubber inflated toy. That's why the inside was so surprising: the number of rooms with various shapes, nooks and corners, and first of all a blow of bright colour, a different one behind every turn. Parents and children were wandering around the labyrinth, rolling on rounded walls, laying down in small rooms. They all looked like aliens in some town of the future, wearing identical clothes, barefoot, filming the surroundings with mobile phones, as if in a trance.
Of course children liked it best - it's like in the Teletubbies! And I feel like Alice in Wonderland! "It's lovely, I could live here!" the kids were shouting over each other.
In another article, a young woman operating the labyrinth said that "you can feel as if all the colours were painting your skin. It's a magical feeling." Doesn't she sound a bit like a girl named Clair Brush relating her Acid Test experience?
My idea is a little amateur research/documentation project that would search for examples of "normal," acceptable art, design or entertainment - especially those labeled as "family amusement" - with clearly psychedelic motives and associations. The goal: check out how far can such art go. From a recent post by Scotto we learn that strange audio noises intended to put the listener in a drug-like state of mind are too much, that they "glorify illegal substances". However, it's OK to "feel like Alice in Wonderland". The use of this title brings us closer to older examples of drug themes in literature for children:
Grace [Slick, Jefferson Airplane singer and writer of "White Rabbit"] has always said that "White Rabbit" was intended as a slap toward parents who read their children stories such as "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (in which Alice uses several drug-like substances in order to change herself) and then wondered why their children grew up to do drugs.
So it seems that it's not always true that "the [pills] that mother gives you don't do anything at all"; sometimes an amusement accepted by the family can "make us feel as if in a magical world, wandering around in a trance". Do families notice such associations or are bright colours and patterns still "innocent"? Are psychedelics perhaps even a direct inspiration for the authors of such works? And if yes, are these artists some agents of the international drug mafia, trying to sneak into the pure world of our kids with their deadly propaganda?
I'm very interested in getting some feedback (press articles, memories...) from DoseNation readers because the whole phenomenon of "psychedelic" family amusement seems fascinating.
I'm sure almost everyone remembers this, right? Well it might have scared some kids, but I was intrigued, and would take my Cracker Jacks tattoos to school. I'd wait till just before recess, and I'd rub the tattoo onto my arm and run out to the playground faster and further than anyone, thinking to myself in my imagination, "I'm on acid, this is LSD!" I was so excited I made myself hallucinate. I still remember that first placebo, staring out to the playground thinking something was happening, even though it wasn't. THOSE were the days. I always thought that homeless people, and LSD were related somehow, that's thanks to my mom saying things like,"never be like those people." Who were those people? I never saw them we were in a car, so I can only guess. Yeah I basically realized in adulthood that the tattoo scare was just an urban legend to pre-program youth to fear LSD. It sure had the opposite effect on me. I would ask all the kids in my class to give me their tattoos, and I kept them in baggies!
I was the biggest wannabe acid head in 4th grade! Growing up I heard of and have met many kids who dropped acid in 6th grade and 8th grade.
Unless they got into other drugs they were fine. I sure was jealous;)
I think that toys that induce optical illusions like tops, kaleidoscopes and such are very psychedelic and inspirational. Star Wars is very psychedelic.
Most toy concepts in the 80's like Transformers were very futuristic and psychedelic, even G.I.Joe become more sci-fi than it's original design. These along with superhero concepts give kids thoughts of existent latent realities.
Of course video games are as innately psychedelic as the home computer.
Kids are more tuned into these things than their parents half the time.
Now, like Leary predicted, it's been Hollywood and the internet to influence pop culture in a similar way akin to LSD. I forget what doctor said it, but the quote goes something like, "even if you've never done LSD, your life has been affected by it one way or another." So when I first finally did do LSD I couldn't stop thinking, "I've done this before, it's so familiar" I think around 2060 there's gonna be a global awareness of what psychedelics truly are, and we'll all see the world is, and has always been, extremely psychedelic. My backyard was psychedelic as a kid. My imagination was psychedelic. The Sun, the clouds, water, the moon, trees, animals, etc. etc.
Just being a child you're naturally psychedelic until your ego hardwires shut. Look at the clothes that kids get these days...mushrooms everywhere, day-glow, hippie style, it's amazing!!! It's only gonna get more and more so. I have often imagined the Japanese to recruit kids into "higher learning" programs that include psychedelics, to further their growth and productivity. I don't know, maybe, who knows?;)
Cartoons don't forget Cartoons!!!
What else can I say it's all psychedelic , criminalize everything, let's go back to being in black and white, save the children;)
No, educate, thats the way. Truth. Also music like Bruce Haack!!! Very psychedelic! He ate peyote when he was 8 years old with native American Indians! Listen! Rock Home! Compute!
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