Every so often, I come across a person who attributes the
creative talent possesed by an individual or a group of individuals to the use of some sort of
drug. Most commonly
LSD or
mushrooms, but also
variants of
cannabis. And, well,
it pisses me off.
Whether it's music, writing, painting or any other form of art, some people simply cannot believe that these artworks are products of the human mind alone, and not something that the artist created after smoking copious amounts of ganja, or munching a shitload of LSD.
I never hear "man, them guys in Tool are musical geniuses". Instead I hear "Ænima is all about doing acid".
I had the same drugs-gives-you-talent-label slapped on me once. I wrote a weird-ass interpretation of the Tool-song stinkfist and posted it to the alt.music.tool newsgroup, and the first reply was:
Dude, either you're a fucking genius, or you're smoking some real good shit.
The amount of
acid heads that tell me how much LSD Tool consumed during the writing of
Ænima is dumbfounding. Why do so many people attribute the use of drugs when someone creates something artistic that is beyond their own abilities?
Yes, this writeup is very focused around the band Tool, but that's because I like them, and started pondering on this subject after being exposed to some of their more... free spirited fans, drug-wise.