Reflections on Kool Keith's 'Matthew'

            We are nearing on fifteen years since this landmark album was released by the greatest poet in the history of the English language. Although, in true chameleon style, Keith’s image was suddenly harder, in line with the times, the meditations he developed in verse form were as untimely as Nietzsche’s reflections amid academic impotence and rampant German Nationalism. Moreover, the musical substance of most of these tracks signifies a potential new genre of music, something the people of this country (and the world) are in desperate need of right now, whether they know it or not, and something which, if history has any say in the matter, can only be developed by the African American community.

            Well then! A brief sketch, by way of background. Keith grew up in the Bronx, at the inception of Hip-Hop, the last American art form, whose roots were imported from Jamaica by Kool Herc, but whose initial musical form drew from popular records of the day, incorporating funk, soul, rock, jazz and other genres in a truly American, truly democratic innovation. Apparently Keith’s early involvement in the hip-hop culture consisted primarily of breakdancing, a skill he must have excelled at, ultimately performing on television as a youth in front of Ronald Reagan. But Keith’s initial foray into the rap market would be with Bronx-based Ultramagnetic MC’s, one of the most talented groups of that time and space, along with Boogie Down Productions and Eric B & Rakim. With the timbre of puberty still in his voice, Keith dropped lyrics that were already leagues ahead of most other rappers.

                 They use a simple back-and-forth, the same old rhythm

                 that a baby can pick up, and join right with ‘em

                 but their rhymes are pathetic, they think they copacetic,

                 using nursery terms, at least not poetic

                 on an educated base, intelligent, wise;

                 as the record just turn, you learn, plus burn

                 by the flame of the lyrics, which cooks the human brain

                 providing overheating knowledge, by means causing pain

                                                              -‘Ego Trippin’, 1986

            Keith rose to stardom briefly in the 90’s under the Dr. Octagon moniker, and then, as Kool Keith, with Sex Style and Black Elvis/Lost in Space; all three albums landed videos on MTV, showcasing Keith’s bizarre personas which somewhat shadowed his lyrical deftness. Much of his greatest work, including Sex Style, has been in collaboration with producer Kutmasta Kurt; on Lost in Space Keith produces his own music, playing guitar, bass and keyboards with a deep funk influence. The music is going in a new direction, stylistically; it is both funky and psychedelic and would serve as a blueprint for Outkast when ‘Andre 3000’ (a name derived from a song on the Dr. Octagon album) proceeded to plagiarize just one of Keith’s many personalities. It had been almost three decades since the influence of LSD was so prominent in the work of a major artist, and by bringing the sounds of black reality along for the trip, rather than just “sitting in an English garden, waiting for the sun,”  Keith did indeed seem to be on to something new. Keith was a huge Zapp fan and even got Roger Troutman to sing on ‘Master of the Game’ before his tragic and untimely death. It is a shame this development was not taken further, as commercial rap music was already being used to portray certain stereotypes of black culture, and was at the time becoming sickeningly materialistic, contributing to a total collapse of the music industry at the beginning of the millennium. Keith, however, is not one to be bound by fashions, even if they be fashions of his own devise. He was ready almost instantaneously to move on, in a radical departure from anything that had been heard in the history of commercially recorded music.

            Kool Keith was under tremendous internal pressure to create this record, dealing with the recordings being leaked as he made them. This, along with the standard ignorance of how to handle an artist of this caliber by his record-label, led to a great deal of frustration, which may have influenced the final results (listen to the hidden track White Label Test Press.) In any case, the album itself is incredibly aggressive, opening with the intro, “F-U M.F.”, an easily decipherable acronym directed plainly at other rappers in the industry who inevitably could never stack up to Keith. This flows seamlessly into the street-hard “27 Shots,” in which Keith’s anger, now seething, will not be satiated except by his ingenious lyrics.

            After a brief skit (“Errand Boy”,) the album, with all its musical and lyrical ingenuity, begins in earnest. The track “Operation Extortion” features a haunting keyboard melody that sounds like a synthesized approximation of somebody plucking the higher strings of a piano with their teeth. Underneath is a hard drum beat, harder than anything he’d done aside from Sex Style. “Baddest M.C.”, an epithet that honestly can’t be denied, has Keith displaying the validity of his claim over a funky, futuristic beat with lines like:

Other rappers standin around, jealous lookin broke
Need to be in double dutch, jumpin rope

…..

Fascinatin with the quickness
I make models come to public housing and visit
That's how technical I get exquisite
Bangin on pipes
Lookin at cops walkin up the stairs with flashlights
Most MC's wearin leg-warmers and tights

….

Jump around you gonna need a napkin and a tissue

When I gross up the max you count the issue
Buy The Source cover for twelve months
And send other rappers over to pose
And take pictures for some potato chips and Cap'n Crunch
That's how I take suckers out to lunch
Forget the internet, the website, that's no way to step right
I ain't sittin by no computer, I'm goin to Bermuda

                                                -genius.com

            …and then, my personal favorite, “Extravagant Traveller.” The synth-bass-line comes on, in what I can only describe as “percussively staccato”; it is a futuristic update on the tribal rhythms brought here from Africa, the way rhythm can speak, not merely keeping tempo but actually communicating, telling a story, interweaving with the programmed drums and Keith’s casual, laid-back flow so perfectly that I am at a loss to describe, so go do yourself a favor and listen to it!

            Another skit follows, the hilarious “Recoupment”, in which Keith, portraying a record-label executive, lets some would-be rappers know that, although his company had spent a lot of money marketing and promoting them, and had “rented a lot of anorexic girls to grab you guys and make you look very macho,” they were unable to pay the group, and suggested they keep their jobs at 7-11. Obviously this is how Keith felt about most rappers in the business, whether they were making money or not. The skit segues into “I Don’t Believe You”, in which Keith develops the theme of a broke-ass wannabe rapper employed by the convenience store chain and idly boasting of his numerous exploits, which range from “you got mad guns” to “you got your kids a gift”, all of which are met by Keith’s response, the track’s title, “I don’t believe you.” This song is also noteworthy lyrically in that Keith exploits a novel poetic device, rather than adhering to the standard “AABB” rhyme scheme that most rap confines itself to. Of course, when Keith rhymes, he is often using cross-rhymes, or sustaining a sonance, then seemingly dropping it, only to bring it back at the end of a complicated clause. But in this case, Keith displays his true avant-garde poeticism in a hymn of contempt for all who would feign greatness without honing their skills or possessing any substance of which to speak.

            Side One closes with “Lived in the Projects,” another diatribe against the false claims of weak rappers, so prevalent at the time. Along with the impulse to fake riches and wealth, there was a strong trend to exaggerate or invent stories of poverty and violence, to make the rapper’s image appear more authentic. In fact, Keith actually grew up in the projects, and took offence to the ridiculous posturing of soft, middle-class rhymers who attempted to project a more hard-core image to their middle-class audience on MTV, and garner undeserved credibility on the streets.

            Next up is “Keith N Bumpy,” which features a relaxed beat, counterpoised by aggressively violent and threatening lyrics on Keith’s part, and the refrain, “Ya’ll do your shit in the studio, we bring our shit to your face.” Bumpy Knuckles jumps on for the second verse, and although the cadence of his flow keeps the groove moving forward, with eerie synth basslines creeping occasionally underneath, as usual Keith’s generous spirit in allowing his friends and colleagues to share the mic leads to some of the weakest lyrics on the whole album. There are a few great rappers who have added depth and brilliance to Keith’s songs when they joined him, namely Motion Man and Sir Menelik. Some, like Jacky Jasper, have even spun off as satellites of Keith and attempted to develop a career of their own by attacking Keith’s brilliance and biting the hand that taught them how to eat.

            “Shoes N Suits” is another beat of paranoid, conspiratorial ambience that shows a development from what Keith was doing on the title tracks of his Black Elvis and Dr. Dooom records. Amidst tales of violence and FBI probes, Keith’s proverbial court defendant keeps it real:

          
    Narrator of a true story; to write something fake would bore me.

    I baby-sit three kids, you guys acts like ya’ll never saw me.

and further shows his development as a poet, beyond the early-day toasting of “my name is Jay and I’m here to say” by rhyming ‘bore me’ and ‘saw me’.

            One of the most unique beats is that of “Diamonds.” If “Extravagant Traveller” was percussively staccato, “Diamonds” is perhaps the funkiest legato of any riff I’ve ever heard. Although Keith sought for hip-hop to move beyond the musical confines (and cultural regurgitation) of old jazz loops, his musical innovation, on this album specifically, can truly be seen as a development of jazz; and although he forsakes the sound of a big-band or its modern equivalent of heavily orchestrated rap tracks, and, on this album as he achieves his maturity and apotheosis, extemporaneous expression (“I don’t rap freestyle no more, stopped smoking angel dust,”) both characteristic of jazz music, he nonetheless has taken modalism, which Miles Davis incorporated from the inspiration of watching an African dance performance into the fabric of the most successful jazz of the middle-twentieth-century, to its logical conclusion; on “Extravagant Traveller,” for example, stripping the minor blues scale to its bare minimum in a sub-modal riff focusing on the root, octave, and fifth-descending-to-diminished-fifth (like Black Sabbath on their eponymous song.) The beat on “Diamonds,” specifically, suggests the sound of the vibraphone. How Keith achieved the timbres on these tunes, presumably through commercial-use analog oscillators, remains a mystery to me.

            “Sweet Unique Pete” features Black Silver, whose verse, while not breathtaking, especially in contrast to Keith’s timeless rhymes on this album, is much better than Bumpy’s lyrics on the earlier track. The beat itself keeps up the dark, funky mood that permeates this record overall, and has Keith dropping contemptuous taunts to any would-be challenger, such as:

            My temperature’s 1003, look at these 
            big-head kids on labels tryin’ to MC…

            ….I saw you on the Greyhound bus station floor,

            Layin’ down with a do-rag on like a circus clown.

           

            The final skit of the album segues into “Backstage Passes,” with an aura of mystery in the beat that emphasizes Keith’s own mystique to star-struck fans, in this case an amateur female journalist who wants to get in bed with Keith so she can have something to share with her lame friends. The song deals with the absurdity of fame in general, in a much more real way than perhaps any rock star (and this is what Keith is) hitherto.

            The album’s outro, “Mad Man Departure,” is perhaps the hardest, most vitriolic track of all time. The musical devices and theme persist in their assault on the rap industry, and Keith lets ‘em know that,

                 You been rappin’ for 20,000 years and you ain’t

                 got your fuckin’ deal yet…the fuck, don’t take

                 your problems out on me…

                 motherfucker I’ll pull your face off your body,               
                 show you what the fuck you look like,

                ‘cause you keep it real, too real, motherfuckin’ broke,

                 2001, nobody was sayin’ that shit when I was payin’

                 for them fuckin’ hot wings…
                 hope you burn your fuckin’ lips.

It has been exactly 14 years since I was rockin’ this cassette tape on my Walkman on the wildest New Year’s Eve of my life…I sincerely hope I can steer at least one new fan onto this, perhaps the highest achievement of Western musical poetry to have been ever produced.

12/31/14

@dGabeEvau 

Jim Morrison: Philosopher-King

Styles change, rockstars come and go. Values parade down the runway of society, flattering the puppetmasters as the people stare transfixed at shadows on the wall of some dim cave, flickering televised images which burn their propaganda into weary eyes. American Idolatry has replaced the once mighty cult of personality that inspired a rebel generation and turned the world on for three decades. Right in the middle of it all, James Douglas Morrison appeared and stood out briefly, a piece of cosmic fire burning through our thinning atmosphere in the darkening twilight, casting shadows of silence upon the echoing green. No longer were sung the songs of innocence.

“You see, the birth of rock and roll coincided with my adolescence, my coming into awareness.”

Young people all over the English-speaking world were becoming intoxicated by the wild panpipes of this Black American music, as the Bacchants in ancient Greece were carried away by the Dionysian frenzy spreading out of Asia Minor.  Film stars like James Dean and Marlon Brando offered a new aesthetic of cool, no longer the stoic professionalism of Humphrey Bogart but instead a hot-headed and righteous martyrdom of the individual for whatever pathos or political stance presented itself in the swirling milieu of a society whose tide, for a moment at least, seemed to be turning. It was the medium of cinema that brought the late Jim Morrison and Ray Manczarek together in the mid-60’s, while studying film at UCLA.

This past Monday would have been Jim’s 71^st birthday, yet the singer has been gone for over 43 years, leaving a yawning chasm in his wake for all of us. What might have been is not a subject we philosophers take seriously, as reality gives us every cause to be filled with a sense of wonder. What he left us, at the price of his own sanity and blood, is a legacy whose surface has merely been scratched. The higher man’s very existence justifies itself, but still there is much we can learn from him, which may prove to be of benefit, and pave the way for the future of culture. Jim wanted for us, above all, to be free. Freedom is not a bourgeois luxury but a terrible burden. And yet, as the teleological arrogance of Man would have it, freedom is the goal to which all of evolution has been driving, ever since some singularity in the fabric of space exhaled the Heraclitean fire of which we all are composed.

As the father of three sons myself, I know how difficult it is to deal with this raw masculine energy, the impulse to freedom which has not learned measure or restraint and knows of no bounds save the direction of its own superabundance. Being the son of a Navy Admiral during a time when American values were seemingly etched in tablets of stone, the tension pulled Morrison taut as a bowstring ready to release its arrow at the mark. Luckily, his keen eye had taken aim, guided and reassured by his incessant consumption of literature, poetry and philosophy. The model of Arthur Rimbaud resonated in the young poet’s fragile, eggshell mind, as it was still incubating and waiting to hatch. As he came of age, Jim would take up Rimbaud’s challenge to undergo “a prolonged derangement of the senses to achieve the unknown.” This was becoming more commonplace, as young people were imbibing marijuana and ingesting lysergic acids like the latest spring fashion. Jim went further, also smoking jimson weed and, according to myth, searching the desert for peyote, only to get beat up by a Mexican gang.

After graduation, Jim’s use of LSD picked up, inspiring the poet to compose his first rock songs, some of which would be on The Doors’ early records. The band was formed shortly thereafter when Jim ran into his fellow graduate Ray Manczarek on the sands of Venice Beach. After an early incarnation that included Manczarek’s brothers, the band’s lineup solidified with the addition of flamenco guitarist Robby Krieger and jazz drummer John Densmore. These two shared an interest in transcendental meditation with Ray, attending classes by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Jim, meanwhile, maintained his interest in transcendental medication as his acid use continued, not having much use for the Eastern esoterism that was sweeping the counterculture, although he did attend one class and composed the song ‘Take it as it Comes’ for Maharishi. This was all before The Beatles first took acid or studied under Maharishi.

The group put in two years of hard work, practicing daily at the beachfront house Ray shared with his wife Dorothy (and, for a time, Jim,) building their repertoire on the club scene in LA and promoting their demos to record executives until finally, due not only to Morrison’s poetry but also Krieger’s incredible songwriting (which Jim encouraged,) they all of a sudden found themselves on top of the world during the Summer of Love. Already along the way Jim had broken virtually every rule a popular singer was supposed to follow, culminating in an extended performance of ‘The End’ during which the singer, high on the equivalent of 100 modern-day doses of acid, gave visceral expression to the Freudian ‘Oedipal Complex’ and lost the band a job, thereby gaining a career.

Well then! What more to say on the band’s legacy; let us instead explore the deeper implications of what Jim was trying to say, and what he was saying to try. We have said that freedom is the highest goal of the philosopher, for wisdom is freedom not merely from material constraints (a prerequisite nonetheless for extended intellectual pursuit) but also from all fetters of the mind, all societal conventions which seem put in place to simplify and unify man’s existence, yet serve actually to squander our spiritual reserve on a thousand petty concerns which are of no true relevance to our inner selves. The Apollonian illusions of white society through the 50’s, transcribed in the popular songs of the time, were ill-prepared against the sudden onslaught of maenadic revelry and political protest; how much more dangerous was the wisdom of wild Silenus to the avaricious monarchs of our age? For at worst, early rock and roll had questioned the solidity of sexual mores and race relations, and the first half of the sixties only offered a protest against militarism and oppression, voicing the agenda of a political party. The true philosopher, rather, is party to none, and when it becomes evident that he holds as great disdain for bleeding-heart liberalism as he does for tight-fisted conservatism, he surely has no value to the Corporate States of America, for he has no use to which to be put. If all the young people had burned their draft cards, if all had joined in some such march, or voted for a certain bill, it would have only proved how easily they could be led, and the rulers, if wise, would have found a way to co-opt and subvert such dissidence into a new conformity; which in fact has occurred, a plain fact to the open-eyed. In Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Arthur Schopenhauer as Educator” the true philosopher is painted as being antagonistic to the interests of the state; for this purpose, the state has elected false philosophers to instruct the youth with false wisdom, programming their eager minds with doctrine beneficial to her interests. It will take another piece of writing to examine, at length, how the powers-that-be have indeed reduced the fearsome powers of rock music, and all popular music, to a feeble, anorexic seductress of mass consciousness in order to curtail the possibility of true intellectual freedom, and above all, to “Sell, sell, sell!” For two decades, however, Jim’s model was an example to punk, hard rock, heavy metal, and perhaps even hip-hop, as dangerous minds were able to gain wide popularity and use their voice to utter forbidden truths and question established values. All this, of course, has its downside, and the corporate state has learned to profit from what threatened to do it harm, throwing out the baby while retaining the tepid bathwater.

But no one did it like Jim. In “The Pre-Platonic Philosophers,” originally a lecture series by then-university-professor Friedrich Nietzsche, the great philosophers of ancient Greece through Socrates are painted as ‘pure’ philosophical types, whereas Plato and all who follow him are ‘mixed types,’ meaning that they present nothing essentially new in their thought or character but merely build upon and synthesize the ideas of the older, pure philosophers. Nietzsche would remain ambiguous throughout his literary career as to his own philosophical ‘type’’; certainly he boasts of many advancements that he proudly claims to be of himself and no-one else, above all a panoramic perspective of morality as something not fixed but constantly shifting in mankind’s ceaseless exercise of its will to power, with words and values pasted over each other as rulers and thinkers see fit. At the same time, many of Nietzsche’s ideas can be traced back to these same pre-Platonic philosophers, whom he admired so greatly, especially Heraclitus, while Nietzsche’s own philosophical attitude of questioning can be compared to the skeptical Socrates, whom the philosopher frequently derided. We are left with the same uncertainty in defining Jim Morrison, and certainly nothing is more difficult than giving definition to a man whose brief life was so sharply kinetic and transformative, despite (or rather because of) his deeply contemplative nature. Now that we have set out, however, let us not stray from our task.

Examining the record: Jim Morrison left us various writings, in the form of poems, notebooks, brief screenplay-sketches and philosophical musings. From his writings and interviews we have a rich catalogue of quotes, many of them self-contained aphorisms in the tradition of Proverbs, Heraclitus, Lao-Tzu and Jim’s own favorite aphorist, William Blake. (There are also several quotes attributed falsely to Jim, concocted by Oliver Stone for his cinematic version of Morrison, portrayed by Val Kilmer in the film. As with virtually all of Stone’s work, these reflect the filmmaker’s own philosophy more than the film’s subject, although this is not necessarily to the director’s discredit.)

Of course, what Jim is known best for are his songs (as well as Robbie’s songs, which he sang himself and therefore is probably assumed by most listeners to have written.) ‘Break on Through (to the Other Side)’ is a tour-de-force of Heraclitean fragments set against a bossa-nova/Ray Charles fusion groove. This world is, for us as mortal beings, a seeming contradiction of opposites: day and night, pleasure and sorrow, accumulation and dissipation; yet these seeming opposites spring from the same source, and we have no recourse but to pass constantly from one state to another, as water from the sea turns to vapor and clouds, which then become water again and causes plants to grow, eaten by animals who will die and return to the Earth.

This song opens The Doors’ first, eponymous album; the record concludes with ‘The End.’ We have already touched on the introduction of the Oedipal theme in performance of this piece, which developed from an embryonic break-up song, an ode and lament, perhaps to a high-school girlfriend of Jim’s who broke his heart, questioned his manhood for expressing his pain in tears and led to his destruction of all his written poetry up to that point (as Plato had destroyed his own poems in order to become the philosopher that Socrates wanted him to be. Perhaps this is why Plato was not himself a pure type, as he allowed his mentor to dictate his early beliefs to a too-great extent; perhaps this is also what led a highly impressionable Nietzsche astray in the form of Schopenhauer and Wagner.) (A great many perhapses.) By the time of these recordings, ‘The End’ had become a forum for Jim’s poetic improvisation, and on the album version focused on the overall confusion and violence of our times, reflecting the eternal human condition, whose loftiest and most noble ideas and institutions have evolved from a substratum of cruelty and vigorous suppression. The climax comes when Jim confronts Man’s archetypal parents, threatening parricide and incest, and chants the word ‘fuck’ as a percussive instrument while Robbie performs the most impassioned use of Indian raga within the context of rock music up to that point. (In the originally issued recording, Jim’s profanity is turned way down in the mix, but Francis Ford Coppola, in his own Heraclitean/Nietzschean epic exploration of ethics and philosophy in the context of the Vietnam conflict, ‘Apocalypse Now,’ brings the word back up to audibility and reclaims the powerful statement Jim was making, that this world of suffering and futility of which the Ecclesiast despaired is ultimately redeemed by sex and death.) After recording this masterpiece of a song, perhaps the most chilling performance in a recording studio ever made, Jim continued to repeat, “Kill the father, fuck the mother,” obsessively, offering the explanation that ‘the father’ represented those repressive institutions of society which must be successively overturned by the new generation, and ‘the mother’ represented our own nature as children of the Earth, and the necessity of our commitment to passionately pursue our own biological and emotional selves, rather than follow the strict patriarchal authority that his own father embodied as a military officer, at a time when global conflict and militarization were deeply disconcerting to many young people in the counterculture, as well as a growing tide within the mainstream liberal community itself. To Jim, there was no separation between the internal and the external aside from the thin veil of consciousness and our own epidermis; there was no performance, only reality. He would often sit in despondent contemplation long after the music was over, lamenting the fact that probably no one really got what he was trying to say, what same pessimism I try to suppress as I develop this exposition.

“I like any reaction I can get with my music. Just anything to get people to think. I mean if you can get a whole room full of drunk, stoned people to actually wake up and think, you’re doing something.”

 

Afterword Jim, high on acid, typically, returned to the empty recording studio, which he believed to be on fire, and ‘rescued’ the facilities from the blazing inferno which surrounded him. The fire turned out to be a small red light from a recording console or perhaps an ‘EXIT’ sign, and rather than prevent, he actually caused irreparable damage to the instruments and recording equipment, although the masters were safe and have since found their way into our hearts and livingrooms. Jim’s responsibility for the incident could perhaps have been denied had the singer’s shoe not gotten stuck while scaling a fence to flee the scene of his heroic deed.

Just as Jim reminds us that we cannot have day without night, it is wrong to attempt to separate the man and his work from his supposed ‘shortcomings’ in order to redeem his image in our own eyes, as if modern man has the right to judge something so alien to itself as genius. Jim Morrison is probably known best of all for his drug use and erratic behavior. While experimentation with psychoactive substances and rebellion against authority were both commonplace during the 1960’s, we cannot write off Jim’s enthusiastic prodigality as a mere sign-o’-the-times. A psychologist would point to his childhood, and, following Freud and Jim’s own extrapolation, trace all this ‘misbehavior’ to a resentment against parental authority. Oliver Stone certainly attempted to do so (which should only give signs as to his own childhood.)

“When you make peace with authority, you become an authority.”

Clearly Jim was fascinated by ideas of control and revolt. He provoked the police, he provoked his audience, experimenting with calculated incitement to riot. He provoked his band; he provoked his lovers. Before the band had broken big, drummer John Densmore came to pick Jim up from a girl’s house one day…and found him standing in front of the young woman, with a knife to her throat. “That’s when,” John recounted years later in his memoir, ‘Riders on the Storm’, “I realized our lead singer was psychotic.” We might now say ‘manic-depressive’ in place of ‘psychotic’, but this too is a misunderstanding of a certain psychological predisposition to extreme heights and depths of emotion which seep into daily life, sharpening and altering behavior in a way that is not safe and predictable to a civilized society, which must above all tame and domesticate the human animal as a puppy is housebroken. ‘Mania’ is a false term for power, misdirected by societal restrictions against the individual and his own interest, rather than allowing its fruit to blossom as it sometimes does, to produce among the most profound artistic accomplishments of human history, as well as advancing the individual or his cause with seemingly boundless energy in the military, political sphere, or even just his day-to-day activities such as work and feeding his family, doing the dishes, and writing long paragraphs with the desperate desire that they find readers who may be excited to an equivalent level of vibrational energy in order to grasp the rushing waters of his thought.

Jim’s drug use was an extension of the same impulse that stirred him to create. There has been much speculation as to whether creativity necessitates ‘mental illness’ and ‘substance abuse’ (as they are known to the vulgar) or vice versa, but the truth is that they both flow from an overabundance of energy, something which is condemned in our society unless it can be put to some highly specialized (and therefore innocuous) use. Now, there is great variation in the species of drug used, the methodology, dosing, and all other particulars involved, especially when we are discussing an inspired genius. For drugs themselves do inspire, as has been the case since before recorded history, and according to a few 20^th century scholars, is responsible for the development of much of our religious institutions (and, by the late Terrence McKenna, human consciousness itself.) They can both expand and collapse our sense of ego, which is of prime significance to the poet and dramatist, as has been sketched out by Nietzsche in ‘The Birth of Tragedy’. Jim’s downfall, however, came in large part from his growing reliance on alcohol, which mitigated his anxiety over excessive fame, being misunderstood by the world, and the looming charges for obscenity at the infamous Miami concert. Ultimately, however, by its toxic nature alcohol only contributed to anxiety and, in the end, his death.

What have we, in the final analysis, to learn from all this? That freedom is a two-edged sword; that we don’t really want freedom, but a shiny new prison. The liberties we embrace are in fact arbitrary and extravagant, and Jim himself was not immune to these indulgences. The paradox is one that must confront us, at the deepest level of our being. The freedom in sexual politics, for example, proved to be misgiven, as it led to an increase in sexually transmitted infection, including later the HIV virus, which has devastated the lives of countless individuals and families across the country and indeed the world; it has led, furthermore, to a self-indulgent zeitgeist where pornography is proliferated and women are bound to a social restraint unprecedented in the history of the so-called patriarchy over which the same liberal forces have won so much ground for women’s supposed liberation. In fact, we are all quite less free, to think and be our true selves, correspondingly as we see an increase in our right to arbitrary acts prescribed by a spectral elite of mind-control doctors, all of whom are well aware of the implications that have been raised by such freedom fighters as Jim Morrison and have done a commendable job at co-opting and subverting the truths unearthed to more dubious ends than could previously have been imagined.

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first. You can take away a man's political freedom and you won't hurt him- unless you take away his freedom to feel. That can destroy him. That kind of freedom can't be granted. Nobody can win it for you.”

Suggested reading:

Friedrich Nietzsche-

            The Birth of Tragedy

            The Pre-Platonic Philosophers

            The Untimely Meditations (specifically, ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’)

Ray Manzarek- (I have retained the original spelling of his name in the body of this essay; Ray dropped the ‘c’ when he became an entertainer to distance himself from his Polish heritage, as many celebrities of various background have been forced to do by our Anglophiliac society, and kept this spelling for this autobiographical publication)

            Light My Fire

Heraclitus-

            Fragments

Jim Morrison-

            The Lords

            Wilderness

and by the author (dGabe Evau)-

             Opening the Doors to the New Aesthetic in Music

"Couldn't Get Much Higher": The Musical Legacy of Robby Krieger

       The 1960's were the start of the peak of electric-guitar music, a time when a great range of popular acts, both white and black, American and British, made work of great emotional depth and curiosity. Several names would come out as Gods and heroes, as definitively influential on their own, and subsequent generations. Of course we could not imagine heavy metal or other guitar-based musics of the 70's and 80's without Jimi Hendrix. His tone, phrasing and expression form its bedrock. But there are other artists, perhaps equally important, who do not get the recognition that their influence and contribution warrant.
       Case in point: Robby Krieger, guitarist and songwriter in the Doors. A guitar teacher once compared Robby disparagingly to my own progress--
       "Yeah," I replied, "well he played everything finger-style." Indeed he was an anomaly in rock guitar, playing sparse triads and descending intervals, using a bottleneck slide with unorthodox phrasing, and sometimes just adding atmosphere. Not always being flashy like, say, Hendrix or Clapton. So yeah, it can sometimes sound like he's not playing anything at all. But he gives the music its emotional character, and in fact wrote some of their biggest hits, and indeed their biggest hit, actually.
       'Light My Fire' may have bored their lead singer after a while, and indeed it is their most played song; but they never would have gone so far without it. That was Robby's first song. The solo section is one of the most exciting in rock history. Robby is attempting to channel John Coltrane, and the result is an incredibly powerful guitar solo. The distorted modal passages certainly prefigure a different aspect of metal guitar than Hendrix, Cream and Page had done. Santana was certainly inspired by Robby's channeling of jazz and his melodicism. You can still hear this in Kirk Hammet's playing on 'Ride the Lightning.'
       Early metal bands like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Blue Öyster Cult certainly owe a lot to the Doors. This is evident in the influence of Jim Morrison, as lyric poet, dramatist, and madman; it contributed to the dark aesthetic above all. The musical innovation was just as important: Ray's bluesy organ was a bigger influence on Deep Purple's classic sound, but Robby Krieger brought in all these influences like flamenco, often using a simple descending progression that Black Sabbath and Blue Öyster Cult would also use, a more dissonant sound, again the modalism and jazz, chromatic riffs, and, of course his distinctive use of the bottleneck, both within and outside a formal blues context.
       Duane Allman is the most conspicuous heir to Robby's slide technique, although use of slide guitar seems much more widespread in the Doors' wake. Just listen to 'Mountain Jam.' At about 3:07 the incorporation of a minor 6th adds that characteristic dissonance, reminding one of the disturbed solo in 'When the Music's Over' and contrasting to the bright yet bluesy feel that permeates most of the track. But Robby's style was completely inimitable. For example, incorporation of the major seventh in a minor blues scale on 'My Eyes Have Seen You', implying the diminished scale…the dark harmonies on 'End of the Night' and the use of open minor tuning, along with John Densmore who was actually, is, the most musically talented member of the band, whose drums beat out the cadence of Jim's stanzas, rather than just keeping time, and Robby brought out his voice with the strange wail of his bottleneck, yeah and 'Summer's Almost Gone,' the shimmering guitar Robby puts into it, drawing your sweat out, it's sticky, hot LA music, of course Ray, Rest in Peace, putting the icing on with insane brilliance, without his genius the music wouldn't have made it but ultimately Robby adds the anguish, the darkness, with certain dissonances and intervals that other instruments cannot achieve. Even a crappy song, well crappily sung anyway, 'Blue Sunday', Robby totally takes out onto another plane with his lyrical solo, as Jim sings "la, la la la," very jazzy, but different.
       In fact, Robby should be given more credit as a pioneer of fusion. Although some guitarists, such as John McLaughlin, had been messing around with combining elements of jazz and rock since the early 60's, and in fact any true musician in a metropolitan environment would logically have incorporated jazz, rhythm and blues, country and other styles into their playing, before such rigid definitions of 'genre' were invented, nonetheless there was an almost idealogical opposition between the rock crowd and the jazz scene, at least superficially, at the time the Doors hit the scene, to bridge that gap.
       Morrison himself was equally fond of Frank Sinatra and the composed cadence of poetry, as well as the wild Black Dithyrambs of Rock and Roll. Densmore was extremely jazzy in his drumming, which is what made the music so dynamic, although Jim often wished he would play a more simple, heavy beat. But it was Robby who brought his love of Miles and Coltrane into that solo on 'Light My Fire,' before Miles himself started the great fusion revolution from the jazz end. Other, more progressive rock bands like King Crimson show the clear influence of the Doors, who paved the way, along with The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, for the more expansive approach to music that really took off in the 70's. The soft, introverted guitar solos on Robby's own compositions 'You're Lost, Little Girl' and 'Yes, the River Knows' are reflected in King Crimson's 'I Talk to the Wind.'
       Krieger, as well as the other members of the Doors, has continued to create and perform music after Morrison's death. He is best known for his contribution to that immortal, Dionysian frenzy that the Doors were able to achieve, however. It is a shame that commercialism and complacency have eroded the revolutionary spirit that pervaded music in the 60's and 70's and for a time blurred barriers of race and class. Ironically, that same hedonism that artists like Morrison naively asserted as new values to the young audiences of the time, has contributed to that very same complicit self-centeredness and false egotism of our modern culture. Friedrich Nietzsche predicted that this revaluation of all values would be cataclysmic. However, the state of music these days is so stale and anemic, it would be great to see some true creativity and revitalization of the scene; and whatever eccentric music is made, at least in a guitar/rock context, owes volumes to axe-slingers like Krieger, Syd Barrett and Lou Reed.

Inman Square

      When I moved to Inman Square with my wife and three children a little over a year ago, we found ourselves in a compact, vibrant cultural center, a pleasant change from the lazy doldrums of West Cambridge, and what would be a breath of fresh air if not for the smoking stream of traffic flowing through Prospect Street to the highway. My wife being born a 3rd generation Cantabrigian, and myself being here since I was 6, we have collectively inhabited seven homes in this city, but in many ways this is the coolest neighborhood we've lived in.
      With Harvard and Central losing a lot of what had made them so culturally relevant, and interesting, in the name of commerce and decency, being streamlined, gentrified and marginalized until unrecognizable as living communities of free-thinking individuals, what hope remains for this greatest of cities in which the most powerful army on Earth was first gathered to deflect the advances of Empire and Tyranny from the British Crown? This modern Alexandria, home of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?
      Although a hot-spot for yuppies, surely, Inman has not yet been crowded out by students and hipsters, and still retains that stamp of individuality that only an organic community displays, while also showing signs of a new embryonic intellectualism and art. It would bring great joy to see a new birth of creativity on American soil, in this stale age of rigid and nervous boredom.
      Inman has all the makings for an artistic/literary Mecca. First, there are the bars. Beer has long fueled American thought and creativity, and there are several interesting places to drink--- what we need are more interesting people to drink there. Bukowski's serves good beer and tasty, Cantabrigian bar-food. The staff there are very friendly, particularly the waitress who put up with the obnoxious comments of my friend, who was mooching beers off us; I made him at least leave her a tip. Being named after an iconic poet, I think it would make sense to start hosting poetry readings there. It would bring a higher sense of culture. There's also a cute little bookstore next door, Lorem Ipsum---why not get drunk and go read literature late in the evening? As you stumble tipsily down the sidewalk, bubbles float through the air. You could also drink at The Druid, or cram into the Lilly Pad to hear music. What Cambridge really needs is a revival of the local music scene.
      We could play in the open air of Alfred Vellucci Park, right across the street from Rosie's Bakery. Children playing with sidewalk chalk, hippies singing folk-songs, the old-timers and semi-bums of the neighborhood sitting, smoking, watching and talking. Host some real Happenings, make this the new Harvard Square, Vellucci the new Pit, sans the less genuine elements, the excessive filth and drugs and all that. Maybe just some teenagers with a can of beer in their pocket, smoking a joint. It's a short walk up Cambridge Street to the High School and the Library, which has become far more popular than when I was at the High School. Inman is perhaps not as superficially attractive to young people as Harvard Square --- when we were teenagers we were pulled in by the scene of quirky people in Harvard --- but there is the potential here for a depth of culture absent elsewhere.
      Further up Prospect Street, toward Central Square, you've got The Field, a nice, cozy Irish bar. You can even get a good meal there. Before that even, on Prospect is Out of the Blue Gallery. Lots of cool, funky local art in there; we got a housewarming gift from there. They also do lots of cool stuff, poetry readings, I've played music there a couple times, sidewalk chalk and yard sales; an eclectic place for reviving the local art scene, if only heads would get involved; we need more patrons of the arts, of real art, in Cambridge. Anyway, I've met some pretty interesting people there. And of course XO, beloved dog that you're bound to see lying down outside. Whole Foods right across the street, they should link up do something art/healthy food oriented.
      In the other direction you've got the highway and Union Square. Somerville and East Cambridge are right there; Area 4. I love the neighborhood feeling of Area 4 and the smell in the Summer (except on trash day.)
      Not long after we moved in we answered the door one day and met Jefferson R. Smith, candidate at the time for City Council. He was a very nice guy, and Inmanian himself, and affordable housing was at the top of his agenda. Unfortunately, he lost. More and more families and businesses are being forced out of Cambridge. Inman and Area 4 still have more working-class families than a lot of Cambridge, though.
      So, in short we should initiate a cultural exchange, at Vellucci Park and local businesses. Then we can establish an independent philosophical development and entertain other possibilities for the city's atmosphere than pure liberal prudence and homogeny.

@dGabeEvau

Note: Since I wrote this last Spring, already the area has changed; at least temporarily, for the worse. We have lost our close neighbor Out of the Blue to Central Square, although I was happy to help spread the word to save the gallery and raise awareness for their fundraising efforts to relocate. Also, in a trend consistent with the literary atrophy of America, Lorem Ipsum bookstore has closed. Bukowski's has been closed for months due to renovations; according to the Boston Globe they will be open again soon...just in time to come in from the cold to warm up and celebrate New England's heritage of booze, poetry and greasy food....on an apparent up-note, Christina's Spices has moved a few doors down from its previous location, which was connected to Christina's Ice Cream; the new spot looks really nice; I haven't been in yet, but just looking at the sheer assortment of hot sauces on the wall makes my mouth water (and my nose run.) Haveli, Inman's perennial Indian restaurant, closed about a year ago...that was a shame; it was a great place to grab buffet, my wife and I had eaten their for our anniversary years ago, and, most fondly to me, last winter I shoveled out a path in their parking lot and in front of the store in exchange for a free lunch! It is now January 5th, 2015; hopefully we can look forward to great things to come for Inman Square this year.

Keith Matthew Thornton, Poet Laureate of the English Language

       The most significant poets in American history have been, with several exceptions, Black. Sure, there were the Beats, there was Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson. But the most financially successful poets, of any race or nationality, in fact, have been the white musicians and songwriters who appropriated African American song forms, notably the blues, jazz, and rock and roll. Although some of these composers were creating work of artistic and cultural relevance, in their own right, nonetheless they profited from the creation of Black America, just as our nation was founded on the blood and sweat of Black slaves.
       It was, in fact, a slave who was one of the earliest known Black American poets. Dave the Potter was both a skilled worker and literate; he etched in his clay pottery simple yet profound verses which told the tale of his life and times, and echo universal human truths and feelings. There have been successfully published and known Black creators of written verse as well, such as Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Amira Baraka…but the most influential contribution, in fact the single cultural product of any true value which America has put forth, is Black music.
       Much of this is simple, plaintive lyric verse such as the call and response of the blues. There were certainly many who incorporated more 'sophisticated' word-play and mainstream Americanisms, such as Chuck Berry, who ingeniously hit a wider (whiter) audience as the Father of Rock and Roll; but for the most part this music confined itself to the Dionysian pathos of lyric poetry. We could replace Archilochus with Leadbelly as the hero of Dionysian poetry in The Birth of Tragedy. Mainstream white music tended to be more Apollonian, focusing on appearance and technical display rather than true depth of feeling and universality.
       The parameters of rap music allow it to convey a greater depth of intellectual consideration than the passionate call-and-response of the blues. Sometimes this leads to shallow superficiality, and in fact materialism. But it also paved the way for the true synthesis of the 3rd element, which Nietzsche erroneously (and critically) identified as the 'Socratic' force of reason and reflection, corrupting the artistic perfection of Greek Tragedy, which perfectly blended the Apollonian and Dionysian art impulses into that 'mysterious union.' I would substitute the term 'Hermetic', to be more alchemical, and true to the Greek Deities. The ancients knew there to be three forces in the universe; in Ayurveda this light, mental energy is called Vatta.
       It would take a poet with a truly scientific insight into both the deeper pathos and the more superficial impressions of everyday life to fully merge these three forces in poetry and music, crowning the great artistic medium of the 20th Century with the most brilliant stanzas ever written. 
   
       Keith Matthew Thornton is the greatest poet in the history of the English language. His achievement goes beyond his technical mastery of the medium. Few rappers, or spoken-word artists, have such a variety of cadence and vocal inflection in their art. That dynamic delivery of phonetics is something the printed page is simply unable to capture. Keith's brilliance transcends his intellectual genius; of any artist I have ever heard Keith has the most completely independent voice…not just in terms of the subjects he chooses to rhyme about; it is truly that here one comes into contact with an individual human mind, free of, and yet at the same time making use of every artifice of expression in order to convey his mood, his thought-process, his sensation of relative humidity and every other variable of the human experience, beyond simple (yet powerful and evocative) emotional symbols which poetry has relied upon for centuries, at least.
       When Kool Keith is discussed or even mentioned, it is usually to talk about how 'strange,' 'weird' and 'crazy' he is. Certainly this is a great part of his appeal. Keith is creative and unique, an anomaly for sure, and he has done a great job of building (and living up to) this reputation himself. At the same time, it is only too easy for the press to marginalize his artistic output and cultural significance, particularly as his abilities and intelligence could be threatening to the controllers of mainstream white media. Just as Jimi Hendrix being cast as the 'Wild Man from Borneo' helped to reduce the anxiety he provoked among white (British) musicians who had grown comfortable in their appropriation of a Black American medium (the blues,) so the removal of Keith from the spotlight and focus on his eccentricity allowed for the expedient and rapid demise of mainstream rap music during the time of Bad Boy's over-budgeted MTV videos and the subsequent appropriation of superficial markers of hip-hop culture by mainstream white America. 
       Even without the issue of race, madness is characteristically used as a way to scapegoat tremendous, visionary artists with the potential to alter the mass consciousness, for better or worse. Another amazing poet of American popular culture, Jim Morrison was crippled and destroyed by his own role of insanity, in which he was inspired by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud's 'derangement of the senses in order to achieve the unknown.' In fact, Rimbaud is the only poet of the previous millennium comparable to Keith in lyrical acuity; and when it comes to this new age, just forget it. I don't think anyone writing today could even fill-in-the-blank on a Dr. Seuss book. Certainly 'Rockets on the Battlefield' or "No Awareness' are poems comparable to Rimbaud's absinthe-induced 'Season in Hell.'  When we confine ourselves to the English language, there is simply no parallel…"Shakespeare's gone, don't even think about him."
       Perhaps this very linguistic framework is the key to Keith's ability to convey perfectly all the psycho-sensory nuances of the human existence. In many ways, English is decidedly un-poetic. The lack of sonance and the prevalence of stiff, unwieldy suffixes characterize the Germanic languages in general, making them far less melodically viable than, say, the Latin-derived family. Yet somehow the frankness and candor of our language allow for a simplicity in verse comparable to ancient Greek lyric poetry.
       A posterity with any cultural integrity whatsoever will include the name Thornton with those of writers such as Homer and Aeschylus. It is high time for a credible, authentic press media to acknowledge Keith's role as master poet, as musical innovator, even philosopher. It is his ability to capture the tiniest detail that others might not notice, or take for granted, in any case not write about as the subject of 'grand poetry,' that sets him leagues above the rest. It is this cinematic quality, like LSD revealing the individual blades of grass where the average person would simply see a lawn that needs mowing, that propels his metres into mental activity, 'traveling at the speed of thought' and manifesting inside the rapt mind of the listener.
       Keith is this Hermes, this Thoth, who Morrison himself predicted (in an interview with PBS) would emerge in the post-rock era, after European and African music had been thoroughly fused in the creation of the true Apollonian/Dionysian synthesis of rock-and-roll, to speak and to sing over recorded media, taking what had emerged in Jamaica as 'toasting' over the instrumental recordings of reggae hits in the streets by popular sound-systems, and was then imported to the Bronx by Kook Herc as Hip-Hop, and making it a grand and epic art-form comparable in technical consideration as well as cultural import to the classics of the Ancient World. It is no accident that Keith himself grew up in the Bronx, amidst the birth of Hip-Hop, channelling the urban experience into the ultimate reflection of America's transient and manifold soul.

suggested reading:
Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Birth of Tragedy"
Amiri Baraka, "Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music"

Amnesty International Proposes the Decriminalization of Prostitution

Amnesty International is calling for the complete decriminalization of prostitution, or "sex work", at least between "consenting adults."

Read AI's Proposal

This is a very convoluted issue and perhaps there is no one right solution to the questions it raises.

The so-called "Swedish Model" of policy does to me seem the best approach, criminalizing pimps and johns rather than the prostitutes themselves. Many women, even if not actually forced or coerced into prostitution, nonetheless engage in prostitution out of desperation and lack of other employment opportunities.
On the other hand, many turn to drug-dealing from a similar lack of prospects, and it would seem absurd to criminalize drug addicts and not the pushers. However, in this case the prostitute is the primary victim of the industry, not the buyer. The pimps and traffickers are the real criminals, however; perhaps the right to associate and form brothels, taking the economics into their own (or at least a less insidious representative's) hands would offer better protection and conditions to these (mostly) women. Indeed, that is one of the main points that Amnesty International is making, that by decriminalizing the sex industry, prostitutes would have better working conditions and not be targeted by the police. Violence against prostitutes is taken for granted as they are seen as criminals and socially disgraced.
The Proposal seems to take the johns' side, claiming that buying sex is part of their right to "life enjoyment and dignity." To me this seems ridiculous. However, they should not be the prime target of law enforcement either, especially when they are sometimes entrapped by undercover police officers offering sex for sale.
But the Proposal would protect traffickers, while claiming that violence, enslavement, and involvement of minors should still be prohibited and enforced...in fact in the wider context of the sex industry, these elements are inseparable.

I would go further and say that currently there is far too much permissiveness.... somehow prostitution is allowed to persist through classifieds and online, in a direct-to-consumer market.
Pornography should also be regulated; in any case hard-core pornography is in point-of-fact a form of prostitution, albeit a contracted form, where the person(s) being paid for sex is paid by a third-party.

I found this article engaging as well

Cambridge Should Ban Cigarettes Altogether

    With retail giant CVS Pharmacy recently announcing plans to stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products, I call for the City of Cambridge to follow suit and completely ban the sale of pre-packaged, mass-produced tobacco goods, namely, cigarettes. This is the 21st Century and we, as a city, should be the intellectual and progressive leader in the World today.
    As it is, high school students have little trouble finding someone to buy them cigarettes, sometimes right across the street from school. I am confident that many of these same teenagers would not go to the trouble of seeking out cigarettes from strangers in Somerville, Boston or Arlington. Just having that many fewer teens with access to cigarettes would have a substantial effect on keeping them smoke-free and healthy their entire lives. This in turn translates to savings in health-care costs, which is my preemptive response to those who would argue that banning cigarettes would hurt our city's economy. More importantly, the health of our citizens is of infinitely greater consequence than a loss in tax revenue. New markets will arise; and if people should decide not to spend that cigarette money elsewhere, then indeed the measure would have a tremendous impact on reducing poverty in Cambridge, a city that is currently deporting many of her longtime residents and, with them, her cultural integrity and relevance, as part of an unwritten policy of economic and perhaps political micro-colonialism.
    Cambridge stands poised to make a dramatic impact upon the world, culturally, politically, and artistically. This is a new age where the celebrity of the future need no longer rely upon a cherried Marlboro to typify cool to the young consumer. Art and creativity, it turns out, can be allied to progressive and healthy values, rather than decadence and disease.
    I do not think it realistic to attempt to ban smoking outside in public, as after all smokers are still reeling enough from the ban, over ten years ago now, on smoking inside places of business, particularly in these nasty New England winters. As a former and intermittent smoker myself, I can sympathize with the sentiments of smokers, especially cynical Boston smokers who seem to pride themselves on increasing their risk of cancer and other mutagenic effects. That is why I want to give my children a chance to grow up in a city without cigarettes. This measure alone would be enough to dramatically decrease the number of cigarettes smoked in the city, which would also be good for the esthetic value of our streets, centers and sidewalks, as well as the health of plants and our sacred River Charles. A city that continues to pollute its own river is committing suicide.
    Personally, I don't care what happens to those who profit off of killing others, so the economic arguments, as I have mentioned, do not touch me. They are moot and smell of nationalist barbarism, a smell that, along with second-hand smoke, should be eliminated from our air and our lungs. The one exception I would make is Leavitt and Pierce. They should not be exempt from the ban on packaged cigarette products, which are an addictive poison that is used to commercially exploit the souls of children, but independent tobacconists such as L+P should be allowed to continue selling loose pipe and rolling tobacco, as well as cigars, as this is the industry upon which, in great part, our magnificent nation was built, not the interest of Phillip Morris's stock-holders and hypnotic marketing campaigns. I do not think these items would pose nearly as great a danger as pre-packaged cigarettes to our youth, and if I should be proven wrong on that count, the measure could then be extended as necessary.
    It may seem crazy, but so did all great innovations and changes initially appear.

Café Society: America Runs on Adreno-Cortico-Stimulants

    Ah...as I sip my hot-water extraction of roasted coffea arabica beans from Guatemala blended with the cream of cow's milk, typing on my laptop, feet not planted firmly on the floor, I can only say...God bless America! Now....
     "Wake up!"
                       and smell the coffee burning at the bottom of the pot, taste the acids churning inside your intestines, disrupting the bacterial flora that regulates your immune system;
                              feel the tension in your jaw,
                              write home to Mother all your racing thoughts as you babble vapidly to friends
on sidewalks and traincars, endlessly listing off the categories of Infinity....

...O, to be young and write poems in cafés and chainsmoke as if life had no consequence...

now: reality: 
                     you need coffee to function, to work, to write, to get up and make the kids breakfast, to raise up the nerve to even talk to anyone.
now: back from the initial stimulus and bliss, that 1st sip of poetry, down to the prose of this post:

     America is addicted to coffee. We need it every day just to function. Coffee is originally from Africa, although some people think it is from the Americas. In fact, it was the Dutch who expanded the coffee industry beyond Africa and Arabia, and it was they who brought it to Central and South America, where indeed so much of the world's coffee is now produced. Brewed coffee in the form we drink today was developed in Yemen. The first coffee-houses among the Arabs were indeed a political innovation as they became a powerful yet affordable and accessible social forum, and for this reason were quickly recognized as dangerous. Coffee became popular in the North American Colonies in the late 17th Century, and it was at a coffeehouse that the Boston Tea Party was concocted.

"In the year 2000 in the US, coffee consumption was 22.1 gallons (100.468 litres) per capita.^[6] More than 150 million Americans (18 and older) drink coffee on a daily basis, with 65 percent of coffee drinkers consuming their hot beverage in the morning. In 2008, it was the number-one hot beverage of choice among convenience store customers, generating about 78 percent of sales within the hot dispensed beverages category.^[7] " - Wikipedia 

     So coffee is at once an industry of oppression, colonialism and exploitation, but also a tool for political dissidence. My primary focus of enquiry is not political, moral or ethical, however, but sociological, nutritional, and endocrinological. Caffeine, and other compounds present in the coffee bean, stimulate the cycle of adrenaline and cortisol. Adrenaline is very useful for an animal that needs to fight, run, or otherwise respond rapidly, decisively and forcefully to a situation or stimulus. It is not healthy to have adrenaline always blazing, as this leads to adrenal fatigue and exhaustion. However, proper diet and exercise can mitigate some of the effects of excessive adrenaline. Of more concern, to me at least, is the cortisol spike. Fasting and lowered blood-sugar levels already tends to elevate production of cortisol, the primary 'stress hormone.' Many people drink coffee on an empty stomach, and many women and men, generally out of commercially misguided vanity, use caffeine- and other stimulant-containing products to lose weight...the problem is that cortisol ends up breaking down muscle tissue, yet in the long run will prevent fat loss...I myself no longer take sugar in my coffee, but perhaps the sugar does help to mitigate the gluco-consumptive properties of caffeine and reduce the stress that coffee often causes.
    Adrenaline should not be discounted for its danger, either. We are an aggressive nation of car-crashers, bar-brawlers and murderers. My wife has suggested that caffeine-induced aggression is likely a primary contributor to violent crime and accidents in America (and in other caffeine-addicted industrialized nations.)
    Caffeine is a phenethylamine. These psychoactive compounds are all derived from the amino acid phenylalanine, and include its metabolite tyrosine, the hormones adrenaline, noradrenaline, and dopamine, as well as drugs such as cocaine, amphetamines, the prescription-anti-depressant Welbutrin (or bupropion) and mescaline. Of these, mescaline (and related alkaloids in various cactii species, somewhat legal with the exception of peyote) is the only phenethylamine that has the full potential to activate man's Higher Mind, whereas the rest have a tendency to be addictive, despite or rather due to their tremendous benefit to active, organized and socialized human populations. For this reason peyote is illegal, because we are racist Christian vigilantes who have condemned the beautiful traditions of the Native populations of the Americas and supplanted them with an abstraction forged of Christianity, war and colonialism. Peyote would allow one to access the 5+1/2th Chakra, the secret Sephira Daath, denied by Hebrew Kabbalists as heresy due to the loss of trans-Atlantic trade in ancient times.
     Of greater import for modern America is the question of the legalization of marijuana. It is incredible that human beings are branded as criminals for utilizing a plant that has for ages been a sacred food, medicine and ally. Perhaps the dis-attenuation of peripheral awareness could cause more car accidents from stoned drivers; this is probably the most legitimate argument against legalization, IMO.  However, as we have mentioned, it is highly probable that caffeine already does contribute to traffic accidents, as well as aggressive crime. Marijuana, overall, would reduce violence and aggression. Most of the association between marijuana and crime is, in fact, due to its being criminalized (duh!) It would be a wonderful world where high school students could buy marijuana from someone who didn't also deal in addictive pharmaceutical narcotics; if legal, marijuana would never be a 'gateway drug.' 
     Coffee, however, doesn't even need to be a gateway. Middle-class teenage girls learn that they should wear tight black riding pants and bring their laptops to Starbucks. Just in Harvard Square there are three Starbucks, plus one a seven-minute walk and another a twelve-minute walk away. This is saturation. Monopoly. At least independent cafés have some character and distinction. And then there's the slogan, "America Runs on Dunkin'." How proudly perverse, our culture's celebration of its own addictions, even as we make (successful) strides to curb smoking...even then, an addict can pat themself on the back for two weeks without drugs or alcohol, as they congregate together outside the church smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. 
    (ok, case-in-point, I'm just typing on the computer drinking coffee and now I'm yelling at the kids 'cause they're making too much noise...I think caffeine also lowers the tolerance for loud noises, by turning everything into a stimulus for adrenaline and cortisol, as mentioned, and making every noise or word a cause for panic and reaction.) 
     Before the coffee beans are roasted they are actually green, and contain much higher amounts of chlorogenic acid, with relatively less caffeine. Cholorogenic acid has been shown to have many health benefits, including blood-sugar regulation and, by extension, purportedly weight-loss. It will be interesting to see if the interest in green coffee bean products grows in the future, and somewhat replaces our addiction to roasted coffee beverages.
     Of course, coffee is not the only caffeinated beverage we drink. Tea, however, contains theanine, an amino acid which relaxes the mind and mitigates the effects of caffeine (one must watch out for the tannins present in tea, however, as they are highly acidic.) The biggest problem is probably the artificial energy drinks, which use other stimulants as well such as l-tyrosine, further contributing to adrenal fatigue, and generally without the addition of antioxidants, which are naturally present in coffee, tea, cocoa and yerba maté, and lend these plants much of their health-promoting benefits. Obviously these drugs should be regulated, far more than ganja.