Charles Baudelaire
There are many translations of this, and the one I prefer is the one that has the closing line
"It is the hour to be drunken! Lest you be the martyred slaves of Time, intoxicate yourselves, be drunken without cease! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, or with what you will."
That's a much more interesting headswerve - the idea that you could get intoxicated with virtue
Perhaps it's even possible to be intoxicated with sobriety, or the idea of sobriety as society-salvation, a cause, the single solution to everything wrong (the fanatical anti-drink campaigners of the temperance movement)
Born again former drug users, addicted to AA meetings, clutching little positivist mantras to one's bosom
(R. Meltzer quite scathing on how a cleaned-up Lester Bangs got into this whole humanist trip, 'bring back emotions, they are threatened in this society', reeling out maxims and homilies of the kind he would once have mercilessly scorned and mocked)
Humanist Bangs is my favourite Bangs, mostly. More interesting than Meltzer's tired nihilism, anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe great example of being drunk on sobriety in our time: Russell Brand. He has renounced drugs, renounced promiscuity, renounced comedy, renounced rational thought, even.
Yes I do prefer the writing done in his more mature phase, like the great piece on Astral Weeks.
DeleteThat's a great example, Russell Brand. Just an addictive personality so now he is addicted to conspiracy theory,
Whereas Guiliani would be an example of who is drunk on conspiracy theory but also drunk on drink.
The value of alcohol (and probably also drugs) is less in how it makes you feel, but rather in that it a random event generator. When you're drunk unexpected things happen that just don't happen when you are sober - for example you meet and get talking to people who you would otherwise never meet.
ReplyDeleteHow pleasant or unpleasant these experiences are is very dependent on how your consciousness changes when you are drunk. That is why it is vital to cultivate a kind of temperamentally pleasant drunkenness. (Which of course is not particularly easy.)
Well this is true - but then how do you account for the fact that I often have a drink when I'm at home, with my wife - who I have met before and know quite well - and even on my own. There's a high there - being just the right level of drunk - a loosening up. Maybe it creates a randomness in your own head - random thought encounters, a bit of chaos in your perceptions and connections.
DeleteBut yeah there's nothing quite like a night on the piss when you meet strangers and you find yourself in some place you hadn't planned. Of course it can just as easily end up in disaster, or at least grave loss of dignity.