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Originally Posted by Sljslj
Thanks for pointing those out. I wasn't exactly sober when writing that, so it was bound to happen.
I really think that, on a universal scale, we are idiots and that our brains are very limited in what we can observe. I believe there's a whole other reality (probably more than one) in existance all around us that we will never see. This poem and it's theme were heavily inspired by reading trip reports on Erowid ( Erowid Experience Vaults: Salvia divinorum (also Salvia) Main Index check it out if you like), and it really made me think about what we call reality.
Erica, would you consider joining the lyrics contest thread I made? It's pretty fun and interesting. Think about it, at least.
Thanks, Erica. You're awesome. |
The trip reports at the Erowid website compiling people's descriptions of experiences when taking psychoactive drugs etc. do look very interesting. The take-home message I get from that site is this: mess up the human brain's functioning, and you create a lot of self-generated perceptions and emotions that only exist in the mind and don't represent any external reality.
I remember reading in college about how the brain processes visual information in a step-wise fashion, so lesions can result in odd perceptions. For example, our experience of motion can be separated from our experience of sight, such that people with lesions in the brain areas responsible for perceiving motion see the world as if it were a series of still pictures, but they can no longer judge how fast things are moving (which makes knowing when to stop pouring a drink impossible). This doesn't mean that reality isn't moving, but they've lost the ability to perceive that, of course. I think drugs, like brain lesions, do create altered perceptions...but they don't reveal anything new about reality, although they *do* reveal a lot about how the human brain functions (or doesn't).
I've seen your lyrics competition and I'm glad you're getting some participation, Slj, but I really feel that, for me, putting up lyrics in a competition would sap out the pleasure I take in writing them. I like art because there is fundamentally no right or wrong, no intrinsic "good" or "bad." Thank you for asking me about it, though!