Marijuana is a useful catalyst for specific optical and aural aesthetic perceptions. I apprehended the structure of certain pieces of jazz and classical music in a new manner under the influence of marijuana, and these apprehensions have remained valid in years of normal consciousness.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how marijuana can enhance the experience and understanding of music and art.
Allen Ginsberg expresses how marijuana has affected his perceptions of music, particularly jazz and classical. He suggests that the substance has enabled him to grasp the deeper structures within these art forms, allowing for a unique aesthetic experience that has continued beyond the intoxication, indicating a lasting impact on his appreciation for music.
In practice
In a discussion about the influence of substances on creativity, this quote could illustrate a perspective on art appreciation.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.
Many seek and never see, anyone can tell them why. O they weep and O they cry and never take until they try unless they try it in their sleep and never some until they die. I ask many, they ask me. This is a great mystery.
What if someone gave a war and Nobody came?
Fortunately art is a community effort - a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.
Sometime I’ll lay down my wrath, As I lay my body down Between the ache of breath and breath, Golden slumber in the bone.
Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.
I do not believe in adding enrichment merely for the sake of enrichment. Unless it adds clearness to the enunciation of the theme, it is undesirable, for it is very little understood.
The secret to film is that it's an illusion.
Whether the psychological effect of color is direct...or whether it is the outcome of association, is open to question. The soul being one with the body, it may well be possible that a psychological tremor generates corresponding one through association.
Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there — that, one might say, is created.
Swing your razor wide! Sweeney, hold it to the skies!
Even if a story has nothing to do with my life, if I can recognise something of myself in the character and think, 'Oh yeah, that's what I'd do...' Yeah, that's what I look for.
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