With thanks to Kid Cudi

[Da6s]

I posted that first as an anchor, because it was the anchor. After last night, I now have the desire to write, which I typically haven't had in some time. So I'm writing it out, just like the other posts I've made here, so I can look back on it in 5 or 6 or 8 years, remember the hazy details time removes, and then nod, affirmed of the experience. This won't be that ranty, if anything, it's just writing out the details as they're fresh. Enjoy. Or don't. It's written for me.

The death rattle of my 20's is fast approaching. I'm 29 this coming week. Yes, I know that's not that old, but it's still got me a bit on fucking edge. After the navy shat all over my life's plans, parental cancer shat all over my lifes location, and the "Oh god I'm almost 30 and more or less single and living with my parents (due to cancer & only for another 5? months for his chemo, but still) in a shit awful town in shitneck Tennessee and what have I done with my life oh fuck me i've fucked up". Yes, I know this sentiment is ridiculous, but whatever. Thoughts happen. Still adjusting from not being on course to anything I had intended & pretty much having all of fucking 2015 be a waste of a goddamned year.

Anyways.

After the Navy & with 29 looming, I realized that I was now enabled to do some of the things I wanted to in my youth that service would have prevented me from doing. One of these was last night.

I didn't start experimentation with narcotics until relatively later than most. Like, 20's for majority of things. I've never smoked anything I couldn't grow out of the earth & imbibe pure & I've never used anything that requires a needle. Everything else, pretty much tried it to see how it went. The one exception was hallucinogenics.

I had tried E before, and honestly didn't have that great of a time with it. Enter Da6s in post navy world destroyed funk a month and a half after being kicked out. One of my good friends that I've known for damn near a decade, which also freaks me out, invites me to go see Pretty Lights in Nashville on Halloween. I say fuck it, why not. She's kind of a hippy and all about experiences & all the drugs. Good person besides all that. I love her in the most platonic of ways. She reaches out, I join her, her BF, and a bunch of people they go to music festivals with like Imagine and others. A few of the people in their group are the definition of candy kids. My friend offers me a type of E called "Snapchats". I've never done it outside of a hotel room with a significant other, and since the navy gave me the finger I decide to rebel and do it. That experience that night was fucking incredible. The venue was this outdoor show in downtown Nashville. Outdoor amphitheater, grassy incline. It had been sprinkling off and on through the day. Being halloween, everyone's in costume & there are some freaking amazing ones. Our group gets there, and we're all rolling at this point. The show proceeds to be one of the most surreal, incredible, and just sheer awesome experiences of my life. Here we are, this group of their friends and me,  no worries at all. The show is great. The music gives me chills. The lights are fucking incredible, and the sprinkling rain is the best part. Nothing will ever compare to the feeling of rolling outdoor at a concert looking up at a laser show & seeing countless rain drops falling through it, while also having the CONSTANT sensation of the rain on your face, shooting electric tingles down your spine like a fucking food orgasm with every impact. I get why people do that drug every chance they get. I don't know how many more times I'll ever do it, but it's one I'm ok with recurring to a safe in moderation extent, because even though that experience will never, ever be recreated in any way shape form or fashion in my life, having all of my serotonin being depleted rendering me totally care free was fucking fantastic. And only possible by the E. That night I realized in public on it, I'm extremely outgoing, chatty, and friendly. I fucking talked to sooo many people that night. One of the more awesome memories were these fucking jelly fish. Their costume was the following: 1 loofah, unraveled & cut into strips to make tentacles. Sombrero, with loofah tentacles attacked to act as the head of the jelly fish. Christmas/rave lights the same color as the tentacles in the trough of the sombrero. Bubble wrap & another loofah of the same kind over the top of said lights. They were simple, ingenious, and fucking amazing. I talked to a jelly fish for how long I don't know. Had a serious crush on her for days after that. I also got blessed by a ton of jesuses, and just had a fucking incredible time.

The next day, there was no "FUCK I HATE EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE" sensation like i'd had before. I had a weird content glow that lasted for days, that I decided I would be ok. On the drive back the next morning, I told my friend that I still had never tried any hallucinogenics but that I had wanted to since I was 20 years old, just for the experience one time. She tells me how she doesn't like mushrooms, and asks if I would be ok trying acid for my first time. I tell her sure.


3 weeks ago we decide that yesterday, weekend before my birthday, we're going through with this. OK. And now brings us to Kid Cudi and why I'm now a fucking fan of him.

I did one hit last night. It was a small white square with a picture of snoopy on it. Initially I hated it. Took for fucking ever to dissolve. It was like a spitball that would not go away. constantly in your mouth. We start by watching some music videos through her apple TV, through youtube to start. I first notice the initial effects on a robin schultz song, which btw, that dude has blown the fuck up and he's incredibly catchy and it's ridiculous how many of his fucking songs are constantly being played right now and they're all great. Anyways, it's a lyrics video on youtube, and the lyrics appear to be growing. OK. Weird. I discuss with my friend, she agrees it's starting with her too. The next few minutes are hazy, but my first wave was FUCKING INTENSE. She changes music, I'm trying to handle whatever the fuck is going on in my world. I'm not seeing anything at this point, but having issues focusing on anything. She plays kid cudi. It's some stupid video with stupids shitting fire. It might've been demonlaser or majorlaser or some other fucking EDM (god i fucking hate the term EDM so fucking much ever time I use it i rage inside a little bit but it fucking works god dammit) artist with the name laser in their name. Whatever. This video has like, hell imagery in minimalist style with trumpets shitting fire, and I'm like "NOPEEEE". She goes to the next song. I don't remember the next song. All I remember, is that it was just a picture of the Kid Cudi album cover listed. The above image. This is my jumping off point.

For whatever fucking reason, the above album cover is fucking BEAUTIFUL to me. What I'm about to describe is all from the course of like, 3 and a half minutes of this song. It's crazy at this point how deep the impact is, was, will be just from so short a fucking time.

First thing I see are the stars. Each one is its own fucking galaxy. They fade in and out, like glowing-dimming christmas lights. They twinkle. They swirl. The night sky in that fucking album cover is a alive. There are shooting stars. The cosmos are fucking in view to me and they're beautiful. I'm dumbstruck. All I want is to keep staring at this fucking image. Words don't do justice the hazy memory of how vibrant & just active the sky in that single, still frame picture were. The second thing I look to is his profile. It looks cell shaded but not quite, thing Borderlands art but sharper. He also starts a kind of shimmy shake dance back and forth like looking at him from 2 different angles. I'm amused, but I again return to the stars. They're still incredibly, swirling galaxies and just inifinite. I love it. I look to the left & see the weird hazy smoke lines on the left side for lack of a better term. They're on both sides. The smoke climbs, like an incense trail off a burning stick of incense. The stars twinkle, the smoke dances. I focus on the left smoke. It takes the form of a female body silhouette a la a james bond intro. She dances, sensually. She morphs into like a snake of smoke. She morphs into a volcano. It's fucking cool. I return to the stars. They're still alive.

The song fucking ENDS. And it's the WORST FUCKING THING EVER. Like, I plead with my friend "Bring that back! I need that back!". She can't. My joy is temporarily crushed. The next song is a video with moving people, I tell her I can't deal with movement, and I need to stare at something until I'm done with it and decide I'm ready for something else to stare at.

She's in the kitchen as she's feeling nauseous from how fucking intense the first wave is. IT REALLY FUCKING WAS. That's one thing I'll always caution people interested in trying it. It's sooo fucking intense. I wasn't ready for it. I did ONE. I can't even fucking fathom how damned scene kids at shows do 3 or 4 in PUBLIC.

Anyways. She's in the kitchen. I walk to her, ask her if she's got any kind of like, art pictures. Or something I can stare at. In the mean time, I stare at a white flower. The white flower dances. It doesn't dance like, up and down and around. It makes concentric circles inside with its pedals, like some fucking kaleidoscope image of the flower. It's fucking cool. She tells me she has 1 art book of salvador dali in her room. Not personally a dali fan, but fuck it, I'll try it. At this point I realize her music isn't doing well for me, I retrieve my faithful ipod nano that desperately needs to be replaced because he's like, fucking 9 years old at this point, but goddamned if he doesn't still work. I love mr. nano. I retrieve him, fuck with my songs, realize almost ALL of my shit is way too fucking angry or fast or depressing for the current situation. THIS IS NOT GOOD. I cycle through. I stop on motherfucking JUSTICE and they save the day. Civilization - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKsL90gkbNY 

I listened to Civilization I have no fucking idea how many times last night. I also played Incubus - Warning, FC Kahuna - Hayling, Zero 7 - waiting line, eclectic mix of pretty lights, ratatat, and some others. Depending how my mood felt based on what I was looking at. This other music came later though, Civilization was on repeat while I sought my happiness again, that kid cudi had so graciously offered me originally.

I get the dali book. It's not doing it for me. HOWEVER on the cover of the dali book, there's this mish mash of dali art with a bunch of dots at the top morphing into birds. One of these bird dots turns into a fucking fairy from zelda. It flaps its wings. It twinkles. It's black. I LOVE IT. I giggle and grin like a fucking idiot. Another bird dot flaps its wings. and flys. Other dots dance around each other like some kind of birds eye view of a waltz of dots. I at this point am cradling the dali book gawking at the cover mouth agape with my feet under a space heater for warmth because her floor was fucking cold hardwood and I wasn't capable of sitting down without a constant source of kid-cudi esque brilliance. By cradling I mean I'm clutching it like a fucking girl with a diary in anime. I decide I'm done with the fairy and birds, and need something else. I put the book back, which at this point is fucking AWKWARD still. Coordination is fucking hard while the waves are ongoing, and the first wave was the worst EASILY. Lasted the longest, but was fucking INTENSE. I really can't iterate that enough.

She has a picture rendering on the wall in her room of the sunsphere in Knox. I ask her if I can take it down. She says yes. I cradle it. I look through it. The light up rooms in the gold sphere have active scenes playing, including some of my own memories from my own POV. The buildings in the background twinkle. The lights in the stairwell morph and take on their own life. I'm dissatisfied though, but it's still cool as hell. I put it away.

Genius strikes me. I ask my friend if I can use her laptop to find something to stare at. She says ok. She's the best.

I don't know what I googled. She told me to save whatever I found and loved, because I'll never be able to find it again. I've tried while typing this. I can't. It wasn't "Milky way galaxy art". It wasn't "galaxy art". It wasn't "milky way art". I did find one of the images that i KNOW for a fact was incredible. Here it is.



I basically spend the next 4 hours staring at different art styles of the galaxy on her computer, downloading and saving them. Typing was hard. Saving was hard. Any coordination that isn't observation in a wave was damned near impossible. I really have no idea how people function on it in public.

I stare at this galaxy art. I stare at all of them. Every one is alive with the infinite, just like kid cudi's background. They swirl like hurricanes. The center eye changes to a portal to a stargate to a robot eye to a pool to countless other things. Circles form & dance around it, like a halo ring of concentric circles spinning in tandem. Stars twinkle, become their own galaxies, swirl, spin, pulse, blink, disappear, and explode. Stars shoot across and explode like fireworks. It's the most fucking incredible thing I've ever seen on a computer screen. It's fucking mind blowing, which I get is the whole fucking point of hallucinogenics, but still. I wasn't prepared for the sheer awesome.

The above paragraph describes pretty much every fucking galaxy art that I looked at and liked. I cycled through the songs i mentioned on repeat i don't even know how many times while just staring at these galaxies, taking everything in. The waves taper off, we become functioning, able to talk. The waves at this point still creep up on you, as we were talking about lasik as I still say it's the best money I ever spent, she hands me her glasses to see her perscription, and it's a trigger for another wave. I go back to my galaxies. My space. My universe. All the stars continue. I watch a full supernova overtake a portion of the screen. I watch a seascape be sucked into a black hole. New galaxies form, rotate one another like some superstorm hurricane, until they merge and return to the same image.

The wave subsides, and it's the last major one. We proceed to watch the entirety of drunk history season 3 on hulu. Chiquita banana's are fucking awful. They've done some bad shit. That chick on the banana label is a little cunt. Fuck chiquita banana's.

I don't get to sleep until like, 6 AM. Today, I had a slight body hang over but I attribute that to being late 20's and sleeping on a fucking futon.

I'll probably never do that again. But god fucking dammit, what a cool, holy shit, surreal, fucking amazing experience. I'm glad I tried it in my 20's. The curiosity was there, and I had it exactly how I wanted it. And it's all thanks to Kid fucking Cudi. I don't even like Kid Cudi. But i'm going to buy that goddamned album. Respect.

I can totally see how it can fuck you up in a bad way, especially if you did it alone or allowed your environment to not be pleasant. There was one point where my friends music on the TV was this awful grating vibe beat that was overpowering my headphones, and I started to see the center of the galaxy as ghostly forms and wraiths and shit, and i quickly was like "NOOOO CHANGE THAT SHIT NOW NOT OK". Having a friend handy and maintaining composure anytime something isn't being great would probably be recommended.

Still though. I tried hallucinogenics for the first time at the end of age 28, and i'm glad I fucking did. I'm totally ok if I never do them again, because my experience was fucking amazing.


Also, I goddamned LOVE galaxy art now. Fucking hell. I'm shit for artistic talent but i want to make fucking galaxy art now like crazy. Easily understand why creative geniuses attribute it as a GREAT choice.



Or Kill Me.
Just make sure Kid Cudi knows he's appreciated if you do.

[Da6s]

god dammit how do i resize that first fucking huge image D: <


Edit: Just found a smaller one.

[Da6s]

Seriously though, fuck Chiquita Banana's. Watch this if you haven't seen the episode of Drunk History I referenced: https://youtu.be/Lds2JhNgK-s?t=413