I don’t remember whose idiot idea it was to try it. According to psychologists, that person wouldn’t be culpable. It would be me who demonstrated to everyone else that this idiot idea was a good one. That’s how compliance forms.
Robo-tripping. Getting f’d up on cough syrup. It’s only a step above huffing.
DXM was limited to buyers in California. Me, Aram, Ray, Kim, Maggie, Kailyn, Tyler, Lilah and Annie all crammed into Kim’s red station wagon. We did a drive by of every pharmacy in Santa Cruz to purchase a maximum amount of cough syrup. Rumor was that there was an ID trace to make sure one could not go into another pharmacy and buy more in a narrow time frame. This was mostly for limiting meth production and not for doing “Lean,” “Dirty Sprite,” “Sizzurp,” or “‘Tussin.” The limitation was unlikely but more fun to assume was true. It was like we were into contraband. We sure felt clever cheating the system by having several buyers to throw the authorities off our tracks.
After returning to Kim’s dorm, we dumped all the different brands onto the bed. We were consulting erowid.com for instructions on how to “properly” trip. The forums said it was a pacing of three tablespoons per hour. Somehow this was avoiding toxicity and nausea that would induce vomiting. Getting drug advice from a website forum is specious at best. Yet here I am writing this over a decade after the fact. Me and my friends are living proof that youth equals invincibility.
This was the semester I was taking Calculus and Physics. There was work to be done. I was blowing it off. This binge lasted for two days straight. That kind of blithe is tantamount to sitcoms or a bad stoner comedy.
Cough syrup is the closest drug you can get to morphine. Numbing the entire body as a powerful analgesic. Take more of it and it comes with a bonus of mild hallucinations.
We got a taste of all of that.
We got out shot glasses for comedic effect. That’s three tablespoons in one shot glass. Sizzurp, bitches. Too bad we didn’t know that then. We just wanted the novelty of doing shots of cough syrup. Except if you were Aram. Then it was shots of cough syrup and a chaser of actual liquor and vicodin. UCSC students are a case against a single-payer health care system.
(Footage lost)
We were sitting at a bus stop, waiting to get to late night dining. Annie and I were sitting on the bench and the rest were aimlessly shuffling nearby. Annie was fiddling with a pocket knife, trying to break up DIY stitching in her jeans. Ray noticed that she had cut through the stitching and was digging into her leg. He panicked and batted the knife out of her hand. It was too late - the denim was already soaking through with her blood. A few of us went back to the dorm to bandage and clean her up as best we could, tying a gauze pad around her thigh with some duct tape to keep pressure on it. The cut was not deep enough to need medical attention. No signs of subcutaneous fat or deeper dermal layers, or so that internet said.
We went to the the top of Merrill Hill for late night dining. The walking should have been taxing for Annie and her bum leg but the analgesia was in full swing. Once at Merrill’s DC, the group was moving in jerking motions. People may have noticed but probably just presumed it was standard art student behavior. Maybe some kind of flash mob or performance art piece.
Kim picked up a banana, inspected it a little too long before putting it back down in the basket. She delicately patted as if it were a child’s head. Maggie got more corn dogs than she could handle, brought them back to the table and ate them provocatively. The rest furtively watched her. Maggie was in her own world, clearly doing this for her own amusement. Maya went back for grapes. She returned to the table at half the speed of a normal, functioning person. She still managed to trip over an obstruction in the floor that might not have actually been there. Luckily she didn’t hit the floor, but threw the fruit everywhere. Giggle fits erupted from our table.
We skipped the bus and we all made the 20 minute hike back to Kim’s room. Few words were exchanged. Aram and Molly turned on the Nintendo GameCube and started playing Legend of Zelda. Me and a few other started playing Uno. Kim’s roommate had moved out at the beginning of that semester. She was left with a double room to herself. She had pushed the two beds together, making one giant bed. She sprawled out on to it and let out a satisfied sigh. The TV hummed and produced electronic blips and beeps as villains and bogies got the edge of Link’s sword.
I had been phased out all night, my hearing monopolized by a Sony minidisc player on Modest Mouse’s discography. I didn’t know if the album had always been this good or if it was being chemically enhanced. Cards were being dealt to me: Blue 4, Red 0, Black 4+, Yellow 1, Red 5. Like Star Wars. I look through them and then place them on the floor. The carpet is like pahoehoe, moving like a slow glacier but swirling slowly like hot fudge being turned on a marble slab. I expect to put my fingers into the melting fondue, but feel only coarse fibers. Okay, so it’s not actually molten rock.
“Hey, guys...” I say, taking one earbud out. There are a few scattered admissions to me, though none sound all that interested. “Hey, guys...” I pause again. Molly looks over at me from the gaming screen.
“Yes, Jordan?” she says with mirth.
“The floor is moving. What should I be more worried about - that the floor has been moving or that it doesn’t seem to bother me?” There is a moment of silence and then snort-laughs bubble from various corners of the room. Aram smiles, which I never saw him do. I was almost certain the guy either didn’t like me or was just like that to everyone. He kept his eyes fixed on the screen. He had on an ugly brown sweater, evoking the 70s. But he was also wearing pants of a different shade of brown and sandals. Who the hell was this guy? On the other end of the gay spectrum was Ray, who spent way too much student loan money on fashion, wearing a white button up shirt from H&M, Banana Republic dark blue hoodie with grey lining, Diesel jeans and Rainbow flip flops. Aram was very chaste and introverted. Ray was more indulgent with a gregariousness to match. Loud sexuality, loud personality. He walked up and down the halls of the dorms and would sing opera. He believed that if you were going to be a great singer, you had to practice all the time however inopportune. Aram didn’t say much of anything. This character contrast is completely irrelevant to the story.
“Look, I think we need to drive somewhere. Away from the lava. P.S., the floor is moving.” How cliche. Everyone has the same hallucinations - all getting cast into the Well of Souls. ‘Why does it have to be snakes?!’
We run through the halls, giggling, flushed faces. A few other students come out of the bathroom, see us, quickly look away, well aware - no doubt - of what we’re into. Kim’s car is parked in the lot. A permit on campus is damn pricey. Super rich kids. Not all of us can fit into the seats, so three of the others opt for the hatch back, laying down. Somehow, the responsibility of driving is on Tyler. “Do we even know where we’re going?” Someone asked. All I can think of us an artist’s palette of pinks and yellows, blanketing liquid spills of rock. And arid environments. Another stark contrast to where we were on the Northern California Coast. I want them! “I want to see the big horn,” I say. “Death Valley. I think it’s only an 8 hour drive.” Everyone else kind of just goes along with this impulse. We have no camping gear, most of us are broke and it’s Wednesday. We all have a class either tomorrow and/or Friday. Poor decisions. Prefrontal cortex you are hereby relieved of duty. That is if it was even there to begin with.
(Footage Lost)
We stop by a Burger King somewhere in the Valley along I-5. Everyone else goes inside. I wait next to the car, watching the detached lights of blacked-out cars pass by on the nearby highway. I know that everything should be moving at its normal speed. To me, these lights are dragging across the dark void, rays like a meteor shower. A punctuated, definitive beginning but a dragging, infinite tail. I’m interrupted by the sound of tin cans hitting the concrete. I look over at the dumpster and see a coyote hop out, and trot away casually. Something expired is hanging from its clenched jaw. Everyone comes back out of the glass doors, already devouring things that should have been in the dumpster. Like problem children that should have been shot in the cradle. Fast food burgers are made and should already be abandoned in the refuse bin.
I’m hungry but the last thing I want is a whopper or BK Broiler. I ask Kailyn for one of her cloves. She’s wearing an apron for some reason. She reaches into a side pocket and pulls out a Djarum, perches it between my lips and courteously lights me up. I feel that somehow this is better than processed, deep-fried food.
A car full of stoned college students bound for Death Valley in April. This is the precipice of hospitable weather there before the temperature skyrockets to the low 100s. Silhouettes of Joshua trees sprinting by on a backdrop of diamonds on black satin up the 395. Fast food wrapper tumbleweeds on the floor. They take bites of their burgers in the middle of our passing around the travel-sized bong or nitrous oxide breaker with flaccid balloons. I’m wearing my aviators. It’s pitch black outside. I may as well be sporting a welding mask. I take a drag on the clove. Herb-laced poison. It crackles as I inhale. The smoke and heat effluviate my bronchi branches, terminating at the leaves of the alveoli. Gas exchanging metabolic waste for carbon monoxide and nicotine. The mixing at the shore and delta of oil and industrial runoff. Polluting my shores. My ears ring, head spins and my skin gets bumpy and hair goes erect. Carcinogens and oxygen deprivation were blissful. My minidisc is on and I’m shutting out garrulous nonsense around me. Laid on the floor in the trunk, looking out at the constellations through the hatchback. We must be near Bakersfield. Luckily it’s nighttime and we don’t have to witness the armpit of California.
Prior to Bitches Brew, Miles Davis was the paradigm of cool Jazz. Music that you could play in your swinging, Manhattan bachelor pad, both hands occupied: one with a martini, the other with your favorite sweet heart and cigarette. “Kind of Blue,” “Sketches of Spain,” and “Birth of Cool” were his watershed works.
I fell in love with pre-1970’s Davis along with Cannonball Adderley, Dave Brubeck and John Coltrane when I was a sophomore in high school. I raided my dad’s CD collection and ripped everything I could onto my computer that was jazz. The genre has become my Madeline cookie for times when jazz was not even in my life. I never listened to jazz before high school. Yet for some reason, “The Girl from Ipanima” effervesces memories of living in Hawaii when I was in the 3rd grade. Hearing Ella Fitzgerald’s “Route 66” foments homey flashbacks of being on the beach when I was just a toddler. Now with all the stresses of being an adult, I constantly have KZSC on in my car. “The Bay Area’s Jazz Station.” The Jazz Oasis Hour, with the DJs speaking in low, euphonious voices humming just barely over a whisper in your ear. A playlist of tracks equally as soothing.
Though in this car, without worry or care, tripping balls off of cough syrup with deficits of intense hypoxia from the nitrous, I am feeling that homey feeling. Feelings Getz-y, back in the living room apartment I was in in the 4th grade, eating ramen and the setting sun mood-lighting the living room. Sitting in a glass of summer-warm vermouth. My sisters and I at the coffee table, breaking from Commander Keen and Doom on a summer afternoon. Dad retired from the Navy, living off his pension, taking up carpentry as an odd job to stay occupied. My stepmom, Laurie, works at a bank in a management role. We take excursions to Berkeley to see Shakespeare performed in a grassy area on the campus. We go rollerblading afterwards down the hills. Back then, the rolls seemed much steeper. You walk up them today and they’re barely noticeable. More nuisance than dangerous inclines because of our inexperience and callow perceptions.
My moods don’t always dovetail with the kind of music I want to hear.
Right now, “Bitches Brew” (BB), the quintessential jazz-rock album is playing. The album that brought the genre to the attention of aficionados. Arguably the apex of Miles Davis’ career and the genre. Go back and listen to any of his albums from the 1970s. They are all topnotch quality but don’t create the same moments or teleporting soundscapes that BB does. Leading into the 80’s with such works as “Man with the Horn” and “Aura,” the rock contributions are too concentrated, eclipsing the jazz. On BB, both styles are in the perfect ratios. The songs are as potent as Russian classical but combine bebop, jazz and experimental rock guitar. The results are psychedelic and trippy. Smeared colors on an impressionist painting. Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” if it were a few shades darker. The machinations of heroin dreams.
This deviation of Mile’s other work is what gave him the nickname “Prince of Darkness.” His cools days were cool. On BB and all albums succeeding it, we see his rock star come to life: volatile, brooding genius. He is pugnacious and focused.
On BB you are practically in the studio. Throughout you can hear Davis’ gravely voice in the background, giving instruction to the rest of his team, sometimes snapping his fingers. This is something raw and juicy, an expose of improvisational mastery. There is no calculation here other than decades of experience, blood, sweat and tears that this uncanny ensemble coalesces into. It is what 10,000 hours of mastery, precision and teamwork sounds like. When recording the album, musicians were only given tempo count, chords and melody. Everything else was off the cuff and fed off of the chemistry that this team brought together.
Production work includes some “tape loops, delays, reverb, chambers and echo effects,” said Teo Macero, the direction for other Davis works, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk and Dave Brubeck. There was also some editing of shorter parts to create these long compositions. Even this editing was minimal. The group was able to create the same awe-inspiring pieces for their live albums for the touring of BB (“Agharta,” “Pangaea”).
We’re just entering the valley. In the barren landscape and plains there are tatters of shacks, cinder block dwellings. No convenience stores, amenities anywhere. A gas station every 20 miles or so, habitable land hours to the North in Yosemite Valley. How anyone can live out here is beyond me. Who would live out here? Before taking the right on CA-190 to get to Panamint Springs, the gates to Hell. In the distance near Owens Lake is a farmhouse with a few greenhouses and some struggling farmland. Dust devils are harassing the structures and crops momentarily before moving in Brownian Motion onto the empty land.
“Pharaoh’s Dance” is the first track. It is a deviation from Davis right off. You hear Davis’ signature but there’s noticeable baritone. This isn’t like Miles you knew from “Birth of Cool” days. This is dark, atmospheric, brooding. It’s music for a midnight drive. Appropriate. The drum plays at a suffocating, non-stop metronome, ancillary to McLaughlin (guitarist), Davis and Dave Holland (Bassist). Despite how improvisational it sounds, there are moments where the rest of the band knowingly pulls back to allow Davis to thrive and create cinematic moments. It’s chorus line hypothesis in action. All jam-driven but hinting a movie film score thanks to Davis’ proper use of appropriate hook. He uses it sparingly but each carries a distinct refrain. To an uncommitted jazz listener, they can go by unnoticed.
Cymbals carry the flag as a metronome. The keyboardist dabbles with more upbeat scales. But when playing alongside Davis, Holland and Shorter (Saxist), it only adds to the claustrophobia. The interstices of harsh, jarring tones, are appropriately placed and fitting to Davis’ lead. Right from the start, “Pharaoh” showcases each player’s second-nature flow of when to play rhythm, solo or tone. McLaughlin’s guitar plays like an old, broken saloon piano, jabbing and striking in the air, adding tension.
The valley is the stuff of Frida Kahlo’s twisted imagination: skeletons of trees, scant signs of civilization, abandoned mines and houses and earthy tones. The basin is laden with salt deposits, zero moisture, boulders, white sand and colossal dunes, a scurry here and there of a skittish, desperate wildlife looking for shelter from the unrelenting sun, cracked and jagged rocks. It’s beautiful, breathtaking, a geological anomaly. When described in its components it sounds unappealing. Look at it as a whole and see the natural awe and all its splendor. We are at the top of Dante’s View and are marveling at the great expanse. Telescope Peak in the distance, towering over the rocky sink like a spire or pan-optic.
It’s hard to fathom that there are endurance races that take place out here twice a year. The races start at Badwater basin and end at the top of Mt. Whitney. From the lowest point in the US to the highest point in California. Extreme runners doing Orpheus’ journey: from the lowest circle of hell to heaven. You endure 100+ miles, equaling days of running, extreme heat, no sleep, tens of thousand of elevation gains and losses and then one final 14,000 foot ascent.
We get to Furnace Creek. Some people take a few towels that were fortunately in the car and roll them out on the picnic tables. The sky is still dark but won’t be for much longer. Others stay in the station wagon. Somehow, 7 of us all managed to cram in the car. Two in the front seats, 3 in the back and two sprawled out in hatchback trunk. The seats in the back come down and make for a larger, flat area for people to lay down. I opt for the park bench. It’s solid and ungiving to the contours of my body. I can’t feel it’s rigidity. Being 19 years old, I’m also a lot more resilient when it comes to sleeping in odd places. I roll out the Little Mermaid towel, my shades still on, and lay down on table with my shoes under my head. The stars are clearly scattered over the sky. As I lay unmoving, I feel sleep come on and the numbing power of my self-medication take me away. BB still playing.
“Sanctuary” is slower, Davis drawing out each note. Chuckles and bursts on the piano, fluttering away as Davis croons dolorously. Drums change tempo creamily, stream of consciousness playing with percussion as Davis moves with a cool head. Slow but unstoppable. This second track is transitory and one almost forgets it’s the same 10 minute track. It’s more open than the “Pharaoh’s”, meandering with purpose. The bass thumps sparingly with the percussion section, maracas an ongoing buzz. It’s a wonderfully diverse without getting bombastic, ending with climactic abruptness.
The sun is my wake up call. I come to at high noon. Everyone else is returning from the dead but still moving like the undead. “I need food,” I say, rolling up the Disney towel. No one says anything but they all lumber towards the car, rearranging the seats. Piled in, Tyler turns on the AC and we drive to the Stovepipe Wells Ranger Station. There is no convenience store. The valley emulates a prospector era, so there is a “General Store.” Yet this “General Store” supplies Pringles,Pork Rinds, Ben &’ Jerry’s, soda of all varieties. I don’t remember this as pioneer sustenance from my elementary school history books. I opt for the freshest looking food there: a sandwich, apples and a hummus snack pack. Everyone else goes for ice cream products.
We all sit out in the clearing outside of the store. There are bungalows and a swimming pool a couple hundred yards away with visitors passed out in lawn chairs. Fenced in to keep the indigents out who can’t afford proper housing while visiting this unsympathetic ecosystem. Road runners congregate in groups of three to five, sometimes scurrying away without any apparent provocation only to return soon after. Ground level automemesis. Starlings flutter around from one dead/dying tree to another, collecting pieces of shrub, leaves, small branches. Occasionally they accost a tourist walking out of the store for a talon-full of their hair. The tourists swat at them with visitors maps or water bottles as they languidly try running away. After the altercation, the starlings fly back to their headquarter, mouths gaping, gasping from dehydration.
“Bitches Brew” is all lower tones, drumming plays a sepulchral consistent beat while the guitar skips and hops. Added traces of whispers and finger snapping, the keyboard and guitar jarring, twanging only to switch back to the mortar that fills the cracks between the meaty chunks of the other band members. At 27 minutes, the titular track is a labor of love. We hear McLaughlin’s versatility by switching off between a myriad of styles. From catchy hooks to noise to smooth grooves. Davis makes unforgettable battle hymn riffs. A truculent, militant death march.
Drum rolls for the obsequies on “Feio.” Chirping piano, funky guitar styling. Rattles spraying from Davis. Apce with partnering horn section, trading off with caterwauling piano and guitar. It plays like New York minimalism. Spotted with otherworld noises, animals calls in the background of unwinding rich tones.
“Spanish Key” is funky, eerie. Drifting horns over chops of guitar, maracas abound. The world smears colors, pastels. Artists’ Palette is all greens, pinks, yellows and faded reds. Everyone walks through the tightening half pipe. I am on the umpteenth play count of BB. The drums pick up and establishes a jogging beat, McLaughlin doing a Hendrix/Sharrock funk and blues. It goes into one cadence and then retreats, returning with a slightly higher tempo and timing. The feeling is the same but the minor details change to keep it interesting. The landscape becomes less smooth and more jagged as we make our climbing route through Artist’s Drive.
Clarinet comes in and dances whimsically like Prokofiev. “Spanish Key” is the more lighthearted moment of the album but still has that monster hiding in the closet during playtime: Davis is constantly in the shadows like Dis Pater.
There is a narrow path, trees and an impotent stream on one side, sheer cliff on the other, leading to Darwin Falls. We’re thinking it’s going to be an oasis paradise. “Sanctuary” is a crooning, glittery, sparkling piano keys, grooving over a lazy brass. Water sprinkling down over a precipice, disrupting and displacing the water delicately. We’re all anticipating, fiending for a skinny dip into the cool, clear water. We get there and the pool is stagnant, the surface festooned with algae. This is the valley’s only freshwater source and it looks like a sewage spill. So much for that idea.
The Mesquite Flats Sand Dune shoots straight up out of nowhere. A pinnacle on a flat EKG. Miles’ landscape is an smorgasbord of ideas. The sherpa is a two-note motif but everyone and everything else is on the swing set, slides, merry-go-round, monkey bars. Drummer Tony Williams on Latin funk poly rhythms drums, McLaughlin doing psychedelic space rock, Dave Holland playing three-note bass line, Davis’ Horns somberly blowing the top line, and keyboardists Chick Corea and Joe Ziwanul haunting.
We’re walking back to the car from the failed birthday suit swim at Darwin. The heat is getting to me but the day is nearing the end. The “lean” must be wearing off. I wipe perspiration from my forehead. The back of my shirt is damp and warm. I look at the time on my cell phone. 6 pm. We left last night at 9, got here at 5 am, took a siesta on picnic benches at Furnace Creek among the shrubs and barren ground, woke up sometime around noon, went to the general store and had a lunch of Ben and Jerry’s then hiked around for the rest of the day. If we leave now, we’ll be back in Santa Cruz at 2 am. Finally the toxic cocktail is wearing off and some prudence is returning.
I have shirked all my homework, missed class all day and will probably sleep through tomorrow’s morning Calculus class. Robo-tripping causes improvisation. But sometimes you need to leave improvisation to the masters.
