A group of West African chimps hit the headlines recently when a report on their palm-wine boozing behaviour was published. Turns out they’re pretty partial to it.
Most people are well aware that habitual alcohol consumption is observed in the wild in several species (including elephants) but what I didn’t know was that chimps have the same ethanol-processing gene that we do. Which means that our common ancestor also had the gene. Which means, we were ready to drink alcohol before we even became humans. First the wine, then the world of humans, and the word.
‘Write drunk, edit sober.’ Good soundbite, but Hemmingway never said it, and certainly didn’t practice it. Why does it strike a chord? It’s an antithesis to Wordworth’s definition of poetry as ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity.’ Personally I couldn’t disagree more violently with Wordsworth; perhaps because I find his poetry odious or perhaps because I have more sympathy with the bacchanalian vigour suggested by the faux-Hemmingway quote.
Why do we write? Not just fiction and poetry. Persuasive arguments, comic recounts, travellers’ tales, ‘history’, even scientific papers. We write because we want to communicate something to another human. If the writer doesn’t find the original content inspirational in some way, what would their justification for wasting someone else’s time with said content be? Pretty poor. Are we always stunned by the significance of what we’re writing? If you are, I’d advise you to drop to knees forthwith and offer thanks to whatever it is that keeps you going.
Alcohol depresses our behavioural inhibitors, loosening the joints of thought. The effects could be anywhere between a light limbering up to complete dislocation. Whether we like what we see is quite a different matter.
The ingestion of psychotropic and mood-enhancing substances by mediums of countless varieties is probably as old as humanity, from the Delphic Oracle to the Shamen of the steppes and mescal-drinkers of South America. What is a writer, other than a medium? Anything from a translator between humanity and the consciousness of something intangible and Hamletesque, to a gateway to learning about the pros and cons of a new computer game in an online review. You’ve got to have fire in your belly to start with or who’ll want to listen?
Unfortunately, the Delphic Oracle was notoriously cryptic, and I can’t think of an instance where it actually did anyone any good. It’s no use setting down drunken ravings, as Hemmingway was well aware. Does this bring us back, kicking and screaming, to Wordsworth?
The ‘high’, the ‘inspiration’, ‘muse’, ‘vision’. We’re not just talking crass chemicals like whiskey or cactus or opium. The smell of sunburnt skin that slaps you in the head with recollection of a beach decades in the past, together with all its associations. The exhaustion after a mountain climb that in its lightheaded giddiness turns the wheeling birds into other-worldly messengers and the rolling blankets of clouds into sheets of general doom. Something that alters perception, that bypasses the 98% of brain activity that is what it takes to keep us functioning in society. A view of a shortcut to something. Who knows if it’s valid? It’s a glimpse. Perhaps that’s what the misattibuted phrase suggests. And perhaps its practical application is not too far from my least favourite Victorian poet after all.
(First published in Writers Abroad blog, Monday 15th June 2015)
Most people are well aware that habitual alcohol consumption is observed in the wild in several species (including elephants) but what I didn’t know was that chimps have the same ethanol-processing gene that we do. Which means that our common ancestor also had the gene. Which means, we were ready to drink alcohol before we even became humans. First the wine, then the world of humans, and the word.
‘Write drunk, edit sober.’ Good soundbite, but Hemmingway never said it, and certainly didn’t practice it. Why does it strike a chord? It’s an antithesis to Wordworth’s definition of poetry as ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity.’ Personally I couldn’t disagree more violently with Wordsworth; perhaps because I find his poetry odious or perhaps because I have more sympathy with the bacchanalian vigour suggested by the faux-Hemmingway quote.
Why do we write? Not just fiction and poetry. Persuasive arguments, comic recounts, travellers’ tales, ‘history’, even scientific papers. We write because we want to communicate something to another human. If the writer doesn’t find the original content inspirational in some way, what would their justification for wasting someone else’s time with said content be? Pretty poor. Are we always stunned by the significance of what we’re writing? If you are, I’d advise you to drop to knees forthwith and offer thanks to whatever it is that keeps you going.
Alcohol depresses our behavioural inhibitors, loosening the joints of thought. The effects could be anywhere between a light limbering up to complete dislocation. Whether we like what we see is quite a different matter.
The ingestion of psychotropic and mood-enhancing substances by mediums of countless varieties is probably as old as humanity, from the Delphic Oracle to the Shamen of the steppes and mescal-drinkers of South America. What is a writer, other than a medium? Anything from a translator between humanity and the consciousness of something intangible and Hamletesque, to a gateway to learning about the pros and cons of a new computer game in an online review. You’ve got to have fire in your belly to start with or who’ll want to listen?
Unfortunately, the Delphic Oracle was notoriously cryptic, and I can’t think of an instance where it actually did anyone any good. It’s no use setting down drunken ravings, as Hemmingway was well aware. Does this bring us back, kicking and screaming, to Wordsworth?
The ‘high’, the ‘inspiration’, ‘muse’, ‘vision’. We’re not just talking crass chemicals like whiskey or cactus or opium. The smell of sunburnt skin that slaps you in the head with recollection of a beach decades in the past, together with all its associations. The exhaustion after a mountain climb that in its lightheaded giddiness turns the wheeling birds into other-worldly messengers and the rolling blankets of clouds into sheets of general doom. Something that alters perception, that bypasses the 98% of brain activity that is what it takes to keep us functioning in society. A view of a shortcut to something. Who knows if it’s valid? It’s a glimpse. Perhaps that’s what the misattibuted phrase suggests. And perhaps its practical application is not too far from my least favourite Victorian poet after all.
(First published in Writers Abroad blog, Monday 15th June 2015)