Drugs, Music, and Necessary Obscenities

I cried when I heard that George Carlin had died. I hadn't cried about the death of
anyone that I didn't know personally since George Harrison died. I had been too
young to know about John Lennon when he was assassinated, or I surely would have
cried then, too. I didn't know much about anything back in those days, at the
beginning of the nineteen eighties. I was busy dealing with my torturous teenage
years. I didn't wear the right clothes or join the right clubs or say the right
things, shamelessly sucking up to all my teachers and defiantly refusing to bow to
peer pressure or play silly reindeer games. But I was at once a nerd and a fraud,
as I lied to myself that I consciously chose not to fit in. In reality, I wanted
desperately to fit in, but was unwilling to submit to the hazing that was
apparently necessary for that to happen, and so I remained aloof.

College was a chance to start afresh, to build a new identity for myself.
Naturally, I indulged in binge drinking, along with everyone else in the dorms who
was trying to be hip. It didn't take long for me to realize, however, that that was
not my path, that the most interesting people were managing to balance their
schoolwork with a regular regimen of pot smoking. They were kind and intelligent,
talked about interesting things, and listened to music that was mind-blowingly
better than what was being played on the radio. They were unlike the losers with
stringy hair who had hung out behind the dumpsters and disengaged with life back at
high school. To the contrary, these people were highly engaged, pun intended, as
life was revealed to be immeasurably funny in that way. Indeed, the more I
investigated the strangeness of reality, through even more hallucinogenic agents,
the more engaged I became in trying to unravel its hidden layers. It became clear
that the media was portraying only one narrative, full of messages telling us that
our futures were so bright we had to wear shades, that Reaganomics equaled Freedom,
and that pot smoking somehow lead to fried eggs. So we, me and these new friends,
fried our own eggs, and found that the result was not the greasy mess that our
government was portraying, but rather, that it was possible to produce something
beautiful, well-formed, delicious and nutritious, along with all the joys of being
toasted, with a little OJ on the side.

Once we understood that our government was lying to us about marijuana and its
effects, we began to see through all the other lies they were perpetrating – that
government services were bad and military technology was good; that using the CIA
to keep poor workers for our fruit companies in line in Central America was a
necessary projection of our nation's power; that Ollie North was a patriot for
secretly trading arms for hostages with the Iranians by having the Israelis send
them weapons, and then selling replacement weapons to Israel and funneling much of
those profits to the Contras in Nicaragua, who the CIA was aiding to fight against
the anti-imperialist Sandinista government with cocaine-smuggling profits gained
through their connections with Manuel Noriega in Panama... We concluded, through
thick hazes of sweet-smelling smoke, that if it were really true that pot only
addled the brain, then they would have dispersed it to us all to keep us from
untangling their complex webs of deception. Was it all that coke that people were
getting hooked on that caused nearly everyone in society to become so self-
absorbed, to not care about anything else, and to not doubt the lies, or was it the
success of the marketing campaigns that so effectively silenced any other
narratives?

The eighties eventually ended, the nineties came along, and people's attitudes
changed remarkably little. Technology advanced by leaps and bounds, but humanity
lagged behind, bogged down by consumerism and the conservative stranglehold on
progress. Any real social criticism was relegated to the realm of entertainment, to
the musicians, writers, actors, and comedians, not to be taken seriously, while the
caustic voices of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk corroded the heart of the nation's
soul. Still smoking pot and bent on searching out alternative truths, I traveled
throughout Mexico and Central America, relying on the progressive rock music that I
brought along to help me keep my bearings amid such cultural differences. Despite
those differences, I found that the Beatles above all others were universally loved
by people of all walks of life. Amazed by this, I, too, learned to love the
Beatles, and to appreciate the other members besides John Lennon, whose widow had
aggressively and unrepentantly marketed his legend. Meanwhile, Paul McCartney
rocked on, George Harrison's guitar gently wept, and Ringo – well, Ringo was always
lovable ol' Ringo.

As the new millennium was beginning its turn, I was deeply saddened when I heard
that George had died. The whole world morned the loss of such a gentle and caring
soul. Then, as history unfolded itself and we all settled into our roles amidst the
latest manifestation of a powerful government out of control and horribly in the
wrong, our government, the sudden death of George Carlin came as a real punch in
the stomach. I cried not only in sadness, but in pain. For while the Beatles had
pushed forward a phenomenon of freedom and universal love through music and joy all
those decades ago, the forces of human progress now necessitated a very different
approach. George Carlin always understood that complacency is a complicity that
entails an awakening from its stagnant slumbers, so he passionately offended us
all, pointing out absurdities wherever he found them and making us examine the
foundations of our own delicate sensibilities. He was brilliant and hilarious and
pissed a lot of people off. Well, as he would have said and probably did, fuck 'em!