"The 'Trip' Not Taken"

“You don’t know what you’d have done if you had done what you didn’t do.”

(Me, not on drugs.  Though sounding suspiciously like I am.)

I am listening (on CD) to Graham Nash’s memoir, Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life.  The man took a whole lot of drugs, inspiring some exceptional songwriting.  (E.g., “Teach Your Children” and “Marrakesh Express.”)

I took virtually no drugs.

Today’s Wondering:

What comedy “brilliance” did that keep me from writing?

It is not a serious wondering – more a theoretical pondering – because I did okay without drugs.  Which kind of fit, because the audience I wrote for did not take drugs either.  Who knows? I might have “drugged” myself right out of mainstream entertainment. 

More specifically, that whole scene, Man.  It just wasn’t me.  (For example, I hardly ever said “Man.”)

I don’t like “losing my mind.” 

What would I use to recover it?

Offered marijuana before the taping of a Canadian television show I would soon perform “live” on by a band who had pre-recorded their songs and didn’t have to remember the words just make their lips pretend that they did, I politely said “No”, explaining, pointing to my skull,

“My brain’s in there.  I am going to need it when I go on.”

That was… I don’t know what that was.

Sensible rationale?

Scaredy-cat copout?

“Chicken.”

“I’m not ‘chicken’.  I just don’t want to.”

Dance around that for a while.

Or don’t.  And get on with your “straight arrow” existence.

Which I did.  And I have.  And am likely to do so in the future.  (If you take drugs when you’re old, when they wear off, you are still old.)

Graham Nash’s testimonial backing rekindled that “crossroads conundrum”:

“To indulge, or not to indulge?”  (And why call it “indulging”?)

Triggering this cautionary (though maybe prejudiced) anecdote.

(Note:  I apologize for the “name-dropping.”  It’s just, the people involved subsequently became “names.”)

Having recently just arrived in Los Angeles, I was living in the Chateau Marmont Hotel, a rundown fleabag that sometime later got trendy.  (And proportionately more pricey.)   Lorne Michaels, who had brought me down to work on a Lily Tomlin special, also lived at, what he pretentiously pronounced, “The Chateauowwww” – I can’t accurately delineate it, but it was hideously snooty.

Anyway, I am ensconced in my spare chamber with a small fridge in the closet, (making my clothes smell like leftover corned beef from Greenblatts) when there is a surprising knock at my door.

It is a non-working Sunday.  Lorne Michaels stands in the doorway.  And he is telling me this:

“Lily and I and some friends are going out to the desert to ‘do mushrooms.’  Would you like to come with us?”

This was not a tough call.

I politely said no.

And with that, a potential “life-changing experience” slipped through my fingers, as Lorne bade me farewell, and went off to nirvana.

A few hours of-no-regrets-whatsoever later, there is a surprising knock at my door.  (Am I ever popular.  Two door knocks in one day.)

Standing in the doorway is Lorne Michaels. 

Looking considerably less chipper.

He instead appears dazed.

And disturbingly distraught.

“They took Gary (filmmaker Gary Weis) to the hospital.  I think he’s dead, but they won’t tell me.  I’m a little messed up.  Would you mind sitting with me till I ‘come down’?”

I walk Lorne to his room (which was a lot nicer than my room), considering the “fun” I had recently turned down: 

“Magic mushrooms”, and an ambulance.

In time, Lorne returns back to earth, bolstered by reports that Gary Weis was not dead.

To be fair, Graham Nash’s “drug stories” are demonstrably more encouraging.

I don’t know.  “A guy who didn’t”, casting aspersions on people who did?  (And wildly succeeded?)

The fact is, there are creative risks I kind of wish I’d attempted.

But “mushrooms” or “acid” – would they really have helped me?

I will now sit with that question.

Till I drug-freely “come down.”

(AFTER A BEAT.)

Nah.

I’m just gonna have lunch.