How to be Drunk
I have my glass of wine to hand as I write at the end of a distinctly lazy Sunday. It's turned into a real pleasure, writing my blog at the end of the day, often with a post dinner glass of white or rose, often with K- at my side working on a recreational project of his own. But of course I'm not going to write instructions on the best route to literal inebriation. Just a selection of thoughts which surfaced in my mind.
Firstly good for Carol Ann Duffy for ordering her laureateship bottles of sherry in advance. Apparently Andrew Motion is still waiting for his, after what presumably was a 'dry' decade in at least one way. I know he's a great advocate of settling down to wait for the muse over a steaming mug of lemsip, but there isn't quite the same resonance about this particular rite of relaxation. But what do we mean by getting drunk? Thinking about it I can perceive two opposite underlying interpretations.
Years ago I was watching one of those American comedy programmes that featured a slightly wacky still-single woman, her disappointed mother and her disreputable friends. I don't think it was Ellen. Cynthia? Cyndy? Cybil - yes I think it was Cybil. Anyway in this particular episode she is hitting a bit of an impasse with her love life and/ or career again, and one of the dubious friends comes around and presents her with a substantial goblet of liquor. 'This, honey,' drawls the friend, 'is alcohol. It makes you not care any more.' Quite so: cue canned laughter. And indeed that's one of the chief immediate effects of the stuff - it numbs, relaxes, anaesthetises; temporarily, at least, the horrible stresses of the day recede into a hazy background noise. Very dangerous needless to say, this effect, considering the damaging fallout from using a drink to help you not care anymore. The drink won't particularly care about you. You have been warned.
But what about the other idea of drunkenness as a kind of heightened, impassioned consciousness? Drunkenness as creative delerium, as being in love with life. Here is Louis Simpson's translation of Baudelaire's 1855 prose poem with its strict instructions to Be Drunk:
You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.
But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."
So there it is. In a way this methodology of drunkenness also makes you not care anymore - but not care about the drudgery of life, the inevitability of its drearier aspects, of time seeping away, and of what can seem like our essential loneliness. This drunkenness makes you fall right back in love with whatever it is you do, however you choose to explore and express yourself. It enables passion. It makes you open to experience. This was something psychologist William James once said, in his Varieties of Religious Experience; that wine was the great facilitator of the 'yes' faculty in human kind. It seduces you into saying yes.
Sounds a bit decadent? It has its overt religious expression too, this concept of drunkenness as a passion, for example in the anima christi: 'sanguis christi, inebria me', goes the third line of this early fourteenth-century prayer. Blood of Christ, make me drunk. Polite versions change the 'inebriate me' clause to 'refresh me'. I doubt very much though that the original advocates either a polite perking up of attention, or even a genteel numbing to the needs of the world. Rather, be drunk, and let that 'not caring any more' be a kind of detachment from ego which is frees the self up for 'drunken', heightened appreciation, dedication. Another glass of poetry then, please...
Firstly good for Carol Ann Duffy for ordering her laureateship bottles of sherry in advance. Apparently Andrew Motion is still waiting for his, after what presumably was a 'dry' decade in at least one way. I know he's a great advocate of settling down to wait for the muse over a steaming mug of lemsip, but there isn't quite the same resonance about this particular rite of relaxation. But what do we mean by getting drunk? Thinking about it I can perceive two opposite underlying interpretations.
Years ago I was watching one of those American comedy programmes that featured a slightly wacky still-single woman, her disappointed mother and her disreputable friends. I don't think it was Ellen. Cynthia? Cyndy? Cybil - yes I think it was Cybil. Anyway in this particular episode she is hitting a bit of an impasse with her love life and/ or career again, and one of the dubious friends comes around and presents her with a substantial goblet of liquor. 'This, honey,' drawls the friend, 'is alcohol. It makes you not care any more.' Quite so: cue canned laughter. And indeed that's one of the chief immediate effects of the stuff - it numbs, relaxes, anaesthetises; temporarily, at least, the horrible stresses of the day recede into a hazy background noise. Very dangerous needless to say, this effect, considering the damaging fallout from using a drink to help you not care anymore. The drink won't particularly care about you. You have been warned.
But what about the other idea of drunkenness as a kind of heightened, impassioned consciousness? Drunkenness as creative delerium, as being in love with life. Here is Louis Simpson's translation of Baudelaire's 1855 prose poem with its strict instructions to Be Drunk:
You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.
But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."
So there it is. In a way this methodology of drunkenness also makes you not care anymore - but not care about the drudgery of life, the inevitability of its drearier aspects, of time seeping away, and of what can seem like our essential loneliness. This drunkenness makes you fall right back in love with whatever it is you do, however you choose to explore and express yourself. It enables passion. It makes you open to experience. This was something psychologist William James once said, in his Varieties of Religious Experience; that wine was the great facilitator of the 'yes' faculty in human kind. It seduces you into saying yes.
Sounds a bit decadent? It has its overt religious expression too, this concept of drunkenness as a passion, for example in the anima christi: 'sanguis christi, inebria me', goes the third line of this early fourteenth-century prayer. Blood of Christ, make me drunk. Polite versions change the 'inebriate me' clause to 'refresh me'. I doubt very much though that the original advocates either a polite perking up of attention, or even a genteel numbing to the needs of the world. Rather, be drunk, and let that 'not caring any more' be a kind of detachment from ego which is frees the self up for 'drunken', heightened appreciation, dedication. Another glass of poetry then, please...
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