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IN_A_BLUE_HAZE

                                            March 21, 2006

One summer day in
'73 or '74,            Which is to
one of my older        say that I
brothers had a         was 13 or 14.
troupe of friends
staying the night,                         VILLION
in preparation of                          WHATNOT
an experiment
in making electronic      Their approach: electronic feedback circuits
music the next day.       using consumer stereo equipment, some guitar
                          effects peddles, and a hell of a lot of cables.
So they moved me up
to the couch in the
living room, where I
spent the night.

The next day, while I was
very curious about what they
were doing down in the
basement, I kept putting off
going down to see, because I     Not only was I a compulsive
really wanted to finish          reader in those days, I
reading the "Deep Blue           felt no compunction about
Good-By"... which I did,         being polite about it.
while occasional blips and
howls of sound emerged              I remember being taken out to
from the depths.                    a diner, and just taking out a
                                    book and reading in lulls in
   The funny part about             the conversation.
   this experience
   though is the
   comments from this
   one twentyish woman
   that was hanging
   around with them...

   She was really disgusted
   by my behavior: reading
   some silly adventure
   novel when I could be              On a different occasion
   admiring the cable work            I remember opining:
   of the big-boys
   downstairs.                       "People put too much
                                      faith in their personal
   On the few occasions               experience."
   that I remember her
   being around, I would              And she responded,
   get nothing but bitter,            contemptuously: "What
   jeering remarks from               *else* is there?!"
   this woman.  If she was
   capable of anything else           To which I mumbled
   I certainly never saw it.          something weak like
                                      "impersonal experience"
   In retrospect, I think             (thinking, but not
   she was a classic example          saying "statistics")
   of a kind of pseudo-               and let it drop.
   intellectual that the
   "sixties counter-culture"          As I remember it I
   helped to produce:                 was kind of               And my 13-year
                                      embarrassed that she      old self was
   A herd-following                   didn't see the point;     too shy to
   non-conformist, nearly             and I suspected           argue with this
   brainless, but trying              that she wasn't           hipster babe.
   hard to bluff and pass             capable of getting
   for heavy.                         the point:

                                         We all but ignore statistics
                                         as having little to do with
                                         ourselves, but when something
                                         has happened to someone we
                                         know personally, that suddenly
                                         increases our perception
                                         that it may to happen to us.

                                              Addiction is just a
                                              word until someone we
                                              know becomes an
                                              addict -- and so we
                                              stumble into the same
                                              traps, over and over.





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