I was watching a 1991 interview with Frank Zappa over the breakfast ale this morning. Zappa was ill at the time with prostate cancer. His condition was terminal, and he knew it. During the interview, FZ restates his long-held opposition to drugs, as they "rob the young of their ambition" and "are a license to act like an asshole".
Naturally, as a musician during the late 60s and early 70s, Zappa's position put him at odds with the prevailing wisdom of his professional peers on the subject. I broadly support his views on this. Narcotics co-opt one to the system that supplies them. Unless you grow your own "shit", you must become a customer to someone or something to feed your habit; this limits your freedom.
I've always had a dislike of being signed-up to things I can't control, committing my future to some institution or person. It makes me nervous and claustrophobic. What if I don't want to be a soldier in two years' time? Tough. It's also why I don't like debt and hire purchase. That simply means I have to go to work for the next 28 weeks, or whatever the credit period is. I've sold my liberty for a consumer durable, which is an appalling act when you see it in those stark terms.
However, there is a problem with Frank's argument in that all the while he was expounding his thoughts on this subject, he was holding a cigarette. To him, cigarettes were not drugs. He describes tobacco at one point as his favourite herb, and voices doubts as to perceived damage it does to smokers. His refusal to classify it as a drug implies that he believes smokers have some choice in the matter, and are able to make a detached decision prior to lighting-up each time. This is clearly nonsense; that's the drug talking.
The truth of course is that smokers are hopelessly and clinically addicted to cigarettes, and are therefore subjugated absolutely by their addiction. I realised this when I was a child. Whenever I went on a train journey as a boy, I would look in horror at the adults in station frantically bolstering their stashes of fags prior to the off. I thought to myself then "if you can't undertake a two-hour train journey without this drug, you are anything but free". Imagine if the cigarette companies decided to limit the supply in order to drive up the price. Smokers would be on their knees in days, unable to function, pleading for a hit. Fcuk that. I decided there and then that that would not happen to me.
All this makes me sound like a paragon of drug-free virtue. I'm not that. I have a very active relationship with alcohol. But my childhood phobia of addiction constantly keeps me on my toes. I'm always eyeing booze carefully, lest it start calling the shots instead of me.
My trouble with alcohol is that I'm not clinically addicted. I can and do go without it regularly. I also virtually never crave a drink. That doesn't sound like much of a problem, I'll grant you, but it is. It's a problem because it makes me complacent about my ability to control matters. And that is how narcotics work their evil magic. Suddenly, they're at the steering wheel, and then it's a problem. This is what caused Frank's momentary lapse of good sense in the interview. It was the addiction using his vocal chords. The same temporary madness also explains, but does not excuse, David Hockney's ludicrous pronouncements on why anti-smoking legislation in the UK is " the most grotesque piece of social engineering". We live in world when people starve to death every day, but not being able to have a fag in a Wimpy Bar is what gets DH's goat.
I don't blame you, David. I blame the Capstan non-filters.
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