Vertigo and Drugs

Thinking through the ramifications of vertigo (ilynx) as a strategy, I'm struck by my continual return to drugs (esp. hallucinogenic drugs like LSD) as a contemporary means.

Caillois, of course, covers this, referring to drugs when he speaks to the corruption of ilynx outside of the separate zone of play. He reminds, "If the principles of play correspond to powerful instincts in the human, they gratify these only under the idealized situation correspondent to play. Left to themselves, destructive and frantic as are all instincts, these impulses can hardly but lead to disastrous consequences" (55). Searching for unconsciousness and a distortion of perception, many are led down the harried road of pure pleasure, which, of course, interrupts daily life, making existing in the "straight" world nearly impossible.

Maybe it'd be different if one could ride a rollercoaster to work.

Then again, I wonder if there might be more to Caillois' position. He considers the use of intoxicants as a derivation from the positive impulses associated with ilynx at play. He talks about a group of ants who preserve another species' larvae in order to get stoned on its secretions. They evidently give this so much attention that they neglect their young. For Caillois, such a favoring of the paralyzing substance neutralizes "the most powerful instincts, even that of self-preservation." Because of physical addiction, the "alcoholic [is] led down a road where he is destroyed. IN the end, deprived of the freedom to desire anything but his poison, he's left a prey to chronic organic disorder, far more dangerous than the physical vertigo that momentarily compromises his capacity to resist the fascination of oblivion."

Drug culture has changed a lot since Caillois wrote the book, and it seems like they might offer a means to experience the world in a strange new way. It's no secret that many of the avant-gardes used drugs in their speed toward new forms (cabaret scene and absinthe; 60's avant-gardes and LSD, etc. etc.).

So, to what extent should we consider these things in our conceptualization of ilynx? The purest example of vertigo I've seen in contemporary art might be Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void, a film that simulates the experience of someone who's killed while taking a new hallucinogen called DMZ. The blend of live-action and digital imaging in this film is quite incredible, and as a result of the effort put forth in the production, it's the closest one can come to tripping without taking a tab or eating a mushroom.

As you can see from my earlier example, I'm exploring the effects of psychedelia in my image. It seems to me that trips might be considered a kind of living sublime. A sublimity, chemically inspired, coming from the inside out (or the out in). It seems to me that one way of promoting a feeling of vertigo in the reader might be to attempt to synthesize the feeling of the trip in a visual form, but not in a boring, tyedye way, but in another, something resembling reality but tweaked enough in a way as to inspire a feeling of intoxication, of blurriness, of dizziness and ilynx.