Alcohol and Art

For as long as we have had booze, we have had poor drunk fools who think themselves an artist. I mean this in a very broad sense of art as a whole: literature, music, painting etc. Alcohol has played a crucial role in the arts, as it has been directly responsible for the likes of Hemingway, jazz, van Gogh and countless other luminaries of art.

           

            I think that everyone fancies themselves a writer at some point, and there are few who are worth a damn. It is interesting to note that many of the greats were unrepentant drunks. Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson and Bukowski were all great drinkers and their work reflects it. One thing that so many people, especially high school kids, get wrong about them is that they see their drinking as the ends rather than the means. Rather than abusing alcohol solely for the state of being drunk, they used it for their craft.

            Hemingway saw it as one of those wonderful things about being alive and wrote often about how it made the world a finer place to live in. Robert Jordan from For Whom The Bell Tolls says that absinthe “takes the place of the evening papers, of all the old evenings in cafes...of all the things he had enjoyed and forgotten.” This does not jive with an amateur's assumption that we drink solely to blackout and throw up all over ourselves. In fact, Robert Jordan would likely frown upon such an act.

            On the other end of the drinking spectrum, we have the venerable Dr. Thompson. More so than any other, his substance abuse is far more misunderstood. Too many teenagers have seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and completely missed the fact that Raoul Duke and his attorney were searching for the American Dream. They see the flash and hilarity that came with the drug use (some of which were fictional) and incessant drinking and cannot grasp that it was essential to their mission. I don't want to go into too much detail now, as I want to save material for a Lords of Awful installment on Hunter S. Thompson. He used alcohol as a coping mechanism in order to deal with the grim realities of the brutal politics that he covered so well. Unfortunately our society has made reading uncool, especially for the young kids, so the vast majority of them will know nothing about the brilliant Gonzo Papers, and will wrongly remember him as a guy who was only famous for doing a bunch of drugs in Las Vegas.

            It has been my experience with writing that what alcohol does best is not necessarily providing inspiration, (apart from directly writing about it) as much as relaxes you and allows you to write about whatever you want, taking a small seed of an idea and then writing it into oblivion. Papa Hemingway once said to “write drunk, and edit sober.” I'm a big fan of this theory for many reasons, not least of which is a terrible affliction that I'm plagued with. My problem is that while I'm writing, I tend to edit as I go along. Until I get a few drinks in me and loosen up a bit I spend five minutes on every sentence, trying to make sure that it fits perfectly and sounds profound and grand before I actually put pen to paper.

            I have often found that the writing that I'm most proud of is the stuff where I was able to just write and write, editing be damned. My work generally goes through about four stages: First I write it out on paper, then read it to my darling wife, and come back a few days later with a red pen to do some proofreading and minor editing. After that I type it up as what is generally the final draft and do some last minute editing. One of my favorite pieces, “Death in America,” looked like someone literally died on it. There was so much red ink that I wondered if I severed an artery. When I was writing that I had reached that perfect drunk where I was still lucid, but riding an incredible buzz. The Wild Turkey had loosened me enough to plumb the depths of my soul and pour all my feelings onto the page, and I think it shows.

            Music is an area where I have considerably less experience, but still hold a great deal of knowledge. I have not seriously played music in at least five years, but when I did alcohol was integral in helping me learn new songs on guitar. I never did many original tunes, but I could play a cover so well you'd think it was an original recording. I could begin learning a song drunk, and after I sobered up and started again things would just kind of fall into place.

            One difference between the drunks of music and literature is that many times the drinking was the ends rather than the means. The most egregious examples are those awful hair bands of the 80's, Mötley Crüe in particularly. If you ever have the chance to read The Dirt, do it. It is a vile tale of an utterly hedonistic band who focused more on debauchery than making good music. While these are the types of drunks who give us a bad name, it is important to note that alcohol is a key factor in who they were.

            Jazz is another genre heavily influenced by alcohol, and in fact owes its entire existence to it and the gin joints where it developed. While I completely disagree, there are those who claim that jazz is the only truly original American form of music, but it is undeniable that the seedy bars of the Prohibition era provided the perfect incubator for this music. After we aborted the failed social experiment of Prohibition, legends like John Coltrane and Miles Davis honed their craft in hazy, smoke-filled barrooms across America. While it is true that Coltrane preferred heroin to hooch, it was the audience at the bar that shaped jazz. Without a liquored-up audience to listen to him, Miles Davis couldn't have reinvented jazz time and again.

            I would be remiss if I didn't mention country music in an article for Blue Ribbon Radio. Throughout country's history alcohol, especially whiskey, has played a major role. Countless songs have been written about it, because of it, and sound great under the influence of it. There is no need to discuss the legends of George Jones and his lawnmower, or the myriad other stars and their stories; we know them all. I feel that I must join the legion of detractors of the modern country scene, fashionable though it may be, but I come at it from a drinking standpoint. As I have stated before, there are different approaches to drinking as either an end or a means. At some point in country music drinking became the ends rather than the means. Somehow we went from Merle Haggard singing about “Memories and Gin” and ended up with Toby Keith blathering on about a red Solo cup. To address a pet peeve of mine, men drink from glass. Inbred hillbilly swine drink from plastic. I cannot imagine Johnny Cash leering at high school girls at some silly field party drinking Bud Light out of a red Solo cup. He was a God, and he drank from glass.

            Apart from knowing the van Gogh liked absinthe and cut his ear off, I don't know much about “art” art. I think I read somewhere that a lot of architects are drunks. The fact remains that alcohol is a shining beacon for the artistic set. Even if you don't have natural talent, booze can help you fake it. A drunken, vehement rant is usually entertaining to read, always fun to write, and you  may have the luck of writing something good, and all thanks to your pal alcohol. So the next time you find yourself at home with nothing to do, start drinking and writing. Pick whatever topic comes to mind, and write the hell out of it. Then submit it to us, because we need content.

Frank Nichols is a deep drinking heavy thinker.