Dispatches from the soft underbelly of being high.
I cry more often than I’d like to admit when I’m stoned, which is inconvenient because I’m stoned more often than I’d like to admit.
There’s no heaving, bumbling, or swelling movie score. It’s quieter than that. A small internal weather event.
The air shifts. Gravity turns hostile.
Music starts it most nights. It’s treacherous. It sneaks past the bouncers.
I’ll be fine—functional, sarcastic, engaged—then a melody hooks something behind my sternum and pulls the string. A harmony leans too hard on a raw nerve it doesn’t know it’s touching. And suddenly I’m blinking more than necessary, jaw set, pretending to be deeply interested in whatever is happening across the room.
Colin Hay is the most reliable trigger, but he’s not alone. Pink Floyd catches me sometimes. The later-era, Gilmour-led stuff. Less cosmic, more bruised. Radiohead does the trick when I’m already tired. Certain Dylan lines that sound like they came from a man who knows how loud a door can be when it shuts quietly behind your back—against your will.
I’ll feel it before I understand it. My eyes heat up first. Throat tightens second. Chest follows. My brain scrambles behind the eyes, late to the scene.
So I just sit there.
High.Present.Cornered.
Letting a song do whatever it wants to me while I pretend I’m still in control of my face.
Sometimes I am.
Sometimes I’m absolutely not.
There’s a look people get when they clock it. A quick recalibration. A quiet reassessment.
Is this guy sensitive? Should we give him space or crack a joke or pretend we didn’t see that? Is he going through something? …
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Author: Lucas Indrikovs / High Times
