pure and easy

04.12.03 @ 2:33 p.m.

I found this on Pete Townshend's website and I thought it was interesting:

"I'm A Boy" was Pete's first effort in the opera direction. "The original idea was called "Quads," about three girls and a boy, and the mother was always trying to make the boy in to a girl. It's the kind of thing that society does all the time - refuses to see its' problems and tries to twist them. That's how I saw it then. But now, to me, it stands for an assertion of individuality. It says "I'm The Seeker" much better than a "I'm The Seeker" did."

On the other hand, the meaning of "My Generation" has not changed. "That's so simple I could always understand it. It's just about being young and holding the ace card over the old. "Substitute" was a reflection of what was going on among kids at the time. It was a kind of complaint about society, race and drugs, which I used to feel very strongly about." Townshend still has pretty strong views on this subject.

"The effects of so-called hard drugs is well-known, but it worries me that soft drugs have hidden aspects which people don't see. Taking drugs is like a young guy going up to a very old man and saying something to him in incredibly hip language just to put the old man down. But you don't need to intimidate the older generation. You intimidate them enough by the fact that you are young and they are old.

"Why do people use dope? Is it because they are desperate? Are they doing it because they are revolutionary? Is it because of the poverty, the rats in the basement? Or are they from the spoiled middle-classes? It's because they want to get higher, nearer the spirit path. But the spirit path is here in Twickenham, on the motorway, in the office.

"It's not in dope. I used to think it was all right because it was natural; came out the ground. But poison comes out of the ground too. You can eat vegetables that look like swedes that are poison.

"It's less powerful if you smoke it but it's still hallucinatory; it alters your consciousness. If you are taking it to see things more clearly, you're just distorting things. I'm not qualified to talk on this really but Meher Baba is. He says that what we live in is a dream so that drugs are a dream within a dream. Our path is a illusory thing which we have to accept. So taking drugs is like falling asleep when you are already asleep. Instead of getting high you are really getting low in consciousness.

"The higher you get in consciousness the purer everything becomes. It becomes less colourful and less exciting. In fact, it's almost boring!"

It's from the period of Pete's initial work on Lifehouse. Which I'd really like to hear. I'm thinking of working on my NaNovel, a little. I haven't done anything with it in a long time, and all I'm writing lately is fluff.

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Previously

fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05