my new roommate, mario the philipino (i asked him!) poolside sunset cocktail hour guitarist (he of lovely though oddly accented windswept versions of "across the universe" and "homeward bound"), just came home drunk, very very drunk (i am tip tip typing late night in me bunk). and he was apologizing...."sorry, david, sorry. i drunk. too much. never before this drunk (which, wow...the guys at least 40). sorry, sorry, david. oh i drunk." watching him take off his pants was just too much. but luckily for him, i had just been reading about the bacchanalian influence on plato, and i told him that drinking was divine, and that he had a right to see god. i also told him to drink some water.

last week was spent with beauticarammle. ______, which i could go on about for hours, but in the interest of decorum and masculine restraint (not to mention artistic maturity) i will not. i will say, though, that there is a girl who knows about god and alcohol. really, she was matching me drink for drink the entire cruise, and our san francisco wanderings with bottles in bags find her holding the drink more often than i (this evens things out because i consistently take bigger sips). always stretching for the stars she is....and while we were never really trashed (maybe once), there was a nice lubricated haze about the lights in the sky all week, they twinkled at us even when they werent there, and i know that this drink was a small part of that.

and i love this! i do. i love embracing it without the mock ironic shame, just drinking it. alcohol doesnt get its just holiness these days, owing to the overwhelming negations of fraternal vomit and styrofoam coffee cup meetings, bleeding steering wheels and failed marriages. but back in the day, when the magic of fermentation was discovered, it was known to be of the gods. bacchus and wild orgies of tearing flesh and divine ecstasy. and we can trace this into judeoschristianland, monks and mead, the four glasses of wine at pesach and purims edict to "drink until one cannot tell the difference between right and wrong" and of course the communion....this is holy liquid! and i feel like everyone, all these young hipsters getting trashed at night, know about this, but they dont talk about it, so knickknacky and hated is the plastic gleam of western religion. theyll go on and on about peyote and mushrooms, any drug that has some shamanic/eastern tone, but beer is of the west, of woman hating catholic church barbecues, and so the drink is not taken as seriously, at least on the surface.

but why every weekend, every magic saturday night, do these bottles of wine and gin call to our screaming souls!

i suppose a lot of this religious feeling has been overwhelmed be the far more potent and mind fucking capabilities of hallucinogenic etc., thus the religous ecstasy raves of the milennium and melting burning men in the desert. (though my mother used to proclaim that no drug gave a better high than alcohol. this may have been her own subconscious attempt to curb my drug use while maintaining her liberal credentials...other memories of her expounding on drugs contradict the previous assertion. but ill let that lie). old roommate eb once told me that she hated people who use spiritual reasons to justify drug use. "just party and say its for party and thats fine" she would say (supply your own south african accent).

im more in line with my mother than eb on these two really not at all related statements. because while lsd and ecstasy and all sure can show you a lot of weird fucking things, and encourage metaphysical wanderings of the most fruitful (and dangerous) kind, leave it to alcohol alone to get at your raw humanity, your pulsing emotion and fires raging under your skin. and its this kind of spirituality, the spirit made flesh, that seems to me ultimately most useful. one can trip for hours on the perfection of creation and the illusion of duality, but youve still got to love someone in the morning, got to talk to people, got to feel the hot sun on your forehead and decide what to do with your sweat as your lover walks beside you. ive just about had it with ascetism of any sort (and fuck spelling something im done with), so key is this body to expereince. why fight against half of your reality? why dualize mind and body at all i guess is the more edifying question. anyway, i love this body, this lust, this god of touches and tastes, and leave it to drink alone to bring the honest out, to say yes to a million specters of color and dissonance buzzing about in the sky. leave it to drink to help you find laughter in the night air...and then communicate it to your love in real ways unchecked, vulnerable, shaking and quaking. ecstasy.

now im going to relate all this to the beach boys' "pet sounds", which i just listened to seriously for the first time today. ive heard it in passing a lot, sure, but this time i snapped on the headphones and went all the way through, while riding the bus out to bermudas southern shore rocky beaches. and the music was great, wow, vocals, strings, fucking timpani!

but it was the lyrics that really took me aback. wilson is just so completely embracing all of the "worst" approaches to love...neediness, insecurity, pessimism, dependence. yet he is naked and unapologetic. he tried to change, to become selfreliant, but at the end said fuck it, "thats not me", and now he wants love, "god only knows" what hell do without it. this pervading desperation makes some of the sweeter love songs ("put your head on my shoulder", "wouldnt it be nice") almost creepy in my mind. only the beauty of the music itself makes you suspect that maybe hes right, maybe he does "have the answer" (god i love the line "what can you say that wont make them defensive". what indeed!). that maybe its okay to want love that badly.

cause hes so fucking honest and its so fucking beautiful! what a weird wonderful thing that beauty can make you reevaluate your philosophical views on things. my experiences with love a few years ago have left me very much anti-petsounds in terms of needing love (at least in theory)...and now here are these beautiful falsetto harmonies encouraging me that maybe its okay to want it so badly. and to taste again true romance...everything is up in the air again. where am i! how much may i feel! everything is true and beautiful...how to pick! oh future you tremble me!

when drunk, there is honesty flying through the air, crashing into itself with its multitude of contradiction, and beautiful love are all of its promises. drink you bring me every truth all at once, and i know it so well because i always laugh with you.