High or Sober, 2001 is a Head Trip

Drugs are weird. Science Fiction is weird. The two go hand in hand sometimes. My colleague Shaun told an anecdote about seeing and reading 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time. When he saw the film, he was amazed, but he didn’t understand it. So, he picked up the book expecting to find answers. He was disappointed.

I had a similar experience in high school when I saw and read 2001 for the first time. In my twenties I had the opportunity to kick it up a notch. I got into some LSD. I decided I would understand 2001 as well as life, the universe, and everything if I dropped acid while watching this movie.

My partner on this expedition and I dipped the paper on our upper gum and floated upstream of the blue Danube. I won’t say that drugs made the film make sense. I understand that I am Jon Stewart from Half Baked saying, “Have you ever seen 2001 on acid?”

I will say that if a movie doesn’t make sense, and drugs make everything not make sense, then this makes for an excellent time. It was a show that touched every sensual experience. I could see 2001, I could hear 2001, and I could taste 2001. All I had to do was reach out and touch the cosmos with rosy fingers and the dawn would rise on my enlightened consciousness. Drugs tend to make one babble like an idiot, I don’t take that euphoria very seriously anymore. There was something purely sensual in the sublime cohesion of movement and music. The breathing sound effects burned deep into my brain. The suspense and the adrenaline from the Lucy got me going mach-5. Mankind mastered machine and movement to such sweet music towards the monolith.

Did it make sense? No.

By Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s red spot the monolith pushes the cycle forwards towards destruction and rebirth. Thus, the Star Child is born. From bone to gun to ship to bot. The human race has emerged into the heavens and said I am one of you. Who could possibly understand such divinity? Only someone with a head full of doses. Feeling is better than understanding when one is high. The character’s dialogue is impossible to follow in such an intoxicated state. Yet the beauty of an image strikes twice as hard to the eyes. This is the tradeoff of watching the film high as opposed to watching it sober. To substitute feeling for understanding may sound like a dive into pure unadulterated hedonism.

Perhaps, this is exactly what happened. Have you ever fornicated with a piece of cinema? Once it happens it feels quite domestic, hedonism’s edge replaced with a homey kiss.

When I watch 2001 with a sober mind now a days, I admire the beauty in its coherency. What I couldn’t understand wasn’t merely nonsense but a complicated and abstract idea. It doesn’t take drugs to understand this idea but reflection, and conversation. These are the highest ideals of theater and film. To use performance, artistry, and writing to create something so marvelous people put aside their differences to watch it and admire it.

I still think there was value in my voyage through psychedelia. Being able to feel deeply and profoundly helped expand my understanding. Understanding is not something that happens short term. I could never just watch 2001 once and understand it and leave it alone. It is a film that must be approached from all sides, and multiple angles. I have a feeling that we are not done with it yet.  I don’t mean to talk about 2001 with such religious pomposity, though in a way I suppose it is inescapable. The film has plenty of flaws. Stanley Kubrick is an uncompromising artist, and though his work is aesthetically beautiful, it isn’t always exciting to watch. I can’t imagine what it took to get MGM to agree to release a movie where the first thirty minutes are apes grunting at each other. What the film offers is better than mere excitement. There is an exploration of the idea that human beings will over come the constraints of their existence and ascend into the heavens.

There is a religious cycle at work. Creation: the monolith gives the apes intelligence to use tools. Life: humans have achieved technological marvels that would seem like magic to their distant ancestors. Destruction: the same technological marvels pose an existential threat. Rebirth: the monolith is found after a long journey and the star child is born.

Then there is the stargate scene. Douglas Trumbull describes a machine made of neon lights and using long shutter exposures to achieve the effect of streak photography. A passing light becomes a tube, a neon bar becomes a plane. It’s a sensory experience equivalent to being in a psychedelic candy store. This is a journey into another dimension and an encounter with the beings that  helped us become who we are. The psychedelic sequence is effective because it completely breaks down attention and abandons narrative constraints in favor of something else. We are left with a  visual meditation on aging. Our alien gods have provided all of the comforts of home for us to live out our lives. Once we die, we are reborn. Then the stars our truly ours.

Does this only happen in the year 2001? I think the profundity of the piece is that this is something that is true regardless of the year. Humans have always looked outward towards something  bigger and higher than us. We call this God, and religion. We use it to make meaning of the universe. 2001 gives this spiritualism a skew towards secular science. In this we find reconciliation between the spiritual and the secular.

No matter how high we rise there will always be the fallibility of the animal ape somewhere deep inside of us. We will build monstrous creations that take on a life of their own, and not always for our benefit. Are drugs any different? I have done plenty of acid and I can promise that it doesn’t bring the enlightenment that I thought it would bring. I developed a creative chemical dependency on the stuff, and it almost drove me insane. When I stopped needing things like LSD, I started growing and living as a full person. I could honestly look inside myself and say, “my god it’s full of stars.”

I’m not saying you shouldn’t drop acid and watch 2001, but I’m not saying you should, either. Drugs are dangerous, their highs shouldn’t be taken very seriously, and their lows should be treated with the utmost caution. They are a lot like our starships and computers that way. They are a lot like our religions that way. However, it was most definitely an interesting experience.

Such is the fabric in the tapestry of life.