(no subject)
Q: Have you ever used LSD or other so-called consciousness-expanding drugs?
KUBRICK: No. I believe that drugs are basically of more use to the audience than to the artist. I think that the illusion of oneness with the universe, and absorption with the significance of every object in your environment, and the pervasive aura of peace and contentment is not the ideal state for an artist. It tranquilizes the creative personality, which thrives on conflict and on the clash and ferment of ideas. The artists transcendence must be within his own work; he should not impose any artificial barriers between himself and the mainspring of his subconscious. One of the things thats turned me against LSD is that all the people I know who use it have a peculiar inability to distinguish between things that are really interesting and stimulating and things that appear so in the state of universal bliss the drug induces on a good trip. They seem to completely lose their critical faculties and disengage themselves from some of the most stimulating areas of life.
Perhaps when everything is beautiful, nothing is beautiful.
(Agel, The Making of Kubrick's 2001, 1970, excerpted from the Playboy interview, p. 346)
KUBRICK: No. I believe that drugs are basically of more use to the audience than to the artist. I think that the illusion of oneness with the universe, and absorption with the significance of every object in your environment, and the pervasive aura of peace and contentment is not the ideal state for an artist. It tranquilizes the creative personality, which thrives on conflict and on the clash and ferment of ideas. The artists transcendence must be within his own work; he should not impose any artificial barriers between himself and the mainspring of his subconscious. One of the things thats turned me against LSD is that all the people I know who use it have a peculiar inability to distinguish between things that are really interesting and stimulating and things that appear so in the state of universal bliss the drug induces on a good trip. They seem to completely lose their critical faculties and disengage themselves from some of the most stimulating areas of life.
Perhaps when everything is beautiful, nothing is beautiful.
(Agel, The Making of Kubrick's 2001, 1970, excerpted from the Playboy interview, p. 346)