JOURNEYS AMONGST ELVES

Every day i am inundated with requests from wannabe writers seeking opportunities to kickstart their literary careers by writing for The Nerve. But not everyone has the complex physiognomy and mental hardwiring that allows them to lay their body on the line, wear their heart on their sleeve, and avoid clichés like the plague. Whilst we have published posts by Mayhem, the Donstar, even Celeste, these colourful identities are not writers. Hell no. Nor are they possessed of the pretentiousness that inheres in any claim to be a writer. Rather, they are the embodiment of a bohemian chaos; the incarnation of a certain primeval bacchanalian urge; the distillation of that stellar ebullience which finds its apogee of expression when coalesced into female form. Their role on the nerve – do i really need to spell it out? – is that of muse. Their posts are the random musings of elfin wanderlings, not serious writing.

As a serious writer, i do whatever it takes to bring the avid reader a story. Even take drugs. Yes, i place my body on the line and roll up my sleeves. And, by crikey, you have no idea what kind of laundering costs are involved in wearing your heart on your sleeve. But for wannabe writers who think they can empurple their prose by taking drugs, a word of warning: never, never, ever settle for inferior quality (and yes, of course i'm talking about the prose).

But trying to write on powerful mind-altering chemicals kind of defeats the purpose. Or rather, the act of writing vainly tries to create a purpose within a cosmic void wherein no purpose can exist. One of the litany of problems with people is that we think too much, we read too much, we write too much – we exist too much at one remove from the world. We should all take time out to read the self-help book "People Who Read Too Much".

Anyway i've taken a few drugs in my time. But am i not an experiential scientist? Shouldn't i employ this large, blood filled organ to probe as deeply as possible into life's little mysteries? After all, what's a brain for? But absolutely nothing did, nothing would, and nothing ever could prepare me for my experience with what Mayhem has dubbed the Fruit of the Wattle. I've had lsd before, magic mushrooms, the worm at the bottom of the tequila bottle, you know, it's all part of the rich fruitcake of experience that make us what we are today. So when my muse proffers a crackpipe full of dmt, and lights it up, i think ok, here we go ... done this all before. Smile and look interested. Just another head trip.

Wrong. I am not even going to try to describe it.

Oh, ok then, i will. So i'm thinking: i'm going to fucking die. I am going to fucking die. No-one can survive this total body seizure. My head is splitting, my teeth are falling out, my watch looms like a relentless hybrid organic/mechanical threat strapped to me like a bomb, i simply can't breathe, i have become a slowly imploding bomb, my head is like totally oww! and i'm clutching it saying oh my god oh my god i'm going to die oh fuck oh fuck and i'm thinking well there's no coming back from this one and Mayhem is in professional nurse mode saying just let it go, let it go, go with it, don't fight it, like some paramedic of the paranormal. Don't fight it? It's trying to kill me! But i have no option; it seems either i place my trust in my muse, in this overwhelmingly brutal yet beautiful force, or my neurons are squid rings. So i relax and allow myself to be killed. That part of me which Freud called the ego, which barely clings to a rapidly unravelling thread of sensibility. Then my self – my ego, my (self) consciousness – suddenly evaporates, and with it, the headache. CAN NOT SPEAK> UNABLE TO MOVE> should say something, but i can't because there is no i. Only the ceiling. My God, is all that only a ceiling? There is the bed, the door, the Mayhem: all in beautiful perfect fractal unity. The crushingly reassuring feeling that all is incomprehensibly huge and mind-blowingly perfect. And the muse says, Relax, art director – have i ever given you anything that killed you before? And laughs.

Instead of my mind there is now just the purest, clearest, un-fucking unbelievableist perfection. There can be no buts in perfection. My nurse, ever professional, is correct. You can only embrace it. And be held in its clear infinite wonder. I am completely at one with the here and now yet it has taken only a moment. Because it can only take a moment to be at one with the here and now. I look at Mayhem and she is become a momentary goddess. A pure unadulterated yet evanescent essence. Serene, smiling, striking, beautiful, Egyptian. Her eyes large, round, intense Wandjina. Time seeps in around the edges and i find we are laughing, and somehow i'm laughing into a phone i don't remember picking up but vaguely recall its frozen rings somewhere out there like Saturn, and i'm trying to remember how to talk, with a bewildered Safari Bob on the other end of the line listening to me ranting it's like a gift. A gift.

Yeah? So where's my gift? he asks in his forthright manner. He called me earlier asking for Neil's number, and got a prompt and efficient reply. Called ten minutes later to find some unknown species of nut.

Dmt. Like the truth, it's out there. Allegedly not physically addictive, except in the sense that having a whole lot of fun is physically addictive. And as you know, having fun is half the fun. Dmt is an opening on the perfect underlying geometry and beauty of the universe, (and yes i know what that sounds like, but hey, it's not easy reporting on this) a kaleidoscope that deletes the mundane while bringing forth only the crystalline and the pure. The great cosmic joke in all its ludic, lucid, shifting, sliding, smiling complexity. To look at the world and not know if your eyes are open or shut because you've never seen anything like this before except perhaps just before dreamsleep, those reddish brown patterns that suddenly open wide, repeat and recur while you fall dizzying through the depths of the infinite. Kind of like that. Only with the intensity knob cranked up to eleven billion.

Professor Alan Watts has described the effects of DMT as: "Load universe into cannon. Aim at brain. Fire."

This has been the Art Director, reporting from beyond the edge. Yes, it's a dirty job and no-one has to do it. Meanwhile Mayhem has prepared herself like a hot dish, and we are heading out to the Film and TV Institute to party ...