A Defect In Your Mind

In the year 2001 I lived in Tooting Bec in South London. I worked in Borough, straight up the Northern Line, just south of the Thames. At my work there was a guy from Montserrat. He claimed to know all the secrets of the universe. He said he was writing a book that was going to be "bigger than The Celestine Prophecy". I used to score pot off him. Several nights a week I would role this marijuana into a joint and smoke it like a cigarette. Then I would put on the Boards Of Canada album Music Has The Right To Children and lie down in my bed. It used to scare the absolute crap out of me. For starters I actually hated the effects of marijuana. There are two things in this world that I have in abundance and need no more of: paranoia and a rapid heartbeat, two noted effects of marijuana. So whilst smoking marijuana increased these already considerable personal defects in me, the symptoms I felt from the marijuana smoke seemed to take on an even more extreme effect when combined with the muted drilling beats and eerie atmospherics of Music Has The Right To Children. I would lie in my bed feeling like both my heart and my brain were actively trying to destroy the rest of my body. It was fucked up. You could say it was just a young man experimenting with how far he could push himself, or you could say it was a fairly obvious case of self-abuse. Either way, it had the unfortunate effect of wrecking what is a fantastic album for me. It's only many years later that I am able to listen to it without feeling the need to curl up into the fetal position and suck on my thumb.