This passage came from a recent Harper's Magazine profile on legendary junkie jazz musician Art Pepper. When describing his first experience with heroin he pulls no punches, what follows is his in his own words:
I looked at the few remaining lines of heroin and |I took the dollar bill and horned the rest of them down. I said "This is it. This is the only answer for me. If this is what it takes, than this is what I am going to do, whatever dues I have to pay..." And I knew that I would get busted and I knew that I would go to prison and that I wouldn't be weak; I wouldn't be an informer like all the phonies, the no account, the non-real, the zero people that roam around, the scum that slither under rocks, the people that destroyed music, that destroyed this country, that destroyed this world... I realized that from that moment on I would be , if you want to use the word, a junkie. That's the word they used. That's to word they still use. That's what I became at that moment. That's what I practiced: and that's what I still am. And what I will die as --- a Junkie.
I couldn't put together a more philosophically trenchant motto for a junkie. He turns the idea of the beat down junkie and turns it into a noble stance. While perhaps not as eloquent or informed as the vast collection of William S Burroughs philosophical thoughts on being a junkie, this is by far the most heartfelt.
I looked at the few remaining lines of heroin and |I took the dollar bill and horned the rest of them down. I said "This is it. This is the only answer for me. If this is what it takes, than this is what I am going to do, whatever dues I have to pay..." And I knew that I would get busted and I knew that I would go to prison and that I wouldn't be weak; I wouldn't be an informer like all the phonies, the no account, the non-real, the zero people that roam around, the scum that slither under rocks, the people that destroyed music, that destroyed this country, that destroyed this world... I realized that from that moment on I would be , if you want to use the word, a junkie. That's the word they used. That's to word they still use. That's what I became at that moment. That's what I practiced: and that's what I still am. And what I will die as --- a Junkie.
I couldn't put together a more philosophically trenchant motto for a junkie. He turns the idea of the beat down junkie and turns it into a noble stance. While perhaps not as eloquent or informed as the vast collection of William S Burroughs philosophical thoughts on being a junkie, this is by far the most heartfelt.
