{"id":11376,"date":"2021-04-20T12:34:56","date_gmt":"2021-04-20T11:34:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=11376"},"modified":"2021-04-20T12:34:56","modified_gmt":"2021-04-20T11:34:56","slug":"head-shop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2021\/04\/20\/head-shop\/","title":{"rendered":"Head Shop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tedium was tip tapping on the pane of Gibbo\u2019s day, the hours slouching into another shite night alone, like the slow but certain, annihilating course of ink on blotting paper. A visit to Tosh in the Head Shop \u201cHappy Daze\u201d on George\u2019s St might just resurrect the dregs, if not by consuming a selection of the products for sale there, then at least by listening to Tosh describe them and the effects they\u2019d produce, the feelings and sensations they\u2019d induce once ingested.<\/span><\/p>\n

The shop was dimly lit like one of those places that sell lizards as pets to stoners; it smelled of stale joss sticks and half eaten Govinda take away trays. Dub reggae oozed like liquid hemp from two battered vintage speakers that stood at either end of the glass cabinet containing all the pills, powders and shrooms, which looked like the moist, fecund sex organs of alien amphibians. And then there was, Tosh.<\/p>\n

Some people become caricatures of themselves but Tosh took it to another level entirely, becoming a parody of the caricature itself. He was pencil thin and tall enough for half of his body to be in an entirely different, Himalayan weather system, to the rest of him. He didn\u2019t wear clothes; they hung from him like sheets of washing out to dry. The brown, round neck Aran sweater that he wore like a second knitted skin, billowed at the slightest twitch of his body.<\/p>\n

He had that wizened pirate look that comes from years on the high seas of late nights, rolling spliffs in other people\u2019s kitchens, at parties that always ended with dawn breaking on crushed green cans that spread like metallic spawn from butt soaked sinks.<\/p>\n

Of course he had a benign, pointed satanic beard too! And he wore an earring that was given to him by a German girl he\u2019d spent the night with after seeing Marley in Dalymount Park, years back. Everything was \u201cYears Back\u201d with Tosh except for his eye brows which were fierce as fresh printed font. He wouldn\u2019t have looked out of place on the cover of \u201cMojo\u201d magazine talking about his comeback album but he had little to come back from, other than his greatest hits played in the kitchens of Dublin where he\u2019d roll the best numbers while talking about Syd Barret, \u00a0arcane sub clauses in the Brehon laws and mumbling something about the Tuatha De Danann being connected to the Mayans.<\/p>\n

\u201cAh Gibbo, my man! How are we today? Are ye in for a buzz or a chat or a bit of both? I\u2019ve got some crackin\u2019 new stock in from a warehouse in Budapest. I\u2019ll talk ye through it in a minute but c\u2019mere, how did ye get on with them ones I sold ye last week?<\/p>\n

Did you do as I told ye?<\/p>\n

The cheeky half, chased by a full one just as the half is settlin\u2019 in nicely, then when you\u2019re tilting full gear on the whole one, drop the last half, see, that\u2019s how ye play a two pill game!<\/p>\n

D\u2019ye remember I wrote it down for ye? Like how to take them properly, in the right order, there\u2019s no point in double droppin\u2019 these, that\u2019d just be bein\u2019greedy and ye wouldn\u2019t be lettin\u2019 them tell their story, it\u2019s a three act thing, ye got yer intro, yer crescendo and yer beautiful sunrise fade. Apart from the obvious whack off them, did ye get any of those subliminals, I\u2019was tellin\u2019 ye about? There\u2019s a nuance to them, like they\u2019re not in yer face, but they\u2019re all over ye at the same time.<\/p>\n

So Gibbo, I have another fella like yerself who comes in most Fridays, now, he loves his food, he\u2019s all culinary, mad into his ingredients, would know his way around all them African spices on Moore St, so, when I\u2019m talkin\u2019 him through the pills I go all Master Chef with me metaphors but you\u2019re a man like meself who\u2019s into his tunes \u00a0so I\u2019ll keep it musical for ye, so ye get me drift, I love doin\u2019 the R+D on this shit, I take it seriously, I want me good customers like yerself to know what they\u2019re getting\u2019 into and always remember Gibbo, when ye feel yer bowel howl, ye\u2019ll know they\u2019re kickin\u2019 in, c\u2019mon, are ye ready?<\/p>\n

These ones here I call Kittsers, after yer man David Kitt, half an hour or so after takin\u2019 the first half, ye\u2019ll feel a warm acoustic vibe comin\u2019 over ye, a half full but well in to it crowd in Whelan\u2019s buzz, but ye\u2019ll feel a slight stitching of electronics studded around the hinterland of things, I don\u2019t wanna say \u201ca glow\u201d but ye get what I mean, the Kittsers aren\u2019t too strong though, when ye drop the full one, it\u2019s more of a Boutique festival vibe, like Whelan\u2019s morphin\u2019 into a Body and Soul stage and it goes on like that a while, a more genteel \u201cGloaming\u201d vibe than yer urban \u201cLankum\u201d trad, they\u2019re smooth, the muchies with these pills are organic, d\u2019ye get me, I found them a bit shite in the end to be honest, like being at some gig in the Iveagh Gardens and ye wonderin\u2019 how ye ended out there?<\/p>\n

Nah, I like a bit of grit in me pills.<\/p>\n

These ones here are more like it, though may I say, they are strictly for well-seasoned travellers like yer self. I call them, \u201cThe Gaffs\u201d.<\/p>\n

About twenty minutes after taking the first half, remember yer maths Gibbo, half + full + half, the only way to do it, the narrative, the flow, that\u2019s what yer after,<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll start to feel like there\u2019s a house party in yer head, a good one with all yer mates there, you\u2019ll feel them coming in, a mad rush at the front door, swingin\u2019 bags of cans, it\u2019s not Whelan\u2019s anymore man, it\u2019s a stairwell full of people ye hardly know, that you\u2019ve never seen in yer house before, one of them nights that\u2019s goin\u2019 to swell, it has its rough edges too though when ye start comin\u2019 up proper, a Garda siren lickin the walls blue and white, ye might feel a tremor, a panic but it\u2019ll pass with a rattle of worry farts, when ye drop the full one it\u2019ll be like the house has been dipped in spirits and torched with new beats you\u2019ve never heard before, some Brazilian dude is DJ-in in yer front room, Favela-Fuckin\u2019-Chic, wadin through a block party, a carnival and a \u00a0sudden flash of asphalt wasteland in the room, there\u2019s no lettin\u2019 up with these ones, pure ritual,<\/p>\n

ye\u2019ll be all alone but surrounded by people, nice bit of hallucinatin\u2019 on these too, the party will become external, people will leave yer head and pour into the kitchen, ye\u2019ll meet people there ye haven\u2019t seen in years, ye\u2019ll feel the erotic rush of a whole house heavin\u2019 with the dance, like a greedy snort of Pentecostal Poppers,<\/p>\n

the colour range on these is like a serious fuckin\u2019 festival rig, ye\u2019ll end out focusin\u2019 on the colour of the kitchen door for way longer than\u2019s natural, ye might even feel a Oneness with shit that\u2019ll make ye oblivious to all the other shit around you,<\/p>\n

ye know like when all of life\u2019s asteroids are comin\u2019 at ye, thick n fast and ye do a Han Solo on it and go straight into Spiritual Hyper Space, bypassin\u2019 all the mundane crap that brings ye down, it went like that way for me anyway,<\/p>\n

these really are quality pills, all the colours get like a Biblical Dulux paint catalogue, ye\u2019ll start makin\u2019 connections between things that\u2019ll fade as soon as ye try thinkin\u2019 of them again, ye\u2019ll remember nothin\u2019 later, yer mind\u2019ll be like The Shining maze, bein\u2019chased by half formed feral sentences, ye\u2019ll wish ye had a brain stenographer with ye to record yer thoughts, ye\u2019ll think they are important but they might just be shite but who\u2019s to know,<\/p>\n

they\u2019re roarin\u2019 \u201cTune\u201d in the front room, ye\u2019ll have strobe light black outs on the dance floor, not knowin\u2019 how ye arrived into the glare of the kitchen light, ye\u2019ll feel epic and loved, all the walls of the house throbbing like a heart pumpin\u2019 speed, the kitchen and the front room will seem like they\u2019re different hoods in some huge smudged metropolis that yer racin\u2019 through now, high as some released captive thing, a vertigo in your stride, fearless, ye\u2019ll have flashes of being all alone because you are all alone, reality sneaks in the fuckin\u2019 cat flap the odd time with these pills, like morning light torn from a drawn curtain, a prison break on the dance floor,<\/p>\n

there\u2019ll be a blonde PR bird at yer living room door with a clipper board, askin\u2019 ye what guest list yer on, ye\u2019ll have to choose carefully or ye\u2019ll be fucked out high as a kite cut loose, tremblin\u2019 alone on the quays, freezin\u2019, neon taxi slur in the puddles, ye\u2019ll look back at the entrance to The Liquor Rooms and ye\u2019ll realise it\u2019s yer own gaff, the door into yer own livin\u2019 room and everyone there is bein\u2019 sliced by strobe, tribal Batucada Beats, and the bird who had the clipper board has lassoed you with her eyes, ye\u2019ll get a lust rush but it\u2019ll be a brain boner, yer lad will be limp as a droopin\u2019 glove, ye\u2019ll think of Lou Reed, \u201cbetween thought and expression there lies a lifetime\u201d, the music will go all,<\/p>\n

ah- whacka-whacka-whacka, ah-whacka-whacka-whacka,<\/p>\n

ye\u2019ll get down on yer hands and knees and try crawlin\u2019 away from the echo but soon enough ye\u2019ll surrender to it sweatin\u2019, relieved that it’s yer new Master.<\/p>\n

these pills can have quite a rough come down, the worst kind of psychic turbulence but they\u2019re worth it for their plasma screen clarity and the integrity of their buzz, when ye come down proper, all the people who weren\u2019t there will have gone but ye\u2019ll be glad ye met them anyway.<\/p>\n

Are ye with me Gibbo? Am I givin\u2019 ye a few ideas for later? C\u2019mon, I got a couple more to show ye.<\/p>\n

I call these pills \u201cThe launches\u201d, they\u2019re cunnin\u2019 little bastards, the first half comes on all warm like yer at some art openin\u2019 in a warehouse, somewhere in the Batter, NCAD heads wearin\u2019 vintage gear, some lad in a knit wear bobble hat, stooped over a lap top playin\u2019 Ricardo Villa Lobos minimal techno, craft beards and shite lager but it\u2019s free, so ye dive in and talk crap about the installations, ye\u2019ll get these comin\u2019 up jitters, feelin\u2019 that what yer sayin\u2019 about the installations isn\u2019t the right thing to be sayin\u2019 about them, like yer out of yer depth at a party full of those Irish Times \u201c 50 People To Watch in 2009\u201d, ye know the fuckers, video sculptors \u2018n vegan choreographers.<\/p>\n

Ye won\u2019t feel like yer one of them, me and you Gibbo never make it on to them lists, but once ye drop yer first full \u201cLaunch\u201d ye\u2019ll feel better than all them cunts collaged together<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll feel like you\u2019re the artist, that it\u2019s your launch, you\u2019ll have interviews about your work runnin\u2019 through yer head, ye\u2019ll feel like ye own the room, on top of yer mad out of it game, ye\u2019ll see yer self on the box talkin\u2019 about yer difficult second album even though you\u2019ve never played a note in yer life, it\u2019ll be like ye become whatever music yer listen\u2019 to, it\u2019s so real, ye\u2019ll feel ye\u2019ve got the fingerin\u2019 all sorted on the tenor sax yer mimin\u2019 the fuck out of in the mirror, ye\u2019ll see posters for \u201cAn Evenin\u2019 With Gibbo\u201d flappin\u2019 on the lampposts in yer twisted, head fucked streets, you\u2019ll believe you\u2019ve really gone and learnt an instrument, then the most fucked up, loved up shit kicks in,<\/p>\n

Yer playin\u2019 stadium concerts now, yer the lead singer or the guitarist, ye can be whoever the fuck ye want to be, snortin\u2019 lines of adulation, ye grab yer crotch and gurn, \u201cI am Live Aid. I am Freddie Mercury\u201d, a Nuremberg crowd rush of pure fuckin\u2019 love, the best gig ye ever gave to yer reflection in the mirror, yer all alone and shittin\u2019 yerself, a stab of the fear, but ye mange to pull yerself back into a pub sized gig, yer listenin\u2019\u2019 to Howlin\u2019 Wolf, built for comfort, \u201c300 Pounds of Joy\u201d, it\u2019s Walters in D\u00fan Laoghaire and ye command the room, ye\u2019ll see everyone ye knew there when ye were young and they\u2019ll love ye, ye\u2019ll feel Savoy 1 screen stretched, everythin\u2019 about ye will feel epic, it\u2019s the maddest rush.<\/p>\n

I, like, became Marley in Dalymount an\u2019 I seen meself singin\u2019 as Marley to me younger self and the German bird that gave me the earring, fuckin\u2019 multiple identity trippin\u2019<\/p>\n

The come down from these is smoother than you\u2019d than ye\u2019d think, like a class of farewell tour, a \u201cfor one night only\u201d vibe, ye\u2019ll see posters for yerself again but they\u2019re smaller, ye\u2019ll be back to playin\u2019 Whelans, but it\u2019ll be a good crowd, when ye come round ye\u2019ll have forgetten all the interviews ye gave but ye\u2019ll know ye did give them,<\/p>\n

ye won\u2019t even have a ticket stub to one of yer own gigs.<\/p>\n

The rest of the gear I got is natural, herbs and shrooms, Inca gear, it\u2019s not really party gear, it\u2019s all about foliage and mad ancestral voices,<\/p>\n

These first two herbs work in seconds, they both wreck yer sense of time, one makes nine hours seem like it\u2019s just two minutes that\u2019s passed and the other stretches two minutes into what seems like nine fuckin\u2019 hours, so, you choose dependin\u2019 on how yer fixed for time, both have the same immediate effect of ye seein\u2019 foliage growin\u2019 on yer walls, it\u2019s Amazonian, the green is so deep ye could swim in it.<\/p>\n

The Shrooms are ancestral though, I got an intense Ogham Stone vibe off them, like I was rubbin\u2019 my hand up one of them and understandin\u2019 this 8th century braille that was chipped into them by some mad mason monk years back before, like when ye know some of the Brehon Laws were still standing, I felt like a kind of gutter with all this mythology streamin\u2019 through me, playin\u2019 me Bothy Band and me \u00d3 Riada sa Gaiety albums backwards and hearin\u2019 messages from The Tuatha, ancient secrets that would make Fatima blush, d\u2019ye get me, I had some experience of knowledge, somethin\u2019 unbroken, like I was totally plugged in to the whole meaning of shit, like, I saw through it all, connected it all up, wrote a new fuckin\u2019 alphabet and found a story way out of it all, I was it all, I had Prophet deliriums, I sweated two languages and learned a third, I tied myself to a post and crawled through centuries to tell people what I\u2019d learned , the further I went the less I remembered until I had no idea where I was or what I was doin\u2019 and I\u2019d forgottin\u2019 what I was supposed to tell them and they didn\u2019t like me for that.<\/p>\n

Ye just don\u2019t know what portals the shrooms are goin\u2019 to open up for ye Gibbo.<\/p>\n

Are ye with me Gibbo?<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s it goin\u2019 to be? A bit of herb and nine hours of Kittser?<\/p>\n

A mad one or a quiet one?<\/p>\n

You tell me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tedium was tip tapping on the pane of Gibbo\u2019s day, the hours slouching into another shite night alone, like the slow but certain, annihilating course of ink on blotting paper. A visit to Tosh in the Head Shop \u201cHappy Daze\u201d on George\u2019s St might just resurrect the dregs, if not by consuming a selection of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":10313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[976,977,1377,1385,3262,4021,4022,4023,4024,5262,8356],"class_list":["post-11376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-billy-o-hanluain","tag-billy-o-hanluain-cassandra-voices","tag-cassandra-voices-dublin-writers","tag-cassandra-voices-fiction","tag-fiction","tag-head","tag-head-shop","tag-head-shop-by-billy-o-hanluain","tag-head-shop-fiction","tag-kittser","tag-shop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}