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It occurs to me that unlike the other major vices (drinking booze, snorting narcotics, driving fast cars, sexing the sexy etc) the appeals of smoking are relatively intangible and entirely opaque to many.
The thread in which the psychonauts are waxing learycal about hallucinogens, and some of the asides in the recent threads we’ve had about the politics of smoking, make me wonder whether we can (and perhaps should) better articulate what we like about tobacco.
They’re subtle things, cigarettes, I think. They’re a delivery system for nicotine, for sure, but there are safer, cleaner, cheaper, less antisocial ways of doing that, and yet cigarettes, cigars and pipes remain popular. The idea that smokers only smoke in order to get a hit of nicotine can only be a part of the story. I’m starting this thread in the hope that smokers and ex-smokers will try to explain the rest. I’ll try to get the ball rolling.
One thing that strikes me about smoking is that it has a particularly strong two-way relationship with environment and context. So, for me, a cigarette smoked outside in a cold wind is barely a shadow of one smoked in a cool, still, quiet room. And as the room enhances the cigarette, the cigarette enhances the atmosphere of the room (literally and figuratively), giving it an extra kinda texture, like a roux thickening a gravy or something. I don’t like very smoky rooms, but lightly smoky rooms are lovely.
Also, certain situations seem to positively demand a cigarette. The end of a meal, with a coffee, and post-coition are the standards, but for me the unexpected arrival of a favourite piece of music induces a more intense urge to light a cigarette than anything else. It’s so strong that being in the middle of smoking one isn’t enough to entirely blot out the urge to light another. Something about the process of smoking a cigarette helps me to immerse myself in the music better. It’s hard to explain, but listening to music and not being able to smoke a cigarette when the right tunes come along would be like listening to music and not being able to tap my foot when the right rhythms come along. Dunno if that’s unique to me.
There are lots of other ways in which I’ve found cigarettes to be an immersive aid like that. They benefit a certain kind of thinking, for one. If I’m trying to summon up the words to describe a subtle experience or thought, I find smoking a cigarette provides the sort of semi-distraction I need to access a certain kind of peripheral, creative thinking. It’s a bit like when you can’t remember the name of something, and you have to kinda stop thinking about it so much in order for it to pop into your head. For example, if I wasn’t at work, a post like this would be written in chunks, between cigarettes. I find it much harder without that. I do sometimes wonder what non-smokers do when they take 5 minutes out to think about something.
Anyway, that’s a couple of things on the more nebulous end of the spectrum. I’m hoping others might be able to add some more. |
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