Den5hion’s ‘Drugs Are Bad’ Mixtape

Art by Abel Torres (Abel Digital)

I must admit I sat down many times to start writing this post and just couldn’t get going. This is a difficult subject to take on. I could approach it in many ways. I had many ideas, all were worthy but at the same time I didn’t want to be predictable. What I’m going on about is my venture into writing a post featuring Den5hions new mixtape ‘Drugs Are Bad’. I can write about it from Den5hion’s point of view, but instead I prefer to write from an entirely different perspective.

As I struggled to get my head together to write this I entered many places of thought. I thought about the use of drugs to escape or rather deal with the turmoils of life. I thought about how things don’t seem to change much when it really comes down to it. I thought about people thousands of years ago before anything was recorded in history. How they must have dealt with the same emotions we all deal with. I created imaginary people in my mind, people from an ancient tribe. How love, hate, pride, desire influenced their lives just as they do in our lives today. How much has it changed? I’m going to go out on a limb and say nothing has changed. There was a man long ago madly in love with a woman who didn’t love him back, at least not the same way. There was a woman who lost a child to disease and cried for the rest of her life. With every issue we have today the people in the past dealt with the same. Politically how many revolutions have been fought? Won? Lost? Cycles of revolutions forcing change to better the people over and over. But where are we now? The same place just with newer technology. The same fears of the past resonate today. Warnings from the past about the future come to fruition time and again. The only real difference is the innovation in technology allowing us to escape by distraction more easily while also allowing the corrupt to influence the masses more easily. I can go deeper into this specific subject like everyone else does. Almost every day I see a debate or article about the pros and cons of technological advancement and how it affects us. The pros obviously that we can all connect to one another more easily and the ability to share information which the corrupt hate and wish to control. I’m not going to go into this. I want to go deeper.

Deeper as in to ask the age old question asked and contemplated about countless times since we started being aware of our own existence. What is it all about anyway? The good things in life a lot of times seem to hurt us and the bad things at times seem to help us. Good memories of a lost love are incredibly painful. Bad memories of things that happened to us in the past teach us. But why? What is it all about? Should we push for a global utopian society? Is it even possible? Or is it about finding somebody to love?

The truth is we all know the answers we’re searching for. The answers are in us all. Right under our noses actually. I believe in evolution as I’m sure most of you do too. If you believe in evolution than you most likely believe that we are social animals. Early on in our common ape ancestor forms we gathered around to protect each other, learning we needed each other to survive. This very basic original concept of connection is what it is truly about. I enjoy the poems of Lao Tse’s Tao Te Ching as much as the next philosophy guy but one specific part of the Taoist philosophical thought that I argue with is the belief that we must only live in the present. That the past is over and now non-existent so we shouldn’t dwell in it due to the fact that we will rob the present. I disagree. I’ve tapped into this philosophical point before in more agreement than I do today. While yes we shouldn’t waste our time with the past in the sense of dwelling about ‘WHAT SHOULD BE’ because that will only bring about the pain the memories of our past, good and bad. But we should remember and we should cherish our memories. The past is what has made each of us into who we are today. One other truth of remembering our past is that a lot of times our memory of past events many times show us that it was a good time, better than we felt at that moment. This can make us sad but it also allows us to analyze reality a little better which in turn can influence how we live our lives from now on in future experiences. The meaning of life is to connect, share and experience with one another the adventure. It is not meaningless, if you live correctly you will be eternal. Your influence will live on in other people and so on and so on. This being said the first man to ever think is still alive in all of us today. The people of thousands of years ago are not forgotten. They live on influencing us and future generations. It’s this experience that answers the questions of what it’s all about.

I often ask elderly people what is most important. Always the answer is ‘to share life and experience with others’. So live, love, cry, laugh, and fucking go crazy. We’re doing just fine in the big picture.

Now you might be asking what does all this really have to do with Den5hions mixtape, Well first off I want to point out that the mixtape is by Den5hion and Siete Catorce, two sides to the same soul. Secondly do you really have to ask?