Three glasses = Hemingway
After collapsing on the couch late this evening, and sharing a few glasses of leftover wine from the Halloween party with my better half (a wonderful bottle of “prosecco”), it struck me that the words flow far more naturally from me after a few drinks.
I have no doubt that this phenomenon has been observed in the past. The most famous writers have most famously been drunks, haven't they? Hemingway would be the classic reference case, perhaps closely followed by the Fitzgeralds, and then of course Kerouak, and Ginsberg.
I'm not drunk though. Just a bit tipsy. I think perhaps laziness would prevent me from ever developing a drinking problem. If we have no alcohol in the house, we won't go out of our way to go and buy any (unless we have a had a monumentally rubbish day).
I wonder why the words flow so much more freely after consuming alcohol? While we have all read about the lowering of inhibitions that alcohol causes, I wonder what goes on at a lower level that causes the behavioural changes? Alcohol basically poisons the brain – damages it's ability to function accurately.
I guess in some ways it shows how remarkable our brains really are, that they can survive the confusion caused by poisoning, and keep all the essential functions working (breathing, pumping blood, etc). Maybe it's similar to packet switching on the internet, where you can knock a huge hole through the middle of a network, and the rest of the network will take up the slack – only less efficiently. Maybe I should quit thinking about it while I'm still ahead.