"Muggles is the Mother of Invention"
Milton "Mezz" Mezzrow, "Really the Blues"
Louis Armstrong and Milton Mezz Mezzrow
Many consider jazz one of the greatest American art forms, and at its heart lies creative improvisation. Milton "Mezz" Mezzrow plays a unique role in the history of jazz: as a clarinettist, saxophonist and legendary cannabis dealer, he left a lasting mark on the music and subculture of the 1930s and 40s. In the clubs of Harlem in New York City and on tour, Mezzrow was, for many jazz greats, the very embodiment of the "viper". That is what cannabis users in the jazz scene were called, because they made a hissing sound like a viper when they inhaled a joint.
Mezzrow became known not only for his musical talent, but also as a key supplier of high-quality Mexican "golden leaf" marijuana. His autobiography Really the Blues (1946) is a fascinating document of its time that vividly describes the influence cannabis had on creativity, musicianship and community.
Mezzrow was friends with the legendary jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong, who is himself considered one of the most famous and outspoken cannabis advocates in jazz history. Armstrong, who smoked joints every day, valued Mezzrow not only as a musician but also as a reliable supplier of "muggles", "tea" or "gage", as marijuana was called back then. Louis Armstrong later said:
"I believe marijuana played an important role in my creative process. It helped me see things from different angles and inspired many of my compositions. It is a tool that enhanced my artistic expression."
In his autobiography Really the Blues, his fellow musician Mezz Mezzrow gives us more background. He describes, for example, how one day he hears Armstrong's record Heebie Jeebies. A milestone, as he tells it, because this was where Armstrong first recorded his famous scat singing: a form of vocal improvisation in jazz in which the singer strings together syllables rhythmically and melodically to imitate instrumental parts. The voice is used like an instrument, with the focus on melody, rhythm and tone colour rather than lyrics.
This style became a model for generations of jazz musicians and is seen as the epitome of jazz improvisation. Mezzrow writes that Louis later told him he had smoked a joint in the studio while recording Heebie Jeebies, lost his lyrics and had to improvise. The rest is history.
A collective self-deception?
We know of countless artists, musicians, writers, philosophers, scientists and many other prominent cannabis users who used the plant for their creative work. From Charles Baudelaire, one of the co-founders of the French Club des Hashashins, to Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, the Beatles, Bob Marley, the artist Frida Kahlo, the comedian George Carlin and the film director Hal Ashby, all the way to actors such as Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson: many of them used cannabis not just to relax, but also as inspiration for their work.
However, we also hear from many people that the cannabis high has at times had a negative effect on their creative output. The jazz musician Artie Shaw, for instance, said he was very unhappy with his "viper" bandmate, the trumpeter Chuck Peterson, because he felt Chuck slowed the band down when he played high. Chuck disagreed, so Artie suggested they both play high together: if it went well, they could perform high every night from then on. Shaw recalls:
"(Chuck) gave it to me, I smoked it, and I played sensationally. I heard things I had never heard before in those old arrangements. (...) 'You win,' I said. 'No, man,' he said. 'I lose.' He had been looking at me in disbelief all evening, and I thought he was thinking: 'Man, this guy is blowing his head off.' I heard great things. But the technical ability to actually do it, that's like driving drunk. You feel great, but you don't know what you're doing."
So could many reports about the high be down to systematic overconfidence? There could be general unconscious mechanisms of self-deception at work, such as cannabis users wanting to justify their often illegal use of the plant. Or does the high itself create systematic overconfidence through altered perception?
A purely quantitative collection of personal accounts therefore hardly gets us any further: even if the vast majority of users report positive effects on their creativity, they could be wrong. So how should we proceed if we want to find out more about whether the high can actually enrich creative work?
A dead end: the limits of psychological creativity tests
In the debate about cannabis and creativity, the same handful of scientific studies keeps coming up, in which participants took tests during a high that are designed to measure the capacity for "divergent thinking". "Divergent thinking" describes the ability to approach problems in an open, unsystematic and playful way, coming up with as many unusual solutions as possible.
The term was coined by J. P. Guilford and is seen as a central element of creative processes. Divergent thinking includes aspects such as fluency of ideas, originality, flexibility and a willingness to consider seemingly far-fetched solutions. It is contrasted with convergent thinking, which aims at a single, logical solution.
In creativity research, divergent thinking is often measured with tests such as the "Alternative Uses Test" (AUT), in which participants have to come up with as many alternative and original uses as possible, as quickly as possible, for everyday objects such as a chair.
Criticism of tests in altered states of consciousness
A central problem with using such tests during a cannabis high lies in their basic design: they are made for an awake, attentive state. They assume that participants are conscious and able to speak and act, so they can express and record their ideas. An altered state of consciousness (for example a cannabis high, a dream or deep meditation), however, changes not only the quantity and quality of associations, but also the ability to steer them deliberately and put them into words.
A comparison with dreaming as an altered state of consciousness makes the dilemma clear: in dreams we often experience an extreme boost in imagination and associative freedom, both classic features of divergent thinking. Many artists have used dream content creatively; but while dreaming, we would of course fail the AUT, since we could not fill in any questionnaires. In a similar way, states of consciousness altered by cannabis may broaden the range of associations, while at the same time limiting the ability to work ideas out deliberately and express them.
Divergent thinking is not the same as creativity
Another often overlooked aspect: divergent thinking is not everything when it comes to creative work in real life. If you look at creative work in practice, such as writing an essay, it is only one part of the skill set. Besides generating unusual ideas (divergent thinking), it also takes evaluating, developing and implementing them (convergent thinking, sustained attention, attention to detail). In his metacognitive theory of creativity, the psychologist Bernhard Hommel stresses that creative achievement results from the interplay of different cognitive abilities, self-regulation and conscious control.
So how should we go about it if we want to find out whether the cannabis high can help creative processes, and under what circumstances it tends to get in the way? I present my new research approach and some completely new perspectives on this in the next part.
Sources
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