cc of a message i sent to the qualitative research listserv
Gary Shank (P30GDS1 who-is-at MVS.CSO.NIU.EDU)
Fri, 31 May 96 23:48 CDT
By now, I am sure that most of you are aware that Timothy
Leary died yesterday at the age of 75 of prostate cancer. A
friend and colleague of mine was a friend of Leary's, so I
had the privilege of meeting and talking informally at length.
I was struck by the raw power and profound playfulness of his
intellect. His great love was in the use and exploration of new
and, to his view, benign recreational drugs, starting with LSD and
ending with the World Wide Web. He was often misunderstood, but
I think Tim would take ironic pleasure in my statement that no one
worked harder than he to make sure that he was never totally under-
stood. He suffered terrible hardships for his beliefs, but he
never lost that wonderful Irish big-souled heart of his, and had
the chance to die what the medievals called 'the good death' --
at home, in view of friends and family.
At almost the same time that Tim died, John Kahn died. John was
much younger, in his late forties if i remember correctly, and he
died of an apparent overdose of cocaine. I'm sure most of you
have no idea who John Kahn was. He was one of the finest bass
players of the rock era of the 60s. His driving bass holds to-
gether the still-legendary Super Session album of Al Kooper and
Mike Bloomfield. But he was best known as the bass guy who
worked with Jerry Garcia on many of Jerry's tangential projects.
For instance, he was the bass player for the Jerry Garcia Band
for 20 years. He also played with the bluegrass group called
Old and In The Way -- John, Jerry Garcia, Vassar Clements on
fiddle, the sublime David Grisman on mandolin (Grisman is the
only mandolin player alive who can play Bill Monroe bluegrass and
then go right into Thelonious Monk), and the incomperable Peter
Rowan on guitar and vocals. Old and in the Way was only together
for less than a year, but the 2 CDs from that run are still in
high demand to this day.
Leary and Kahn together tell a story about the obsession with
drugs that runs as a constant substructure in at least our youth
culture in America. Leary rode over top of the drug experience,
because he chose his drugs carefully. Kahn is the more familiar
story of the user of powerful drugs that eventually take their
toll on the user. Power drugs are everywhere -- cocaine, heroine,
alcohol, tobacco, refined sugar, caffeine, low density lipid
proteins, and they kill the user foolish enough to buy into them
for the long run. They are all powerful medicines in some fashion,
and yet we choose to use them with no respect whatsoever for that
power. Two of our most talented and kindly public figures in re-
cent memory -- John Candy and Jerry Garcia -- were killed by
cigarettes and cheeseburgers.
What does this mean to us, as qualitative researchers. For one
thing, there is a complex crisis of meaning in the issue of drugs
in the US. Like any powerful phenomenon, drug use has many and
complex meanings, and thinking about them in simplistic ways leads
us nowhere. What good does it do for us to try to make sure our
kids dont get drugs, when we do nothing for the angst that fuels
the search in the first place? Is it merely the case of good
target advertising that has led to the increase in cigarette use
among teenagers, or does nicotine fill some void? No one in my
high school was smarter than me, but i started smoking at 17, and
it took 16 years for me to get free of the habit, quitting cold
turkey as a two pack a day smoker and dealing with hallucinations
and vivid dreams for six months as a result.
I've gone on too long, but I am going to miss both Leary and Kahn
and I mourn their passings for different reasons. I think the
world will miss Leary, but folks like him, for good or ill, are
rare. But the loss of Kahn, much smaller and less noticable on
the grander scale, is by far the greater tragedy. Kahn was cut
down by the dark side of drugs that we all fear, and which is the
motor for our war against drugs.
As I note, I want to go on record that I am not advocating drug
use, nor do I practice the use of illegal drugs. I do struggle
with some of the more powerful legal drugs, as do many of us i
suspect. And I know that our qualitative understanding of what
drugs mean is quite sparse.
thanks for listening....
gary shank
gshank who-is-at niu.edu