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Psilocybin, and DMT
They all changed the way I see Sturgill Simpson – Turtles All the Way Down
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Something that we all make in our brain Sturgill Simpson – Turtles All the Way Down
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Most directly, this line’s making a reference to the later-mentioned N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, a powerful and naturally-occurring hallucinogen that’s purported by many to be produced in our own brains. VICE reported on Dr. Rick Strassman, who proposed the human pineal gland as the production center for DMT. Little substantial evidence supports this claim. Many illegal substances such as cannabinoids (the active ingredients in marijuana) are chemically similar to substances such as endocannabinoids, which are used by the brain as neurotransmitters.
Inside that old and fabled book
I'm blinded and reminded of
The pain caused by some old man in the sky Sturgill Simpson – Turtles All the Way Down
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What is this?
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This track expresses Sturgill’s Buddhist influences and beliefs (he met Buddha, y'know), from the Bardo to the 49 divine day vacation (referencing the Bardo once more), leading up to his conclusion that everything is a part of him, or that – as he mentions in his Rolling Stone interview – “we’re all this universal shared consciousness,” which reaches back to the Cosmic Turtle Theory, one of the focal points (and the namesake) of “Turtles All The Way Down.” This idea of a “universal shared consciousness” also reiterates Sturgill’s intent “to make a social consciousness album about love.”
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This is Sturgill’s downcast cover of When In Rome’s 1988 hit of the same name. As Sturgill said in one of his NPR interviews:
I believe it’s one of about three thousand brilliant compositions from the 80’s that got lost in production. I always thought the lyrics to “The Promise” made for a very beautiful, sweet love song and decided I’d like to lay down a somewhat “Countrypolitan” version.
Sturgill uses When In Rome’s lyrics and his own lively, low, country sound to create something entirely different from the original track. He expresses his mission to “make a social consciousness album about love.” He provides the object of his love with a guarantee or promise that he’ll always be there, explaining that he’ll go the distance to make this love work, and, despite his shortcomings, that love will ultimately reign and remedy the troubles of any relationship.
Sounds Shakespearean.
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A biblical allusion to Daniel’s time spent in the lion’s den in the sixth chapter of the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible. The Persian official Darius punishes Daniel for praying to God by throwing him in a lion’s den for a night.
The line could also be a veiled allusion to Simpson’s own life, to nine months he spent in Nashville and its role as a trial for him, as per NPR interview:
I moved to Nashville the first time in 2005, for about nine months, but I was still very much in a highly focused, traditional mindset. I really came, more than anything, to find the old timers that were still around, that I could play bluegrass with and try to learn as properly how that should be done as I could. I didn’t find a lot of similar-minded folks in town: pop-country was really at saturation at that point, and what is now described as the “hip” Nashville scene wasn’t really there yet. You know, any of those bars in East Nashville that are hotspots, that you can walk into on a Friday or Saturday night — back then there’d be six people in there."
So you left?
Yeah. I spent about nine months holed up in my apartment at the bottom of a bottle and hanging out at the Station Inn on Sunday nights and then I just kinda figured, “Yeah, OK. I probably do need to get a job.” So I headed out west for about three or four years, working on the railroad.
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In his NPR concert, Sturgill says most people don’t get what this song is about: “it’s about drugs”. After he plays the song he adds a story about his friend asking him about DMT and if he’s ever tried it, possibly hinting at the origins of this song’s inspiration.
Sturgill reports this song (and the rest of the album) to have sprouted not only from experimentation with hallucinogenics, but from a combination of life experience, “heady reading” – French philosopher/Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature, and hallucinogen expert Dr. Rick Strassman’s The Spirit Molecule (which also served as the basis for an eponymous documentary on DMT), and a little push from his wife (from the NPR interview):
[My wife] said, “You’re probably gonna drive yourself crazy, but you’re definitely driving me crazy, so maybe you should get this out of your system and write some songs about it.” And I thought, “That’s a great idea.”
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