His Majesty’s Theatre…on acid.

Whoever said that today’s students aren’t culturally mature, I feel obliged to prove them wrong with an account of a visit, with a friend, to His Majesty’s Theatre to witness and experience in some modern dance.

The main thing that separated the two of us from the rest of the audience that evening was, of course, the fact that we were ‘under the influence’ of LSD.  I’m pretty sure some of them were under the influence of something, but I reckon we were unique as acidheads that night.

The venue.

We’d picked well, I think – a critically-acclaimed performance set to the music of David Bowie, along with a bit of Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.  Starting off at Hillhead (as many things did in those days), we dropped the acid and wandered into town, with everything around us starting to become very clear by the time we approached the theatre.

There was a lot of “WOW, look at that lamppost/tree/other everyday object”.  It had begun. We quickly flashed our tickets and got inside before we lost the capability to interact with normal humans.

My god he’s huge.

It is worth mentioning that this particular trip featured a whole load of time distortion, which was really interesting, but also incredibly confusing.  As we entered the theatre, we came across a programme sign explaining the format of the performance.  Trying to understand it was a mind-boggling challenge.

“Part One, then Part Two, then Interval Two, then Part One again, then Interval One, then… what?

“How long is the interval?”

“Which one?  Two, One, or Eight?”

In actual fact, there were four parts and three intervals.  Not hard, really.  How did we get into uni?

All parts of the performance itself were totally transfixing, it was impossible to tear our eyes away from what was going on up on stage, even for a single minute.  It was hugely intense at times, with Bowie’s music vibrating right through us as we saw the dancers move as though they were part-human, part-colour and part-music.  I remember thinking to myself, “If Bowie was here, he’d be loving this.”

Something that really stands out for me is basically how ORANGE parts of it were.  I’ve never seen (or felt) so orange in all my life.  Profoundly orange.  Can’t really describe it any better than that.

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Even more than this.

We were seated at the end of a row, and at the beginning of one of the intervals, I became aware of someone hovering in the wings, who (as far I remember) was wearing a proper old-fashioned ice-cream parlour uniform, complete with apron and hat.

Initially unsure as to whether this gent actually existed, I went for eye contact and he suddenly approached me with a HUGE tray of what seemed like TINY pots of ice-cream.  I wordlessly exchanged a random handful of assorted ‘monies’ for two pots and ate the whole thing in minutes, while my friend took one miniature spoonful, grimaced, and put the pot back down.  Each to their own.

Money means nothing when you’re tripping.

During one of the many intervals, we decided to follow the crowds and nip outside for some fresh air.  Sitting at a bench outside, getting ‘good shivers’, all my mate could say was “Oh my goodness”, mumbled repeatedly.  I found this very funny, as did the two random, harpy-like women who sat down at the bench beside us, who immediately and unsettlingly said: “We know what you’re up to.”

They seemed quite friendly, though, and unconnected to any sort of law enforcement, so we chatted to them for a bit about the performance before they went on their way.  During the rest of the interval we debated whether they had existed at all or were in fact some sort of complex, shared hallucination.  Turns out they were sitting behind us the whole time in the theatre – and had met us on the way in before the performance.  Funny, that.  Time is weird.

Oohmygooodness

When it was all over, we exited through the back door, which resulted in us getting briefly lost, before heading to TKs for some post-theatre drinks.  On the way, we counted six police cars passing us by (probably only one or two really), and so, hatching a paranoid plan, we decided to use alcohol as a ‘shield’, drinking enough to appear drunk and mask our true state to any passers-by.

Thankfully, though, we met absolutely nobody until we reached Old Aberdeen, where we somehow found ourselves as part of a group doing a night tour of the campus.  We moved on when we realised our opinions on the architecture – “Ah, look at that cornucoptrex up there. Beautiful!” – were not wanted.

It’s not really called a cornucoptrex

We came across a fairly stoned friend of ours as we approached Seaton Park – luckily for us, he served as our guide through the pitch blackness, past all the ‘youths’ with their MD 20-20 (those were the days) and safely back to Hillhead.

When passing New Carnegie Court on the last leg of our trek home, I was shocked to find a little dead chick, half out of its egg, lying on the pavement – both my colleagues agreed that this is what the horrible squished thing was, and we mourned its death.  Until, of course, I looked at it from a different angle and realised it was a tangerine.

What an orange night.