“Spice and vice,” MacGregor says, is the theme of his week, and he’s particularly intrigued by how mores and the culturally acceptable change over time. He began his ‘gay porn’ podcast of the day before commenting that a Rodin sculpture of a nekked male/female couple kissing was considered ‘unexhibitably’ erotic when created, at the turn of the century, thus collected by Mr. Warren of Sussex along with his impossible cup. (When the Warren Cup went on exhibit at the museum, a political cartoon had an ancient Roman at a market and the vendor asking whether he wanted to buy a straight cup or a gay one.) Smoking, needless to say, is a pastime which has provoked similarly varied attitudes, in recent years.
I’ve noticed over the years my own prejudices and attitudes shift about in mysterious ways. I wonder what it’d be like to have some that are fixed, really, truly fixed. Raised to be extremely homophobic, it took longer than it should but I have for the most part been able to let that go. Since 9/11, I’ve become absurdly prejudiced against automobiles; it’s an obsession, I realize that I take it too seriously, but since it’s both thought and feeling, I’m not quite in control of it. And who’s to say that I’m wrong...that one day, humans won’t look back on the dark time when we drove cars as we look back on other unfortunate episodes of Wahn, on eras that practiced human sacrifice or held slaves or committed genocides?
Something of the kind happened in the last decade around smoking. Tobacco, originally cultivated here in the Americas, swept the new world by storm by 1600. MacGregor has a glorious quote from King James (post 1603) denouncing smoking as “a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.” I couldn’t agree more, and, going back ten years, I was at least as prejudiced against smokers as I currently am about those who depend on cars. But a funny thing happened: in Washington, as in California and New York and many other places, it was legislated that you couldn’t smoke in public places. And suddenly smokers were being herded up and discriminated against. And that made me more uncomfortable than their smoking had, originally. So there you go...we spent some time in Copenhagen, in 2006, where (as in much of Europe) everyone still smokes loudly and proudly. My friend and I concluded that it was the symbolism of a people who, if you try to tell them what to do, try to legislate how they behave, will by nature do exactly the opposite. Just like parents and kids.
I’ve never smoked, never touched a cigarette or pot to my lips; never taken any illegal drugs, indeed, never really been around any, never been offered any that I can remember. A sheltered life? Perhaps. Had I lived in the ancient north American culture that produced this cute little otter pipe, who knows, I probably would be like the MP MacGregor talks to on this podcast, an ardent defender of his smoking habit. (To his credit, he didn’t recommend that anyone start; but he’s not going to give up his pipe, it means too much to him by way of companionship, comfort, pastime.) The deal with the native American thing is that it was an important part of peace and other rituals; smoking was something sacred. This pipe was carved as a river otter, a charismatic and fascinating animal, one that may have been taken as a totem. And to smoke this pipe, you basically have to kiss the otter; it reminds me of Stephano’s oft-repeated line to Caliban in The Tempest, “Kiss the book, monster!” when he’s teaching him to drink from his bottle. A sweet custom, I’m sure...if you can get over the part where you’re giving yourself cancer, coating the inside of your body-temple with diseased filth and slime, killing yourself in an effort to look cool and fit in with losers.
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