Acid for the Children: A Memoir

by Flea

The greatest fault of humankind belongs to those who think their view of what’s real is the only truth.

On that day I began a lifelong fascination with the discovery of a new culture. It’s the mundane things that intrigue me—seeing someone walking down the street with weird hair and ill-fitting pants, or the way a shopkeeper sells me a can of soda. I love it; I love how we are all the same, eating, pooping, fucking, and sleeping; yet the way we feel and act is profoundly different from place to place. I’m driven to try and understand the hidden differences in what motivates us, to crack the code. I’m amazed when I experience humans living in different rhythms.

The trumpet, an incredible brass invention, is the king of instruments. This wild machine, its curved pipes, valves, and flowering bell. A puzzle of cold metal and grease, but when placed against the lips of a human being, and love is blown into it, it becomes warm and alive, a conduit for god, a spokesman for the divine. The more love in, the more warmth out, its finger-propelled pistons changing the shape and speed of the rainbows of curved air blown through its passageways. The expansion and contraction of lip muscles a feat of strength.

While reading, all my confusion and hurt dissolved, and when I reentered reality, I was a little bit better of a person, a little bit more capable of learning from my missteps.