Pigs in Zen: Getting Hooked on Jane's Addiction

Dear Gen Xer,

Jane’s Addiction is a divisive band. Pretty much you love them or hate them. But this isn’t about the band per se. This is about songs being gateway drugs. This is about living like a Pig in Zen.

Get Up!

I’d spent my first week at university depending on the kindness of friends, crashing on their filthy couches until I secured a room on campus. When I finally did one night, I greeted my new roommate, excused myself, and collapsed in bed for some much needed sleep.

I was cruising down an endless highway, hair whipping freely in the crackling wind, when all of a sudden I heard:

Get up!

My eyes squeaked open like a rusty door. Who the hell was barking orders? And who was thumping on their guitar?

Ba-bump, ba-bump; Ba-bump, ba-bump.

I hoped for a moment that I was still dreaming, that the noise was but a segue into a different dream, one that starred Susanna Hoffs.

But I wasn’t dreaming. I was in my dorm. The music was coming from next door.

I squinted across the room. My roommate was gone. I checked the alarm clock that I’d unpacked. It was 8:16 a.m. I remember the time because 816 was the number of the apartment I’d been staying at. Not that I gave a shit about the coincidence. When you’re a student, 8:16 is the crack of dawn.

Annoyed but resigned, I lay back in bed and listened to some lunatic sing about a pig. How the pig goes in the mud. How the pig is unashamed. Pigs in Zen. Pig’s in Zen.

If this is Zen, I remember thinking, I’d rather be a Mormon.

A few moments later, the music went off. Seconds after that, a knock on the door. I got out of bed and answered the door and found a tall and gangly guy standing at the threshold. We stared at each other in confusion.

“Where’s Johnny?” the guy asked, meaning my roommate.

“I don’t know,” I said. “He was here when I went to bed.”

The gangly guy nodded, satisfied with my answer. “I’m S.,” he said. “You up for pancakes?”

Pigs in Zen

It’s hard to overstate the significance of that day. And not just because the pancakes were tasty. S. and I learned we had a lot in common. The same sense of humor. The same taste in film. Then we started talking music. I was well-schooled in classic rock, and knew my Whodini from my Run DMC. But S. was into what we used to call ‘alternative music’.

We went back to his room and he showed me his CDs – Primus, Kyuss, Revolting Cocks – all these bands I’d never heard of. I asked S. about the song he’d played that morning. S. said it was by a band called Jane’s Addiction. He put on their album ‘Nothing’s Shocking’. It blew my 19-year-old mind to pieces.

"I read the Gita, I read Black Magic Crowley, the Bible, anything I could get my hands on. If you want to talk about reaching nirvana, reaching Zen, well, the pig is closer than we are because the pig doesn't have material possessions. He fucks when he wants to, he eats when he's hungry, and he sleeps when he's tired. That's the whole point of Zen. That's exactly what pigs do... so, 'Pig’s in Zen.'" – Perry Farrell

That’s pretty much how S. and I rolled that year. We drank and ate and slept when we wanted. The only material possessions we needed were our tapes and our CDs.

We spent countless nights listening to music. We’d pound our beers and smoke some weed and try to make sense of the fucked up world. S. would usually paint while we listened. Sometimes I’d scribble in a notebook I kept. S. would teach me about Geiger and Hewlett. I’d turn him on to Auster and DeLillo. On and on we went all year, drinking and thinking until the piggies passed out.

S. got into an accident the following year. He banged his head when he fell off his bike and never felt right after that. S. complained of headaches and struggled to concentrate. This affected his general demeanor, which swung from pleasant to volatile. He even got aggressive with me one night when he thought I’d stolen his copy of Pretty Hate Machine.

A couple of months into our second year, S. dropped out of university and moved back home to live with his parents. I tried to call him a couple of times but S. was never home. At least that’s what his mother said.

It was a sad and sudden end to a flourishing brotherhood. We’d bonded without warning and lost touch the same way. Even worse, I never got to tell S. how much his company had meant to me; how spending time with him had exposed me to art I may never have found on my own; art that continues to influence me today.

Leave a message, I’ll call you back

Many years later, I received a call from my father. “Do you know a guy named S.?” he asked. He added S.’s surname to clarify.

I remember being shocked at hearing the name. “Sure,” I said. “We went to school together.”

Turns out S. had wound up in Toronto. He’d been riding his bike around the Danforth when he saw a sign with my father’s name. S. had walked into my father’s business and asked if he happened to be related to me.

There was a vague sense of pride in my father’s voice: “He said you told him something he’s never forgotten. He asked you one time if he should try to be an artist. Apparently you said: ‘That depends. Do you want to see your signature at the bottom of a house or at the bottom of a painting?’”

I couldn’t recall the conversation, though it sounded like a smartass thing I’d say.

“He asked me to thank you,” my father said. “He does animation for a studio now. He gave me his number and he wants you to call him next time you’re in town.”

A year or so later, I returned to Toronto for a family visit and decided to give S. a call. I was eager to hear his voice again. Curious to learn what he was listening to. But S.’s number was out of service.

I still haven’t managed to track S. down. His name’s about as common as ‘John Smith’. Maybe we’ll reunite one day, or maybe we never will. But with that visit to my father, S. let me know that our time together hadn’t been one-sided. I’d had an influence on his life as well. And that made me happier than a Pig in Zen.

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