Red-Dirt Marijuana by Terry Southern

“Down this sidewalk, half a block in each direction, were the avenues where ten thousand buses, trucks and taxis were caught up in a writhing fantasy of noise and cross-purpose motion, the exposed segment of a tortured mechanical nerve, blindly, frantically threading the city. The sound seemed to funnel itself down the street from both ways and into this gap between the buildings, as into some huge amplifier, where, as a backdrop to the chorale of the two boys at war, the vicious timpano, and the quaking roar of the passing elevated, it made for a pure Bartokean nightmare of dissonance, while across the scene the dead light of afternoon seeped, in eerie, dismal shafts—winter light in a cathedral of dirty windows.”
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“In an age gone stale through the complex of bureaucratic interdependencies, with its tedious labyrinth of technical specializations, each contingent upon the next, and all aimed to converge in a single totality of meaning, it is a refreshing moment indeed when one comes across an area of human endeavor absolutely sufficient unto itself, pure and free, no strings attached—the cherished and almost forgotten l’art pour l’art. Such is the work being carried forward now at the Dixie National Baton Twirling Institute, down at the campus of Ole Miss—a visit to which is well worthwhile these days, if one can keep one’s wits about.”

-Terry Southern