"blow (one's own/someone else's) mind" (with implications for cognitive science)

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:39 PM -0500 12/21/04, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>On Tue, Dec 21, 2004 at 11:37:13AM -0800, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>>  On Dec 21, 2004, at 9:29 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>
>>  >...I've wondered about that.  The first conjunct ("she blew my nose")
>>  >I've always assumed is an obvious reference to coke, but I was never
>>  >sure about the mind--could be taken either way, or as a simple
>>  >metaphor (she caused me to blow my mind, in an unspecified way)...
>>
>>  haven't we discussed this before?  or maybe that was on OUTiL or
>>  soc.motss or something...
>>
>>  in any case, my interpretation always was that this was a nose/penis
>>  figure, and that the mind-blowing was a simple metaphor.
>
>And I seem to be the one person who's always taken this as
>literal all the way--it never occurred to me that "blew my
>nose" was either a cocaine or a fellatio reference; I thought
>it meant just that--"she helped me blow my nose, because she
>was motherly, or solicitous of me when I was sick". As for
>"blew my mind", I also went for the simple metaphor--"she did
>(unspecified) sexual things that were mind-blowing".
>
>Jesse Sheidlower, Prude of ADS-L
>OED

Well, the "did (unspecified) sexual things that were mind-blowing"
reading isn't entirely prudish, and in fact my gloss for the second
conjunct is even more general.  I could be wrong about the coke
reading on the first one, but that was always my guess.  There's
probably a variety of authorized and unauthorized close readings of
Stones lyrics, on the web and between the sheets...um, covers, that
would inform our speculation on this point, or misinform it.

Larry