Look On details a period of John’s life that he has described as “a struggle” (Broken Record With Rick Rubin, October 2022); a time when he was “a dying body without a soul” (Viva Zwei, 2001). When John finally quit heroin after around 5-6 years of addiction, he lost the synesthesia/feeling of creativity and connection with music he had been trying to sustain with drugs. By his own words, nobody seemed to enjoy being with him—people looked at him with pity in their eyes, friends wouldn’t laugh at the jokes that had been working before—so he retreated into a state of depression. Throughout 1997, John occasionally would indulge in speed and crack binges. Near the end of that year, however, he did “whatever he want[ed]” and began to experience extreme psychosis. John stated that he would talk to hallucinations of Marcel Duchamp, Flea and Clara, Perry Farrel, and others for hours at a time, only realizing they hadn’t truly been in his house when he called them later and was met with confusion (Broken Record With Rick Rubin, October 2022). This information is crucial in understanding the environment and state of mind John is describing in this song.

Quote from Q 157 (October 1999):

When I was 27 I had a year of not feeling like myself, a year of feeling like I was an impostor who didn’t deserve to be called John Frusciante. It was the worst year of my life. But it ended really good. Although the rest of the world still wanted nothing to do with me I was happy within myself through dancing and through writing in notebooks and playing guitar. I was trying to record songs, but never finishing any – and doing whatever I wanted to do as far as the drugs go. I was smoking crack all day long, shooting heroin, shooting cocaine, drinking wine, taking valium. I was this close to killing myself. If I had had a gun I definitely would have killed myself. But when I was going extremely fast in my head and feeling I was about to die I would get these warnings from spirits saying, ‘You don’t want to die now.’ I can see them, it was like they were in my room. And I got back in touch with the spirit that is John Frusciante, knew that I was who I am and who I’d always been and I didn’t feel like an impostor any more.

If his interview with Rick Rubin is to be believed, the portion in the middle about “smoking crack all day long…” may refer to the “indulgences” he claimed to partake in near the end of the year after he first quit heroin.