Telephone
Sometimes I wonder how myths are made. If we get the full story from the wonders of history or if its an extensive millennia long game of…
Sometimes I wonder how myths are made. I question if we get the full story from the wonders of history or if its an extensive millennia long game of telephone.
A few weeks ago I went out to see a concert at Britt Festival. Britt is this amazing physical space out in Jacksonville, Oregon, a natural amphitheater set on a hill in a rustic old town. It’s been a venue for years and years for musicians to play from the Britt Symphony Orchestra to the Psychedelic Furs. Each summer there is a long season of music, performance, comedy, and thousands of people gather on the hillside to lounge, rock out, relax under the stars, and listen to wild strains of musical magic float through the air.
The lighting is wonderful, the picture above doesn’t do it justice. You’ll see that there is a section close up to the stage. For more sedate bands, people sit in their camping chairs, but on this night (one where famed band X opened for the Furs) it was a mini-mosh pit of sorts. Kind of a nostalgic gentle mosh pit, really, as the bands began at 7:15 (hardly a punk rock time to start playing), and the floor was occupied by Gen X and young Boomer adults and their Zoomer progeny (newly discovering the delights of vintage goth/punk/rock).
Still, when the lights were fully on and the sun was fully down, the band performed with fervor. I sat far back on the lawn, remember when I’d seen the Furs last-this was back in 1984 in Athens, GA at Legion Field and I think the tickets cost $3.00 at the door. I was young then, as were my friends. It was a wild free and prophetic night. Probably one of my last in that 15-year-old-innocent-to-the-world’s-issues kind of ways. We just ran around and danced and breathed in the air and felt exceptionally cool in our vintage thrift store gear. It was sweet.
At Britt, so many years later, Richard Butler, lead singer of the Furs, entertained the crowd like a royal elder Dionysian figure. He waved his arms gracefully and shook his ass. He was having a great time and so was the crowd.
Crowd energy is amazing. It’s real. Crowds can be swept up into a peaceful lull, a joyous lust, or a terrible violence depending on the speakers who wield that energy. It’s a life of its own, crowd energy as anyone who has spent time in a choir or moshpit or riot will tell you.
So as I sat back, on the hill, and watched the lights and strobes and listened to the ancient 80’s hymns of the Furs, I naturally thought about Jesus.
I wondered if maybe the Wedding at Caanan, or the times of Loaves and Fishes might have been like rock shows. Water into wine? Vast celebrations? Taking one small song (or food) and turning it into a full throated chorus from the crowd? And everyone there from those close up to those way in the back would then sink (or rise up depending on the vibe) into that energy and FEEL things that only Jesus (or the rock god) could share.
Jesus Christ Superstar and all that.
And it’s a game then over the decades, of telephone. Because did he really play Pretty in Pink? Did he write that before the film or for the film? Is he still married? Love is the main commandment? What? Who said what? Go look up the lyrics. Jesus or Richard?
Imagine the centuries of interpretation of one man’s words. To hold a conservative reading means one thing, a progressive entirely another.
I work at an utterly amazing place that produces Shakespeare. Shakespeare was and is kind of a rock star. I believe he was rowdy, bawdy, political, rude, probably both egotistical and insecure, brilliant with the current zeitgeist and prophetic enough so that his words? Wind up being this universal template.
You can take his plays and set them ANYWHERE and it will work.
And people fight about his words and meanings in similar ways to how religious texts are fought over. What game of telephone have we played over the past 400-some years. What would he think of us all? Shakespeare would probably laugh and write a dirty sonnet about humanity’s worship of the wrong people. What would Jesus think of us all?
I mean no disrespect or heresy. I actually love Jesus (the concept of him at least if not the way things have played out) and I love Shakespeare. I love that human beings need Rock Gods and we need wild catharsis and we need communal ritual where we enter into crowd energy and FEEL.
At the same time? I’m deeply suspicious of gurus. Of charismatic leaders. Of those who might wield our innocent energy into something darker and crueler. That’s the risk of submitting into that big group dynamic. Will you diffuse your ego-boundaries safely and with mature and noble guidance, so that you enter the storm and then remain on the outside as you, but with more of you somehow, or will you get sucked up into…something bad.
So that’s what I thought of as I sat on the lawn of Britt until I gave into the music for a while and lost myself. I thought about all this later though. That’s what I do.
I’ve had my hand at facilitating and hosting crowd energy. I love it. It’s an absolutely thrilling feeling to be on a stage and to work my voice or body in a way that gets reactions. I’ve done this in comedy, storytelling, and at political rallies. Its addictive though. And it’s dangerous in the wrong hands, and I mean, any hands can be the wrong hands. The older I get the more I know we need that human connection and catharsis and the more worried I become that it always turns into something that no one can control.
I feel as if we are, culturally and perhaps globally, in the grip of a particular kind of crowd force. Authoritarianism. Not just one dark rock star leading it but many, in many places and in many ways. On stage and television? Sure. Online in social media? Yes. This is a new way to do that work.
Nothing feels innocent now. I know how privileged that makes me to feel it now. But I feel it and I worry it’s going to be a long period of heavy, dark magic. I have this initial instinct to run towards rationalism. But I don’t sense that is working.
I wonder if the only way out of it is with our own acceptance of that shadow (for our culture never had truly done its shadow work and that makes us susceptible to the darker forces-not doing the shadow work makes us culturally weak but also individuals who do not extend into that journey can be susceptible to cultic coercion), and creating as many glorious, loving, light fantastical communal experience in which we each get a turn to embody the peace the love the dionysian the lamb the lion the shakespearean the words that our prophets and preachers have shared with us over centuries that love is the only commandment, that we can and should speak truth to power, we absolutely should shake our ass, and we should be WITH each other in and truly with ourselves. Core. Boundaries. Choirs. Rock Shows.
We can diffuse our ego boundaries and come out stronger and more mature instead of under the grip of autocratic fervor. I hope.
Or maybe I’m just weird.
It was a fantastic Rock Show night though, and the shows the theatre I work at are filled with glory. I cling to that.
What do you think? What rituals will help us save ourselves from ourselves?