SPG and Madhouse Karaoke
Last night was the night of Sex Power God, one of the two annual mostly-naked hookup parties.
I didn't go, again.
And again I became melancholic and troubled because,
I can't help but feel like there is something shameful in that there is some resistance there, inherent to my psyche, that I cannot overcome. The more powerful position would be one of complete indifference (as far as taboo sentiment goes) and mobility (willed movement across and over physical and psychological states.)
[Individualist's skepticism with projected "need for cognition": There was and is no collective dionysian spirit that could be tapped into in that place. That is only the illusion created by not having one's vision in focus. I intuit out of myself (rather than take in through sensation--perhaps not an option for me given my personality type) a party-blob-concept, rather than a more complex collection of individual-blob-concepts, each with personality and neurosis and making instantaneous but deliberate judgments, each actually disconnected from the collective id they are...never mind. I'm being ridiculous.]
All this thought and the resulting self-loathing doesn't bother as much these days, however. Because of my current status, there were other, overriding reasons not to get involved, for which I am very thankful. So the issue at hand was completely moot--these thoughts were all reflex, or habit, the result of years of conditioned thinking-like-that. Also, for the same reasons, the edge of these self doubts is blunted these days--they don't cut, they just punch a little then give up.
So what did I do instead?
I went to a Karaoke bar with the Madhouse.
(What? The very concept of which still sort of tickles.)
Given its nature, any sufficiently large random sample drawn from the distribution of people supplied by the madhouse has a very high likelihood of being "motley." Our was--I can't even begin to describe the personalities of the people who were there. But on top of that, the biases of the madhouse dished out another layer of incongruity.
Imagine a college campus, then imagine the subsection of that campus that is likely to join a program house themed around religious diversity. Then put them together in a bar.
I don't think we really "got it." The guy running the karaoke machine kept making announcements reminding the patrons generally but really us specifically that we were in a bar and therefore should be buying drinks. The handful of sodas and couple beers weren't cutting it for them. I was part of the problem--a lifetime of stubbornly refusing to form a habit of spontaneous consumption makes me generally unwelcome in any such establishment, I guess. (But I wasn't thirsty! And if I'm thirsty, shouldn't I just drink water, which is free and plentiful?)
But we did tear up the karaoke machine. The meek agnostic Mennonite and culturally-religious Ethnic Studies major started it off by delivering "Penny Lane." Jovial Jewish girls seem to have uniformly good voices, and busted out their showtunes and a capella-arranged Paul Simon covers. (With one mind I appreciate all this deeply; with the other I pull my hair out--how can anyone be so pure of cynicism, so unashamedly saccharine? And I switch minds again and think "That's the only way to live...") Eventually, other--the real people, the real patrons--began to appreciate us. Some of the madhouse residents went out to do "No Scrub," beginning in washed out college style. A blond woman at the bar shouted at them "Sing it like you mean it!" Some sort of rapport happened.
And the real people there were great to watch. The extroverts, the sensers, the feelers, the perceivers (bullshit?), the people that whose worlds don't include as many invisible strings tied to imagined abstractions (elitism? condescension?)? I don't understand how the lives of real people work, or how they think, or what their beliefs rest on. But they are amazing: just folks hanging out in a bar. (What are their values along all the other dimensions? Of course, the variance is too high to make a fair characterization. And of course, any one of them could be opened up and shown to be of irreducible (ha!) complexity--no matter what somebody says, I don't think anybody has every really known anybody else--especially not themselves--to their rock bottom. So it is too clumsy of me to allow myself to believe anything about those people--about any one person--by simply witness a mica-flake of aspects of one night of their infinitely rich lives.)
"Steve from the Bar" came out--a grey-haired guy with an enormous belly--and sang "Sweet Caroline." And all the real people, diehard Sox fans to a man, shouted the necessary "So good! So good! So good!" in unison like they had in a dozen Sox games before. It was really beautiful.
Just before we were about to leave, I got called up to sing: "Crazy Little Thing Called Love."
For all intents and purposes, I'm Freddy Mercury.
Although it will be clearer once I shave off this beard and go with only the 'stache for a while (pictures are promised!!). For now, people are saying I look like Trotsky.
It's nice--there are large classes of songs that I can listen to and sing nowadays that I can appreciate more fully because I can make them refer to something real.
-----------------
There is something bothering me--I know I promised ode_to_tapirs that I'd mention something in this post last night, but I'm completely blanking on what. What's wrong with me?!?!?
I didn't go, again.
And again I became melancholic and troubled because,
- While I know that if I were acting as a rational agent considering all of the pros and cons of going, I would decide that it wasn't worth the effort, I also realize that
- I am acting mostly on instinct--maybe some latent purity complex, or more likely just less well-motivated strong (superego?) inhibitions. There is a barrier between me and that incarnation of the dionysian that establishes itself first physically but would continue to contain me psychologically even if I were in the midst of it--I would still, I think, be detached.
I can't help but feel like there is something shameful in that there is some resistance there, inherent to my psyche, that I cannot overcome. The more powerful position would be one of complete indifference (as far as taboo sentiment goes) and mobility (willed movement across and over physical and psychological states.)
[Individualist's skepticism with projected "need for cognition": There was and is no collective dionysian spirit that could be tapped into in that place. That is only the illusion created by not having one's vision in focus. I intuit out of myself (rather than take in through sensation--perhaps not an option for me given my personality type) a party-blob-concept, rather than a more complex collection of individual-blob-concepts, each with personality and neurosis and making instantaneous but deliberate judgments, each actually disconnected from the collective id they are...never mind. I'm being ridiculous.]
All this thought and the resulting self-loathing doesn't bother as much these days, however. Because of my current status, there were other, overriding reasons not to get involved, for which I am very thankful. So the issue at hand was completely moot--these thoughts were all reflex, or habit, the result of years of conditioned thinking-like-that. Also, for the same reasons, the edge of these self doubts is blunted these days--they don't cut, they just punch a little then give up.
So what did I do instead?
I went to a Karaoke bar with the Madhouse.
(What? The very concept of which still sort of tickles.)
Given its nature, any sufficiently large random sample drawn from the distribution of people supplied by the madhouse has a very high likelihood of being "motley." Our was--I can't even begin to describe the personalities of the people who were there. But on top of that, the biases of the madhouse dished out another layer of incongruity.
Imagine a college campus, then imagine the subsection of that campus that is likely to join a program house themed around religious diversity. Then put them together in a bar.
I don't think we really "got it." The guy running the karaoke machine kept making announcements reminding the patrons generally but really us specifically that we were in a bar and therefore should be buying drinks. The handful of sodas and couple beers weren't cutting it for them. I was part of the problem--a lifetime of stubbornly refusing to form a habit of spontaneous consumption makes me generally unwelcome in any such establishment, I guess. (But I wasn't thirsty! And if I'm thirsty, shouldn't I just drink water, which is free and plentiful?)
But we did tear up the karaoke machine. The meek agnostic Mennonite and culturally-religious Ethnic Studies major started it off by delivering "Penny Lane." Jovial Jewish girls seem to have uniformly good voices, and busted out their showtunes and a capella-arranged Paul Simon covers. (With one mind I appreciate all this deeply; with the other I pull my hair out--how can anyone be so pure of cynicism, so unashamedly saccharine? And I switch minds again and think "That's the only way to live...") Eventually, other--the real people, the real patrons--began to appreciate us. Some of the madhouse residents went out to do "No Scrub," beginning in washed out college style. A blond woman at the bar shouted at them "Sing it like you mean it!" Some sort of rapport happened.
And the real people there were great to watch. The extroverts, the sensers, the feelers, the perceivers (bullshit?), the people that whose worlds don't include as many invisible strings tied to imagined abstractions (elitism? condescension?)? I don't understand how the lives of real people work, or how they think, or what their beliefs rest on. But they are amazing: just folks hanging out in a bar. (What are their values along all the other dimensions? Of course, the variance is too high to make a fair characterization. And of course, any one of them could be opened up and shown to be of irreducible (ha!) complexity--no matter what somebody says, I don't think anybody has every really known anybody else--especially not themselves--to their rock bottom. So it is too clumsy of me to allow myself to believe anything about those people--about any one person--by simply witness a mica-flake of aspects of one night of their infinitely rich lives.)
"Steve from the Bar" came out--a grey-haired guy with an enormous belly--and sang "Sweet Caroline." And all the real people, diehard Sox fans to a man, shouted the necessary "So good! So good! So good!" in unison like they had in a dozen Sox games before. It was really beautiful.
Just before we were about to leave, I got called up to sing: "Crazy Little Thing Called Love."
For all intents and purposes, I'm Freddy Mercury.
Although it will be clearer once I shave off this beard and go with only the 'stache for a while (pictures are promised!!). For now, people are saying I look like Trotsky.
It's nice--there are large classes of songs that I can listen to and sing nowadays that I can appreciate more fully because I can make them refer to something real.
-----------------
There is something bothering me--I know I promised ode_to_tapirs that I'd mention something in this post last night, but I'm completely blanking on what. What's wrong with me?!?!?