|
|
The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Sarah Bruner
Last week I was obsessed with the eclipse that occurred four days ago. Because we didn't get to see it here in Hawaii, I found myself surfing all over the internet, reading up on it, hoping to find an Eclipse Cam somewhere. Along the way, I read that the eclipse coincided with an unprecedented astrological formation in which a series of planets are aligned to form a cross. Mars in Scorpio will be opposite from Saturn in Taurus, creating one line, and the and moon in Leo will be opposite from Uranus in Aquarius to the other line of the cross.
That said, I'm not a big believer in astrology. However, I do know that this alignment was being touted by astrologers and prophets as a significant cosmic event; others said it was related to Nostradumus' end of the world prophecies. I didn't necessarily believe that August 11th was to be Judgement Day, but I am a believer in many forms of divination and even self-fulfilling prophecies. I'll even admit to being swept up in much of the cosmic symbology of the past few months, and even the approaching millennium new year's. I have no idea what will happen, but I believe that anything is possible. I also believe in angels. I even believe that universal energies can shift, causing human consciousness to shift along with it.
No, I haven't been reading Shirley McClain books, ok? I realize it might sound like some wretched new age stew of hocus pocus. But even if it is, I believe that humans have the capacity to find meaning and healing in more abstract and less significant phenomenon than eclipses and astrological alignments. There can be spiritual awareness and profound cosmic connections during a walk in the park, great sex, smiling at a stranger, or listening to a powerful musical jam as it segues into your favorite song. It's not all LSD and Nostradamus and Zen meditation, at least not in my world. Sometimes all you need to do is notice, which is often the hardest part.
I'm currently reading a book by Salman Rushdie entitled The Ground Beneath Her Feet, from which I ripped off the theme of this new column. It is possibly the best book I've ever read. It's a retelling of the Orpheus myth, but set in modern times. Instead of gods and goddesses, the main characters are world famous rock 'n' roll stars.
In the Greek myth, Orpheus was a part-divine musician who married Eurydice. She died young, having been torn to pieces by the bacchantes. Orpheus was so distraught that he braved the journey to the underworld to try to use his music to convince the powers that be that he should have her back. His music was so beautiful that they agreed he could take her, but on one condition: On their way back up to the world of the living, she was to walk behind Orpheus, and he was not to look back at her until they both stepped up out of the underworld. But just as they got up to the surface, he looked at her one step too soon. The earth closed around her, and he lost her forever.
Rushdie takes this fable and transforms it into a story about the links between music and spirituality, about cosmic connections found between people through song, about the epic power of music, which many of us have experienced first hand. It's also about the uncertainty of the world, about prophecy and myth, about cracks that appear in the fabric of reality.
Yes, of course! We say to ourselves. We love this stuff! Isn't that why we go on tour?
As I sat reading this book the night before the eclipse, I was primed when the synchronicities began to appear brazenly before my eyes. I happened across this quotation, which someone else [1] had pointed out, that originally got me interested in reading the book:
Suppose that it's only when you dare to let go that your real life begins? When you're whirling free of the mothership, when you cut your ropes, slip your chain, step off the map, go absent without leave, scram, vamoose, whatever: suppose that it's then, and only then, that you're actually free to act! To lead the life nobody tells you how to live, or when, or why... Suppose you've got to go through the feeling of being lost, into the and beyond; you've got to accept the loneliness, the wild panic of losing your moorings, the vertiginous terror of the horizon spinning round and round like the edge of a coin tossed in the air.I put the book down and went to get a drink of water in the bathroom. In the mirror, I noticed my pupils were dilated, as if the book had somehow dosed me, and the words themselves were psychedelic stimuli. I realized that part of me secretly wished that it really was the end of the world. It would have been the biggest mind fuck of all, astonishing even the most devoted and believing prophets of doom. Yet it occurred to me that the real end of the world wouldn't happen that way. It's almost too orderly, too symbolic, too easily predicted. Where is the chaos? The wild panic? The vertiginous terror? It seemed that if there ever is going to be an end of the world, it wouldn't be during an eclipse, or astrological alignment, or even at the turn of the millennium. It will be a completely arbitrary event that nobody would predict. We would all be lost, spinning into the beyond on a random Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m. Best of all, the end of the world doesn't necessarily need to be all gloom and doom. Instead, "suppose that it's only when you dare to let go that your real life begins?"
I slept soundly that night. Of course, I was disappointed the next morning. I still was hoping to wake up to the apocalypse, but it turned out to be just another warm, sunny, peaceful day in Hawaii. I put Dick's Picks Volume II into my CD changer first thing, and lost myself in the chaos of Dark Star. It was sort of like the end of the world, only way better.
---
[1] Thanks to Emily Bristor for introducing me to Salman Rushdie's work and for being the catalyst.
Sarah Bruner is a writer, researcher, and webmaster living in Honolulu, Hawaii.
She also manages the Chicks With Tape Decks mailing list.This column is dedicated to the memory of Dick Latvala.
August Issue: Home | Editors | Features | Columns | Photos | Regional | New Groove
Road Trip | Tour Journal | Venue | Levels | Ghosts | Homegrown | Inaudible | CDs | Charts
JamBands.Com is published on the 15th of every month. Submissions are due ten days earlier on the fifth of each month. Please contact the specific editor for the section you are interested in contributing to. For general content comments, please e-mail jambands@jambands.com. For all technical web site related issues, please contact Sarah Bruner or David Steinberg