For every action in the world, there is an equal and opposite reaction, as according to Isaac Newton’s third law of motion. What are the laws of consciousness? And when an atrocity is committed, is it the victory of unconsciousness over consciousness, like darkness over light? It’s control succumbing to loss of control, the consciousness being saturated by noxious chemicals in the brain, hormones, mental and emotional gunpowder.
When you cruise into my hometown from the north, on one of the main drags, you come to a church, on the right, after you pass down a small hill. This is the church to which my mom was take me, when I was little, and where I was briefly a member of the “youth group,” generally, an hourlong ping-pong and toilet-paper-hockey (yes) session, once a week.
It’s a place with which I associate a lot of memories from my early adolescence, many of which are good. It’s a place where I met some undeniably good people, like our youth group instructor, who took us a retreat to Camp Eberhart, one time. And it’s a place associated with other things, as well — things which made the local and even national news.
It’s a place at which some people succumbed to chemical warping of the consciousness and gave in to base desires. An atrocity like the ones outlined in the accusations and news reports is a powerful thing. I think of it, sometimes, and the dirtiness, the desperation, the incredible inferiority complex, and need, associated with and rampant within my hometown. And I get a feeling, like a dark purple vapor, a sordid mechanism rising from the church where we’d go when I was growing up.
In The Bacchae, an ancient Greek play rendered most famously by Euripides, Dionysus, the god of wine, defeats the impious king of Thebes, Pentheus, with a series of metamorphoses, and an incredible, inhuman level of guile and adaptability. According to transgender feminist scholar Camille Paglia, then, the Apollonian/Dionysian binary applies to rock and roll, as well as morality and politics, with the Apollonian hemisphere represented by things that are purposeful and firm, like buildings and rules to make our society better. The Dionysian hemisphere, then, would refer to polymorphous, dark, uncertain or liquid things — dreams, if nothing else.
“Number 9 Dream” came to John Lennon in a dream, according to Wikipedia, and it was transposed from the dream by the artist with such directness, apparently, that Lennon even remarked it was done with “no inspiration,” according to the article. This is the song that, to me, runs the closing credits on the Little Flower Church scandal. It does not lash out against the reality of the situation. It does not attempt to change it, especially since it’s not even a deliberate phenomenon on the part of the artist, according to direct accounts. Having come from a dream, it’s essentially a supernatural force, like a Dionysian ballad of healing, for all who were involved in, or nearly involved in, the events that took place at Little Flower church. Reality, once bound to rigid, anatomically uniform humans, devolves into “Two spirits dancing so slow”; to then be captioned by a set of choruses completely subsumed in gibberish. And we move on, from the unconscionable, through song. Life is rhythm, again, life is melodies, and how this informs our consciousnesses and our behaviors represents refreshing an email account, or a web screen, one which had grown malodorous and repugnant, without the proper supervision of rock and roll.
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