Into the Unknown

I've always been highly obsessed with the nature of consciousness and existence, as evidenced by my most recent post on PhillyWriters:
On Carl Jung, the Unconscious Mind, Archetypes, and Meditation

I think it all began when I was 4 years old and my mother allowed me to watch Poltergeist. After that, I'd developed a bit of a preoccupation with the supernatural -- I'd listen to the static on the TV set, I'd call out "Carol Ann". I'd try to talk to God, to see heaven, to read people's minds, to move objects across the room, etc., etc. When I realized I could do none of those things, I became very frustrated.

I grew up as a Catholic girl. After my First Communion, my fellow 2nd graders and I were required to attend confession for the first time. There was no private booths at our church or anything like that -- you had to sit face-to-face with the priest, and believe me, he was scary. He was about 100 hundred years old and had bad breath and acid reflux. I didn't want to tell him anything. I didn't even want to look at him.

A few weeks before First Communion, I stole a pencil from my classmate Julio's desk. This wasn't an ordinary pencil. This was a Clowny. It was some kind of crayon with multiple colors in it. You could blend all the colors together or use only one color at a time. My mother wouldn't buy me one -- she never bought me anything cool -- so when I saw it just sitting there in Julio's desk I knew I HAD to have it.

And of course, being the good little God-fearing mongrel I was, I was wracked with guilt. I told my mother, and asked her if I needed to tell the priest at confession. I was hoping she'd say no -- that telling her was all the confession I needed -- but alas, she said yes. I was freaking out.

When the day came, and I sat before him -- Father Bob, I think -- I was so ashamed. He asked me if I had anything to confess I said, "Um. I fight with my brother. I call him a jerk sometimes. I said "hell" the other day. And... um... I stole a Clowny."

He just nodded and said, "Hmmm-mmmm... Okay... Say two Hail Marys and one Our Father."

I ran the hell out of there (oops, I mean "heck"). I was so relieved! I couldn't believe I'd gotten off so easily after having done such a terrible thing.

I returned to the pews and sat next to my friends Rose and Paul who had already gone into confession. They were kneeling and praying.

"Whadja get?" I asked my friend Rose.
"Two Hail Marys and an Our Father."
"Me, too," I said, perplexed. "How 'bout you?" I'd asked my friend Paul.
"Same," he said. "So did Tony." I turned around and Tony was in the pew behind me. He nodded.

I didn't know what to make of any of this. Either Rose, Paul, and Tony had sinned just as badly as I did, or stealing wasn't too severe of a sin.

What did this mean? Were we all really bad kids? If so, the next time we did something bad, all we needed to do was confess, and we could start from scratch again. A clean slate.

I'm still confused about the whole thing.

Creative Collaboration

Last night Paul and I went to our friend Emily’s apartment for dinner, which is on 8th street in the Italian Market region of Philadelphia, one block up from the flashing and garish cheese steak extravaganza of Pat’s and Geno’s. Emily is Vinny’s girlfriend. Vinny is Paul’s friend from Penn. There were 5 other people there, too – one friend of Paul’s and Vinny’s, and the rest, friends of Emily.

The night began normally. Emily served an elaborate Mediterranean spread of hummus, babaganoush, pita, olives, couscous, pine nuts, etc. – all vegetarian, all bought fresh from the local markets. Emily, in fact, was my inadvertent inspiration for becoming vegetarian. I had been kicking around the idea for some time, and when she told me that she’d been a vegetarian since she was 12 years old, I looked her over, thought, “She seems healthy enough,” and figured I might as well try it out. I’ve been meatless for about 3 months now, with just one exception: Beth’s fabulous (but ultimately problematic for my gastrointestinal tract) New Orleans style gumbo.

We were sitting around eating, having nice conversation, getting wasted (I’ll leave it at that) when someone suggested that Emily play her accordion. She resisted a bit, but after consistent encouragement from the group, she agreed to play. She handed this guy Dan a violin with only three strings, she handed me a tambourine, and she handed Paul a bongo. She began playing some Yiddish tunes. (I think they were Yiddish, but maybe I only thought that since she’d occasionally yell out “Oy!”) Dan plucked the violin, Paul chose not to play the bongo, and I shamelessly rattled the tambourine irregularly. I was trying hard to keep time, really. I was just too fucked up to follow along.

For the next song, Dan handed me the violin and took the tambourine. I figured he wanted to keep time since I was probably confusing Emily.

“I don’t know how to play the violin!” I said.

“Neither do I,” he said.

“Oh yeah, good point.”

(Well, not really – he is a post doc in the Music department at Penn, and though he doesn’t play violin, I imagine he’d be far more adept at picking up a new instrument than I would be.)

They started a new song, so I experimented with the bow on the strings. At first, I made some really awful, screeching sounds, but eventually, I found some real notes. I had no idea how to find notes that would fit in with Emily’s tune, so I just kept moving the bow across the strings until I found a few that sounded okay. I settled on three notes – notes that didn’t necessarily fit in with the tune, but they were clear notes nonetheless – and I would move the bow from note to note to the beat of the song, which miraculously, I was able to hold this time around. At some point during the song, during my bow’s journey across the strings, I found a note that fit in precisely with one of Emily’s chords, the series of notes that wheezed as she pumped the accordion in and out. So I held that note and moved the bow back and forth in time until the end of the song.

What a cosmic event! A music explosion! At least that’s how it felt. Like I said, I was really intoxicated.

I’ve only had one experience like this before. It was back in college. I had been at a party and a group of people, most of which I didn’t know, grabbed pots and pans and utensils and held some kind of impromptu percussion concert. Again, substances were involved. But back then, I was too shy to pick up a pot or pan, too shy to draw attention to myself rhythmically. Now, I suppose I just don’t care.

I’ve decided it’s not worth feeling self-conscious about anything anymore. For example, I used to feel really self-conscious dancing in public. But at Aimee’s recent Halloween party, Neda, a teetotaler, started dancing in the middle of the living room by herself, with absolutely no inhibitions, and I figured, “What the hell, why not?” I joined her, and had tons of fun that night, too.

There’s something so pure, so expressive about music, whether it’s through singing or dancing or playing a musical instrument. You feel this when you’re alone, like when you’re singing in the shower or in your car, or when you’re tapping your foot along with a song on the radio. But these few times I’ve been musical with other people, the feeling of purity just seems so much more intense, so much more meaningful than it would if I were in private, as if the collective feeling of joy contributes to my own via a feedback loop, building into something larger than it would if I were left to my own devices.

My Quaker co-worker says the same thing about “silent worship.” I told him how I’ve been meditating lately, and how I’m occasionally filled with a wonderful, (seemingly) transcendent feeling of calm. He insists that the feeling I describe would be far more powerful if I experienced it with a group of people seeking that same feeling. I wonder if there’s truth to that. Given this recent musical experience, I think it could be true.

I’m just not interested in being Christian. I think I’d rather “group meditate” with people I already know well, rather then join a religious group, go through the process of meeting a whole bunch of new people, and “worshipping silently” with them.

I dunno. I guess I’m just really sold on communal projects lately. Like the group storytelling project on PhillyWriters. Now, we’ve hardly created anything profound, but it’s certainly fun checking the site each day to see which new twist the newest contributor will add.

Rebecca said in passing once that we should do a group digital art project. We could all contribute, inspired by a certain theme, and I could host the “opening” at my house. It would be a blast, I’m sure.

And if Emily brought her accordion, who knows what might happen?