detail from hieronymus bosch's 'last judgement' (triptych, centre panel), 1482.
Apparently a 22 year old man is fighting for his life after being stabbed at T in the Park. Read about it here.
This just substantiates my denouncement of this event, I feel. On a far more ironic note, folks, at least Altamont fielded a better soundtrack. And it was free.
Police are searching for a man with "mullet style" hair in connection with the incident. I kid you not.
Mad dogs and (non) englishmen.
4 comments:
While I'm genuinely sorry to hear about this young man's plight, I have to say it comes as no surprise. I detest large crowds. You never know who the fuck you're rubbing shoulders with.
Then again, probably I'm just a cantankerous old fart...
Yeah, well, they say you are most likely to be murdered by a family member or someone you know personally.
I don't like crowds because I don't like crowds. My ex, Annie, is terrible at one on one conversation in an intimate setting. She will get up and start rearranging the furniture to avoid it. Put her in an enormous crowd and she lights up! She will make friends with everyone for fifty feet around her. Within ten minutes she will have a couple of perfect strangers fixing her car while their wives cook dinner for her and April. The next day she will not remember any of their names.
My oldest friend, Bob, has a little more depth to him, but he just really likes people. He's perfectly at ease in an enormous crowd. Dump him in a crowd and in a few minutes he will have made friends with all of the coolest people there and half of the best looking women. There's even a good chance he'll get phone numbers of various people and get together with them later to see if they can make friends. I have no idea how he does it.
Personally, I feel extremely anxious and unhappy in a crowd of any size at all. Drinking used to help, but I was just as likely to make a public fool of myself and still have a lousy time. Now, I go into a crowd if there's a reason to be there. If there's some band I want to hear, thing I want to see or person I want to meet. I expect to be uncomfortable and I think a long time before I go.
The last really good time I had in a crowd was maybe 35 years ago at the Ann Arbor blues and jazz festival. I had been drinking hard and steady for about three days when Sun Ra came on to close the festival. I tell you, I was transported. I was instantly struck sober by Ra's power. I walked out of the festival in a straight line and feeling just fine.
Unfortunately, much of the rest is a blur. I know I saw Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, Freddie King, but mostly I remember knowing that I saw them. I don't really remember their performance. Then again, it was a long time ago.
I used to get paid to go to a lot of football games. American football. I didn't like being in the middle of eighty thousand people, but I really didn't mind. I was working.
I should also say that Annie, the ex, has an absolute horror of being alone or in a very small group in the middle of nowhere. I loosen up out in the wilderness, but Annie tends to get rigid like I do in a crowd. Any wonder that we're divorced? The point though is that we are the way we are and shouldn't feel compelled to justify it, or blame it on other people.
Well, I don't mean to suggest I dislike crowds merely because there's a statistically higher chance of being assaulted with a deadly weapon. The converse is true, as you rightly point out.
I don't like crowds because I mistrust the pack mentality.
Crowds are either meekly shepherded and whipped into submission or they happily coalesce into a lynching party.
You can smell the fear and self-loathing. The yearning to relinquish individual identity.
It makes me break out in hives.
Put me in a group of any size, and I immediately begin to agitate ; panic ; or slip into a narcoleptic trance.
As for Sun Ra. He is one hip motherfucker.
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