![]() It cannot happen in isolation to one individual, but is produced, somehow, by the convergence of many people together in the same place. The most important part of catharsis, the thing that makes catharsis catharsis, is that it requires a sociality in order to be born. ![]() In other words, it’s a catharsis, which is to say, a communal alchemy-transcendent, transformative, pure magic-with emphasis on the communal. Unlike a black hole, though, which absorbs everything that comes too close to it, and ultimately negates it, the force of the mosh pit ripples outward from its core, and, rather than a negation, it amplifies, intensity begetting intensity. This produces a set of physical laws that push into something supernatural: the people in the pit are transfigured from solid units of individual mass into a singular body of surging liquid. Instead, the pit obeys a sort of metaphysical law that can’t be seen but which permeates the material plane with a numinous power. The pit is like a black hole, or a quantum anomaly, or the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz: it’s a vortex of forces that don’t obey the physical laws we earthlings are bound to. Will the person crash down on their head, won’t the crowd crush them?īut questions of gravity have no place in a mosh pit. The camera cuts away as the legs start to fall over, and you worry what will happen next. It’s hard to watch this video and not want to be there, in the midst of all those bodies transforming into that slippery electric elixir that only happens in really mythical pits. One, two, three! A comment on the YouTube video says, “You know you are at a great concert when the audience is rocking upside down!” The legs, and the person to whom they belong, are held up by the crowd, which heaves and swirls like an agitated sea. As though the person were pumping their fists in time with the beat, both of their legs strike the air in bursts. The pelvis is where the head and shoulders should be. “It is amusing and interesting to know that when the jazzband came into existence everyone said to his friends: ‘Something crazy has come into society.’”Īt 03:14 in the video of Lightning Bolt at the 2014 TACIOCLUB festival in Japan, a pair of legs rises above the crowd and kicks at the sky. ![]() The Mysticism of Mosh Pits, Or, The Mess of Sociality, Or, Have You Ever Seen Lightning Bolt Live? ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |