The Guerilla War
Thursday November 23rd, 2000 @ 8:49 PM
Filed under: Everything, Tales Told Well
I looked at Tommy before it happened. He was illuminated in the soft glow of red floodlights. It gave him the appearance of glorification, as though he were about to be raptured off to a holy place. The rest of the room was dark but for the neon of an occasional beer light. Then I noticed that no one was talking. Silence is a strange atmosphere in a dance hall. They just sat and stared, a large audience in a small room, gazing and waiting, locked in anticipation, having been seduced by the music.
I looked down at my pocket watch: twelve twenty-four. The distance between its tick and tock, which I only imagined I heard, had slowed deliberately and dramatically: TICK…TOCK…TICK…TOCK…and still no one moved or spoke. I could feel it coming as one senses the advent of a storm ascending the far side of a hill, hidden from sight except for the rustle of leaves, and the ceasing of birds chirping, and the smell of rain-wet dust on the wind.
Instinctively I knew the next song was critical to the moment. I’d been here before, many times, but never enough times. I chose carefully. It would last long and the groove would be deep. It would be a journey and everyone would come along, like the children of the piper. The guitar tone leapt from the stage and impaled the audience like the piercing of a herald trumpet. The other instruments remained silent four bars and then thundered into the closed quarters of the hall and shivers went down my spine. The band seemed to know it was coming and responded in spirit.
Tommy’s giant Hammond B-3 whirled through its Leslie and screamed into the night air like a banshee. Tommy flung his fingers down the keyboards postured like an Opera Phantom. I was so excited I could hardly sing. The people reacted as one, and the dance floor filled almost instantly. No one cared who saw him dance. No one cared with whom they danced. They just had to dance. Not dancing in self-awareness, not dancing to show off, not dancing practiced steps, but dancing in response to a call. A call to their very soul. No one knows from where the call comes, I least of all. Some dance halls never hear the call, but they did that night in Cherryvale, Kansas.
By itself, a band cannot create this Cherryvale transcendence. Neither can it be the will of an audience. It cannot be dictated or planned. It just happens. But, it can only happen when the band and the audience merge their souls collectively. Dancing doesn’t have to be involved. If this transcendence never happened to you, and if you do not believe it can happen, then this accounting is probably as close as you will ever get. Because it only happens to the willing, and only after a cycle is established between the band and the audience. A beautiful cycle of human energy that feeds on itself and regenerates each time it is passed on. It is empowered by concentration of focus and feeling and is seen in myriad ways like the enchantment in the eye and the exuberance of body movement.
It is this transcendence that fills the soul with vivacity like a sexual adventure, only it is of the human spirit and indeed transcends the mundane and takes away those things temporal. The experience taps into things eternal. The exhilaration is so fiercely delicious that ones mind wills time into a slow motion warp. There is no want to think or desire to explain, only the feeling exists. A feeling that takes on texture from wave after wave of silent elation: ever deepening, ever cycling, ever borrowing from those around; a spiritual whorl that sends the participant spiraling profoundly into a nether world. When the music stops the feeling begins to fade and ones mind returns unwillingly and slowly as though awakening from a nepenthean slumber. Therefore, from the darkness of the Freudian Id, a cry goes out to prolong the music.
The musicians do not hear the cry, but they feel it. Each is lost in some zone peculiar to his mind and its mastery of the musical instrument. To become self-aware is to lose the transcendence, for it is the terrestrial from which he escapes and joins the grand illusion.
It is an illusion is it not? Without the lights and the music it disappears like the grin of the Cheshire cat. Yet it happens–and what then do we call the happening? You can’t reproduce it at will. You can’t preserve it even with the best of movie cameras because they don’t record feelings. You can’t bring it back or give it to someone else. It is ethereal, and yet something happens. I call it the Cherryvale Transcendence.
There will be scoffers among my readers. Some stiff pragmatists will undoubtedly challenge my words and accuse me of overwriting and sensationalism. In the minds of some, what you have just read will remain the prattle of romanticists such as I. Some musicians would be among the doubters because their band has never seduced and mesmerized an audience. Some club owners would shake their heads in derision because they know nothing of lighting and ambience and are disinterested in the very bands they hire for their patrons. Some patrons will question my veracity because they remain stoically behind barriers of inhibition or insecurity or misanthropy and cannot and will not yield to things intangible.
But the Cherryvale Transcendence is not restricted to bands and dancing. It is available in many forums. The American Indians find it in Sweats and other rituals. One can slice it with a knife at epic heavyweight championship fights. A mighty preacher can conjure up spellbinding visions. Think about the poem “Casey at the Bat” or whatever it is called. Was not the entire crowd, the team, the pitcher, and Casey himself caught up in baseball’s version of the Cherryvale Transcendence? Ask yourself where and in what way you’ve experienced it.
I write of it because I am challenged to put words to the transcendence because I was told it can’t be put into words. But then, how do we share what we have felt with those who have never felt it? And, how do we, who have experienced it, talk about it amongst one another? How then do we cue each other to watch for it? How do we freeze the memory for examination and reflection? How do we prevent the diminishing of personal illumination? How do we enlighten others so they can become themselves seekers?
Unfortunately the Cherryvale Transcendence doesn’t happen often, or at least often enough. One abrasive and loud naysayer in a crowd can squash the entire effect. I know clubs where the transcendence is impossible and will never occur because the ambience, and the philosophy of the ownership won’t allow it. It may not happen in Cherryvale again. But somewhere, one night, it will happen. It may start with the contagious enthusiasm of one dancer who, like a bell-cow, leads the others to pasture.
This happened in Cherryvale that night. A middle-aged black man named “Lucky” was dancing so enthusiastically and having so much fun that it made us want to exceed our performance levels. He made me happy just to watch him. He made others want to share in his happiness as dozens of people joined him on the floor. He challenged the band loudly, saying: “You can’t play a song that I can’t dance to.” He danced the way I see Delta artists paint old juke joint dancers. I think Lucky started the cycle between band and congregation. I can see his beaming face as though he were dancing around on my computer screen.
The savoring of such memories is what makes a good life. I begin writing this piece on August 16th, my fifty-fourth birthday. My father was in the hospital very sick and calling for me. When I saw him he was weak and frail. It hurt me to see this proud man losing his powers. I realize how quickly my middle age is going to turn to old age. Twenty-four years ago I was a cocky young buck of thirty, and twenty-four years from now I’ll be my father’s age. The last twenty-four went by so very fast. Fortunately I’ve let myself be open for the Cherryvale Transcendences that fortune and fate have strung out for me, and I intend to seek them always.
I’ve envisioned myself knowing when it was time for me to pass on. I would like do as the Indians of old who simply walked away and sought a place to die with dignity, then prepared themselves. I can’t help but think that their minds were flooded with memories and their hearts with feelings of times and people past. That being the case, some had sterile, lonely, and depressing death experiences, while others vaulted into a fabulous kaleidoscope of remembrances that allowed their final moments to be a Cherryvale transcendence.
The old Blinddog bus arrives in Cherryvale again September 30th and Tommy Carlyle will come from Wichita to play the mighty Hammond Organ with us. Here’s hoping we get Lucky.
Carl
*My 500th subscriber is a young man under 18 years old from Short Hills, New Jersey. I don’t expose my readership in any way unless they so desire, so I’ll not mention his name, but Blinddog Smokin’ will send him our latest CD, “More Trouble Than Worth.” Some of you have read every piece I’ve written for TTW and certainly deserve more than my gratitude, but please know you old faithful are the motivation that keeps me writing.
*Look to upcoming issues of Southwest Blues Magazine for an article I wrote about our recording sessions with the fabulous Dorothy Ellis, a.k.a., Miss Blues, and another article by Aletha Dewbre on Blinddog Smokin’.
Posted by Carl