THE DAY I MISSED THE ROLLING STONES

marisol

A couple days ago a dvd from amazon arrived in the mail. Rolling Stones concert 1975. It was the year I rode to Jacksonville from Charleston, a couple hundred miles in August to see the Rolling Stones. My neighbor and friend, Chip, came into two tickets and asked if I wanted to go. Rebel yell: Hail yeah! The Stones filled every major football stadium in the country that year. It was the apex of mega concerts, concerts so big the performers on stage were like colorful ants standing on their back feet. Didn't matter. The sound was dynamic. A Stones concert in that time was the very height of rock n roll as it had evolved to that year. It was also the year punk started in London, NY and LA. I didn't know it until the next month. The show on the dvd was LA in July. I saw this was a new release, had a good price on it, and I wanted to see it. I saw Thelonious Monk at the Bohemian Cavern in DC with Charlie Rouse in 1963. Not many years ago I found a 2cd set of the same concert tour recorded in LA at the It Club, 1962. It was wonderful to hear it. I'd totally forgotten what I heard that night. Hearing the recording was brand new. The show was after the release of one of the great albums in jazz, Straight No Chaser. I did see Monk, but failed to see the Stones. The reason why is so subjective I haven't told it; it's something I don't feel comfortable talking about. This morning on the phone with my friend Carole, I told her the experience, and this far away in time, forty years, it didn't seem as disorienting as it did at the moment. We rode to Jacksonville in Chip's Volkswagen bug he worked on himself and kept in good running condition. 

marisol

We arrived, parked, walked half a mile to the stadium entrance, went in, took our time milling about, walked onto the field up close to the stage to see the mechanics of it, neither of us being down-front guys, and we walked around in the stands looking for a good spot for visuals and sound. We picked the opposite end of the bowl. The place filled up around us and the Florida sun shone down upon us. The place filled in a short time. We waited. Some recordings were played on the sound system. People on the ground were playing beach party, blankets on the ground, beach balls bouncing around. The day went on and the day went on. The sun turned from friend to enemy. I had thought to wear long sleeves and a straw hat that went all the way around. I knew it would be hot, but had never experienced the Florida sun to know how hot it can be. People packed in tight all around. Shoulders, backs and arms turning red, burning bad. I saw several people who had passed out from the heat carried out on stretchers. I saw a guy walk up the aisle who had a Neanderthal face with big brows that hung out over his eyes obscuring them in dark shadows. Creepy. There came a time the beach party was over, everyone on the field quiet, in place, not moving. Nobody was moving throughout the whole place. It became eerie. I saw the people around me cooking, their faces twisted in pain. The Atlanta Rhythm Section came out and made some noise. They sucked. They didn't move anybody. They didn't connect with the music and totally did not connect with the crowd. Another band played, Paul Butterfield, again no music, just noise. Rufus came on with Chaka Khan in firetruck red pants and long sleeve top, wearing a red Indian headdress that ran down her back to the floor; eight or so feet of it dragged the stage behind her. She was dynamic. Their music soared. I was a Rufus fan; didn't know they'd be there.

marisol

Between bands it was wait in the heat a very long time. People streaming out of there carried on stretchers. I fell into a zone of suffering. It became like a desert. We had thought to bring a bag of grapes and some water. I came to a place where I got with self and asked, Would you go through this for God? At the time I thought I was a nonbeliever. My answer was, No. To which I said, If you would not go through this agony for God, why the hell are you doing it for the Rolling Stones? It was becoming obvious the Stones would not play until after dark. The sun was a long ways from the horizon. I did not believe I wanted to be carried out on a stretcher. I wasn't there for that. It became too steep a price to pay to see the World's Greatest Rock n Roll Band. Who gives a shit? So they're the best there ever was. So I'd been hoping for a decade to have a chance to see the Stones. I was feeling a very dark energy in the place, very dark. I was feeling the stadium was a ring, a circle with all these thousands of people in it, drawn by the magnetic force of the dark side. A time came when I felt like I had a choice; stay where I was and receive whatever darkness was going on there, or get out of there, away from it, whatever it was. A time came when to stay any longer became worship. I did not go there to worship a commercial enterprise, a corporation with their own private jet. I wasn't worshiping God, so why worship a rock band just because I like their music? That's not enough for me to worship. If I'm going to worship, it has to be something verifiably worth it. The heat grew more intense. I knew I could not make it til dark sitting in a ring of fire. I told Chip I was leaving. He was not expecting that. I told him to stay where he was. I'd find highway 17 and hitchhike home. He couldn't let me do that. I couldn't stay. He decided to leave and drive me back. 

marisol

I stood up and wiggled my way to the aisle walking over feet. At the stairwell opening I came face to face with a cop. He was looking troubled. I stopped and spoke to him, saying, Something is going on here that I don't like. He saw it too. We spoke of what we saw, both of us tearing up as we looked out over the crowd where nobody was moving and nobody talking. However many thousand twenty- and thirty-somethings still and quiet as stone. I told cop I had to get out of there and he concurred, it's the best way to go. Under the stands in the big walking area nobody was walking, a few people on the ground leaning against the chain link fence. I felt like I was in a Calcutta slum. Chip had no idea what the cop and I were talking about. He didn't get my Calcutta reference. A Krishna kid approached to me in his orange gown and little pony tail sticking out from a shaved head. I asked where the exit was. At that moment I needed to be outside the circle. Once through the gate I was free. The Krishna guy told me the Stones are not where it's at, come on over here with us, we're just inside the gate. A little gathering of them singing and playing spiritual. I told him nothing inside this circle is where it's at. Y'all are inside the circle. You're not where it's at. Went through the gate and nearly danced in the parking lot. On up the highway we thought to turn right and go to the beach to see the sun set. It was getting big and incredibly beautiful like I'd never seen it before. We made it as far as a marsh at a state park area with a road. We found a place to watch the orange-pink ball sink into the marsh at high tide coloring all the water passageways through the green marsh the pink of the sun. Farther on, arriving at Charleston well after dark, I wanted to go to Folly Beach and lie down in the water, feeling like I'd been in the desert. I went under water, let the water wash over me and everything I was wearing, even held the hat under water to soak it. A tiny light on the horizon I took for a fishing boat and idly watched. It grew bigger. It was the tip of the new moon. I watched it rise up into the sky. I felt like the cosmos, the heavens, were celebrating my decision. A month and a half later, I learned to satisfaction that God, indeed, is. I watch the Stones concert this many years later and feel like I missed nothing. 

marisol herself

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GROWING FREE OF EXPECTATION

adolph gottlieb

I found another measure of my own psychological maturity, or so it seems from the point of view of the interior life. I think I mean by psychological maturity the ability to absent self from a tiresome situation right away without hanging about trying to look like I'm interested, without pretending. I used to try to please people around me who ruled by disapproval. I'd try so very hard to at least give the appearance that I'm approval oriented. I went to a psychotherapist over that one. Had a highly educational experience on the path of Know Thyself. One of my many core questions was why I allow self to be manipulated by disapproval. I've recently seen that approval does not have the hold on my psyche it onetime did. I don't dare attempt to fool myself by saying I don't lean toward approval, and disapproval has no power with me. That would really be fooling myself. I don't take disapproval in this time of my life like I did young when the preacher's wife, who didn't approve of anything, ruled absolutely. I came to a place I said to preacher friend, Millard Pruitt, Since everything I do and can do is a sin, I'm free, I can do anything I want. So what if I sin when I can only sin? No, it's not like that. This is how many of our conversations went. He was still pre-Copernicus and I was post-Darwin. Two cosmologies lay stretched out over several hundred years between us. He was pre-Renaissance and I was post-Modern. It was quite a gulf. I felt like we met on a bridge between his world-view and my own. We were of very different cultures. His culture was in the past of the culture I came from, but he had no reference for my culture. When I talked, it put him to sleep. I encouraged him to talk; I loved hearing stories from his life. He represented for me at the time mountain culture. He was one of my more significant teachers, who, like his brother I worked the farm with, taught without teaching. 

jean arp

I didn't even bother about his disapproval. His disapproval was so absolute it was meaningless. I learned in childhood never to say anything that might provoke judgment. More than likely, that's the origin of much of my character. It was an easy lesson to learn, because it was hell to pay if I ever slipped up and said something like shit or even worse. The kid learned young to edit everything spoken. We start individuating at about three, so by eight or ten we're individuated. I was and it seemed to me the other kids around me were. I recall at about age eight sending a message to my future self, my adult self, to remember that kids are a whole lot smarter than adults can see. I've remembered it every time I've been around kids. I recall one of the random times I saw the Tonite Show with Johnny Carson, he had a woman I supposed was famous and I didn't know it, Selma Diamond. I enjoyed her so much I remembered her name. She was chatting about baby-sitting kids, taking care of kids she knew whose parents were out. Carson expressed dismay she could be so long-suffering. She made it clear the kids are wonderful fun. She said, "They're just little people." As indeed they are. I think of Roman Polanski's film, The Pianist, Warsaw in the time of the German occupation. Polanski, himself, was an eight year old Jewish kid in Warsaw in the time of the film's story. His parents and extended family were taken away. He slipped out of the city and disappeared into the countryside to be taken in by a farm family where he stayed and worked with them throughout the war. That eight year old made some serious decisions. They didn't destroy him. Decisions made in that time gave him the drive that makes him go.   

eva hesse

I've found when I'm around people who disapprove and wait for key words to get in a huff about, I see them like a hawk sitting on a wire waiting for something, waiting for It. Gives them something to talk about later in other company. I don't like to be around people I can't talk with as I talk with my friends. An experience popped up in the front of my mind from several years ago. I was visiting some people I knew who were new here from Florida. They also had invited to my surprise the biggest gossip in the county and her husband. I was miserable. I couldn't talk, knowing everything I said would be told in altered form to a given gossip circle all day next day. I could name many in the circle. I felt like Martha the dog stuck at the door between me urging her out and Caterpillar outside hissing at her, not allowing her to step forward. There wasn't much I could do. I just didn't talk. Couldn't talk. I imagined anything I said misquoted on the phone a dozen different ways. You might say I was struck dumb. Of course, I was judged all the more mercilessly because I didn't talk. It was actually quite obnoxious, but I didn't know how to break the spell of silence. It was like knowing you're being recorded by surveillance cameras. Alone in a room watched by surveillance cameras, I would tend to sit still. Do a meditation. Take a nap. Surveillance cameras have become a new form of the disapproving eye. Add to the disapproving eye the approving eye of the cell phone camera that can also be a disapproving eye. The cell phone camera is subjective, the surveillance camera objective, the eye of law enforcement. A song is playing in my head by Chaka Khan, God Is Watching You. She sings it that God is watching in loving support, yet in certain religions God watches you in disapproval. You sin. The omniscient surveillance camera has a video file on you. You don't have a chance. That's the God I grew up under, the god of disapproval. I prefer the God of love; approval, understanding, allowing, supporting, embracing. 

jaap mooy

It seems like what happened was I took one more step toward freedom from other people's expectations. That's a great freedom in itself. For a very long time I cow-towed to expectation. It got incredibly confusing after awhile. So many different expectations from so many different egos unto conflicting expectations. Finally, it came that expectation is another form of control, especially the silent expectation that can easily be denied if called on it. When I start feeling silent expectations coming on, I'm gone. The humor is that when I saw the light that other people's expectations have nothing to do with me, only with them, that was the end of being expected of. I didn't understand it, still don't, but that's how it bore out. As far as I know I'm free of other people's expectations. When somebody projects an expectation on me now, I pay it no mind. It pisses them off. My attitude: leave me alone with your expectations that are for you, not for me. This is a time in the life that if somebody gets bent out of shape because I didn't say or do what they expected of me, I say: You bent yourself out of shape. I had nothing to do with it. A good one: You're an artist, I expect you'd want to be on the studio tour. I expect you listen to MO-zart. Actually, there are other composers I prefer. We expect to see ye, next week, brother. I had to cut out paying attention to other people's expectations for my own personal behavior. They sent me on an endless maze like a Kafka story, going from bureaucratic office to office looking endlessly for why. It took a long time to learn that other people do not know what's best for me, what I'll love. Netflix recommendations based on what I watch very seldom have one in twenty I would want to see. Amazon's recommendations are closer than netflix's, though they're still way off. I expect you would want to (fill in the blank) is always as far off the beam as a netflix recommendation. I've come to see expecting of others another form of control. I have the choice to participate or not.
     

jasper johns

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