Taylor Swift, Ritual, Transcendent Experience and a Band named Tool
Taylor Swift is touring at the moment, you’ve probably heard. If not on the news I’m certain you caught wind of it via someone else’s social media feed playing at full volume courtesy of the teen that you’re squeezed in next to on public transport. If you travel in slightly more style than this, I’m sure you’ve got some second cousin, some member of middle management at your job, insert any other sphere of life that the country-pop cult of personality has infiltrated, who’s released an elated squeal in your presence of the kind usually reserved for the bedroom.
Thousands of these squeals have been released in the last six months or so, from devotees who can’t believe they were lucky enough to secure a ticket. Lucky enough to be allowed the privilege of paying $200 for their seat.
Excitement. Terrifying devotional excitement.
I’m probably running a risk even writing this down as you can never be certain how deep the Swifties have infiltrated. Starting a paragraph with the letters TS probably filtered this article down a Shake it Off centric algorithm that’ll put it in front of more eyes than I’d ever be comfortable confronting, further to this, the implication that her fans are in any way fanatics has probably slapped my name on a more nefarious kind of list.
But this is all low hanging fruit isn’t it? The truth is, I’ve been guilty of riding the same obsessive wave that Taylor Swift’s following carries—not with her music, but with other artists and causes. Music, politics, diet.
I’ve felt that excitement, that sense of luckiness that I get to be in the presence of people I admire, preaching all the things they’ve told me I should agree with. Being part of the select few who “get it.”
And sure, perhaps I’m taking liberties by assuming this hive-mind behavior is universal. There may in fact be some among you who can’t relate, who have impenetrable walls against influence, who are so unsuggestable that instructions on how to pull your parachute cord couldn’t even get through to you mid freefall, but I wouldn’t consider you better off as a result. I might go as far as saying you’re missing out.
What are you missing?
Without taking a stance for or against religion, I’ve long made the argument that life must have been more exciting back in the days where as a rule people held their beliefs in a literal sense.
Just imagine the thrill of breaking one of the commandments, with a real life fear that a lightning bolt might smash through your ceiling at any moment and impale you at the kitchen table for your sins? Imagine being on a battlefield, realizing you’re outnumbered, yet instead of shying away, you bear your teeth and run towards the blades that are primed for your neck because “Valhalla is waiting!”
It sure beats sitting on a panel with Richard Dawkins, studying the different shades of rouge in his nose as he explains how obvious it all is. How obvious you can explain away this perfectly stabilized anomaly of probability that is our universe, atmosphere and consciousness if you, “simply look at it through a scientific lens”
Maybe he’s right. I’d be lying if I said one of Dawkins’ late contemporaries Christopher Hitchens hadn’t held some of the allure that I described above with similar arguments, but isn’t it also true that to look at the world in this way robs you of a few things as well.
Let’s revert back to Taylor Swift for a moment.
It’s good to throw away logic from time to time
When fans of Taylor swift talk about their idol, they throw around some wild claims. That she’s more talented than The Beatles, that if she channeled her musical talent into any other field she could reach the top of it, i.e. neuroscience, professional sport. Because “have you seen what she does up on that stage? Singing and dancing at the same time. That takes a real athlete!”
Sure, sure, but let’s float back down to reality.
She’s just a singer. She’s got a story that people can connect with and she lives during a time where her music and message can be broadcast worldwide via an uncountable number of outlets. That’s why she’s as popular as she is.
And I think a good portion of her following understand this, but they’ll still bleat out the above talking points because….it’s a relief to pretend sometimes.
We all do it. Yes I’m making another umbrella claim. But have you ever probed a devout atheist on whether they believe in ghosts?
It’s shocking how many people walk through life holding these two things in their minds—secular by day, sprinting back from a lights-off visit to the bathroom at night. It’s funny how this type of person might even stop you from finishing a ghost story on a camping trip, or voice a complete aversion to sleeping in a house where someone has died, for what reason.
Because they can’t help but pretend.
Sometimes this results in funny contradictions. But it’s not always funny, and for this reason, I suspect there’s some psychological function in it.
Consider people who have lost a loved one. Logical people who have lived a science based or at least reason based life, who get down and pray for their sick husband to pull through, or will avoid stepping on cracks for an entire day out of an unspoken hope that it might help assist their mother’s cancer passing.
Where’s the logic in that?
Who knows? Who cares?
Where’s the logic in dealing wading through the mourning process without any mental opiate to get you through it? This is not by any means an admonishment of science, it’s simply an acknowledgement that it’s unhelpful during those times, so we pretend.
Taylor meets Maynard
I went to a Tool concert last Monday.
This is the second time I’ve seen this band. The last time was in 2020. There’s a solid chance its lead singer might Maynard James Keenan introduced a new strain of Covid 19 into my country. I like him a lot more than Taylor swift.
Though Tool haven’t released any new music since I last saw them, this concert might be the best live event I’ve ever been to.
Granted my taste might be limited to a certain niche of music but working backwards of artists I’ve seen perform live recently (hmmm, there’s quite a long list, so I’ve omitted some of the smaller names people won’t recognize and pulled out a few that I can’t remember or I’ve been dragged along to)…this is saying something:
St Vincent, Angus & Julia Stone, The Kills, Queens of the Stone age x2, Roger Waters, The National, Idles, Fontaines DC, Royal Blood, Arctic Monkeys, The Streets, Pearl Jam x2, Guns ‘n Roses, Black Sabbath, ACDC, Soundgarden, Alice Cooper, Wolfmother, Slash, Ramstein, Kendrick Lamar, Action Bronson….
I’d go as far to claim that TOOL might be the best live act on the planet.
And I’m only half joking when I make that claim
Naturally, after spouting off how delusional Taylor swift fans are, to, in the next breath prop up a band whose biggest hits boast titles such as “Prison Sex,” “Stinkfist” and “Pneuma” comes with more than a small facetious wink.
But… I believe it. Because I want to believe it.
I’m telling you, when you’re in that stadium. You hear the opening bars of this band steeped in so much mystery— very few interviews over almost three decades, keeping even the availability of their albums off streaming platforms until 2019—it’s hard not to feel like you’re witnessing something special. Something divine.
And the band knows it.
This concert had a strict no phones, no filming policy (barring the last song) but not through the use of Yondr pouches which would make the enforcement involuntary, but rather via a request directly from the lead singer—right before he skulked off stage and sang from the shadows.
From there, knowing that what you’re about to witness will be for no one but those present, you have no choice but to sit back and enjoy the ride. And trust me, it’s a ride.
Granted, part of it’s the stage production: the use of screens, lighting, 3D lasers— all of which turned the open air of the O2 arena into part of the performance.
Part of it is the lore of the band. Grounded on the use of odd time signatures and tempo changes. One of their songs is based on the structure of the Fibonacci sequence, the mathematical formula which literally forms the blue print to our reality.
But when you’re there, it all feels important. When you’re taking in the rhythm, the lyrics, half hypnotized, surrounded by more than a few crowd members who are drugged up to Saturn, it feels like you’ve tapped into something that everyone in your arena can feel, something which if you could just hold on to, if you could just let people on the outside access….
Then it finishes, the lights come on and it all goes away.
If moments like this are so transcendent. It begs the question. Why don’t we do this more?
Sure these elevated, transcendent moments aren’t something you can hold onto for more than a few hours, but there’s nothing to say that you can’t seek them out more regularly.
To me, the thing standing in the way is a slightly cynical cultural consensus on “what these things are,” and a slightly naive framing on “what they could be.”
Bear with me for one more anecdote, before I circle back to this point and unify why I’ve taken you down this long meandering road.
I visited Croatia about a month ago. I stayed in Pula and visited a small seaside village called Rovinj. The most impressive element of Pula is a two thousand year old arena, built in the same era as the colosseum and is actually in much better condition than the iconic Roman landmark. The beauty of it is, it’s less known so it’s less guarded and a sub-industry of parasitic tourist traps are yet to crust the ten block radius surrounding it.
In Rovinj, there is a church. In that church there is a tomb. The body of a saint rests inside that tomb, and all around it are murals depicting her martyr’s death.
The first mural shows a Christian girl being fed to lions in the very same Roman arena that I had stepped foot in only a day before. The second mural shows her being greeted by angels, the third shows the people of the town carrying her coffin, which I could reach out and touch beside me.
I wouldn’t call myself a Christian, I certainly don’t buy into the idea of martyrdom for the promise of an afterlife. But whatever that thing is, that extra layer of metaphysics they’re laying on you while inside that ancient church is hypnotizing. It’s power of a kind, modern society rations out very sparingly.
Sure you have to be hyper aware of who’s wielding it. But the intoxicating nature of it is hard to deny.
And that’s really my point here. There are many factors at play when you let go of your logic and just pretend for a little while.
Let the story behind the experience elevate whatever it is you’re witnessing into something more than the sum of it’s parts, and suddenly you are (as far as your mind is concerned) living in that new reality, where Zeus may spear you through the head at any moment, where when you die you’ll wake up as a grizzly bear cub in just a few moments.
The suspension of disbelief that allows you to enjoy the experience without the cynical, “Isn’t this all ridiculous,”colouring that you might carry around to get you through your ordinary day to day, might be the requisite lowering of your shield, to allow something more ancient to creep in.
Ritual of a kind that involved fire, music, even psychedelic substances.
Perhaps it’s more than relief, more than a bit of fun.
Perhaps when those Swifties are making claims of “Genius” they’re not so far off the mark. Perhaps while their attribution to a thirty something with the gift of tidy vocal chords for the experience they’re having may be misplace, their claims of Genius is not.
We already know that human beings take on entirely different thought processes when they’re in a group. Who is to say it doesn’t go a little bit further than that? Who is to say that that transcendent state you achieve when the story, the rhythm the light and the sound hits you doesn’t contain information of an ancient kind we recognize yet don’t understand?
We’re creeping into Jungian Psychology territory here—which is probably on account of TOOL’s subject matter once again, but I sense there’s something in this.
The person up on stage and the message they’re preaching may even be irrelevant, yet the process of that ritual may allow us to see something (and hopefully take away) something that adds to our lives having been through it.
Please stop me if I’m sounding crazy here, if it helps, I’m not making a religious argument.
A secular, religious zealot free explanation to all of this.
This article is already too long, so here’s the nutshell.
Essentially, what I’m saying is this:
People used to deem experiences of this kind as more important than we do today. We only need to look at Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Mayan Tablets and Viking scripture to recognize this.
Back then they did it in the name of some deity who in all likelihood doesn’t and never did exist.
But it at least got them to act out the ritual, which in turn fulfilled them enough to keep going back to the well.
My argument here is, perhaps this is a framing issue. Our contemporary version of this experience is associated with harmless fun—which it is. Taylor Swift, Metallica, Beyonce, you name it.
But that ignores that other part, that sensation of significance which we undeniably experience while caught up in those grand events, yet we don’t quite understand.
Is there a chance that there is some evolutionary adaptation that such experiences feed, which benefit us in ways that we don’t have the means to intellectualize?
Is the low hanging fruit of “Swifties,” TOOL fans and religious zealots, a smoke screen that keeps us from visiting and returning to a particular type of well that could help enrich all of our lives?
Okay, that’s enough. This reads like I’ve been sniffing glue.
But I thought it was an interesting thing to ponder.
