Photo courtesy of Spiritual Rez.com
“Me? Oh, I’m not religious, I just consider myself spiritual.”
Who said that? Picture this: an 18-24 year old, yoga pants, arms full of bracelets, sipping on a dirty chai at a dirty vegan café that is cool as hell. But HELL we are not going to admit that to the 18-24 year old in question. Ego boosts for the newly self-proclaimed spiritualists? No, we can not have that.
I am totally fascinated by why most of us in this generation, and at this particular time of our lives, claim quasi-participation in the realm of spirits, ghouls, orcs, or what have you. I am not here to criticize your beliefs, your morals, your inclination to dress like a hippie and toss out the religious traditions you were once affialited with; but I was recently informed, by a nice tall sir, that I am obliged to challenge you to think about those beliefs and why you said them at the vegan café the other day.
The first question I have for you, in my efforts to challenge you as the reader, is this: “WHAT exactly happened the other (other) Thursday night at Java?” Yeah I know, a startling claim coming from the person reporting on the scene of the Barn crime. Were we having too much fun? Did the (FREE) pizza just go straight to your hips and cause you to forget how many times you peed in the other gender’s bathroom?
Perhaps the reason our memories are foggy, and the impending question on spirituality, go hand-in-hand: we forgot because we drifted off into a loftier cloud-space of Canton, NY. Those hearts and those weird little plastic souls we are stuck with forever zoomed off into the incorporeal galaxy—mode of transporation? The galactic music spaceship best know as SPIRITUAL REZ.
I have heard some great emotion comes out of some of the Rez shows in the Barn. Elena Pesce ’17, a babe who may or may not hail from Australia, swears that she had an other wordly experience at the band’s last show. Proof ? She MARKED the date on her CALENDAR. Vina Smith ’18 recalls this being the band playing Barn side when she came on her overnight to visit SLU, and always makes sure to see them when they come back tah rock!
The kind of Rez experience, the spiritual fuzzy dance haze we all entered, included a lot, I mean A TON, of dancing. There was twirling and spinning, summersaults and booties dropping. The six members of the band were groovin’ that other (other) night, lettin loose some mad virtuous talent; this conglomerate of musicians, committed to the task and trials of fostering masterful experiences of funky reggae rock, inspired the crowd to lay down some of their finest. We got to see some of the rarer instruments on the set this week too, with members on sax-(ophone) and trombone; always nice to see some spitters (ja feel).
The details may not have all been there, but beauty is more than often perceived as an intelligent feeling, not as a list of monotonous facts from Sunday school. Hey, maybe that is why we lean on the spiritual side of the debate: there is no explaining, there’s just feeling. Now pass me that doobie.