New Orleans: America's Second Chakra?!
Former GenSit contributor Nicq MacDonald's true story of a conspiracy-ridden one-night stand in New Orleans (a phenomenal piece of writing by the way, equal parts CrimethInc. and Andrei Codrescu) really got me thinking today about the Big Easy's deeper role in the social body that is the United States.
If you'll forgive this New Age tangent, I've always been intrigued with the idea of macroscopic social correlates for the purported chakra energy system of the human body. For the sake of argument, let's consider the United States as a living superorganism, with its own chakra system. The chakras, or wheels, represent extrasensory "energy centers" which supposedly regulate the basic needs up and down the spectrum of this living creature.The second chakra for the human being, centered just under the navel, is what supposedly regulates the body's sexual and creative energies. Anyone who's seen a Girls Gone Wild Mardi Gras video or can't go to bed without an hour of classic jazz 78s knows that sex and creativity are two things that New Orleans, in all of its depraved and decrepit glory, excels in. Nicq's story only drives the point home.
Therefore, what might look like a drug and crime-riddled abberation in a supposedly law-abiding and safe nation is what actually helps to keep the nation energized and alive. Just as it wouldn't survive without addressing the root chakra needs for food (the Midwest) and transportation (Detroit, or what's left of it), or the third chakra needs for power (NYC, LA) or 4th chakra needs for compassion (sigh, Boulder? Madison?), the United States would be helpless, locked up, and dead from the neck down without the swinging, slimey, sexy slithering Beast that is New Orleans.
Now read what Hakim Bey thinks of musicians.
posted by Paul S. at
10:32 PM
7 Comments:
What about Vegas?
that's something to think about, but i stand by my assessment of new orleans. Vegas is something more akin to a supremely alienated and fucked-up head or crown chakra-- despite its hedonistic image, i'd never confuse vegas with sensuality or creativity. anyone who's sat at a slot machine for ten hours straight knows this: Vegas is the anti-body, the eternal carrot-on-a-stick, what the clever Intellect gives us in substitution of more immediate gratifications. vegas is spectacle, new orleans is SAUCE. you can't touch, taste, or feel vegas, you can only SEE it, and what you're seeing is a mirage in the desert, the tendency of heat to split the subtle rainbow waves of the Northern Lights into a million shimmering baubles in the night, all of them empty.
Well put.
i know you're just being nice. i pull the most retarded ideas out of my ass at 2 in the morning.
I'm the king of nice.
But I agree with what you say about Vegas, the whole place has a shiny veneer that wears thin (it's one of the few US cities I've been to, and I was too young to gamble, so it was fun just to take it all in).
If we're gonna talk about Chakra's though, I'd slot Vegas in at number three (LA and NY get their own spinal cords) Money.sex.power, or suchlike.
I loved your post, I've entertained the idea of macroscopic social correlates for the chakra system for years. The validity of such musings aside, New Orleans is the most deliciously haunted place I've ever visited, and if you haven't been, I hope you get a chance.
I was talking with this tantric sex teacher the other day about how he would love to have been in Beijing during the 1920's. The context was set up for it to be a killer town to party in. It was a cultural center located in a location of intense uncertainty due to the war that was going on and the black-market human extravaganza.
We were trying to decide on what city is playing that role today. I think Moscow has a shot for it. I would think Baghdad but Islam has its tenets.
What cha think Paul?
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