New Age rage

Can I admit something? I’m scared. I’m scared a couple of weeks ago, while riding my motorcycle, I had an experience. It was an accident. Well, I didn’t have an accident in the physical sense of the word—there was no flying off the motorcycle and landing head-first, Police Academy-style, in a horse’s butt—but rather the experience I had was a total happenstance occurrence. I was cruising down the highway and listening to my mp3 player on random when, all of a sudden, a self-help mp3 came on, and it scared me.

It scared me not because the guy’s voice was possibly the creepiest thing I heard since I found out Will & Grace lasted for eight years, but it scared me because what that voice was saying kind of made total sense. The voice hypnotically talked about being in the now, about taking in every detail of what is happening around you and finding enlightenment through centering yourself in the moment. I’m not sure if I was hypnotized by the monotony of highway driving or if I was driving through a particularly beautiful stretch of road, but I was into it.

Let me just say now, I usually hate most new-age hippy crap. While my live-and-let-live Canadian neural net processing forbids me to judge people for whatever belief system helps them through life, when I hear about people paying hundreds of dollars to get their chakras aligned at a crystal healing session in some patchouli-drenched shed in the Laurentians, I can’t help but cringe a little.

But it’s not that I don’t want to believe that waving rocks over your gonads can cure your clinical depression, I do. There is something about crystal healing and psychic phenomenon that sounds totally awesome (I mean, imagine what astral projection could do for rush-hour traffic on the 15). And, in fact, one summer when I was a young, impressionable teen, I tried to impress my goth crush by buying some tarot cards. When that failed, I moved onto Celtic runes, then I outfitted myself with one of those pirate shirts at Le Chateau, and after a particularly ominous palm reading, I purchased a Skull Ring of Empowerment from the palmist. Of course, it all came crashing down when that goth crush ended up dating my friend who played bass in a Cure cover band. In the end, I never figured out how to read the tarot cards or runes properly, and then I discovered that the Skull Ring of Empowerment that I bought to ward off bad juju turned out to be a cheap Motörhead ring repainted black (which still kind of ruled).

At this point, however, these psychic expos and new-age self-help books never seem to do anything more than provide a safe space for Baby Boomers to use phrases like “taming your spirit animal” and “extending your kundalini into the netherverse” without people punching them in the face.

But that’s why I’m scared. In that moment, I felt like this weird, creepy, Werner-Herzog-sounding guy actually had something to say. Finding happiness by living in the moment makes total sense. I mean, it seems to work for those guys in those Mountain Dew commercials, right? But could I do it? I’m not sure if you know, but I’m actually a very Nervous Nancy as it is. In any given situation, I tend to analyze, re-analyze and re-re-analyze things until the dead horse is not just flogged, but reduced to glue. Letting go and freeing your consciousness in the moment is not something I associate with my lifestyle. Other guys who do things like skateboard and ask girls on dates, maybe. Guys who collect Battlestar Galactica patches and get a bit queasy when girls smile at them, not so much.

But last weekend I was at a sweaty house party in Ottawa and things were getting bananas. Of course I was a wall flower standing awkwardly in the corner, when suddenly the music got crazy and people started screaming. Suddenly my friend was up in the air crowd-surfing over the entire packed living room. For a moment, my rational brain took hold and analyzed the situation, but then I remembered what the creepy German guy said so I quieted my mind, let myself go, and leapt up above the crowd to join my friend.

The result? The whole time, I was worrying. What if I get punched in the balls? What if someone steals my wallet? How long does this last? How does this end? What if I land on my head?

Maybe some people are not made to live in the moment. Maybe I should live in the past, or in the future. Maybe this new age shit isn’t for everyone. Or maybe I just need a new Skull Ring of Empowerment.

RIFF-RAFF@SYMPATICO.CA