The Muses Rapt
Peeing on LSD is always a holy moment, sometimes an ordeal. I shook off a few drops and watched my hands wash themselves. I looked in the mirror and inhaled shakily.
I was in the messy bachelor pad of a friend. The mirror itself had dried toothpaste and rust stains all along it, beside finger smudges and flecks of liquid. The only light in the room came from a single bare lightbulb hanging from a string above my head.
I stared at the lightbulb. Then I stared at my reflection. After a few breaths, the freckles on my nose and cheeks began to jiggle slightly. Are they moving? Or is the light moving? My eyes darted back to the lightbulb. It was moving. It was swaying slightly, which made the light on my face move rhythmically too. The light bulb swayed further, faster. Wide arcs, wider, now totally around my head, orbiting me like a tiny moon-sun. As it did the light on my face changed wildly.
My freckles were drifting now like ducks in a river, swirling along the lines of my face. My skin glowed like hot metal, brilliant orange-gold. More freckles than I’d ever seen, swept along invisible rivers. My eyes shone brilliant blue and green. Like some kind of Hindu God, I heard myself think aloud. Warmth in my chest. Wonderful warm awe seeped out of my glow.
The lightbulb moved faster now. Zipping around my head, making the shadows dance across my face. My skin began to melt, my eyes sunk down my throat, and alabaster white bone reflected an almost purple hue from the light bulb. A skull stared eyelessly back at my reflection now. The wonderful warm awe remained.
What stable love, I wondered, as my flesh grew back, crimson as blood. My freckles were no longer brown, more like brilliant gold, and my skin was red too, and so were my horns. An exaggerated grin snuck asymmetrically along my mouth, mostly to one side. Ha! I thought, and watched myself for a while longer, grinning all the way.
Eventually the light slowed and returned to its original place. I turned off the sink, then the light bulb. Flicked it back on. Everything was back to normal. My heart, however, stayed warm.
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We drank mushroom tea and went to the park. Gan Sacher specifically- which until the moment I typed this I thought meant ‘soccer’ but actually was named for Harry Sacher, a significant figure in the World Zionist Organization. During the day it’s full of people, often grilling Kosher or Halal BBQ, but this was night, and the only other people there were a Orthodox Jewish couple sitting on a bench. From the distance between them and the general vibe it seemed they were practicing shomer negiah- guarding of the touch- meaning they were not yet married, and on a date.
We noted this as we passed and became enthralled with the trees beyond them, and climbed their branches, and stared at the clouds we could make out in the light of the city and the moon. I asked for a song, and my friend grinned mischievously and began to play ‘entrance of the gladiators’ by Julius Fučík.
Originally intended as a military marching song, this track is now known as The ‘Thunder and Blazes’ Clown Theme. People played Entrance of the Gladiators faster than Julius had intended and over time it had morphed into what we all recognize as ‘circus music’.
As the absurd song played, a friendly dog appeared out of nowhere, tail wagging, a smile on his face. He ambled in the general direction of the religious couple, who promptly panicked. They bolted upright from the bench and lurched away from the dog, who politely followed, bounding towards them, tongue dragging along the outside of his mouth.
We leaned forward from our perches, pupils wide and dark as the night sky. The couple turned hard, and so did the dog. We looked at each other and at the field again. The couple and the dog were running in circles to the clown music. Our hands gripped the branches tightly, and mania began to grip us. The branches shook with our laughter.
The couple and the dog did a few more circles and then tired out around the same time, the dog got the message they were done, and turned heel. They gave us a glance, but were too far for us to know what kind. The song ended, and we climbed down the tree.
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Unknown doses of LSD from a gigantic shared water bottle. A massive outdoor psychedelic trance festival. We approached the Goa Stage, and an old man with a huge smile adorned with a perpetual lit cigarette began to play the best music of the weekend. Sometimes with his son, sometimes alone, always smiling.
Something about his music elicited orders of magnitude more hallucinations than usual for me. A childhood memory of the rainbow road course from Mario Kart became overlaid on the dancefloor and behind my eyelids. Massive crystal clear rainbows in space, shooting fireworks and moving my legs, folding my knees, bouncing my shoulders.
I danced for what felt like hours and found myself closer and closer to the DJ booth. Something in me pulled me towards his gaze. The DJ locked eyes with me and made a motion with his hand, like he was sending an orb of something my way. With his other hand, he did something incomprehensible with his machinery of music and hit me right in the chest with rising arpeggios. I felt like being some kind of non-newtonian ferromagnetic liquid or a feather in a wind tunnel or hot air balloon made of wacky inflatable waving arm men.
He hit me again and it happened again. He hit me again and it happened again. I turned to my friend and I did it to him, and he to me. He danced close and yelled in my ear: “this song is called ‘Spiritual Healing’- he wrote it after recovering from cancer!” I glanced back at the DJ, chain smoking with his son, blasting the crowd with song. “His name is ‘The Muses Rapt!’. My friend yelled. “AMAZING!!!” I said, and lit up a spliff.
