Unmasking the Gods

After much frustration trying to get tickets to see U2 in San Jose, I finally found an honest person with an extra ticket to sell. She wasn't trying to sell me a bogus e-ticket that had already been cancelled, or some sketchy inkjet thing printed out from scalper-asshole.com. It was unbelievable how much some of these tickets were selling for on ebay and elsewhere. Five hundred bucks and more for a general admission ticket with a face value of fifty bucks. Bottom line: scalpers suck; I got my ticket.

Here's the point of this ramble. The concert was enjoyable, but not mind-blowing. I've been a fan for a long time, and I'd never seen them live before so my expectations were high.

Driving home from the show I realized I was feeling depressed. I'm sure everyone's had the experience of feeling let down after a highly anticipated event. The party's over, and everyone goes home.

We all would like to believe that there is someone or something out there that can transform us, remove our imperfections and lift us up toward living in the way we've dreamed possible but never achieved. That's what heroes and gods are for, right? When they get up on stage and sing, or when they put on masks and dance around the fire, it's only a ritual and we willingly suspend our disbelief. We know consciously that behind the mask, or in the dressing room after the show, there's another person just like us. Unconsciously we believe differently. And sometimes the unconscious belief in divinity can become strong enough that it overwhelms the rational, conscious knowledge of finitude and limitation.

So it's a delicate balance between myth and science, unconscious and conscious mind. And fortunately the injunctions of the conscious mind against belief in the supernatural tend to be temporary while the demands of the unconscious for maintaining that belief may be inexhaustible.

So I'm bidding on tickets for the return leg of the tour, in November. It's going to change my life. Want to come along?