A Fortress With Its Gates Unbarred
The Cathedral & Other Culprits
It’s been a month since I returned to the real world, after spending a month being altered. I think I’ve found what caused my transformation. This post was originally planned as one of the “Maybe it was this?” explorations. I now know it had nothing to do with this. However I still learned something, so I’m still writing it, but with some changes.
I. The Cathedral
This title isn’t a metaphor, it’s literally about Cathedrals. There’s a lot of old churches in England, and all of them are beautiful. Perhaps the most impressive are the Cathedrals of Canterbury and Westminster Abbey. I visited the Canterbury one first.
The scale of these things is superhuman. Transhuman, maybe. The pillars go up for forever, and they are just stone. Humans pried those stones out of the earth, dragged them here, and chiseled them with friggin hand-tools until they turned into this.
This architecture has been refined over centuries to trigger the wonder-and-awe emotions in humans, and it’s pretty damn effective. High gothic is amazingly mind-altering. The closed-expansive contrast brings a feeling of openness combined with safety. The acoustics are ethereal and piercing. The stained glass is semi-psychedelic. Being in a cathedral for a significant time is not unlike a low-key acid trip. It was compelling. I can understand now why this religion stuff was so powerful and dangerous. Make people do this every week and you can reshape them to some extent.
I had a lot of time to think in those cathedrals. How our ancestors lived. The importance of venerating the accomplished dead — those rare gifted few who had the ability to go beyond caring for their immediate circle, and could use their lives to benefit the greater community, and maybe even the greater world. It felt right to spend many labor-days to carve stone into their likeness. It felt right to place them in this place, with such limited space available within its walls, and remember them.
It was interesting to discover that I didn’t feel animus to religion-qua-religion anymore. There comes a point where you so comfortable with the supernatural’s non-existence that it doesn’t enter into emotional consideration. Some people need religion, and that’s fine. You can accept it for what it is, and take the things from it that you find valuable, and ignore the rest. Like the feelings of peace and wonder among the bones of the earth, reshaped by man.
Attending Mass was great, though I preferred the parts where I couldn’t understand the words. My favorite part was the call-and-response segment between the priest and the choir. I mostly tuned out the parts that were in understandable English. I plan to go to the Denver Basilica with some regularity.
Here’s some more pics.
II. Other Culprits I Considered
The personality change was drastic enough that I also contemplated the possibility of more physical explanations.
At Burning Man I’d taken Delta-8 new-ish marijuana derivative. It’s a nice mellow high. It’s also a new drug to me, sooo…. maybe permanent brain damage/alteration?
At the writer’s retreat in Oxford I banged my head real good the second day there. (note for those who shower: Lacquered wood floors + Wet feet = massive slippage risk! WHOOMP, BANG, OW!) Maybe a micro-aneurysm or hemorrhage caused some physical change?
Also every night at Burning Man and in England I took 2.5mg of Cyclobenzaprine to make sleeping easier and deeper, when normally I only do that once or twice a month. It’s a muscle relaxer that works by slowing nerve impulses. Sure, that’s 1/6th of what’s prescribed, but sudden change in drug usage could’ve altered brain stuff on a larger scale?
III. The Answer
As it turns out, I believe the answer is purely psychological, and I know what it is. Gonna probe some more at it this weekend, and report back next week in the final post in this series.