Embracing Dionyus : The Power of Chaos
GG Allin was Dionysus in flesh. He shat on concert goers. Smashed bottles over his head. Punched fans in the face and started melees. He shoved a banana up his ass on stage - but, don't worry, that was only after throwing slurs and furniture at the college kids who had the balls to show up. Set to the backdrop of washed out chords and pumping drums, his lyrics were as coarse and raw as his performances:
Well, you want me to kiss your ass
Well, bend over, buddy, here comes my foot
I don't need your cry ass shit
Temper's rising, take a fit
Bite it, you scum
Bite it, you scum
Bite it, you scum - Here I come
Bite it, you scum
But eventually, his full-hilt living caught up with him, and, like most avatars of chaos, died too young from an OD.
Since I was young, I've always been fascinated by the chaotic and the wild, from the aghori babas of India who meditate in cremation grounds, eat corpses, and adorn themselves with human bones to Sid Vicious and Jonny Rotten smashing and fucking all. As a teenager, I dabbled in tamer forms of rebellion. I snuck out to get high and fuck around with my pals. I stole just about everything, from restaurant knives to handles of vodka. I keyed cars and broke bathroom doors for no reason other than just to be a little fuck. I fucked without a condom because, well, what the hell, right? I also sported the punk uniform: black Sex Pistols shirt, black pants, metal studded bracelets, and crazy, oily hair. I was vengeful, stubborn, and petulant.
But my hormones got the better of me. When I realized how gnarly a lot of the girls in the punk scene were, I started searching for richer hunting grounds and turned to the California rave scene. Although I initially came for the girls, its cocktail of ecstasy, super-hot vanilla girls, and the LSD that fucked my bitter punk attitude over good.
Ecstasy was driver #1. I still remember when my mom dropped me off at my job at the nearby smoothie place the afternoon after my first rave. I was still overflowing with love and, before I left, I hugged her tight and told her how much I loved her. She was as moved as she was suspicious. What the hell happened to that bitter, entitled punk? MDMA. It literally saved my life. And after taking it most weekends for two years, I went from a resentful, selfish punk to being a caring, confident, and generous soul.
The other cause was the cheerleaders. Before my rave days, I was into the really bad girls. You know, the kind that sneak whiskey into school, smoke weed before class, piss in a front yard while smashed, and steal thousands in underwear from Forever 21. But the rave scene hooked me up with the vanilla girls that I secretly crushed on but were well beyond my social orbit. By the end of my rave career, two of my exes from were former cheerleaders. One was the cheer captain, a model, and a Disney Princess. The other, an amateur model. As much as I was a bad boy - slinging pills, stealing handles of vodka, and just being a general piece of shit, they mellowed me out. I stopped the random hook-ups. I stopped driving strung out on coke and whiskey. I stopped diving down my existential rabbit holes. I stopped listening to Pink Floyd and Black Flag. And I became a bit less of a freak.
The final cause: psychedelics. I only tripped a handful of times every year and, despite my wish for some super deep metaphysical meaning, it didn't do much for me other than just smack me up the head and say, "Yea, dude, this shit show isn't what you think it is." The existential doubt helped open me up to something new, beyond the veil of the ordinary, but it was more just having super normal but super hot girlfriends and ecstasy that pulled me out of my chaotic, angry, destructive teen years. That and the development of my pre-frontal cortex.
Even though I was going more ordered, the fascination with the chaotic persisted. Gary Snyder and Jack Keruac were my heroes and Zen was totally my thing. But that raw anger and vitality that was at the heart of my teenage years had evaporated. Instead, what remained was a shell of that former self. A good boy still holding onto a token bad streak. Looking back, though, I'd been defanged.
After getting deeper into Buddhism, shaving my head, and wearing the robes, the impulse towards order only grew. I became stiff, self-rightous, predictable, authoritarian, intolerably boring. And although I felt an extraordinary peace, I also felt dead. The lively, chaotic, spontaneous, grinning, mischievous, wrathful me had died. The GG Allin and Jack Keruac, the Dionysus within had shrivelled up and died. I spoke with long pauses between words. I washed dishes and swept floors with a saintly patience. I pondered things deeply before acting. I followed orders and made sure not to step on anyone's toes. I was nice. In other words, I'd become the very thing I once scorned: a square.
It would take my best friend of many years, an anarchic artist girl, to kick me out of my trance. She came to my temple wanting to seriously practice Buddhism, but she ended up imploding it from the inside out. After initially forcing herself to kowtow to the austere and disciplined forest tradition, her spirit broke as her spirit soared. She started to sleep in, refused to play the "good Buddhist" game, and bucked much of the convention that ordered the monastic sangha that I was a part of. And she did while, at the same time, flourishing in her own spiritual practice, surpassing many monks who'd been there grinding it out for ten or fifteen years in the space of a few months. It came at a time that I was undergoing my own awakening experiences and a lot of what she said resonated.
Her rebellion and awakening came at a time that I was undergoing my own. And while I didn't have her brazeness, I did start to embrace her fuckall attitude more-and-more. I started sleeping in, eating twice a day, reading random books for pleasure. These sound like very normal things, but as a monk who was literally living in a cave and sleeping on a bare rock, these indulgences were a big step.
Those steps gradually led me out of the robes and into the world again. Liberated from the strictures of the robes, the world forced me back in touch with my inner Dionyus, a god that'd been sequestered to a prison ten stories underground for the last few years. Energy and creativity gushed through me. I became more raw, more angry, more physical, more chaotic. It took me about a year to get out of that phase, but I'd recognized that a powerful aspect of my own psyche had been unlocked. After years of neglect, I also recognized it not as some shameful creature to be locked up, but as a powerful ally and an inexorable part of my own humanity. I am Dionysus.
Over the years, however, I've drifted further from Dionysus. Not because I'm fearful or resentful of him, but because it's just not my style. Archetypally, I'm more the knight than the viking. I love order, goodness, grinding discipline, nobility, sacrifice, beauty. But I've also stayed in touch with the GG Allin within, the guy kicking down doors, holding no quarter, and shitting all over without apology.
I'm still fascinated by the GG Allins of the world, by the Iggy Pops, Ikkyus, Li Pos, and Chogyam Trungpas of the world. I see part of myself in each of them and I love them for who they are. But I also know where I stand and am at peace with the slightly boring me that I am.