Rocky Horror Memories

I am so amazed with Ryan Murphy's show "Glee." Every time I think he has done something that is going to be impossible to surpass, he surprises me. My first amazement was his "The Power of Madonna" show and then he blew me away with his Lady Gaga "Theatricality" episode. I was watching this weeks episode from last night and good luck topping tonight's.

Now I will admit freely that part of the difficulty Ryan's going to have is he hit a topic close to my heart and just completely full of memories; The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The first time I went to see Rocky Horror, I didn't care for it; the audience was constantly screaming, I couldn't hear half the story or the numbers, people were throwing stuff and what I could make out of it did not make ANY sense to me, I never expected to go back.

(Mom and Dad, you may not want to read this as you are going to learn some things you probably did not know and ignorance may just be bliss...)

Sometime around late 1979 to early 1980 I was hanging out with a group of friends and they decided that they wanted to go and I was not very enthusiastic about it.

At this time in my life I was coming to grasp with just what my differences meant in my world of the time, social outcast (or pariah), what was left of my home life falling apart and my beginning to become aware that "I" had no say in any aspect of my home life and I had tended to start spending as little time at home as possible.

I went to the Varsity Theater at 6610 Delmar Blvd in University City and stood in line with a collection of punks, glams and costumed characters waiting around smoking everything from Marlboros to Jakarta Cloves and a few things that are still not legal in most towns. What should I have expected for a movie that only runs on Friday and Saturday nights starting at midnight?

At the Varsity, Rocky Horror always started with a cartoon I cannot remember, the video intro to Meatloaf's "You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth" followed by "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" and finally Tim Curry's "I Do the Rock." The room would go dark and a giant set of lips would begin to appear on the screen while a cast of live characters would do the "Science Fiction/Double Feature" line dance, kinda a Bob Fosse on a lazy day (I still remember all the steps and motions -- frightening).

Needless to say, by the end of the evening I was hooked. I really got into what was going on and made a collection of new friends and acquaintances that did something no one else in my life had until that time, like and accept me for me, not what they wanted me to be.

As I said, things at home were not going well and the Psychiatrist my family had me going to creeped me out completely so I was not getting any "therapy" there. Rocky Horror became my new therapy. I could go every Friday and Saturday night, let my hair down, be myself, enjoy everything and release the last week's frustration and anxiety.

Very quickly I became friends with and later joined the "cast" as Riff Raff, the Butler/Handyman. I spent time and what little money I had at the time to buy a tailcoat and made a hunchback out of an old military backpack I had which also came in handy for the additional props one takes to Rocky Horror; rice, newspaper, water pistol, lighter, rubber gloves, noise-maker, toilet paper, toast, party hat, bell, cards and hot dogs.

I made such an effort to go EVERY week, I rode my bike about 10 miles each way on many occasions, I even "borrowed" my parents car once in a while to get there. I remember fighting with my parents about going to that "cult" film and trying, in vain, to explain that this was not the Moonies but a regular group of people who return week after week.

I will never forget one night on the way home with a group of friends when I made the fateful decision to be the last person dropped off and we got pulled over for having a headlight out. I had the pleasure of being carted off to the local police station, in full costume and makeup, then transported to Juvenile Detention for being out after curfew and I enjoyed sitting in a holding cell till around 9 or 10 the next morning before my step-mom came to pick me up.

As the years went on, I would continue going to Rocky in cities all over the country and recently decided to finish the last 12 theater viewings to make 1000 shows (I don't count video and DVD viewings, not nearly as much fun). Likely I will finish this off at the Nuart Theatre in West Los Angeles.

For me, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" has been one of those threads that has joined all the periods of my life through the years. I have met people that have amazed me in their variety and joy, all brought together by a film about a cross-dressing mad scientist, his creation and the innocent young couple who stumbles across an intergalactic party, set to fun music that has kept it's joy for 35 years.

So Ryan, I salute you for your comment about why Rocky Horror spoke to me and all those like me:

“It [Rocky Horror] was for outcasts, people on the fringes who had no place left to go but were searching for someplace, anyplace, where they felt like they belonged.”

Will Schuester

Sparing the Rod

I was reading a personal ad earlier by a young man looking for a partner in life and he wants to have children. He comes from a more traditional background and spent part of his ad discussing his beliefs in child-rearing and specifically mentioned the following;

He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.

Proverbs 13:24 (NIV)
There seems to be an assumption in today's world that this, and other similar verses, are a justification for spanking, hitting or beating children, it is not.

One of the things we forget about in trying to understand the scriptures of the world is often to put them into cultural context so that we can make heads-or-tails of the metaphors that are used. In the case of the Hebrews the predominate metaphor is that of a shepherd and his flock.

When a shepherd uses his rod to guide the flock, it is not about beating the livestock, but about putting a barrier in front of, prodding and maybe an occasional tapping at most. When my cats attempt to get into what I am eating, I often take my hand and put it between them and their object of interest. They are not particularly fond of it, one occasionally hisses at me for a moment, but it supplies guidance to where they may or may not be.

Children need guidance from their parents, it is how they are kept safe and taught what is and is not acceptable behavior. I find that more than spanking a child one can talk with, not at, them and the child learns.

The biggest place that I find most parents losing the game is through a failure of consistency. I so often hear parents set a barrier for their children and then not follow through, children are a lot brighter than we often assume. I hate to say it, but children learn how to manipulate their parents very early, it is part of the early stages of learning to communicate so it is not as bad as it sounds.

So when we talk about "sparing the rod or spoiling the child" we are talking about what all parents have to do, supply guidance for their children. Discipline is a way of supplying guidance, but physical abuse and beatings are not, remember that!

The Meaning of Life

Introduction

Religion and Philosophy in truth have the same purpose, to try to answer the question of the meaning of life.

In philosophy the question is addressed through the “general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.”^[1]

In religion there is usually the discussion of deity or deities and the ways to appease them. Sadly, these ideas are not actually what religion is about when you read most of the founders. They usually refer to the idea of finding deity within ourselves and bringing it into manifestation.

In this context, religion takes on the Latin origin of re-ligare^[2] which means to relink or rejoin. I have always found it interesting that this definition for religion is nearly the same as the word "yoga" (Sanskrit, Pāli: योग yóga) which means to rejoin.^[3]

To relink or rejoin what?

I have mentioned on many occasions the amazement that I felt when I realized that every Religion agrees on the idea that we are eternal Spiritual or Energy beings that only inhabit these bodies and then continue after wards in some other existence.

Many would call this a return to the Source or, some would call, God (oh no, he used the "G" word). Call this whatever you may.

The Buddha talks about reaching the state of Nirvāna (Sanskrit: निर्वाण) which literally means “blowing out.” It is a state where the metaphorical “fires” of desire, hatred and delusion are blown out or cease to be the controlling forces in life.

In Hinduism the idea is expressed in many ways ranging from the Vedantist's “neti neti” (Sanskrit: नेति नेति) which is used to separate the real from the illusion and since everything the senses can recognize is illusion the idea is the translation of “Not this, not that.” Many other sects refer to it as rejoining their view of the ultimate aspect of God which can only happen through “Self-Realization” in one form or another.

The Abrahamic traditions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have an often overlooked expression of this in the first book of Moses, Genesis (Greek: Γένεσις, "birth", "origin," from Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית, B'reishit, "in the beginning").

At the end of the second chapter we have a statement “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” (Gen 2:25). Immediately after this is the famous temptation and fall. The very first thing that happens is that they become aware of their nakedness and were so ashamed they covered themselves and hid from the presence of God when he came to visit. I cannot help giggling at the first question out of God's mouth after hearing of their awareness of their nakedness; “Who told thee that thou wast naked?” (Gen 3:11)^[4]

The Meaning of Life

The underlying idea in all these traditions are the same, restore knowledge of our true selves. This is the Meaning of Life; to reclaim our rightful existences as Spirit, energy beings and place the focus of our Life there.

This is my personal favorite quote about this:

“You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.”

Teilhard de Chardin
When we stop looking for happiness in those things we find around us and reacquaint ourselves with this higher nature, my personal experience is that all things become a joy and sadness and hopelessness vanish.

So I place a challenge before you, start to look at your life from the perspective of that Spirit or Energy being and see what it does to your perspectives on Life. If you are anything like I am, in a surprisingly short time you will find those things that were SO important yesterday will make you wonder and laugh at their silliness today.

Try it and tell me what happens, I dare you!

Footnotes:
1 Wikipedia.org Article on Philosophy
2 Wikipedia.org Article on Religion, Section: Etymology
3 Wikipedia.org Article on Yoga
4 The complete example from the King James Bible