cash rules everything around me

tonight i did my first sustained blindfold experience. i pulled my black hat over my eyes at the pearl street night club and checked out some hip hop, including raekwon the chef from wu tang, and sean price. this was my first time at a live show by any member wu tang, so i was a little sad to pull the hat over my eyes. in a certain sense it's ridiculous that i spent a bunch of money for a concert ticket to a legendary rapper who i think is pretty brilliant, and i decided to spend the whole time not looking. but to be honest, when he came out and started doing 'c.r.e.a.m.' i decided to watch for a little while. the rest of the time i stood there blindfolded, like a good little blogger.

at first it was very exciting, so i felt a kind of rush over my body - but also, the bass was so heavy that my skin and my insides were vibrating. maybe you've felt this. when i was little, and i would go to a parade i would feel the marching band's drums rip up my chest - it scared me. tonight i was very focused on the feeling of the vibrations and the different sounds that came to me. it was also the first time i can ever remember being at a concert and hearing people around me having conversations during a loud song. usually i hear a faint background noise in the crowd, but tonight i heard people talking pretty clearly. this came after about 20 minutes without vision.

later a couple of strange things happened almost simultaneously: 1. i started hearing the overtones of raekwon's voice, and the voices of the d.j. and the hype-man. 2. i started feeling like my body was levitating a little bit. 3. the smell of the room shifted from a very acute smell of alcohol to a beautiful, purple sticky smell. i assure you, i was not smoking the purpleness. but i smelled it and it was nice.

i also noticed that i was fidgeting with a rolled up piece of paper in my pocket (once again, not that kind of rolled up paper) for nearly the entire show. i don't know why i was doing this. i do have a tendency to play with the things around me, but i decided to try and take my hands out of my pockets and dance. why not? the air on my hands was nice, but i started wondering what people thought of this weirdo dancing with a hat pulled over his eyes. oh well. nothing much to report regarding touch, as it applies to my hands. but i can say there was something about the way inner touch and hearing were swirling around together... it's not easy to explain, but it felt pretty substantial. obviously for raekwon the bass is pretty prominent, so that really moved my skin, and i could feel that thing where your arm hairs start to stand-up too. the drums were not as loud in the old wu tang songs like 'wu tang clan ain't nuthin ta fuck wit', but on his new songs and songs from 'the w' and 'only built for cuban linx', the drums were enough to put my hair on end too.

and the mix of the 3 voices together, with all the different overtones and mixtures... that helped too. but i guess raekwon must be an expert in understanding the sounds of a group by now. at times, it even sounded like there were more than three people up there (and i may never know for sure if that was the case).

i don't have much analysis yet. i just wanted to get this all on the computer before going to sleep. maybe something will come to me in my dreams.