When mass attendance became a head trip
Worshiper as team member . . .
When mass became a group exercise, the worshiper became a team member, taking his or her cues from the signal-caller standing up front behind the table altar.
Team members had to stay alert. Absorption was a temptation, harmful to the team. The quarterback says hep and everyone moves. Pay attention, everyone.
Head trip? It's from the 60s, when drugs were on more minds than today. Less talked about anyway. Look it up.
. . . an exhilarating intellectual experience . . . a mentally exhilarating or productive experience, one in which a person's intellect or imagination seems to expand . . .
Used how? Samples:
It is the sort of head trip that leaves audiences gasping for air and critics lunging for adjectives.
What a weird and wonderful head trip, something less watched than experienced.
And it's just a total head trip.
This head-trip heist flick is tight, tricksy and entrancing.
Floating face down, we embark on elaborate head trips to distract ourselves from our bodies' increasingly urgent reminders to breathe.
Ah, that last one. Beautiful. Take note: elaborate, distract ourselves.
Mind conquers all. Think. I must add the subway memorandum of the 60s, THIMK!, in half-mockery of, half urging people at a time when public-service announcements were the rage or at least having a brief turn on readers' consciousness.
Elaborate. Remember this, remember that. Look it up. Page, number, program of the day. Come on. Stay abreast. Get real, or pandemonium’s like to walk upon the scene. To illustrate, Jonas and the whale, Noah and the ark.
Read the prayer, say the response, stand up, sit down, kneel. Do this, do that, and THIMK! Don’t miss the intellectuality of it all. Stay alert, Jonas and the whale, Noah and the ark.
Wave your hand(s). Everyone to everyone. Be a phrase-maker, no, a haze-maker. Let the air ring. Then stop. That’s enough. Pull yourself together. Get ready for the next moment. Think. You can do it if you try.
more more more more . . . .