Pretext for new comments:
The Facebook posting of the article 7 reasons why I’m not going to UNTOLD, has generated a lot of rejection and even mockery. The general chorus was related to the author’s self-assumption of moral superiority and other more or less explicit allusions to retrograde religious fanaticism. Others preferred just to laugh, without trying to invalidate the position assumed by the article. After all, nobody messes with fools, especially fundamentalists, right? However, like many of the commentators have said, “Everyone has the right to do what they want!” and no one denies that, especially in a modern state, but the consequences of such a festival concern us all as a society. I don’t doubt the things I wrote in that article, but I took the liberty to ask myself a few questions about what might motivate me to go to UNTOLD, and then reflect on them. In the following lines I will try to answer them.
1. Could a challenge from someone I know entice me enough to participate? Accused of being just a detached observer, of shying away from experience, of not allowing myself to be contaminated by life, as if fun and sensuality would defile me? Are such reasons plausible enough for me to at least consider going to Untold 2024?
I think a challenge like that would really make me think. True, I’m proud nature and I don’t like to be accused of being a coward, but I can’t say that my mother raised me in church fluff and I burned my adolescence waiting around for the relics, as some of the people who reacted to the article have wished me. I’ve been to concerts. I’ve seen Iron Maiden, Alternosphere, Zdop and Zdup, The Motans, Carla’s Dream, Roua, etc. I’ve also forgotten a few sleepless nights, due to high blood alcohol, even dancing to manele(Balkanic gypsy music) at proms and parties. Therefore, I don’t consider that I haven’t tasted a bit of what Untold has to offer. It tastes good until it doesn’t. Until the stakes of everything that happens there become insignificant. True, you need to find another consolation, of a different kind, to make the trade. To stop being interested in what Untold has to offer, you need to get consistent pleasure in some other way. As for me, I no longer seek such contexts, because I have found my joy in the present, in the Presence of God, not in the collective trance. No one denies, if the present and the presence in it are not enough, stimulation is needed to sensory overwhelm the dissatisfaction. For me it’s simple! Contemplating reality and cultivating His presence wherever I am, in addition to filling my being with rest and deep pleasure, frees me from paying for such contexts, because being here where I am now, is enough. I offer nothing to be transported to a magical land, reality is the joy I have. I pay a price, it’s true, any form of freedom requires giving up another, but nothing can buy, what God offers. I’m not condemning anyone, on the contrary, I’m saying that it’s logical what you do, it’s logical to seek satisfaction. As St. Augustine said: “What is a man looking for when he goes to a prostitute? He seeks God!”. But I wish you all a taste of God’s goodness and joy. What more could I wish for you?
I close by saying that yes, I would like to experience what it’s like to be in such a crowd someday, I confess, I am an adventurous spirit, but the sound kills me. I think in the meantime I’ll opt for a U Cluj – CFR match.
2. Would the desire and curiosity to expose myself to such intentional stimuli, so that I could be taken into possession by the experience, to be the dance itself and not just the dancer, as some mystics would say, would somehow convince me?
It’s not that I don’t believe in losing control. I think there is a need for ecstasy and experiential surrender. Experiences that to an outsider may seem like emotional irrationality, lacking lucidity and critical thinking. But what is really important to me is the voluntary loss of control with someone I trust. Whatever we do affects us, it is unavoidable, even more so the ecstatic experiences and the social context in which they took place… Therefore, whenever I open myself freely to passion and all that is the celebration of life through the body, I will first cultivate a relationship of trust with those who will participate in the experience with me. Everything to do with the sensation of bodily pleasure simultaneously opens us up to the erotic phenomenon, which is about imagination and fantasy, and here we are talking about what I nourish in myself as a predisposition of my psyche. Because I love my wife and actively choose her every day, I will only allow myself to be possessed by the experience of ecstasy with her. This doesn’t just mean sexuality, as if Untold is some massive nudist party, but everything about engaging my body through rhythm, dance, and music with the goal of sensory pleasure. At such intensity of stimulus, my openness to eros escapes all rational censorship. Many open us to eros, especially nowadays when marketing is becoming more and more pornographic, but consciously I will choose love day by day. For me it’s simple, I know who I am and who I want to love!
3. Would the temptation to free myself from critical judgment and the desire to let myself be assimilated into the great human tribe actually draw me to Untold 2024? After all, I would be doing nothing more than temporarily suspending my usual inhibitions and allowing myself to dissolve into the beat with others, all in a safe and controlled environment.
I am no saint and have not attained any state of bliss. I’m a man of sorrows, if I’m to speak as an Orthodox, because I often do stupid things so that I can feel like I belong, stupid things that I am ashamed of later. No one likes exclusion or ostracization, but often our need to belong can contradict our need to assume an individual truth beyond the group. I’ve committed it and disowned myself many times by my actions from the things I’ve assumed in my own right, it’s no secret! The need to belong is rooted in the fiber of our being and it is in a struggle with our need for individuality. It is morality that condemns our individualism and criticizes it so that we can feel that we belong to that group of valuable people, those who think of others. It is also moral conscience that reminds us when we have betrayed ourselves in order to belong to others and resigned from the community of those who have assumed to the end who they are. Wouldn’t it be nice to abandon this moral conscience and reset our preferences in the group, and then there would be no conflict between us and the community? It would be a brave new world, some would say… But it would also be the hell of all that is uniqueness and personal freedom. I’d rather be different and struggle with the pain of being rejected than to be approved, but not for being persuasive, but rather because my truth is the only truth that those in my group validate. We will not be a community unless we learn to be individuals. But between individuals there are spaces, gaps where everyone can be themselves, enjoying themselves, or inviting others into their intimacy. Everyone is free to be him, to be with others who want him for who he really is, or to freely reject him, because they are not obligated to prefer his options. I won’t go to Untold to be bewitched by the mother goddess, the one who birthed us all and into whose earthly womb we will return. How wonderful that you are, how marvelous that I am, as the poet Nichita Stănescu [1] says, and I wish that it may remain so. For until you and I become an us, we have a road to travel, a road that requires time, vulnerability and real life lived together. There is not the slightest disposition in me to get high on the lie of inclusion without paying the price of reality, the price of my life lived with another, the one I am forced to know and live with him and his differences. I don’t want just to party hard for a few days with strangers. Inclusion is seductive, as long as you don’t have to pay the real price of our differences.
Instead of conclusion:
I am not judging anyone who seeks pleasure at Untold, the feeling of pleasure is a divine gift. I’m just saying that I wouldn’t seek it there. I don’t vilify the youth set on entertainment, but if there’s anything that makes me speak out, even at the cost of being uncomfortable, it’s the desire to state bluntly that there is pleasure beyond the horizon of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, something real and consistent, something that experience does not exhaust. We all make choices, choices that we like to believe are free, after all that is the nature of life. But when we choose to go to Untold this year, it’s worth asking ourselves a simple question: can I not go to Untold and not feel the frustration of missing out on something valuable? Because if the answer is no, then that means that we don’t have something that gives us more satisfaction than Untold does. And if we don’t have that, it means that we are compelled to satisfy ourselves with that kind of pleasure, otherwise we wouldn’t experience frustration. Furthermore, if we are constrained it means we are not free, free to go out in the country and wreck the grass while the music is blasting at Untold. Then what does it mean to be free? Is it more than just doing what we think satisfies us? Is freedom more than that pleasure that compels us irresistibly?
Such questions will be answered on other occasions, until then, let’s ruffle the grass and scratch the trails for a while. Out there in nature, in that place where the crickets will concert whether you like it or not, you can ask yourself the following question for no cost: What does it mean to be free?! What does it mean to be free not to go to Untold?
Bibliography:
[1] https://www.nichitastanescu.eu/opere/poezii/ce_bine_ca_esti.html
