Following close behind survival and procreation, the pursuit of spiritual transcendence seems to be a universal human need. The three-hundredths-of-a-second neural gap between reality and our apprehension of it dooms us to see our lives in images forever newly obsolete and to grasp only the tiniest fraction of what is available. It is the chasm that Plato described as the difference between shadow and fact. The methods chosen for the pursuit, from the Roman Catholic mass to whatever the Dionysians used to the captures of southern Pentecostalists induced by gospel music to LSD-25, are merely a matter of cultural taste.
On the turntable: Jean-Luc Ponty, "Live at Donte's"
On the nighttable: Jon Krakauer, "Into the Wild"
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