Rock leverages the entire society. As Jim Morison sensed, the rock performer regains the power of the shaman. He or she knits passion and reason together in the tune. This means also that the most powerful spirits lurch within rock. Escaping them requires an exact understanding of the rock and roll system.
Tribal dancers sway to a deafening and repetitive beat coming from a stage hundreds of feet away.
The master of ceremonies, if a man, strikes all the poses required by the culture's masculinity rituals, if a woman, she evokes all self-victimizing images required of femininity. Rock is at the forefront of decadence precisely because it opens up the most possibilities. There are a fantastic number of possibilities in a communications system that broadcasts one person's spontaneous reactions to millions. Rock brings us together for a special moment but only as atomized lump. Lodged between drunkenness and despair, rock is a perfect subjective map of today's foreshortened mental landscape.