The soul movement, if it can be called a movement, lays claim to
the dignity of the most basic human mystery: that, whether it can be
verified or not, we feel something in the nature of being human that is
beyond measurement, even beyond wisdom. And we are not prepared to
discount that feeling. Perhaps that feeling is what we call "soul"-a
feeling that demands we keep in our vocabulary a word no one quite
understands.
In this light, even the foolishness of the worst of those soul
books seems more forgivable, for even their foolishness is evidence of
what we humans do most consistently, most compulsively: grope for a light
in the dark.
BRIGHT NIGHT OF THE SOUL
Every language has a word for soul, yet all shy from a precise
definition. Soul is clearly a universal experience. But an experience of
what? When we try to answer that, we're on our own.
A Vegas assertion if there ever was one.
And if America is a confrontation of absolutes--material and
spiritual, violent and free, ancient and new--then Las Vegas speaks to a
confrontation of absolutes within me. And what a confrontation is here: a
conflict of classic lights and darks, good and evil. The crassness and
the glowing beauty of this city are one and the same. (If you don't think
it's beautiful, drive into the mountains that overlook it and gaze upon
its lights for a while.) Here is both the most up-front commercialism in
the world, and the luminous inner longing it seeks to satisfy Here is a
shameless cheapness of sexual display, and the beauty of what's being
displayed. Here is the stripper who said to me, "Just because you can do
any damn thing you want in this wild town--well, man, then you'd better
have your own boundaries, and they'd better be really yours, or you'll
lose your ever-lovin' soul."
Here life seems to be one great pulsating neon-tinted desire--an
American vision if ever there was one. Yet here is a constant reminder of
the fragility of it all, how everything can be lost with one spin of the
wheel or roll of the dice.
As I said a little too quickly in the beginning: Something there is
about the soul that goads one onto unknown, difficult, improbable
journeys. For isn't the human journey itself--collectively as well as
individually--unknown, difficult, and improbable? With our beautiful and
often bizarre variations, with all our mad and maddening behaviors,
"replication of DNA" doesn't begin to describe our experience of being
human. But the word "soul" does--however vague it may be. We can't escape
it. And that may be the most cogent proof of its existence.
In any case it seems to be my soul, rather than my deadline, that
keeps me up all night pondering such things. For my part, here on the
19th floor of the Rio, it will be dawn soon, and that's the only time I
really enjoy gambling. The Rio's casino will be almost empty and subdued;
its diminished din of slot machines, canned music and scraps of talk will
seem to come from farther off, even if you're standing in the middle of
it--though the cocktail waitresses will be flashing just as much flesh,
the dealers' eyes will be just as inscrutable, and the odds will be with
the house, as they are at any hour, anywhere. At dawn in Vegas the neon
starts to fade, and as the sun rises the signs flicker off in an
irregular pattern all over town. There is the sense that souls have been
lost again in the night. Certain dawns here, the air feels thick with
them. Some have won their wager with Satan, some have lost, and some have
turned down the deal.
But they keep coming here anyway, longing for something--and
longing is soul energy. So I'll go indulge a bit of longing, play some
roulette, and drink a little Glenlivet, Joseph Campbell's favorite brand
of Scotch. I'll toast all who've lost or found something that corresponds
to that odd word which has no final definition--that word which calls
into question all definitions, and by its very existence, invites us to
explore and test our limits.
Thus a roulette wheel where there's no limit on your bet is, in its
way, a soulful thing.
PHOTOS (COLOR): LAS VEGAS
BY MICHAEL VENTURA
Michael Ventura's biweekly column appears in The Austin Chronicle.
His novel, The Death of Frank Sinatra, was recently published by
Holt.
Tags:
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