Feed your head. (Jefferson Airplane, White Rabbit)

[Sweeney]

68. Sir; it is not just about the rhyme.

Poetry before the Christians was measured and limited by the pagan, self conscious self control. Look at Aurelius, look at Cicero. These people were rational and not given to extremes of emotion. It was not just Christianity, but all mass movements and revolutions that are carried by emotions. The pitiable condition of mankind as mere playthings of the gods is often brought to light. It is impossible for me to imagine catharsis such was we know it from the witness of tragedy without the emotions being invoked. Other than the followers of Sybil it is hard to associate an excess of emotion with any part of Roman Pagan life.

Christianity changed all that and the attachment to God as Jesus was of the lover to the beloved. The full flare of emotion is something that clearly defines the early Christians against the Pagans, and it is not logical, and the most logical of the Christian feared being condemned by God as Platonist or Ciceronian.

The leap of faith that was this period took along a little bit of logic and philosophy. It took very little of the visual arts. It is as though people stopped seeing the beauty in the human form. Many could not see the beauty of love between a man and a woman, and gave their lives to celibacy. One thing is clear to me, at least. The new frame of mind that was cosmic in its breadth could not find expression as the measured lines of Roman poetry had done. Clearly Virgil got the futility and tragedy of life; and I love those guys and am far more like them than I care to admit.

I love Catullus; those lines: For Venus and her Cupids gave my girl an unguent, and when you smell it, all you'll want the gods to do is make you one gigantic nose to smell it always with.
That man lived. That man smelled that unguent. That girl was real, and that man made that wish as we have all made that wish. I have something in common with that man. Do I have the power to express even a twinkle of that shine of God's love in creation, his mercy and forbearance, his hurt and injury by humanity on the cross or of the many thousands of emotions that might cross the mind of a believer. No. Nor do do I seek the immortality of God's promise. One life lived well is just enough.

Woman is my God, and to her I sing; but still I understand, because I try to understand what a change this was, to have the emotions for the first time, on a social level- liberated. Think of the women who followed Dionysus into the hills to dance and do their rites. This was a reach of freedom and emotion that could not be shared by, and was rather condemned by the men.

It may be impossible to prove, but I think possible to conclude that Jesus Christ and the feeling he aroused made possible Grace Slick and all of modern music. People never become real in history until they can feel.