Moments ...

At 9pm or so last night, toward the end of DP's wedding banquet, the DJ started playing "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Ramones. It's a quick, maniacal, frenzied song. Within a few seconds DP had recruited a number of his friends, including some of the folks from my gaming group (DS & DW) to rush the dance floor.

Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go
I wanna be sedated
Nothing to do
Nowhere to go
I wanna be sedated

We all began to bounce wildly up and down--to "pogue" as DS calls it, swearing it's the only dance he knows. For the full three minutes of the song, a half-dozen or a dozen of us were gyrating up and down, the music blaring in the background, the entire banquet hall bouncing up and down before us. Arms stiff at our sides, leaping like salmon, we tried to reach the ceiling, the heavens.

Just get me to the airport
And put me in a plane
Hurry hurry hurry before I go insane
I can't control my fingers
I can't control my brain
Oh oh oh ho

Then finally, blissfully, thankfully the song trailed off, fading into a slower, older piece, and we stumpled off the dance floor, sweat beading our faces, legs aching and on the verge of collapse, and we felt momentarily joined. Members of a community. Alive.

And that moment reminds me of a similar one, at ER's wedding, six months gone now. As the ceremony ended the DJ--the same DJ, as it happens--began to play "I Melt with You", by Modern English.

I'll stop the world and melt with you
You've seen the difference and It's getting better all the time
There's nothing you and I won't do
I'll stop the world and melt with you

And as ER and his new bride began to walk back up the aisle, the guests began blowing soap bubbles up into the sky. And I began to follow ER and his bride up the aisle, the maid of honor at my arm, and the sky was filled with rainbows and music, and everyone was standing and smiling, and there was love in the air too ...

And it was another moment it which I felt truly united.

Music offers catharsis & release, and sometimes I dearly wish life had a soundtrack all its own.

Books Read: Complicity

Finished reading Complicity
by Iain Banks this afternoon. It was, miraculously, a three-day novel. I started reading it just before bed Thursday night and finished it before I got out of my robe today (though admittedly it was the afternoon). I never allow myself that much time to read anymore, because there's too much to be done. A month is more like my average.

I'm not even sure why I picked Complicity up. I'd finished Revelation Space Thursday night and wasn't quite feeling like sleeping yet, nor was I up to doing anything particularly sensical, and so I grabbed a fairly random book off the shelves. It was a hardcover next to some paperbacks and some smaller trades, and thus it stood out a little bit. I think kimberly_a originally brought the book into this house, through her pre-merge collection.

I haven't read Banks in about five years, since I read the SF novel Consider Phlebas. I remember that one being dense and depressing, and that the ending was unsatisfying. It was enough to recommend against Banks for a long time.

Complicity is one of Banks' non-SF novels. It's a thriller, also a category that I usually don't read, about a journalist and serial killer (who may or may not be the same person). But, Banks is really writing about deeper issues. It's about personal responsibility and the things that we allow to be done--which is to say, complicity. It's about justice, and what that could mean to different people.

Like that one other Banks book I read, Complicity isn't necessarily a happy book, but then the world isn't a happy place. It is, however, honest. (And well written, characterized, plotted, and all the rest.)

I'm now more interesting in reading other Banks books from both sides of his literary career, and should really consider rereading Phlebas sometime too.