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RITUAL
SPACE
by
Martin Higgins
Concept Overview
This
is a collection of short
stories about common rituals in our lives, each examined and traced to its
ancient roots. Martin Higgins relates
his experiences as:
He
then analyzes the structure and history of the rituals attached to each of
these unique situations.
Ritual is a way of
formally entering another world, but we all pass through hundreds of ritual
spaces during our lives. Ritual
space is a way of celebrating our integration, evoking the power of our spirit;
to grow, conquer, to accept and believe.
And by our rituals, we
mark the passage of our lives.
Each
day we pass though dozens of specialized ritual spaces.
Some are highly structured and formal: a church, synagogue, school or
restaurant, while others, like a department store, parking lot or sports arena,
have agreed upon rituals that are barely discernible.
I decided to write about
ritual space during my second trip to the Houston International Film Festival.
My first children's film, Magic Boat, had won the Silver Award a year
earlier and now I was back for the Gold with my second film, Palooka.
Film festivals are
bizarre ceremonies to begin with, but Houston takes the absurd glad-handing and
back-slapping to a new level; desperate networkers in a feeding frenzy with not
a development dollar in sight.
Joining me at the fete
was the General Manager of the company that had financed my films and, although
he was my pipeline for production money, he had reached the end of his creative
wits and his resultant glazed bonhomie
was becoming annoying and shrill.
We "did"
breakfasts and lunches with tale-spinning wanna-be's, watched the filmic efforts
of other independents and spent every other available minute driving the Lincoln
Town "air conditioner" around Houston, looking for people who didn't
have a screenplay, treatment or series concept.
Two days and a trip to
Galveston later, my spirit was so low that, during the awards ceremony, I stated
that even if they initiated a Platinum Award especially for me, I would not be
back the next year.
During the awards
ceremony, a group of filmmakers from New York sat at our table, describing a
local club that featured naked dancers. My
associate immediately proposed that we all meet there after the Awards dinner.
At first, the others were enthusiastic, but he jabbered on about sex in
such a mannered and puerile way, that the New Yorkers left one by one, and we
never saw them again.
So, we taxied to the club
they had described, only to be turned away because my hair was shoulder length. I was puzzled by logic that said "Longhairs are unfit to
watch naked women". my friend
was less puzzled, having lived for a while in Texas. "Don't try to understand it", he said, "just
accept it".
The
second choice club dispensed with the affectation of
"screening" their clientele and after showing I.D. and making
the cover, we entered the darkened room. It
took a few moments for our eyes to adjust to the light, and our personalities to
the ambiance, but shortly found our
way to a table near the stage and ordered our first round of drinks.
The waitresses wore "G" strings, probably a requirement under
some obscure Houston Blue Law: "All
persons serving alcoholic beverages must cover their genitals...".
Why not? This was
Houston, in the Great State of Texas,
where it's legal to drink and drive as long as you have a loaded weapon in the
car.
We
watched several of the featured dancers strip to the buff as the house D.J. spun
Brick House, Three Times a Lady and Celebrate at a level that kept the bubbles in our drinks.
I gave one of the "Table Dancers" a twenty to perform for my
friend and she gave him the nasty little girlie dance that every twelve year-old
boy dreams of.
When
she finished, he leaned over to me and said, "You should have seen my wife
when I first met her." I was
horrified. "How dare you
mention your wife in this space!" I shot back.
"What in the world does this have to do with wives or family or
love?" I was truly puzzled by
his reaction to the lust dance. At
first I wasn't sure why I was so appalled, but as my protests spilled out it
dawned on me.
We
were in a ritual space. This
"Topless Bar" was a sacred shrine to the power and glory of sexuality.
A place were men could revel in the archetypes of lust: the
"Girl-next-Door", the "Tropical Goddess",
the "Ice Bitch of Retribution", the "Innocent Young
Thing", all performing the primal fertility dance, each one embodying an
aspect of the Goddess, displayed in a highly structured "hands-off"
environment.
Bachelor parties of
young men drank themselves silly as they bid farewell to another of their ranks
"a victim of the power of a
Woman", lonely single men, lost in the formidable Age of Aids and crumbling
sexual roles, older men dazed by the infinite variety and variation of such a
simple physical iteration -- all deeply involved in the ritual without
acknowledging its obvious necessity.
But
I first became aware of the concept of ritual space in February of 1962.
Winter
on Long Island is long, cold and wet, so my freezing pilgrimage to St. Boniface
each morning usually included a slip, a fall, and always icy toes and fingers --
fingers frozen and cramped from gripping the coat hanger neck on the garment bag
slung over my shoulder. My
vestments: cassock and surplice, for I was the sorcerer's apprentice; an altar
boy.
Father
Desmond was the latest addition to the parish clergy, so he was blessed with the
daily sacrifice of six o'clock Mass. The old wooden church was warmed by an
antique furnace that responded only to Augie, our school custodian.
Years of service had left both furnace and man stubborn, temperamental
and sooty, so they were well matched.
An
intoxicating aroma of coal smoke, myrrh, wet wool, and beeswax drifted through
the church as the bleary-eyed congregation sat in the nave, silent except for an
occasional muffled cough or throat clearing.
At
ten minutes to six, John Devaney and I changed into our cassocks and roamed
around the sacristy, secure in the knowledge that Desmond would not appear until
five of. Our curiosity lead us to
examine everything that was "off-limits" when a priest was present,
and the electrifying thrill of breaking a taboo is a feeling I cherish to this
day.
Naturally,
the spiritual quest quickly became a noisy game; the usual result of any serious
activity by twelve year-olds. Our
play stopped abruptly as a black shape flowed into the room.
Sister Maria Conceptor, big, Dominican and The Law, somehow bigger than
life somehow here and now. Her
black habit swirled and stopped a moment after she had.
"Devaney,
Higgins! We do not act like that here."
We
snapped to attention, expecting a cuff, ear pinch or slap, but she spun on her
heels and left before we could offer our lame excuses.
Devaney immediately resumed his horseplay, but I stood there for a long
while trying to make sense of what she had said.
My father worked on the Mercury project, so I knew what space was.
It was where the Sputniks were and somewhere just above where Shepard
flew; cold, empty space. So what did it have to do with the sacristy?
I
let the incongruity of the thoughts clang together; another favored pastime of
my pre-pubescence.
I
was stunned to realize that the sacristy and the church were not the walls,
floor and ceiling; the altar, cabinets and pews, but the space inside and around
them. I'm sure Sister Conceptor was
unaware of the thoughts her words initiated in me, but I became absorbed with
the seemingly illogical idea that we create and define spaces: stores, dentists
offices, gymnasiums, bathrooms, and
the only tangible evidence of the space is the material that shapes it.
So,
the church itself wasn't holy, the space was.
Amazing! And how did we make
the space holy? By what we did or
didn't do in it. Stunning!
And what are these deeds called? Rituals
or ceremonies. Whoa!
And how far does this thought reach?
Into every place there are people.
I
was changed forever. My world of
things became a world of roles and rituals and rites and ceremonies.
Understanding the form and execution of each one became my hobby, and
eventually, through writing, theater, television and film, my life.
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