Re: Digest Number 464

[Guest guest]

If AA is all of those things, why are you still attending? I personally am

offended that AA might have kept me on an old list, never mind showing up

there! If you are looking for thumping entertainment, check out the new Van

Halen album. Otherwise, do you you really need to have that last question

answered or is it rhetorical?

B

> From: 12-step-freeegroups

> Reply-To: 12-step-freeegroups

> Date: 19 Nov 2000 01:50:28 -0000

> To: 12-step-freeegroups

> Subject: Digest Number 464

>

> Subject: lack of humor

>

> Hello everyone from -- new to list. Was in an AA meeting tonight -- my

> home group -- which, for reasons I could explain but won't just now, happens

> to " work for me " whereas the fellowship as a whole quite often does not.

> Well, I'll speculate this much: I'm one of three home group members. Another

> of the three is 84 years old. So it's really me and the other guy, who is

> cool. So we buy the supplies, make the coffee, and schedule most of the

> speakers. Ergo, in the scheme of things, the home group concept works for me

> because in this group dynamic I have a (very modest but subtly recognized) bit

> of power. People feel like guests and don't behave belligerently. The fact

> that I don't do steps or sponsors, and feel my theology-of-the-moment is a

> non-sequitur to everyone else's business, is not something I generally throw

> up in their faces.

> Well, my thought for tonight came as I was watching a hardcore " oldtimer " as

> he was watching a speaker. The speaker was rather animated. He had just over

> a year sober and had been a musician and a salesman, so he was kind of

> flamboyant and funny. Irreverent about his own pain. He even got up once and

> imitated himself walking into his first AA meeting, slumped over. The speaker

> was trying very hard to fit into " what was suggested, " but -- my theory -- he

> still had a creative flame he didn't know one is supposed to keep very low or

> to snuff out.

> I was watching the oldtimer watching the speaker as the rest of the crowd

> chuckled with the speaker or laughed appreciatively at his jokes. It occurred

> to me -- and whether it's strictly true about the oldtimer is for now

> irrelevant; I'm more interested in the insight itself -- it occurred to me

> that the oldtimer (or " thumper, " as I am wont to call oldtimers) could not

> laugh because his goodness, nay, the very quality of his hi-octane sobriety,

> was offended by the creativity coming off of this relative newcomer.

> The idea goes with my previous bias or thought or belief that fundamentalism

> of any kind is always hostile to art because art is liberating. (It feels

> liberating to say that, because I know that somewhere, in some far-flung

> corner of the earth, by the very act of my writing those words, a thumper is

> exploding.) And his goodness was offended by the creative light coming off of

> the speaker, which the speaker had not yet learned to quench, to drown out --

> yet he remained glued in his chair unsmiling. Why?

> I pause, cup my ear to the universe, and listen for the echo of a

> Rumplestiltskin thumper about to stomp himself in two with anti-intellectual

> rage, with a jeer: " That's bullshit! "

> Why, as I was saying, does the thumper remain glued to the speaker whose light

> offends him?

> Because, my friends, the thumper needs that light. It is how he obtains

> vestiges of the " old self " he has left behind, the part of his own soul to

> which he has since died. By " helping " the newcomer, he can glean little bits

> of unvarnished humor that does not reference the steps, he can listen to

> speech that has not yet been fully bent to the ways of the cliche and the

> flagellation of the ego.

> (Thumper, what did you think of that last phrase? Pretty flighty, wouldn't

> you say? Look, here's my e-mail address. Maybe you can reach me.)

> Ah, you all think I am mad but I am not mad. Observe how calmly, how

> carefully, I tell this story.

> A caveat: the thumper is not wholly vampiric. In stealing over the newcomer

> and withstanding the brilliance to which he has died, which almost sends him

> scurrying back into his casket, he does nonetheless offer genuine aid: He

> helps someone stop a destructive habit. And the genuineness blinds him to the

> perversity of the same activity on another level.

> This has been a wonderful exercise in glorious self-indulgence. If there is a

> thumper lurking, I encourage that person to come out. Post to me privately,

> if you like. Perhaps in me you can find a troubled soul in need of aid.

> Maybe this is all a " cry for help. " But seriously. Besides saying a

> belated hello to all on the list, does anyone else think there is a

> relationship between lack of humor, hatred of the artistic, and 12-step

> fundamentalism?

> I won't be able to engage in much conversation on this because there is no

> time whatsoever right now. Just putting the thought in the air.

>

>