That Feeling That Planning That Animal Instinct

Nearly jumped into writing this and then scared myself and jumped backwards away from the keyboard, thought I might burn my fingertips. Such a sizzling feeling. So ... maybe I'll ... well, shall I write about it? It's just a feeling -- a tumble of feelings. About late night lounges in hotels and music playing and women dressed in high heels and pink silk cocktail dresses, men in simple black suit white shirt black tie clothes. Wanting something. Some music. Something to drink. Something to hold in their hands. Someone to hold. A hibernation instinct. And why there must always be music.

Music lets us believe anything can happen.

Someone told me each different sense travels a little path of synapses from the outside world to the brain in order to register. Sight for instance, takes 12 stops along the way to the point where we see something. And smell -- talk ancient senses -- only requires two. This is why the scent of a woman's perfume is so evocative -- that and the other scents people learned to know in cavewoman and caveman days that would keep them alive or kill them in a New York minute. Of course, there was no New York then. But then later there was. And there only is a New York thanks to those cavemen and their scents. Odd.

Anyway, they told me sight took 12 stops on the neural subway and smell, just two and sound is somewhere in between. Maybe it was nonsense they told a woman at a bar -- me.

So if you're in a bar in New York at night, seeing things, seeing a woman's pretty legs, a man's handsome forearms, all the necessary sexy body parts and you're tasting something, something sweet, something salty, it can get anyone in the mood to go in for the kill, that's what I was thinking about. How that set of circumstances even in the most civilized place in the world, gets us in the mood to do that uncivilized forest and fur thing, gets us in the mood to mate. In the mood to mate like animals. Loosen our ties. Gives us that razor sharp ability to plan, we sit there planning with great gut instinct how to leave the bar, with a partner, how to go somewhere, get the other animal's clothes off fast, hunt for the little fur we humans have left, get in that nice skin-to-skin conversation, see where it leads, let one thing lead to another. Music can do that. Music can help you do that. Samba, cha-cha, rumba. Listen to the rhythm. The rhythm of hipbones. Listen to it.

[I'll blame this post on this music, which I find I like more and more.]