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By Root 726 0

Yet as a routine feature of early western civilization it cultivated what we now call our own “self-consciousness,” and our ability to think reflectively about ourselves and our perceptions, to think about thinking. This comes easily to us. You can see what the ancient Greeks meant by theoria simply by looking at something, even continuing to look at this page, and then looking at yourself looking at this page. The ancient Greeks, on the other hand, were just discovering, identifying, and naming this human techne.

Music clearly played a central role in these festivals and in the evolution of theoria. Theoria was thought to arise spontaneously from the music played by the festival musicians who were themselves considered to be ‘priests’ and ‘holy theorists’. The ancient Greeks found theoria to be so crucial to their own lives that they even developed professional ‘theorists’ whose job was to attend the festivals of other city-states in order ‘to look on’ their theoria and report back home.

After a few hundred years, theoria developed into the theatron (‘looking place’ or what we call the ‘theatre’). Finally, it evolved into the concept of ‘theory’ as used in Plato’s theory of ideas (or ‘forms’) and other philosophical theories. This concept of ‘theory’ is very close to ours, a ‘theory’ being a set of ideas, usually systematically ordered and arranged, designed to explain some thing or phenomena.

Zen and the Art of Being a Stones Fan

You can draw a direct line from the ancient Greek Dionysian festivals to a Stones concert of the twentieth or twenty-first century. I have no doubt that ancient Greeks, planning to go to a festival, got as anxious and flustered as I do when I hear about an upcoming tour (only that they didn’t need to worry about tickets. Everyone was welcome!)

Rolling Stones fans too have been known to become intoxicated at these large open air concerts, drinking wine or engaging in the use of some other intoxicant. I am willing to bet that Stones fans have also experienced the theoria of collective ritualistic dancing. I have many times transcended myself in a moment of ecstasy, suddenly able ‘to look on’ my life and what I had done with it up to that time. This is why it is so easy and natural to organize my life and my history around The Stones concerts I’ve been to.

So, are The Stones ‘theorists’? Yes—in the ancient Greek sense of the word. As an essentially live band, they play the same role as the festival musicians played in ancient Greek Dionysian festivals—festivals have never disappeared but merely have taken on different forms over the centuries. Their music incites us to collectively, ritualistically dance and offers us the opportunity to disrupt everyday patterns and routines of thinking and behaving and just possibly create seeds for new ways of thinking, understanding, and living in the future.

They do this, of course, through their music and the spectacles (like The Stones’ famous stages and props) they invite us ‘to look on’ or theorize about at their concerts. Their songs articulate the realities of being human, perhaps most famously: ‘Let’s spend the night together’; ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’; ‘look at that stupid girl’; ‘I’m shattered’; ‘I have to walk before they make me run’ and so on. Their songs draw attention to important aspects of life that we seem to systematically overlook or are reluctant to admit. The theoria of The Rolling Stones has also expanded our musical vocabularies. Many Stones fans were introduced to the blues through the music of The Stones. Think of the ways in which they have ‘spun’ old genres in new ways, in some cases, creating songs archetypal of a complete genre.

As well, The Stones’ musical theoria helps us to recognize self-transcendence and the importance of ‘looking on’ for living a good life. Their songs remind us to ‘look on’ our very being in the world, with its moods and feelings, cares and concerns, anxieties and fear, as well as hopes and aspirations, all of which fill our being at each and every moment. We often don’t acknowledge what