Given the grand and glamorous setting of the show, it was hilarious as well as heart-warming to be in the midst of this. Plus, a significant percentage of the audience were adorned in solidarity with the participants in the Heilung collective - black-smudged faces, furs, horns, and unorthodox dress that attempted to time-travel significant millennia into the past. An abundance of black t-shirts, black pants, tattoos, piercings, etc., etc. I’m talking about 2800 people who looked like the kind of crowds you typically rub shoulders with at underground metal clubs. The crowd at the show was an added bonus to the magic of what was happening on stage. Perhaps needless to say, Heilung isn’t typical of the kinds of musical performers who show up at this place. And not just any concert venue, but one that first opened in 1928 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. often, and they quickly sell out one of the largest and grandest concert venues in this cosmopolitan city. Here’s an experimental folk music band with members from Denmark, Norway, and Germany who don’t get to the U.S. By the time I found out about it, the 2800-seat Paramount Theater was sold out. On the other hand, it was a testament to the willed creativity of which we’re capable, and the capacity to create beauty and magic. On the one hand, the intense primal attraction of the show was a vivid reminder that “primitive man” still dwells within us. These thoughts bubbled to the surface as I reflected on the performance of Heilung I was lucky enough to witness in Seattle on the night of September 20th. We just don’t do any of that as often as we should, and there’s a case to be made that time is running out. Sometimes we’re able to extricate ourselves from dangerous predicaments through the exercise of reason when instinct alone would fail. Sometimes we actually behave in genuinely altruistic ways. Unlike almost all other creatures on the planet, our big sophisticated brains give us the ability to override instinct for the better. Instead, they lead to behavior that’s just plain dumb, or worse yet self-destructive, or still worse yet, dangerous to the survival of the species as a whole.
Unfortunately, it’s also pretty clear that in the “modern age” those instincts no longer function very well as instruments of preservation and advancement. The literature of anthropological evolution (in which I’m a dabbler rather than an expert) makes a convincing case that much of our behavior is rooted in instincts that evolved over a vast span of time, instincts geared toward the survival of the species. (Our editor Islander wrote the following concert review and took all the photos that accompany it.)
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