Emerson said that “if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars,” and it’s not that the stars are apparent exactly in this electronic world, but if a man would be alone in the go-go ’90s, the local brain saloon may be as close to Walden Pond as he’s going to get. The saloons, which are appearing around the country, offer electronic systems that stimulate visual and aural parts of the brain, opening up the kind of mental wilderness that seduced Thoreau and Emerson; a place where isolation makes self-awareness as accessible as fantasy.
The dream of a virtual nirvana began to take an electronic form in the 1980s, when advances in computer design met up with research, indicating that light and sound can fire up different parts of the brain. Neurobiologists related bright lights and soft music with specific brain patterns: a highpitched tone combined with a quick flashing light seemed to produce an energizing beta wave, for example. Ideally, mixing and matching sounds and sights with a computer program can inspire everything from creativity to the sort of neural Disneyland that Timothy Leary sought so assiduously in the ’60s. “We get a lot of people who want to have a psychedelic experience without ingesting drugs,” says Judy justice, who works at New York’s Synchro Energize. “It’s really a combination of new-edge technology with a New Age sensibility.”
Bhagwan Shree-Rajneesh meets George Jetson? Absolutely. At Synchro Energize, the thick smell of incense and the recorded sound of crickets fill a room crammed with an array of recliners and cots, each equipped with a visualization headset. Twenty dollars buys 45 minutes of pulsing lights blended with nature sounds and classical music. Though the tumultuous storm of lights and Vivaldi can seem an awful lot like an opera about getting a speeding ticket, it’s nearly impossible to ignore the incessantly seductive lull. Ethereal bliss? For some, but for others it’s better than Halcyon, and snores replace “om…om.”
If that hardly seems a recipe for discolike popularity, don’t tell the hundreds of ravers who are making the world of thickened light an essential part of fin de siecle nightlife. Brain saloons have popped up in Amsterdam, San Francisco and Seattle, and do-it-at-home kits, like the $150 version from Seattle’s Synetic Systems, are making the mental trips accessible to anyone. The odd appeal of a social life built around solitude recalls the brine-filled isolation tanks that came and went with Rolfing and Jody Powell. Yet for Generation Xers bred on the soft, introspective high of the drug Ecstasy, the idea of a neural Jungle-Gym sounds just fine. Though Thoreau argued that “Be it life or death we crave only reality,” rapper Guru may have been nearer the Zeitgeist: “Realistic? Kind of mystic. Mellow out, check it out and just lounge it.” Emerson, at least, would have approved.
