From somewhere ahead too dark to see came music from a small orchestra, unusually syncopated, which grew louder, till they could make out a small outdoor dance-floor, all but unlit, where couples were dancing, and about which crowds were streaming densely everywhere, among odors of beer, garlic, tobacco smoke, inexpensive perfume, and, from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, somewhere up ahead, the unmistakable scent of massed livestock.
* * * * * * * * * *
My initial reaction to the boys' first experience of the Fair is that of a rodeo during Oktoberfest at the Gilroy Garlic Festival.
"somewhere ahead too dark to see"
This is a strange way to begin the boys' journey into the Chicago World's Fair, seeing as how the entire thing is known for its electric light displays. But it makes sense seeing as how the boys seemingly came through a hole in the fence manned by some anarchic entrepreneur taking advantage of a loophole in the capitalist system. They would not have entered on a broad well-lighted street leading them into the heart of the experience. They would have entered in the dark, behind the displays and the shops and the exhibits, having to make their way to the lighted part of the world and the controlled, maintained part of the experience.
"a small orchestra, unusually syncopated"
I tried to read the Wikipedia entry on syncopation but realized early on that I would never understand it. Music, music notation, music terminology, and music theory will always remain a foreign language to me and I'm terrible with languages. I don't even do English that well. I'm not tone deaf or anything! I can do Karaoke reasonably well (depending on the song and singer. I'll sing Indigo Girls or Concrete Blonde even though I know I can't do them justice. But I also don't shit all over them, seeing as how familiar I am with them. But I could never sing, say, a Van Halen song with Sammy Hagar because I just can't do what he's doing. And he's a way worse singer than Johnette or Amy or Emily!) but tell me there's a key change in a song and I'm like, "What? Is there? What is that? Maybe I heard it? I don't know!" If I'm singing a song where two singers are singing harmony, the Non-Certified Wife has told me that I'll often slip back and forth between the two harmonies. I don't even know enough to figure out how to stop from doing that!
Anyways, I can state the definition of syncopation but it's absolutely meaningless to me. I suppose somebody could explain it to me while giving me audible examples of what it is and I might understand it at the moment. But forget retaining that knowledge! It might accidentally drive out some of my memories of the first time different women put their hands down the front of my pants!
"a small outdoor dance-floor, all but unlit, where couples were dancing"
Since the electric lights are part of the thrill of the Fair, the only reason for this dance floor to be "all but unlit" is so that couples can grind their private parts together while pretending to be doing not that in a socially acceptable and traditional activity. I think "syncopated" also means "a beat that helps people fuck."
"Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show"
I'm sure mentioning Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show is somehow important to the themes in Against the Day but being as how this is my first reading of it, I'm currently ignorant on what those themes might be. I will say that it's probably an example of liminal spaces! Once again, we experience a blurry point in time where there's a significant boundary between the past and the future. "The frontier has gone," proclaimed Frederick Turner at the Chicago's World Fair. What was once an authentic experience was now simply a "historic" entertainment told through the voice of the white men who experienced it, even if that white man were employing Native Americans. From a time when Native Americans had agency in their lives, they were now no more than exhibits of the idea of what white men thought they were. In a way, Buffalo Bill's show, begun in 1883 and bankrupt in 1913, is the thirty year boundary between the frontier and the modern era, from authenticity to simulacrum, from a group of people acting out of personal investment and agency to groups of people acting the stereotypes of others.
"the unmistakable scent of massed livestock"
I'm sure a lot of people from the Midwest understand this smell. I only truly learned of this smell, having grown up in California, in my early twenties when I visited my friend Doom Bunny while he was in college at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. Pee-yew!
