Stanning Observations: When Dionysus Meets Excel

I was just scrolling his fan page to look at a pretty face.

Yao Chi — good-looking, and, according to fan-compiled profiles I have not independently verified, one year older than me, an English major, currently filming in Hengdian Studios. I browse his fan community out of habit — until I saw he named his concert tour Dionysus.

Then I looked at his schedule: morning filming in Hengdian, evening flight to Nanjing, night concert, next day back to set.

My first reaction: those two things do not sound like they belong to the same object.

What is the name doing here?

When Dionysus Meets Excel

Dionysus, as pop culture inherited him — largely through Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy — means ecstasy, excess beyond norms, the shattering of order, irrational creative impulse: a force that ruptures everyday discipline. That is a nineteenth-century construction. The Dionysus of Athenian civic religion was something else: the City Dionysia was a state festival organized by the archon (chief magistrate), who worked with two deputies and ten commissioners selected from the tribes to manage logistics. Wealthy citizens were assigned as choregoi — sponsors who funded the dramatic competitions. Playwrights submitted trilogies plus a satyr play; actors competed for prizes from 449 BCE onward; judges were selected by lot. The festival ran for five days on a fixed calendar. At Delphi, Dionysus and Apollo shared the same sanctuary — Philochorus records that Dionysus's tomb was said to lie within the precinct at Delphi; Plutarch (De Iside 35) places his remains near the oracle. The two gods were not opposed; they cohabited.

Even what Dionysiac ecstasy actually consisted of — whether maenads danced on mountains and practiced omophagia (ritual raw-flesh eating), or whether those elements belong to myth and to art rather than to cult — has been argued over for a century. E.R. Dodds (The Greeks and the Irrational, 1951, Appendix I) argued that maenadism was a genuine historical practice. Albert Henrichs ("Greek Maenadism from Olympias to Messalina," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 82, 1978) used epigraphic evidence to trace historical maenad practice from the Hellenistic period onward, distinguishing documented ritual associations from the literary tradition's more lurid depictions. The "shattering of order" that pop culture attributes to Dionysus may never have happened the way we imagine it — and the Athenian version certainly had a schedule.

Both are on the table when somebody says the name. The second one already had an archon.

Meanwhile, this "Dionysus" lives: 06:00 wake up, film, airport, venue, concert, sleep, next day repeat (according to fan-compiled schedules — I have not independently verified the itinerary). Timed to the minute.

The pop-cultural instinct says: that's Apollo, not Dionysus. But Nietzsche's own thesis in The Birth of Tragedy is that art happens when the two fuse — the Dionysian impulse tamed by Apollonian form. A rigorously scheduled concert tour with a transgression brand is not a contradiction of Nietzsche. It is, arguably, his thesis in action.

The theme says Dionysus; the production schedule says Excel spreadsheet. The gap is not between the name and its Greek original — sort the referents and that one dissolves — but between the pop-cultural image the name summons and the conditions under which the tour is made. The question is whose gap it is. Did he choose the name, or did a promoter? The answer determines whether the mismatch is a personal pretension or an industry product.

So what function does "Dionysus" actually serve here?

Why I Can't Be a Fan

When an idol speaks, others hear emotion. I hear discourse.

He says "let's embrace freedom together" — I ask "what does freedom mean inside an industry that books a day like this one." He says "don't let life domesticate us" — I say "you filmed eight hours today, flew to Nanjing tonight, and start again at six tomorrow." He invokes "Dionysus" — I ask "Euripides' Dionysus? Nietzsche's? Or the contemporary pop culture version?"

I'm not laughing at him. What holds my attention is the distance between the concept and the conditions under which it gets produced — and, as the previous section left open, whether those conditions are his to set is exactly what I cannot determine from outside.

I'd rather study fan communities than join them. The moment I join, everyone's yelling "oppa is so handsome" and I'm saying "hold on, let me first analyze the ideological structure of this discourse" — banned within three minutes.

From Nietzsche to Durkheim

It occurred to me — maybe Durkheim explains concerts better than Nietzsche does.

For fans, taking a train to another city after work to see a concert already feels rebellious. They're not channeling Nietzsche or Euripides — they're feeling "today I finally don't have to be the person who goes to work every day." This experience is closer to Durkheim's collective effervescence — the extraordinary shared emotion generated when tens of thousands gather together.

Whether that hypothesis holds is tested below, against the album.

Late-Night Listening

I had zero interest in his music. Not even the desire to press play. I wouldn't even open Apple Music — afraid the algorithm would misread me and spam recommendations of similar artists. I'd rather use Wikipedia.

But I can't critique only the press release. So I started digging.

First lyric impression: Blade Runner references, galaxies, dopamine, Pluto, "if you love him just kiss him." Lots of imagery. But what's the relationship between these images and "Dionysus"? If you renamed the album Stardust or Wanderer, the lyrics would still work — meaning Dionysus is just an outer frame, not an organizing principle.

Album description: "A world that worships rationality and efficiency… I wanted to honestly write my sensitive, often shame-filled self into this album… inviting listeners to reflect on the commodification of emotional expression." Okay — so the album's own stated problematic lies elsewhere. Not Dionysus, not romance, but how modern society turns emotion into commodity. That is a thread this essay does not follow; I note it because it is the album's, not because I am about to analyse it.

Vocal: some Douban comments I read on 2026-07-05 said "vocal is trash." I decided to verify. He started singing and I laughed — not because it was bad, but because it was kind of cute. Thin timbre, but when singing psychedelia, that thinness becomes a floaty, soft texture. Not trash — a kitten trying to roar.

Track-by-track:

"Dreams" — his voice with psychedelic effects actually works well. Best fit for him. But too short; could extend into post-rock.
"Space and Time" — sounds like his idol Queen. Also suits him. But the mix is rough.
"Run" — punk-flavored Hard Rock, slightly limp. But I already like this genre, so even though he didn't nail it, I'll take it.
"Cycle and Scrap" — best hook on the album. Saved.

He also has some inspired modulations rare in Chinese indie rock — melody leading harmony, not textbook moves, but naturally carrying the tune somewhere new. The Britpop lineage is real.

Final verdict: the 7.6 Douban showed on 2026-07-05 is fair. Not a masterpiece, but genuine creative intent with a sustained problematic. Being a soft-cute rock singer is fine. I'm not asking the record to be something else.

Where Did Dionysus Go?

Finished the entire album. I expected a track called "Dionysus." There wasn't one.

These songs are overwhelmingly personal — even when addressing universal themes, they depart from "my" experience and "my" feelings. No dissolution of the subject, no collective ecstasy — just "my" love, "my" emotions, "my" growth. The subject stays intact throughout.

So it's not collective effervescence either. I corrected my own hypothesis.

Dionysus is not in the work. There is no song by that name, and the album is not thematically about him. He appears on the tour — in its title, its staging, its promotional language. That gap is observable from outside, and it is what this essay is about. Who inside the production decided the name, and why, I do not know and do not claim to.

He does at least know that Dionysus has to do with art, sensibility, dreams, freedom. His understanding is closer to the pop-cultural Dionysus than to Greek religion or Nietzsche. Whether he knows the Greek Dionysus is not something his job requires of him, and not something an album can tell me.

The real research question that remains:

Why would a tour by a creator who has no song called "Dionysus," whose album isn't thematically about Dionysus, be named after him — and who, inside the production, makes that decision? Why does Chinese pop music keep borrowing this name?

How a classical concept undergoes semantic drift in modern pop culture, how it gets continuously re-encoded — this question is far more interesting than "does he understand Dionysus."

Postscript: a personal note (not part of the argument)

Nothing in the sections above depends on whether I like him, and nothing below should be read as evidence for any of it.

I was just scrolling his fan page to look at a pretty face. I ended up listening to his entire album.

It didn't change my understanding of Dionysus. But it reminded me of another kind of youth: not the kind sculpted into an inspirational template, but a twenty-something who put his own idols and his own ambitions into an album and released it under his own name.

He's only one year older than me. I never expected we'd become such different people. Knowledge changes how you see — and that change is almost irreversible.

I'm being youthful too, apparently. Actually stanning someone. And barely younger than him at that.

July 5, 2026, small hours. 00:29 to 04:09. Just under four hours, one album, two saves ("Cycle and Scrap," "Run"), one research question.

Thanks to that pretty face. Without it, I'd never have gone from Hard Rock to Dionysus, and from Dionysus to intellectual history.

What this essay does not claim: (1) that the performer is unintelligent or uncultured — the critique is of a naming practice, not a person; (2) that "Dionysus" must refer to the Greek original — the essay acknowledges three valid referents (Euripides, Nietzsche, pop culture) and the performer's use of the third is not a misuse; (3) that pop-cultural concept-naming is unique to this case — it is an industry-wide practice, and this essay examines one instance without evidence that it is worse than the norm; (4) that the author has attended the tour or verified the production schedule firsthand — the essay works from album, fan-compiled materials, and public statements only; (5) that the classical scholarship in this essay constitutes original research — the Dodds/Henrichs material was assembled through secondary sources and AI-assisted search, not through sustained reading of either work, and should be checked against the originals before being cited onward.

Sources for the classical material: Dodds, E.R., The Greeks and the Irrational (UC Press, 1951), ch. 5 "The Greek Shamans and the Origin of Puritanism" and Appendix I "Maenadism"; Henrichs, Albert, "Greek Maenadism from Olympias to Messalina," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 82 (1978), pp. 121–160; Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy (1872). On the City Dionysia: archon's organizational role, choregos system, and judging by lot are standard handbook material (cf. Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1968). On Delphi: Plutarch, De E apud Delphos and De Iside et Osiride; the Philochorus report of the tomb is cited here at second hand, and its fragment reference has not been checked against Jacoby.

This essay was written with AI assistance (Claude). Cover photo by @蒸气牛奶 via Weibo. Revised July 25, 2026: classical scholarship section expanded with the Dodds/Henrichs literature on maenadism, City Dionysia organizational details, and Delphi Apollo-Dionysus co-habitation; Durkheim application qualified. Three blocks removed rather than qualified: the section on the Paris Olympics, the list of untested theoretical affiliations (Debord, Foucault), and the general claim about fan communities.