Alone In The Machine

We All Must Forgive Jesus

Some days i agree with Bacon and i cannot shake the thought and the dread of it. Some days the falling sickness lifts, and i arise and begin to think i am immortal, only to fall down flat on my face in the mud again.

I relate to every Morrissey song. I feel deeply that 'life is a pigsty', and that 'this world is full of crashing bores'. Paraphrasing his words, 'i lie in bed, i think about life, and i think about death, and neither one particularly appeals to me'. Other times i feel like 'i have forgiven Jesus'.

We all must forgive Jesus. I have forgiven him for the crusades, the inquisition, my crazy religious upbringing, and all the phony televangelists preaching in his name. It comes down to this- once you say anything, people can, and naturally will, misinterpret it. ' I am the way, the truth, and the light' got turned into follow or die. 'Love one another' was turned into judge one another, and act with malice towards those who feel differently. Of course it was an easy mistake to make, it was a confusing mixed message, and we misinterpreted it. So we all must forgive Jesus.

I saw Morrissey once in the trafford centre. He was strolling around wearing reading glasses and walking beside an older woman i assumed was his mother. My brother Andre was with me and we nudged each other and conferred among ourselves if it was really him. Have you ever seen music made flesh and blood? It undoubtedly was him, and so always i saw him, and he did not see me.

I prefer it this way. Though i love the man, i have no inclination to grovel at his feet and ask for an autograph. That would only be embarrassing for us both. I have no desire to speak to him or know him, no illusions of friendship. Like so many, i simply admire him from afar and appreciate the truth and the beauty of his art.

It is better this way, not to meet ones heroes. Better still to have heroes who are dead, and better once more to have no heroes at all, but for some you can't help but make the exception. I suppose they are not heroes in a sense, they have not become false idols or authorities, it is just that i have preferred them over most humans. I have not known them, i will never know them, yet their words or creations have consoled me and made me feel less alone. Their works have enriched life, they have left behind artifacts or pieces of themselves that have comforted me.

It is good to have heroes in this way, and it is one of the few things that makes life truly interesting and bearable. The world needs a Morrissey! It needs a Van Gogh. It needs a Bill Hicks, a George Carlin, an Alan Watts, a Rupert Sheldrake. It needs a Bukowski! It needs all these things. It needs all the poets and artists, the comedians, the philosophers, the lovers, the drunkards, and every other living breathing thing. It needs the mediocre, the maladjusted, the petty, the insane. We know things by contrast, and not in themselves. Without all these things there would be no way of differentiating the mediocre from the extraordinary.

Sometimes something in me sees everything on the same level. Reality itself plateau's and becomes flat. There are no peaks and valleys, or rather, those peaks and valleys define each other. There is no deep. There is no shallow. No good. No evil. There is merely one movement defining and opposing itself. It is one flow of existence, it is everything all at once, and we categorize and label it according to our preferences. Good becomes what pleases us, bad becomes what pains us.

There is a time for superficiality and a time for depth. Without knowing one we could not know the other. Yet hasn't this world known enough suffering? Have we not as a culture embraced superficiality with open arms, and to a large extent, rejected depth? Superficiality is for the masses. Depth is for the scientists, the specialists. Most of us don't create anything. We are too tired to create, we are too caught up in the petty drama's of our own lives. We are working jobs to survive, and when we come home we want to switch off our minds. The last thing we want to do is question the meaning of it.

We are God's ever living death. We are the dark background of space that allows the stars to shine. You will never know how little space is allocated to introverts until you become one. The extroverts are everywhere chattering endlessly, holding the stars in place and separating them from each other. They talk incessantly, yet miraculously say nothing. I too talk incessantly and say nothing. The thoughts bubble up in the brain, but do not come out of the mouth. How can they enjoy it, i wonder? But before i exalt my prejudice too much i get a glimpse of the truth. They are talking inanely and incessantly thinking it has meaning, for pleasure and to fill the void, and so am I.