Think of that special moment when you realise nobody gives a toss whether you have a glass of milk or drink yourself to death; think of all those people you've met during your time who remain unchanged amidst this huge personal process that's tearing your brains out of your nose every time you think of it. It's like waking up to a nuclear explosion and watching others snore and drool in their sneakers, when you seem to have a greater awareness of what's going on outside music television. Even though there is no-one who really believes in what you think, it is all justified bliss. It's a rusty air force hangar with you approaching the only working jet.
I had a dream in which Marianne Faithfull and I communicated with each other in the silent, rapid way people do when they're asleep.
- You are vulnerable, darling. You reek of it. Nobody likes that!
- Why are you resenting me? Weren't we supposed to be friends?
- Yes sweetheart, but this is how it goes.
- What if..
- You're full of questions. You want to know too much. The others? Just look at them: they don't have the answers but they don't ask anything either. You've just fallen from the ride and bumped your head a bit, that's all.
- Why do I get all these problems?
- Don't you see any benefits in there? So all the coke and fanny passed you by.. but be thankful; they'll get there too, once they're 55. It could kill them then, where as you know what it's like already. See, you only have to go through it once in your life: being totally without any attractive qualities, being old or ugly, the anti-person. Having no-one to lift you up and carry you out of the pub. Nobody gives a fuck about you now, darling, and you know it. But since you didn't slash your wrists.. doesn't that make you feel like a king? You are in it now, you are in their hell- not yours. Just imagine that lot over there being plunged in your world.. they would pray for a piece of rope.
She pointed to a nearby shampoo-commercial set.
- Thanks..
- You have nothing to hide, sweetheart. Come on, put on some miserable music, put on some Morrissey. It's a question of authority. Always. People like you are here to show just how petty most of the world is. Most of them are under constant pressure to achieve. You're having none of that, are you dear? You're a true rocker. I should have your autograph!
Once I woke up I drifted to the kitchen to stare self-pityingly out of the window and pretended our relieving dialogue was still in progress. It felt as if all sense of humour had evaporated from my home town. I was once again face to face with my grave depression except this time I kept a loaded gun to my head. I had previously thought of ending myself on numerous occasions but didn’t have the hopelessness to pull it off. This time it seemed present. Marianne was doing her best to talk me out of it.
- You are a divinity and there is something inexplicably soothing in your hand that's wrapped around that glass of milk, downing it slowly, sunburnt from the lightbulb above..
The hidden delight at others misfortunes drove some to the company of dying addicts watching babies getting microwaved on video, some to the catwalks and most to spend time with a cause that seemed kind of remote at first but now you would eat teargas for it. You get people lazily drifting towards anything cool, avoiding the fact that maybe you were abused as a child or maybe you're developing schizophrenia or maybe you have some things in your character that account to vulnerability but you decide to travel-and-substance-abuse it away.
Few are willing to lose the outside ideas of good living. Outside is what counts; how the Big Outside feels about your life and/or hairdo. Ideology is outside, trainers and painful music is in but still of the outside.
To question the ultimate authority of tattoos and bum-sex is like waving a blood-stained flag at a giant, nervous raging bull. Tell a member in the hi-fi youth-order there is no karma left to be consumed. There is no shock-value to anything except parenthood, simplicity and religion. But the bull is worried; it is nervous because it fears deflation by someone with a ton of easy calm. What if you just left the bullring, walked away from that senseless, greedy beast?
Although promiscuous behaviour is mentioned in apologetic mental health leaflets around the world as a "possible cause for depression", it is also encouraged to a massive extent: whole generations worth of aspiring human beings are defined through it. If our societies are this ambivalent, confused and unable to cope with variety, how do you think your average 15-year old feels?
After the foam dries and the poison-green lights shut down at the altar of an eternal mardi gras, the hard pulse is replaced with a barely audible heartbeat. A global hangover sets in. Taboo topics are never discussed, they are acted upon, they give us tragedy. Like the video-presenter who can't spell the names of classic rock-acts and generally feels uncomfortable around good music, the biggest misconception is in the strength of the loud. That is recommended: be the alpha (fe)male, consume as much as you can and get treated like a human being in return. But why am I so fucking depressed? Who is to blame?
You cannot exist as a sexless, friendless cunt on this planet unless it is well justified; namely with disease, crime or superstardom. If you can't provide the dough, the biology, or fit in the PVC, you have to leave this city, country, life.
- Where are the old life-worn women with their wisdom? But should a shaggable girl sing out of key like the lowest of infernal shit-eating demons it really makes no difference: you don't slap your face and grin to your mates, do you? You appreciate her efforts. This is living in a metropolis, sweetheart.
If there are no means of justifying your existence, the least you can do is be really hip until your face explodes in a surge of blue fluid in the middle of filming a hilarious tampon-commercial.
- Did I tell you I'm a hypnotist? Come on dear, relax. Let's see what's in there.. You feel yourself pulled to whatever is acceptable now, whatever is rude enough, brave and danceable.
- Movement movement movement movement movement movement noise just suck me in. Take me out of vulnerability. Fry my brains. I am getting married married married, in the end, eventually. I can dance shit and sting like a bee if you mess with us. I am someone. I am doing better than you or some ex of mine and I love it. I am justified justified justified. I have a high-profile job and money money money. Maybe a celebrity mate or two. Three, four. My car is nicer than yours. My hobbies are more exciting than yours. My toys look brighter and I play harder. I can kick the ball higher. I can sit still in my own shit for hours, maybe days mummyyyyyy wipe my bum I'm bleeding-
What if you were picked up by celestial hands, placed inside a padded cell, made a drooling vegetable with what you previously thought was just an appetizer? What if you gradually lost track of the last time you had sex, drugs, or a trip to Kuala Lumpur to have sex and take drugs? What if you had nothing, except a sweat-stained joystick on the other end, waving at you without a life, living in the coffin of all towerblocks to begin with? What if everything goes wrong and you lose your perfected social hovering skills? When you encounter that absolutely terrifying feeling that you do not have, what is generally approved as, the right to live and nobody taught you the counter-hatred.
Like the previous generation warned us: being in the company of others is the only moral ladder in the 21th century. You still have to fight your way through what seem like eons of wrong hair-conditioner, body-shape and philosophy. Take a moment to blame the world of advertisement.
- Come on dear, it'll make you feel better.
- But you're wearing Armani!
- And you're wearing CK.
In modern times humility is considered as something equally desirable as a mullet. This ambivalence is what drives some people into writing shit poetry, slitting their wrists, having kids too early on and then abandoning them. In this world, how could you ever escape being undesirable? You are willing to try anything it takes, maybe through an enigma or a cult. It is not the universe that's trying to knock you down from your bike, it's the the ignorance of not knowing what topics are alright amidst fashionable strangers. That is the stuff that makes perfectly productive, interesting members of the society hang themselves on their 27th birthday; sensitive art-school girls who overdose on aspirin because they are still virgins. In the end, is it their fault: who is to blame?
It is the grinning hairspray puppet that's asking for a light, reporting back to heirloom shampoo-people. It is The Hip. You go with it although you're not exactly sure why.
- That is why you are depressed, suicidal, on medication, drawing upside down crosses on your skin with a knife: you just couldn't elbow your way through the ridicilous demands of a borderless shopping sodomy. You couldn't justify your existance with enough hairspray, money, photographs, friends, bunjee-jumping or life. The Big Outside around you is living in a fear-based illusion, fear of being alone. It doesn't kill you, it doesn't break hearts.
Reluctantly you got to feel what it's like to take a walk on the other side. Maybe you never really travelled passive-aggressively at 16 to 24, pushed that trolley at 25 or sat down at 26 after finding out your latest STD is fatal. Maybe you kept petting rabbits at your parents house until 33 but at least you always went head-on with the biggest crimes against humanity in the universe: lifetime celibacy and isolation, begging, poverty and unemployment. That's the biggest, bravest, boldest thing for anyone to do and you can pat yourself on the back now.
- Sensitive art-school girls, lads doing Cocteau Twins, come on.. you're alright! You think you've lost all beauty but you've never been closer to it.. consider yourselves extremely lucky.
It's 100% life because in a room of six billion people emanating of shipwrecks you are the only one who weathered the storm, ice and sin of urban retreat. Every pound, dollar and yen that's spent on neon and jeans now screams for forgiveness.
Then it's 5:25 in the kitchen and even if the sun can't tear away the towerblocks you feel it shine from within you: it rises from your belly, up your throat and like a crown it finally rests at your brow. You start to enjoy, cherish, attach your whole being to the amazing hum of your fridge, not noticing it has died away long ago and you enter a place where all-that-you-are is lovingly measured under grace and understanding. I am so in love with me, I want to hold me, I want to giggle at me and write about it.
- Life? They missed so much of it..
Then the world's only worthwhile idea is whispered in your ear in a husky, beautiful voice:
- And by the way, sweetheart: all experience is equal.
I hold the vinyl in my hands, peering at the faded picture of a very young woman. She came to me last night, of all the fucking people she chose me. I put the gun down, of course.
