ericboy's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the pier 2 -Why the fuck did you take him away from us, you motherfuckers?- System of a Down, Soil This line is shouted as loud as any human being can shout. Its execution is not beautiful by any standards and the song that frames it is an inflammatory attack on social conditioning with no sugarcoating, whatsoever. I like to think I have a great deal of culture and varied, albeit eccentric, musical taste. With the cruise-control set at seventy-one miles per hour and the final phlegm of the sun's assassination to my right, I heard this line and wiped away tears. Yes; I blame society. They took him from me. They taught him how to measure himself. They taught him what they do with the ones that don't fit. They even taught him how. He was only doing what he'd been taught to do. They poisoned his mind; suffocated it. He followed their instructions and punched out a hole so it could breathe. He measured himself, saw the glittering dissimilarity, and did what they told him to. Yes; they took him from me. They glorified his exit in film, music, art, and literature before he even performed it. They pushed him to the edge. He wasn't tall enough; handsome enough; strong enough; cool enough; smart enough; trendy enough; enough of all those things that one must be "enough" of to be tolerated. Then they showed him the way. And he took the route of the lemming and leapt. Yes; they did this, and now I hate them. They never told me why they took him; they just did. It's their way. They are the world, you know, so it's ok. They can do what they want. Never mind that I fucking loved him. He wasn't theirs to take. He was ours. We loved him for everything that he was rather than shunned him for everything that he wasn't enough of. But they took him, anyway. Those motherfuckers! On the pier, I'm watching the water ripple towards the sand. When I focus on one current, I can follow it all the way in. But if I focus on a patch of sea as seen between two fenceboards, I watch it undulate uniformly; the whole patch. It's not traveling; just rocking in place like a violated child. I've been thinking a lot, lately, about perception and the space between. There's a poignantly beautiful song by Portishead called "Roads" that starts with a synthetic bass line that warbles up and down the scale for about 50 seconds in a fuzzy staccato. I've always loved this song because the music creates a feeling of peaceful desolation while the lyrics roll on with subtle power and a vague message of loss and immediacy. One day, I heard Beth Gibbons' lips part before she sang the last line, and now I hear it every time. It became my favorite part of the song; the moment that I remember that a person sang this song and it's not actually the work of a circular piece of plastic. With its humanity reclaimed, the song found its way onto every mix CD I made. I listened to it almost everyday. One day, I stopped listening to the song and started hearing it. Not as music or voice or instrumentation but as sound. I was driving in my car in the dead of night, my driver's side window cracked about an inch or so. As the song began, I heard the wind and the sounds of the road coming in from the window between the peaks of rhythm, cutting in and out, in the space between. The peace and joy of discovering something so new and solely mine. Now it's my favorite part of the song and my drive. My private Heaven. That's where you find the beauty: in the space between. And now I see it and hear it everywhere. The audible parting of lips; the inhalation before a statement of purpose; the exhalation that often speaks more than the plethora of words that pollute most of my conversations. I read an article in the San Diego City Beat today about www.jesus.com. The writer wanted to purchase www.god.com and make something sacrilegious or heretic on it, giving atheists and agnostics a bad name. I want to start a site called www.atheismisnotevil.com. I want people to understand that I don't desire to pull them from their faith or coat the earth with anarchy. The Latin prefix "A-" means "not", not "Against". Just because I don't believe doesn't mean I'm immoral, or, worse yet, a Satanist. The next time I meet a Satanist who bills himself as an atheist, I want to punch him in the face, right on the obligatory upside-down cross that's undoubtedly represented on his forehead. How can a person worship Satan and not believe in God? It's ridiculous, not to mention uneducated. The answer, as I see it, is not to worship at all. There is no higher conscience aside from yourself on your better days. The only deity you have to look forward to is yourself, endowed with the revelations that will inevitably befall you in the future. So if you need to worship or emulate a figure beyond you in consciousness and wisdom, it is your future self. To emulate this figure is merely to continue being. A goal would be a prayer. Time spent with a good book or a leisurely drive would be reverence and pentinence. Looking at the world around, taking it all in, would be your tithing. All of these are self-sustaining and never limit you to obedience or fear. Perhaps it's all too utopian to appreciate, but it's beautiful to me. Imagine: a religion suited to be celebrated, never mourned or taken to grudgingly. Dragging yourself to the temple in the morning would never be a challenge; you're always there. I'd like to be a rock singer. The freedom of purging one's demons as a career. Particularly with the current trend of blending melodic moments of beauty with surges of unadulterated anger. To go from angel to monster and back again and take everyone within earshot with me. Slightly elevated above the masses, screaming out all the evil, all the pain; everything I've ever wanted to say. Abruptly changing gears and crooning for a loved one or a memory to crystalize in time. To see the look in the eyes of an onlooker that's singing my words back to me. What would that look be? What effect would I have on the disaffected? I want to create something that I enjoy and share it with others. Who knows? Maybe someone could actually benefit from my exorcism. Wouldn't that be "enough"? In the blurry, dreamy window affected by tears, the face of Sara Jones comes floating up again. Where did she come from? Was it the setting sun? The girl on the scooter? The surfers? The abandoned fishing poles? I sang her song again today. What used to be sort of funny is now sort of tragic. I suppose I had it coming: my just desserts. I've always had a bit of a sweet tooth. To force her out, I'm playing "Devil-Rock" on the home stereo. But these fuckers keep straying off topic and addressing their songs to "you" and "she" and "her". Can't they just focus? I surrender to their suggestions and put on some Staind. I'd say that I don't ask to feel this way, but that would be a lie. I like it. It's familiar, like my Old Navy jeans with the holes in each leg. Comfortable. And it's magic with my eyes. They're never quite as blue as when I feel that color. All day, almost twelve hours, and my phone hasn't rang once. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that. I'm wishing I were at the pier, watching the sun take a dive and singing all of our old songs. I participated in a consumer opinion research test for Jolly Ranchers today. The girl who administered the procedure intrigued me with her wild hair and the fluidity with which she printed with a pencil. I wanted to learn something about her personality. She never looked up from her script, though, even when she read the part that thanked me for my time. Then she went away. 4:55 p.m. - 2003-02-13 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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