Arcane Desires

(Draft portion of a planned live performance piece.)

People want things. Large billboards and moving pictures convince people that they want these things. There is a place where people go to get the things they want. Large trucks carry the things to this place. People count the things and put them into trucks. Other people give electronic numbers to the people who used to have the things. The electronic numbers represent pieces of paper, and the pieces of paper represent more things. People almost never see the actual pieces of paper. The pieces of paper, which used to be larger pieces of paper, have pictures of old dead men on them. These men had lots of metal coins when they were living, which is one of the main reasons that they are on the sheets of paper. They bought different kinds of things with their coins than people do now with their pieces of paper.

Things are very popular with people. People wrap some things around their bodies and put different things in their mouths, and the things go through their gastrointestinal systems. Those same people carry things around in other things they buy. They take the things out of the things they carry them in and do other things with them. They put their things into the things of other people. The things store where people buy the things has so many things. They sell stomach things, things that move, things that talk, things to help things with, and things to hurt things with. The thing store has people that will give you the things and take your pieces of paper so they can get their own pieces of paper. At the things store, they sell butter. At the things store, they sell guns. At the things store, they sell butter and guns. Some people think this is not crazy at all.

--

Nebulae are somehow both chaotic and organized, the first stage in the cycle of a star. Plasma, hydrogen, and dust amalgamate and gather new substances. Nightshades, Neptunian orbs, jars of starfish swimming in bathtub gin, moonapples, and the rest of the big black nebularform words collide and become a new organism.

Is surreality the only way to enter the realm of nebular forms: amber and hyacinth? A montage of the beautiful, with crystalline necks of swans just hovering on a golden track as you drift. Is the illusory preferable, visual and auditory? What if you could taste the illusory, touch it, grab on to it with both hands? Rimbaud called for a derangement of the senses, and isn't that truly what we're trying to achieve in art? A manner of perception which eclipses that which we have been given in this world and takes us to new heights. But within this derangement, is it possible to reach a transcendent level, to escape stores that sell butter and guns just a few aisles apart?

If you convince your mind that the patterns are syncopated and syndicated, then your own simulacrum is your own. You can live in a painting or a book or an imaginary castle on an alien planet. Fantasies can be juvenile-- they are designed to bring us back to the spirit of childhood that we neglect in favor of a societal structure that forces misery and work on us. Maybe we should all get back in childhood cardboard boxes and lift off in our strange new spaceships with the ability to imagine, one of the keys which separates us from the status quo and gives us the ability to shift reality to the degree that we have already. Back to the garden, childlike not childish, as in children of god. And we could do this all inside of a cardboard box. Hike through virtual canyons, explore verisimilitudes unparalleled because they not only imitate life but go beyond in spontaneous acts of whimsical creation. Or we could just eat Whimsicles. A Whimsicle is like a Creamsicle, but they taste like cinnamon and smell like vanilla.

Butter and guns. Why the dichotomy: guns and butter, butter and guns? Don't we have other choices? We could be lachrymose acrostic agnostic gnostics with pockets full of pebbles on another plane, scorched with fire to deviate, disintegrate, enunciate, denigrate, and then create anew. That sounds like more fun.

I don't like the butter and guns store. I'm not going to go there anymore.

--

Hurry everybody hurry. Do your work in a cubicle, and you'll get a bigger cubicle and a slightly bigger house and you can eat sandwiches instead of just bread and maybe get a bed one of these days.

The worker works for his worker's pay all day. No time for thought or contemplation. By the time you're home, you're too tired to go out in the world, let alone protest the whole damn environment. The middle manager will make him wear his uniform. The boss wears an even shinier uniform than the middle manager.

Dreams save us. Extricate yourself from the cruelties of the world. Live in a monastery, one of your own choosing. Beg for alms. Arms grow longer, and you don't know what to do with them.

Get up again by some mechanical device that your body instinctually resists obeying. Loud, piercing noises. Noises you wouldn't like if you were already a ghost.

--

God does not play dice with the universe, says Einstein. What about the dice rolls for Jesus' rags? Christian cosmology declares that God is omnipresent, omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and most importantly omniscient. Aren't those quarks obeying God's commands? On those dice rolls, when the men were casting lots, wasn't every molecule predestined to give some lucky Roman soldier the garment, the crown, the cape?

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Cash and carry those butter n GUNS. Pick 'em up and get 'em out of our way. We'll overcharge you for butter and guns. Guess what we'll buy? More butter and guns!