Monday, February 11, 2008

By Richard A. Webster

Temporary madness. That is our addiction.
Not booze, not blow or smack or speed or weed.
Temporary madness. That's what we're all after.
Give me 18 hours in the tank with the titans of loose limbs and reduced brain stems, fluttering in the Mississippi River wind as the fat lady on the ferry pumps the gas keys of the organ, unfurling her ribbons of carousel sounds throughout the Quarter streets.
How are we supposed to pretend to be normal when the soundtrack to our lives reminds baby clowns of their childhoods?
It's not possible.
That much to me is clear.
And after ten years spent in the big tent, trying to hold a conversation with a mute on a big wheel spinning out in the middle of traffic while his pet pig pinches the wallets of the dumb onlookers, you expect me to buy into the Americana dream of a normative life?
And you color us insane?
Get right.
Get married.
Get pregnant.
Get stable.
Get in line.
Get acceptable.
Get praise from the dead-eyed praise-givers.
Good job.
Good on you.
You're a good American.
A good soldier.
A good example.
A good provider.
A good statistic.
You don't cause trouble.
You salute well.
You follow orders.
You fit in.
So get right.
Get married.
Get pregnant.
Get stable.
Get in line.
Get acceptable.
Get wealthy.
Get generous.
Get sheepy.
Get sleepy.
Then get dead.

We all have a part to play. And there is only one part.
Be that person you are expected to be.
The person that he is expected to be and she is expected to be and her and he and them and those.
Be like everyone else.
Trust us. It's easier this way.
You dig?
Whatever you do, don't fight it.
Don't resist.
Close your eyes and dream of another life.
But don't stray too far from the reservation because if you allow your dreams to take over your soul, if you allow yourself to dream too big, to think you can rise above the pack-rats and overburdened pack-mules, chances are you will lose your shit.
And that's when they swarm.
And unless you have lived long enough in your dreams, unless you have lost yourself long enough in those dreams to believe in the images projected on the inside of your eyelids, that you have a beggar's shot at getting that quarter, you will disintegrate in the eye of the swarm.
It has no emotion, this swarm.
All it can sense is the cancer that is the dream.
The swarm governs the center and demands complete fealty to its dead-eyed passion for submission.
The price of admission is the cleansing of the face.
Wash away your eccentricities, your pointed nose, misshapen ears, and protruding chin.
Wash away your beauty, your impossibly gorgeous brown eyes, your dark brown hair that bounces off your head and down your neck like a cascading halo, framing your porcelain skin into a portrait of longing that distracts the masses from their muddy destinies of gray walls and dull skies.
Wash away your love of the deep waters where the fantastic offers itself up for those willing to risk the pain.
Become the mannequin.
Become the dollhouse denizen.
Become number 23,473 out of 10 billion.
Become nothing.
Become a night's sleep without flight or fantasy.
Become zero sum.
How does that sound?
Drift to death.
But there is something else.
Temporary madness.
This is what we live for here in New Orleans, that temporary madness offered by Mardi Gras and random nights when we rip from our scarred hides the sticky deposit of life's gun barrel.
This is what separates us from the drooling herd that shakes its collective hammer skulls when footage of our deviant exploits is broadcast on the plasma screens of its corrective nightmare.
Two legs good. Four legs bad.
But what about three arms and a tricycle?
They never thought about that, but we did.
Some choose to ride the octopus machine into the abyss. But most of us, we value our sporadic misty turns, hop off for a day or two, shake our devilish grins in the sunlight drawing the fire of the snipers, proving that we have the ability to move from one world to the next, and then, with a sticky taste of hope, we hop back on for another turn.
There's no promise of grandeur, though most of us cling to the possibility.
But, at the same time, there's no chance of picking up where the dull dead planted their seed.
Most of us will pass into oblivion never having made the mark on the world that we so desperately believed we were destined to carve.
Most of us will disappear into the blackness, alone, our pockets empty, our walls bare, our family names at an end.
But there will be the select few who transformed their sojourns into that temporary madness into something larger and more important than any of us could have conceived.
These people, they represent a small percentage of the whole. But to us, to the wildin' angels of the devilish hours, four champions out of 40,000 soldiers is all the proof we need that we were onto something.
And it may be presumptuous for me to speak for the 40,000, but I stand tall in the razor tempest, tasting the whirlwind of my own blood, loudly proclaiming my belief that I will be one of the four, and that everyone I know who counts themselves among the 40,000, that they too will stand with me, themselves proud members of the holy four.
The numbers don't matter.
I was never good at math.
But I am fused to a can of Budweiser and it speaks to me.

"Hey Rich?"
Yes sir?
"Do you want to know what I think?"
Of course I do sir. Why do you think we spend so much time together?
"Because you're a fucked up lost soul."
What the fuck did you say?
"Nothing. Calm down asshole. Focus on the butterflies floating in front of your eyes."
Yeah. I see them.
"Good. Now listen to me. There's birth, life and death. And the most we can hope for, in this partnership of ours, is that in the short time between your birth and death, you manage to twist these visions of yours into something more than a dream."
You're a prophet Mr. Budweiser. Tell me more.
"There's nothing left for me to say. The rest is on your shoulders."
Is that it?
"No. There's one more thing."
And what's that?
"Stop being a fucking coward."
I hate you Mr. Budweiser.
"Eventually, they all do."