Midnight Jolt Run

A Manifesto in three parts

Part I: Preparing oneself for the horde

It is two-thirty in the morning and I work in less than five hours but I couldn’t be bothered to give a shit. The LCD ray traced perfection from this monitor, the squishy feel of the ergonomic keyboard beneath my fingertips, and the wet, cool feeling of a drying towel on my ass as I sit here, typing naked are the items in my mental to-do list that matter at the moment. Writers don’t need pants. Writers need only the Word. The Word has an annoying habit of making me sober. Two hours ago I was enjoying my second tall glass of Jolt and Jack, with a visit from the Governor General in the form of a shot of Crown Royal thrown into the mix. And I thought to myself, what a perfectly hedonistic way to end a glorious weekend.

But, as I sat here, growing bored with the musings on the internet, I decided instead to open up a directory on my computer that has been getting more and more frequent use of late. The complete series of Transmetropolitan, scanned, delivered, and organized into nice, crisp JPG images for my visual consumption.

And it was this that made me decide that I did not want to ruin this weekend by giving in to my painfully self destructive habits of apathy, liquor and the self-righteous smug feeling I have been getting that I am Right.

No.

I am not right. I am wrong. And it feels so goddamn good to be wrong again.

For the last three and a half years…no…longer than that, I have been deprived of a visceral need to give a shit about the world outside of my life. It’s truly terrifying to look down at yourself, at your crinkly, squishy skin and your fuzzy, wiry hair and realize all at once that, even if just for a second, you believed that this was it. This. You. This over clocked monkey-brain kicking out a consciousness that could only laughably be called self aware due to the rare desire of it to parody itself against the world. This consciousness is stuffed into a sagging meat bag of trace elements, water and dirt, and it is one day going to return to just the dirt you step on as you rush from Busy Life Point A to Busy Life Point B. Giving a shit means more than just saying you give a shit.

I cut myself today while installing a new headlight in my car. It hurt like a bitch, but it was more of an angry ‘how dare that car be made of sharp things!’ kind of anger versus anything substantial or righteous. This is what I have become. Bitching because my own hand slipped and I was too silly to think of wearing a glove. For my troubles, I hope I get a mild infection. How dare I? How could I? Why is it that I’ve become such an annoying prick to the universe? I haven’t been able to write in months. Is that because I haven’t had the time? Of course not. It’s because, deep down, I know I’ve had nothing worthwhile to say. One of the most amazing, important, challenging and exciting years of my life is approaching, and I can’t find the words because I know I am full of too much shit for any of them to matter.

Well, no more.

If I have to stick a tube up my ass and flush myself out with sea water and acid, I’ll do it, because I can’t, in any form or function, allow myself to be silent for much longer. I can’t keep thinking that this is all there is. That this can all be planned. That nothing else matters except some kind of haphazard faith that there is something beyond me. No. I’m going to have to do a cleanse, and I’m not talking the two weeks of eating blueberries kind. I’m talking about returning to my roots, removing the bullshit I’ve padded my life with, and pounding out a new universe while I still have breath, wits and will to do so.

So I sit, dead sober and simmering on nothing but my pantsless arse, and I am trying to remember what made writing so easy ten years ago. And you know what? The more I let go of myself, the more I remember. I remember a lot of teenaged anger. A lot of brilliant passion. Romance and hatred and desire. I remember aching to be inspired, skimming the world for reason, and piling just enough regret beneath my arse to light a fire. I remember nights so long that they became eons, and months so short that they became the bittersweet climax of a year, passed off and wiped away with only the fleetest fondness to keep them in memory. I can still taste a thousand ghosts of things I swore would always remain as vivid as a punch to the face, and the sour, spunky tang of a hundred things I wished to forget about by now. I remember being an asshole. I remember hurting others. Hurting myself. And I remember how it drove me to want something better.

It is a Goddamn travesty that I should need to lose that desire just because I am honestly happy. But that’s it, isn’t it? Happy, safe and suckling on the fat teats of the world, why would I need to rage? To speak out? Why fight against silence when the background music seems to be doing such a beautiful job already?

Because it’s not Goddamn right to be silent.

Jesus, the only reason I shouldn’t be screaming on the rooftops right now is because I type faster with a keyboard in front of me and my laptop is too Goddamn small. In my rush to be happy and safe and teat-suckling, why have I lost all the delicious passion I once had? Aren’t we writers made of that stuff? What is my child going to think of their daddy when they get to be eleven or twelve and see that all I’ve done is pulled in a paycheque, changed diapers, fed, slept and shat for a decade while spouting memes and shitty jokes he’s learned off of the internet?

I’d sooner stab myself to do something interesting than know realize the grand culmination of my generation’s end is so horribly base and annoying. To be responsible, passion-lagged, and meme-ridden. Jesus, save us all…

I look around the world on the ‘net and I see a thousand different assholes trying to keep themselves on the front page. Racists, sexists, politicians, criminals. People who want you to believe that, if only for two and a half minutes during their column’s segment, that they are not full of bullshit and know what they are talking about. They want you to believe them. They want to matter in their own eyes. They want you to take them seriously because one day, when they are dead, buried and gone, they want to know that someone still remembers them. Even if they were only “that fucking asshole” or “that bitch that called gay people the devil” or some other combination of vomit both literal and metaphorical.

Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a good thing. That people can transcend their mortal coil and become the source of endless influence. That people can fight for what they believe in and try to make a lasting difference: this is a reason to exist. A glorious, amazing thing! But too many people confuse influence with immortality, and immortality with invincibility.

And it will be a great number of people who one day find their dreams and their influence and their legacy gone, and only the dirt of their bodies remains being tread upon by the great number of people who are still alive and haven’t yet discovered the fact that they cannot take their wealth, fame, sex and lies with them when they die, no matter their market share, published novels, or legacy of hatred.

For too long, I have thought like this: If only I can get published, I’ll have made a difference. If only I can reach out and influence others, I’ll be remembered. If only I do something with my life, I’ll have a legacy. But these are foolish dreams and foolish thoughts. All that matters, truthfully, is love, hope and truth, and none of those three perfect things is going to carry you into the third next millennium, even in spirit.

While I hope to have texts and books still collecting dust while I’ve been disintegrated into base atoms by the heat of re-entry from orbit (more about my plans for cremation later), I have no doubt in my mind that eventually, those books will be lost in the jungles of the library’s discount “we’ll burn these if you don’t buy them now for a dime” bin. I have no doubt in my mind that my website and all those annoying archive sites will all be erased from neglect, solar flares, or general lack of interest long before the Trumpets sound and the dead jump up to do the Thriller.

But that doesn’t mean this is all meaningless.

God no. In fact, it is our mortality, even in our so-called post-human works, that makes us need to create them. There must be new creation, or we will all be forever silent, bored, and sitting around watching reruns until the end of Time. And that’s what I need to remember as I smash my life out onto this keyboard one fingertip at a time. I have to remember that, even if immortality will only come to me by the grace of the Good Lord and I’ll never set foot on the planet again, that nothing is ever wasted. That, as surely as I believe that there is a way back to God, and as surely as there is a Desire for Love and Truth, I must remember that nothing I do…that you do…that we do is meaningless, wasted or forgotten.

The endless entropy of the universe cannot destroy the song you sing, not completely. The words you speak, even to an empty room, still echo and reverb in some form and function. Butterflies and hurricanes have known this relationship since philosophers and alcohol came together. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is lost. Everything matters, just not in the way you might have been hoping. Your words will inspire others, who will inspire others, who will inspire others. You may be misquoted. Your words may be used against their original meaning. But maybe, just maybe, they’ll keep making a difference. This all still means you have to do something. Action, effort, reason and energy all have to be put into motion. Don’t worry about understanding the full implications of it all. After all, you’re still just an overclocked monkeybrain in a decaying meatsuit with delusions of grandeur and a soul with the thinnest, slimmest thread-bare connection to the Devine.

So it’s time for me to stop believing that I can take all my stupid dreams with me. I’m going to have to get to work before they’re lost the only way they can be lost in this perfect, brilliant universe: By thinking that everything is Right, nothing needs to be changed and that I know what I’m doing.

If that possibility of injustice isn’t enough to kick me back into anger, passion, need and desire, then I’m clearly not cut out for this writing shit, and I’d better bone up on my diapers and paycheque-earning so the poor kid isn’t left with absolutely nothing of a father. I’d prefer to give the kid a life worth living that was improved somehow by my dreams, my actions and both my successes and failures. Nothing scares me more than thinking that they might look down at their crinkly, squishy skin and their fuzzy, wiry hair and believed that this was it. That this was all there was.

This isn’t all there is. But hey, while it’s here…

May as well write about it.

Maybe they’ll see something change because of it.

Christopher Brummet, Studio Shinnyo 2009. Khattam-Shud, EOF.