"God wars" (my last dread desert tale, promise)

[mnaz]

(from the mind catacombs of all that residual motelin' stuff, part of the ongoing channel)...

Nothing but rock and sky, a lucid and fierce light, drenched in dry heat and roots. Jah dread has a foothold in mountain rhythms, exploded in rare reverberations, interior thunder, turned low to fill expanse, bathe it in desolation, ricochet off mesas, a pulse blown open, transfigured and drifting. Hard to believe it came from the tropics of mother ocean. Reggae is a little trivial beside blown dub deconstructions. Reggae—the bouncy stuff they play at Beach Casino at happy hour, with plastic props in festive, pink-ish cocktails. Dub is in the wilderness and grinding bedrock, the heat and grit of this place, far side of radiance, the lost tribes.

In 2001 AD a God war flared up. We hadn’t seen a big one since the Fourteenth Century or so. Television piped in the new reality, the bluish pale seep through windows spreading into every inhabitable corner of the place, creeping higher on the hills. Within days, even hours, history books began to record it. The One True God hurled a thunderbolt at another One True God, which is to say, agents of the former steered jumbo jets laden with huge tanks full of fuel into skyscrapers of the latter, which fell down in a terrifying, twisted pile of obscenity, as the One True God willed it no doubt. You don’t need “evil” to describe such physics, only failure, done of sentient free will. And detachment. Meanwhile the stricken One True God was on every screen, a rumbling volcano.

You never saw so many men of God so profoundly agitated. Or serene. It was prophecy—no need for despair. Too early to tell if it brings trumpets and earthquakes and horsemen. It was spit and bile, smoke and vengeance. At once. Eighteen Saudi outlaws armed with box cutters and a deific death wish managed to sneak on board a couple of jets and grab the wheel, at least by the account of glowing screens and barking heads, and with results so traumatically apocalyptic, so utterly and thoroughly and efficiently destructive, that this unseen, villainous band of unconscious rogues could hardly have dreamed it. The fact that we’d surely send legions of troops fitted with our own much more terrible and sophisticated and surreal weapons of mass destruction to invade blazing Muslim ghettos and profligate oil regimes (no doubt unrelated to the act), with no clue about the culture or what to do after the tanks rolled into the center of town, into Biblical inferno as these things tend to go, was presumed to somehow satisfy or comfort us. It did. George the Second rallied his flock, mumbled something about the other One True God’s “religion of peace,” and turned the dogs loose.

The people in the air, up there with God, wanted only to ride their sheet metal pony to LA—an expensive ticket, though far less taxing than the prospect of hooves or wheels. Sixty years ago everything accelerated madly—techno and babies, trans-global warfare and commerce (usually inseparable), and travel as well. Huxley figured we’d fly on rockets by now—to fit his ideas of narcotic instant gratification as a means of control? The more ponderous and bulbous jumbo jet is the proven postmodern pony however, though a jet journey only vaguely resembles travel. You barely see earth, a few hazy bumps slinking by, detached. On a rocket you’d be free of landmarks entirely, only a brown blue emerald blur in the window, if a rocket had windows. Barely time enough for a drink. Bound for LA, pick the olive out of your martini, stir it a little, and you’re in Tokyo. Save the rockets for space. Or war. As for our sheet metal pony, our benefactor of crisscross, it hit as nightmarish realization that our trusted pony could be used as such an abominable weapon against us. We could never see it the same.

The act was cataclysmic, and the reaction again protracted and suitably debilitating to the species, the God of wrath, wild heads on floating screens, a glow filtered through dust and detritus, talus rubble, elegant bones in the unseen defiles, miles of them, disconnected glow advancing on corkscrew thermals to haunt perfections of silence, jealous God, wrath filling all corners of empty with unbearable stillness. Enter Jah roots. “Hey Gods, I’m over here.” On rock and sky, immaculate inversion, subversion, riding a muffled echo pulsation, interior thunder, supernatural light and grit. Jah roots never knew the empty so urgently, though born originally to navigate tribal wreckage of their own. Sometimes on the echo they attempt heaven. Zion. The place where suffering ends, if you could get there.

Heaven is the place. We met a high priest once on a radioactive fortress, on the big bang’s highest, holiest hot rock, short of grazing the nearest star yet taller than other fortresses built on everyman’s sinking sand. He peered down when he could, our big bang father who art nearly in heaven, who loves chaos smashed into verse. We barely made him out he was so high. He sat beside us with brochures and heaven’s black hole suck. We faded into the desert.

Emptiness is instinctual. In the third century, before faith became a monolith, before Christ was an empire, monks and outcasts went to live in the Egyptian desert, the “desert fathers.” They sought solitude in the way of Jesus and John—rough-edged hermits. Christ was more humble then, like Jesus fasting in the desert, not yet legalized by Rome. Prophets fell back into the desert naturally, necessarily, to subdue noise. But storms rattle the empty as well. Elijah knew a cave next to a spring, out of corruption’s reach, if not a gentle God murmur, or a vanishing stammer of vanquished walls behind, rattle and wane, down to your own whoosh. How do you take theology at its word? John the Baptist heard louder tremors; no simple hermit was he. God would descend in utter terror to destroy evil at any moment. God comes from the sky while wretched mystics claim the divine within.

We got doom. Nothing runs without it. We need something, wheels turning. Everything turns on dread. Enter Jah dread. It was mostly irony, a big irony sandwich tucked between rock-sky. Mine it, bleed it, extract the ore. You drift between, betwixt in the illimitable high low bald sculpture of it, but you can’t shake badlands. We got heaven on a screen for Chrissake, in perfect, twisted redemption. We got God to contend with. Everything changed. Nothing new under the savage, holy sun. Read your Bible. Hurl it like a spear. Victory is at hand, if the cash keeps coming. It was irony drifting on celestial reverb, diffused in desperate canyons. Mostly it was irony. And emptiness.

Emptiness is instinctual—diffuses and defuses clatter. No new insight here. Rock balances sky as silence balances noise, in zero sum equilibrium. You leave the grid for a time. But finding a non-zero sum is the greater concern and quest of “wisdom literature” throughout history. And history has always (unsteadily) pushed the range of non-zero sum—mutually gainful interdependence. Our sheer numbers and interconnectivity only amplify the point. As numbers explode and we tax the planet, individual profit tends more interdependent with collective health, “avoidance of general system failure.” History’s “purpose,” if such exists, is not to make progress toward any particular sort of equity or wholeness, but to give the species a choice of either making progress or paying a price. But now we’re mired in theory. Rock and sky have no use for dissertation. Disengage! Heat and dust. Big beat earth.

As most things go, in the childish footsteps of a guru, the point is not so much in its notching, but in getting it out, drawn out from unseen reaches and recesses and shade canyons, surreal as breath. Why the hell do you care if they choose to butcher each other right up to the final bell? Of course you care, but you reach a fork where you state your peace and move on. Howl it to heaven’s black wasteland and icy glitter, into God’s star-spangled ear if you must, the collective suicide, the swinish politics, but get back in the truck and go on, deeper into raw revolution. It’s out of your hands, in the hands of God. All of them. Yes old man, you made a good point now and then with your theory and complaining, but you had to yield the floor. To rock and sky. Simmering roots. Mostly it was irony, the subversion. Impossible to forget that heady stretch of blaze.

[Doreen Peri]

We met a high priest once on a radioactive fortress, on the big bang’s highest, holiest hot rock, short of grazing the nearest star yet taller than other fortresses built on everyman’s sinking sand. He peered down when he could, our big bang father who art nearly in heaven, who loves chaos smashed into verse. We barely made him out he was so high. He sat beside us with brochures and heaven’s black hole suck. We faded back into the desert.

I remember this part ... Lrod and I recorded it when you posted it as a poem..

The poem is a little different...

You can listen to it here....
This is the Problem of Heaven

One of my favorite poems by you!

[mnaz]

Cool deal, Doreen.

Yeah, I tweaked that one a bit and mixed it in. I've "mixed in" a lot of poetics in my recent prose excursions-- not sure how the final result plays out.

Also, my last couple of segments are a bit on the "dire" side, but you'll find more "sunny" offerings between them when all is said (written) and done...

Thanks

[Doreen Peri]

I remember about 5-6 years ago when we recorded that, you said you didn't have speakers and couldn't listen to it. Were you able to listen to it this now?

I liked this whole prose piece, btw... didn't say that in my last post. I like all your writing.

[mnaz]

Yeah, I was finally able to listen later, at the office-- 2006 I think.
My words read aloud by others-- a first! What a trip! For some reason, with my new computer I'm having software troubles, so-- no player yet. I'll try to grab an office computer later on perhaps...

The mysterious "big bang father" in the poem is (very loosely) based on an actual guy I met about ten years ago (who also shows up briefly in my book). He was quite obsessed with heaven-- quite specific and detailed about it. Coming during the Sept. 11th aftermath, with all the talk of martyrdom and "72 Virgins" and such, it was the last thing I wanted to listen to. Oh well. More power to him I guess..

[GodModule]

I love your choice of language. The whole piece has an aura of mystery about it. Very nice.

[Doreen Peri]

Mark... I'm glad you were finally able to listen to it a few years ago. I'll email you a copy right now so you can listen to it again on your ipod or itunes or other digital player. I love it. It's one of my favorite pieces I've recorded.

[mnaz]

thanks doreen. I do appreciate.

and thanks, godmodule (love the name-- fits with the story!) I was a drifter living in cheap motels and casinos and camping in my truck in the desert when all the Sept. 11th furor and tempest was blowing across the land (I actually began the long trek on 9-10-01; almost turned back). But I made it to light and space. And sometimes to ease the silence I had three cassettes full of cosmic dub, a trinity...

had to add/tweak a few more things. I'm notorious for doing that...