An army of Claire Danes taking over a small modern town constructed to facilitate the inhabitants’ illusions of living in a clean, Christian city where sunset smells like fresh popcorn. I know already that the meta-post-modern, celebratory mockery of the celebrity sphere (photographed in bleach-soaked beauty under dis-proportionate melon-ious jugs suggesting a crushed pair of vacuumed, unusable lungs) laid absently upon the normal land of chaos, coupons for abortions, preposterous graduation gowns, and rotten bananas (the cramped, swampy, forgotten fish tank from which we all must breathe) like the gentle 8.5 x 11 slice of paper nuzzling up next to its baby brother may infuriate you. I know you may be wondering if I am a hipster, or someone who stands at the ledge of a roof in a once sadly only seedy now slightly hip Shitville though formerly to the former ten bedroom Swanksville mansions (curbs with twin crimped boxes of white zin paid for with a welfare check beside those purchased absently with the river of absent parental funds) making projections about the world, about American TV in her head, ignoring everyone at this party, declining a glass of wine or a Keystone Ice, gesturing empty handed and pretending to admit without pride that she’s quit smoking cold turkey years ago and has actually made it cool to go to parties not to party, not even to connect, only to remind herself that there are no parties left to go to, there are no illusions left, because the world is sad, and fucked, and a much better place to live in once you’ve realized that God is not a word, not a person, nor a concept. God is giving up and handing your life over to lullabies that focus on the melody instead of the irony. God is buying new shoes and ignoring the ensuing bunions brought on by four inch heels and the crappy deck you’ll be wearing them on that will tear the material to shit, or your new roommate’s dog, or your brother’s dog, or the grimy curb, or the muddy back yard where you’ve taken the children to play. God is to believe in a woman smiling who doesn’t breathe or a diamond that sparkles because it is a rock of empathy and love that desires only to lure a genuine bliss-scented twinkle from your eye. God is to believe in a magical DJ spinning commercials for debt and cellulite removal spliced with bad Country, sappy slow Rock, and unearthly Pop. God is your worst nightmare. God is your ultimate fantasy. God is the motherfucker, master changeling haunting you and living inside the stuffing of your couch while you lazily, apathetically binge on coffee while fingering yourself and think of spreading your legs for an old boss. God is a dream. God is a joke. God is not a word; it’s a disease.
God is not Claire Danes—duh! and Sorry for insulting you while making a point…although I am sure people will insult you worse who intend to make no point whatsoever, so cut me some slack and bare with me here, please. My friend likes Claire Danes for a reason we can’t articulate; however, he can articulate why he doesn’t believe in a jelly bellied, bearded ogre slinging lightning bolts at his children, that likes to fuck virgins in the dreams of their sleep, and leave his bastard only son for dead, hanging at the top of a hill, naked, and sandwiched between criminals. That God sounds a lot more like someone you’ll meet at a bar than someone whose invisible, merciful feet you can bury your head in amongst anonymous victims of one special handicap: alcoholism; not “Not Knowing When to Quit”; just “Knowing Just Where to Start” (perhaps the first Muslims were recovering alcoholics with a sudden ocean of time on their hands—Why not try and make sense of this sober mess if we have to be sober? Only the sheer pain of sobriety could bring on such illusions as God).
[This song is for my faithful friends. You know who you are; careening; relentless; gorgeous, awkward bliss spasms.]
I tried to put myself in a drawer; one papered with twull print, that smelled like old, ornate, unused stationary, the matching pencil set that came sharpened but went unused. I thought I could be comfortable memorizing the patterns, conditions, and commitments of these people and their lifestyle; the Victorian mother ushering her two sons through the countryside; the baby chasing after hens and the older boy playing a song that neither moved nor inspired the heart, like Hot Crossed Buns, on his hand-me-down horn instrument, hitting the notes in sequence to reinforce the tune and muscle-memory and impose the knowledge that he had learned and mastered a song; and one song was enough.
I found myself drowning in the emptiness of this tidy, registered trademark version of what a life smells like, for this print I felt I was meant to inhabit in my natural progression as a middle class, educated, traveled, tall, white, Catholic American woman with exceptional bone structure. Though I don’t rip my clothes anymore, wearing them proud and torn the way I did in my early twenties, my one dimensional Victorian woman waits till everyone is looking and tears her blouse to expose and sunbathe her radiant, blubbery, mountain-ous, three dimensional boobies that like to dance, play hide and seek, go deep sea diving, and often offend others with their ingratiating, infectious joi de vivre that sends them giggling and howling at any occasion; these breasts grin at funerals and jig in traffic; these breasts don’t have mere personality, they are a spirit with the size and incantation of a bonfire that ripped Rome burning into the ground below sea level and character the color of fresh, lethal wounds exposing bone, organ, and some incredible, inevitable agony.
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