by Rob Brezsny
Here are our first demands:
DEMAND #1: We demand an immediate three-week global boycott of all media. Consume no television, Internet, radio, movies, newspapers, or magazines! Return to the primordial silence for three days or else!
DEMAND #2: We demand that the word “asshole” begin to be used as a term of endearment rather than abuse.
DEMAND #3: We demand that the average length of an act of heterosexual intercourse in America—which is now an appalling four minutes—be required by law to be a minimum of twenty-two minutes.
DEMAND #4: We demand that all anchormen cry every time they report a tragedy on their nightly TV news shows.
DEMAND #5: We demand that People magazine do a cover story on “The Ten Sexiest Homeless Americans.”
We have eight hundred eighty-three more demands, but there’s plenty of time for them later. First we want you to know more about who we are and what we offer.
We are the World Entertainment War, sacred saboteurs dedicated to helping you learn the difference between your own thoughts and those of the celebrities who have demonically possessed you. Our purpose is to save your imagination from the poisons of the entertainment criminals.
On their televisions, the televisions of the entertainment criminals, crude storytellers called “journalists” terrorize you with nihilistic yet sentimental myths that seem to prove the lie, “If it isn’t ugly, it’s dishonest.”
But on our televisions, on the televisions we control, aspiring bodhisattvas tell you funny stories about how to go crazy in the name of creation, not destruction. In our movies and websites and radio shows, holographic reruns of your happiest memories repeat continuously on instant replay, freeing up your libidos to become telepathically linked with thousands of psychoactivists who’ve already learned beyond a doubt that they are geniuses! Just as you are!
DEMAND #6: We demand the production of a major feature film based on our life stories. Also, a best-selling book, a weekly column in USA Today, and an appearance on the David Letterman show.
DEMAND #7: We demand that brilliant genetic engineers create a mutant bacteria that causes people to hate opinion polls.
DEMAND #8: We demand that you all live up to your full potential.
DEMAND #9: We demand that God be referred to on all future TV shows as a big black lesbian woman. We demand an end to the molestation, exploitation, and torture of God by the world’s major so-called religions.
DEMAND #10: We demand an exposé of so-called nice people who cynically use honesty, cheerfulness, and openness to manipulate others into doing things their way.
We, the peaceful soldiers of the World Entertainment War, are supreme patriots! And when in the course of inhuman events you discover as we did that entertainment criminals are pouring trillions of dollars into making the world safe for America’s most dangerous images, it becomes necessary to learn very intimately how everyone and everything worth loving—including our native land—is an inextricable blend of divine revelation and idiotic bullshit.
Therefore we hold these truths to be self-evident:
that everything we behold with our five senses composes but a tiny percentage of the twenty-six dimensions of ecstatic creation that God and Goddess freshly fuck into being every second;
that while there may be, for all we know, such a thing as “objective reality,” it most certainly does not consist of the endless streams of pictures in our imaginations, which our arrogant egos mistake for the external world;
that therefore every “truth” you and I embrace with such certainty cannot possibly be more than a little bit correct, and to pretend otherwise is the only original sin;
that like docufiction movies and every nightly TV newscast ever done, like life itself, fact and creative storytelling are always blended together so seamlessly that there is no honest way to tell the difference; and that therefore our imaginations are our most sacred organs which create every story we see and believe in;
that we have the right to believe in any story we conjure up or believe in, but not to the point that we would hate or kill people who don’t love our stories as much as we do;
that when an elite group of human parasites with obscene amounts of money and technology at their disposal try to trick us into believing that their stories are truer than everyone else’s, it is our patriotic right and duty to become trickier than they are.
We therefore do uproariously declare World Entertainment War against all evil advertising geniuses, disinfotainment peddlers disguised as journalists, simulation experts specializing in the rape of our memories, fraudulently immortal celebrities bent on haunting our dreams with their empty souls, cartels of friendly father figures hawking pretty media viruses, and all other genociders of the imagination.
To defend our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, we pledge to fight the entertainment criminals in such a way that we don’t become like them.
DEMAND #11: We demand an affirmative action program that will make a majority of all Americans celebrities within five years.
DEMAND #12: We demand foreskin reimplantations for men who associate sex with violence because they suffered the trauma of circumcision within hours after they first came into the world.
DEMAND #13: We demand that brilliant American engineers create a machine for measuring emotional pain. We demand that moralists of every stripe use this technology to try to prove that their favorite victims suffer more than the favorite victims of other moralists.
DEMAND #14: We demand that you experience global warming in your pants.
DEMAND #15: We demand that somebody come and cut me down from this crucifix so I can teach everyone the fine art of kicking their own asses. NOW!
At this cue, Darby and Amy glide onto the stage, each armed with a black Navy Seal knife, and slice through the ropes that have kept me tethered. Meanwhile, the rest of the band breaks into the juju trance rhythms that launch our song “Kick Your Own Ass.”
As Darby and Amy scurry to their microphones, I turn my back to the audience and begin demonstrating the proper technique. First I take both hands and rub the area that will soon be impacted. Next I thrust my arms up over my head as if preparing for a high dive, then wiggle the area below my belt, careful to give the gesture a masculine cast, like a male rather than a female stripper. Finally, in tune to the beat, I jump off the ground with both feet and thrust my heels forcefully backwards into the target area. Mission accomplished, I propel my feet back down, landing in time to avoid crumbling to the ground.
Meanwhile, Darby and Amy are singing and chanting:
Your body is bread in a holy war
Change Change Change Change
My body is love in a holy store
Change Change Change Change
Your body is God and I want some more now
Change Change Change Change
My body is money and I’m spending it now
Change Change Change Change
Kick your own ass
NOW! NOW!
Kick your own ass
NOW! NOW!
When they reach the lines commanding the audience to participate, I repeat my lesson with a twist. Facing right this time, I administer two boots to my rear end in quick succession, matching their explosive NOWs, then quickly turn the other direction and make two more stabs as they unleash the second set of NOWs.
As the song evolves, I show off every conceivable permutation of the holy gesture. By the end, all the band members except Squint join me in illustrating the technique. I’m ecstatic to see that well over half the crowd has joined our cause. It’s amazing to provoke this much audience participation, but then that’s our specialty.
“Now that you’ve disciplined yourselves,” I proclaim to the audience as the song ends, “you have every right to ask for the world.”
Amy switches the settings on her Korg keyboard to simulate a harp sound and begins playing in a hymnal vein. Soon she uses her other keyboard to add the reedy eddies of
a snake charmer’s flute. Meanwhile, Squint summons a sinewy rhythm, making his maracas sound like a rattlesnake tail. He’s joined shortly by Daniel, who somehow makes his bass sound like a throbbing didgeridoo, and then George, whose churning guitar reminds me of a vat of chocolate cooking over an open flame.
Amy, Darby, and I sing in a whisper at first, chanting the same refrain over and over.
Give me what I want
Exactly when I want it
Forever
Now
Once upon a time
Steadily the volume swells, and as it reaches ripeness, Squint pounces on his snare and bass drum, kicking the groove into overdrive. Now our chant becomes strident, an exultant cry for liberation. Many members of the audience have added their voices to the plea, even as they dance with abandoned minds, like those whose lives have just been saved.
When I sense the climax is complete, and the mood is ready to shift—and I hate to brag, but reading a crowd is one of my most infallible talents—I signal to the instrumentalists, who manage to pull off an impeccable ending followed immediately by the launch of the next song on the set list. It’s a funky, percolating tune on which I sing lead:
I dropped out of kindergarten
to explore eternal youth
I talked back to Mr. Science
to defend eternal truth
I saw angels in my playpen
They taught me to kiss the sky
I unlocked all nature’s secrets
Cross my heart and hope to die
I bailed out of Daddy’s airplane
Fell to earth like angel dust
I broke into Caesar’s Palace
looking for eternal lust
Every time I found a goddess
we had sex by accident
No one even tried to stop me
when I fired the government
I don’t need no paradise
Living here is twice as nice
I don’t need no therapy
Free of freedom
Free of me
In mid-song, I crane my head around to monitor the big-screen TV behind me, checking to see what scene is playing. Huge bulldozers driven by teenage girl ninjas in clown make-up are scooping away the cars full of the television-headed human skeletons. A gaggle of witches in conical hats is tenderly removing Eleanor Roosevelt from her gnarled crucifix.
I lucked into symbiosis
Worked my voodoo to the bone
Everything I love surrounds me
Never never am alone
I broke into kindergarten
to destroy the evidence
I danced backwards on the tombstones
to restore my innocence
I don’t need no paradise
Living here is twice as nice
I don’t need no therapy
Free of freedom
Free of me
On the big-screen TV, a beatific Eleanor Roosevelt is now sitting on a dragon-headed golden throne holding a phallic wand and sporting a new halo as big as a hula hoop. She’s bestowing sloppy mouth kisses on a long receiving line of famous men from history, including Socrates, Charlemagne, various Popes, Napoleon, Teddy Roosevelt, Stalin, Nixon, Rush Limbaugh, Joseph McCarthy, and Howard Stern.
The band is hot tonight. No broken strings interrupt the flow, no extended tuning of guitars forces me to do shtick while waiting to return to the scheduled program. The moment “I Dropped Out of Kindergarten” is over, “The Triple Witching Hour” begins. As I light the thick green candle on top of the TV altar and pull out my wad of five-dollar bills, Amy and Darby croon the intro:
Fire and water
Earth and air
This is holy ground
Wall Street, Chrysler, IBM
Round and round and round
Audience members who’ve attended recent shows know this is their cue to purify their money karma. Quickly there’s a gaggle of volunteers holding up their legal tender for me to dispatch. I sing the verse:
The Triple Witching Hour happens every now and then
When all the witches and warlocks on my block
Get in the mood
We cast hexes on the plutocrats
We laugh at their greed
We hoot and we howl and we dare God to make us rich
“Hey God make us rich!”
After another chorus and verse, the volume of the instruments drops way down as Darby and I do a call and response.
“Do you love money?” she sings. “Yes I do, yes I do,” I reply, “by the light of the silvery moon.” And then:
Do you worship money?
Yes I worship all the time by the light of the dreamy moon
Do you conjure money?
Yes I conjure all the time by the light of Hecate’s silver moon
Do you burn money?
I burn it all the time by the purifying light of the moon
Some of the bills I torch are my own. Some are those handed me by the amateur performance artists in the audience. As I gaze out at the faces beyond the flames, I sense in many of them a fascinated repulsion and flabbergasted awe, as if I were incinerating an American flag and spitting on a crucifix at the same time. Others scream encouragement, egging me on as if I were conducting an exorcism.
Maybe seventy dollars have been turned to ash when there’s an unscripted arrival. A tall woman has leaped up onto the stage. She’s wearing a rainbow tweed jacket, unbuttoned to reveal a marigold bustier. Her lower half sports a semi-transparent chiffon wraparound skirt that reveals below it tight-fitting azure boxers with a pink camellia pinned at the crotch. Around her neck is a flask attached to a leather necklace.
It’s Rapunzel, followed by a woman I don’t recognize.
They stride right up to me, and I let a half-burned ten-dollar bill in my hand fall into a large bowl full of dirt on the altar. Our two roadies look at me apprehensively from the wings of the stage, wondering if they should intervene, but I wave them off. This is one interruption I’m going to try to integrate into the show.
Before I can figure out what they’re up to, the strange woman kneels down on all fours behind me, and Rapunzel pushes me. I topple. Towering over me where I lie, she bellows gleefully, “The archetypes are mutating, Rockstar. See if you can turn this into fuel.”
She squats down, pries my lips open with strong hands, and drops a thick gob of saliva into my mouth. I swallow it whole. She lingers, massaging the bones next to my eyes with a softly electrifying jiggle.
The spit and the jiggle have the strangest effect on me. My perceptual field shifts with a slide and a crackle, as if an angelic chiropractor had just manipulated my brain into perceiving a hyperdimension next door to the realm I usually inhabit. A crush of alien images cascades into my mind’s eye—crocodiles dancing on their hind legs, a spinning weathervane surmounted by a vulture, not a valentine heart but the anatomically correct organ ejaculating half-liquid pearls from its aorta, sea anemones spiraling out of the horns of bull skulls. These scenes coexist with my view of the Catalyst stage, which itself is half-dissolving into a rippling gossamer curtain of liquid sparks.
Struggling to become accustomed to my new domain, I recall the technique of the whirling ballet dancer: To keep from getting dizzy, she compels her gaze to alight on the same fixed point during each rotation. The sight I choose as my focus is Rapunzel’s beatific yet cracked grin, one side of her mouth raised higher than the other. Though the rest of her is at first distorted by my vertigo, gradually I can make out an impossible fact: She’s removing her clothes.
“Thunderbolt,” I hear her say (to me?), “let’s go swimming.”
“Namaste,” I hear myself answer. “I greet the Goddess within you.”
Then a further marvel unfolds, a miracle as shattering as if the Virgin Mary were descending from the ramp of a silver space ship with writhing purple snakes for hair and a wet t-shirt emblazoned with a bleeding rose. As I lie on the stage floor, Rapunzel pulls off my furry Pan pants, r
evealing my body to be fully primed for worship.
“You’re just going to dive in cold turkey?” I hear myself asking her.
“Not really, dearest. I’ve been wading around you for centuries.”
The next moment is impossible. My beloved, the Queen of the Menstrual Temple herself, lowers herself down onto my shouting cobra. I’m incredulous at how wet and ready she is. Instantaneously she’s grooving on top of me with the improvisational playfulness of a dancer.
I flash on how voracious women are portrayed in porn movies and Islamic doctrine and Christian fantasies: as leering and menacing, oozing with twisted love. I shudder to think of all the clitoridectomies that have been inflicted in the sick name of reining in the libidinous urges of the descendants of Eve. A spontaneous prayer flies from my lips. “O Goddess, thank you thank you thank you forever for the uninhibited joy and eagerness I feel in the presence of Rapunzel’s uninhibited hunger. Thank you thank you thank you for scouring away from my body every last shred of the patriarchal fear of divine female ecstasy.”
There’s a time for love-making in which each partner is as concerned with the other’s pleasure as with her own. There’s a time in which the ebb and flow of desire from partner to partner follows a sweet, intuitive rhythm. This is not one of those times. My pleasure—I surrender to it with utter peace—consists wholly in reading the spiral of Rapunzel’s drive towards delirious bliss. I want nothing more than to telempathically anticipate, beyond thought, the precise angle she wants to feel my lingam against her yoni, the exact spot she needs to be touched on her ass or back or ankles that will sluice the flow of kundalini to the source of her liberation. Does she want me to stay rock steady while she corkscrews and stretches and shimmies? Does she want me to lose control of my hips and pump her like a fibrillating heart?
Her dance atop me betrays no habits of movement. No sequence of squirms, shudders, and rotations is ever repeated. She’s the best kind of prodigiously original artist—no contrivance, no self-consciousness. Hers is the deep orgiastic intelligence of nature eternally reinventing itself.