The First Power

Sixteen minutes, twenty yards. Time-lapse retinas screen the image. In rotation are twisted looks, unblemished contortions, signals of a face in motion, a battle endlessly fought, a soaring fable forging pathways through the gloomy melancholy. Sixteen minutes ago it ended, struck off the video box in a display of sparks, an unfiltered electromania, dazzlingly dangerous, an unforgettable jet stream of neon and static – and at that moment, fear beyond fear: a blackout.

Four hours, a kebab shop up the road. Loose-hanging limbs smack the face on entry. A few distorted apologies are issued, benign words spoken by earnest fellows unsettled by the malformed crawling shape. Lug this body, lug it good. Tersely mumbled well-wishes descend into theatrics: the prophet finds his temple. Slumped in the corner, debilitated arms and legs – recklessly dirt-covered and smelling of faeces – lying supine as the spoken bullshit rolls forth. “Let me tell you gents a fine tale. Perhaps the finest. There was once a man, a hard working man, a man of the law. His name was Russell Logan, but he mostly went by the name Lou Diamond Phillips.” At this point a turtle-necked ruffian interrupts. “Who?” he asks. Suppressing the primordial urge to beat said fellow senseless with a crowbar and a hammer, I deny all knowledge of his question and continue.

Thirty minutes, the corner of the avenue. The pavement is shimmering, clotted cracks yielding images. Pentagrams painted in blood. A serial killer stalking the stage. Homicides reported with haste. A spooky mask wears a silhouette holding a knife. What calamity! What nasty denigration of the human being! A cold wind thrusts a crisp packet into the face. The soiled curb again memorialises the events that began two hours ago. There sits Diamond Phillips in his apartment, half-eaten pizza and a cat his only pets. The phone rings. A mad nun on the line. She tips him off, her whispers describing the location of the next murder. Rising, striding, gun clasped in iron hands of Awesome: seven leagues east, a hero throttling through space to prevent an evil force. Give up, bad man, you’ve killed your last – the Sheriff of Fuck is on his way.

Nine minutes, one yard. A hazy recollection forces open tired eyes. Two rhythms: the first a dynamic Diamond Phillips chasing villain Patrick Channing; the other a body prostrate on the floor. One a sweeping mass of gunfire and barked commands; the other a state of inertia. The explosion that coincided with the end of The First Power must have rendered the body still. The recall is utter excitement, but the physical reality is corporeal shutdown. A tiny image maintains the spirit. Diamond Phillips knocks the bad guy to the ground, pummelling him with fists. Channing, with cheeky disdain, fights back, stabbing our hero three times in the belly. But the assault isn’t enough to disable Diamond Phillips. He returns with kicks and screams, ushering in a Lou Diamond Victory.

Two hours, the stench of tarmac. A grotty boot swings pendulum-like, causing havoc in the lower sternum, abdominal pains looming large. It’s a copper. He’s trying to disengage me from the road, a bed to which I cling. Hollers of Up, Up, Up ring with each kick. A few seconds of sentience hit me, enough time to yell a bitter rebuke to his life and ideals: “He got the death penalty!” I spit. “But that wasn’t enough. He came back. Back from the dead. Damnable spirit! He’s got the first power: the power of resurrection. How can Diamond Phillips fight a supernatural being? Channing – I understand he’s a minion of Lucifer – can possess any body. He’ll jump into someone; use their hands to enact his dirty deeds. Could be you!” I point a mottled finger at the copper. “I don’t know. We don’t know. Who knows? Diamond Phillips doesn’t know. Eh? His psychic sidekick aids the hunt, but I worry. I can’t remember the ending. I can’t feel my limbs.”

Ten minutes, one yard. I must escape this confinement. I need to rip asunder these walls. If I’m destined to fall into the empty world below then so be it. I can already see the innocent faces, oblivious, desolate – they lack the mana, the heavenly brew that only Lou Diamond Phillips can supply. The pupating solace, locked in a thousand memories, seeks freedom. It can’t withstand the penitentiary of the head. A breach will occur. I must jolt this shell of a body out of here, away from the epicentre, brave the colossal antagonisms of the outside, sacrifice comfort in the name of The First Power, tug tight the underlings and lick them clean of confusion. Fall to the floor. A shattering interjection, a gloss of resurging images: demon Channing playing games with Diamond Phillips, bounding in and out of bodies, creating chaos, paranoia, grumpy faces; death dealt by the hero has no effect, a swift leap later and Channing resides in another; hobos, alcoholic cops, nuns, bag ladies who imitate slapstick deadites: all are victim to Channing, all are targets of Diamond Phillips – scorn and shotgun await.

Five hours, a kebab shop up the road. Quaffing down a can of lager the ruffian eyes me dubiously. “Say that again, you worm.” I shoot him an angry glance, irritated. “An old abandoned waterworks,” stressing each syllable. His strained features ease. “What, like in Lethal Tender?” “Yes, kind of, now shut up.” A shake of the head suffices to exhibit annoyance. “As I was saying, big showdown, epic combat, stretched across netherworlds and our own, the triumph of Diamond Phillips, the extinction of Channing. What a time. The full extent of the tension, I can feel it; it’s a feeling that’s replaced every other feeling I’ve ever had. Channing gets thrown into a vat of acid. Then gets blown up. But still he comes back. It takes forty stabbings with the Jesus dagger to finally destroy the beast. Bring us into the light, Diamond Phillips! But no, you’ve got shot. The cops thought you were trying to stab a nun. Their mistake. But too late. You’re in a coma. The missus sits by your side; her psychic ability can't help you now. Bequeath us your powers, Lou Diamond Phillips; we may need them next time Channing returns.” At this point: a few blinks, some minor convulsions. A man decides he’s heard enough and throws a chip at me on his way out. The bastard.

Quaidscape Dream Potlatch

Free daily newspapers swarm across the train carriage. Seven teenagers cower next to the sliding doors, hands held, earphones crisscrossing, the buzzing of faint guitar riffs filling the space between here and the next stop. Gnarled faces look askance at the cohort, gazes shifting at five second intervals, now concern, now indifference. A foul stench of ink and manufactured need diffuses in the staid air. The plague gets ever worse in the land of sun hours, the deep blue glow of months held aloft by titan summer hands, punishing swelter, a chthonic squeezing. A man gets smacked awake by an advertisement for Tunisia. A child screaming has its ululation silenced by a paparazzi fold-out – forty pages of tight angle leg snaps.

A young fellow stands near the rear, Young Gottlieb we’ll call him. His eyes bounce over pages of the most meritorious journalism, eyes buoyant in their absorption of relevant information, all that pulsating knowledge, true knowledge, the innumerable vital words that ceaselessly escort wisdom to inviting minds. His tail, were he to be so endowed, would right now be oscillating furiously at the excitement induced by this product of the press. Headlines and blurbs, reportage, cropped images of celebrities checking their email. Tireless hands fold one page into another, vestigial punctuation blurring into grimacing promotions coated in cyan.

A moth shoots past, now clinging to the window, a stain soon apparent.

Our young hero skips three pages, his enlarged neocortex pushing him forward, a bodily flow through the river of content. There it is, the TV listing open before him, casting rays onto his face, a rich yellow colouring anew his skin. His now-bulging forehead dips as he moves his eyes closer to the page. A few seconds pass as daylight’s programming is consumed, chewed up and discarded. Now the turn of night.

Suddenly the prophet sees his messiah. With a head looking more and more misshapen, Young Gottlieb sports a smile. He knows what is lying on page sixty-two. Never before has he had precognitive powers, but this time is different, this time an antediluvian spark spun from forgotten, dusk-hewn corners of his brain has left him with no doubts: page sixty-two is patched together in strands of Quaid.

Young Gottlieb – his head now beyond the limits of curvature – stares into the pages. Dreamscape is on tonight. Broadcast during the segue of the days, a bridge to tomorrow, how fitting. Epic nightfall treats are not mere items on the agenda, they are the agenda – and the agenda is written on the grinning face of Dennis Quaid. Dreamscape, thrust into repeated existence by randomness, is a treat in plural, its number not restricted to the inertia of one.

A jubilatory march erupts somewhere nearby – perhaps someone else knows the news.

Bubbles rise from Young Gottlieb’s head, spherical nebulae escaping from a fissure in his scalp. In them are contained concrete moments of Proustian glee. First a memory of a child’s viewing of Dreamscape. The precocious sprite sat down opposite the screen, distracted twitches of the head suggesting a preference for other things. Then rupture: images no longer filtered through the cathode ray, now spooled through miles of cranial flesh. The Dreamscape effect has the child delirious – assimilating or being assimilated, it’s hard to tell.

A second bubble has a spotty teenager being given a copy of Dreamscape. A scene of festivity surrounds the gift-giving. The bubble floats along the ceiling of the train, before reaching a hairy man engaged in a paperback. Initially he sees his reflection, the vain image forced upon him. A moment passes before the bubble reveals its innards. He seems affected by the scene of generosity. Pop. A splattering of mind pus later and he’s recoiling back into his paperback.

More bubbles sail through the air. One has Max von Sydow kneeling before a masked figure, seemingly pleading something, an imp prancing around behind him, cutting his Bergman chains, shoving him into exile. Another has Quaid helping a young disabled child cope with his nightmares. Beside a hipster lands a bubble in which Quaid fights a demon beast, Belial or some such, with a fork. A tourist watches a bubble ricochet off a window, the image of shameless Quaid grinning at a blonde swirling at its centre.

A noise is heard from the rear. It’s Young Gottlieb. His head has stretched to breaking point. Two seniors wrap themselves in newspaper, afraid of the imminent mess. Pop. Sheets of ooze fly over the seniors as a thousand bubbles fill the carriage. Some people tilt their heads, some lie supine, some stand with their faces in their hands. Kinetic scenes of bravery and sub-horror almost-Disney tit-fest Quaid-zone madness cascade through the air. Smeared with spit, the tantalising motif of 80s science turned bad becomes clearer as it sheds one gooey exterior. It falls into the lap of a nomad. He peers expectantly at it. Then the bubble shifts form, becoming the grin of Dennis Quaid. Now all the bubbles have become the grin of Dennis Quaid.

“What sacred gift is this?!” screams a little Bohemian girl.

The free papers drop abruptly to the floor. Eyes move from startled to amazed. A mighty surge of emotion overcomes the passengers. An idiot stands up and tries to hug one of the Dennis Quaid grins. He fails, then sits down. Fool. By the time we reach the station all the grins have disappeared, breathed in by anxious lungs, now tethered to the body’s interior. Grinning phantasms left to multiple in the hot moist cavern of the body, held in check by nothing, spreading Quaid cancers to everywhere. Organs shut down, masticated upon by chopping yankee gnashers, spelling the end of everything.

Too many things that begin as a gift, end as a massive inconvenience, like cancer. Thanks Dennis Quaid.

Repetition Roulette

It started as a memo, just another anonymous sheet of white shuffled haphazardly across the political palms. No one foresaw its catalytic potential. Neither were there fleeting images of turmoil, nor discoloured memories of a dreamt controversy, for precognition lived elsewhere. The social reconfiguration born from its words remained entirely unknown. Eventually ignorance began to fade, unstoppable sentences of import coming to the fore. A new mentality infiltrated the present; now the memo cut gazes in two, spitefully begrudging a past rife with insolence. It was hailed as genius, the work of a visionary mind. In less than a fortnight, it was elevated from valueless office debris to the blueprint for a grand plan, schema for an unavoidable step towards utopia.

The obstacles were many. Six months passed, during which time vigorous preparatory steps were untaken, sleepless nights were washed away by the headache of practicalities, orders from above lashed tender heads, fragile pates whipped upon with tyrannous demands, speedy implementation the omnipresent priority.

Yet, dissent remained visible. Some saw an infringement of their rights, an evil divestment of their civic worth orchestrated on a massive scale. Others were puzzled at the government’s lack of justification, merely requesting elaboration. Bellowed remarks could be heard all around London, usually shouted by beards denouncing a dismantling of freedoms, inveighing against what they saw as surrender to the clutches of automatism. Questions wafted skyward from all quarters. Uneasy faces stared inert at their copies of the Metro, eyes becoming more and more indifferent to the ubiquitous silence. The concept of asking assumed new heights of nonsense as the torrent of questions failed to cease. After a while, Whitehall said No more. A gigantic billboard was constructed, erected high on granite arches, piercing the blotched-grey sky, on which were printed the words ‘No Questions’.

One still saw the querulous faces on the Jubilee Line – frenzied minds figuring out the best words for their queries. Sore disappointment was the sole offering upon their arrival.

Then the day came. Eager ministers watched as theory morphed into practice, as the epic outcome of six months’ arduous planning and preparation assumed a form. Unmarked vans arrived at the libraries almost in unison, a stuttering of ignitions the signal of their presence. The men, attired in civil service garb, dragged the large discs from the back of the vans, lifting them into the buildings. Inside the libraries they were positioned in central spaces. The discs, about six feet in diameter, were large wheels amounted on steel spindles, able to be rotated with ease. Markings segmented the circles, dividing them into different colours. Straps hung loose on the face of each disc, stuck on at places within the perimeter.

Queues formed almost immediately, their conformity enforced by the threatened viciousness of the law. The injunction to submit met with little resistance. And so the first person was strapped to the wheel, set in motion, hastily allocated the specifics of their day, and then turned away, the next in line ambling forward – thus heralding the new society of repetition.

The problem – a conspicuous wound in the fabric of society, the deepest of structural faults – was given great emphasis in the original memo. It diagnosed a world of too much variation; it described an existence replete with too many options. Choice and decision were identified as actions of iniquity. Baleful standards of societal thrust had taken control, giving rise to a multitude of outcomes, an endless revolt against banality, individual ends perpetually diversifying. A menace was hoisted into view, said to be the bane of society, and the government agreed: variety was to be no more.

Fragments of ideas were embedded in the text – unformed gestures toward a solution. But a feasible answer remained to be devised. Government employees set off on long journeys of meditative struggle, delving into chasms of difficult debate, immersed in frenetic brainstorming orgies and interdepartmental back-and-forth. Chins were worn down in fits of scratching; divorce numbers rose. At last a solution was assembled: men and women would have their day decided by the turn of a giant roulette wheel.

Naturally making people do only one single thing all the time would be cruel. Variation may indeed be immorality by another name, but to purge the earth of it entirely, that would be futile and stupid. As a consequence, the wheel was built to retain the chance of leisure, the possibility of a time free from the rank of employee. But that time would be closely regulated, and limited, by government decree.

Buildings of civic importance would be needed to store the wheels. Schools were considered too rowdy; hospitals too busy. Libraries were chosen, their recurring community presence and peaceful ambience supplying all the necessary reasons. One minister also saw a great poetic appropriateness to the choice of libraries. Shelves upon shelves, rows upon rows, books filling every corner – libraries are exemplars of repetition. Pages aligned in series, the same words written, the same conclusions reached, a cycle whose tail never enters the light. Subjects that secrete the same, an endless parade of the already touched upon. Three hundred books about Flaubert, ninety shelves on Antiquity, twelve paperbacks about a scene that was cut from The Shining. On and on, a tunnel of zero finish. Such was the opinion of one uninformed minister.

Every adult in the country was assigned a local library, a place to report to at the stroke of daybreak. Each morning the queues would start, quickly extending in length, sprawling forth like tentacles composed of tired faces, penetrating car parks and playgrounds alike. Awaiting their turn, those towards the front of the queue would see others spun on the wheel, spun into a proletarian routine. Another man to work, another woman to work, shades of the alternative rarely seen. Spinning would continue, edging ever closer to noontide, each revolution the father of the next.

It was some minor minister, perhaps he who rambled nonsensically over the state of libraries, who had the smart idea of strapping citizens to the wheel. Make it interactive, make them think they can influence the outcome, give it the ring of destiny, the frivolity of fate – as he argued. But mostly it just made people nauseous.

The Seven Lives of Blanka

The street scene décor looks wooden. A few niggling cries of inauthenticity ring out, blackening the air with contrarian glee. Cleanly varnished surfaces reflect the light, a setting fresh at the touch, objects chopped and chiselled at little remove from the present.

‘But nonetheless!’ chant the chorus.

And so the street opens up. Cars and pedestrians, shops and eateries, blue-hued skies and matt-finished roads. Homey and homeless gouge the street, earning third-person glances and deferred interest. Careerists zip past the elderly. Mothers living the infant frenzy stomp the pavement, nudging street soldiers – always bolting ahead, always late.

‘Enough of the general!’ chant the chorus.

The mid-street café – a colourless fragment of the terrace, anonymous to all non-locals – coolly eases through the day. A quiet hideaway, sufficiently close to the bustle to maintain one’s grasp on the social nexus. Sun shines but the out-front seating, straddling gum-encrusted pavement, stands primarily empty. Only one seat taken – one table in use. A body fills the space, sipping tea and tapping a nervous hand on a newspaper.

‘Why, it’s he! Our hero!’ chant the chorus.

The smell of burgers and vomit is perceptible, noise of the bus lane audible. A couple stroll past walking a dog they named Hegel. Motor fumes course through the air. A woman madly bemoans “all that there NASA shit” to a silent telephone interlocutor. A toddler trips, suited men run for the bus, a kebab merchant discards his junk mail.

Green is reflected off the table steel as Blanka lowers his cup. Fatigue shows upon his eyes – fatigue or age? Frenetic happenings unravel behind him, a patchwork blur of technicolour ebb and flow. Little distracted by the environment, long-accustomed to the droning daytime, Blanka looks piercingly at the table. Someone has scribbled the word ‘Yeltsin’ on it.

‘Who be damned – where and why?’ chant the chorus.

Jutting out from below the newspaper is the cherished item of Blanka’s rumination: the latest draft of his memoirs – the myriad sheets of white, lathered in words and drenched in history’s reckoning advances, that have preoccupied his life these past months. He sighs, scratching a lump on his arm, dark green ever darkening. The newspaper he pushes to the other side of the table. The papers are revealed, bundled together in a rush. Blanka twists his neck away, yawning in tormented tiredness. Irksome tasks to do and their terrible completion rage behind his eyes.

‘Pay distraction no heed!’ chant the chorus.

Throwing no look to a nearby cyclist as she reproaches a van driver, Blanka lifts the pages and begins to sift through them. Every numbing memory of the writing process assails him, from the cutting of cherished passages, ones that took days to assemble, to hours lost through needless meditation on whether the word beatdown ought to be hyphenated. Fingers flick through the stack, eyes catching on headings. A nod intermittently ruptures the stillness of the air. A pen emerges from a shirt pocket, moving in rhythm to a baritone splutter gurgling its way up Blanka’s throat. Cough now free, the critical scribbling commences.

‘Soundless reading take flight!’ chant the chorus.

Chapter 6: The failed playwright

…I did not have the sense to start at the bottom. Things would have gone better that way, I am sure of it. A year or two making props, time arranging rehearsals, maybe a tour as Shylock – all would have been good preparation. But by that time my ego was too large. I demanded instant recognition. I could not wait for theatrical fame. And so I called myself Playwright and began to write…

…Some called Piss Piss, Mother Gods crass. Many reviewers tore it apart, writing at length about the unpleasant feeling it engendered in them. I was appalled. I did not expect such a backlash. I knew it was provocative; I was not naïve. But I believe it was misjudged. What they saw as misogynistic trash, I saw as a challenging metonymic critique of society. The scene in which Hank and Vera’s marriage is on the rocks is a perfect example. They argue over having children: Hank wanting them, Vera not wanting them. Tempers flare and voices are raised. After a minute of furious argument, Hank goes to retreat, but teary eyed Vera continues to harangue him. Hank turns back and shouts, “I will beat off in my hand and slap it in your fanny if you don’t shut up!” One reviewer centred his entire review around this scene, listing everything he saw wrong with it. Sometimes it confuses me. But I just assume they are ignorant…

Recollection of a dream spent talking to an ocelot returns to Blanka. Reading ceases as an intake of breath lightens the mood. Cheap ink stains his fingers, orphan biro lines running over his knuckles. Sputum interrupts his breath, a wad of opalescent gunk in ascension – now dislodged. The dreams involving the ocelot stopped a few months ago. Those twilight terrors ravaged Blanka’s sanity for years, hindering every new career, every new relationship. But now they appear absent, silent and invisible, enabling the byways of harmless slumber to be trod sans agony. Untouched anodyne sleep and myriad mind freedoms were the catalysts for the memoir, encouraging Blanka to finally chronicle his eventful life – now allowing him to do it.

‘Enter readerly delectation!’ chant the chorus.

Chapter 9: The fallen scholar

…I never knew him well. My cohorts spoke about him a lot. He was always held in high esteem. I considered it hyperbole. Our casual conversations never implied genius. We would exchange pleasantries on the odd occasion, that is it. He seemed to know much about the weather, but so did I. Then one day he comes up to me with a book. It was Writing and Difference by Jacques Derrida. He insisted I read it, guaranteeing the enrichment of my mind. I said I would take a look. He ended by inviting me to a seminar he was organising. Yes, E. Honda was a Deconstructionist. I could not have guessed it. Appearances are deceptive. Who would see a philosophical mind in a man who hand slaps cars into scrap metal? His flying headbutt was using his head, but a head certifiably Derridean? After the shock subsided a new inspiration took hold…

…I had been teaching the dynamic of différance for three months. I thought I was doing well. A list of my career goals was pinned to the wall of my shared office. I would not forget them. My energies were focused, perhaps for the first time ever. Yet all was not to be. Complaints started to come in, mainly from angry parents. I had been illustrating the play of signifiers, the core of différance. I did this by throwing students at each another. Accusations of physical abuse grew in number and I was sacked. I thought it was a great way to show how signifiers jostle in a constant movement of deference. I do not understand the controversy. I threw the students with the lowest essay marks first…

Bone joints click as Blanka leans back in his seat. A fly pretending to be a wasp flies by. Lines of disenchanted workers roam across the backlit horizon. More coughing. Breathing only has further obstacles to surmount; it edges closer to the terminal spot. Some identifier will be there: the letter X, a skull, a picture of Guile winking, something to let us know. Blanka plays indifference but even he feels the hollow rush of mortality. A local tobacconist walks past, a copy of Minima Moralia protruding from his bag of groceries.

‘The else must have legs!’ chant the chorus.

Eyes glide over hasty records of a past lived quickly. Excursions into carpentry, yachting, rolling full stops for authors too famous to roll their own – the printed word slices easily through time. Notable understatement of the glories derived from Street Fighter, feelings of guilt at a fame bought cheaply. Hurried passages segue into elaborate exegeses on declined career paths. A sigh hovers over the mishmash of first book problems: lack of cohesion, unevenness, indelicate use of punctuation. But the yawns multiply with firm resolve, unable to be stifled by the calling of late authoring prowess. Blanka is buoyed by a desired success, but a success uncertain. He takes a tapering journey on words chipped away from the lived and the experienced, stolen from a monopoly of the past tense, crammed into paper repositories in the hope of beating Time’s advance. Another cough, this time wet and wholly penultimate. A page is turned, flipped by creaky fingers. There’s no more, only table steel. And the final sheet slides away finished.

‘The else has no legs...’ chant the chorus.

Tornado! (Starring Bruce Campbell)

Given the usual incoherence of the morning I’m surprised I heard the banging. It was a sound from outside, it seemed, or maybe not, maybe inside. The origination was not immediately clear. An odd discombobulation of the ears reigned, a jolting rush of confusion threatening to capsize the day. Then a realisation, faint but not indiscernible: the sound, it’s coming from below, down the stairs, at the front door. Quizzically I slid down the stairs, the banging ever present. What wild ruckus is ensuing beyond the door? Should I risk showing my face? Am I to be met with death, is this the inevitable moment of my demise? Is my procrastinating walk only solidifying the nastiest facets of my execution?

Then the door is in front of me, hand reaching for the handle, pulling back to permit the light.

A man stands in the doorway, a flurry of sweat and dreadlocks. A large red satchel hangs off his shoulder, full of padded envelopes. The scorn etched on his face seems not likely to fade.

“Are you Mr Aaron?” he barks.

“I am.”

“You’re a hard man to get hold of!” he returns, one hand thrust into his bag.

A head devoid of words is a poor condition for the music of conversation, even the sweet warble of friendly badinage has trouble springing to life.

“I, uh, you’ve…what?”

“I’ve always the packages for you…you’re never in – man, packages for you,” he says lifting a grey box out of his bag.

“I’m here now, what is it?”

“A package – for you!” he yells without hesitation. “Take – and sign this.”

A box in one hand, delivery form in the other, a pen slid under the thumb, I playing the balancer as my signature struggles into motion. The courier’s angry glare causes my skin to freckle.

Squiggle down, I give back the form. His return to the road is instantaneous, his feet a speedy blur. A soundless insult tears through the air, his gaping mouth the only proof of something said. I stifle my cries and retreat into the fortress. The morning’s annihilation is truly complete, gone is the gentle caress of semi-sentience, gone is the clawing urge to yawn away the day. Day has begun, no ambiguities remain. And what’s more, day now has meaning, for a glistening DVD lies in the palm. The name of that DVD is Tornado! starring Bruce Campbell.

The promises are infinite, they occupy a bottomless of abyss of wisecracks and hilarious side glances. Potential, too, is well in abundance, stretching far into the horizon. Pre-packaged kudos, Tornado! finds itself cloaked in a great swarm of it. Imminent respect, love and lust are the promises of a Bruce Campbell film. His glorious name bestows on the most obviously dire pieces of cinema the chance of rebirth – cocoons of crud giving way to butterflies of watchability. He provides motivation where there might not be any, engendering reasons to view a film clearly made as a cheap cash-in on a more popular film.

Bruce Campbell is a beacon of truth. You’ll never carry pretence into one of his films, for he builds coruscating worlds that ostentation cannot assail. Most of his films are perfect examples of ‘it is what it is’ – we know the narrative and the characters, the setting and the outcome. No need to enrich matters with hyperbole or words of misdirection. Laid out naked is a story arc oblivious to experimentation, uninterested in striving for innovation. Bruce Campbell says: ‘you know what this is, I know what this is, but I’ll try and make it as fun as I can.’ He is the antidote to fame’s most nauseating proponents and affiliates, a man of honesty and decency. The proletarian actor par excellence.

Tornado! – also known in a different form as Twister – follows the actions of a hip young crew of meteorologists who live in the Texas area. Their hobbies include chasing tornadoes and barn dances. They dream of one day being able to accurately predict the appearance of tornadoes. Visions of saved lives and hot girls propel their scientific inquiries. Liquor deliria and trips to the zoo help them retain their sanity.

Bruce Campbell plays Bill Paxton, thrill-seeking leader of this band of maniacs. His chin feeds their lust for domination, tilting upwards when the reek of a tornado hangs in the air. He gives legitimation to their cause through his rugged features and array of checked shirts. Ernie Hudson smiles wistfully at Bruce, unsettled by the throbbing desire he holds for the man, a desire undiminished by years of meteorological comradeship.

A girl arrives, foretelling another Bruce-related coupling. Shannon Sturges, eyes attractive enough to ensnare Bruce, points forward in time to Chase Masterson, Bruce’s female partner in Terminal Invasion. They are linked across space, time and who knows what else by a common generational beauty and the kind of denim energy that usually dies a death in the graveyard of TV drama.

A tornado arrives, Derek I think it’s called. It roams across the plain, skirting about the place in an over-hyped dance of destruction. Roofs become airborne, livestock disappear, a housewife falls over. Normality sits crouched and crying. Cut to break.

Back from break: fire crews trudge through fallen walls, an engine roars an ambience unsettling but appropriate. Bruce Campbell/Bill Paxton shows up, open-top jeep, or not, and casts sympathy over the luckless locals. ‘I will get that fucking tornado, so I will,’ he declares.

Into the night he runs, jeep and cronies in tow. Helen Hunt or someone answers questions by the side of the road, a ghastly interruption. The tornado is sighted. It swirls menacingly. Bruce runs, the foulest revenge on his mind. A jeep follows slowly behind. The tornado veers to the left and sees him. Now it moves towards him, he towards it. An epic showdown is materialising, reality splintering to accommodate the inevitable disappointment. Clouds gather, Bruce is in the eye, the tornado sways to and fro. Drama plays out in a toneless picture of wind and rain. Combat continues into minutes, time getting more and more bloated. Hospitalisation can be the only result. Bruce takes his dagger and slices the tornado in two. The swirling menace decelerates into nothing. Bruce stands victorious, love is his prize. Ernie Hudson, Helen Hunt and Chase Masterson run to hug him, all united in a sentimental expression of man’s mastery over the weather.

Unsent Letters to Gary Busey: Letter 2 - Information Overabundance, the Agony of Thought & Ghost Rock

Dear Gary Busey,

I refuse to have any more thoughts. That’s it, I’m done with them. Niggling though they are – and it’s incessant, the thoughts always puncture the most innocent of my pleasures, from a stroll to the shop, to air drumming to Slayer – yet I can’t avoid the necessary and the desirable, for they must be cut adrift from my mind. It’s the only solution I can see. It’s a problem to be destroyed. Thoughts are open sores on the warped flesh of a day’s traversal. Dispel the distractions, melt down the mental pathways through which they move. Block the rising reflux of ideas and opinions, conclusions and propositions. Label them leprous, sully their existence, and charge them with crimes against importance.

I know your view, Gary Busey. You’ve lived an era free from thoughts. You exorcised the tyranny in one swift movement, and it was the cleanest defecation known to man. Scullion told me about it one day. Any mistakes or omissions are his fault.

You, Gary Busey, had spent many years chained to your thoughts. They’d come to you from afar, wave upon wave of speculation. Daylight sentience grew them in abundance. Twilight yawns tore rifts in reality, opening doors to the walk of ruminating madness. Senselessness observed night’s fecund flow – what made no sense had night bestow upon it a meaning in the propagation of thoughts.

Did you have a bad time of it? No doubt. A terrible plague had befallen you, Gary Busey. You were a captive of your own thoughts. You polluted conversations with your declarations and assertions. You even had the effrontery to translate your thoughts into writing. It was a dark time. Sheer reminiscence is almost enough to force tears upon me. But I will be strong, Gary Busey, I know that’s what you’d want. I also know the past is a shadow to you, a spectral quasi-presence that you really couldn’t give a fuck about. But humour me.

Languishing in the armpit of despair, hostage to the baggage of thought, you needed a cure, or some means of escape. Then it happened, an intervention organised by Keanu Reeves on the set of Point Break. In a show of support, the cast assembled on set, urging you to confront your problems and relinquish your addiction to thinking. Being a former addict himself, Reeves was the perfect man to give advice on how to suppress the need to think. His inspirational example of a life lived thoughtless proved overwhelming to you, Gary Busey. You broke down, the tears ran in heavy jets, the screams rendered all inaudible. Then courage hit. Dismantling all the craven ways of yore, you stood up, wiped the snot from your face, and started to shake your head. The shaking got more and more intense as shouts of support came from Reeves. As the shaking intensified, you started smacking the side of your head with your palm. The banging and self-violence continued a minute longer, then you fell to the ground in a spasm of dust and sticky head-goo. Reeves ran forward, lifting you up, consciousness slowly returning to your being. You looked around. Onlookers stared on, curious to know if the cure had worked. Then you said it: nothing. And the place erupted in raptures, your silence bringing tears to many. Reeves shook your hand and strode off into the horizon. You glared at him, you glared at the audience, you glared at the sky – all were one and the same to you. The treatment was a success, you were no longer shackled to the monster of thought.

It’s quite a tale, Gary Busey. I hope I was able to capture the magic of it. I dare say not even biblical prose could reach the levels of hyperbole needed to convey the importance of that moment.

Alas, until Keanu Reeves decides I’m fit to be saved from my thoughts, I will have to continue to live bearing the curse. I may refuse those thoughts, ignore their pleading, shun their heckles, damn the revelations to irrecollection, but plough forward they will. I have no defence. My fractured genes leave predisposed a personality unprotected against the injunction to think. To consider and to write are the promises of the information surplus. The vast infoscapes are multicoloured encouragements to create and contribute. Add to the mass, use what is deemed usable, delve into the relevant and reject the rest.

Evolution put us in a place where we take in all the information we can. Look about you, hear the audible, smell the odorous, touch all you can. Identify the threats, signal the eatable, take the useful. Hold in the mind’s eye a portion of earth freed from mystery. Enough for the senses to work, to exercise their genetic endowment. Information to be compiled on a limited scale, use of a limited lexicon, dissection of limited resources.

Now that portion of earth has changed beyond all recognition. Rather than gawk at a few stones, we see an endless stream of information in perpetual motion. Always being modified, always added to – magnifying in direct correlation to our own sense of insignificance. Gaze upon the history of everything, peruse the geographies of the micro and the macro; do it all, for now is the only present on offer.

The reactionary response is to criticise. It recommends ignorance and stupidity, obliviousness to the benefits of technological progress. The comprehension is nonexistent, the chance for technology to empower and free is disregarded. The right circumstances, the right uses, are both foreign concepts. Nothing’s neutral, but potential shines through the murk of cowardice and disinformation.

Sure our brains buckle at the thought of the internet’s gift to us – or rather, our gift to us, the gift we give each other, the gift we construct on a daily basis. The brain’s shortcomings are laid out naked in the heat of the internet’s infinite deluge. I know you, Gary Busey, you harbour few woes along these lines. But for the head set to maximum consumption it’s a difficult condition in which to live. Compulsion comes already preprogrammed into late capitalism’s push to buy and be the best consumer possible. The problem sees us lodged in the web of market logic, hearing only the bang bang of buy buy.

They’re dull considerations to you, Gary Busey, I know that. You’ve got no answers to offer me. I don’t write you in the hope of attaining answers. On the foregoing issues, I can discern all you’ve got to offer me from your performance in Ghost Rock.

Truly no better example can be found of just getting on with it. Your turn as Jack Pickett solidifies the absence of caring, it stands for action and not thought. Where’s reflection in the act of doing if not dead and buried in the past. There are no wasteful minutes spent asking the same tired questions, praying for something better, clawing for guidance from a spot in the sun that’ll blind you if you look too hard. Conventional hesitation has no place in Jack Pickett, he’s the product of an instant Yes.

Men built of stone weather in the wind; Gary Busey is the wind.

The internet is all writers, no readers. Or so it seems. We’ll go with it, Gary Busey, because a little exaggeration goes a long way. All writers, no readers. Whereas Ghost Rock’s all film, no viewers. It has all the facets of a film production: actors, a narrative, horses, Jeff Fahey. But no one to consume it. Ghost Rock is the internet written in film language. It’s a theatrical representation of the blog surplus, a dusty emblem of a guilt that scratches the soul every day.

How can one feel anything but guilt in adding to the information flood, Gary Busey? To exasperate the situation and give truth to the idea of ‘too much’ is surely a shameful pursuit that deserves outright prohibition. Adding to the already said and the already written, isn’t that the definition of a futile act?

Some fools insist that there’s nothing left to say, that it’s all already done, in turn ignoring millennia of creative struggle fought by writers and artists. The fools assume an ease that was never there. As if Dickens scribbled a list of titles at the beginning of his career and just wrote them out slowly over time.

Then again, Gary Busey, did Milton have to check his email whilst writing Paradise Lost? Was Ibsen nipping onto Facebook to update his status every time he wrote a scene? Would Bertrand Russell have written 3,000 words a day if he had Youtube as a distraction?

There are no excuses, Gary Busey. The world offers as much as it takes away. For every impediment comes a new avenue. Vaults of creative inspiration, whose paths are unobstructed, or becoming so, flash into view on a continual basis. The ongoing project of the world is the birth and death of ideas. Well, that’s the case for us poor tragedians anyway, Gary Busey, those of us tied irrevocably to our thoughts. I know Ghost Rock points in the direction of ‘shut the fuck up and just do it’. I know the example you set, Gary Busey, is aghast at my seeming acquiescence. But we can’t all be Ghost Rock, however enthusiastically we pray for it. Thinking will persist. As will the guilt at adding more and more sand to the desert. All we can hope for is that that sand is worth frolicking about in; after all, no one likes shite sand.

Sorry about the words, Gary Busey. I hope Betsy and Ethel are well. I hear that preproduction on your Broadway show is going well. The cast sounds highly talented, you’re lucky to be working with such fine actors. I have no doubt that Diabetes the Musical will be a great success.

Oodles of love and affection,

Aaron