The Televisionary Oracle (24 page)

My artist friend and helper Marijka emerges from the bathroom and starts unbuttoning my shirt, the Menstrual Temple tunic that Rapunzel gave me way back when. Was it only a few hours ago? “Come on, big guy, strip,” Marijka says. “Where’ve you been? We’ve got less than our allotted time to turn you into Jesus Pan.”

“Jesus Dionysus,” I correct her.

“Same dude,
n’est-ce pas?
”

She grabs her body paints and a chair while I prepare the canvas, my chest and abdomen. As I stand in front of her, she begins creating the image I’ve specified: not a Hallmark Valentine but a realistic, anatomically correct human heart at the top of which a flaming cross sprouts. Wrapped around the middle of the lurid organ is a band of crisscrossing thorns which in one place rips open the red flesh, causing a rain of blood to shower down on a single white rose. Marijka has rehearsed this painting on my chest twice in the past week, so it materializes swiftly now.

As she toils, my assistant Erica works on another part of my costume. First she fits the rubber goat ears over the outside of my real ones. They’ve been carefully altered to allow me to hear without any muffling. Then she slides on a plastic headband that’s surmounted by two prominent goat horns. In recent shows I’ve been wearing my very long brown hair in a topknot, like a Samurai clown, but tonight Erica’s brushing it into the Jesus-style.

When they’re done, I slip off my shoes, socks, and pants, gleeful at the casual unisex atmosphere backstage which makes it no big deal for the men to change clothes in front of women or vice versa. Then I pull on the furry greyish-brown leggings and slippers Marijka has fashioned for me out of real goatskins.

“How do I look?” I ask Marijka.

“I’m reminded of a passage from Plutarch,” she muses.

“You are?” I reply, surprised. “I had no idea you were a classical scholar.”

“Actually, this is the only passage from Plutarch I know. I heard it from my ex-boyfriend, the Christ-phobic professor of ancient religions. Plutarch tells a story about a sailor on a boat in the Aegean Sea. It’s during the time Tiberius is Roman emperor. The sailor hears a spooky disembodied voice say three times, ‘When you reach Palodes, proclaim that the Great God Pan is dead.’ It just so happens this is the precise moment Christianity is hatching in Judea.”

“Yeah, well, I’m here to offer a bozo-ish cure for that tragic schism in the spiritual yearning of humanity.”

“You’re halfway there, big guy. Ready to materialize the fullness of the archetype on stage?”

“Let me go have a conference with myself first.”

I lock myself in the bathroom. Closing the lid of the toilet, I sit down, bury my face in my hands, and begin my peptalk. Three years ago I would have been horrified to hear the blasphemous words I feel obligated to tell myself now. But after more than a year and a half of silly exile in the limbo of corporate hackdom, I have to ritually remind myself of what the hell I’m here for.

I AM NOT A ROCKSTAR. I HAVE NEVER BEEN A ROCKSTAR. I WILL NEVER BE A ROCKSTAR.

I affirm this aloud now in front of myself and the Goddess. I broadcast it from every synapse, driving it deep into my subconscious mind, as well as into the subconscious minds of any fans, music critics, record executives, radio programmers, or evil demons that might be working, advertently or inadvertently, to subvert my intention. I will never ever again place myself in danger of diverging from the One Righteous Path of My Destiny.

Am not a rockstar. Am not a rockstar. Am not a rockstar. Am not a rockstar. Am not a rockstar. Thus has it always been and thus shall it always be.

I’m not an inarticulate, barely educated elitist pretending to be a cultural hero disguised as a nihilistic outlaw.

I’m not a narcissistic vampire of mob energy who delights in staging onanistic, ear-numbing spectacles for eager-to-be-hypnotized voyeurs.

I’m not a smarmy opportunist sucking up to jaded cynics whose newspaper reviews might possibly pump up my stardom another octave.

I am not a sulking megalomaniacal celebrity squandering millions of dollars on high-tech hocus-pocus in order to record for posterity a handful of cliché-crammed four-minute songs that’ll earn me enough money to buy my own private jet.

I am not a sexist dickhead bent on exploiting and relishing the misogynist traditions of rock and roll.

I am not the patriarchy’s crowning achievement: the goddamn fucking hero; the all-conquering, greedy-for-glory, kill-everything-that-doesn’t-adore-me and fuck-everything-that-adores-me, eternally adolescent ego.

I am not a rockstar. I have never been a rockstar. I will never be a rockstar.

But I
am
a singer. I love to feel the sweet, fierce, loud, moist sounds coalescing in my body and then rushing out of my throat in a wild but disciplined stream of loving voodoo. I love to move people to intelligent tears and gritty ecstasy with the power of my melodic words.

I
am
a dancer. I love stumbling around the stage like a slinky fool, whipping up the exalted emotions of a writhing, intoxicated crowd.

I
am
a pagan priest. I love to throw wild parties that are also sacred
rituals, spiritual orgies disguised as rock and roll shows.

I
am
a dionysian bard and shamanic clown and guerrilla therapist. I love to channel coyote angel jokes from some higher part of my brain that I don’t normally have access to—all in the sacred service of bringing the true goofy religion to my tribe.

I
am
a lover. I don’t live to be worshiped, but to worship.

I AM NOT A ROCKSTAR. I HAVE NEVER BEEN A ROCKSTAR. I WILL NEVER BE A ROCKSTAR.

Amen.

Which leads logically to the question: Then how the hell did I end up signing contracts with two huge corporations that rank among the world’s most ambitious perpetrators of the rockstar fantasy? Through what inconceivable sequence of events did I become a puppet for one of the most cartoony of all archetypes?

Yes, I owe myself an explanation. If I hate being a rockstar so frigging much, why did I marry my fortunes to: 1) the entertainment conglomerate CBS, and 2) WBM, the management company founded by rock demi-god Will Boehm? Am I a liar? A hypocrite? A self-deluded poseur?

F
or our first discussion on the history of spiritual pranks, beauty and truth fans, we turn to a performance by the renowned sixteenth-century physician Paracelsus.

First a little background on the man. Like Johannes Kepler, who was both astronomer and astrologer, Paracelsus was one of those rare scientists capable of living in the Drivetime. On the one hand he was a full-on, no-apologies alchemist who loved to commune with the spirits. On the other, he was an influential medical reformer who articulated a new model for disease. Previously it was thought to result from imbalances in the body’s humors. Paracelsus replaced it with the theory that external agents attacked the body and could be driven out with chemicals.

He was named to the chair of medicine at the University of Basel in 1524. Soon after, he made a most astounding promise. He said he had discovered the Elixir of Life, the true Philosopher’s Stone, and would reveal it to the students and faculty in a public demonstration.

On the appointed day, the hall of learning filled with curious but skeptical scholars. Before him on a table, Paracelsus set a large jar covered with black cloth. For three long hours he lectured on the First Matter, the raw material of the Elixir of Life. He quoted from Philalethes, who said that the First Matter is “a virgin who meets her wooers in foul garments.” The Qabalists, Paracelsus noted, advised the seeker after truth to find the First Matter in “the stone that the Builders rejected.” Even Pythagoras himself claimed the Philosopher’s Stone could be made from a substance that the rabble look upon as being the vilest thing on Earth.

As the learned men grew impatient, shifting restlessly in their seats, Paracelsus finally circled to his climax. “Discarded daily as worthless refuse,” he boomed, “eternally scorned and devalued, it is now ready, through my sponsorship, to receive its well-deserved due. In the bowels of the Earth have I found it. In the sewers and the gutters and the wasted places. And now, behold. The mystery is unveiled.” Whereupon Paracelsus lifted the black cloth with a flourish and revealed … a pile of shit.

Instantly there was a storm of howling and stamping. Outraged, his colleagues denounced him as a fraud and exhibitionist. “If you knew how misguided you are,” he shouted back, “you would make the sign of the cross on yourselves with a fox’s tail.”

Four centuries later, Carl Jung used dry, scholarly language to drive home the same point that an earlier performance artist, Paracelsus, had so amusingly made in Basel. The process of individuation and the awakening of the Self, Jung said, must begin by addressing the
shadow—
the disowned and ugly aspects of the personality.

D
efine your problem crisply and bluntly, my mothers have always taught me. Meditate on the truth that the universe is a problem-solving machine, and that you always stir up hidden forces to work in your behalf when you provide the universe with a beautiful problem to solve. Then relax with perfect confidence and make yourself available for the solution to find you.

Using this artful technique, I tracked down the collector of antiquities within a week. First I composed a precise description of the person I wanted, the nature of our interaction, and the money that would come my way. Next I incubated a dream about how to bring this person into my life. In two of my dreams that night I was hanging out in a certain cafe in Santa Cruz, Caffé Pergolesi.

My third step was to go do in waking life what I had done in my dreams. Stealing all the time away from the Sanctuary I could, I parked myself at Pergolesi and waited. During my third watch I met a forty-year-old antiques dealer who became obsessed with my ability to tell her what she was thinking and to prognosticate her future. In return for me providing these unofficial services (which ultimately led to her making three lucrative finds she would never have stumbled across without me), she connected me with an associate from Carmel who was seriously interested in the artifact I had to sell.

It all happened so easily, I couldn’t help but interpret it as a sign to proceed with my plan. This helped quell the doubts that had begun to creep in about whether I was doing the right thing.

It wasn’t the annihilation of the splotch I felt queasy about. Not in the least. That was a righteous quest I regarded as my birthright. But I was having trouble rationalizing the theft and sale of the Grail. I knew that for my mothers, it was precious beyond imagining. They believed it possessed a magical mojo that could dramatically enhance the link between Goddess and anyone who touched it. And though I was bent on waging a secret holy war with them, I also loved them with all of my surgically repaired heart.