Nice day for a... or: Building my own c----

Dear diary,

Today I gotta go to a wedding; it starts in less than two hours, and I’m just killin’ time by writin’; so this entry is gonna be halfhearted and scatterbrained.

Whose wedding, you ask? I don’t even know the people. My sweetheart RSVP’d to the event many months ago and just reminded me about it this morning. At least it distracts me from worrying about our dying heater.

The service is to be at a Catholic church – that’s all I know. This’ll be my first time ever seeing the interior of one of those places. I mean, I’ve admired photos in books, and I love that sanctuary that Matisse embellished (was that Catholic, tho? I think I’m stretching too far, just to include the name of my beloved); but the only churches I’ve ever walked inside of are Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and “Reformed”—this last denomination is what my parents’ church labels itself (it’s the church of my childhood: the one I was forced to attend): I had to check their website to make sure; apparently it’s an offshoot of Presbyterian, Lutheran, and United Church of Christ. I didn’t know anything about the United Church of Christ either. —I just spent a while on a few official websites for churches, and now I’m all churched out.

(Is a mortal man much more than a worm that grew limbs?)

I want a church of my own. But yeah, you’re right—I wouldn’t want any followers. I’d want large groups of people from all backgrounds and beliefs to attend my services, and to listen carefully so as to argue with me. Not blowout arguments like red-faced spitting yelling cable-news pundits at each others’ throat, and whoever yells the loudest is the winner—no, but rather polite, measured, caring, honest remarks that are, at the same time, challenging, skeptical, and provocative. Questions from people who are curious about my teachings, who are interested in what makes me tick spiritually, but who are comfortable with their own beliefs, they are willing but not necessarily seeking to expand their purview: the minds attending my services hold as their mantra to reject no good idea yet accept no bad one. For instance, a visitor might say to me: “Why do you call Walt Whitman the savior, when the Bible says that only a belief in Jesus can get you to heaven?” And I’d answer them sincerely by reading them Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1838 Divinity School Address, from beginning to end – that’d be one service; and also William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, at another service... But I would answer from my own heart far more often than I’d read from others’ texts, because a great emphasis of my teaching would be that the answers are within you, and so is divinity; I’d stress the superiority of intuition; I’d say that the crown of humankind is the mind, thus there is nothing more worth pursuing than IMAGINATION. Yes, even the kingdom of heaven is within you.

And over the sound system I’d play a recording of Philip Glass section VII from “Music in Twelve Parts” for sacred music. And I’d also play Aretha Franklin and James Brown for sacred music, and too many others to list; Palestrina and Bach, and the opera Carmen by Bizet. I’d have a variety of sacred music – I’d play anything that seems good to me. Because if it seems good to me, I can only assume it seems good to GOD. Because, as I just got done telling you two seconds ago (I would always keep reminding everyone of this), GOD is inside of each of us – not outside, not up in the clouds like a hawk waiting to swoop down and clutch us up to judgment... So if the music seems good to us, we know it seems good to GOD: that’s my point. If the music weren’t sacred, then I assume GOD would start kicking to indicate disapproval, like a babe in the uterus.

But also I’d say that GOD doesn’t exist. I’d say that GOD lives and that GOD is dead. Sure, I would read Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, but I’d read that far less frequently and only after Nietzsche’s other books, like my favorites On the Genealogy of Morals, also Beyond Good & Evil, and Ecce Homo. And I’d also read his Antichrist aloud to my congregation with great feeling, and I’d stop frequently and remark: Now we’re getting closer to GOD! …But I don’t wanna get too bogged down listing the books I’d read for holy scripture—the King James Bible, by the way, would be read ENDLESSLY, COMPULSIVELY, INCESSANTLY: I love that book to death—but I want at least to say that Moby Dick would be very familiar to my (non-)followers, as would Don Quixote and much of the poetry of D.H. Lawrence, plus Aristophanes, Heraclitus, Diogenes, Archilochus… Emily Dickinson of course, and of course Whitman’s “Song of Myself”… and Victor Hugo’s cosmic poems and Dante’s—

You have to pretend that I got guillotine’d just now, otherwise I won’t be able to stop. Alfred Jarry’s writings would also be sacred. And Joyce and Beckett; and Emily Bronte...

Damn, guillotine’d again. And often we’d inspect films: I’d have a wall-sized silver screen behind red curtains, and we’d view many titles. The only catch is that I’d be the one to choose the movies that we watch – after all, it’s MY church, for Christ’s sake. I’d show Cassavetes films, like A Woman Under the Influence (1974); and Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel (1962) and L’Age d’Or (1930) and The Milky Way (1969), and pretty much all the stuff that he made from Belle de jour (1967) onward. And I’d show 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); and the original Star Wars (1977); plus a lot of David Lynch films, of course. And Bergman’s Persona (1966); and many, many from Michelangelo Antonioni, especially L’Eclisse (1962) (I’m glad I’m making this list – it’s alerting me to the fact that I like a lot of 60s films: I didn’t know that about myself); and I’d include ALL of Errol Morris’ documentaries, especially The Fog of War (2003); and we’d have ALL of Werner Herzog’s filmography at the church. And I know you’re gonna ask it: YES, I would screen Wrong Cops (2013) every Sunday night, tho I don’t know how I’d justify it as sacred. I guess I’d say, if the Tanakh can contain the book of Jonah, then my sacred movie canon can hold Wrong Cops.

(NOTE. Once that last film gets accepted into the Official List of Best Movies Ever Directed by Earthlings, assuming this would occur after my demise, I would leave instructions for my successor to ease off from screening this film so frequently: the reason I harp on it is that it’s so little known at present. It’s our duty as prophets of hell to support one another.)

And Synecdoche, New York (2008) – I preach that this movie is the best movie we’ll ever see released in our lifetimes. Except for maybe the films of Paul Thomas Anderson, especially The Master (2012) and everything else in his filmography. (It’s a coincidence that Philip Seymour Hoffman plays major roles in both films that I just listed…)

Again I’ll stop with the personal favorites. I’m afraid my church is coming off as nothing but “Bryan’s Art Shrine.” Well, what if it is? What’s wrong with that? My church’s belief is that art is sacred. But the best art is the art that challenges ART. As it is written in the manifestos of Tristan Tzara: The real dadas are against DADA. ...And my church would also teach that everything is art. And my audience will politely rib me about this, but I’ll never give up the belief. They’ll say: Yeah OK so you think that TV commercials are art? And I’ll say, YES—yet allow me to clarify: ads are often lousy art, dull art, boring and shallow art (art that is not anti-ART), but they’re art nonetheless… and sometimes they’re fine art, strong art, even sacred art. For what is a TV ad but a 15-second movie? It’s a super-short film! Would that all blockbusters were so efficient. Some poems have very few lines.

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
     Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art:
I warmed both hands before the fire of Life;
     It sinks; and I am ready to depart.

[That’s “On His Seventy-fifth Birthday” by Walter Savage Landor.]

And our congregation would meet outside as often as possible. I’d like to find a place where the rocks and the trees contribute to naturally pleasant acoustics, so you would melt into the hum of my valvèd voice...

And my church would not just meet on Saturdays or Sundays, or even weekends-plus-Wednesdays: no, we would meet every single day of the week: all seven days. Why should one want to leave church? I’d never leave my church; I’d basically live there. I’d sleep in my office – I’d install a hammock or something. I wish I could grow real trees inside; if not, then maybe we can manufacture some fake trees. Actually, now that I think of it, I prefer all fake verdure for my office: fake plants all over, astro-turf for the carpet… I even want a huge semi-real volcano behind the pulpit, with actual glowing lava.

And I hope that this idea doesn’t cause people to get rowdy or drift into daydreams when I’m trying to read to them from Edward Lear or Christopher Smart or Gertrude Stein, but I’d like to have a vast bar along the back wall of the church which serves absinthe and cannabis. And other choice liquors. No beer tho. But, before you kill me again, let me explain: I love beer: love in all caps and even italicized: beer is good! I don’t mean to offend beer drinkers, and I understand all the merits of that beverage: I really do salute beer as sincerely as you do, believe me; but there are plenty of places in this world where you can get a cold beer – when you enter MY holy sanctuary, you can keep your sandals on, but I prefer that you abstain from partaking of mild intoxicants, and join the rest of the congregation for absinthe and cannabis.

And my church will practice polygamy – let’s get that out in the open and on the table straightaway: no apologies, we will believe in free love. Nobody will be forced to cherish anyone or enter into any relationships (we hold coercion as the severest sin—perhaps the only sin), and marriage will be frowned upon anyway, but multiple partnerships, all on the up-and-up and with everyone in-the-know, will not only be permitted but celebrated; and yet the sexless life, those who voluntarily abstain from fleshly pleasures and instead choose to sublimate their genius into artistic production, will be held as the eye of the pyramid. If this attitude seems contradictory to you, or you find my notions confusing, then come to my church anytime and I’ll talk you silly. Also I should emphasize that if you DESIRE to be monogamous and embrace one single partner for your paramour forever and ever, till death do you part, and then remain together in heaven as true lovers and soul mates, like me and my sweetheart, then, by all means, pursue that too: it’s very good: bravo! My church is a positive place, I hope you’ve gathered. But, yes, I’ve always been mad at the Mormons for abandoning the idea of Celestial Marriage. I myself don’t believe in Celestial Marriage, but I yearn to believe in it, especially if it justifies group affection. But in case there’s something I don’t know about polygamy that causes people to see it as a male-dominated thing, because so many of the biblical patriarchs were old fools with many young wives, I want to stress that gender can be thrown out the window, in the sense that no single style of being should dominate: any possible permutation of mutual affection is clean air to us here – it’s so healthy we don’t even think about it. It tastes good to our palate.

And you’ve maybe heard the notion of wearing your “Sunday’s best”—this, I assume, is because churchgoers dress a little finer than they do for the rest of the week, when they attend the service on Sunday. But if you look at paintings of traditional churchgoers from the last two centuries, and then you compare them to today’s churchgoers, you notice that one thing hasn’t changed: the churchy style has always been to wrap oneself in a table runner, or a doily, or the designs of patio furniture, like an umbrella with big yellow flowers, or a bedsheet for grandparents, with a repeating pattern of bluebirds and apples on twigs, like vulgar wallpaper. I’m not saying that people should come to church in rubberwear or faux-leather jimjams (tho please do, if that’s your fancy); but my church will look like glamorous ballroom dancing – eveningwear everywhere: formal clothing, for the sharpness of it. And many people who work hard to get their body to the point where it is curved or flat or chiseled or smooth in all the right places will desire to display this naturally achieved beauty, so they will probably want to wear silken robes, which rest against the flesh in a way that is tantalizing.

And singers. We’ll need singers. I myself can rap, that’s OK, but I don’t like to sing, at least not solo. But hey, that’s it: we won’t do solo singing – I already listed 1% of the music that we’ll play for sacred worship, but we’ll sing together as a congregation everything from traditional hymns like “Shall We Gather at the River” and “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”; also “Old-Time Religion” (a song that, to me, seems so simple it’s sinister; as if it were written by Nobodaddy himself) – I truly love these timeworn gospel hymns: so we’ll keep all that type of material. But most of the collective singing will sound like the chorus of “Little Joe” from the film Destry Rides Again (1939; with the German Marlene Dietrich playing Frenchy who sings in English) – yes, most of the public worship at my church will be like all those old drinking songs, where the whole bar is waving their mugs and rather shouting the lyrics together: that brings tears to my eyes, I love so much when everyone’s happy. If my congregation is willing to participate in those howlin’ loud bar songs, I’ll even temporarily lift my embargo on beer – because, how can you worship the LORD with a saloon-style singalong, if you’re not hoisting high a huge frothy mug. And you sway your arm back and forth, and the beer spills out; so, with a congregation this extensive, we’ll have to find a way to clean our floor effectively… (Ah, now my sweetheart is calling me, telling me to get up and stop writing, get ready: it’s time to go to the wedding! So I leave Franz Kafka to solve the problem of our beer-strewn church floors.)

Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony.