WHEN THE OLD MAN DIED (Part Six : When the music's over...)

Beware of people rushing around dramatically with a fanatical sense of purpose, they’re either in the military, finance or entertainment business, or hustling to get elected so they can save the world from its’ inherent drab dullness! Or convince you that lighthouse is really a monster, it’s gonna chew you up and spit you out or tie you to a chair and make you watch the same episode of “Britain’s Got Talent” over and over and over again! “But I enjoy it, it’s fun! Just harmless entertainment, lord!!

And meanwhile, like me dad, millions of people are lying there on their little hospital-cots wondering did I do enough??? Did I do too much? Did I really do anything at all? What the fuck was that all about??? Will anybody miss me when I’m gone? Will anybody remember me when I’m gone? Will I care if anybody remembers me when I’m gone? Will I remember me when I’m gone? Who will I be when I’m not myself anymore? Who was I and who the hell was everybody else? And where the heaven is everybody else when you really need ‘em? And who needs ‘em if we’re all just sinking into the same sunset? Is there really one final a la carte moment of self-consciousness before I blend back into the universal soup-du-jour? If there is, I’d better make it a good one…Or else! or else what? Can I possibly fathom this before I die? Not much time left before I’m off-the-clock forever! Where’s Rupert Murdoch when you need some good press-play? Playtime’s over, sunshine, it’s time to get serious… Is Simon Cowell smiling? Did I do good or did I do bad? Will I get a call-back? It could make or break my career as a corpse, becoming a zombie on prime-time television! Death’s got talent too! I coulda been a contender! But I’m not ready for me close-up yet, Mr. DeMille, need to find me false teeth, I’d hate to go out of this world without a smile on me face! I should’ve left a more significant mark on history! Whose his tory? Your history? My history? her history? What’s history if not the chronicle of profit and loss? What’s to gain if nobody profits by it? Where’s a good prophet when you need one? Am I leaving this world a better place? is this world taking me to a better place? Ask not what the world can do for you but what you can do for the world! Not much if I’m dead! But I’m not dead yet, so quick get me a priest, get me a rabbi, get me an imam, the forty virgins! I like that! I’ll settle for that! In which case I’ll need the use of me penis back, do they have functional penises in eternity? What’s the point of forty vaginas if you’ve got no useful penis!!!??? Just to tuck me up at night? Forty beautiful young maidens gazing lovingly over me flotsam and jetsam, singing me lullabies and cheerfully changing me diaper! OK, I like that, I’ll go for that! I’ll go for anything that doesn’t scare me to death!!! “Just go with the flow!” Who said that? “I said that.” Who the fuck are you?? “I’m the flow, man, can’t you feel me flowing?” Not with this catheter stuck up me private parts!!! I need to break wind! “Hey, if it’s not broken why fix it” You should try and catch it!” Dying is contagious. And so is life. We’re all exposed. And there ain’t no vaccination in this world can make you any better than you really are, were and possibly never will be again! When your immune-system is not so much finally fucked-up as utterly irrelevant! Where’s a good lottery ticket when you need one? When your number’s up and it’s the wrong number..…When the music’s over and all that’s left is the train-wreck!

As you lie there terminally trying to configurate a final mis-en-scene : some technicolored Disney-channeling triumph of well-scrubbed good over unwashed evil Just not some psycho serial-killer surviving for a sequel!? Or some ambiguous art-house open-to-interpretation after-dinner-conversation-provoking anti-finale…? If nobody's coming over for dinner ever again…

Then suddenly you realize everybody else has left the theatre. The movie’s over, the credits are rolling.. But you swear you’re not gonna leave till you’ve seen your name in lights…And there it is! produced, directed, written by and starring William Henry Bellwood!! That’s me! I was there! I made that movie!! Who are you talking to, dad? I’m talking to Simon Cowell, I’m talking to Martin Scorsese…I’m talking to God! I’m talking to your mam… But mam’s not here, dad, she’s back at the house watching cartoons on television. How is she doing? Well, she’s not dead yet. That’s good, I’m glad somebody’s still alive!

Then the screen goes blank! The light some up. Maybe the lights don’t come up? Maybe everything remains forever in the dark. But you have to imagine it doesn't matter anymore. Light and dark, black and white, here and there, up and down, war and peace, sport and politics, sex and religion….Hitting or missing your mark.. You’ve mastered that particular brokered medium. It’s time to move on, switch channels, try something else for a change…I shall now attempt to communicate absolutely everything using absolutely nothing! That’ll be a real challenge. Maybe I can still ruffle a few feathers even without having to break wind…Give people something to shiver about…..oooooohhhhh… somebody just walked over my grave! But you’re not in a grave, dad, you weren’t buried down you were burned up, ashes and smoke, poufff! Abracadabra! Now you see me, now you don’t! Magic. real magic. No trickery involved. If you want to squeeze a soccer-ball into a Cadbury wafer, first you gotta let all the air out!!!

A hell of a show, ladies and gentlemen, one hell of a show! This man has been where no other man has ever been before! Not without dying or not being born in the process.. This man has achieved the impossible! Which wasn’t possible while he was alive, he’s dead!!!

But he did good, he did OK. I have to believe that, cause if it wasn’t for me dad I wouldn’t be where I am today, I’d be somewhere else. I’d be somebody else. At the mercy of somebody else’s imagination. Maybe a cockroach? No imagination at all but survival instinct intact, no matter how many times I get exterminated? Maybe a Hindi Untouchable? Could be worse, could be a cockroach! Or maybe The Leader Of the Free World? In which case if I can’t imagine peace, I can make sure a lot of other people can’t imagine it either! A Buddhist monk meditating on top of a mountain, un-fanatically focused on keeping this world untipped balanced in everybody’s favor?Or a hermit-crab, nestling at the farthest shores of creation witnessing this natural planet earth a vast and infinitely radiant conduit of mercifully indescribable loveliness..

You did good, dad, you did your best. No other Bill Bellwood could have done any better. And I know eventually I’ll be following in your footsteps…Different feets, same final step…When the parting’s over and it’s time for this particular mask to come off!