The Televisionary Oracle (58 page)

Granted, it’s not as grandiose a publicity stunt as blowing my brains out with a shotgun like some rock stars I’ve known; nor is it as titillating (if hackneyed) as punching out a journalist or overdosing on heroin or romancing a naughty supermodel. What it lacks in predigested gossip-worthiness, however, is compensated for by its stark originality. No rock star, not even a semi-famous one like me, has ever abdicated the throne to take on the monastic life—let alone a
radical feminist
monastic life. If I do say so myself, it has fair potential as a storyline for a Hollywood movie.

I don’t regard this as being deceitful towards our fans. For one thing, I really am suspending the band’s operations for a while. For another, I sincerely want to hook up with Rapunzel and her crowd, and the truth is that she has made the dissolution of the band and a job as janitor conditions for accepting me.

Beyond that, I have for a long time regarded my art as consisting in part of translating the themes of my complex inner life into a relatively accurate, if simplified, public image. My job, in other words, has
definitely NOT been to let my public image be sculpted by the one-size-fits-all machinery of the rock business; NOT to leech off a fake version of myself by fitting into the generic archetype of the famous rock star.

Rather, I’ve wanted to lend my creativity and spiritual awareness to the task of revolutionizing the whole act of persona-making. My hypothesis has been that maybe a celebrity’s public image can be more than a hyped pack of pretty lies; that maybe I could shape, through artistry, an outer package that quite precisely reflects the spiritual intentions that lie inside.

One upshot of this line of thought is that I’ve concluded I sometimes have to fudge a little on the specific details in order to tell the bigger truth. Another implication is that my life really is, essentially, a story. It is not an assemblage of objective, incontrovertible data. It is a swarming fiction composed of endlessly permuting levels of truth (often contradictory), any one of which I can choose to highlight or downplay at any moment to create an entirely novel version of my history. There’s no difference between my life and the story I proclaim to be my life. In the end, I
am
a performance art project.

I’m reminded of the children’s picture book that consists of three groups of pages assembled vertically. The top group of pages has thirty different heads, the middle has thirty different bodies, and the lower has thirty different legs. At any one time the mongrel personage you have before you can be built from, say, the clown face on page one of the top group plus the soldier body on page eleven of the middle group plus the ballet dancer’s legs from page twenty-seven of the bottom group.

The story—or rather the
stories
—of my life resemble that children’s book.

So I’ve rationalized with exquisitely lyrical logic why our performance art experiment is not deceitful towards our fans. Can I manage the same feat in relation to Rapunzel?

Well, she specifically said I didn’t have to leave the music business forever. And she did not say exactly how long it might take for me to, quote, untangle my divine motivations for singing from the diseased motivations, unquote. Two months might be enough, for all I or she knows. And I figure I want to let the first part of my prank simmer at
least two months before launching it into its next phase. Besides, I really do want to be free of the day-to-day demands of the band for now so I can make myself abundantly available for whatever Rapunzel and company have in store for me. I can’t imagine any feistier fun. And after having had to reconnoiter the music accountants’ and music bureaucrats’ sections of hell in the last few months, I richly deserve to indulge in such feisty fun. An artist needs regular doses of fertile chaos.

Best of all, it’s one hundred percent guaranteed that my imminent adventures with the gorgeous sphinx trickster will generate a spate of killer works of art.

I am as sure of that as I am of the solidity of the bedraggled mop and bucket full of slopwater I am gazing at here in the kitchen of India Joze restaurant in downtown Santa Cruz at 1:30 in the morning.

It’s my third night on the job as a janitor. Shreds of moldy tomatoes dangle from my hair. Dirty cake frosting clings to the sleeve of my khaki Sears work shirt, as well as rotting eggplant pulp blended with the pulverized fragments of a dead insect. My matching khaki pants, new just a few days ago, have already absorbed so much grunge that the cuffs have permanently turned the color of crud.

I’m ecstatic. Maybe I won’t be in a week, but for now, I’m awash in infatuation with my role as a total nonentity. I’m living the dream of any egomaniac who has ever loved the Buddha: to be as empty as the moment between the ticks of the clock; to be stone-cold, dead-dumb, flat-out unimportant, the biggest nobody in a world full of nobodies.

For years I’ve allowed my ego to sway and groove to the rhythm of its cute hallucinations of grandiosity. I am, after all, the spiritually savvy rockstar fueled by feminist lust, right? I am a hip philosopher for the proletariat of geniuses, the postmodern bard who channels the most entertaining brand of crazy wisdom that’s ever held down a regular spot on the periphery of the mass media.

And oh the crushing weight of it all. To be chronically teetering with top-heavy self-importance yet pretend that I’m naught but a humble seeker. What sublime guilt! What messianic sneakiness! What ineffable tomfoolery! What lousy stinkin’ graceful fragrant logic!

Now, though, for going-on-three nirvana-crammed nights, I have
been scoured of all such bullpuckie. With each used tampon I’ve had to fish out of the clogged toilet with my mini-roto rooter, my innate hubris shrinks. With each crop of shattered drinking glass fragments I gingerly harvest from the sink, my treasured invisibility grows.

Tonight I wept with unironic joy as I scraped away years-old gunk with a putty knife from a corner behind the bread table. “I am nothing!” I laughed aloud as I marveled at the perfect gnosis. Not a single soul will ever know I carried out this secret act! And even if they did, they wouldn’t be in the least impressed by it! I did it, indeed, because there was absolutely no reason to do it. And in that moment, as the gummy green-black slag responded to my earnest ministrations, a liquid thunderbolt of love blasted through me—I mean a tangible elixir of blessing from the Grandmother of Us All. The Goddess saw! And rewarded me! I felt it! I swear I sensed Her nectared presence! Her fiercely sweet touch! And hallelujah I deserved it! Because for once in my life I was wildly free of all lust for results. I had lived, if only for an instant, outside of karma.

Here’s the best part: I’m not even being paid for busting my ass six hours a night. In fact, I’m
spending money
to earn the privilege. In carrying out Rapunzel’s assignment to get a job as a janitor, I wanted to be as free of attachments as possible. I didn’t want to give anyone the false impression I was interested in a long-term commitment. Nor did I particularly want to call attention to my new role from someone who might know someone who knew me.

My solution was to stroll over to my favorite restaurant in the wee hours a few nights ago. When the janitor came out to the street at about 2:45 to hose down the rubber mats in the gutter, I engaged him in conversation.

“How’d you like a little paid vacation?” I offered.

“Huh?”

“I’ve got a proposition for you.”

“Listen, I ain’t into gay sex.”

“It’s nothing like that. What’s your name?”

“Dave.”

“Well, Dave, my friends call me Rockstar. And there’s a little performance art project I want to try which involves doing exactly the kind of work you’re doing. Thing of it is, it’s important that I do the
job completely off the books.”

“You’re fuckin’ crazy.”

“No, Dave, I assure you I’ve never felt more lucid in my life. Here’s what I propose. Do you work here every night?”

“Five nights a week.”

“Here’s what I propose. You let me do your job every night for, I don’t know, let’s say your next fifteen nights. And in return I will pay you five dollars an hour for every hour I work. So in other words you’ll get to collect your regular salary from India Joze plus what I provide.”

“I still think you’re fuckin’ nuts. But I’d think about it if maybe I knew you better. I mean, what’s to stop you from stealing stuff from the restaurant and then my boss’ll blame me?”

“I’m perfectly willing to make you feel totally comfortable about that, Dave. If you want, you can hang around during my entire shift and monitor me as I work. You can sit back and watch TV or read while I slave away.”

“Well. I don’t know. I mean I guess so. You want to start now?”

“Perfect. You can show me everything you do so I can take over full-time tomorrow.”

I became Dave’s apprentice for the next four hours, and as we parted at dawn I handed him twenty dollars. I met him here last night and gave him his thirty dollars right away. He hung around for an hour before giving me the keys and taking off. Tonight before I came to work I got a call from him saying to start without him, that he’d come by at dawn to pick up his nightly wage. So here I am alone, blissing out on the stench of the fermenting meat littering the stove I’ll be cleaning next.

Or should I stack the chairs on the tables in the dining areas and sweep and mop the floor? Or maybe ply my craft on the sinks and urinals in the men’s bathroom? There are so many thrilling acts of self-abnegation, I’m almost paralyzed with my freedom of choice.

For now I think I’ll just kick back, chill out, and meditate on how pleased I am with my fascinating life. All is proceeding with sweet synchronicity. The band’s press releases should be arriving en masse at media outlets later today. No doubt there’ll be a flurry of inquiries on the World Entertainment War hotline by nightfall. Despite the bit in the press release about me refusing all further contact with the media, I just might get back to a couple of journalists if I think they’re capable
of helping me promote the mythic angle of this experiment.

Suddenly I’m overwhelmed with the urge to bellow out “I Know Nothing,” one of the last tunes World Entertainment War and I wrote before my “retirement.” It’s actually more of a rap than a song.

Y
ou are now wrestling with a subliminal message. BMW bouquet protector feast. On a conscious level, you may not know what the hell we’re talking about, but your subconscious mind will record and remember all the mutant joy contained herein. Slamdunk peak-experience blueprint. Your dormant genius has already begun to stir, ensuring the genesis of love spells that will dispel the black magic you’ve wreaked on yourself. Pain-reliever flushed cheeks lucky dog dream-treasure. That’s why we have utmost confidence that you will soon discover the power to kill your own death. Moist hot laughing bloom.