Ghost Movement
Ghost Movement
Then there appears a singular being, having the head of a man on the body of a fish, haunting
Having total freedom would be akin to standing alone in an endless desert. I read something like this once, or heard someone say it somewhere. I forget. But it rang true. If all conceivable directions were to one day open themselves up to you, then it follows that they would have to close themselves off to others, and so it is inevitable that you would find yourself alone there, alone and with nothing but shapeless earth and meaningless time and life surrounding you. You would find yourself a slave to choice, as that would be all there is, but you would still be only you, and so all of your choices would be barren and empty, like empty calories that consume you instead of the other way around.
Total freedom equals zero sacrifice. And zero sacrifice equals total aloneness. It’s the only way it can go. The moment someone else enters your frame, sacrifices must be made. Viewed this way, our sacrifices become like stars born from the partial collapse of our total freedom.
Indeed, even one who has somehow arrived at total freedom but then chosen to make even a single sacrifice has, in doing so, sacrificed total freedom. As for me, I’m quite fond of my aloneness. I’m a man who lives richly in his own head. It is only when I’m in the company of others that I begin to see my alien markings reflected in their eyes and sink into the pangs of loneliness. There is, however, a great difference between much aloneness and total aloneness. And the total aloneness that my total freedom would bring would be too much even for me. To choose it would be to choose the desert, a prison of the self.
There’s no way around it, Desperado.1 We must sacrifice, lest we imprison ourselves in the soft tissue in our skulls, which, when you think about it, is actually kind of beautiful.
Don’t want to be totally alone in your mind-desert? Don’t want your time and life there to be shapeless and meaningless? Put another person there. Put a few of them. It’s your desert. Do what you want. Don’t want your choices to be barren and empty and all-consuming? Put some obstacles there. Some sacrificial challenges. Spread them all across your sands of mind. Convert your psychic desert landscape into a lush forest obstacle course. To really turn the juices loose, put some of those obstacles between you and the others. Make the others be out there but hard to find. Make symbols to communicate and maps to find each other. Build shelters in or at the feet of trees. Dwell there in rest and wait and yearning.
Explore your sinuous terrain.
Discover that you will sometimes find the others there, and that most of them will let you down and make you feel more lonesome than you did before finding them, but that others still will arrive to you (and you to them) as kindred spirits that take refuge in your soul (and you in theirs). Learn that the more you love them, and the more you let them love you, the more you will lose them when they go. Learn that the love and the loss that you feel for them are phenomena no different than the love and the loss that they feel for you. It is all the same bolt of light shrouded in the same vast darkness.
Know to hold dear and defend the limits that your sacrifices have led you to place on yourself. Know that without them there is only sand. Know that total freedom is an abyss, a tale told by fire, a story in the Times, a mirage of sated thirst, a cruel daydream in the pupils of slaves.
Know that death is here already. It is the thing we are born into. It is the bloody echo in our lonely heads.2 It is the cacophony of ghosts and demons that we must maneuver through.3 Life, on the other hand, is a manipulation of form and time. It is at variance with the echoes and choruses of death. It is neither a reverberation nor a dissonance. It is not a sound at all. It is a shape. One that we erect and fortify to absorb death’s ceaseless pummeling. One that we compel into being via trial and error, addition and subtraction, freedom and sacrifice, alchemy and madness. We may be born into death, but we bring with us these birthrights. Madness is not something we succumb to. It is our inheritance. It is the base material that we make meaning from. It is the glorious and hideous wet growth that we must cut through in search of our nucleus. Every movement of the blade across it is a sacrifice, every sacrifice, a new growth.
Desperado, oh, you ain't gettin' no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they're drivin' you home
And freedom, oh, freedom, well, that's just some people talkin'
Your prison is walkin' through this world all alone
—Eagles, “Desperado”
I been dryin' in a dead age
I been reekin' of the new plague
The sound of the ocean is dead
It's just the echo of the blood in your head
—Acid Bath, “Dead Girl”
Gonna lay with a ghost by my side
Let the birds take to the sky
Gonna try and drown or drink the river dry
May the ghost lay by my side
And the flowers will bloom
If you want them to
The flowers will bloom
If you want them to
We spoke upon the stars up in the night
How'd you ever get so high
Gonna try and drown or drink the river dry
May the ghost lay by my side
And the flowers will bloom
If you want them to
The flowers will bloom
If you want them to
Kissed a blue girl
While it rained broken glass
Rode a bolt of white light
With Satan on my lap
Everything is happening in the dark
And everything is happening all at once
Do we haunt the hearts of god, my love?
I bet ya haunt the heart of god, my love
My love
My love
My love
My love
My love
My love
My love
My love
—Dax Riggs, "Ghost Movement"