Apocalypse is everywhere. I hear it in The Arcade Fire. I hear it in that “bad guy” song. I see it in 1917 and Parasite and Revolution and Doomsday Preppers and The Walking Dead. I read about it in White Noise and Wanderers and The Stand and The Dog Stars. I hear it in the streets, in my friends’ loping, sad gaits, in their mouths, coughed up like hairballs. I hear it in my own thoughts.
A tape flapping over and over and over and over again, around the spool, around an idea.
We aren’t having kids. We aren’t buying houses. We don’t have permanent jobs. Responsibilities aren’t helpful in the end; they only make it worse when it comes. We’ve seen the movies, the TV shows, read the books, listened to songs, sung the lyrics. We know. We aren’t stupid.
I wrote my own book too, one more voice in a sprouting field run riot with them. It’s called The Greatest Show on Earth. It’s about the end of the world. God’s in it and it’s his fault it’s happening, and he says he says he says, “My children, it’s all going to be alright. This is necessary. It’s going to be alright.” And I hope it makes people feel better about the time we were born into. I hope it makes people feel better that it’s probably not God’s fault. I hope it makes them feel better that God’s probably not there at all, that it’s us, you and me, us and we, doing this. God is like a fogged mirror, I expect. We’re really looking at ourselves but the fog makes it easier to look and see something, something apart from us, a separate thing, smiling, saying, “My children, it’s gonna be alright. It’s all gonna be alright.” I suppose that’s why I put him there, because who could argue with God? God is super-great.
Amiright? This is necessary.
It’s gonna be alright.
We’ve seen the movies. We’ve seen the TV shows, read the books, listened to the songs. We’ve sung them lyrics. We can see. We aren’t stupid.
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