Oh Mark.  Mark Lunt.  Lunt.  

Mark has written one of my favorite pieces of music, "Hebrides Shipping".  I've lost my copy, and he hasn't been able to come up with a new one.  

When I mentioned this Guest Editor bit to Mark,  I said "Your thoughts on the eschaton/end of the world/etc would be a bracing tonic to my vague fappery."  Mark is a poet and musician.  He's the  most rigorous political thinker I've ever met - no, really. For sure, I don't move in the political thinking  circles, but neither do most of us, and Mark is fecking spot on.  I hold on to a letter written from Seattle that is tender, demonstrative, illustrative and prevocative.    I miss his cat Beckett, and we should all listen to more of this:

Here's his post: say your foulest, he'll appreciate it.

Robert Anton Wilson (and a little later) Terrence McKenna – when he was just on the right side of sanity (decide for yourself which side that was) – used to speak a lot about the “immanentization” of the Eschaton. I saw McKenna give a talk at the University of Washington in the early 1990s. The audience was enraptured as if listening to a latter day Sibyl. I sat there wondering what the fuck he was talking about, and I remain ignorant to this day.

I mean, all these ignorant nutters across the globe panicking because of some bizarre Mayan inscription – the 13^th Baktun – were getting on my nerves so much that I longed for my own personal fucking Eschaton – but which one? Do we get to choose? Some see the Eschaton as “the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell.” Bearing in mind that I only believe in the first of those things, my Eschaton will be brief, final, covered with shit, and devoid of any meaning or enlightenment.  

I abhor flabby mysticism; I laugh in the face of the religious dolt; I loathe any form of prayer; I refuse to kneel before anyone or anything (I might consider it for Ba’al, because it’s such a cool name), I piss on religious icons.

I think those who eagerly await the arrival/descent/manifestation/immanentization of the Eschaton are all going to be rather disappointed. Sorry, ladies. It’s going to be – it already is - a slow-motion convergence or confluence (if you prefer) of rather predictable, tedious, and nasty events. The starting gun for the show was fired long ago. One can pick a date or an event at random. It’s of no real consequence.

I have chosen the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by the cheeky young chap, Gavrilo Princip, in 1914. I need not recite European or world history from that point on. The Eschaton is like the hound of heaven or the hound of hell or – in my case – a local miniature schnauzer with a skin disease – pursuing us, dogging our every move through this brief temporal stay on earth.

The Eschaton is not some magical fucking Broadway show, or something that makes (pick a god, any god) appear to start handing out “get out of jail free” cards. Probably about 60% of the people on the planet are already enjoying the benefits of the Eschaton – we just arrived a little late to the process.

I shall end this – not like an Eschaton – but with a few keywords and phrases to pay more attention to: WARS, GLOBAL WARMING, DROUGHT, BLIGHT, FLOODING OF COASTAL AREAS, NEW AND BETTER EQUIPPED VIRUSES, MASS UNEMPLOYMENT, CIVIL WARS, WELCOME TO WORLD MART, DICTATORSHIPS, INCREASING MESSIANIC CULTS, ALIENATION, DEPRESSION, SUICIDE, A MALAISE INDUCED BY THE POOR STANDARD OF TV PROGRAMMING, THE SHINY TOILET PAPER, THE END OF THE GOOD OL’ USA… AND ALL WHO WAIL ON HER.

 

 

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