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roadswim-collective · 6 years

Text

Birds Hell (Reprise): The Book of Job

Extracted from Transcript C

Right, let's have a go of this one.

(Inhales from e-cigarette, coughs)

God help, that is harsh.

(Coughs, spits, laughs)

What the hell was that again? Lychee and Raspberry, for god's sake.

(Blows nose, clears throat)

Think I'll go back to the bloody Zestappeal. Anyway, where was I? Christ knows. Oh yeah, so car parks, right? Twice in my life I've been sat on the ground at the edge of a hospital car park, totally brainshot and unable to move. Once was when my brother died, back in 1987, in the old East Glam Hospital, and I was fifteen. Twice was a little while ago at the new Royal Glam Hospital when those birds scared me and all the cars were dead. And what these two car parks taught me was this, right?

When everything's gone wrong and fuck all makes sense, if your brain is smart and knows what's good for it, what it'll do is try to ignore everything. It'll try to get you back to your distractions ASAP, whatever they are. It'll say, hey so life's got no inherent meaning but you invest it with your own meaning and basically just seize the day, have fun and be kind. (Laughs) Oh, and it'll also do that if it's a particularly thick brain. (Coughs) Yeah...and...then it'll get all obsessive over some hobby or other. According to the tastes it was brought up to enjoy, you know. Like golf, or fucking, or politics. Maybe faith, religious faith, that's an old favourite, right? (Sniggers)

But my brain, for some reason, this is what I learned in those car parks, doesn't do that. Distractions don't work, they don't distract. Stupid thin things they all seem, stale, flat, and useless. And everything is just a distraction really, every possible thing, love and pleasure, all just a distraction from this truth I'm drowning in right now. My brain, in those car parks, just goes numb and I start to see things in the landscape beyond the perimeter fence and I just don't know where or what I am.

Actually, I remember this Jehovah's Witness who came round the house one day, a few years ago now, and she was on the doorstep, you know, and I can rarely resist shooting the shit with them when they knock. I think they see me as a challenge. I usually talk about the Book of Job. Because that doesn't exactly show the non-existent bastard in the best light, does it?

I mean...(Laughs) it's all about God gambling with the Devil over the soul of the best man on earth, right? They have a bet and the stakes are this poor fella's eternal soul. Which is fucked up for a start, right? Because if He's God, and God is Love, then why did the bugger take the bet? Not very loving, that, is it? Kind of suggests the whole thing is just a game to Him, right?

Anyway, the Devil says, look here now, Jehovah, show me the best and most righteous man on that beloved planet of yours, and I bet I can get to him so bad that he ends up cursing you, his Lord God.

And what does our loving shepherd tell the Devil? Does He tell him, mate, fuck off, you're being a dick...(Coughs) and anyway, I've got a duty of care here, so no way, no bet, no deal. Back to the infernal realm with you, old son.

No, he says game on.

Knowing full well the kind of shit He's letting Job in for, right, all the delicious death and disease and disaster the Devil has in store.

Game on.

And this is just to win a bet, mind.

(Yawns)

The funniest bit is the ending though. When God's righteous man, reduced by now to a toothless, hairless, multi-bereaved tramp with these pulsating buboes all over his body, sitting in the ditch where his home used to be, when poor old Job finally dares to raise the slightest, most timid, respectful little question to some sympathetic friends as to what the point is of all this devastation, down comes God Himself. There He is, right next to them, in the form of a whirlwind. He's come to talk to the bloke who's wondering why his life has so spectacularly fallen apart. And what does He do?

(Laughs)

What He does is He gives Job the most almighty bollocking for even thinking such a thing. And I mean like a really enormous bollocking. A god-sized bollocking. Makes it clear to Job in no uncertain terms that he doesn't even get to ask that question. That what's it all about, eh? that everyone asks at some point in their lives, usually when the shit's hit the fan. Don't even dare to wonder what it's all about, says God, only I know that, you're so tiny and bloody mortal, I can crush mountains, so I guess you'd better just STFU.

It's true, check it out yourself, Book of Job, in between Esther and Psalms.

And to back it up, He goes on and on, for two whole pages right, about what a massive big God He is, how incredibly powerful and mighty, how He made everything, and how He holds up the sky and moves the stars and fills every fathom of every ocean (Bellows) so how could you possibly expect to know what my plan is, puny mortal!

And He's a real sort of alpha male arsehole about it too, at one point boasting about His big dangerous monster pets, Leviathan and Behemoth, and talking about how He hooks them through the lips and drags them around on chains. Now that sounds all too bloody familiar, dunnit? Like, 24-year-old Lee from Clydach swaggering around with his pitbulls, Tyson and Facefucker. The god version of that syndrome, right?

And all the time this Jehovah thug is all up in poor old Job's pustulent, ruined, human face, giving it all the sarcastic questions routine, I wonder if you could drag sea monsters around on chains? I wonder if you could hold up a mountain, eh? EH?

So that's essentially God's answer to Job, his answer to the question of why a loving God allows suffering in the world. And the answer is because shut the fuck up, that's why.

Hallelujah!

(Coughs, inhales more nicotine vapour)

And I mean, yeah, God does magic back Job's stuff in the end, his house and all his sheep and that, and he does clear up his boils for him and gives him new kids to replace the dead ones, after the Devil gives up the bet, but still...think of the psychic trauma, the PTSD for poor bloody Job. Because there's no mention of God giving him a merciful mind wipe, like Men in Black, so he can forget the whole twisted fucking nightmare. No, the poor sod has to spend the rest of his life all freaked out, walking on eggshells, never able to relax into it all, even at his kitchen table with his new daughters around him, because he's always totally and horrifically aware that any time it can all be shat on and pissed over, for no reason at all.

Anyway, so I'd spin this out for them on the doorstep, the Jehovah's Nusiances, and they'd smile pityingly at how a lost soul can read the True Word of God and still go astray.

(Laughs)

Or maybe they thought I was the devil, trying to send them astray.

I've got one about the Tower of Babel too...but...maybe another time...(Indistinguishable) All working together...(Inaudible)...must be the only time in the whole of human history, international co-operation (Indecipherable)...too many ruined buildings in this story without that one on top (Laughs, slurps).

Sorry, just eating...daring to eat...a peach.

(Slurps) Or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

No, but the point I was trying to make was this, right? This Jehovah's Witness, she said to me that what will happen is this. When the Day comes, there'll be a final battle between Jehovah and Satan. After a load of terrible armageddon and apocalypse stuff, God will win and everyone who is still alive on the planet will be sorted by the Angels into two groups, the Saved and the Damned. The Damned go straight to Hell, of course, to be punished and tortured for all eternity. And the Saved? They get to stay on the Earth and live forever, at their physical peak, on a planet transformed so it's like the Garden of Eden again.

The way this woman described it...She said that if you were one of the Saved, you could live forever and, you know, inherit the earth. Do all the things you always wanted to do. Like me, she said, I love to knit and what I'd really love to do is start off with fleece straight from the sheep, and then go all the way through preparing it and washing it and dyeing it and carding it and finally knitting clothes with it. To me, that would be heaven. To you, something different, but whatever it is there would be time for. Words to that effect. Nice little lady in her 70s, very slight, delicate features, pale skin, quite ordinary looking, and yet that little bone china head of hers was the container of such a tiny, cosy eternity, she and her saved friends and a neverending supply of sheep.

(Coughs)

It seems so obviously bloody silly but, you know, it kept this little old lady trudging up the steep steps of every house on our side of the street in the pissing grey drizzle. An insane act, surely? But it's working for her you know? It goes to show how far you can go if you really invest in some crock of shit or other. Don't forget, it's all about distraction. Your brain knows the truth, deep down. It knows there's no reason for any of this, no reason and no purpose. It knows there's no God, there's no Devil and there's fuck all when you die. Even that little Jehovah lady, even her brain knew it deep down. But, unlike me, she'd invested in some crock of shit or other, and that kept her happily distracted. As far as she was concerned, she wasn't just spouting nonsense at indifferent strangers in a cold wet cul de sac in a slowly dying post-industrial zone among the impoverished uplands of northern Europe. No, she was on a very special mission (Giggles)...from God...it's quite sweet really.

(Giggles, coughs).

And despite my best efforts as devil's advocate, she stuck with it. Although she never did call back, which isn't like them, is it? Once they've got their hooks in, they keep coming back, don't they? Not this one, though.

I wonder why she didn't call back.

(Laughs, coughs)

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