Sour Grapes

[poliphilo]

I had my moment of fame. The phone rang, stuff came through the door. Interviewers interviewed, photographers photographed. It was intoxicating and I didn't want it to stop. I felt really, really alive in a feverish, slightly off my head kind of way.

It was to do with the vicar into witch thing. It couldn't be sustained. If I'd really wanted to sustain it I'd have had to take things further. I'd have had to put on a performance, dress up, wear horns on my head and invite the News of the World to come watch me celebrate the black mass on the stomach of a naked virgin.

But I was only interested in trying to tell the truth about my situation. And the truth is hedged round with buts and perhapses. It ain't tabloid enough.

I was watching a show about hauntings with Yuri Geller last night. Yuri was schlepping round Venice in a state of controlled hysteria, pretending to be scared of spooks, making chairs move by exercise of his psycho-kinetic powers and generally trying to convince us that this cheap documentary he'd been hired to front constituted a personal spiritual quest- part Death in Venice, part Don't Look Now. It had me thinking, but I could be doing this...

Cos I'm as talented. Or as untalented. The only thing against me is I'm not as driven. Geller ought to have been a flash in the pan- there's very little to him- but somehow he's managed to parlay his psychic gifts (or simple conjuring skills) into international celebrity. He's made himself into a household name, a brand. It's amazing how far sheer naked hunger for fame can take you.

Once in a while I get wistful and wonder what might have happened if I'd played my cards right. But then I think of Yuri and people like him and wonder what wizened little kernel of self is still rattling around inside the shell.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't know how you could possibly prove ghosts. You can't get them to perform in a laboratory. There's plenty of evidence- including the evidence of scientific instruments- but nothing that absolutely clinches it.

[archyena.livejournal.com]

BTW, about Geller, he doesn't seem to pop up in the states anymore really. As a matter of fact, the US on the whole is going on a weird skepticism binge even while the President attemtps to create a theocracy.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Geller recently did a stint on the Brit "reality" show, I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here- which features various has-beens undergoing humiliating ordeals in the Australian bush.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I wish there were marvelous ghost documentaries such as you describe, over here. The few I have thought about watching are 'historical re-enactments of such and such a story as told to so and so.'

I believe in ghost. I believe in whispers at the waterfall, and voices on the tops of buildings.

As for Uri Geller...I've always wanted to believe in him. He's so earnest.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The whispers in the waterfall were in your poem. So what about the voices at the tops of buildings- did you hear them too?

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Yes. I am afraid of high places - a rather recent development. I'm not sure why...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't mind heights- so long as there's a good stout guard rail. Take that away and I'm jelly.