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

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's the way to keep them on the straight and narrow and sitting in church, let's mess with their little minds and scare the crap out of them.

[cataptromancer.livejournal.com]

But if one honestly believes in hell and the devil, then it's natural to want to warn children about it, isn't it? If I had a child I would have to someone drum a fear of poison and electrical outlets into them.

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

I would say personally that would depend on HOW you are doing the warning as well. I have a healthy respect for the power of evil, but I don't see some guy with a pitchfork offering to buy your soul any more than I see God as an old guy with a beard. I believe in protection against evil, just as I believe in letting in the Eternal, but certainly not the Judeo-Christian ways.