The Curative Powers of Non-Thought; or "Jeremiah Blues Redux"

"Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness." - Henry Miller

What amuses me to no end is the fact that people listen to only what they want to hear and make up their own narrow conclusions about things. Case in point: people who visit Jeremiah Blues. Now, I do not mean the regular patrons. I mean people who drop by. Sometimes they stay for a while. Sometimes we share a drink or two. Sometimes they vomit all over the floor after the second helping. At other times, we get the "lurkers". Those who wait in the dark. They spy. They peep. They jerk-off on our "unorthodox" thoughts and ideas, then they go off quietly back to their Latin-sounding homes and sleep the sleep of the just.

The owners of Jeremiah Blues do not fit into your narrow stereotypes - do don't even try! When we talk church-history, it's not from a handbook. It's from personal experience. We go on church tours. We get ourselves amused ("Everyone must get high..." - Bob Dylan). We get fed shit so often that we hardly believe anything. By that, I mean "positions", "sides", "stands", "political parties", "masturbating masses", etc. We have no sides except our backsides. We believe in what we believe in (content in faith rather than faith in content). And don't even bother to interrogate us or try to force us to define what we believe. It's more complicated than your textbooks tell you.

"Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire." - Henry Miller

Then there are those who look down on us, who despise us. These are the ones that we are most amused by. When we talk about the Septuagint, we are really talking about passion - the fire that comes from the pure and holy act called "reading". The despisers point out our inability to master Alexandrian Greek grammar and syntax. Sorry, we don't get off on that. You're really on the wrong bus here if you think we do. Most Christians are either too academic or too moronic (sometimes both at the same time - don't believe me? we can direct you to this fella named "Vincit"). Sometimes we prefer hanging out with holy-rollers who handle snakes and speak in crazy tongues rather than those who jerk-off on Greek Grammar and Continualist-Meta-Definition-Systematic-Theology.

"Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil." - Henry Miller

In line with our talk about passion, we believe in whatever that is genuine. A heartfelt laughter. A scream in the night. Weeping quietly. Sitting still before the Holy Mother of God. Long bus rides. Sharing shesha among friends while ogling girls. One minute quoting memorable passages from Dostoevsky and Henry Miller, another minute laughing at the Green Goliath in "World War Hulk". One minute having a long discourse on the Bar Enasha traditions in Enoch-Daniel-Gospels, another minute talking about why the reptilians haven't begun their attacks (after all, we've got less than 4 years to 2012, right?). In short, don't even bother trying to analyse us - you will be wrong every time (and look stupid in the process). We are watching you make fools of yourselves with your endless analysis of everyone else.

Once in a while, we get visits by the gentle-folks. These are those with a hint of fire within but nearly smothered out by years of clean-living, believing in shit and trying to gain acceptance into the holy-club of the Latin-shitheads. These are not the profane purveyors of puerile entertainment such as comicbooks and rock-music. They grow up with a little Tintin, a little Asterix, a little Agatha Christie and a lot of solid Christian books. With the gentle folks, we are gentle. We may poke fun once in a while ("Stop trying to behave, start trying to live!" - Ah Pek Jalan Sultan) but it's all in the name of gentility and good humour. These are those who still believe that there is order amidst the chaos (sometimes they don't even notice the chaos - after all their history books state every event, every date, every personality so very clearly and orderly, right?). These are those who still subscribe to a code of behaviour (hoping that the Latin-anathemisers will be kinder with them on Judgement Day, perhaps?). We have only one message: go read some books by Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Mark Millar, Grant Morrison, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Murakami, Steve Gerber, Howard Chaykin, David Icke, Erik Davis, Douglas Rushkoff, Charles Bubowski, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, etc. Real books by real people. They are wrong sometimes but oh-so-right most of the time. [We are not trying to convert your clean-living pansy-ass, you are responsible for yourself. It's your choice...]

"Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself." - Henry Miller

Postscript: It's a Sunday morning. Beautiful morning. Rained a little so the weather's pretty cool. Lots of people are reading newspapers and hanging out at the local kopitiam. Other folks are in church. I'm in a cybercafe typing this mini-manifesto for Jeremiah Blues. I've got Henry Miller's "Plexus" on my lap. There's this 8-year old kid next to me who is a God. He's playing Serious Sam 2 and he just used the cheat-code to turn on God-mode so that he can blast away all the alien-invaders. There are some people who think that Jeremiah Blues is expounding dangerous ideas. You have no idea what you're talking about. Everything is chaos and those in power have the "cheat-codes" to turn themselves into Gods. Sometimes they even pastor large churches (one local pastor here was conferred the "Tan Sri" title by the king yesterday). Sometimes they run governments. Sometimes they write handbooks to imprison your minds. Sometimes they write blogs to anathemize half of Singapore. Dangerous? Are you kiddin'? What is dangerous, what is so offensive about the patrons of Jeremiah Blues is that we are adamantly opposed to any attempts to stereotype us. We refuse to *look/feel* orthodox. We refuse to *behave* - we choose to *be*. Hence, we refuse to be controlled, we refuse to conform, we refuse to stand in line to buy tickets and prefer to sneak in the backway if we can get away with it. Welcome to Jeremiah Blues - you can check in anytime you like but you can never leave... :)

"Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself." - Henry Miller (once more, with feeling this time, ok?)